Reply #96: Teaching is about measuring things. [View All]

[sulphurdunn]

Lots of things. We measure academic progress, social development, maturity and character. We only use analysis to measure academic progress relative to lots of intangibles: things like how little sleep some kids get, or whether they eat anytime other than at school, or whether mom's boyfriend has been using them as a punching bag or worse, or if the utilities have been shut off, or why they're sad, or happy, or hopeful, or have any faith in the future of the world we adults have created and are making worse. At least a quarter of all school age children in the land of the free live in poverty. How do you quantify that other than as a gross statistic? What does it mean?

Teachers don't actually get "tenure" like a college professor might. They get continuing contracts, which means it is not necessary to renew them every year. We don't have "guaranteed jobs for life". I'm really getting weary of hearing that meme.

I'm also sick and tired of hearing the "in the private sector we don't get..." analogy. The private sector has totally fucked up this country beyond all recognition and would be better run like the public sector. Worship of the private sector is no more rational than any other form of idolatry.

As for quantification being the be all and end all of every measure of success, know this: People are not widgets. Kids are not standardized products and neither are their teacher, and neither are you. Maybe the widget system works for producing things, but it doesn't work for educating citizens. It isn't even the black box assessment that is so offensive as it is the incomprehensible, punitive nature of it. The folks who design these measure have been unanimous in asserting that they should not be used alone to determine teacher competence or student development. Politicians have decided to use them for that.

You need to get over the idea that our country is some kind of assembly line, and that people are just another kind of quantifiable stuff that have numerical values. Free people don't think like that. There is far and away too much variation in the human population for analysis by formula without human subjectivity being the determining variable.