2/12/09

Testing Prep Filling Up Kids' Minds


I understand the need to make sure all kids do well in school and this being one way to find this out for sure. But to spend a huge part of most days these days doing test prep is not adding to one's learning experience. 
As a mother of children who will most likely be in the public school systems for 12 years, I am very concerned about this issue and know I will be more and more at odds with it as my children get older and ready to take them as well. Kids are not learning anything while they are being prepped for standardized tests; well, except how to bubble in the circles, a, b, c or d and how to eliminate their obviously wrong answers. 
As a person who has always learned best in doing, this type of education would be the death to my creativity.  I would love to see more emphasis placed on schools teaching more self-learning and more meta-cognitive type of projects, where kids become the evaluators of their own work and learning. But this type of learning requires a much higher standard and much more care and dedication on the part of the teacher. But below I created a list of things I would love to see in my kids' schools and am sending this wish out to the Universe in hopes that more and more parents become empowered to take the reins of their kids' education and demand that creativity and pride in one's individual gifts become once again the focus of education. 

I would love my kids to:
1. go to a school where aesthetics was important. Where kids work was smart and beautiful. 
2. go to a school where all adults talk to kids with respect. 
3. a school where the ones in power valued lessons being taught without the use of xeroxes 
4. go to a school where consequences for bad behavior did not include being taken out of gym or outside time. 
5. go to a school were children learned about the larger world....like hey, we are at war....info on elections...etc. 
6. go to a school where no more than 2-3 hours were spent on test prep.....

The print above can be purchase on my online art store site on Etsy.  Would love to hear what you have to say about it. 

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