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> From: “Greg Swann” <gswann@presenceofmind.net>
> To: “Morris Feller – Honorary Baboon” <feller@pcef.pc.maricopa.edu> > CC: “Ken Western/The Arizona Republic” <Ken.Western@pni.com>, > BCC: <suppressed> > Subject: Guerrilla Schooling #1: Too much monkey-business... > Date: Mon, Aug 2, 1999, 8:10 AM |
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The Guerrilla Schooling web-page update challenge:Can we achieve monkey-see-monkey-do without open-book testing?Welcome to Guerrilla Schooling, a new web-based magazine devoted to achieving academically rigorous education by any means necessary. Keep your hands in plain view and no one will get hurt. We direct your attention to the ‘To:’ line, where Mr. Morris Feller is honored as our very first honorary baboon. He merits this distinction for a work of the mind published in The Arizona Republic, itself a suspiciously simian-like enterprise. Mr. Feller advocates open-book testing, although we suspect he might be willing to make exceptions for airline pilots and handlers of raw meat. After all, an open-book test may be a valid test of the book and it may be a way to determine if a blind pig can snuffle up a truffle in less than a pig’s age, but we can’t imagine that even Mr. Feller would willingly risk a mid-air collision or an e coli outbreak just so test-takers can get an uneven break. Whatever. The ha-ha behind this brouhaha is the reaction to the recent release of the Stanford 9 test scores. The reaction, not the release. The Republic approached the issue with the kind of clean, geometric logic that can only be described as orangutangular. First, we were instructed, the scores don’t mean anything because the best-performing schools are schools of choice. And second, the scores don’t mean anything because a cadre of professors of education don’t want for them to mean anything. Breaking vases is actually the very best recreation for cats, according to the cats, but this evidently did not occur to Ms. Bev Medlyn, who is seen above in the ‘CC:’ line. She recorded with round-eyed credulity the doubt-casting of the unlearned doctors, and she never once heard an encouraging word. Much worse, she didn’t bother to mention that the Grand Poobah of the pooh-poohing professors was none other than Dr. David Berliner, also ‘CC’d’ and himself not just vaguely mandrill-like. Berliner is co-author of a book that claims, e coli fatalities notwithstanding, that the public schools are doing a fine job, never better. It would have been refreshingly scrupulous of Ms. Medlyn to have clued her readers in on this fact... But wait. There’s more. The Republic’s editorial page trolled for letters denouncing the test results and standardized testing in general. Unsurprisingly, they got some, which is how Mr. Feller came to our attention. They front-loaded the question, baldly, and the sole ‘evidence’ offered was the stilted, titled articles from the Republic’s own pages. But they wouldn’t stop beating the dead horse even when they had beaten it to a vapor. Out of ten letters published, two were written by minions of Dr. Berliner who had been quoted by name in Ms. Medlyn’s article. If you don’t have your book open, that’s twenty percent. There is a name for this kind of business, and it ain’t monkey-business. But it’s all one, isn’t it? It is conceivable, at least, that the Republic was too trusting, too naive, too ready to listen to the cloying whisperings of fast-talking con-men. And it is conceivable, at least, that they’re not really con-men, they’re just misunderstood... Fine. Our business is not monkey-business, either. Our business is to get an education for our children. A real, rigorous academic education, not any of the many unreasonable, unreasoning facsimiles. For our children, not all children everywhere. Now, while they’re still children. We are guerrillas, not reformers. We are happy enough to look askance at standardized tests without outsized admonitions of agitpropriety. Resolved: Standardized tests are worse than almost anything. The only thing they’re better than is nothing, and this is why we should be more than suspicious of poor, misunderstood non-con-men who insist we should prefer the nothing instead. What we could prefer would be a test as simple as this: A ten-year-old child stands up and reads aloud twelve or twenty lines from Moby Dick and then speaks intelligently to the text. This would be an amazing feat, and you had better know that very, very few ten-year-olds can do it today. So, of course, the test would have to be dumbed down to Lord of the Flies and from there to Harriet the Spy. But even that would be too much to expect, so we would have to work our way down to Curious George, and we might then ask our students simply to say something, anything at all, about Curious George the monkey. But we have not yet reached the level of mastery measured by standardized tests, so perhaps we should ‘test’ to see whether a room full of non-readers can at least screech like a monkey. And when it turns out that half or more of them can’t, Mr. Feller will be thrilled to tell us why: It’s because the test wasn’t open-book. There is no top to human achievement, no level of mastery above which some other master cannot rise. Shakespeare and Copernicus and Beethoven and countless others showed us what we can do at our best, but each one of them bested a giant in his turn, and each of them might someday be bested. Achievement has no top, but surely it has a bottom. There must be some level below which human beings cannot sink, below which we will not only not be human, we will no longer even be alive. All guerrilla objectives aside, it seems a poor idea to plumb for that level. For Mr. Feller is not a baboon, he is merely an honorary baboon. He can do things no baboon can do. For example, he can argue that humanity is not what it is, that knowledge can exist in a book but not in a mind or that a mind without knowledge can nevertheless solve problems, at least problems not involving mortal emergencies. And in its turn a baboon can do things Mr. Feller can never do. Not very many, to be sure, and they’re easy skills, easily mastered. Monkey-see-monkey-do all the live-long day, and not a single professor of education to screech up an excuse about why failure should be expected and welcomed, celebrated, cherished even. And no matter what, we are left with this embarrassing detail: Whether it’s cracking nuts or cracking skulls, a baboon can do the few small things it can do without ever cracking a book...
All that is by way of welcome, friends and victims, allies and adversaries. The real business of Guerrilla Schooling is carried out on its web site, which you can find here: http://www.presenceofmind.net/Guerrilla/ The purpose of this note is simply to advise you that the web site has been updated with a new issue. Not such a huge surprise, taking account that this is the first issue. But: We are new and we hope not too awkward. We are lean-look’d prophets whispering fearful change, dancing and leaping all the while. You’ll get used to it. Rage, war and scalding scoldings, plus tools, tricks, techniques and tactics. Our children’s education is our only destination, and it doesn’t do to get sidetracked. If you should someday find your name in the ‘To:’ line, take heart. It’s a rare honor, and you can only claim it by taking and failing to earn tax-dollars for the work of the mind. And you can always strive to do better in the future, although we won’t be reserving any breaths awaiting that outcome. If you’re in the ‘CC:’ line, it’s because you are presumed to have an interest in education. Fair warning: Being in the ‘CC:’ line will not keep you out of the “To:’ line. The guerrillas are in the ‘BCC:’ line, the line you can’t see. If you think we are laughing at you, you could be as much as half right.
Marginal notes: We are much too Arizoniated right now. There are guerrillas everywhere, but we need links and the email addresses of educrats and media bigfeet from all over. Send along what you can. And: We speak of ourselves in the plural not because we are regal or editorial but simply because we are enormous, a great demanding glare. It’s a good light to read by, I think. And surely there is something I am overlooking, but I can’t seem to think of it. I could consult an open book, but I forgot to bring it to class. Worse yet, I haven’t yet written that particular book, which makes it hard but not impossible to read. We can read it together if you like, twelve or twenty lines at a time. We can whisper the text or we can shout it, but we cannot speak of reason and lose our voices. And reason is all the arsenal we need to win this war... Until next time, Greg Swann |
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