And so it goes....

Our book doesn't really talk about testing of children, but it speaks to the symptoms of a system that led to testing-centered debacles such as President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" and President Obama's "Race to the Top" (the latter an interesting and perhaps unintentional double entendre).  Personally, I don't believe that holding teachers accountable (through standardized testing) for what they have taught children deals with the very basic problems.  To warn that teachers won't be fired if their students pass academic tests, to threaten that school districts won't suffer financial consequences if their test scores meet federal standards, misses the point and causes other problems.  As we comment in our book, schools have shifted away from the art of education to the business of education.  Testing as the primary means of holding schools accountable is more in line with the business approach to education.

An analogy.

A business creates an inventive and high quality product: widget #1. It markets and sells the product successfully. The business owner decides that the business must make more money.  Marketing is improved. The product is refined to become even better than the original. The business makes more money.

Another product similar to widget #1 is developed by another company and appears on the market.  Widget #2  is for sale at a lower price. The producer of widget #1, to compete, realizes that its selling price must be lowered. This cuts into the profit margin. A price war ensues. At some point, the business selling widget #1 decides to cut down on the number of employees by laying off more experienced workers, and thus more costly workers, so that the price of widget #1 can be lowered to compete with the cost of widget #2.

The company selling widget #2 moves its factory to China where wages are a fraction of wages paid in the United States. The company producing Widget #1 determines that it can't afford to move the company to a place where wages are lower so the company begins the process of substituting plastic parts for steel parts to save money. Widget #1 sales begin to fall precipitously because not only is the price non-competitive but the quality of the product is reduced significantly.  Widget #1 goes out of production.  Widget #2 is succeeding but now has to compete with Widget #3 which is manufactured in India and made out of plastic. And the downward spiral of quality continues.

The analogy isn't perfectly parallel with schools systems but making the comparison is worth a try.

School system #1 hires excellent teachers. It maintains high academic standards. The students that attend the school come with an attitude that reflects that good education is a right and not a privilege and that education requires unrelenting commitment to quality education by teachers, students and student families. The teachers are not held accountable by standardized tests because there aren't any standardized tests. The individual teachers know their students very well and devise pedagogies and evaluation processes customized for their students. There is intrinsic motivation among the teachers to live up to the professional and ethical responsibility to be the best teachers possible because they believe that it is through education that our country is formed – its values. The students are interested in learning. Part of to inspiration to learn comes from the family,  excellent teachers, and administrator-educators, but mostly from the students themselves and their parent(s). These kids love learning. They graduate having received an education and not just a diploma.

School system #2 replaces retiring teachers not with the best teachers with significant classroom experience but with first-year teachers. They make the decision to hire new teachers based on the cost of providing education and not on the quality of the education that is provided. The problem goes a bit deeper here because university admission standards for students interested in entering teaching as a career are typically very low across the country.  Not only are the teachers in School System #2 inexperienced, but they may not have had the inclination, aptitude and talent required to be an excellent teacher in the first place.

Many teachers that have left school system #2 and teaching profession altogether before completing 5 years of teaching due to frustation. 75% of the teaching staff are first-year teachers - many of which should not have been permitted to enter the teaching field in the first place. The administration in SS#2 is comprised of people initially hired as coaches and history teachers. After a few years, these coach-teachers become school counselors, then vice principals, then principals, then curriculum directors, then vice superintendents and finally superintendents. Nearly every administrative position in SS#2 is occupied by ex-coaches.  They run the school and, of course, have primary interest in the success of the athletic program.

SS#2 is structured on the business model. The students' parents of SS#2 are the consumers; the students are the customers; the faculty are the human resources; entrepreneurial curriculum building provides a curriculum the student-customers like; the high school diploma is the product. To receive the product,  students must pass minimum competency tests that essentially guarantee that graduates have at least a 9th grade proficiency in the tested areas. To have their students pass these tests, the teachers "teach to the test" and forego most everything else. Their job depends on graduation rates.

The coach-administrators urge their teachers to take whatever steps are necessary to have their students pass the exams. Everything – the very existence of the school, faculty and administrative positions – depends on attaining the highest graduation rate possible. No one can fail. To accomplish this task, SS#2 teachers have not only aimed their teaching at passing the tests, but the administration has excluded scores from disabled students, students who are learning English as a second language, and disadvantaged kids. All this makes SS#2 look good to the federal government.  What happens, however, to the quality of education when first year teachers that graduate from universities where the school of education is not thought of highly are put in charge of teaching students to pass tests so that SS#2 can continue receiving federal funding and teachers can be retained? Students from SS#2 will graduate with a diploma but not an education! What happens to the United States when this approach pervades our school systems. It is unbelieveably upside down.

Like the Widgets above, school districts all over the country have succumbed to quantity over quality. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse 5...."and so it goes".  

There will be no one who wants to read!

The following was inspired by Neil Postman's book,  Amusing Ourselves to Death (Penguin Books, 1985).

I asked someone about the several blogs that I am authoring. The response was that my blogs are too long. 

"People don't like to read. They want to see images. Keep the blog to a short paragraph. People today have a short attention span. Be satisfied with that or you will lose visitors to your sites." 

I respond, "But I can't share what needs to be said in one short paragraph." 

 "If you write it all out in great detail, your blog won't be read. It won't be shared. People don't like to read. You may think that what you are writing is important to write. Replace all of those words with an image. People like to see pictures. They don't want to be bothered with words, information and history." 

This is one of the points that our book makes. Our culture has changed and is changing. It has become a culture wherein reading in depth has been replaced by images, bits of entertainment, and 140 character statements.  Although pictures can certainly document that something happened, they most often don't provide any other information or explanation.  Bits of entertainment keep the public engaged because there is an insatiable appetite for reading secret information about the private and sometimes sordid details of the lives of celebrity. People clamor for that. Reading in depth has been replaced by entertainment.

With the availability of the internet and the cellphone, messaging, texting, twittering and the like have become the main thoroughfare of communication. It is easier to send a short text message than to make a phone call because then there is not a possibility of a protracted conversation. Texting is quick to do, to the point and immediate. Texting can be done at anytime practically - in a restaurant, while walking, while driving, while in the bathroom, in the classroom, during the hymns in church...really at almost anytime and anywhere. 

I was sitting at a family gathering where in the middle of a table conversation when one of the four at the table took his cellphone out and began checking his cellphone. He was entirely oblivious to the ongoing conversation or that he should be listening and participating. Receiving, reading and responding to messages have not only become an obligation, these activities have become acceptable and apparently not considered impolite. I may be a bit old fashioned here but isn't it simply polite to listen to what is going on during a conversation with anyone with whom we might be engaged? Isn't there some sort of taxonomy that governs the position that live, in person conversation must hold over the intrusion of a cellphone message? Isn't it important to stay focused on the people with whom you are having direct conversation by resisting the apparently irresistible temptation to respond to texts? 

I think about today's students in today's classrooms taught by today's teachers. It is common to observe students texting during lectures, surfing the internet during classes. These texts are likely not related in anyway to the content of the lecture but rather part of the constant stream of social networking that knows no proper boundary, place or time.  Even congressional representatives twitter during the presentation of important speeches such as the "State of the Union". So the immediacy of texting is not something owned by the youth of today. We all do it.  Reading in depth has been replaced by texting in 2-3 sentence bursts.

If you are still reading.... 

U.S. Crisis: Art, Education and Society makes the case that the general public cannot discern between "stuff that looks like art but isn't art" from art.  Why is that? Because most everything today is entertainment. Art, for the most part, is no longer in the public discourse.  Even the news media has turned its back on the art of delivering the news in depth. Watch any of the major news broadcasts. From the exciting opening musical theme, shocking stories that contain graphic images about the days most eye-catching events are the lead lines. Warning: The following contains graphic images that may be offensive to some viewers. Result: the viewers move closer to the television set and turn up the sound. The networks know this. Shock and awe and entertainment keep viewers riveted. They end a segment with a pitch for the next shock and awe story. "Yesterday, a woman in New York was found in a cellar after two years of captivity. More on this right after the break."  We don't dare turn the channel. After commercials that take the viewer to the most nutritious dog food available, the broadcast doesn't continue with the story about the woman in the cellar but with a different story.  The network didn't lie about reporting on the woman in the cellar because we are reminded by the anchor at the end of the next segment that the story about woman in the cellar is upcoming.  The networks keep the audience engaged by teasing viewers to stay with the network.  Near the very end of the 60 minute segment:  "And finally to the story about the woman in the New York cellar." Cut to image of the empty cellar and the woman being hauled away by ambulance, her faced blurred out to protect her identity."  And now to our News Quiz which is really trivial pursuit with the emphasis on "trivial".  

The talking heads begin the broadcast by guaranteeing that their network is ethical and therefore is presenting news that is not only critical for the public to know but also presented impartially.  To CNN's "Keeping Them Honest" where politicians are put to the test related to statements they have made or positions that yave taken. The viewing audience hopes that the politicians are tripped up by a delving interviewer. The cunning interviewer asks questions that no one dares to ask but questions everyone wishes were asked.  The viewers thank their lucky stars that they aren't the ones being interviewed but, with schaden freude, smile when the interviewer twists the knife into the belly of the caught and sometimes unsuspecting victim. What would be more artful and interesting would be to provide much more depth, evidence, and quantity of information from both sides of a controversial remark or topic.  But that would cease to embrace the entertainment factor. PBS,  BBC, and Meet the Press does a much better job of in depth reporting, but even they are being forced by the entertainment-news competition to move away from the art of broadcasting to the business of broadcasting.  

Watching a politician or business leader squirm, "live and on-air" is entertaining. Observing a well-prepared interviewer with an agenda verbally attack a well-known personality and then to observe the reporter win the debate is entertaining because there is catharsis in the victory achieved right in front of the public. We all witness it together and cheer the reporter on during the process. But "Keeping them Honest" doesn't really provide the victim interviewee with an hour to debate the real issues that underly the topic at hand.  

FOX News' "Fair and Balanced" essentially states unequivocally that, no matter what the news anchor and reporters say, the news FOX brings to the public can be trusted because the network, right up front, tells us that it is presenting the neutral and objective truth. Why would they say that unless its true? Besides, it is entertaining. 

All of the major news broadcasts resort to interviews of Hollywood actors who, for some reason, are asked to make recommendations about how to solve the situation in Sudan, for example.  But what background and education does a Hollywood actor really bring to the table. The public, for some reason, accepts what a famous actor says even if the actor doesn't know enough to be saying anything substantive. The U.S. government even assigns ambassador-like roles to celebrities. Why because famous people can be believed? They have been successful in achieving fame and have attained all of the financial rewards that pertain to being famous. Famous rich people must be credible! 

 CNN presents the Ridiculist as a follow to something tragic as if not to have the viewers dwell too long on death, dying and destruction in another country to which 99% of the U.S. population will never visit. MSNBC says, "Let's get back to entertainment".  Conservative talking heads accuse the President of using a teleprompter too much while they  themselves read off of a teleprompter. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC goes on and on daily about what is right and wrong very much like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity do daily on their radio tirades. The delivery of news in the guise of "Keeping them Honest," or "Fair and Balanced" is an oxymoron.  While there are major and critical stories to be reported, the networks spend significant amounts of time interviewing a comedian like Bill Maher. There is no doubt that Maher is very bright, brash and controversial. But really who cares what Bill Maher thinks. Maher is quick to make interesting observations.  He is famous, funny and challenging.  Maher is entertaining. He must say to himself, "I can't believe that MSNBC wants to interview me on the economy. What the hell do I know about that!" Even worse is the insipid banter between Bill O'Reilly and his celebrity guest Dennis Miller. 

You see the worry we have for the crisis in the United States. The problems we have in our culture are endemic and Huxley's Brave New World has arrived. As Neil Postman concludes in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: 

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.  Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy....In short Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Thank you, Neil Postman, for pointing this out in 1985, one year after 1984 (Orwell), but sadly, Aldous Huxley was correct about his fears for the future in Brave New World. Few will take the time to read Huxley because as he predicted "there would be no one who wanted to read". It takes too much time. There are too many words. Even the news media folks will not be able to endure Postman's book because he took too many pages to describe the media's thinness and penchant for entertainment over news when he could have just done it with images and text messaging bursts.