SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Pompous, patronizing, piffle-filled, and pretentious….

So, to get your juices flowing, I reprint in full a letter to the editor that appeared in The Globe and Mail today. The author, Heather Lotherington, is a member of the education faculty at York University. The letter is an excellent example of educationthink, being pompous, patronizing, piffle-filled, and pretentious. And, it goes without saying, wrong. It’s hard to believe some people actually believe this stuff!

“We educate children for the future they will inherit. Standardized tests of language and literacy test the literacies of a half century ago, when grammatical knowledge and mastery of spelling and punctuation marked the educated person.

“Contemporary literacies profoundly invalidate such tests. Literacy now requires mastery over digital tools for collaborative, dynamic, multimodal communication. Continuing to test children’s formal spelling using handwriting is a speck on the team-oriented strategizing and programming abilities they will need to succeed.

“Standardized tests assume that each student has learned exactly the same thing. When we can customize education to reach all students and maximize the potential of each, insisting that each student learn the same thing is wasteful of precious human resources.

“Please suggest to the aging politicians who support standardized tests to collaborate electronically with the children of today, who might be able to give them a few pointers on how people communicate in this century. Mind you, they might not all pass.”