Editorials

The purpose of going to school

Apr 26, 2007 2:07 PM

The purpose of going to school
One of the more ugly things that is happening to public education in these times of high-stakes testing is that there has been a subtle but significant shift in the purpose of schools. There was a time when the purpose of going to school was to receive an education and tests were simply a measure of how much you had learned. Today, more and more the purpose of going to school seems to be to pass the tests.
This could not have been made more clear than by the UFT’s recent survey in which 12,000 teachers reported on how much of the school day they spent on test preparation and paperwork [see story on page 3]. The results were professionally disappointing, but not surprising to people who work in our schools. We have heard anecdotal evidence of this for a long time. For more than a year teachers have been complaining about how much time they were pulled away from teaching actual subject matter in order to do test prep and assessments.
Now we know. More than a full day per week. To be sure, this is not the case in every school; 11 percent of the schools that were reported on did not use class time for test prep. That leaves a mere nine out of 10 that did. And the average was for seven to seven-and-a-half weeks before the test, almost two months. For each test.
In the early grades, pre-K to grade 5, more than one-third of the time was spent on test prep. And during those weeks subjects like the arts, science and social studies suffered greatly with kids receiving less than two hours per week of instruction for each.
We should say the kids suffered greatly because who gets hurt with this much time devoted to test prep and assessments? The kids, of course. They are being short-changed by not learning much about the arts or science or social studies. It’s also fair to ask how much they’re really learning about English and math, the test subjects, even though they’re constantly being grilled on them because they’re being grilled not in order to learn anything but in order to pass the test.
Moreover, the kids will suffer greatly throughout their lives if the people who run the school system don’t come to their senses. We need a far better balance between testing and teaching in our schools.

Party animals
Brooklyn members have been kicking up their heels lately in TGIF get-togethers every few weeks and it’s a terrific idea. Sure, suffering the denigrations heaped on educators by Tweed and other school administrators helps create a common bond of the put-upon. But nothing creates a feeling of solidarity like becoming friends, having fun and getting to know the person behind the professional face.
By developing a deeper sense of who our colleagues are as human beings we become a union of people who care for one another — and that creates a union bond that is very powerful, indeed.
Actually, those Brooklyn members have picked up a tradition that goes back to the very roots of the UFT, one that could very well have provided the glue that held together the fragile little fraternity of teachers before their movement gained momentum and became the mighty union we have today.
In the middle and late 1950s there was no unified teachers union. The small group of plotters that was working to create one met on Friday nights in a tiny headquarters that was about the size of a decent-sized living room. They shared their work-a-day concerns, complained about supervisors, planned grandiose strategies, then broke out the wine and guitars and had a song fest.
These little socials went on for years as the fledgling union grew from about a thousand or so members to three times that number when the present-day UFT was created. And it was created by that daring, audacious, maybe even preposterous strike on Nov. 7, 1960, that against all odds and reason won the day. Would the hardy souls who put their livelihood and careers on the line that day by walking out have had the same motivation had they not gotten to really know and care for one another and to consider themselves as family? Maybe. But there is no doubt that by having a sense of family they each knew that they were not alone when crunch time came and that must have given them strength.
So party on — in Brooklyn and, we hope, all over the city. It’s a great way to make the union even stronger, all while having a good time. And, uh, when you send out those invitations … well, you know our address.