On standards

Brian Drayton (Brian_Drayton@TERC.EDU <Brian_Drayton@TERC.EDU>)
22 Nov 1995 09:08:27 -0400 

   I guess the conversation that has ensued under (no subject) feels beside
the point, though I probably helped push it off center.  In one sense, the
development and use of standards, at least as benchmarks etc. is a very
serviceable thing to do.  What bothers me about it, though, is the importance
it seems to have in discussions about educational policy.  Sometimes, those
discussions should question basic assumptions (which we often do in private,
but don't always find a way to do in a larger circle).

   For me, the basic critique is more like this: we can talk about the
usefulness and dangers of standards (the history of the IQ test is still a
great story, from Binet's time even unto our own).  However, we are not
discussing very effectively whether we are applying standards to the right
things.  What I mean is, the current main-stream curriculum excludes a lot of
important topics, or requires that they be taught in a narrow range of ways.
The emphasis on economies of money in the construction of school systems
lives in parallel with ( and perhaps causal relation with) an enormous lack
of economy in intellectual and emotional terms. So I keep hunting for a
schooling system that is not like current school systems.
   Another way to put this is that we are dealing with whole beings, here,
but only meristically-- only with some parts of their personalities, at a
couple of stages of their lives, in isolation from much of the rest of their
cultural and emotional connections, and preparing them for
compartmentalization in the workplace.
   We thus perform a Galilean simplification -- assume that there is no
friction affecting the motion of this body -- which makes it easier to apply
standards (either as rules of thumb or as enforceable boundaries, depending
on the philosophy of the standard-advocate).  RElying on these standards,
though, is a distraction from focusing on the main challenge, which is, what
definition will we give "education" for our time?