Testing instills fear, not learning, says Kozol

By Sherry Posnick-Goodwin

Written by a young California student, these sentences are a perfect example of both drill-and-kill phonics instruction and the sad neglect of our nation's inner-city schools, asserts Jonathan Kozol, author of The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.

Students may be learning how to take tests, but they aren't learning how to ask an observant question, write a cogent sentence or find a practical use for what they've been taught. "They become plastic people reading plastic words."

Kozol, the keynote speaker at CTA's Urban Issues Conference in San Jose, found these sentences to be the ultimate proof that a "reign of terror is working in the classroom."

The fear of low test scores in an era of high-stakes testing was created by President Bush, conservative think tanks and right-wing extremists out to destroy public education, says Kozol. It makes good and decent principals quiver with fear that their campus will be labeled an underperforming school under No Child Left Behind. The principals, in turn, force teachers to deliver scripted, drill-and-kill curriculum designed to increase test scores without fostering true learning. And the results are hurting the nation's poor and minority children in ways we can't imagine.

A Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar, Kozol describes himself as a "proud, card-carrying member of NEA." The teacher-turned-author, who visits inner-city classrooms on a regular basis, is horrified by what he's found — including standardized testing of kindergartners and even preschoolers in some school districts.

"We have bubble tests that these little babies are taking. They don't know pages go from left to right and don't know how to hold a pencil. They pee in their pants and throw up. But teachers aren't allowed to help them and can only say 'Keep going all by yourself' during the test. I wonder who thinks up these miserable, antihuman policies. It must be a group of sociopaths in Sacramento or Washington hiding in some basement. They must be unhappy people whose only destiny in life is making sure that children of the poor are as miserable as they are."

Schools nationwide are eliminating naptime and recess for young children, which he cites as further proof the reign of terror is working. Schools in Atlanta are even being built without playgrounds, he notes; it's assumed there will be no time for play.

Unfortunately, says Kozol, superintendents and principals think the key to salvation and "turning things around" lies with the adoption of the newest Seven Point Plan, which is soon abandoned in favor of the next one.

Kozol is also worried that today's classrooms are as segregated as the days when segregation was legal. "We are eliminating racial justice," he maintains. "The segregation of black and Latino children has returned to public education with a vengeance."

The states with the most segregated schools are — in order — New York, Illinois, Michigan and California. In New York and California, he adds, seven out of eight black students attend a segregated school.

Kozol finds it ironic that the worst schools tend to be named for black or Latino civil rights heroes, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall or Cesar Chavez. Such schools tend to have inadequate "raggedy" textbooks, deteriorating facilities, filthy bathrooms and overcrowded classrooms that do anything but offer homage to their namesakes who fought for equal rights.

He suggests naming future inner-city schools for the people who helped to create such appalling conditions — the George Bush Academy for Proper Syntax, Clarence Thomas Elementary or William Bennett Middle School.

"They are miserable, smelly, underfunded schools where kids don't [want to] use the bathrooms." As for the portables that pack overcrowded schools, he says, "only in California do we call them bungalows instead of trailers, making them sound like quaint buildings."

When asked how to solve the problem, Bush and other conservatives say they're against providing additional money to schools with poor and minority children, comparing it to putting more gasoline in a car whose engine is already flooded.

"They ask me, 'Should we just continue to throw money at them?' and I say, 'Yes! Throw more money at them!' How else will they get a new wing put on the school instead of trailers, or huge libraries with rich and exciting children's books? I tell them that it's odd, but publishers of children's books really do charge money, and you can't get good computer software for free — that also costs money."

"All of our children have equal value in the eyes of God, but I'm not sure they have equal value in the eyes of America," he laments, calling the way we finance public schools "archaic and unjust."

Schools don't necessarily provide fair and equal access for Advanced Placement classes, which forces students into courses intended to prepare them for low-paying jobs. One California high school student named Mariah had applied to take AP classes — and was qualified to take them — but had been forced into sewing and hairdressing electives because those classes ostensibly had space for her.

"Mariah started to cry in front of the whole class" when she told him about the situation, recalls Kozol. "She said, 'I don't want to take sewing; my mother is a seamstress. I want to go to college. I had hoped for something more.'"

When affluent children receive one form of education and poor children another, "it draws a devastating line right down the middle of society."

He believes it's time for teachers to fight back, to defend their profession and to take back education from those whose goal is to privatize public schools. "Teachers are warriors for justice. We are the ultimate witness for what happens in the classroom day after day. If we don't speak up for these children, no one else will."

Teachers should fight on the political front, organize liberal think tanks to counteract the conservative ones, and do what they can in their classrooms - even with scripted curriculum - to introduce a love of learning, warmth and a sense of "irreverence and mischief."