I am often amazed by the stance many people (both within and outside the classroom) take with regards to education. Everyone has a panacea for the ails of our nation's most "(dis)eased" organ. If I were an antiquated physician, I'd be inclined to cut "it" off...you know get rid of the problem right at the infection site. Too often, however, I've found that those outside the classroom and those jaded by their classroom experiences offer prognoses that take the shape of infected teachers. Their views and ideas about what happens inside classrooms, between teachers, students, and policy are skewed. Everyone has gone to school, so everyone has the "fix-it formula" necessary to make it work. As a result, the prescriptions (merit based pay for teachers and students, lotteries, NCLB, chartering and privitization) only massage the wound(s) and prompt them to continue oozing.
I have a friend that works in the public health arena where preventive measures (and medicine) dominant the current psyche of professionals. I wonder what would happen if such a stance were to surreptitiously permeate education's cell membrane. What would happen, if by osmosis perhaps, if (dis)ease prevention became the perspective through which all education stakeholders [teachers, students, parents, the pursesnatchers] approached teaching and learning?
Who knows? In the meantime, all the prescriptive babble will continue to suffocate learning (in its essence).
Still Waiting for Superman...
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