And is it even legal??
Don't even bother to read this introduction and go right over to these two articles at The Chancellor's New Clothes to get a whiff of the sewage system that our politicized departments of education (plural) have become.
The first one is about the May 16 NYS State ELA exam with a reading passage about how a supermarket bagger changed the workplace. (It doesn't say a thing about him getting a management job as the result of his efforts: just that he made a lot of people in the place feel better about themselves.) The passage is excerpted from a book by Barbara Glanz, and the publisher is, you got it: McGraw-Hill.
The second one is about Barbara Glanz herself, because that's what The Chancellor's blog does for breakfast: track things down through the eduswamp. Even more this time, it connected some dots for me about a ghastly corporate model and our very own rubber rooms.
I don't have anything more to say about this just now, except that I am not discrediting the service of any supermarket baggers here. I do, however, thoroughly condemn the governmental agencies that have allowed advocative political economics to creep into a required reading test.
Is there no one at these über-levels who is doing oversight? Or, should I say, is there no one doing oversight who isn't free of corporate connections?
Holy Smokes!
ReplyDeleteJust read the post about the ELA make-up test passages. "Johnny The Bagger" was bad enough, but this passage really gets my goat:
"Today’s ’situation’ told students that they were in a leadership team who has been debating ‘whether leaders should have experience in their chosen fields.’ They were instructed to write ‘a position paper in which you argue that inexperienced people can provide leadership.’
"They weren’t even given a choice about which position to take."
On the other hand this also means that bringing social justice issues into the classroom is now fair game.
Interesting, eh?
We are the union, just as we are the people. We have become complacent; more interested with watching America's Next Top Model than to maintain our place in the democracy. We need to wake up from our American Idol-induced sleep and take back what is and always has been our right to individual sovereignty.
ReplyDeleteOh my dear G-d they're putting propaganda right in the middle of a state wide exam? Is McGraw Hill now in the intrigue business as well as education? Doesn't anyone proof these tests?? Is everything boiling down to product placement? I don't watch Bachelorette and Idol is boring....I unfortunately read and think, and I think it's quite scary that everything has become a corporate entity.
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