And as California Home School is Saved...There Goes New York

    

Excuse me, Sir, you said what? In New York City, standardized testing is being initiated for kindergarten students next month?

You want to test my little Johnny? No! That's very funny! I...huh? I heard you right? It's not a joke? In NYC, there will be mandatory testing to determine if my five year old is sufficiently...what? Schooled? But he hasn't started school yet! Educated? Literate? But he's not educated, yet, Sir, he's about to start that slow, hard climb. Sane? Oh, is that it? Because, and let me see if I understand you, Sir, we should all expect our five year olds to be calm, rational examples of human sanity? What, like the adult politicians running our town? Huh? Like the morons who came up with this idea? What? Just make sure he shows up on time for your test? And what happens if I refuse...?

Are you weary of such machinations? Are you terrified and furious about maneuvers like these, intended to place institutional controls over the lives of our children? I am. But I'm sorry to say, this is no joke. Next month, children in NYC of kindergarten age will go through mandatory, standardized testing.

As those of you using Connect The Thoughts and 1st Step know, I'm profoundly opposed to "testing" that does anything other than help the student evaluate and master the materials he or she is studying. State testing does nothing but place a mark on your child so he or she can be "processed correctly", as say "bright", "remedial", or "troubled". The rationale behind such standardized tests, in the end, seem to be so we can eventually manufacture good, standardized human beings.

The claim actually made is that these tests allow states and school districts to compare their educational results with prior years, and other educational institutions. That's nice. But there have been standardized tests for decades. Yet, nearly all of our educational industry's statistics continue to worsen, year after year. These expensive "evaluations" are paid for by tax dollars, and benefit who? If these tests were in any way beneficial to students, then why is it that scores are still dropping? Unless of course the tests are manipulated and designed to show scores dropping, so that more funding can be demanded to stem the tide of encroaching "idiocy" in our country? And who would benefit from such funding?

If these tests have been useful, then why are more children and families fleeing schools than ever before in the history of organized education in the United States.

Why test five year olds? I know why, and I believe that most of you reading this know, too. Institutionalized testing exists to categorize children and make them more easily "handled." Results can be used to stigmatize, manipulate, degrade and minimize not just the student, but his or her traumatized family. Really, who amongst us could bear to hear that our little Johnny or Susie, at the tender age of five, has a "problem"? Could there be a more disturbing report?! Could there be any other news handed down to a family by "an authority", that would more quickly make that family do whatever they're told, whatever will help little Johnny or Susie?

Is there anywhere a bigger pile of hooey?

Folks, when my son was in his early teens, and he's not going to like that I'm mentioning this, he was quite short and quite round, and I feared for his future. I had nightmares. I dreaded what he would become, that he would be depressed, sad and lonely. I fought daily to provide him a social life. I envisioned a grim future for the lad spent before a computer screen somewhere, smoking and drinking some sort of cheap beer and silently raging at the fates.

Then a few years went by, he became brilliant, grew six inches and started getting roles as a professional actor. Now he's a young Robert Redford, only funny. And man, I had certainly wasted a lot of worrying!

You simply cannot evaluate young children! As every parent will tell you, they change. They change every day. Some children are hard to recognize from week to week, much less year to year. Children change, and almost always grow into themselves.

I've been a teacher for over 30 years and have worked with many hundreds of children. Every one of them went through academic and emotional and physical hurdles...and then they grew up. Slowly, sometimes painfully, but inevitably, they grew up. I'd say at least 95% of them came out pretty well. The other 5% are still working at it. But under no circumstances could I or anyone else have told you how any one of those children would come out at age eighteen, by looking at him or her at age five!

What you have at age five is a human being "in embryo". The raw materials may all be there, but they have not been arranged by the hand of man, science or God. That process is reserved for the workings of time. And no institutionalized test can see into the future. We're just not wise enough to create such a test.

So let's ask a few questions I'm sure we will not get answers to. Who will be constructing said tests for kindergartners? What is the agenda behind the selection of questions? What is the basis of evaluation?

Here's a better question: How quickly can we vote out of office the monsters that support and engender this sort of covert control over the lives of our children?

The brainchild apparently of Mayor Bloomberg, thousands of kindergarten children are about to be evaluated. It will be determined if these worrisome denizens of the sandbox need...what? Remedial help before they start their schooling? Psychiatric aid to help them play in the sandbox better with their fellows? Or is it the drug companies who need help, in the form of yet another cash cow...er, another excuse to make mandatory their poisons to children just starting to stick their heads out the front door of home for the first time in their lives? What, Johnny is "anxious"? He needs Ritalin.

Below is a link to a video carried by a television station in New York. Please take a look at it. It's a news story, and even the anchor woman is clearly disgusted. If this isn't an argument for taking education out of the hands of institutions, then I have no idea what would persuade.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/education&id=6354227

My son recently took a test in the state of California that very few adults living here would pass. It was to determine if he'd acquired a sufficient education to represent the proud educational tradition of the state of California. You know, the state that brought you...uh...no, not Einstein. Give me a moment. Oh, yes...the state that brought you OVER A 50% DROP OUT RATE. Oh, sorry, that's the mark across the United States, now, not just California. Oops.

Until our schools locate a constructive purpose and a degree of sanity, home school may be the last bastion of education. And if many of those in government have their way, even home school children will be subjected to evaluations like those five year olds in New York City will endure next month. These are our children. We know and love them, and it's our righteous duty and privilege to protect them from such devious and destructive "tests". Life is test enough.

     Steven Horwich
     Connect The Thoughts™
     1st Step™