Quasi Dictum

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Location: Vancouver, WA, United States

Teacher

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

An interesting story to follow from outside Seattle: Mill Creek students walkout in protest of schedule change

About 100 students demonstrated outside Jackson High School in Mill Creek this morning, protesting a schedule change they said they weren't involved in arranging.

Who says students should be involved in their education?

The key is whether or not this story receives any more pub. Stay tuned.

Monday, February 23, 2004

The question - what to do with Social Studies in a state test?

Every spring, as Florida's reading, math and science teachers scramble to teach a few last-minute lessons and sleep restlessly with dreams of the FCAT, their colleagues in the social studies department wonder if they're lucky or not.

History -- and its academic cousins in government, geography, economics and civics -- is the only core subject not tested directly on next month's all-important Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

From USA Today: Electives teach most valuable lessons

Every day now on the morning announcements at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., I hear what has become a school mantra: ''Study hard for those SOLs'' -- the state Standards of Learning exams that will be coming up in a few weeks.

When I look around my class and see kids chuckling, I can't help but feel how out of touch schools are with the real lives of the kids entrusted to their care. Obsessed with the results of so-called high-stakes testing (which, in fact, have turned into minimum competency tests that almost any middle-class kid can pass with a modicum of effort), educators have forgotten that what schools offer outside the classroom also is essential to a total education.


Educational theorist Jerome Bruner maintained that ''we get interested in what we get good at.'' A complete education would give every kid an opportunity to find what he or she is good at. Unfortunately, schools are providing only a fraction of their students the opportunities for the kind of challenge, self-discovery, confidence and camaraderie that drama, band or other activities afford.


Preaching to the choir, but nobodys singing.

Monday, February 02, 2004

Is the Civil War over?

From the heart of the Confederacy: Georgia

A proposal to all but skip the Civil War in high school history classes has state Superintendent Kathy Cox defending her views again.

National experts say, however, that the change -- which would mostly teach the topic in earlier grades -- mirrors a national trend.

Teachers have less time to cover more events in U.S. history, and that means something has to give.


We said this three years ago: LESS IS MORE!