Mandated Curriculum: "Everything I Love About Teaching Is Extinct"
Jonathon M. Seidl reports at The Blaze on a teacher who "Resigns in Scathing YouTube Video Targeting Standardized Education."
Seidl writes:
As parents in several states have stood up against standardized education such as Common Core and CSCOPE, one teacher in the Chicago area (Highland Park) has taken a similar (although not necessarily directly related) stand that is now going viral.
Last week, 15-year teaching veteran Ellie Rubenstein posted a 10-minute YouTube video where she decried the state of test-centric eduction after the district she was working in said it was going to be transferring her and several other teachers -- a move she says came because those teachers were vocal about their issues and one she says the district has attributed to concerns over the school’s “poor climate.”
"This is a total kangaroo court, a retaliation against four teachers who are quite vocal in advocating for their children," Rubenstein is quoted as saying in the Highland Park News. "We are at the forefront of speaking our minds and at the forefront of advocating for our students. We are all being falsely accused by the administration and some colleagues of doing things we have never done, and saying things we have never said."
According to Seidl, among Rubenstein's concern is that "curriculum is mandated. . . . The classroom teacher is no longer trusted or in control of what, when, or how she teaches."
A "teacher" who is pressured to submit to a centralized authority and then become a conveyer belt for a mandated, prefabricated curriculum is no longer really a teacher but is rather mistreated as a cog in somebody's machine.
No wonder this woman revolts. Ellie Rubenstein is created in the image of God and properly exercises critical thinking and a critical distance over against a dehumanzing "educational" machine.
If underneath all the high-sounding verbiage about the adventure of education is the reality that it has become more of a conveyer belt than real learning, why not simply hire monkeys to do the work? They can be trained to push all the correct buttons. And they work for bananas.
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