The Broken Model: History of the American School

Talking Points:

1. Khan states “Basic as the habit of eating three meals a day. Is there some biological imperative dictating that we should eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner versus two or four or five meals? Some Buddhist monks eat one meal a day at midday. There is some recent evidence that suggests alternate-day fasting might also be a healthy option. Why, then, do most of us cling to the habit of breakfast,lunch, and dinner, even though most of us today do much less” (pg.2). This is just something we have always done because it is a cultural habit. We do a lot of things that are “cultural habits” like having certain types of foods, going to certain schools, etc. Khan mentions this is something we take for granted and I agree. If we did not have allotted lunch breaks or restaurants that offer lunch vs. dinner options. It can be difficult to challenge these norms, and this goes for other norms embedded in our culture as well.

2. Khan also talks about handing out test scores like A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s. What does that actually accomplish and are we doing more harm than good? The same goes for standardized tests (pg.16). This can create labels and put students in categories that may not truly reflect who they are. We know that certain students perform better on standardized tests than others and that a particular test does not make a person. For example, I did terribly on my SATS in high school. I probably received one of the lower scores. I was still able to get into nursing school and graduate as a nurse. Yes, it may have taken me longer, but I still did it. During high school not doing well on the SATS definitely put me in a different head space like I was not good enough. That I could not apply to certain schools all because of a test score that reflected nothing. Another example of this would be in nursing school, I passed every class with a  B. I never received an A, does that make me any less than the nursing student that got all A’s? I understand there needs to be a cut-off grade for certain specialties, but I feel like as a culture we can do better and not label our students. 

3. “The danger of using assessments as reasons to filter out students, then, is that we may overlook or discourage those whose talents are of a different order—whose intelligence tends more to the oblique and the intuitive. At the very least, when we use testing to exclude, we run the risk of squelching creativity before it has a chance to develop” (pg. 22). This quote may seem similar to my last talking point, but I feel this really stood out to me. Testing does indeed exclude and this can create a bit of a bias. Just because someone does not perform to a certain standard, they are cut. Why are we not giving them the chance to excel in a different category? Maybe their creativity would pull through showing they are capable. The example Khan used was the student Nadia being prepared for her placement test because her parents prepared her. Because of this she was able to pass and excel. If she did not have the support from her parents, this may not have been the case for her. Expectations would have shifted. 

Argument Statement:

If you want students to truly learn something, we cannot just have them listen, read, and repeat. We need to allow students to explore on their own so they are not set up for failure. We cannot hold every student to the same standard and expect them to thrive. 

Connections/Reflections:

In the film A short History of Public Schooling John Gatto says "Universal schooling has destroyed the imagination”. He mentions the constant bells, ordering lunch at a certain time, having to be at school at a certain time, and testing/ranking. This is made to regiment students and prepare them for adulthood. Couture mentions we are sending children to school to essentially take our place. When it is put like that, I can see why creativity is felt to be absent in schools. That we may be treating students all the same. I can connect slightly. When I was in high school I felt I was able to be creative, I was able to thrive in sports. Academics I always struggled so sports were my outlet. If my teachers instilled the theory that even though I was not top in my class or in honors classes that I was still going to make it, I think my academics could have been better. Looking back I could have pushed myself more, but I was just in that constant state of needing to just “graduate” and push through. I was an average student grade wise, but still I knew I was not getting into prestigious colleges because being on the high honor roll with straight A’s was where you needed to be and that was not me. I also remember my school pushing college. You had to go to college and they would not even talk about community college or trades.  I felt like going and getting the “college experience” was literally the only option. I love being a nurse and would never change that, however, I would have done my research on community colleges before just settling. My “college experience” did not do me well. I felt I had to go away for college and quickly realized it was not for me and returned home. Due to this, I was not able to immediately get into their nursing program and had to transfer schools to then get into another nursing program. This ties back to my talking points about falling into cultural norms.