Do you Teach or Do you Educate?

If we go into our careers with the intent to spoon-feed students we will never be successful.  If all we care about is good grades on standardized tests we will not be successful.  I am not suggesting that facts are not important.  Nor am I saying that state tests do not serve a purpose.  I simply believe that in order to truly empower students we have allow them to think for themselves and inspire them to go after the desired information.  There are too many teachers in the United States that are safe in their jobs because of tenure and simply care about good grades on standardized tests.  That is not what our job is as educators.  Our goal should be to motivate students to push their own limits, not constrict their ability by teaching them to a test.  At the end of each year our students will move on to the next level.  After that they will move into a new classroom with a new teacher.  We need to provide them the tools they need to be successful and help build their self-esteem so they are confident that they can continue to succeed.

Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home

Tom Johnson perfectly states the problems that schools are facing in the United States today.  We can continue to try and point to whatever problems we want but for some reason we refuse to try and look for solutions.  There is no question that economics drastically impacts the education system.  Schools in lower income areas will have lower quality supplies and resources.  But that should not mean that that there has to be lower quality education.  The notion that “that’s just the way it is” is crazy.  Education can take place anywhere under many different circumstances.  But people fail to see this and instead we try and force children into taking a path that is simply not working, and we take away potential tools that could be used to force them on this path.

                Pencils are a symbol for education just like an apple is a symbol for a teacher.  The message of this post is that we are stripping students of essential tools they need because we are afraid they will adversely impact standardized test scores, or whatever goals the system has for the students.  It seems silly hearing that students wouldn’t be allowed to have pencils but is it really that far off.  In today’s world we are limiting our students because of the tools we provide for them.  We are teaching with textbooks that are decades out of date and we still have teachers afraid to allow technology into their classrooms.  We are afraid that real education cannot take place if we change the way we do things.  It’s time that we stand up for students as educators and give them the tools they need to succeed.  We are falling behind the rest of the world and we need a competitive education system to reverse that trend.