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The Trouble with Standards
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Frieda Gardner, W A M M
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When we start to walk down social studies standards lane, it is important to remember that underfoot lies a surprising and widespread assumption, one that both Bill Clinton and George Bush have agreed upon: mandatory educational standards—for all disciplines and for all states—are a good thing. On the surface, the idea seems to be that national agreement about what to learn will produce less national ignorance. And what’s more, if we have such standards, we will be able to compare schools on the basis of agreed-upon criteria.
Standards enforce quality control: Start with a product mandate, institute procedures and rules that will enforce the mandate, and test frequently in order to insure that the product (this is your daughter or son) meets the standards. Most journalism on the subject does not use marketplace language to describe the standards problem. Usually, we are plunked down in the middle of the so-called “Culture Wars,” where two sides tug and pull at young minds.
Example 1: “America is a great, liberatory power in the universe” versus “America is an exploitative, imperialist power governed by white guys or their functional equivalent.”
Example 2: “Students need to know historical facts” versus “Students need to know big ideas.”
Example 3: “The rise of corporations” versus “Robber barons.”
Example 4: Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II: In or out of history classes?
Our conservative education commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, favors “facts” over “ideology.” Perhaps more significantly, she talks about giving parents a “quality option”; she wants to make our schools “attractive,” presumably in the great vouchered marketplace of the future. She also voices concern for the mobile poor, saying they should be able to get the “same” education no matter where they go to school.
Needless to say, both content and critical thinking are crucial to all learning. And there is no evading fights even over what a “fact” is. But accepting educational standards—especially if they are mandatory—opens up a trap, because with standards come authorities either to help us establish them or to enforce them.
Given our differences over the most basic of facts and values, a fight over standards can only be a political fight. There is no such thing as “simply” teaching. We on the left should reframe the discussions about what our schools should be, being especially attentive to how standards—always imposed in the name of “excellence”—have been used to shame and punish rather than educate and empower. |
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Social Studies Resources
Meier, Deborah. In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.
Minnesota Department of Education
1500 Highway 36 West
Roseville, Minnesota
55113-4266
651-582-8200
http://education.state.mn.us
Click on “New Science and Social Studies Standards”
Minnesotans Against Proposed Social Studies Standards (MAPSSS)
mapsss@msn.com
www.mapsss.org
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete February 2004 Index - click here
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