Lock-step learning is not (learning)

Award winning social studies teacher Ron Maggiano is leaving his job. And this is why:

Our classrooms have become intellectual deserts where students are not allowed to use their imagination and their natural curiosity in order to learn new tasks and explore new ideas. Teachers who dare to be innovative and creative are more often than not viewed as a threat to the testing regime and its priorities.

Academic freedom has been replaced with a lock-step approach to learning in which testing has become an end in itself. This is not progress, and it is not reform. It is, however, a threat to our students, their future, and our future as a nation.

Read more at Valerie Strauss’s column in the Washington Post: Life is Not a Multiple Choice Test.

JosieHolford

View Comments

  • These look like they could help my daughter as she is behind at school because of learning difficulties so I trying to find more things she could do at home because to be honest her school isn’t helping much

Recent Posts

A Better Class of Train

The two-forty-five express — Paddington to Market Blandings, first stop Oxford—stood at its piatform with…

5 days ago

The Reverse Ferret and the Vicar of Bray

Changing your mind is perfectly normal—and often essential. After all, it’s what education is all…

2 weeks ago

The Day Trip

One childhood ritual during the days between Christmas and the return to school was the…

2 weeks ago

Wayward and The Turning Tide

“That woman is pursued by demons,” Wally Brigley, the Board chair, declared as he settled…

3 weeks ago

Seasonal Cheer at Wayward Academy

“You look about as festive as a radish sandwich,” Midge had said. And she wasn’t…

4 weeks ago

Train to Nowhere

"We were young and we were keen; Europe was in flames, and we were ready…

1 month ago