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.