The Death of Education

Profits Over Minds...


Got to hand it to those Bush boys they don’t leave a stone unturned.
When you have a program promoted by the president that quizzes school students on their knowledge, it only stands to reason that another Bush boy would find a profit in supplying the answers students need.

They do it through a system called COWs developed by an associate of Neal Bush who markets this program through the public schools system.

It just stands to reason that somebody would come along with a computerized dumbed-down version of answers so that students will pass their tests. The more enduring question: Will they learn anything using COWs?

When specific facts that students need to know to pass their No Child Left Behind exams are given to them in a visual format, will the child be challenged sufficiently to learn anything beyond those facts?

If this question was posed to real teachers, you might hear that all the money and effort in American education is going to prepare for the test; it is not going for education purposes.

So while students increasingly seem to be learning less, they are improving in their test scores.

Will COW, therefore, survive as the easy way to get through each class. Will testing proficiency replace knowledge as the Holy Grail. Look around you. It already has.
Until educators are able to persuade Congress otherwise, we shall persist in this empty exercise that proves nothing about how capable our children are.

It’s time to get real and push the idea of education, per se, over testing proficiency.

And isn’t that what the schools are supposed to be about in the first place.

Dumbing down in today’s competitive world where other children take school for more hours than American children and then do homework or take tutoring way into the night, is no way for America to prepare its youth to excel into the future.

We need some straight talk here with fewer COWs and more of something teachers are trained to do, teach.

Les AAron