Note: I've moved this post to the top after adding an update. Newer posts are below.
We've got another little testing opponent on our hands:
Saying too much emphasis is placed on the Texas Assessment for Knowledge and Skills exams, fifth-grader Macario Guajardo is refusing to take this year’s TAKS reading, math and science tests.
"In fourth grade, I was under a lot of pressure for the TAKS, and I decided I wanted to something about it," he said. "Teachers focused on TAKS, and it wasn’t fun for us anymore. Sometimes we had to stay in from recess to prepare for it. It was a lot of worksheets."
Ah, yes. A product of the "schools must be FUN" generation.
With his parents’ permission, the student who makes As and Bs skipped school Wednesday to miss the reading test. He declined to take a makeup exam Thursday. State law says students must pass TAKS tests to pass each grade level. In cases of TAKS failures, a committee of parents, teachers and a principal must decide whether the student can advance.
Macario, 11, has already appeared in articles in The New York Times. Network TV news stations including NBC and Telemundo have also contacted his parents and school officials. Macario said he hasn’t received any bad vibes from teachers or students and that many seem to support him.
Wow. So he's definitely learning that there's pretty much no downside to opposing the tests, no matter how hysterical the arguments get about how tests are taking over our lives and being crammed down our throats.
Although he grew up hearing his father’s complaints about TAKS, the protest idea was entirely Macario’s, he said.
Uh-huh. Forgive me for being skeptical about this part, which seems to reflect only the trendy notion that children develop entirely apart from any parental influence whatsoever.
Macario’s parents are behind him 100 percent, said Francisco Guajardo, assistant professor in the University of Texas-Pan American’s educational leadership program. "He stopped having fun at school. For me, it just broke my heart to see my son frustrated, upset, even angry," he said.
Ah. His dad is a prof in an educational program - and regularly berates the TAKS. At least the dad is honest enough to admit that his views have affected his son:
Guajardo said he probably influenced Macario’s opinions. "We’ve been talking about this since Mac was a little baby. Mac grew up with this," he said. "I like the TAKS. … I’m not in support of the way it’s done. The whole school is organized around … the test. Teaching to the objective on the test — that’s pervasive (in the area"...
TAKS scores don’t improve graduation rates or SAT scores, Guajardo said...Teachers have little time to encourage students in imaginative, creative work. Macario hasn’t once had an art class in his elementary years, he said.
So who's really protesting here, I wonder? And does the lack of art really have anything to do with the TAKS focus? I'm thinking Guajardo knew a newsworthy story when he saw one.
Not that Guajardo Junior shouldn't be allowed to protest; heck, I give him credit for it. But I'd be more impressed if his argument was something other than school isn't fun enough for him anymore. The Bernard Chapin chapter I quoted earlier today addresses this issue as well:
There are a plethora of pseudo-scholars in the field of education that wholeheartedly approve of the videogameification of the modern classroom. Those “scholars” would have been disappointed to discover that our principal’s devotion to fun was more based on her own lack of seriousness than it was rooted in any educational methodology.
Update: Education Gadfly found another young testing opponent - interestingly, also in Texas...
Anti-testing types have taken up the cause of Mia Kang, a 14-year-old Texan who defied teachers and counselors and turned in a little essay announcing her opposition to standardized testing instead of completing a mandated practice TAKS test. She has vowed not to participate in the real thing this spring, even at the risk of not graduating from high school. Kang is one of a gaggle of Texas students who has refused to take state tests, and posters to the liberal blog Daily Kos hope to start a letter-writing campaign to ensure she will graduate despite opting out of the test.
We have two thoughts on this. First, Kang and the other objectors mentioned share one thing in common: parents in the education system. (Kang's mother is getting her teaching certification; the father of another boy who dissed the test is an ed school professor; the father of a third is a school principal who has written a book opposing testing.) So we wonder who's pulling the strings here.
Further, it's a strange form of civil disobedience that demands both notoriety for breaking the law and exemption from the consequences of law-breaking. If Mia Kang doesn't want to take the TAKS, fine. If someone's conscience dictates that they cannot participate in a mandated activity, they should refuse. But civil disobedience without consequences is merely showboating. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his magnificent "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" because he accepted the consequences of his refusal to accede to unjust laws. The nation was moved by his example to correct an injustice. "Letter from My Living Room" likely would not have had the same effect. And if Ms. Kang believes the TAKS to be unjust, we invite her—and would applaud her gumption in so doing, even if we disagree with her interpretation of the facts—to convince the Texas legislature of the rightness of her cause.
Good point.
Posted by kswygert at March 1, 2005 03:41 PM