Apathy Doesn't Live in the Bronx

Last Wednesday more than 160 students in six different classes at Intermediate School 318 in the South Bronx refused to take another standardized test. The students boycotted the test not out of laziness or fears of failing, but because they are sick of being dragged out of their classrooms to be treated as lab rats in the No Child Left Behind rotten matrix.

These tests don't affect their grades, nor are they always actual tests. You see, sometimes the students are issued "practice tests" that have no real meaning. The companies are merely experimenting on the children with their shiny, new tests and if they fill in the right bubbles, the test companies ship off their crates to white schools in the suburbs.

The Bronx kids are sharp, determined pupils so they didn't just sit around, bitching and moaning. Instead, they created a petition complete with specific grievances. The students declared themselves to be aggravated with the "constant, excessive and stressful testing" that causes them to "lose valuable instructional time with our teachers."

Some might say criticizing the broken No Child Left Behind act is a tired, cheap shot. I disagree for the simple fact that teachers are still guilty of teaching to tests instead of teaching to engage. They teach with narrow, shallow focus because the No Child Left Behind act demands that sort of curriculum. The act completely robs teachers of their ambitions, desires, and instincts. Teachers are left with no other option than teaching students to regurgitate the appropriate answers for the appropriately numbered questions, which is the opposite of critical thinking and complex problem-solving.

No Child Left Behind is still rotting our schools from the inside because we've left it to politicians to fix the educational system. Big mistake. It is going to take the will of the students to get real, permanent policy changes.

The Bronx strike is a significant victory because it represents students rejecting a corrupt institutional policy from inside the institution. Victims of corrupt policies are the strongest voices of dissent because without their participation, the entire parade of corruption and deception comes to a halt.

For the same reason, veterans are the most prolific voices of peace. It's difficult for even the most staunch conservative politician to look a veteran in the eyes and say, "Look, buddy, I know more about this whole war thing than you."

Though it is smaller by comparison, the Bronx strike brings to mind the historical 1968 strikes in France that led to the collapse of the De Gaulle government and forever changed the country. The French students wanted certain grievances addressed, namely issues involving class struggle and school funding. Above all else, the students wanted to be treated like adults. They wanted a place at the negotiation table and they wanted dignity in the negotiation process. Quite rightly, they believed they should have a say in the outcome of the institution that would play a part in shaping their minds.

At the time, the French students were dismissed as petulant children out of their league in the world of politics. As Gandhi famously said: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." The French students won and the 1968 strikes are now seen as a critical time in France's history when the old order of nationalism and conservatism gave way to a more liberal, enlightened period.

These Bronx students will be ridiculed, too. They'll be called lazy and petulant among other things. Already, the school's Principal, Maria Lopez, has wowed the public with her spectacularly wrong decision to fire Douglas Avella. Avella is the students' Social Studies teacher, and he was fired even though the students insist they are entirely responsible for the petition and the strike, and Mr. Avella had nothing to do with their walk-out.

Despite the unfortunate consequence of Avella getting scapegoated, the strike is an encouraging rebellion within a corrupt, failed institution. Hopefully, other students will reject the No Child Left Behind doctrine, just as a steady trickle of war veterans will continue to join the anti-war movement. Until then, our country will be unable to right the wrongs of the past without these essential players, those victims of the very institutions we wish to heal.

Follow Allison Kilkenny on Twitter: www.twitter.com/allisonkilkenny

Comments

[KenGirard]

Recently St. Charles MO fired a group of teachers for not giving standardized tests. One of them was the new Physics teacher. He was quite popular, made kids excited about his classes, and had managed to lift the number of kids planning on taking physics from one class to four classes.

My son and quite a few other kids silently protested, submitted a petition, and spoke out at the local Board of Education meetings for the next couple of months.

Since then half the kids have decided to drop physics off their curriculum as their is no teacher signed up to teach it, and they don't want to chance getting an English teacher who is filling in for someone with a degree in the field.

[S1m0n]

Back in the day I got selected to talk part in some kind of longitudinal study, I think for grades 3 through 6. Twice a year I'd get hauled off and go and write a test, along with an assortment of other kids, also selected in a manner I knoew nothing about. The tests were multiple choice 'fill in the little oval' format. Marks didn't count for anything. In fact, we never saw them.

By the second year, I was bored. I decided that it would be more fun and more interesting to try and get every single answer wrong, rather than right. With four choices to pick from, when I didn't know the answer it was often because there were two good options along with two obviously wrong answers. So, I'd pick one of the clearly wrong ones.

I went on doing this every year until the end of the study. I never heard a thing from anyone, so maybe it was as anonymous as they said.

What this means for NCLB is that there's screaming aporia in the midst of all their assumptions: the tests assume that kids are really trying to get them correctly, and that the results therefore present a realistic picture of student knowlege. As my anecdote shows, this is an unsound assumption. I've no idea how many kids there were like me (actively seeking to sabotage the sample), but I know I was one, and that's more than the designers of NCLB know.

[rini]

I took my kids out of a very highly regarded public school because of this reason. Did you know that W has relatives in the testing industry?

Seriously, it sounds too ridiculous to be true, yet another incestuous round of nepotism. But there you have it.

[GrainOSand]

For the second time today, I will utilize the words of a person who saw himself not as genius, saint, or sage to speak to this subject. To the children of the Bronx I applaud your stand against tyranny. To children all over the world, may you veer from the path of the stupidity that preceded you.

“As most of our education is the acquisition of knowledge, it is making us more and more mechanical: our minds are functioning along narrow grooves, whether it be scientific, philosophic, religious, business or technological knowledge that we are acquiring. Our ways of life, both at home and outside it, and our specialising in a particular career, are making our minds more and more narrow, limited and incomplete. All this leads to a mechanistic way of life, a mental standardisation, and so gradually the State, even a democratic State, dictates what we should become. Most thoughtful people are naturally aware of this but unfortunately they seem to accept it and live with it. So this has become a danger to freedom.

[GrainOSand]

..Continue­d
Freedom is a very complex issue and to understand the complexity of it the flowering of the mind is necessary. Each one will naturally give a different definition of the flowering of man depending on his culture, on his so called education, experience, religious superstition - that is, on his conditioning. Here we are not dealing with opinion or prejudice, but rather with a non-verbal understanding of the implications and consequences of the flowering of the mind. This flowering is the total unfoldment and cultivation of our minds, our hearts and our physical well-being. That is, to live in complete harmony in which there is no opposition or contradiction between them. The flowering of the mind can take place only when there is clear perception, objective, non-personal, unburdened by any kind of imposition upon it. It is not what to think but how to think clearly. We have been for centuries, through propaganda and so on, encouraged in what to think. Most modern education is that and not the investigation of the whole movement of thought. The flowering implies freedom: like any plant it requires freedom to grow.”
J. Krishnamurti

http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/quotations.html

[sky2blue]

Wow! I'm too happy and estatic for words!

[galaxian]

Mr. Avella probably had much to do with the walkout--and good for him! Standardized tests means scripted curriculum. Now the entire year is mapped out by the dates for these exams.
Resist the robotic urge! I'm glad these kids are.
Demand writing from our students. Critical thinking not memorization. They love to think--why hold them back?

[TheJibreelaMonsters]

Nice Try to blame Washington (and a Republican President) when the problem is in Albany, NY and the City of New York itself!

[TheJibreelaMonsters]

Ted Kennedy: wrote and supported NCLB
Publicly Educated in the State of New York: this chit is nothing new even before NCLB.
Regents Exams ring a bell?

[unity08]

These kids deserve our deepest respect and admiration for stepping up and speaking out on the social injustice created by "no child left behind".

[rnb]

I was fortunate enough to be just getting out of high school when the first SOL tests were being used. It was clear from the start that these tests were attempting to create SAT equivalents in every grade level and subject. The problem with that of course, is that those kinds of standardized tests have never tested anyone's knowledge or understanding, but rather their ability to take a test. This is made clear by going to any SAT prep class, all the prep methods are tricks for figuring out the answer quickly, not actually teaching the concepts the material is supposedly testing.

That kind of test is barely qualified to determine what kind of college you should get into, much less determine how well you understand the material it tests. The irony of claiming "No" child will be left behind, when in fact all are left behind is not lost on me.

[changetalker1]

John McCain has not choosen a vp as yet, he is old and election is not untill Novemver 2008. God forbid, June in america is when most things with consiquences happen, The now standing VP would be the front runnier and Obama would now have to worry Chaney/Obama Chaney/Clinton the Dems do have a lott to worry about in the next 7 months

[pmcrimson]

I'm so proud of those students. This should be all over the national news. I really hope, though, rather than just news coverage, the kids take some action to inform other students around the country that they can do the same. A flurry of student walk-outs all over the country would be precisely the thing to show how bad No Child Left Behind is; how badly our schools need to be reformed *for the better*. Additionally, this could motivate a whole generation of people to become active in politics.

[realpolitic]

These students have acted so courageously by refusing to be part of a process they know is only hurting their education. Let them learn and discuss and develop interests without narrowly focusing on some multiple choice exam. Why should Bush make education policies when he has avoided any education his whole life?