Can We Teach About Osama Bin Laden's Death if It Is Not on the Test?

When airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, I, like millions of other Americans, felt fear and helplessness.

No one knew who was behind the attacks, how many more were coming, or what could be done about them.

At one time, I would have gone to work at my job as an editor of a small Missouri daily newspaper, put together an AP package on the attacks, assigned reporters to localize the story, and either worked on a sidebar or provided commentary.

When I heard the news, I was nowhere near a newspaper office. I was standing in front of a classroom of eighth-grade creative writing students in a trailer in Diamond, Mo.

And I, like thousands of teachers across the United States, had the important, but unenviable task of helping explain the unexplainable to students.

My thoughts went back to that day, nearly 10 years ago, after I heard the news last night of the death of Osama bin Laden.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I quickly made the decision to turn on the TV in my classroom, tuning it to the one station it picked up, and each hour my students heard the updates, while we took time to discuss what had happened, and I attempted to answer their questions.

It was something new to all of us. My class shared the trailer with a fourth-grade class, whose teacher had not heard the dictate of the elementary principal (high school, middle school and elementary school were all located on one campus in Diamond) that the attacks were not to be mentioned to the little ones.

The fourth-graders came into my classroom to watch since they did not have a television in their classroom. Their eyes were glued to the screen and their questions, when we took breaks for discussion, were thoughtful and intelligent.

One of the jobs of public schools and public school teachers has always been to prepare students to participate in our society. That includes a basic understanding of our history and our government and a knowledge of what is going on in the world around us.

On Sept. 11, 2001, teachers helped provide context for the most horrific act of terrorism in United States history.

When President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, my thoughts wandered back to that day, but then I realized something.

How fortunate is it for students across America that bin Laden's death took place at a time when standardized tests have been completed for this school year?

A knowledge of the world around us does not appear to be a priority to those who have shackled schools in chains of "accountability" and "reform".

Understanding the importance of the death of Osama bin Laden does not help students understand math problems, and it does nothing to raise their scores on standardized tests.

Had this momentous event taken place one month ago, many teachers across this great country would have had to ignore the news in their classrooms. Being citizens of the United States and the world is not a priority in this landscape of billionaires who seek to turn public education into an assembly line for underpaid workers (if public education manages to survive).

If this were a month ago, teachers in many school districts, fearful of the impact of No Child Left Behind, branded as failures if test scores slip even a decimal point, would have been told not to veer from the test prep curriculum.

If the death of Osama bin Laden is not on the test, then you do not teach about the death of Osama bin Laden.

This morning, thousands of teachers across the U.S. will spend some time talking to students about what happened Sunday. Students will be able to express themselves verbally and in writing about the event -- skills which should be prized as our educational system is allegedly racing to the top.

Important national events belong in the classroom. The demise of Osama bin Laden, a man whose evil has shaped the course of the past decade in this country, ranks among those events.

Thank you, Mr. President, for waiting until testing season was over. Thanks to you, students across the U.S. will have an opportunity to learn something besides how to bubble in answers.

 

 

 

Follow Randy Turner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rturner229

Comments

[cmr86]

11:51 AM on 05/03/2011

I agree with the sentiment of this article. Fixed curriculum hinders integration into real world topics. *sigh*

[David Campbell]

08:26 AM on 05/03/2011

One day I was observing an 8th grade earth science class after a massive earth quake in Japan. I mentioned to the teacher how interesting that would be for his students. His response - "Oh we covered earth quakes last week; today we're doing rain clouds." You are correct if this event had happened before the tests nothing would have been said. Worse yet? The day of Kennedy's assassination, teachers crying in the hall and one teacher continued with the math lesson.

[Rita Khanna]

03:16 AM on 05/03/2011

Mr Taylor fails to understand the dilemma of academic administrators.
The standardized tests ensures a threshold, a basic minimum level of competency development. It is to de-risk the student suffering becuase of teacher incompetence.

Good and excellent teachers would develop more content and more competency in students. If you want do more, you are most welcome to do it. Believe me no one will stop you and everyone will appreciate you.

[eceresa]

06:30 AM on 05/03/2011

You fail to understand the basic way that tests work. We're testing the kids, not the teachers. If the kids score low, it suggests (but doesn't prove) that they don't know what's on the test. Did they have a great teacher, but the kid refused to learn? Or was the kid willing, but the teacher failed?

We don't know. And the test can never tell us. But a lot of people have been convinced otherwise, to the enrichment of testing companies and to the detriment of students and teachers.

[Rita Khanna]

08:38 AM on 05/03/2011

That can easily be factored in.
Models can be developed to factor that.
I think the teacher community is just afraid of the change.
Conspiracy theories regarding testing companies is not going to help.
Embrace the change and work forward.

[DeweyJ]

09:31 AM on 05/03/2011

You can do so, after the STAR test. What detractors fail to realize is that we have pages and pages of standards to teach each year for each course, and worse, we administer the STAR test 6 weeks before school ends, so we must teach the entire, and very ambitious curriculum, in less than a year. We hop on an escalator on the first day of school and ride it to the STAR test date. Reteaching concepts, suspending instruction to cover pertinent current events impedes progress. It is difficult to make much time, until after the test, which is the only good reason to administer testing 6-7 weeks prior to the end of school, it allows us time to breathe and to incorporate some valuable learning that does not very specifically address the standards.

The unintended consequences of micro-managed, lock-step instruction are many. For starters, standards need to be reduced by 1/2 so teachers can teach some depth and have ample time to integrate current events that connect in some way. We are not educating under NCLB and its wicked stepchild, Race to the Top, we are training.

[Cindy Visser Ward]

02:52 AM on 05/03/2011

So true. My daughter is a teacher and the one thing we talk about is "The No Child Left Behind" which in fact in so many ways has left children behind. I have 4 children and 5 granchildren ,one of which is in school and I have worked in the schools and continue to do so. The fact is that we have become so drive by test scores that we have lost the reason we teach our children. A sad situation. When has test scores determined how well a teacher teaches or a student learns. Of my 4 children, 2 have a terrble ime taking a written test but ask them anything orally, and they will give you an answer, probably morethan most "A" students would take the time to write, but because they had such a hard time writing, they were considered "failing'. That in my opinion is bull**** and we need to get back to teaching and realizing that not all children learn the same way. Stop putting our children in a box.

[Kansiov]

02:40 AM on 05/03/2011

The point of education is to nature great thinkers, not great test-takers.

[eceresa]

06:31 AM on 05/03/2011

Your information is out of date by about 10 years.

The point of education is to pass tests, now.

[Kansiov]

07:01 AM on 05/03/2011

Blame it on teachers and politicians taking the easy way out. It's so evident nowadays that teachers don't even bother on how a formula is derived, but rather just slap a formula on the board and have the students to memorize it.

Learning has become a chore.

[Josie Burton]

01:39 AM on 05/03/2011

We're testing tomorrow and the rest of this week. I opted for test prep today :(

[Chase Cox]

10:07 PM on 05/02/2011

Seems ironic that you would write this story for a few reasons. First I was in fourth grade when the events of 9/11 happened and we watched it on TV. Second you were my english teacher in 8th grade, and a good one at that. Lastly, I had this same thought today about the news of Osama Bin Laden's death. I knew this sort of thing would happen in public schooling, with finals coming up soon and tests on the rise. But, I figured for sure that being in college while this news was presented would mean that the whole day was filled with discussions of it. Unfortunately, not one word was said in any of my classes, by student or professor! It is sad that teachers care more about how there students do on the course material, rather than their knowledge of current issues affecting them. I guess we can only thank the good deeds of our friend George W. Bush for that, No Child Left Behind was a great idea! (sarcasm....)

[cmr86]

11:57 AM on 05/03/2011

It really depends on the subject. In some of your liberal arts or social science classes there may be mention of it, but...profs have to power through the information they're giving you too. If you're in a chem class, you're not paying to hear about OBL's death--you're paying to learn chem. Which sucks, but is the truth.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

09:02 PM on 05/02/2011

In six years of attending the same school, my son had one great teacher, and five people punching the clock. I think about that when i read articles like these. I think about the last student teacher conferance, which the teacher forgot about, as his iphone was down, and i think about how he did not know my son's name. I think about these things and when people say teachers got it easy and aren't worth the money and aren't producing, i say one in six is doing a really good job, the other five are squandering the potential of our youth via apathy and ineptitude.

[eceresa]

06:34 AM on 05/03/2011

My own experience, with far more than six teachers, is that the percentage of bad ones is much lower. Nowhere near as high as 10%.

Your experience may be as you say, but mine is very different, and I suspect that mine most closely resembles the average.

[cmr86]

11:58 AM on 05/03/2011

It's unfortunate, but learning every student's name is increasingly difficult when teachers have five or six classes of 30-35 kids each (presuming it's a junior high or high school).

[BigOrangeBoehner]

08:45 PM on 05/02/2011

And yet I get your point. Slavery to test scores is counterproductive. But you need to understand that we taxpayers need some objective measure of effectiveness.

[eceresa]

10:05 PM on 05/02/2011

Tests don't tell you anything about a teacher's effectiveness, though.

[BigOrangeBoehner]

08:41 PM on 05/02/2011

Well, Mr. Turner, this particular taxpayer would rather my children learn a Dickenson poem or point-slope notation or the history of Xerxes or why an ad-hominem argument is invalid. BinLaden is current event noise, and available on any TV or web portal.

[rturner229]

09:11 PM on 05/02/2011

Many children are never exposed to television programs or websites that contain news and useful information. I would not consider the death of the man responsible for one of the most horrific events in U. S. history to be "noise," but one of those occasions that should be addressed in an educational setting.

[KatTales43]

07:54 PM on 05/02/2011

Excellent!

[sawyer0413]

06:07 PM on 05/02/2011

Such a waste. Teachers should be using this valuable time after testing to prepare their students for next year's test. After all, anything of value can be tested, as a multiple-choice question, with the blame falling fully to the teachers for any lack of retention by their students. In fact, I would say that any teacher not using this time in test preparation for next year is probably fully in the category of a below-average teacher.

Then again, if you believe that I believe all this, I have a few more "modest proposals" to make. I think we should start with school nutrition.

[Absolute]

05:39 PM on 05/02/2011

We are testing this week and next week here in New York City. Standardized tests are not over for all of the nation's students.

[rturner229]

06:14 PM on 05/02/2011

You have my sympathies. We finished ours a couple of weeks ago.

[DUSAA-1775]

05:13 PM on 05/02/2011

I realize that it must be a very difficult time to be a teacher in the US. Each year, when compared to other countries, it is shown what dismal results the US educators keep giving the American taxpayer. As the US spends the third most money per pupil , The educators can't even perform their jobs well enough to get the US into the top 20 in math, reading or science.
I would suggest the rather than asking some whiny-boy sarcastic question, that the educators instead concentrate on not being negligent in their job functions. I recognize that if the educators could some how do away with standardized testing, perhaps no one would notice that they just are unable to perform their jobs. However, for now, the testing will continue to show that it doesn't matter how much money is poured into our education system , the US teachers are bested by 20-25 other countries every year.

[bessielil]

05:40 PM on 05/02/2011

One teacher makes an observation that it's important to be able to integrate the news into a classroom as it unfolds and you can only respond that he's a whiny-boy? You then dump on our entire education system by ranking.

By that logic, our doctors are significantly worse than our educators. We rank 37th according to the World Health Organization, behind Canada, Morocco, Austria, Colombia and Costa Rica.

[rturner229]

05:57 PM on 05/02/2011

I would suggest that instead of just repeating the talking points of the so-called educational reformers, you examine exactly what those comparisons with other countries are measuring. Whereas most of the countries that rank above us are grading only students who are put on college track and not those who are steered into industry, manual labor and service jobs, the U. S. scores come from all of our students. The cream of our country still knocks off the top off these tests. It also comes down to a question of what we value. I keep reading about this country prizes problem-solving skills and those who can think outside of the box, yet we grade our students with tests that come nowhere near to measuring those skills. American public schools have been doing the job all along. Nearly every area where there are problem scores is an area filled with poverty and crime. Instead of dealing effectively with those problems, which would do a great deal to improve educaiton, our politicians and "educational reformers" take the easy way out and point the finger at bad teachers.

[KatTales43]

07:57 PM on 05/02/2011

F&F to you randy.

And an F grade to Bessielil for just not getting it at all.

[ecotopian]

04:01 PM on 05/02/2011

As with many things, my kids school won't teach them about this. So I will.