Insane Standards

I know I said I was going to keep the gripes to a minimum and instead post those student errors that make my job of grading so interesting. On the other hand, writing can be cathartic, and if you don’t want to read this post I will certainly not be hurt. (I have serious doubts as to how many people are reading this at all!) So here is your warning: This post is going to be a (potentially lengthy) discussion of an “educational issue” which is on my mind. I am collecting some papers in the next few weeks, so we will get back to the fun soon.

Yesterday I sat through a conference day in which we worked on curriculum. There are any number of things I could talk about in regards to these activities. But here is the one I would like to focus upon: prescribed educational standards. I happen to live in New York, so if you are curious about the New York State educational standards I am talking about, you can attempt to read them online. I say “attempt” not because they are hard to find, but because I, a high school English teacher, can’t force my way through the standards in English, never mind other subjects or other grade levels. I offer my criticism in the following points.

Point One: The standards for English in grades 9 - 11 are ridiculously unattainable. One of my colleagues, whose integrity I respect and who has decades of experience, commented that to complete only the standards in writing we would have to double the length of time students spend in high school. (Some of the standards actually cover the writing of literature - as in, we are supposed to have our students writing poetry and short stories, novels and plays. And these standards are written as if for a college creative writing program, not a high school English class.) This is a classic example of trying to do too much and doing it badly, rather than doing less and doing it well.

Point Two: To be blunt, these standards are not assessed on state Regents exams. Considering their length, there is no way they could be. More and more, teachers and schools are judged solely on the basis of standardized test scores. (That is a subject unto itself.) Since we as teachers are judged based not on the standards but on a test that covers very few of those standards, we already have one reason for ignoring the standards, or at least developing a cynical attitude about them.

Point Three: If you take the time to read the standards, an activity I don’t recommend, you will not come away from that document with a passion for literature or writing. You will be bored to death. English teachers went into the profession because we love literature, not because we love curriculum documents. And the reason is simple: Literature is alive, and these standards are dead. F. Scott Fitzgerald is dead, but The Great Gatsby is very much alive. I am not sure that the writers of the standards love literature or writing; sometimes I am not sure they are actually alive. Literature speaks to the human condition and the human experience; state standards are joyless and passionless dictums speaking, as far as I can tell, to no one in particular. Literature is alive like a flower; state standards are a dead machine, like a lawnmower.

Point Four: As I am sure you can tell, I don’t believe in these standards. I don’t believe they are useful, and I don’t believe they are in the best interests of our students or our teachers. Yet I am asked not only to write a curriculum that falls in line with these standards, but to then put that curriculum into action. G. K. Chesterton said, “The educationist must find a creed and teach it. Even if it be not a theological creed, it must still be as fastidious and as firm as theology.” Every teacher with any integrity develops his own educational creed. Now another creed, in the form of the standards, is being forced upon me. I am asked, nay told, to teach what I do not believe to produce results I do not see as at all desirable. And I am being asked to do all this by people I know and who work with me simply because people none of us know or work with created a document in an office in the state capital.

I shall end with this: No one who asks me to write the curriculum for our district asks me what my own creeds are, asks me what I think or believe. No one asks the English department, for example, what we think it is necessary for our students to know. We don’t discuss any of these issues. I would be perfectly willing to discuss any of these things, and more, at length, with anyone who would listen and respond. Of course, I am not sure if such activities are covered by our state standards.