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Friday, May 29, 2015

Opus 2015-146: Discernment Watch: Beware of Success

I don’t know if you are familiar with Demotivator Posters.  They are found at the Despair website that sells posters, calendars, mugs and t-shirts.  It might be worth a visit if you have never seen what they have.  (I receive no payback for this recommendation)  Recently I saw what I assume is one of their posters on another website.  The captions is
“Success:  If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success and celebrate your victory.”
I feel this could be the catchy slogan that education has been searching for. 

All of the commotion about Common Core and testing pretty much comes down to this.  Instead of keeping standards high and consequences sure, we blink, draw another line in the sand, lower the standards and claim we have made progress because more students are passing and going to college.  The problem is that the increase is short lived because once the students realize the standards have been lowered, they put out even less effort and wait for them to be lowered again.  The percentage of students who finish college keeps declining.  Those who graduate often have no skills.

The kids are kids.  The teachers are warm hearted.  This is a destructive combination.  The future is not promising.

homo unius libri

2 comments:

  1. It's not promising for America, some other countries are doing it right, though, including some that wouldn't care if we met our demise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All cultures and civilizations of the past have met their match and most of the defeat comes from within. It looks like we have arrived. Was it Pogo who said, "We have met the enemy and it is us"?

      Grace and peace.

      Delete

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