Those that can, Teach.

I laughed really hard at this clip in the movie "School of Rock" the first time I heard it. Now there is a new saying that is pretty similar that made me chuckle a bit.  Not because it wasn't funny, but because it is sadly true.  Those that can, teach. Those that can't, make the rules for teachers.

There has been a lot of uproar over the new Common Core Standards that most of the states have decided to use as their curriculum guide.  I went to a meeting last year where a person from the Utah State Board of Education came to talk to teachers about a new style of test that we will start using for our end of level tests.  They showed us a lot of great features that it has and they tried to sell us on the idea that this way of testing will help us get a better sense of what the student understands more so than a multiple choice standardized test.

After the presentation there were a lot of parents in the crowd that started to ask questions about the Common Core and the role of certain people in the testing application we were implementing.  They were concerned that it was a government conspiracy to pry into their child's lives and keep tabs on them.  I know some kids have to tape the cameras on their computers because they think other people are going to hack into their computer and spy on them.  I left the meeting after the 3rd comment because I realized the direction the conversation was going.  I heard later that i was correct and that I should've stayed because it was quite entertaining.

The truth of the matter is that these people are looking for conspiracies that don't exist (hopefully) and aren't looking at the real problem here.  The people that are creating the standards and the people telling teachers how to teach, what to teach, and when to teach it have very little experience in the education field.  When I say education field, I mean teaching.  This does not include Teach for America nor does it include summer camps or after school clubs.  I've seen how these operate and they are simply a daycare service/day camp for kids who don't have a place to go after school.  I love these programs, but teaching in a regular classroom is completely different than the sort of job I just described.

I've recently learned about a man named David Coleman who was the mastermind behind the Common Core.  He's a very educated man with degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale. Did I mention he is a Rhodes Scholar? Well I've seen a couple of his interviews and I'm not impressed with the man.  He seems like an elitist that comes across as a man who is always right.  I get the impression that he feels teachers are not doing a good job and that if we taught like him then the world would be a utopian society where everyone attended an Ivy League school.

Attached is a blurb about his thoughts on what students commonly write about.  In essence he says that the type of thing I'm doing right now, expressing my opinion, is of little worth.  I would not expect this from someone who speaks to large groups about his personal opinions on education. I disagree with this man on so many levels that I find the pill I'm forced to swallow next year as we implement the Language Arts portion of the Common Core.  Why is it that a man with no teaching experience is telling us what makes good teachers? For your viewing pleasure, two videos of the man himself. Click HERE to view video.