Hello there.

Today I had meetings at my school about how we're going to proceed with our program. I thought that today was an awesome day as far as the amount of work that we got done is concerned. I am a little dubious about coming in during vacation week though...

One of the themes of today's meeting (that I wasn't involved with) was the new Minnesota Social Studies standards.

For those of you who aren't teachers: most states in the USA are trying to move toward standardization of subjects taught in school. This standardization is the cause of endless debate, which eats up gads of time and money. In the end it seems that teachers will continue to teach what they've always taught; but since the bureaucratic beast must be fed, little people in the government have been put in charge of writing down all of these little things that kids need to know in order to graduate.

Our current government in Minnesota is a kind of back-to-the-basics conservative-type regime. Our conservative friends feel that it is important that students are able to regurgitate a number of facts from a "broad spectrum" of traditional historical themes. (There will be tests too!)

My spin on it goes like this: if the subjects really have to be standardized and students have to be tested, so be it. The biggest problem that I see is that the textbooks and materials that teachers use don't necessarily match what the politicians want the kids to be able to be accountable for on their various tests. It would make sense to have either the people who make the tests produce texts that are written from the tests, or have the textbook companies write the standards and the texts.

Well, you say: having the government write the texts (which are based on the tests) will mean that we've basically created a "Ministry of Education" where the government has too much control over what the student learns. (Also, the things that students are forced to learn will continuously vascillate with prevailing political winds.) On the other hand, having textbook companies write standards and texts will allow for giant companies to have a monopoly over what students are supposed to learn.

Those are two alternatives. Maybe it is just better that standards are written, yet teachers continue as usual. Most teachers that I know are very responsible and are very conscientious about their students' educations. The same things will end up getting taught regardless of how those things are worded.