Teachers who know better than the book are intimidated, by
students and administration, from trying better approaches. Good
students are frustrated in their attempts to define their own
passion and to pursue it to their definition of success.
Entrepreneurs at the age of 14, they do not need the feedback of
stupid tests, carried out more for the sake of bureaucracy than
for their well-being. Standardized tests dominated by
multiple-choice answers facilitate low cost evaluations, but also
affect patterns of teaching and learning. Exactly what the new
pragmatics embodies-the ability to adapt and to be proactive-is
counteracted through the experience of testing, and the teaching
geared to multiple-choice instruments.
The uncoupling of education from the experiential frame of the
human being is reflected in education's language and
organization, and in the limiting assumptions about its function
and methods. Education has become a self-serving organization
with a bureaucratic "network of directives," as Winograd and
Flores call them, and motivational elements not very different
from the state, the military, and the legal system. Like the
organizations mentioned, it also develops networks of interaction
with sources of funding and sources of power, some driven by the
same self-preserving energies as education itself. Instead of
reflecting shorter cycles of activity in its own structure, it
tends to maintain control over the destiny of students for longer
periods of time.
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