"Good teachers are not good soldiers" Great post.

[madfloridian]

Unusual subject line but plenty of food for thought.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity

Maxine Greene, who died recently at 96, assailed the establishment view of defining education as teachers who stand and deliver a prescribed curriculum. Maxine, the Dean of Columbia Teachers College, spent her life as a human bulwark against the machine, committing to what she called, "wide-awakeness" in all of us, especially teachers:

I'm not the kind of person who wants to impose an authority on people. I suppose I'll never stop trying to wake people up to ask questions and have passion about how they look at the world.4

Good teachers are not good soldiers.

In fact, the best teachers are the ones who regularly and forcefully challenge orders from on high. They fight back, or at the very least, tell their commanders that the battles being won today - increased standardized testing, a move to abolish tenure, narrowing of the curriculum, a focus on competition - are Pyrrhic victories at best.

Corporations may be people to some, but schools will never be businesses to those who understand the complexity of childhood.

Why so many of us fear what is happening with the test test and more test reforms going on now:

Sadly, in schools today, the fascinating, albeit messy, work of enlivening the hearts and minds of the next generation is being overshadowed by the austere, petty, numbers-driven auditing that has become standard practice. This misbegotten approach is questioned, often and loudly, by brave educators who risk their livelihoods in the name of providing an environment that honors young people as developing human beings with a stake in shaping their own future. These are people who refuse to be quiet in the face of a politics that is sucking the life out of what used to be sacred ground.

Good teachers are going to lose their jobs if they stand up against this steamroller of corporate reform.