Sending and Receiving Messages

This week is another round of MCAS (the Massachusetts Standardized test), as well as AP exams.  Welcome to the Week Of Standardized Testing Squared.  I get to proctor MCAS in the morning and APs in the afternoon, with one class of EXTREMELY full, tired, and de-motivated students in between.

I was thinking about the messages that these tests send to students and teachers alike.  Once the students finish their exams, they are allowed to do nothing except for stare at the wall.  They can't read, eat, draw, or even go to the bathroom.  (Well, they can, but it isn't the deep-breath break that I would allow them.  They have to be escorted to the bathroom by an attendant, so that "break," too, is a rushed one.)

As proctors, teachers are not allowed to do much either.  We used to be able to answer an email or two while we watched our students take MCAS, but now we can't.  We have all of this work to do, much of it being busywork and paperwork and grading, especially since we have to get our assessments back to students "in a timely fashion."  And we aren't allowed to do any of that.  We must stare at the students and stare at the walls.  We can't eat either--not even a granola bar.

Ok, so I could go on about other things we can't do, and the students can't do.  But what messages are these  directives sending?  This takes me back to my thoughts about Control, and False Control.  The messages that the state and the College Board are sending to students are: "We are big, you are small.  We control you.  We do NOT trust you.  You are infantile."  In the case of the College Board, add: "You are a source of revenue and that is all." In the case of teachers, the messages are:  "We are big, you are small.  We control you.  We do NOT trust you.  You are infantile."  In the case of the College Board, add: "You aren't even a source of revenue, except to our workshops.  You just have to keep teaching this course because we have control."

No wonder Students behave in infantile manners!  No wonder Teachers do as well!  The message they receive is that they ARE untrustworthy babies, so why would they aspire to anything other?

This has been a super cynical post.  I know.  But it is true, and it is time we faced up to it.  As long as we have the factory model, we are stuck with this infantilization of both students and teachers.  I think about how, in ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt, young men, the ages of my Seniors, would be giving their first political speeches.  The students CAN think, and work, and be trustworthy and adult-like, if they are only given the opportunity and the guidance to help them form into young adults and not old toddlers.

So, how do we break this?  How do we send the RIGHT messages, like the ancient cultures did?  Especially in this culture where WE, the teachers, are treated like babies as well, how do we break out of that pattern and find the trustworthy adult in all of us and our own students?