Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix includes a magnificent parody of the anti-intellectualism that gave rise, in this country, to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. In the novel, the Ministry of Magic invades Hogwarts and attempts to convert it to a test prep mill in which students prepare to pass their OWL exams and avoid unnecessary distraction such as wands and magic. This in a school for wizards!
The parallel to schools in Oregon where attention to passing the OAKS exam threatens to eliminate any possibility of classroom magic is unmistakable.
Silly? Perhaps. Fun? Undeniably. Hogwarts is a school the likes of which would never be tolerated in the pubic sphere. Classes are taught by 'unqualified' teachers who are only expert practitioners in their fields of study. Instructors raise their voices. Sarcasm is freely administered. Classroom activities sometimes end in bumps and bruised egos (which in our schools is allowable only on the football field) and there is no guarantee against the possibility of failure.
All well and good, but what of the Ministry of Magic working to reduce schooling to a series of basic competency exams? Certainly there is no parallel in our experience!
Is there really a movement so plodding, so pedantic, so life-denying in our own place and time? Obviously! It's common name is No Child Left Behind. A more recent incarnation goes by the name of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. It is the brainchild of the nation's governors and the state superintendents of schools. Forty-eight states have signed on to date. Oregon included. Who signed on Oregon's behalf? Who knows? And yet we are somehow signed up!
Common Core State Standards! What can that mean? All fourth graders the nation should know and be able to do the same things on February 19th of each year? And how is this educational chimera to be promoted if not by a single, national test? Call it an OWL, and OAK, or whatever you wish, it is a profoundly wrong-headed notion. It would be a wrong-headed notion if it could be achieved with the waving of a wand, with no investment of time or expense. But in the world of muggles, there will be no wand-waving. Instead, we will waste millions of hours and dollars on a process at the end of which we will not have achieved any significant gains and we will be looking for the next silver bullet, magic bean, or scientifically-based miracle.
Let's be clear. Common standards do not make sense for two 9-year-olds sitting in the same classroom. They make less sense to two 9-year-olds living across town from one another. And common standards for all 9-year-olds in America (among whom the oldest are 364 days older than the youngest) is absurdity the likes of which can only be achieved on a grand scale.
Rowling is smart. She tells good stories. But how does she understand so much more about education than do the high-profile policy-makers in our state and nation? What a strange turn of events when a writer of fantasy displays more educational insight in her sub-plot than the majority of educational thinkers have been able to put together with decades of conferences, summits, legislative edicts, and re-re-re-re-re-reforms?
We educators like to call what we do a profession. Yet we tend to be cowards when it comes to actually professing. We leave it to the Rowlings, the Tolkiens, the Mathesons of the world to say what really needs to be said about schools and schooling while we professionals stand guard over the safe, the stalwart, the polished forms that are too often empty of meaningful content.
We professionals need to find our voice. We need to profess. We need to demand that what we be allowed to do what we know. That what we do should be fun. We need to be a little more fanciful and a little less concerned with appearances. We need to teach more like coaches and coach more like teachers. We need to develop real, authentic relationships with our charges and bring extraordinary expertise to their intellectual lives. We need to read literature with an ambulance on the sidelines and play football with a poet's passion.
We should demand that what we do be fun. Serious fun. More fun than Bill and Ted or Ferris Bueler. More fun that Charlie Bartlett.
The obstacles are many and they are formidable. The State of Oregon. The Ministry of Magic. The U.S. Department of Education. Every professional organization that I am aware of. Public opinion, shaped by years of uniformed (to put the best face on it) reporting. But the possibility of progress is worth the effort.
It appears that Superintendent Castillo may have competition in the next election. Election? Is that really how we want to choose a state superintendent? Do we really want which ever applicant can mount the best political campaign? Perhaps we should consider an alternative. Many states appoint a superintendent. Maybe it's worth considering. And J.K. Rowling might be worth a careful look. She won't fall for claims of magic where there is none. That would be a great start.
