The student vs the System

After a couple recent conversations with a new friend last weekend and a dyslexic student I just started tutoring, the idea of education and assessment of knowledge as a systemized institution has been on my mind. I tend to have an inherent aversion to the idea of standardized tests, at least partly because of the negative consequences that have resulted from of them (teaching to the test, funding tied to test scores, etc). However, as a person who loves organization and efficiency and useful information, I completely get the appeal and utility of getting normalized data and being able to structure things based on quantitative knowledge.

This topic is especially interesting to me in working with ABE students, many of whom were shuffled through the public education system without actually acquiring any significant knowledge or learning. So many of our students have so much to offer that is often dismissed in school because it doesn't fit into the current widespread education model where students passively receive knowledge and then regurgitate it back to the teacher or standardized test they are taking (upon which so much about their and their school's future unfairly depends). Students with disabilities (learning, cognitive, etc) don't fit into the established idea of a "good" student so most of the time they receive a second (or third or fourth) class education, which just breaks my heart and frustrates me. They have wonderful ideas and thoughts but have trouble expressing them in the way the educational system says they should, so they go unheard and are essentially taught that they have nothing to say.

While we have made a lot of progress in recognizing that there are lots of different kinds of intelligences and in serving individual students the way they need to be served, there is so much to be done. A lot of the time it feels like the problem is just too big, our nation is just too big, the system is too entrenched, so it's futile to try to change it. Not that change isn't possible or that we as individuals and as a group can't effect change - literacy volunteers in a variety of contexts are doing just that every day with individual students. It's just frustrating that the system is set up in a way that only certain students get to excel and succeed in some ways. Maybe that's inevitable, maybe not.

This was more of a contemplative post than anything else, and I would love to hear others' points of view on this subject - ready, go!