Rambling, incoherent

Ted Sizer wrote: "We rarely underestimate the difficulties of learning. Having had to learn, we know that it is a complicated and unpredictable business," (Horace's Compromise, p. 2).

In today's climate, I disagree. I believe the wide majority, those that have never taught, regularly discount any challenge related to learning.

You're in sixth grade and you can't add fractions with unlike denominators with 80% accuracy? There's something wrong with your teacher. Or maybe you. You're lazy, kid. Get with it.

As every punishment must fit its crime, so too must every reform correspond to a particular failing of the system. Witness the rise of the "no excuses" mantra. Want to outlaw excuses? Someone must have been making a whole damn lot of them.

Can anyone who has never taught fractions really have an opinion? Should we really be listening to them at all? I'm not trying to be divisive, I really want to know. Should Bill Gates really be a powerful voice on education? Something tells me learning fractions was never that hard for him.

Is learning hard? Teaching? What does it even mean to learn? Have you ever learned? How do you know? How could you prove it to someone? Is there more than one way to prove it? Who or what caused your learning? How do you know? Do any of these questions even matter? To whom?

Until we, and I mean everyone, really wrestle with these ideas I see little hope for progress. Hold up a great school. Let's take a look. What's that, you say? The students have learned a lot? According to whom or what source? What did they learn? Did your school teach it to them? How do you know?

Popular assumptions undergird the debate. We are quick to applaud a school with high test scores. This is unquestionably a place where much learning has taken place; thus it deserves our attention. Left unwondered: are high scores really evidence of learning? What in fact, causes high scores on this particular exam? Do we know that the school played a role in causing the high scores?

Those few that ask these questions find a small audience and risk the label of contrarian.