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Petting the Mainstream Middling Mind: An Indictment Against Standardized Testing

I have never been a fan of standardized testing in schools.  There’s too big a variable at play — missing the wild mind — and these tests praise and condone only the middle.  If you don’t do well on these tests, you are not moved forward or thought of as a significant thinker.  The system doesn’t mind if your wild view of the world matters.  The only thing the test givers care about is finding, and approving, the mainstream, middling, mind to guarantee, and impress, conformity.

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The Need for Recess

When I was young my mother told me that as children, our minds were like sponges and that we could absorb much knowledge that our teachers gave over to us. An important thing that I would like to add to that, however, is that the transfer of information from teacher to student cannot be the only thing that happens from the time the student arrives in school until they go home for the day. Recess, it turns out, is an extremely important part of the children’s day.

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Tracking Students with RFID

When I was in school, there were no metal detectors greeting us at the door nor armed police — and children were in their classrooms at the expected times. Those that were not got detention and eventually were suspended from school. We knew that in order to get an education our rears needed to be in our seats, attention on the teacher.

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A Strip Club, a Liquor Store, and a Bus Stop

A Strip Club, A Liquor Store, And A Bus Stop — it sounds remarkably like the beginning of a joke but it is anything but humor. Consider the role of a bus stop — it is meant to be a place to allow children to congregate and wait for a bus to take them to school and then later drop them off after work. The transition from home to school and back has to be one that involves safety for the children — both in terms of their physical well being and what they see. Having a school bus stop sandwiched between a liquor store and a strip club puts children in danger on both ends.

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What Not to Do When You Are the School Principal

There are certain expectations of you when you become the principal of a school. You are, so to speak, the coach of the entire school — it looks to you for guidance and leadership. You need to have a certain kind of moral fortitude in order to be the school principal because in a way you are also the keystone of the school. It should come to no surprise to anyone, therefore, that when the principal of a school slips up and behaves in a manner that is unbecoming of anyone meant to be taken seriously in a school, let alone the head of the school, said principal must face strong consequences.

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Teachers in France Have The Right Idea: Strike!

The other day, I was watching television and I saw a commercial for a certain credit card company that showed a teacher shopping for their own school supplies. I was reminded how bad our education system currently is — bad enough that it supplies teachers with a certain budget for the year but when that budget is exhausted, as it often quickly is, they have to pony up if they want to give their students crayons or colored paper or project supplies — regardless of how important those supplies may be for their education. I couldn’t imagine a bank teller being told by their employer that they could only have a certain number of pens at their station, and that they would have to pay for any others if they needed them.

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Paying the Rising Cost of Schooling

The absolutely most important thing, my mother used to tell me, is a good education — and this was something that nobody could take away from you. This is why my parents would always pay whatever cost necessary to give my brother and me a good education.

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