A recent post at the Teacher in a Strange Land blog makes several interesting points about standardization in education. After providing a brief history of the effort to standardize the educational experience in the US, the author circles in on a topic I’ve been highlighting - the lack of inclusion of marginalized groups in such processes. Teachers, it seems, had limited input in the creation of such standards. “Experts” (Taylorists) were there to make things right.
From an inclusion standpoint, the author reminds us about the history of grade levels.
A room full of children of precisely the same age will always have different skill and aptitude profiles. That’s not to say that we should try to adjust groups to meet academic levels, because kids learn at different rates, at different times, and in different ways–and punishing students by keeping them from their peers is insulting and bound to backfire.
In setting up such a system, it’s almost as if there was No Place for Autism. No autistics helping design the system. No autistics informing revisions to the design. No autistics offering opinions as the the students’ user experience within such a system.
The Absolute Folly of Standardization
The Absolute Folly of Standardization
The Absolute Folly of Standardization
A recent post at the Teacher in a Strange Land blog makes several interesting points about standardization in education. After providing a brief history of the effort to standardize the educational experience in the US, the author circles in on a topic I’ve been highlighting - the lack of inclusion of marginalized groups in such processes. Teachers, it seems, had limited input in the creation of such standards. “Experts” (Taylorists) were there to make things right.
From an inclusion standpoint, the author reminds us about the history of grade levels.
In setting up such a system, it’s almost as if there was No Place for Autism. No autistics helping design the system. No autistics informing revisions to the design. No autistics offering opinions as the the students’ user experience within such a system.
When will this change?