No Child Left Behind: No World Opened Up

(this post was written by Kyle on March 25, 2006, and it concerns & & & & & & & )

The NY Times is reporting that a survey by the Center on Education policy has “found that since the passage of the federal [No Child Left Behind law], 71 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math.”

While no one would dispute that math and reading are foundational elements in any education, they should be recognized not as end-goals, but as beginning points that allow for the intellectual departure into social studies, music, science, creative writing, etc. Though one could argue that NCLB’s focus on math and reading does not dissuade the nation’s schools from offering the other subjects, the (massively unfunded) mandate to test on only these two subjects means that a student who may not respond in formal mathematics and reading classes is not exposed to them through different avenues. For example, a student who would respond to the mathematical underpinnnings of music no longer has the opportunity to, and because the school no longer offers music classes, the student (and the student’s teachers) will never recognize this ability, and instead of being understood as a student who learns experientially, the student simply becomes a “low-profiency” student.

By closing such students off from other subjects, we close them off to a different way of interacting with and learning from the world. What hides behind the No Child Left Behind moniker is the fact that not all students are interested in moving in the same direction, and by instituting a two-subject school day, the students are forced to conform to a world that may do nothing but hinder them.

Imagine what kind of world we may miss out on by denying the natural ability of some of these students. Forcing them to spend more time on something that obviously doesn’t work for them is asking them to be nothing but a trained animal. Instead of opening up our definition of “learning,” instead of imagining what kind of contributions can come from students who don’t conform to the standard, we settle on the compromise that they at least be able to work at McDonald’s.

Our children deserve better than simply not being left behind. They deserve the opportunity to create a better world in the future.