Sunday, September 18, 2005

Michael Lopez Should Go Back To Blogging

I used to read Michael Lopez' Welcome To Highered Education! blog regularly--that is, before he stopped writing it. Now I'm treated to his wit and wisdom only when he guest blogs over at Joanne Jacobs' site.

In this post, Michael takes on the fact that some displaced students in Michigan will be exempted from some standardized testing due to emotional trauma brought on by Hurricane Katrina. Here's a sample of his no-holds-barred style:

I know some people are going to think I'm hard-hearted, but really there's no reason that a kid who's ready to go back to school can't sit down and take a test.

It's. Just. A. Test.

You sit down, and you take it. All this fretting about students' being in the "right frame of mind" for standardized testing is a waste of time, energy, and only serves to reinforce the specious premise upon which it's based. In a way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You hype the test as something scary, something for which you need to be emotionally prepared... and it becomes more significant, it becomes scary.

Nothing would help those displaced kids more than being put back into the routine of life without grief counselors, without a bunch of fretting and worrying, and without special testing exemptions.

If they're that traumatized... they shouldn't be in school for a few days. But just like Viper told Jester to keep sending Maverick up, again and again until he got back the edge, you have to send the kids back into school until they recover.

The self-fulfilling prophecy comment could not be more true.

Update: Here's yet another one. This guy wields sarcasm like a surgeon uses a scalpel.

Another Update: Perhaps I should have put in the link in the first update. Oh well!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup, there's nothing like using a good Top Gun reference to back up your claim about educating our children.

Darren said...

I thought it was a wonderful example. You start with what people know in order to extend their knowledge into the unknown--and you, anonymous, obviously know the Top Gun reference. See? It worked!