Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Professionalism vs. Advocacy
The Carr and Kemmis article about curriculum had me thinking of professionalism. I hear the complaint of many teachers and even the authors of this article that teachers and the profession of teaching in becoming less and less about professionalism. With the rise of standardized tests and NCLB teachers are having to teach to the test more and more. This leaves them with less flexibility over the curriculum...you know the argument. What makes me crazy is balancing this with advocacy for music education. We are always trying to legitimize the place for music education in schools. We want it to be seen as "important" the way math and science are seen. Well math and science classes are constantly having to meet standards and taking state tests. In NYC a few music schools (my school included) were asked this year to take a demo REGENTS test in music. These are NYstate tests. YES! Music is finally seen as important and now the state cares enough to have to have students take standardized tests. NO! now we cant take the time to learn the things we had learned in the past and the curriculum will have to change and the job becomes less professional. I am in between on this issue. Should we all bite the bullet and for the sake of advocacy (only 9 of 50 states have arts graduation requirements) lose some of our professionalism?
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2 comments:
I understand fully where you are on this one, Joe. My district is currently divided on whether we should be having some formal assessment at specified grade levels to demonstrate student learning, and while I do think it would increase some accountability for teachers, I wonder about its true merit of assessing student learning. I wonder..do you think there is a more quantitave form of assessment than a standardized test but less objective than performance evaluation?
I dont know lori- but certainly teaching to the test cannot be the right way to teach music. The Bowman article talks about kant's idea that everything can be quantified in terms of reason and logic and as Aristotle along with possibly Nietche and Hegel point out somethings cannot be discussed through logic. Kant=standardized tests. Nietsche, Hegel, Aristotle=some more appropriate type of assesment. But what is it? I have no idea.
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