Having been an “educator” as my choice of profession after leaving college and looking for work, not necessarily the kind that would make me rich and my family secure, I began at the lowest level– that of a teacher in a State Institution for Epileptics.  There were no jobs available for high school teachers of History.

In all the over forty years of teaching and professing I have encountered a few very bright students some of whom I have kept in touch with over the years.  I have not learned what makes some “bulbs” in the classroom burn more brightly than the vast number of “dim” ones.  You take what you can get and work just as hard with the ones who are slow and who do not “get it” and sometimes you see that bulb get brighter when they do.

Any system of education soon gives way to basic principles of educands, educator and curricula.  To settle on one kind of student (I prefer the ones who interact with me and try) and one kind of teaching with a narrow number of subjects that the student is expect to ingest and then regurgitate in a test is a perversion of an ancient and noble profession.

Texas, a state which has given us an inflated sense that big is better with a dim bulb as President has latched onto a system creating a “new” “Bush-style Education School in Texas”. Bush’s choice for education Secretary, Margaret Spelling, has set up a system that focuses on a narrow spectrum of methods.  This is not education of the teachers as critics point out.  But the big fool in Washington decrees Texas as the prime example of all that is good and right, doggedly plows on.

Teaching to the test is what “No Child Left Behind” has devolved into. I have tried that and found that the dim bulbs in the classroom couldn’t remember the answers even with the promise of a reward or a punishment.

This is not to say that dim bulbs do not make good adult citizens.  What it is all about is that most “educands” do not belong in the schools we have created for in their lives schooling is irrelevant – unless that school has something of value for each and every student. In Texas, the answer is one method (called scientific) and they apply it to ALL students.  This is not the answer and those of us in the field know this to be true for our experience, our studies and our students tell us this is so.  But it is nice to have a bright bulb in the classroom.  The tendency is to direct your energy to nourishing this one and that is not what education is all about.