*applause*
My ex boss's daughter went to public school in Florida. She had a part-time job working for the company. When she sent me her work, we'd often get in conversations about philosophy she was studying. (This would be back in 2004). She would send me notes written in French and get a thrill that I would comprehend them and write back. IIRC, she ended up in Gainesville at Univ C Florida? Her experiences are jibing with this stuff about the testing grind. The stories she told of her school days, the home work and projects she told me about, weren't about drilling of bubble test, though there was some of that.
My son hated school and reading by the time he was in fourth grade. *shrug* Sometimes, that's just the way it is and I left him alone to be the person he wanted to be and not turn him into mini-me. At any rate, he took his share of multiple choice exams, but that wasn't the whole of his work, nor was it that of the two girlfriends he had, both of whom spent a lot of time at our house and with whom I spent time helping with their homework -- essay questions, mostly, but also research papers and a lot of more "hands on" stuff since both were geared toward professions that would be more "hands on" - one was interested in forensics, the other in being a vet.
In any case, as "long" ago as 2006, I didn't see this heavy emphasis on multi-choice exams.... at least not to indicate it was any worse than it used to be. I'm wondering if the kids they put on the "not gonna be so great at kollidge" track are actually getting hit less with the mc tests?
on a related note, R is in college and brought home a book called _My Freshman Year: What a professor learned by becoming a student_ Rebekah Nathan (aka Cathy Small at North Arizona State U).
While we're talking k-12, and this book is about college, I thought some of her points were instructive. She fairly well debunks the idea that things have gotten tragically worse in so far as kollidge in the u.s. has *never* been about the "life of the mind." What anthropologists and sociologists of higher ed have called "classic" American college culture emerged in the 18th c., around the experience elite males. For them, college wasn't primarily about the life of the mind, but about forming relationships with peers. The focus of the college experience was sports, fraternities, and "purveying values of exclusivity, hedonism, and adolescent rebillion". (This is astonishingly clear in histories of k-12 schooling and adolescence in the u.s. In fact, one big reason why age grading came about was it was a way to control the very unruly and rebellious 12+ year old males who felt it their duty to disrupt school constantly, harass their teachers, and sometimes physically assault them.)
In Helen Horowitz's history of the u.s. university, she says that "the real measure of success was the judgement of peers." Intelligence was valued, not because a professor deemed someone so, but because peers did so. Student relationships with profs were openly contemptuous and often adversarial. Students who worked hard and sought approval from or fraternized with professors were ostracized and ridiculed.
By the early 20th century, the student culture was much like the one we see today: "resistance to speaking in class; social distance from faculty; a 'code of honor' that included silence about cheating, drinking, and other infractions; a hedonistic emphasis on fun, sex, and alcohol as markers of the *real* college experience." (p 108)
Interestingly enough, according to Horowitz, it was the non-elite and outsiders who crafted an alternative culture: people from poor backgrounds, Jewish men and women, men and women of color, and white women. The tended to work hard and/or felt themselves somehow outsiders to the elite who dominated colleges in the early 20th c. These are the people who would be ridiculed as grinds, who didn't get involved in sports culture, social clubs, drinking, and greek culture. These students tended to believe in the mythology that university was a way to break out of their social caste or class, so they were unaware that, for the elite, all of that was utter bullshit.
I think it's important to keep this in mind whenever we get on about how everything's going to hell in a handbasket.
Meanwhile, one of the more interesting features of the book was her discussion of the culture of the superficially "friendly" u.s.er as seen by international students.
She was studying Arizona State, so these aren't elite kids. But when you guys were talking about carrot-up-the-ass aloofness and superficiality of elites, and claims that people from less elite backgrounds are more friendly, I couldn't help but think about Natha's discussion of how superficial that so-called friendliness is. She collects these observations from international students who are puzzled by the way that u.s.ers are all "hi, how are you! Let's hang out." but who don't really mean it. I.e., they tell an exchange student that they "really must get together" but then never do anything (like get a phone number) and follow up on it.
As Nathan points out, this is nothing new in American life. You can find accounts of it in the Lynds' study of small town american life (Middletown studies) and in Vidich and Bensman's _Small Town in Mass Society_.
Also, from reading this book and thinking about my years teaching college, I'd guess that it doesn't really fucking matter what happens to these kids in k-12. They are being prepared for what they are going to get in college which, as Nathan points out, is, for most of them, worthless, tedious, bullshit that most of them feel they must get through in order to get the degree in order to get the hell out and get a real job. (Or, it's seen as four years in which to be insulated from the real world on mom and dad's dime.)
As Nathan points out, that attitude isn't new. The kernel of the university system in this country, cultivated by and for the elites, was about partying and having a good time, making social networks through which one carved out an adult life as businessman, whatever. Is it any surprise that, if that is what academe was all about in 1820, it's what it's all about as we approach 2020?
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)