Reply #11: "Fleshy delivery machines"... [View All]

[YvonneCa]

Excerpt:

The point not to be missed here is that policy will be “data driven.” In reality, data
cannot “drive” policy. The very expression conceals the motives and politics under
girding human beings’ decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, teacher education, and
administration. Implementing practices used in high-scoring schools in low-scoring
schools will not only result in misapplications of pedagogical approaches, it naturalizes
the unthinking consumption of information as the essence of achievement while
imagining teachers as little more than fleshy delivery machines. What does not get
interrogated in all this is the process whereby some people with particular values,
perspectives, and ideological convictions determine what is important for students to
know.

NOW I understand why I feel like I've just been ground up by a tractor passing over me. :7 This describes my district perfectly.