Segregation, Apartheid or Classification?

Segregation, apartheid, or the more neutral word classification, is what you call it.  From 1863 to 1898, children in English elementary schools had to take an annual examination in the 3 R's.  The examination was held by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, and the size of the teacher's salary depended, in part, upon on the results.

This appalling system was believed to ensure continuous effort on the part of the teachers, and thus the best possible education for children.  The objections to it were obvious to perceptive people like Matthew Arnold from the start, and by 1898 they had become so manifest to all that it was abandoned.

John Blackie
Introduction to Space, Time and Grouping
Citation Press, NY 1971



And what exactly did Matthew Arnold write in his Reports On Elementary Schools 1852 - 1882?

Well here goes and strangely it sounds an awful like 2013 in our good, old USA.

Payment By Results fosters teaching by rote.  The school exams are a game of mechanical contrivance in which the teacher will and must more and more learn how to beat us.  It is found possible, by ingenious preparation, to get children through the Revised Code examination in reading, writing, and ciphering without their really know how to read, write, and cipher.

To take the commonest instance: a book is selected at the beginning of the year for the children of a certain standard.  All the year the children read this book over and over again, and no other.  When the inspector comes they are presented to read in this book.  They can read their sentences or two fluently enough but they cannot read any other book fluently.

Yet the letter of the law is satisfied and the more we undertake to lay down to the very letter, the more do managers and teachers conceive themselves to have the right to hold us to this letter.  The circle of the children's reading has thus been narrowed and impoverished all the year for the sake of a result at the end of it and the result is an illusion.

William "Bill" Hull On School Shake-Up

Our schools have become Production Oriented, nervously concerned about making things "look good".  We cover up our own basic failure to educate in the truest sense, by talking about how education must be Rigorous and Demanding from an early age.  Great concern is voiced over the children who are not sufficiently motivated to withstand the pressures brought to bear on them.

There is surprise that many children do not seem concerned about meeting the standards set for them.  And there is even greater surprise that it is often these children who are most creative.  NOT ALL CHILDREN ARE READY TO ACCEPT A HAIR-SHIRT ORIENTATION TOWARD LEARNING AT AN EARLY AGE.

Those who do not conform and are successful are cheated just as fully as those who do not conform and learn to mistrust their own abilities.  Leicestershire (England) helped us to see just how sick our schools really are.  What happened there gives strong support to the vision of people who have known that there are more effective and humane forms of education.  But this realization also provides a formidable challenge to those of us who would try to implement these beliefs in the USA.

Leicestershire England
School Visits
1961

Empowering American Children

Way back in 1977 the National Science Foundation sent Dorothy Murdock Hill out to investigate and celebrate the imagination and creativity of children doing science in grades K- 6.  She did not report back with core curriculum lingo or test protocols but instead headed straight for places like the Blind Children's Center in Los Angeles and fashioned field reports like this one.

     Several children made delightful squiggly designs with their plastic squeeze bottles.  A few worked on the sidewalk while others worked in the sand area.  Timmy ran back and forth between the sidewalk and the sand area squirting lovely circles and figure eights.  He was becoming aware of how water acts on different materials as he exclaimed, "The water's still here on the sidewalk.  But my water all disappeared in the sand."
Amy calmly states, "You know, it vaporated!"  The children enjoyed counting how fast the water disappeared in sand compared to the sidewalk. "I wonder how I can keep it from sinking?" mused Timmy.  Another day could easily bring a spin-off activity of making a pond that would stay put.

     At the other end of the play yard another game had evolved.  Jan yelled, "Hey, look how far I can squirt."       Several children tried over and over to see who could squirt beyond a certain mark.  Back and forth they ran to the water source refilling their plastic squeeze bottles.  Here, Dorothy added some of her own questions.  "Does it make any difference in how far you can squirt if you hold your arm at different levels?  Which way makes the water go highest?  Which way way makes it go longest? Which way shortest?"

     Seeing new equipment, Jennifer ran to the table and picked up one of the plastic tubes that had been brought out.  "Hmmm, it's not a pole!  It has a hole in the middle.  But it's not a hose.  What is it?" she demanded.  Upon hearing that it was a plastic tube she started off again.  "A plastic tube?  But it is not wiggly like the other ones we have.  How come?  It's what?  Rigid?  I'll fill it up!"  Jennifer had spent much of the year filling pitchers and cans and containers of all sorts.  But this was her first "rigid plastic tube".  After trying many varieties of "filler uppers" as she called them, she glanced around looking for something better.  She picked up the plastic baster and the funnel.  At first she only held the funnel.  Finally, with complete satisfaction, she placed it on top of the tube.  She then dropped a marble down the middle of the tube and quietly watched its slow movement with unrestrained pleasure singing softly, "Ahh, down...down...down.  Clear down...down...down.  Ahh, down until it touches the ground...ground...ground."

MUD, SAND, and WATER
Dorothy M. Hill
Jean Berlfein - Photographer
NAEYC 1977