Space Jam!
In this perverse test prep, universe of bisected, bifurcated
bits and pieces, there is no recognizable life-embracing curriculum. Long, luxurious inquiry into the language or experience
of words in SPACE never happens.
Astronomy, Astronaut, Astrophysics AstroMedicine and AstroNavigation are
lost forever to these children. Instead, everyone waits until a final, fading Friday in May, when all the Math and Reading re-takes have
been concluded, to cram everything possible into a single, phony, Potemkin Village event
called “Space Day”.
Test Tyranny has skewed our democratic priorities. The technology of accountability is a runaway
train accountable to no one. It is
guided by no moral framework, no compassion and no thirst for the civic justice of equal opportunity. School
days are just one long flow of big and little assessments and targeted interventions which
are nothing more than bumpy benchmarks permitting the money to flow. This is a destructive dynamic for the
thousands of children arriving everyday from deeply impoverished complexes of
social pathology and educational neglect.
Lost traditions now include how to simply and deeply learn and teach with all students but especially with those who are struggling. After all, artistry and investigation is not required of an adult deliberately hired as a low-grade technician in service to a mindless, data-driven machine. We have arrived at a public precipice teetering at the edge of an American abyss.
