2011-03-01

Arts Education as a Spiritual Act

The present trend in the politicization of American public education through the demonization of teacher's unions, the closing and "restructuring" of schools that are replaced with or encroached upon by charter schools, and the emphasis on high-stakes testing as a way of measuring student progress is increasingly marginalizing good teaching and good learning. This trend is most common in many "low-performing" public schools, many of which have multiple reasons for low student achievement that are only tangentially connected to their educational experience.

Good teaching practices and their results are immeasurable by any conventional forms of testing although, if the present trend continues, and, as of this writing shows no sign of abatement, a two-tier education system will mirror the two-tier society in which the feeble imitation of democracy will attempt to mask the dominance of a corporocracy. It will be a society in which an almost caste-like system of low-wage, low-level jobs will be firmly established with little if any opportunity for upward mobility for the employees since the quality education that was once the mark of the American public school system will become exclusively the privatized provenance of the children of the privileged and connected. America will increasingly become a soulless society.

http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/20110223115123553

Joel Shatzky, Professor Emeritus in English at SUNY, Cortland