Perhaps children should start taking their parents to school once a year. As "Take Your Daughter (or Son) to Work Day" approaches, school districts have made it perfectly clear why parents ought to pay more attention.
Chandler Unified School District Superintendent Camille Casteel recently sent out a letter urging parents not to take their kids out of school today. She wasted little time explaining why she made this request.
"April 24 falls into the heart of the state standardized testing season, and we need all the students focused on doing their very best," whereas, at other times of the year, students need only perform at a so-so level.
Given that motivation, what might parents expect to find if they were to follow their children to school? Would they find their children reading Shakespeare, discussing social history or engaging in stimulating class activities?
Probably not. Instead, they would find something far more pedantic and uninspiring. They would find their children studying for a standardized test. In particular, they'd be studying for the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards test, also known as the AIMS test.
The kids would be absorbing "test-taking strategies" and memorizing key concepts the test will emphasize.
Many students might also feel considerable stress, knowing that some aspects of their future depend on their performance. Teachers might very well add to that stress, needing the students to perform well to ensure adequate funding for the school, which, in effect, secures their own jobs.
Of course, those teachers are under pressure from administrators, who are under pressure from district officials, who are under pressure from school boards, who are under pressure from parents prone to intense anger when they find out their children are attending under-performing schools.
And if you think all these factors add up to the best possible learning environment, think a bit harder. Advocates of standardized testing, instead of promoting real education, are substituting the ability to measure something for learning.
Because that is what they are offering, right? Nobody can tell us exactly what these test scores mean, except maybe that improvements in those scores indicate a school has become better at turning its students into AIMS-taking machines.
Apparently, Chandler is not the only district to ask its parents not to take their children to work today. According to The Arizona Republic, school districts in Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley have followed suit.
All of these districts fear the possibility of poor AIMS results and seem to believe that every day of test preparation counts. After all, if your enemies are training, you can't afford to rest.
The need to compare schools and measure their progress should not replace offering students real opportunities for personal growth. AIMS creates sameness; it forces kids to squeeze themselves into a box, however bad the fit might be.
Parents, who believe that their children are special, unique creatures, should be appalled by any attempt to force them to fit into a very narrow view of what it is to be a successful student.
To have parents follow their kids to school could be the only way to evoke that reaction. If it would serve that purpose, I would tell all Arizonans with children in school to take a day off and see what's really going on.
Parents might find themselves just as confused as their children often are when they first experience their parents bizarre work environment. They might even go in with the assumption that schools are actually supposed to educate their children.
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Benjamin Thelen is a philosophy and political science senior. Reach him at benjamin.thelen@asu.edu.
