“The Purpose of Education,” written by Martin Luther King, Jr., was first published in the February 1947 edition of the Morehouse College Student Newspaper. King was 18 Years Old.
The Purpose of Education
Morehouse College, 1948
As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.
It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!
Be Careful Brethren – these words are truer today than they were in 1948.
Please watch and share this video of Jamaal Bowman, principal of CASA Middle School in the Bronx, talking about the deleterious effects of testing on our children. Opting Out of high stakes testing and testing tied to teacher evaluations is a decision parents can and should be making for their children. As Principal Bowman explains in this video – let us work together to OPT IN to teaching and learning that will benefit the whole child and instill a lifelong love of education.
“Standardized tests? Principal Jamaal Bowman says ‘Know your rights’. President Obama recently spoke out against excessive standardized testing. The POTUS claimed that this issue, “takes the joy out of teaching and learning, both for them (teachers) and for the students”. Long before Obama’s declaration, Jamaal Bowman, Founding Principal of CASA (Cornerstone Academy for Social Action) in Bronx, NY, has been advocate for student and parent rights and the movement to opt out of standardized tests to promote more holistic approaches to assessment of student learning. Bowman speaks with YBE about the impact of standardized tests on Black and Brown students and offers his advice to their parents.”
Poetic Justice supports United Opt Out and their petition drive to stop the Senate from passing the very flawed ESEA law. Here is what United Opt Out has written in their petition to the US Senate.
“Since 2002 when No Child Left Behind became law, students, parents, and teachers have been subjected to a national education policy written to benefit the education testing industry and politicians out to privatize public education in America. As a result, schools have been turned into testing factories and thousands of low-scoring public schools that serve the poorest students have been closed and replaced by corporate charter schools that, on average, perform no better than the underfunded schools they replace. Those charters with high test scores most often exclude low-scoring and problem students, while subjecting their students to punishing discipline systems that middle class parents would never allow for their own children.
Next week the U. S. Senate will vote on a rewrite of No Child Left Behind that greatly expands the “No Excuses” charter school system that has gone from a few hundred to almost 7,000 schools during the past decade. If the new legislation becomes law, annual high stakes standardized testing in grades 3-12 will continue unabated, and the expansion of publicly funded and intensely segregated reform charter schools will intensify without the benefit of public oversight.
By signing the petition, you can let the U. S. Senate know to say NO to an ESEA reauthorization plan that, if passed, will set education policy back by over 50 years.
We can do better, and Congress must take the time to hear from parents, students, and teachers, whose voices have been silenced by organizations pretending to represent their interests.
Please join me in saying NO to moving backwards and YES to moving forward toward humane, inclusive, and high quality public schools for all children. Please sign the petition and send this urgent message to Washington.”
Please click on this link and sign this very important petition. Tell the Senate that we say NO to a vision of 21st Century teaching and learning that treats our children like test scores and our teachers as automatons. #DoNoHarm#ESEA
it is like teachers are suffering from anxiety, PTSD, Battered Wife Syndrome, and Stockholm Syndrome all at the same time.
And … we can trust no one … not our unions, not our bosses, not our district, not our politicians, not even our friends – our friends do not get it – our families do not get it.
so …. we take meds …. we drink … we use drugs … we are sick – and we are dying.
The only antidote is unconditional love for our students.
“It has come to my attention that the Monty Neill, the head of Fair Test, in issuing a statement about the Opt- Out Movement’s tremendous progress refused to list any leaders of United Opt Out as local contacts for the movement despite repeated requests by UOO leaders to do so. This comes several months after a leader of Network for Public Education produced a brief history of the Opt Out movement that tolally left out the contributions of United Opt Out and its leaders. I find this exclusion of United Opt Out from narratives of a movement they did so much to start and which they play a leading role in deeply troubling. Whatever the reasons for this “freeze out,” it is unconscionable and unacceptable. The uncompromising militancy of United Opt Out and the fierce integrity of its leaders is a tremendous asset to students, teachers and families facing well financed efforts to privatize the nation’s schools. I support them 100 percent. They are among the best fighters we have.”
It is our hope that Fair Test will remedy this obvious omission.
From Principal Jamaal Bowman opening The Call to Educational Justice Conference in NYC, October 17th, 2015:
“Our Work is About Two Things – Children and Love – and not just love of children, obviously, but the love of the world, a love of the work, a love of our future, and most importantly, a love for ourselves.”
Film-maker Michael Elliot has once again captured a defining moment in the battle to save our children and restore humanity to our educational systems.
Please share this video and comment on the FaceBook page.If you like the message and want to spread the word you have to SHARE IT! Tag it in your comments with names of friends you want to see it. That will get the message to reach MUCH FURTHER!
Poetic Justice would like to see this video touch 100,000 viewers.
Let love lead the way – it is and always was ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN!
Here is an interview with Jitu Brown about the critical lens through which we need to see our children, especially our brown and black and most at-risk children.
Are our children commodities to control, or are our children precious gifts to treasure and protect?
Film maker Michael Eliot captures the heart of the hunger strike in this short video. Please watch and share.
Summer School- Turning the Heat Up On Achievement
by – One Fired Up Teacher
NOTE: This was written by a teacher in a high poverty district somewhere in the US. Child and Teacher Abuse in full effect
A time to maintain achievement, right? To prevent the “summer slide” and keep students engaged and excited about learning. After all, it’s building relationships with our students that can extend far beyond the confines of classroom walls.
But what happens when the school offering summer school has no air conditioning? Does that sound beneficial? Healthy? Safe? Temperatures inside the classroom reading 98 degrees on the thermostat. How about that for the student with Epilepsy who’s seizures are triggered by heat exhaustion and dehydration. Sound safe? Healthy? Beneficial?
If that doesn’t have your attention, let’s turn up the heat a little more. Requiring teachers to supervise lunch for the students but not allowing them to eat. Not allowing them to sit down. Oh no, teachers must waste instructional time. While students eat inside the fiery furnace called the cafeteria, their teachers are commanded to stand and do flash cards or another educational task. Teachers are expected to not only suffer these conditions themselves, but to sit by and watch their students suffer, too. Every minute counts, right? Don’t waste precious time walking kids to the drinking fountain, either. The water is not only warm, it’s “against district policy” to use instructional time in too many transitions.
Yes, the fire has been lit, folks. Our kids, who deserve better, are being burned. They deserve the best and brightest education. Your highly qualified, certified teachers and their students are suffering in silence while those at the top are sitting inside their air conditioned offices on the phone with the next best corporation who’s in the running for the silver bullet. The next “new program” they will demand the teachers use in the classroom to bring up those test scores. Here’s an idea for administration and school boards.
If you want to bring up the scores and raise the achievement gap, turn down the heat on your teachers. Take some of the pressure off your teachers. If you can’t do it for them, do it for our students. Provide them with safe and healthy learning conditions. Foster an environment built on the foundation that our teachers and students deserve nothing short of the best. Stop burning the candle on both ends with the corporate world. They don’t know our students. You don’t know our students.
We, the teachers know our students. You want to know why your good, hardworking teachers are leaving the profession? They’re sick, physically and emotionally. They’re tired. They can’t stand being on the front line every single day sacrificing blood, sweat and tears, all to no avail. They, along with their students, are dying inside while fires set by you rage beneath them, threatening to extinguish all they’ve ever known and loved. Each other. Hang up the phone, step away from the computer in your chilled office and save our teachers and students from the blazing inferno you’ve put them in.
Where have all the teachers gone?
Children are asking.
Where have all the teachers gone?
Parents want to know.
Where have all the teachers gone?
Lost to classrooms every one.
When will they ever return?
When will they ever return?
I am re blogging this piece from my friend and fellow activist Jennifer Berkshire – EduShyster. This is just about the most horrifying expose on what I can only call “Professional Undevelopment” that I have ever read.
When I first read this, I was sure it was a piece of very clever satire. Unfortunately, I was wrong. This is how we make the “achievement gap” a national program – we make sure our high performing districts have freedom and choice, while we make sure our urban low performing districts treat their students like trained seals in a zoo.
Please read and share EduShyster’s story far and wide.
“I am not Tom Brady”
Why are urban teachers being trained to be robots?
By Amy Berard
*Give him a warning,* said the voice through the earpiece I was wearing. I did as instructed, speaking in the emotionless monotone I’d been coached to use. But the student, a sixth grader with some impulsivity issues and whose trust I’d spent months working to gain, was excited and spoke out of turn again. *Tell him he has a detention,* my earpiece commanded. At which point the boy stood up and pointed to the back of the room, where the three classroom *coaches* huddled around a walkie talkie. *Miss: don’t listen to them! You be you. Talk to me! I’m a person! Be a person, Miss. Be you!*
Meet C3PO
Last year, my school contracted with the Center for Transformational Training or CT3 to train teachers using an approach called No Nonsense Nurturing. It was supposed to make us more effective instructors by providing *immediate, non-distracting feedback to teachers using wireless technology.* In other words, earpieces and walkie talkies. I wore a bug in my ear. I didn’t have a mouthpiece. Meanwhile an official No Nonsense Nurturer, along with the school’s first year assistant principal and first year behavior intervention coach, controlled me remotely from the corner of the room where they shared a walkie talkie. I referred to the CT3 training as C-3PO after the Star Wars robot, but C-3PO actually had more personality than we were allowed. The robot also spoke his mind.
No Nonsense Nurturing™
If you’re not familiar with No Nonsense Nurturing or NNN, let’s just say that there is more nonsense than nurturing. The approach starts from the view that urban students, like my Lawrence, MA middle schoolers, benefit from a robotic style of teaching that treats, and disciplines, all students the same. This translated into the specific instruction that forbade us from speaking to our students in full sentences. Instead, we were to communicate with them using precise directions. As my students entered the room, I was supposed to say: *In seats, zero talking, page 6 questions 1-4.* But I don’t even talk to my dog like that. Constant narration of what the students are doing is also key to the NNN teaching style. *Noel is is finishing question 3. Marjorie is sitting silently. Alfredo is on page 6.*
Robot moves
My efforts to make the narration seem less robotic—*I see Victor is on page 6. I see Natalie is on question 3*—triggered flashbacks to Miss Jean and Romper Room. All that was missing was the magic mirror. But even this was too much for the NNN squad in the corner. *Drop the ‘I see’* came through my earpiece. All this narration was incredibly distracting for the students, by the way, to the point where they started narrating me. *Mrs. Berard is passing out the exit tickets.* *Mrs. Berard is helping Christian.* *Mrs. Berard is reviewing the answer to question 4*
*Tell them you are like Tom Brady*
The students were also perplexed by my new earpiece accessory. *Um, Miss, what’s that in your ear?* they asked. I looked over to the three adults in the far back corner of the room for my scripted answer. *Tell them you are like Tom Brady. Tom Brady wears an earpiece to be coached remotely and so do you,* was the response. I never would have said that, and mumbled instead *But I’m not Tom Brady. No I’m Tom Brady.* The students, who could hear me, but not what I was hearing through my earpiece, were more confused than ever. At which point I explained to the students that I was being trained by the people in the corner who were telling me what to say via their walkie talkie. I’m all for transparency and simple answers to simple questions.
What kind of message does this send to students? I wondered. That their teachers are so incompetent that they need an ear piece and 3 people sharing a walkie talkie in the corner to tell them what to say?
What kind of message does this send to students? I wondered. That their teachers are so incompetent that they need an ear piece and 3 people sharing a walkie talkie in the corner to tell them what to say?
Joyless joy
I struggled to adopt the emotionless monotone that NNN required. I was told that my tone was wrong. My voice was too high, and that I came across as too happy—I smile a lot; I celebrate a lot, including every two weeks when the flowers on my cactus bloom, again. When I asked the NNN trainer to elaborate on what she meant by my tone being off, a critique she delivered just hours after meeting me for the first time, her response included a full blown, and exaggerated, impersonation of me delivered in front of my behavior intervention coach and assistant principal. When her performance was done, the NNN trainer winked at me. *But don’t lose your joy,* she said.
Mountain pose
I was told to stand in mountain pose and not to favor one leg over another. I was told not to cross my legs. My body language must be in no way casual (or human). And I needed to stop conveying so much excitement at the students’ accomplishments. After one session of C3PO training, I was told that I was too happy that a student had legible writing. I shouldn’t praise basic things that should be expected. Another time I was chastised for pointing out to a child: *Woah, this is great. This is your best work so far this year!*
*Don’t turn*
I felt awful after that critique, like I had let my students down with my excessive enthusiasm. I went back and apologized to them. The student whose handwriting I’d praised said it had made him happy to be complimented. *I didn’t take what you said in a bad way.* *Just be yourself,* another student told me. *Don’t be who that want you to be. Don’t become like the rest.* You see, the students were old enough to see what the school and the trainers wanted the teachers to be and what their teachers were becoming.
They begged me not to turn.
Amy Berard grew up in Lawrence, a half a mile away from the Guilmette Middle School where she taught ELA last year. She was let go at the end of the school year after administrators determined that she was not the *right fit* for Lawrence.
Poetic Justice 