Standardization of our educational systems is apt to stamp out individualism and defeat the very ends of education by leveling the product down rather than up.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As we embark on something as ambitious as the Common Core, educators must be able to teach to the standards with the necessary support and collaboration and without the sense that there will be dire consequences if students, schools and their tests don't make the grade.
School has never really been about individualized learning, but about how to be socialized as a citizen and as a human being, so that we, we have important rules in school, always emphasizing the fact that one is part of a group.
If we're going to have standards in schools, let's be honest and have standards.
We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning.
The fear that individuality will be crushed out by the growing 'tyranny' of standardization is the sort of myth which cannot withstand the briefest examination.
As education becomes dematerialized, demonetized and democratized, every man, woman and child on the planet will be able to reap the benefits of knowledge. We're rapidly heading toward a world of education abundance.
In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.
The innovation and creativity that's so manifest in the rest of society needs to be turned on our school systems.
The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.