Cocktail Party Chatter

I got myself into trouble on Facebook again last week by posting mean, personal attacks to a forum about education.  You see, my buddy, with his high end degrees and many acronyms following his signature posed a question. The question was "Are smaller class sizes better for education purposes?" Are smaller class sizes better? Really? Here's the answer: yes.  End of conversation.  This is not something that's debatable and is a fucking waste of time to discuss.
This is part of the problem with education today.  We, as adults, find it fun to bat around what we think are big policy ideas when it comes to systems and implementation.  We speak in a longuage that only those who have been educated in the the same way we have undertstand and can speak.  And in the end we lose the point of the whole fucking thing;  thinking and theorizing is the smallest piece of the education puzzle.  It's more of a blue collar job where you're working on a project and in small pieces pull together the final project.  It's not about grouping kids based on research projects its about finding out what works for individuals.  Yes, testing is important to establish baselines and to see where a student has strengths and weaknesses, but the incessant discussions about Piagets theories and the like miss the point completely: as we make ourselves feel good by discussing conceptual learning practices, the kids spend another day unable to read.
I began my first round of testing this week and one thing has become clear; kids in my school in the younger grades are basically illiterate.  Are they smart? Absolutely. Probably smarter than me certainly at that age when all I could talk about was recess and the dumb shit suburban kids of my generation talked about at that stage.  These urban kids have been exposed to a whole hell of a lot more than I was ever exposed to and have learned how to manage adult issues at a young age.  Also, with they're inability to read and write, they have figured out how to problem solve based on what they can do such as learning to talk things out to show that they understand.  This is of course enough in a general education classroom for them to at least get by without being singled out by the teacher.  The problems come when they have to move beyond simple speaking teasks.  For example, in one part of the test I show them a picture of a park with a bunch of people doing a bunch of things in it.  Following that are a bunch of questions about the park.  If students are read the questions they can point out the right answer.  If they have to read the question, however, they push into a whole other mode.  They start to try to figure out, based on the answers, what the question might say.  If the answer choices are either a picture of a ball, a boy, and a bike, they will insert those words into the question even if they aren't.  The question might be " Who is playing on the swings" And the student will start the questions as "The ball...." then look to me to see if they are on the right track.
One of the big theories these days is the need for visual aids.  I agree with it in certain situations.  When I worked with 8th graders in San Francisco who were at 1st and 2nd grade reading levels and expected to analyze and understand "To Kill a Mockingbird" visual aids were a huge help.  We could watch the film version of the story first, to introduce characters and scenes, then go to the book with a general understanding of what was going on.  Did this cut down on the kids ability to imagine what is going on from the words? Yes absolutely.  Is that a problem? If you ask me....absolutely.  However, it again is a sign of us, as adults, getting caught up in what we think "should be happening" versus what is actually happening. When a kid is 13 and at a 2nd grade reading level do you just plop a book in front of them at a level they "should" be at and begin to ask them about plot themes and story archs or do you introduce the material in a way they may be more interested in initially? Visual aids can be also be a crutch and I'm seeing that as the testing progresses.  Kids can easily do matching problems with the word ball and a picture of a ball but have no idea what the concept of a ball is is a sentences.  I mean, people, especially boys may use "ball" as a verb in a few different ways, but its really not.  And reading is not all about picture matching and pointing.