We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcomes Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Education Week pointed out that the opposition to the teaching of critical thinking skills in public schools has corresponded with the rise in the push for standardization, but that this new statement is a first in openly stating the opposition to the teaching of thinking itself. The progressive AmericaBlog thinks that "What this really means is that the GOP is doubling down on learn-by-rote fact recitation – of the kind spearheaded by the worst of the pro-testing advocates, and locally by IDEA Public Schools, which has committed to the anti-analytical direct learning model (aka "press button A, B or C.")" And the Austin Chronicle goes further, saying that, "The Texas GOP is officially enshrining blind obedience into its doctrine of political domination."
As someone who is going into Special Education, this statement is both frightening and revealing. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), I, as a special-ed teacher, am legally bound to provide my students with a free, appropriate education in the least restrictive environment possible. These are required under the federal law - in fact, students with disabilities are the only students in the United States with a federally protected right to an education. So what happens when one of my federal obligations - such as providing an appropriate education - conflicts with state law, such as refusing to teach higher order thinking skills?
This conflict also comes into play when considering "multicultural education". The Texas GOP platform is also opposed to that, stating, "We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive..." Of course, this becomes an issue for most sped teachers, as African Americans are almost twice as likely to be labeled as having a disability than their White peers are, and Hispanics are about a third more likely. So, here you are, Mr. Wright, and two-thirds or maybe three-fourths of your students are minorities, and you are forbidden to teach a "multicultural curriculum." Please keep this in mind as we proceed.
But here is the thing that, I guess, really gets my goat. In one way, students with disabilities are those who have been, in some way, disadvantaged in their lives. This means that they can be someone with a physical disability, like me, or someone with Autism or Down's Syndrome, and it can mean someone with a reading disability like dyslexia or ADHD. But it can also mean someone who is poor, or who is Black, or who has been born into a single-parent home, or someone who speaks English as a second language. And I don't mean this glibly or as an analogy; statistics prove that these factors of race and class and stature are massive contributors to students being labeled as having a learning disability, a cognitive disability, or an emotional disability - the so-called "invisible disabilities." In a very real way, being a minority, being poor, being "multicultural," are disabilities.
This is because these are the students who are let down every day by education, public or private. They are less likely to pass standardized tests, less likely to go to college, more likely to drop out, more likely to go to jail. (I have the stats, if you want them.) These are the students for whom the traditional system is not working, for whom "the return to the traditional basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and citizenship with sufficient discipline to ensure learning and quality educational assessment," as the GOP Platform says, means a return to those things that don't work.
All of the data and research that I have been exposed to points to students being more successful in and out of school when they are taught critical thinking skills and strategies, and not merely rote memorization lists of facts. Within special education, we talk about this in terms of maintenance and generalization, and of the functional application of learned skills; the most valuable things that we can teach our students are strategies and skills for solving the types of problems that they are most likely to face in their day-to-day lives. To this end, teaching by rote, teaching to not question one's fixed beliefs, failing to teach strategies and skills, leads to predictable ends. I feel a little guilty because I'm not going into the details (maybe I will later), but the big idea is this: Not teaching critical thinking skills will lead to predictably poor performances among students with disabilities, minorities, and other disadvantaged students.
I imagine that a Republican would retort that the current system is not benefiting these students either, and that we ought to abandon the advocating of teaching critical thinking skills and embrace a "return to basics," and that this would benefit everyone, not just those select groups that I brought up. But then I would bring up all those parenthetical statements in their policy plank - (HOTS)(values clarification)(OBE)(mastery learning). From where I stand, seeing how the ways in which we have been teaching have been failing all these groups of students that I am obliged to serve as a Special Education teacher, I cannot help but think that these clauses and clarifications have been included in the Party Platform in order to make it clear against whom this policy is aimed, with whom the Republican Party is fed up, and for whom they have decided that they have no obligation to teach:
Students with disabilities.
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