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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (15270)	3/28/2006 7:49:00 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542149

I thought you understood my explanation. I did. I said I did. And I directly offered John the opportunity to say (or "type," as he would put it) "yeah, I had in mind what she said." For whatever reason, he didn't opt to do that. I can't read minds, either. So my curiosity has been redirected. I've become more interested in why someone would refuse to offer an explanation than in the explanation, itself. You offered an explanation, which I valued. When people ask me the basis for my assertions and opinions, I always offer my reasoning. I feel an obligation to back up my assertions and opinions--if I can't back them up, I shouldn't harbor them, let alone post them. So I tend to find it interesting when people do otherwise. I press them partly to learn the explanation and partly to get insights into the behavior. I have long suspected that a lack of explanation is usually because people are parroting some meme that they haven't thoughtfully considered and, therefore, can't explain. if you choose to allot more time to math and English, you can't help but to narrow curriculum This latest explanation of yours tells why, if kids have to double up on their math and English classes, there's no room in the schedule for other things and those other things get cut. I think in that sentence you have captured the essence of the problem. I never questioned that. What I questioned was John's attribution of this crisis to a lack of funding from the feds. Your latest explanation appropriately (IMO) attributes it to a perceived need to remediate brought on by the emphasis of the testing, as did the NYT article, and as do I, not to a lack of funding. Schools want to keep their rankings up so they offer more classes in what is being tested and fewer classes in other things. Ergo, it is the testing that caused the crisis. I submit that, had the feds offered money to fund remediation, the shift in offerings would still have occurred because schools would still feel a need to teach to the test. There are only so many hours in the school day. If you have to spend time on A, then B gets crowded out. No amount of money will lengthen the day. Money might ease the pain somewhat, but it wouldn't change the dynamics. Schools would still be teaching more math and English and less of something else. The reason is the change in emphasis inherent in the testing, not a failure to fund.