Herbert Kohl says we are missing the boat, motivation wise, in an open letter to Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education.
Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, "We are learning how to do good on the tests." They did not say they were learning to read.
Mr. Kohl sees a fundamental contradiction between what we say we want and we were are doing to get it.
It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test.
What, for Mr. Kohl, motivates learning, at least for learning to read?
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