1950's or 2018?

Not too long ago our country found itself in a pickle trying to better its future. It’s normal to want to
see a brighter future, just like a mother gives birth to a child as hopes that their teachings will grant the
child power and strive to have a more successful life. In the early 1900’s and 1950’s these values
became apparent as the school system had not developed common standards so many things seemed
out of place. Some students were assumed to be less intelligent based on their inability to speak or
write English properly, yes these were times when immigration was as big a deal than as it is today.
Schools became a spectacle of experimentation, trying to find what works and what does not. It wasn’t
until they took John Dewey’s idea of a “whole child” and really put things to play. This idea
challenged what it meant to be truly academic. Children were stuck in classrooms for 4-5 hours a day,
the “whole child” idea would mean that they get to go outside and enriched their sun deprived skins
by playing and exploring the world as it should be!

 

The idea made it so that children had a chance to explore what they’re good at and roam around
looking to feed their hunger for knowledge. Unfortunately this idea did not last very long as many
parents were concerned with how their kids were learning, they felt as though the kids did more
playing than actual learning. As a result Gary schools became a bit more serious and had children
get back to picking up their pencils and learning once more. As soon as the Russians launched
Sputnik, the first satellite, America felt that they were behind as a nation. This led to the desire to
really better the school system as it would mean that this nation would be ahead of the competition.
How did America go about it? Simple. They decided to adopt the French IQ testing as a means of
determining who goes where in life. That’s not the craziest part! The crazy part is that they would test
kids at the age of 5 and once they turn 10 their IQ score permanently determines whether they get high
paying jobs and can acquire better academic advantages or work in sweatshops and risk being placed
in the most dangerous positions in the military because they are looked upon as being too illiterate to
understand their lives are at risk. Taking Thomas Jefferson at his words when he said
“...rake the geniuses from the rubbish.” Of course we can’t argue with this logic when it comes to
achieving a brighter path for our future generations, but it still stands that testing children
(especially those who just came into the country and do not speak the language or have not assimilated)
is not effective as they haven’t developed enough wisdom to be able to know exactly what they’re
meant to do in their lives. For example, from a young age I knew I wanted to teach but it wasn’t until
I got to high school that I realized I wanted to teach Earth and Space science.

So how can we be so sure that a kid that’s 10 and has the reading ability of a 5 year old is only capable
of working in a factory? It’s impossible, as we get older and mature, that’s when we know what we
can or can’t do and so it became clear that testing children in this fashion was not the way to go.