Teacher's resignation letter: "My profession ... no longer exists"

[Ian Curtis]

I stumbled across this on the internet this afternoon. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/) This line was, to me, particularly striking.

STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.

[rsisk]

This person needs a robot intervention

[Phalanx]

Interesting to note that this Teacher was a "Social Studies" educator. From their perspective, STEM has diminished the need for "non technical" education.

Looking at it from thier point of view, that is a true statement. Even though I completely support FIRST and the need for an increase in STEM, I also believe that we still need the non technical education, of world societies, world politics, and that they are NO LESS important than STEM.

I think what this educator is trying to point out, is the overloaded focus of STEM is causing a sacrifice in other non technical educational fronts.

To quote from a former engineer, now philosopher..
"Science couldn't answer really the interesting questions, like man, the universe, "God"... So I turned to philosophy."

So lets make sure we keep perspective that STEM isn't the only thing that matters.

[D.Allred]

I stumbled across this on the internet this afternoon. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/) This line was, to me, particularly striking.

Ian,
Thanks for sharing this post. I do not interpret this as STEM pushing out social studies. It appears to be a lament against data driven approaches necessary to comply with the "No Child Left Behind" act. School funding rides on this data and pushes school administration to focus on the numbers, not teacher's needs.

I'm not a teacher. This is just my interpretation of this teacher's frustration.

[Ether]

It appears to be a lament against data driven approaches..

Yup. This phenomenon is not limited to education.

[popnbrown]

Honestly, this is why I am part of FIRST. While FIRST's stated goals are STEM related, the method of accomplishing this (vs. other organizations) creates opportunities for students to excel in other fields.

I am going to become an engineer, and many of the students I mentor have already become interested prior to joining the robotics team in being engineers. I see my role as instilling in them the same values I have learned in my experience on being a better person.

STEM in my view is still important, and dependent on arguments I would be willing to concede it is more important than other fields, but that is a situational conclusion.

Ideally, everything that everyone wants to do should be equally important, but in reality, there are things that are more important some times.

I also agree with D. Allred, the teacher seems to be more frustrated with the numbers focus rather than giving a true education. It does seem he isn't all that happy with the focus of STEM and I would disagree with the teacher about that. I don't think his subject is of less importance when you are developing a young mind, but outside of development and learning (real world) STEM has more problems to solve.