Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Crise na Educação? Ou a Incapacidade de Aceitar que as Pessoas São Diferentes?

Em todo lugar, em qualquer era, a despeito da dedicação, esforço, preparo e incentivos para os professores, haverá sempre alunos bons e alunos ruins, alunos inteligentes e alunos burros, alunos esforçados e alunos preguiçosos. Infelizmente os formuladores de políticas educacionais, os políticos e os “profissionais da educação” são incapazes de entender e aceitar essa verdade absoluta e incontestável. Eles no fundo padecem da doença mental baseada na crença de que a educação é capaz de moldar a essência do ser humano e corrigir eventuais falhas naturais, familiares, psicologicas e sociais. Vejam aí o caso da política educacional americana da última década chamada Nenhuma Criança Deixada para Trás:
A decade ago, President George W. Bush satisfied the demand for testing and accountability by proposing the legislation now known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law by President Bush in January 2002. It mandated that every public school in the nation must test all children in reading and mathematics from grades three through eight and classify the scores by racial and ethnic groups (white, African- American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, etc.), low-income students, students with disabilities, and students with limited English skills. By 2014, every student in every category was expected to reach proficiency in those subjects, as defined by each state and measured by standardized tests selected by each state, or the school would face a series of escalating sanctions, culminating in firing part or all of the staff, closing the school, or handing control of the school over to the state or to private management.
Because of its utopian goals, coupled with harsh sanctions, NCLB has turned out to be the worst federal education legislation ever passed. Recently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan predicted that more than 80 percent of the nation’s public schools would be labeled “failing” this year by federal standards, including some excellent schools in which students (usually those with disabilities) were not on track to meet the target. By 2014, if the law is unchanged, very few public schools will not be labeled “failures.” No nation has ever achieved 100 percent proficiency for all its students, and no state in this nation is anywhere close to achieving it. No nation has ever passed a law that would result in stigmatizing almost every one of its schools. The Bush-era law is a public policy disaster of epic proportions, yet Congress has been unable to reach consensus about changing it.

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