Sam Dillon’s article in the New York Times "Panel Proposes Single Standard for All Schools" outlines the very essence of the Frankfurt School of Thought. This article discusses how all schools should be standard in teaching materials from Kindergarten through high school. In this realm of thought, all Kindergartens would teach the same material, all first grades would teach the same material and so on and so forth. Teachers would all be trained the same way, and all learning would be uniform. "Another improvement over current state benchmarks, people involved in the initiative said, is that the proposed standards are what educators call vertically aligned, meaning that material students are to learn in early years builds a foundation for what is to come in the next grade " (Dillon). This new uniform set of standards has been called to action to unify our educational system. "Because the standards vary so widely, standardized tests keyed to them are not comparable from state to state, nor to national tests" (Dillon). In this standardization, all students would learn at the same rate, and test at the same rate. However, this would require new textbooks, lesson plans, and mass cooperation throughout the entire country. Standardized testing was put into place to try and unify the educational arena and create a level playing field for everyone. However, seeing as how schools in lower socio-economic areas tend to perform at a lower rate and school from higher socio-economic areas tend to perform higher, standardize testing did not quite serve its purpose.
In "Culture and Rationality in the Frankfurt School of Thought: Ideological Foundations for a Theory of Social Education", Henry Giroux critiques the positivist school of thought through education in that "the fetishism of facts and belief in value neutrality represents more than an epistemological error; more importantly , such a stance serves as a form of ideological hegemony that infuses positivist rationality with political conservatism that make it an ideological prop of the status quo" (p.41). This describes how conformity is stressed and how standardization is the key to a functioning society. I believe that Giroux would agree with the cookie-cutter testing that produces same thought processes, same answer giving students that can recite information back without using individualistic, higher level thinking. I also believe that Giroux would agree with the new standards of education that are being proposed in Dillon’s article because it would allow students to all be more conformed and standardized. This would allow for a more class-less society, at least in the realm of education because every student would be receiving the same education no matter what school a student would go to. If all students start receiving the same education, the playing field is leveled for jobs and then people would be able to move about socioeconomic classes more freely than today. This standardization would allow all students to be equal because students in the grade would be educated properly, and teachers would know that all students are working at the same level when the students arrive in a teacher’s classroom.
Links Available
Henry Giroux Website
Sam Dillon Article
Frankfurt School of Thought
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I agree with both Giroux and Dillon’s thoughts on Standardized Testing. I realize in the educational field this is a very unpopular stance. Unifying the current system by creating minimum standards across the United States would make a more even playing field that would un-do class lines. T he problem with the current standardizing testing curriculum, besides being inconsistent, is that people just thought standardize testing was the answer to all of the problems. In reality it should be considered the first step, in a long line of steps to the solution. I believe the steps in developing a more fair and coercive education curriculum include standardize testing, followed by tracking and identifying poor results, followed by coming together with a solution to fix the problem-not just closing of the schools. Part of this process should also include transparency and a more equal distribution of funding. The way we have been using the results of standardize testing is in a sense “ managing from the bottom line, “ you do not have to be a business major to know this is an ineffective way to run any program.
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