Deselection of the Bottom 8%: Lessons from Eugenics for Modern School Reform

[n2doc]

Interesting read. I don't think he really should try to compare the two, but there are some worthwhile points. The last paragraph says it all:


The three errors above are human errors, often stemming from sympathy and a desire to see a simple yet hidden lever to alleviate injustice in our society. We see a monster guarding that lever, behaving poorly as we try to move it. Yet despite our noble intentions, we will not be remembered as heroes or Supermen, striking down a monster. We will be not be saluted for our urgency. The monsters in our society are not unintelligent degenerates or teachers unions. When teachers are fired in front of crowded classrooms, escorted out by security guards, when standardized scores are printed in the newspaper to shame "ineffective" teachers, when we say that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans, we will not be remembered for putting students first. When we agree that we need a dictator to slay those monsters keeping us from greatness, we are the monsters. And as our children get older, if they aren’t too busy taking a reading test to read a history book, they will look at us with uneasy shame and ask us why we didn’t do anything to stop it.

Rest

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=deselection-of-the-bottom-8-lessons-2011-07-19

[Reader Rabbit]

1. Certainly a powerful analogy

I wish people would realize the danger of coming at these issues from a too-analytic perspective:

The focussed but detached attention of the surgeon, with intent to care, may easily mimic the focussed but detached attention of the torturer, with intent to control; only the knowledge of the intention changes the way in which we understand the act...Detachment has a deeply ambiguous nature. The cool, detached stance of the scientific or bureaucratic mind ultimately may lead where we do not wish to follow. (Iain McGilchrest, The Master and His Emissary, 165–166)