Letters
to the Editor
The Valley News
Word Count: 358
Dear Editor:
Governor Shumlin’s State of the State address dealt
entirely with education. His two wise proposals were to fill the stomachs of
school children before asking them to fire up their brains every day and to
pour money into early childhood education.
Hear his third proposal:
“I
propose that Vermont
Had Shumlin controlled my education he would have forced me to
drag this “PLP” around with me for twelve years which adults
would hover over and fuss about making me so self-conscious that to
get them off my back I would agree to anything.
The PLP is the latest gimmick of a society that has gone crazy
in its worship of standardized tests which supposedly assess and predict a
student’s strengths and weaknesses.
The only thing standardized tests assess is how bored a student
is with the test. The ones who thrive on being tested do really well; the ones
who don’t, don’t.
I always dreaded tests and, even though I managed to get four
college degrees, I always did poorly on tests.
Thank goodness colleges evaluated your ability to think in
written papers and not in memorized data for tests or I would have
wound up making widgets on an assembly-line, an assembly line which a
Shumlin PLP surely would have prematurely shoved me into as a life sentence.
Human beings grow at different rates. As every mother
knows you cannot rush a rose. Professor Shumlin apparently knows better.
My rose didn’t blossom till I was 42 –years-old and wound up
being an English teacher for the next 25 years at a Vermont
Shumlin’s academic crystal ball (PLP) would have had me
walk the plank of life at age 16: “Decide now, Sophomore Paul Keane,
based on your 10-year-PLP, what you want to concentrate on for the final two
years of high school, so you can ‘ foster a connection between school and career.’
”
Life isn’t an airplane trajectory. It’s a bit
more unpredictable. And interesting.
Thank heaven for that.
Paul D. Keane,
M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.
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