The Himba tribe in Namibia have only one word for the colors blue and green: zuzu. Some researchers, notably Jules Davidoff of University of London, claim tribal members cannot distinguish between color swatches of blue and green.
When older deaf people were first taught the American Sign Language, there existed no word for simultaneous. As a result, this group of people consistently failed a graphic test that any typical first grader would pass. The test results were so startling, that several researchers wanted to rerun all these assessments. In the interim, many of the subjects had been exposed to a younger deaf population, who had acquired the word for simultaneous. Those subjects passed the test.What does this have to do with teaching?
It might mean that if people are not exposed to an idea, they are unable to perceive it on their own. If ideas like blue and simultaneous do not exist for people who have never been taught them, then what does it mean when our curriculum shrinks due to the pressures of high stakes testing?
Schools are under enormous pressure to produce higher and higher reading and math scores. Teachers are being told by their administrators to skip teaching writing, social studies, geography, art, science, civics, foreign languages and other non-tested subjects, in order to boost the teaching time for the tested subjects.
Some of this loss might be mitigated with a rich and diverse reading curriculum, but most schools are demanding teachers stick with skill-based reading programs where the subject being taught is actually a technical analysis of reading—not literature. As a result, students in lower grades read one story a week and spend the rest of their instructional time studying skills like hard and soft g.
What does this mean for a nation that has led the world in scientific and literary innovation? Are we rising a generation of children who will not have the tools to continue to break new ground or solve the complex problems that they will face?By basing teacher salaries, principals’ jobs and even the existence of schools on student test scores, our policy makers are causing a collapse of our formally rich curriculum and simultaneously hobbling our children’s minds. These policy makers just can’t see what they are doing.
