ABSTRACT
Poverty, cultural, and linguistic differences from the mainstream, gangs, drugs, violence, high-stakes testing, curriculum constructed far from the children’s lives, and teachers and children held hostage by these last two are all contributors to the suffering I saw. Many teachers are forced or coerced (Meyer, 2001) into doing things they do not believe, adding to their own and their students’ suffering. I presented some of the fifth and sixth graders’ writing to a group of teachers and, when we were well into discussing the children’s thinking and writing, I stopped and asked the teachers to write about what they thought so far. One teacher wrote:
Education-where are we going with it? What are we doing to kids as we teach under the influence of NCLB? I, as a teacher, feel like a prisoner in my teaching. Forced to teach kids to read 40 words in 1 minute. Read nonsense words in one minute. What is this? There isn’t time just to enjoy reading; no time to immerse children in stories. What am I doing to kids? I want to teach kids to love learning not in one minute either. At the beginning of summer I ask the Lord to forgive me for what I’ve done to his children and at the beginning of [the] school year I ask for forgiveness for what I’m going to do to them.
