Okay. Gonna finally sell out and give in. Finally gonna give my kids the chance to take a look at the interim assessments for the SBA. I shared this with them yesterday as I was once again reviewing with them next week’s testing schedule. And as I was doing so, I looked out on the sea of faces before me, and I found a great deal of discomfiture in their countenance, and though they didn’t say it, I heard it and it reverberated through my being. “Why are you doing this to us, Sy” A greater fraud I have never felt.

In the recent past I have  iterated, “I wish kids recognized that education is not something we do to them but for them.” But alas, these are only shallow, talk-the-talk words when the walk only reinforces what they have suspected all along. They are on a conveyor belt. They are being stamped and tweaked. They are merely products of a system made uniform to fit into the cogs of a yet larger system. And so, I can no longer employ my clever adage. We are not doing it for them. We are doing it to them. And it is unlikely to change any time soon. We will simply continue to tweak–instead of truly reform, and the industrialized machine will continue to belch smoke into an environment long endangered by our stubborn insistence to do as we have done.

The last fifteen years have seen a lot of tweaking, but they have seen little change, little reform. And with each knew emblem affixed to the grill, we find we are really just driving the same old car. Drove the WASL for a number of years. Then we rolled the HSPE into the drive, and the neighbors ooohed and ahhhed at our shiny new vehicle. But it was recalled rather quickly. And we were given the SBA, a sporty new model promising greater horsepower and better mileage. But as I am out on the road right now, and I close my eyes for a second, it is hard to discern if I am actually driving the new, improved model or the old vintage machine with which this all began. Factory sources hint at a new model on the horizon. But there’s been little enthusiasm among consumers. Most have decided that as long as we are stuck on the same old road, the car is of little consequence. Maybe it’s time for a new road.

Happy Tuesday, all.