Lerone Wilson
LOCAL COMMENT: No Child Left Behind puts creativity at risk
March 21, 2007
The goal of my recent documentary film, "No Child Left Behind," was to create an unbiased account of the effects of this federal education program on the Michigan schools I attended and the New York City school where I worked during college.
The more I ponder what I found, the more I feel something is wrong.
When I was in the third grade at Kennedy Elementary School in Southfield, I was fortunate to meet Mrs. Carolyn Miller, the first teacher who truly changed the way I saw the world. I would describe her today as a "free-spirited" English teacher, concerned less with traditional learning than with the concept of creative development and expression. I always got the impression from her that if the world were in the middle of nuclear holocaust, with our very existence on the brink of extinction, she would be content as long as she had a pen and paper.
Of course, many students, including me, took advantage of her "nontraditional" teaching approach. To this day, I feel badly about some of the stunts I pulled in class. Nevertheless, her words and ideology awoke my creative inner being. That's why I began to record thoughts, anecdotes and humorous tales for my first "blog," then known as a journal, which would fuel my first films.
Had I had spent my grade school years completely in the conventional classroom style that most of my teachers embraced, I'm certain that today I'd be a fact-toting drone ... or, even worse, perhaps an attorney. (That fulfills my quota of lawyer jokes for the week.)
Now I'm certainly not advocating an across-the-board use of nontraditional teaching methods. Students need the conventional knowledge that is often best taught with books and tests.
Without the knowledge that Train A departed Philadelphia at 7 a.m. and arrived in Washington five hours later while Train B departed Miami two hours earlier yet traveled at double the speed of Train A ... well, I'd be lost in Baltimore somewhere. That is to say, without knowing the XYZs, creativity would mean nothing.
However, the biggest thing students need to develop about education is the desire to acquire it on their own. Later on, in sixth grade at Thompson Middle School, I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Walter Sobczak. Although his class was called "reading," it should have been "expanding possibilities." This was the first place where I was introduced to the notion of seeking knowledge not to please a teacher but to make myself a better human being.
"Shoot for the moon!" Mr. Sobczak would always say. You may know the rest of the saying: "For even if you fall short you will be among the stars."
My fear is that No Child Left Behind is pushing great teachers like these either to solely teach test-taking techniques or textbook-based information, or to get out of teaching altogether. Facts and figures are very important, but what good is raw information without the will to use it, or the means to change the world with it? Unfortunately if students aren't taught to shoot for the moon, they'll never get there.
LERONE WILSON, 24, is a documentary filmmaker in New York City who attended public schools in Southfield and Birmingham. "No Child Left Behind" was broadcast last fall on PBS. Wilson can be reached through www.boondogglefilms.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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