Dear Governor: Lobby to Save a Love of Reading
On New Year’s Eve, we and another couple sat, as we have for many years, playing party games — waiting for midnight, a final toast, and a conservative but not reactionary bedtime shortly thereafter.
In past years our friends’ two girls led (and clobbered) us in rousing games of Pictionary; this year they were too old to hang out with their parents on this most festive night of the year. Our kids (younger) were already asleep.
Instead of Pictionary without the champions we decided to play a new game: “take the third-grade English Language Arts practice test” that our son had brought home from school as his vacation homework (if that is not an oxymoron, it should be). . .
In his recent State of the State address, Governor Cuomo said he wants to be an advocate for children. Let him lobby to protect their natural curiosity and love of learning from the onslaught of anti-intellectual, ends-oriented teaching practices forced on our educators by over-emphasis on standardized tests.
Thus was our first, and only, new year’s resolution formed as the clock struck midnight and we opened one last bottle of Spanish Cava to toast the new year: We will boycott the standardized test this spring, and we will do everything we can to encourage fellow parents to join us.
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/20/dear-governor-lobby-to-save-a-love-of-reading/?hp
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