My masters in education has trully shown me how scary the state of education really is. It seems that the schools we teach in are controlled by the non realistic FCAT expectations. (standardized testing in any form) and our students are being taught by teachers that are controlled by the FCAT and can't see beyond it.

Tonight, it was confirmed once again that some of our ELEMENTARY schools are no better than prisons. We are forcing students, little ones, to sit still, not talk, read. As Amanda said, we are punishing them with reading. Teachers, thanks to the Bush's are making students hate reading. We force them to do it all the time, we force them to take silly tests on it, we force them to read boring passages. It is no wonder that by the time they reach me as seniors, they don't want to read at all.

Tonight's class also confirmed that some of the teachers teaching our children are absolute yayhoos and the only thing that they are capable of teaching our children is how to take the FCAT test. This particular teacher/student in my class can not see the "gray." Everything has to be black and white...there is no in between. And she bitched out another student b/c this person COULD see the gray in students. I don't get it.

I never thought my Masters would force me to become such an alternative education activist. We must change the way we percieve education or our students are going to have less of an educational future than what they are going to currently have.

1st grade students should not be made to eat lunch in silence and then read for the remainder of their lunch time. That is insane.

I don't know if I will ever start my own school, but things will be done VERY differently than they are done now in the majority of the schools in polk count/fl/the USA.