Neither Predictable nor Routine

Today as I sat in an in-service session, I was told that teaching was in part about quantifying data (which I suppose it is) and that I should collect assessments each year that were "predictable and routine" and of course put them in a shareable document for the school district.

My notes from this lecture say, "Real Humans are neither predictable nor routine."
I haven't loaded my OED on this laptop yet, so consulting the inferior online:

pre·dict·a·ble

adjective

1.

able to be foretold or declared in advance: New technology allows predictable weather forecasting.

2.

expected, especially on the basis of previous or known behavior: His complaints are so predictable.

 

Now imagine you are a parent. Can you seriously say you want EITHER of these things applied to your child's education? declared in advance, before anything is learned, discerned or known about your child personally?  Expected? Are we teaching a child or training a newly-unwrapped robot?

 

rou·tine

noun

1.

a customary or regular course of procedure.

2.

commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office.

3.

regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.

4.

an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response: Don't give me that brotherly-love routine!

 

 Most of the definitions of this word are negative. The best one is boring and ordinary. Again-- is THIS what education should look like? 

 

People are always complaining that we are behind nations like China. And yet, these same nations send their brightest to college here, because America has the market on imagination and innovation. In short, our kids play! Freedom of expression and exploration fosters a type of learning that is organic, natural, and hard to artifically replicate in the kind of rote systems that are great for standardized math tests, but don't translate into being able to dream up a better design for a vehicle or a more marketable electronic device all on their own. 

 

And so, after a long absence, I declare here my intention to begin blogging again about words. I ask the passing reader to offer a prayer for me as I try to be the Walt Whitman of  my current circumstances: untamed, untranslatable, maybe, but at the very least, someone needs a barbaric yawp now and then or the kids are going to learn nothing at all.