Resisting Standardization

"If we think of facts as the seeds of future wisdom [as Rachel Carson observed in today's quote], then it is the educator's job to provide optimal conditions for healthy growth," observes Nancy Rosenow in Heart-Centered Teaching Inspired by Nature. 

"If you planted carrot, zucchini, lettuce, and pumpkin seeds in your garden, you wouldn't provide care for all the seeds in exactly the same way.  Each type needs varying amounts of space, for example.  And, you wouldn't expect to harvest a crop of only pumpkins since four different kinds of seeds were planted.  And, yet our education system often demands that all children grow at the same time in the same way so they will yield the same type of 'crop'....

"First and foremost, our job as heart-centered educators must be to understand the potential of each 'seed' we are nurturing.  The great Spanish cellist Pablo Casals said it well: 'The child must know that he (or she) is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him (or her).'  Supporting the miracle of each child's uniqueness does not lend itself to standardization.  It is not 'convenient.'  It may seem easier to find a one-size-fits-all way of delivering and assessing learning, but if we pay attention, the natural world will help us realize the futility of trying to do so.  Nothing in nature, including human beings, can be completely 'standardized.'"

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