MCPS is 'turning schools into factories'

The Montgomery County Public Schools system is dumping so much excessive work on the kids that it's "turning schools into factories to produce the next generation fo economically viable robots."

That's how Ginger Baran of Bethesda sees it in a letter to the Gazette.

The "school system's policymakers, administrators and hyper-competitive parents are making decisions with blatant disregard for the needs of the children and the true value of education as a life-long experience of interacting with the world," she writes.

"Elementary school students do not need college prep; they need developmentally responsive, engaging instruction that invites them to read a novel, conduct a science experiment or play a musical instrument for the sheer pleasure of learning.

"The International Baccalaureate program inundates high school students (and now, apparently, preadolescents) with excessive homework, rigid course requirements and unwarranted academic pressure, with the ever-illusive concept of 'college readiness' as the ultimate goal. . . .

"Shaping a child's entire life around the criteria on which he or she will be judged by college admissions counselors is disgraceful, even abusive."