BY DAVID PERRYMAN
During the height of the Cold War and in the shadow of the Space Race a new cinematic genre of counter-espionage came to the silver screen. In 1962, with the theatrical release of Ian Fleming’s Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as 007, we were introduced to a suave, intelligent and always successful secret agent who perpetually had just the right technology to escape certain death, save western civilization from those behind the Iron Curtain and woo beautiful women.
The celluloid on that first “Bond, James Bond” movie had hardly been rewound when, in 1963, the marquee on movie houses across the country advertised the appearance of Peter Sellers and his portrayal of Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Pink Panther and the good guys continued to win.
Bond and Clouseau were the biggest things out of Tinseltown and it only took a few months for the general storyline to migrate to television and living rooms across the country. Get Smart, a creation of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, premiered in 1965 on NBC.
With KAOS [an “international organization of evil” formed in Budapest, Hungary in 1904, but later incorporated in Delaware for tax purposes] looming, our government had no choice but to establish CONTROL, a secret intelligence organization whose most dependable agents were Maxwell Smart [Agent 86], played by Don Adams, and his beautiful sidekick, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon.
Each episode began with Maxwell Smart entering a normal looking building then proceeding through an abnormal series of secured doors, each slamming behind him until he ultimately arrived at a basement phone booth that dropped him into the top-secret and super-secure environs of the headquarters of CONTROL so that he could receive his next assignment from the chief of the agency.
Of course, Agent 86’s arsenal of gadgets rivaled that of 007’s. In an era where telephonic communication was conventionally tied to a landline, Max’s telephones were concealed in a number of objects including neckties, combs, belts, wallets, watches and clocks and even garden hoses. However no concealment was more memorable than the original “Smart Phone” concealed in a shoe that he had to remove from his foot to answer and exposed a dial when the sole was pulled away.
While the fictional Brooks and Henry scripts always allowed CONTROL to prevail over KAOS, the chaos in Oklahoma’s educational system is for real and the solutions do not lay in gadgets, gimmicks or excessive testing.
The goal is clear. Children need to learn to read early so that they can read to learn through school. Unfortunately, the demographics are difficult. For hundreds of various reasons, many children get NO encouragement toward literacy at home and, despite the untiring efforts of overwhelmed and understaffed grade school teachers, many students are not reaching the reading proficiency that is needed.
Tragically, the State Department of Education has poured millions of dollars of Oklahoma’s education funds into testing third graders rather than directing those funds toward tutoring and remediating learning readers in the first and second grades. The State Department of Education seems to be more interested in dropping a hammer than educating children.
The goal is clear: Children need to receive an education to enable them to compete globally. Unfortunately, textbooks are outdated. During a recent discussion that I had with over a 100 fifth graders in my District, they raised this issue and wanted to know why their science and history texts were 10 years or more out of date.
Tragically, the State Department of Education would rather distribute Oklahoma’s scarce educational budget to testing companies than purchasing new textbooks.
The goal is clear: High School students need to be prepared for college. Unfortunately, disruptive batteries of tests that do nothing but appease the State Department of Education [and line the pockets of testing companies] displace valuable and irreplaceable instruction time.
Tragically, intensive testing began in school districts this last week. As an example, one school in my legislative district has four computer labs. All four labs will be occupied solidly for the next six weeks by students taking state mandated tests. During that entire period, the computer science classes will be idle since every computer that the school has will be occupied.
The problems do not stop there. Schools are not told what a passing score is until after the tests are completed and a school that achieves a pass rate of 98% will be marked down the next year if it does not attain a pass rate of 99%.
Another problem is the special education student that is required to be given modified classroom tests throughout the year until the last six weeks of school when the state mandates that all students, including special education students be given the same test with no accommodation.
Teachers are not the problem in today’s educational system. Tell them what they need to teach and they will do their dead level best to reach that goal.
There is a lack of understanding on the need for state mandated testing.
The State Department of Education believes that testing causes learning. Running a calf across a scale every day does not make it gain weight any more than pulling up young plants to check the length of their roots makes their roots grow.
If we must have a state mandated test, let’s use the ACT test which is proven, does not disrupt classroom time and eliminates the waste of 85% to 90% of the money going into the pockets of testing companies.
In Get Smart, there was a character named Agent 13 who was always stationed in unlikely places such as a locker, a trashcan or even a cigarette machine or washing machine. He was there to readjust the mission or provide assistance to Maxwell Smart when things were going badly.
Educators and their students do not have an Agent 13 unless you and I take that role. That is why they need you to get engaged, become involved, learn about the issues and vote intelligently.
– David Perryman, a Chickasha Democrat, represents District 56 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives
