Bird Droppings June 10, 2026

I ponder educational genocide as this administration tries to gut education and/or NCLB, norming children, only leaves the best.

I was huddled in my warm seat as I drove around, window open, as I went outside to chase a sunrise this morning. I stopped along the way to think a bit about some writing I am doing for another degree I started. It’s one of the advantages of being old: in Georgia, free school after 62. I drove my regular route, looking for images as the sun came up, while I stared at the sky. I texted my grandkids a photo of a smiling moon peeking through the cloud cover across a pasture along my journey.

“Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” Sitting Bull

A good friend once emailed about a conference he was going to hold in Georgia. It is funny how ideas often co-mingle in the cosmos. At the same time, I had a mother, a co-teacher, who needed help with her son and had been finding answers in my friend’s books. Additionally, several students I was working with at the time needed assistance. But as I read this note from the great holy man and war leader of the Sioux nation so many years ago, I was intrigued. Sitting Bull wasn’t looking at the now; he was looking ahead: “What life we can make for our children.” His own was cut short as he held his grandchild’s hand. Legend has it that as the Native American marshals were arresting him for instigating a ghost dance ritual, they thought he was going for a weapon and shot him. As the story goes, his grandchild dropped a toy, and he was picking it up when he realized it was not a gun.

“I do not wish to be shut up in a corral. All agency Indians I have seen are worthless. They are neither red warriors nor white farmers. They are neither wolf nor dog.” Sitting Bull

It was many years later that Kent Nerburn wrote a book, borrowing from this comment, entitled Neither Wolf nor Dog. The book was the editing and recording of the words of an elderly Sioux man who felt the need to relate the Indian view of reality and life for others to read.

In days gone by, when End of Course tests and Graduation test results were published and handed out, and as I dealt with children who had issues, we tended to look at test results based on norms. As I sarcastically love bell-shaped curves, we want everyone to fit into this percentile or that. But the interesting thing about a bell-shaped curve is that everyone does not fit in on both sides; there are extremes, and legislative fiascos or endeavors such as No Child Left Behind do not allow for that 12.5% on each end who are on the extremes of the curves; that is twenty-five percent of the population. There is no magical cut-off point. This child is in, and this child is out, yet we have imposed these boundaries through legislation.

We have stripped away individualism and seek to make all children equal and fit in the same mold, and the same parameters. Recently, I saw an entrance requirement for a class in vocational studies that required a certain level of math. Many students who could have benefited are now out. The funny thing is, I believe it was back in Germany during the 1930s and 40s when specific requirements for existence, be it hair or skin color, became issues in international debate, war, and history. Yet we are now instituting educational cleansing by weeding out children who cannot pass tests and/or be accepted into a charter school.

I know a student, now a mother and in the workforce, who, five times, missed passing the end-of-course science test by a total of 10 points, and several of those times by only 1 point. By chance, I read graduation tests for some special education students, and in one instance, question 70 on a test used a few summers back was about a topic where no answer was technically correct. The answer was essentially a logic-oriented response yet hidden within was a correct answer: only if students watched a Disney movie on Desert Life made in 1963 would they know the real answer. Semantics played a role, and what is so sad is that the question was probably wrong. I questioned the testing board, and the question is no longer available. But what if that was one of the questions the little girl missed who missed five times? What if she failed to graduate because of a faulty question no one caught five times? We have normed out of parameters so many children.

In recent months, I have watched students withdraw because of tests or standards. I see the impact COVID-19 had on education. I have watched select students get credit and others not for the very same issues. Perhaps we are practicing educational genocide; maybe somewhere there is a conspiracy to eliminate from the gene pool students who cannot pass this test or that one. A school I have great faith in has dropped its undergraduate special education major. Under current laws, most highly qualified special education teachers are being delegated to assist regular education teachers. We are setting aside disabilities and/or assuming they are not there and working on deficits only, the symptoms. It is funny how it may be the disability that caused the deficit, albeit educational genocide. Sitting here playing with NCLB, Norming, Children, Leaves the Best, what a society we have.

“I am tired of talk that comes to nothing,” Chief Joseph.

It has been a few months since I last listened to critiques unfold of recent test results and listened to teachers criticized for low test results; sadly, we put so much emphasis on a paper-and-pencil operation. Today, FEDEX was on the news for losing an entire high school’s ACT protocols. The students have to retake, and many have missed the early admission deadline as a result. Teachers are facing many of the same situations Native Americans faced hundreds of years ago, be it treaties or laws, and many are meaningless. We won’t and don’t use test results, and yet teachers are being called to attention, and only the test is considered. The demographics of a group of students are only looked at after publicly posted test results are out.

“It does not require many words to speak the truth,” Chief Joseph.

It did not take long for the great chief of the Nez Perce to realize that talk from Washington was often meaningless and only served to satisfy those who initiated it, generally those in Washington and/or their friends. In 1974, we passed laws to require education for all children, and now we are saying all children should be educated the same, all children should pass the same tests, and all children will be the same by 2014. Georgia has now received a waiver based on proposed educational evaluations that will still be conducted, but of a different nature.

“You might as well expect rivers to run backward as for any man who is born free to be penned up” Chief Joseph.

For most today, this may be gibberish as I wander in my thinking. I recall my first visit to a residential treatment facility in 1969 or so. Of that, I recall the smell first, then the hollow gaze of residents who had lived their lives in isolation from normal society. It was several years later that I did another internship, this time from a spiritual aspect, as part of my seminary experience in 1974 and 1975, again at a residential facility, and while in another state, the smell and gaze were the same. It has been many years since big cats were at the Atlanta Zoo, and back in the day, The Cat House, as it was called, held numerous species of large cats from around the world, all with a gaze about them as they paced steel cages, staring off into the distance. I wonder, as we commit educational genocide, are we pushing back to days gone by in the name of progress, taking us back to 1974 and before when we only took children who would be able to pass tests and allowed them into schools and programs? I truly wonder sometimes. Please keep all in harm’s way on your minds and in your hearts and always give thanks. Namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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