The Huffington Post includes a list of 12 common items that have become obsolete this decade. Check ’em out. If newspapers, and landline phones, and calling, and cameras with film, and fax machines, and wires and CD’s and dial-up internet and telephones and encyclopedias and the yellow pages and catalogs and hand-written letters may have all become obsolete… what in if anything, became obsolete in our public schools during the same time period?
Plenty.
Here are 12 things that have become obsolete in public schools during the past NCLB decade:
• Critical Thinking
• Hands-on Science
• Field trips
• Morning Recess
• Grades based on Teacher Judgment
• Creative Writing
• Physical Fitness
• Bilingual Education
• Haiku
• Fine Arts
• Tolerance
• Extracurricular Activities
You can keep up with what’s obsolete in your school by checking your local newspaper. If you can find one.
"El Milagro Weblog" 
At the schools I teach at, they have phys ed, fine arts, critical thinking…just last week we did limericks and haiku. In fact, i let the kids write haiku as a response to anything we do. They still have recess, and always teach , demonstrate and require tolerance. The kids go on at least two field trips a year, as well as five sessions of bowling, skating, or skiing-depending on the grade and season. There are several teams for the kids to join- and other activities like choir. Then again, I am in Canada – Cape Breton, to be exact.
Along with free time to explore and discover at their own pace, time to socialize and interact with others, to just sit and listen, to engage in coversation that is free and flowing.
With NCLB taking time to imagine has become obsolete because imagination cannot be measured. Creativity and enthusiam does not figure into the CST scores. How do we evaluate happiness? Something so many of our children lack, as they are measured and ranked daily.
What has become obsolete is being happy just being, when what we are is not enough.
In the time of the holidays we need to remember that it is not having what you want but wanting what you have.
With NCLB, what we did last year is already obsolete.