Second Thoughts About Education

The Little Red Madhouse: Should Corporal Punishment Be Revived

2012-01-14T07:53:00.000-08:00

Paradoxically, kids from less 'humane' cultures than ours often long for the relative safety of their homeland. They are more terrorized by the disorder in their inner-city American schools than they were by the threat of corporal punishment in schools back home.

A teacher recently told me that her elementary ESOL students are uniformly repulsed and frightened by the disorder in their Philadelphia elementary school. One day, when the sound of cursing and fighting grew so loud in the hallway that her ESOL kids could barely hear their teacher, a quiet little girl from Ghana suddenly said, "These kids are just so bad. In my room (meaning her every-day classroom) I cannot learn!"

She paused, then said longingly, "In Ghana they hit you if you're bad." The ESOL teacher asked, "Did that make Ghanaian kids behave?" "Oh yes," the girl replied, "it wasn't anything like this place!" "Do you think kids in this school would behave if they got hit?" the teacher inquired. "Yes!" the girl replied, momentarily brightening, "Oh yes, I'm sure they would!" Then her smile faded as she realized this was not going to happen.

When we compel children to attend school we incur a non-negotiable obligation to insure that they are safe and that those who want to can learn. This must take precedence over everything including well-intentioned social reclamation efforts, racial pride building, condom distribution, and the thousand and one other non-academic things schools are unwisely charged with doing.

Similarly, teachers must be free of the threats and assaults of disturbed or malevolent youngsters. Likewise, no one should be allowed to destroy their lessons. In short, serious disruption, threats, bullying, extortion, and predation, simply must not be tolerated if schools are to fulfill their function.

To restore order, however, school officials must command meaningful sanctions that tough kids respect. If this can be accomplished without inflicting physical pain on bullies and budding sociopaths, so much the better. But what if resources are inadequate for a more refined approach? Or what if we can't find a more refined approach that works reliably? Should we continue to compel well behaved children to attend unsafe schools where they are bullied unmercifully and denied the opportunity to learn? Should we continue to prate about holding teachers accountable when they are not even safe in their own classrooms?

In the "good old days" if you made other people's lives miserable or learning impossible it cost you a red behind and a one way trip out the door if you persisted. Today, these options have pretty much been ruled out. What has taken their place? Pious sermons, ineffectual detentions, suspensions that the kids view as vacations, forced transfers that spread the chaos, and, more recently, structured efforts to persuade sociopaths not to use the violence that pays off so handsomely for them. All of this is well intentioned. But all too often sneering recipients of these social services continue to lay waste to everyone's safety and learning.

In the best of all possible worlds, pain would never have to be inflicted on anyone for any reason. And a lot can still be done to make schooling more palatable and more effective for a broader range of kids. But the world is far from perfect, school resources are strictly limited and order is necessary for any reforms to take hold. Tough penalties, then, are still required.

Educators relied on corporal punishment for nearly 6,000 years. Must we now revive what has only recently been set aside? Is there an affordable alternative that tough kids won't laugh at? Perhaps. But in the meantime far too many children — good kids who would dearly love to learn — are compelled to attend mad houses rather than school houses.

For more on this see http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Singapore.html

TO TOP

Fairness, Equal Opportunity and Overlooked Handicaps

2012-01-11T16:21:00.000-08:00

Numerous people now benefit from affirmative action programs that are intended to make up for past wrongs, insure the disadvantaged get a fair share and promote diversity. The trouble with this approach is that many genuinely disadvantaged people are left out. Consider the following.

Physical Attractiveness

In a study entitled "What Is Beautiful Is Good," researchers from the American Psychological Association showed photographs of attractive, average, and unattractive people to university undergraduates. The students were asked to rate the people in the photos on various personality traits and behavioral tendencies, based solely on their appearance in the pictures.

Compared to unattractive people, attractive people were assumed to possess a higher number of positive traits. The students rated them confident, strong, assertive, candid, warm, honest, kind, outgoing, sensitive, poised, sociable, exciting, and nurturing. The physical-attractiveness stereotype has been replicated in several different experimental paradigms. As Aristotle noted, "Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction."

Obesity

Weight is another physical characteristic that results in discrimination and unfair treatment. Research shows they are often perceived as lazy, unintelligent, slovenly, and unattractive. Several studies also demonstrate that such negative attitudes toward obese individuals contribute to discrimination in the work place. Specifically, obese people are not hired as often as people of normal weight; are less likely to be promoted; and often report being discriminated against by managers and peers.

Short Stature

Height, particularly in men, is another physical attribute associated with negative stereotypes and discrimination. A 1992 study by researchers from Michigan State University demonstrated that short men are often judged inferior to tall men in several personal attributes. People tend to judge taller men as more socially attractive, higher in professional status, more masculine, more athletically inclined, and more physically attractive than short men. Similar studies have found that short men often experience discrimination in professional settings. For example, short job applicants are not hired as often as taller applicants; short employees earn less, on average, than taller employees; and short political candidates lose elections more often than taller candidates.

Some Other Factors

Research also demonstrates that people with red hair color are often stereotyped as "clownish" and "weird." Negative stereotyping based on language and dialect (i.e., Southern accents, ebonics) also is a common occurrence. Additionally, children who wear brand-name clothing and shoes are judged "popular," "wealthy," and able to "fit in with their peers" compared to children who do not wear name brands.

What does such research have to do with affirmative action? The answer is "Everything." If unattractive, obese, or short people, for example, experience discrimination in a broad setting shouldn't we be prepared to apply compensatory measures for anyone victimized by prejudice? Why should some qualify for fair share treatment (positive discrimination) just because their particular group has more political muscle?

Conclusion

Instead of focusing on skin color or other group differences, perhaps we should embrace the character-based vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. and focus on each person's individual humanity, rather than his or her race,ethnicity, or what have you. After all, in the end, isn't character, not group membership, the most important difference of all?

Schools: America's Face in the Mirror

2012-01-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

The thing about mirrors is they reflect reality with remorseless accuracy. Do we exercise and watch what we eat? There it is in the mirror, flat belly, taut muscles, and all. But if we sit on our duff and gobble Twinkies, the less flattering consequences are also reflected with implacable exactitude.

America's public schools provide a similarly accurate mirror image of our nation. Like it or not, what's wrong with them is, for the most part, wrong with us. And what is right about America is generally right about our schools, too.

Public schools didn't used to provide this accurate an image if our nation. In the 'good old days,' most of the kids from the 'wrong side of the tracks' dropped out of school long before graduation. Consequently, public schools provided a more flattering reflection of America. Today children from this "other America" tend to stay in school. As a consequence, public schools now accurately more reflect America's failings as well as its successes.

Look at today's public schools and we immediately see the consequences of the growing social inequality that is one of America's least handsome aspects. The U.S. has the most uneven distribution of wealth of any major industrialized nation. And the richest Americans dominate our economy and our government. These are the Americans that write the rules that usually end up favoring the privileged and powerful.And this is why Congress stands idle while real earnings decrease, average family income erodes, and deregulation demolishes housing values, industries and lives. This is why millions of American's jobs are being sacrificed to "right-sizing," job exports and mergers — all without government challenge.

As the rich get richer, the rest of America gets left behind and an unacceptably large number of America's children end up poor in shattered neighborhoods. And the social consequences of this whole sad mess ends up in those chronically underfunded classrooms that serve America's poor where their teachers bravely try to keep destructive social conditions, inadequate resources and public criticism by dishonest politicians and their apologists from destroying even more kids.

Ironically, those who benefit most from economic and social inequities, preposterously overpaid corporate CEO's for example, scapegoat public schooling to dodge responsibility for the social consequences of their own excesses and heartlessness. Meanwhile many of the nation's governors bash teachers, issue bromides about the need for educators to raise their expectations, caution against "throwing money" at school problems, and emphasize the "need" to "break the public school monopoly."

To be sure, our public schools reflect all of America's sins, not just those of the corporate power elite and their government lackies. Consider parents, for example. Far too many of them are stupid, selfish, cruel or foolish; and too many believe that material possessions equal the good life. And like the finest plate glass mirror, our public schools reflect the melancholy consequences of all of this.

For more on this see www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/PSMirror.htm

School Textbook Controversies

2011-12-29T07:26:00.000-08:00

The remarkably heterogeneous nature of American society makes it very difficult to establish consensus concerning anything of consequence. And nowhere is this lack of a agreement more obvious than when we select public school textbooks. Consider the example of states like California or Texas which establish a list of approved textbooks.

When public hearings are conducted on this matter a farrago of fundamentalists, feminists, European origin ethnics, New Agers, native Americans, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, Latinos, Chicanos, pacifists, civil libertarians, tea party true believers, fundamentalists, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, Asian-Americans, environmentalists, animal rights activists, Muslims, even vegetarians (not to be confused with ovo-lacto vegetarian crowd) lament bias and register non-negotiable demands for the insertion of their values and a favorable depiction of their cause and heroes.

This is how textbooks are neutered. There are so many competing demands that in attempting to meet them publishers end up with sterility. So be it. Textbooks debates, even textbook sterilization, are an unavoidable part of the rough and tumble of life in a heterogeneous democratic society. The alternative is domination by one group or another.

Verbally duking it out over textbooks, or the entire school curriculum for that matter, is a very American process. This is not my concern. My concern focuses on the elements who short-circuit this diaglogue by un-democratic tactics and by their absolute refusal to even consider that those who oppose them are operating in subjective good will. No, these true-believers will never concede that their opponents might be doing what they think to be right. Those who desagree with them are always immoral, perverted, licentious, atheistic, agents of Satan, pornographers, child molesters -- perhaps even traitors.

Because their cause is so urgent, so patriotically holy, true believers of every stripe commonly assume that their ends justifies any means. This is how anonymous hate mail, terroristic phone calls, unsigned and untruthful pamphlets, acts of vandalism, even death threats become standard features of true-believer textbook campaigns -- particularly at the local level.

This is how textbook content campaigns, and curriculum content campaigns for that matter, come to feature character assassination, half truths, outright lies and non-negotiable demands. Tactics such as these destroy communication and make democracy impossible. Colloquy becomes confrontation when the compromises necessary in choosing a text are transformed into the politics of the end-time. In this realm everyone is required to reveal their "true allegiance" by choosing between God and Satan, America and treason.

The concern here is NOT with legitimate expressions of difference within the democratic dialogue. It is with those who enter this process with a very real intent to subvert it because they are in possession of THE TRUTH. To maintain an exchange -- whether it be about texts, curriculum or politics -- truth and values must be dealt with in a tentative and tolerant fashion. Reason and evidence must not be subordinated to any group's ideology. Opposing points of view must be accorded the same respect you expect for your own and not be ignored, surpressed or subverted.

Granting any religio-political view a special exemption from these obligations is not only ruinous to public schooling; it places the entire democratic process in danger. Our democracy has never required the celebration of common ends; but it does require respect for common means such as compromise, tolerance and civility.

See http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Textbooks.html for more on this topic.

Top-Down School Reform: Trashing Teacher Morale

2011-12-17T16:27:00.000-08:00

One of the most troubling aspects of the recent wave of school reform is that the would-be reformers never bother to ask teachers what they think. Instead, professional politicians and their minions imagine they can just ram change, however unrealistic, down gagging teacher's throats.

The chief problem with this heavy-handed approach is that it rarely works. Way back in the 1970's a Rand Corporation study demonstrated that successful introduction of innovations requires voluntary, highly motivated participants. And this is particularly true of teachers because their work is done beyond immediate administrative control.

Why do those in charge ignore this reality? Perhaps they are just posing for the public. Maybe they are so remote from day to day realities that they no longer have the sense they were born with. In any case their insufferably arrogant style of management is time-honored. It dates way back to the era when classroom teachers were long-suffering females and the power holders were smug, self-satisfied males.

Some say that teachers stand in the way of needed reform, and that explains the imposition of non-consultative change. But resistance to change is hardly restricted to teachers. In fact, resistance is an inevitable response to major change in any organization. And when those changes are being pushed by the same people who look down on you, ignore your hard-won knowledge and experience and can't tell their pedagogical behind from third base, resistance is sensible.

Regardless, teacher resistance to change so frustrates policy makers that if ever they thought about soliciting teacher consent and cooperation they think about it no longer. Instead they become ever more controlling, autocratic and disrespectful while ratcheting up coercion via so-called "merit pay."

In all of this they show a complete disregard for the negative impact their actions have on teacher morale and the recruitment of anything but sheep into the profession. In short, these would-be reformers have lost all concern for the actual consequences of their "reforms" on those who must carry them out. And that may well guarantee the long-term failure of their reforms.

For more on this subject go to http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Domination.html

Public Schooling and the Tragedy of the Commons

2011-11-06T19:32:00.000-08:00

You Want What?

I recently came across a flyer that an Islamic group was handing out to public school administrators. It described allegedly urgent “problems” facing Muslim public school students and outlined what school administrators must do about them. Here is an excerpt:

“In view of the teachings of Islam, Muslim students in your school should not be required to:
(1) sit next to the opposite sex in the classroom,
(2) participate in physical education, swimming or dancing classes. (Alternate meaningful educational activities should be arranged.)
(3.) attend coed physical education and swimming classes. (These should be held separately for boys and girls in a fully covered area — no glass doors or windows without curtains.)
(4.) have opposite sex physical education instructors.
(5.) wear swimming suits that fail to cover all the private parts of the body down to the knee.
(6.) take group showers — they should be provided with separate and covered individual shower facilities
(7.) participate in plays, proms, social parties, picnics, dating, etc. that require free mixing of the two sexes,

It isn’t only Muslims who demand special accommodations. All sorts of groups demand one or another adjustment. Conservative Christians, including former President George W. Bush, require that the biology curriculum pay obeisance to creationism. Some black parents urge that schools strip allegedly racist novels, such as Huckleberry FInn, of all things, from the curriculum. Evangelical Christians demand the elimination of school Halloween celebrations because they allegedly provide Satan and his minions with access to the kids. Italian-Americans insist that Columbus still discover America in history books, even if he didn't. Polish-Americans would have Thadeus Kusiusko

Taken collectively, there is an astounding range of parental expectations that public educators are expected to satisfy. Of course, the chances of accomplishing this in any meaningful way are zilch. But when school authorities keep trying, bad things happen.

In his classic, “Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin argues that free access to common resources brings ruin to all. The classic example is an open access public pasture where everyone is permitted to graze his or her animals. To preserve this commons, all participants must agree not to overgraze it. If even one of the users insists on adding more animals than the commons can support, this public pasture is ultimately destroyed.

Restraint by all is required. The trouble is, it is seldom achieved. It is in each farmer's interest to put more cows onto the common land, even if, in the long run, the land is ruined.

The nation’s public schools are similar to Hardin’s public commons in that they are an open access resource. And school time and the curriculum are the equivalent of the forage in Hardin’s pasture in that when special interest groups fail to restrain themselves they are, in a sense, “overgrazing” our schools by placing excessive particularistic demands on them.

Even school board members should recognize that infinite accommodation is impossible given finite resources. Yet over and over again they try to accommodate special pleading. The result is a down the rabbit hole with Alice world where even those who clearly recognize there are limits, act as if there are none.

For public schooling to be viable, everyone has to limit his or her demands and adopt an ethic of restraint. If all cooperate in this, everyone gains. Unfortunately, participants who, out of moral obligation or naiveté, moderate their demands while others remain immoderate, loses.This leads to a situation where it seems logical to keep pressing for one's particularistic demands even though everyone's benefits would be greatest if all restrained themselves. In game theory this type situation is called the "prisoner's dilemma."

If, as is likely, mutual restraint fails to materialize, school administrators can (1) continue to pretend there are no practical constraints on accommodation and ultimately reduce education to a farce; or (2) start saying “NO!” to special pleading.

To examine this issues further, see http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Conjecture.html

This Schooling Is Brought To You By ...

2011-10-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

Well we've taken another giant step down the road to the commercialization of public schooling. School boards have begun selling ad space in their buildings. Pennsylvania's Pennsbury School District, for instance, is selling advertising spaces as large as 5 by 10 feet in all of their 16 schools. Ultimately 218 ads of various sizes will appear on walls, floors and even shrink-wrapped over lockers and cafeteria tables. One wonders, if the Superintendent happens to be female, has the school board considered marketing the space across her behind. Instead of the ever popular "Juicy" or "Pink" the message might read "Post-It Notes!" or "Dick's Sporting Goods!"

Yes, the Pennsbury school board recently signed a contract with a national advertising agency that should boost their annual budget by as much as $424,000. All they had to do was sell access to the 10,950 children and teens entrusted to their care.

To be fair, the great recession and massive cuts in state aid, caused the district to be $6 million in the red. Those cuts were initiated by Republicans, by the way — the very same political party whose most "conservative" elements plan to eliminate "government schools" entirely. (They're socialistic, don't you know?)

These same die-hard "conservatives" assure us, there is nothing the government can do, that private enterprise can't do better. I can't wait until MTV Networks takes over our public schools. Lady Gaga could teach home economics! Lil' Wayne could teach poetry. Hell, even their CEO could get into the act. He could introduce the youngsters to the principles of American government — corporate style.

For similar considerations see http://www.newfoundations.com/Carpenter/SchoolChoice.html

The Sorrows of an Old Teacher Educator

2011-09-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

I have been preparing future teachers for forty two years and have belatedly concluded that I'm in the wrong line of work. Absolutely no one of influence gives a crap if this job is done well or not.

When I began my career I chose to teach at a Catholic college run by a religious order allegedly devoted to teaching. I reasoned that this bode well for teacher education at the school. Unfortunately, I failed to adequately consider that it was a liberal arts school. In that environment the education department was Thursday's child. Plus filling our classrooms with far too many marginally committed halfwits was more profitable than allowing us to restrict entry in the same way as any professional school does as a matter of course.

Nearly half a century later the Education Department has won some credibility. But the resources we have to work with are embarrassing. Most of the revenue we generate disappeared into the general fund. Proportionately little was reinvested in properly equipping our programs. Consequently, I teach in a classroom equipped in exactly the same way as my first grade class was in 1946 except the desks are bigger.) It lacks even a bulletin board. Imagine teaching in a medical school lacking every feature of modern medical practice. Well I teach in the equivalent.

I really shouldn't fault the college though. They would be foolish to invest more heavily in teacher education than their competitors. Besides, few give a damn about teacher preparation to begin with.

This indifference is aggravated by meddlesome state education officials who, without any meaningful consultation, seek to idiot proof the process. For instance, they mandate literally hundreds of provisions that must be met before a college can secure middle school teacher program approval. What is the result?
It's as if some crazed bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur was given several reams of paper, locked in an office and given the following instructions, "We are dealing with nuckle heads who haven't a clue about preparing teachers. Idiot proof the process by creating hundreds of requirements that leave them no latitude whatsoever."

You might think, "Well, at least they are getting tough." Oh yeah? Then why, at the same time are these half-wits also creating pathetically easy "alternative routes" into teaching at the same time?

Oh, and lets nor forget President Obama and his totally unqualified Secretary of Education. When it comes to teacher preparation the two of them just jumped down the rabbit hole with Alice. How so? They recently decided to classify teacher interns as "highly qualified teachers." Why would they do a crazy thing like that? So that states like California, who use hundreds of interns to fill classrooms in their educational Calcuttas meet the No Child Left Behind requirement that all teachers be "highly qualified." Surely this is the first time in human history that interns have officially been declared "highly qualified." It's 1984 all over again!. War is peace! Love is Hate! and Interns are Highly Qualified." What a joke!

If I could start my career over I would choose something the American people really care about. Perhaps I should have learned how to make napalm stick more tenaciously to babies, or something of the sort. The nation has long been eager to invest in that sort of thing. But like I said at the beginning, absolutely no one of influence gives a crap if teacher preparation is done well or not.

For more on this subject see www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Cannonfodder.html

Preparing Truly Competent Teachers

2011-09-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Professional Teacher Preparation: The Essential Step Toward Better Schools

“When one considers in its length and breadth the importance of a nation’s young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous inertia with which (education) is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage”

Alfred North Whitehead
The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1929) p.22.
Really want to improve American schooling? Recognize that better teachers are the key ingredient. And also realize that real school reform will not happen until we greatly strengthen their preparation.

How can this be done? The vast majority of undergraduates are too immature and unmotivated for serious teacher training. What is required is thorough preparation in a post-graduate professional school similar to that required of lawyers, medical doctors, veterinarians, opticians and other occupations we actually respect.

Highly motivated and mature students in a demanding graduate environment could become the kind of teachers we need to begin tranforming our schools. But state and federal officials are not only ignoring this opportunity, they have been fostering lax, disempowering short cuts into teaching instead. The Obama administration even classifies interns as highly qualified teachers to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind.

Forget quickie teacher preparation alternatives; close marginal teacher preparation programs at profiteering colleges specializing in cut-rate certification; and require truly professional teacher preparation. This is what is required.

Of course, we would have to pay higher salaries and actually respect teachers in order to attract the best and the brightest to such demanding training. And the average American isn’t willing to pay this tab — particularly while we are squandering trillions of dollars on no-win wars.

What is more, truly professional preparation would really strengthen the teaching profession — a primal fear of politicians. Who could they blame if the teachers could really fight back?

Yes, what needs to be done is obvious. But it is not going to happen any time soon. Meanwhile, our politicians will keep tinkering with high stakes tests, charter schools, vouchers and any other "reforms" that can be accomplished on the cheap.

To examine this issue further, see http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/FirStep.html

Unfair Teacher Accountability

2011-07-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

In today's America most of the responsibility for learning is hung around the neck of teachers. In cultures that haven't lost sight of the obvious, a majority of the responsibility for learning still rests with the student and their parent(s).

Suppose a student refuses to even try? The teacher is still responsible. Suppose a student is a chronic truant and absent a third of the school year? The teacher is still responsible, Suppose the student refuses to do any homework? The teacher still is responsible. Suppose an African-American student is convinced that learning is "acting white?" Suppose a youngster's parents are abusive and neglectful? The teacher still is responsible. Suppose the student is a junkie or alcoholic. That doesn't matter. The teacher still is responsible. Suppose the student is dumb as a bag of rocks? That doesn't matter. The teacher still is responsible. Suppose slack administrators have allowed the school to become a madhouse? That doesn't matter. The teacher still is responsible. Suppose instructional resources are utterly inadequate? That doesn't matter. The teacher still is responsible.

This sort of "accountability" would be regarded as insane in any serious context. Imagine holding a swim instructor responsible for a student's inability to swim even though the youngster absolutely refused to go near the water. Imagine holding a piano teacher responsible for a child's poor playing even though the kid is tone deaf and has no piano to practice on. Imagine holding a ballet teacher responsible for a student's inability to dance when the she skipped a third of the lessons and is morbidly obese.

If posturing politicians don't stop trying to heap unfair accountability on teachers, no one with an IQ over 90 will choose the profession.

When Home Schooling Goes Wrong

2011-07-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder what sort of things parents teach their children in the private space that home schooling provides? The fact is that the curriculum can be downright scary.

For instance, some children are taught to embrace white supremacy. They learn that the white race created civilization and that they should loath sub-human mud people. That includes everyone of non-white ancestry — most especially Jews. History lessons consist of heroic accounts of Nordic conquests, British imperialism and the enlightened accomplishments of Nazi Germany. They also are taught about the coming race war when whites will rightfully gain mastery over all of society.

Other kids are taught that their Christian zeal should match the fanaticism of the Taliban. They learn that evolution is unBiblical bunk, that global warming is a fantasy and that homosexuals were stoned to death in the good old days when Godly values ruled. Non-believers are presented as deluded or possibly even knowing agents of Satan. And they are assured that anyone who doesn't believe exactly as their parents tell them to will roast forever in the white hot fires of hell.

There are no practical limits on the kind of screwball ideas inflicted on home-schooled kids. Sure state home schooling standards theoretically must be eet. But effective control over what is taught in the privacy of the home is impossible.

It doesn't follow that home schooling should be eliminated. Some parents just push quirky but harmless things like vegetarianism or karmic consciousness. Others do a truly responsible job. And sometimes homeschooling helps kids escape from truly hellish situations in public schools.

Besides, just because kids are taught dangerous, intolerant things doesn't mean they will subscribe to them as adults. In fact, one of the best cures for fanaticism is to have it inflicted on you when young.

Still, we shouldn't be surprised if some home-schooled true believer blows up a synagogue, chains a "mud-person" to the back of their pick-up and drags him to death or even kills our "mongrel" President. When fanaticism is applied to the young it sometimes sticks to their soul like super-glue.

For more on a related topic please visit: http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Charters.html

The Alleged Power of Higher Teacher Expectations

2011-06-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Educators are repeatedly told that raising their expectations is the key element in successful teaching. Students will learn more when they expect more.

At best this is political theater. At worst it is advise from nincompoops. More often than not, school failures are a consequence of bad school management, parental incompetence and economic injustice. If a school is persistently dangerous, for instance, how will higher teacher expectations remedy the educational consequences? And will higher teacher expectations cancel out the negative impact of cruel, uncaring or incompetent parents?

What about the fifth of all U.S. children who live in poverty? Will higher teacher expectations overcome its deleterious impact? Consider, for instance, that hundreds of thousands of U.S. youngsters literally don’t have a home to do homework in. On an average night in D.C., for example, 1,300 youngsters are in shelters for the homeless. If a teacher expects them to do their homework anyway, will that suffice?

No matter how elevated teacher expectations might be, learning still is stifled when children are scared, hungry, malnourished, abused, neglected, homeless, sick or enraged. In fact this "just raise you expectations" nonsense trivializes the misery that many children suffer in America. It also insults every teacher who already expects, or at least hopes for, as much as they dare.

Even if every teacher in America becomes a pollyanna, kids living in misery will still rarely see the point of learning to do algebra, appreciate Shakespeare, conjugate verbs, or balance chemical equations. In fact, some are too busy surviving to even learn to read.

Only numskulls expect quality schoolwork from desperate children. So let’s stop urging teachers to be stupid.

To further examine these and similar issues, see

Power Failure: Why U.S. School Reform Persistently Misses the Target

--- GKC

The "Highly Qualified Teacher" Farce

2011-05-31T06:29:00.000-07:00

The No Child Left Behind Act (“NCLB”) became law in 2002 “to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.” To that end the law mandates that all teachers must hold "full state certification" and be "highly qualified."

That sounds great, but what does it mean in practice? That depends on which side of Alice's looking glass you are on. In 2008 the Bush administration followed Alice through the mirror when they decided that tens of thousands of teachers in training, interns for example, were "highly qualified teachers." Then, ruling that black is in fact white, a federal court upheld that definition.

In other words, we are talking about rank beginners, students or recent graduates who are gaining, practical experience being highly qualified. In other words. Only in the Wonderland of public education could such jabberwocky be taken seriously.

It is some consolation that, in an uncommon turn of events, the three-judge panel reversed itself and invalidated the Bush adminitration's regulation. In effect, they ruled that whatever "full certification" may mean in a particular state, a teacher is NOT highly qualified before they have obtained it. But the Obama administration figured out a way to sidestep the court and has continued using the logically indefensible Bush definition of "highly qualified" as rank beginner.

in other words, the Obama administration is so dismissive of teacher quality as an issue in school reform that they are unwilling even to insist that public school teachers meet state certification standards that are undemanding to begin with. So Americans, particularly poor Americans, will continue to make do with teachers who often are so far removed from "highly qualified" that it is a joke.

For more such considerations please visit Highly Qualified Teachers: misgivings

Charter School Scandals

2011-05-30T16:43:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia is the site of nearly a dozen recent charter school scandals. Is the City of Brotherly Love just particularly fertile ground for such corruption? Or is this sort of thing common?

There are only 5,400 charter schools in the entire United States. But if we google “charter school fraud” it yields an astonishing 1,080,000 results. “Charter school scandal” triggers another 519,000 and “charter school corruption” 480,000.

Further investigation reveals a broad and deeply troubling nationwide pattern of charter school scandals. And we’re not talking about stealing chump change either. Well over $12 billion was spent on charter schooling in 2010; and a lot of larcenous people are wetting their beaks.

Here are a few examples of what's going on. In Houston Texas the Prepared Table Charter School had its charter revoked and four administrators (a pastor and three relatives) indicted on 26 counts including the embezzlement of millions of dollars in federal and Texas funds. Apparently the table was a little too well prepared in this case.

The Jesse Jackson Academy (with campuses in both Houston and Fort Worth) closed in 2008 when it was charged that school officials had misappropriated $3.2 million in federal funds.

In April the founder of the now defunct California Charter Academy, a chain of 60 charter schools serving 10,000 students around the state, faced 113 felony charges related to misappropriating $23 million in state and federal funds. The charges include 56 counts of grand theft, 56 counts of misappropriating public funds and 1 count of failing to file a tax return. He faces a possible 64 years in prison.

Another California Charter Academy official, who also is a California city councilman, faces 15 counts of grand theft, 15 counts of misappropriating public funds, counts of failing to file a state tax return and one count of filing a false a false tax return

An Islamic movement also has been charged with using their nationwide chain of charter schools to illegally finance the teachings of Turkish Islamic leader Tehuyllah Gulen with US taxpayers money. The FBI is investigating the GUlen schools for illegal use of education funds, criminal conspiracy, extortion and violation of immigration laws.” It is alleged that they have been laundering money through generous “consulting contracts” with Gulen front companies and sending it back to Turkey. The scheme is alleged to also feature prearranged salary kickbacks to the movement by 1,851.

This is just a representative sample of a nationwide Niagara of charter school corruption that is receiving insufficient attention. Most of it is a consequence of weak federal, state and local oversight. Greg Richmond, the President & CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers — an organization made up of the agencies that approve charter schools — testified to the House Committee on Education and Labor in February 2010 that:

“Over the past fifteen years, the federal government has allocated $2 billion to support the creation of new charter schools. … Yet during that same time, the federal government has invested almost nothing, less than $2 million, or one-tenth of one percent, to ensure that those schools are held to high standards and properly monitored by a competent authorizing agency. It is as if the federal government had spent billions for new highway construction, but nothing to put up guardrails along the sides of those highways.”

How has this slapdash approach to supervision come to pass? It has its primary origin with ideologically exuberant politicians who uncritically embrace the self-perpetuating worldview that free market economics is the only possible salvation for allegedly lousy “government” schools and everything else. Their conservative political beliefs have evolved into a self-sealing worldview that has its own gods, heroes, and myths. The central idea is that the cleansing fire of free enterprise, unfettered by regulations, is all that is needed to keep things in order.

Admittedly, an unknown number of these free market politicians aren’t really true believers. They just pretend to be to get the votes of those who are. But this doesn’t make any difference when it comes to casting their votes for the unregulated, prone to corruption, free market approach.

It's time to get back to reality. Let's cool the free market hype and crack down on charter school thieves by setting and enforcing high standards. And this should begin with the Obama administration. They too have fallen uncritically in love with charters. But they had better get the regulatory equivalent of a condom in place before they get too intimate.

Visit newfoundations.com for similar commentary.

Why Teacher Education is a Joke?

2011-05-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

Compared to what is required to enter any serious profession, teacher education is a joke.

A cursory comparison illuminates this reality. Let's match up the preparation of podiatrists with that of teachers. Before admission to a four-year college of podiatric medicine, potential feet fixers must complete at least three years of demanding pre-medical study at an accredited college or university and also score well on the rigorous medical college admissions test.

Should they be admitted they must satisfactorily complete two years of tough classroom instruction,in courses such as anatomy, biochemistry, biomechanics, pathology, pharmacology, and physiology. This is followed by two years of clinical training and practice. Graduates earn the degree of Doctor of Podiatric Medicine; but the majority continue their training for from one to four years in hospital residency programs.

Now let's take a look at teacher preparation. Aspiring teachers merely must complete high school and then gain admission to any one of the hundreds of colleges and universities, many of them third or fourth tier, that prepare teachers. Here they experience underfunded, weak kneed, undergraduate teacher preparation programs that serve as school cash cows. After their often weak-kneed course work there is a semester of student teaching with a supervising teacher whose primary qualification is their willingness to put up with it. Pass a couple of state required tests and a brand new teacher is born. Does this seem too demanding? Be of good cheer, there are alternative routes that require far less effort.

It's not that teaching is easier than podiatry. There is at least as much to be known about teaching, learning and human development as there is about bunions, hammer toes and plantar warts. As a matter of fact, there may be a good deal more to know. But we don't value our kids as much as we do our foot comfort . End of story.

See ”Teach for America" at Teach for America

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking

2011-04-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

There are more than 16,000 school districts in the United States and just about all of them boast that they foster ‘critical thinking. Check out school mission or vision statements, for example. Thousands include heart-warming affirmations like this one from the Lordstown, Ohio School District: “We believe in the development of critical thinking skills.” Then there is the Calvin Wiley Elementary school in North Carolina. They assures all and sundry that their vision, "is to engage in critical thinking and inspire lifelong learning for 21st Century success."

These, and the thousand. of others like them, are commendable commitments. But what would happen if school kids actually were taught to think critically? We're not talking about mere logic chopping here — the usual “these are the premises” and “this is a conclusion,” sort of thing. Such so-called ‘critical thinking’ is both harmless and useless because it rarely results in serious considerations of anything of consequence. No. by critical thinking we mean systematically reconsidering the deep assumptions that most of us take for granted. We also mean questioning basic authority — including sacred and semi-sacred documents and those who interpret them. When "critical thinking" fails to include that sort of things it is hardly thinking, much less critical.

Imagine encouraging kids to consider what would have happened if the American Revolution had never happened. We could ask them, "Would we still be a colony of Great Britain?" The obvious answer is no. No doubt we would have gone through the same process as Canada, New Zealand and Australia and today would have long been a fully independent nation. But try encouraging that critical thought and see where it gets you. Or suppose students were taught how to truly, seriously and boldly scrutinize traditional religious beliefs? We might encourage them to ponder, for instance, why a supposedly loving God permits so much physical suffering in the world. If God loves us, what's with things like hare lips, cerebral palsy and spina-bifida? This question of physical evil has engaged critical thinkers, including brilliant Christian ones, for a great many years. But should educators encourage this sort of critical thinking they would have to flee a rampaging mob of angry, torch-wielding villagers.

Some might argue that it isn't necessary to tackle such controversial issues head on in order to teach kids to think critically. They maintain that by teaching generic methods, learners will, sooner or later, bring these methods to bear on critical matters. This is a forlorn hope because all sorts of things can interfere with this sort of transfer of learning. If we really want young people to think critically, they must be provided with a direct, well focused and conspicuously relevant opportunity to do so. Teachers should just be prepared to find another job should when they do so.

See http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/ISMS.html for another dimension of this inquiry.l

CHARTER SCHOOL SWINDLES: RAIDING THE PUBLIC PURSE FOR FUN AND PROFIT

2011-03-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

Charter schools have become quite fashionable of late. Liberals even have joined conservatives in promoting them. But in what ways are charter schools actually better than traditional public schools?

Are charter schools better academically? No, they don’t consistently deliver superior results. Some do better than traditional public schools — at least as measured by standardized testing. But some traditional public schools also test better than some charter schools. In short there is no clear-cut winner.

We’re assured that charter schools better expose the public schooling process to the cleansing fires of competition. But what sort of competition? Charter schools operate with relative freedom while traditional public schools remain hemmed in by volume after volume of of government regulations? So competition between charter and traditional public schools is like a race between a free running and a hobbled horse.

Charter schools do offer more curricular variety than traditional public schools. But there again, traditional public schools are limited in what they can offer. Plus some of the variety allegedly offered by charter schools is bogus. What is one to make of inner city charter schools claiming to emphasize architecture and design, folk arts or global leadership, for example? In practice that surely amounts to very little. After all, a lot of these kids can barely read.

If over-regulation is the problem, why didn’t public officials first try easing their regulatory choke hold on traditional public schools and then decide if we needed charter schools? Maybe that was less attractive because it wouldn’t open the public purse to as many private interests — some of whom could be counted on for handsome campaign contributions or jobs for the worthless relatives.

We’re not talking about chump change either. More than $600 billion (Yes, well over a half a trillion dollars) is spent annually on public schooling. All sorts of people are eager to wet their beaks in this vast lake of public money and charter schools provide that opportunity. In fact, this is the one way in which charter schools are clearly superior to traditional public schools. They open the public purse far wider for private interests. That’s why the movement attracts a disproportionate share of bunko artists, flim-flamers, shady politicians and a host of their work-shy relatives.

All of these ner-do-wells are intent on mining the charter school mother lode by fair means or foul. An exaggeration you say? Then explain this: Google “charter school fraud” and you get 1, 080,000 results! “Charter school corruption” yields 480,000. “Charter school swindle” produces 67,300 results. Consider these astonishing numbers and then realize that there are only about 5,400 charter schools in the entire nation! Enough said?

For more on this subject visit http://www.newfoundations.com/Carpenter/SchoolChoice.html

Wicked Children

2011-03-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

Can children be wicked? That depends on what you mean by wicked. There are a variety of definitions; but let's keep it simple. We'll define wickedness as deliberately causing gratuitous pain or harm to others for personal pleasure.

Why do people do that? There is the orthodox Christian explanation that everyone, children included, has a fallen nature. Is that adequate?

Deficiencies in a child's family also are blamed. But kids who come from hellish families sometimes turn out kind and considerate and some seemingly nice families produce savages.

Some argue that no one actually chooses to be evil. Their behavior is simply the absence of good. Others offer a therapeutic explanation. What appears to be evil, they say, is really just heredity and environment combining to form a disorder that then is "acted out."

The problem with these explanations is that they fail to do the wickedness in the world full justice. Do Hitler, Himmler, or Eichmann, for example, represent the mere absence of good. Were Stalin, Beria, or Saddam Hussein simply acting out? Weren't at least some of these people consciously, knowingly, torturing and destroying people simply because they enjoyed it?

OK, adults do that, you say, but children? Perhaps you don't remember James Bulger? He was the two year old who was lured away from his mother in a Liverpool shopping mall by two ten-year-old boys. They then proceeded to bash James to death with bricks and leave him on train tracks to be run over. If this wasn't wicked, what is?

The fact is that every sadistic monster who ever existed once was a child. And when did they become evil? Did Jeffrey Dahmer, or John Wayne Gacey, or Ted Bundy, or Richard Speck or Gary Heidnik suddenly metamorphose into monsters when they became adults? That seems unlikely.

So are some children evil. Do they deliberately cause gratuitous pain or harm to others? Of course they do. And they enjoy it. The puzzling question is, why?

See more at The Demon Seed: are some children wicked?

-- GKC

What's Behind The War on Teacher Unions

2011-02-25T17:39:00.000-08:00

Remember A Nation at Risk, that Reagan-inspired denunciation of America's public schools. It charged that they were so bad they undermined our international competitiveness and endangering the entire nation.

This international competitiveness angle conceals another agenda. These overblown charges set the ground work for making hitherto public school money available to private interests and castrating teacher unions in the process.

The charter school movement is a second step in this process. Research reveals that, on average, charter schools are not any better than traditional public schools. But they do open the public purse to private business interests. Plus charter schools are notoriously hard to unionize.

Voucher plans are a third step in spreading public school money around and gutting teacher unions. Vouchers rip the public purse wide open for the fingers of private interests. Unrestricted by the modest government oversight visited on charter schools, privateer's ability to mine the public treasury is limited only by their imagination. With respect to gutting teacher unions, private schools are even harder than charters for unions to organize. This means the more vouchers the less unionized teaching will be.

Now to a fourth step of this process — killing off teacher's collective bargaining rights. Seizing on the sea of red ink created by the great recession, Republican politicians in numerous states, most notoriously Wisconsin, are trying to administer what they hope will be a death blow to teacher unions by eliminating their input into the terms of their contracts. If teacher unions have no input in this process, what's the point of joining?

These unions are a major source of support for public schooling. So weakening teacher unions furthers the disestablishment of public schools. Once that is accomplished more than five hundred billion dollars will be available for private exploitation each and every year. No wonder the foes of public education have been busy.

Sadly, both the unions and public school leadership set themselves up for these attacks. Faced with dehumanizing, top-down, factory style public school administration, union leadership gave in to the temptation of reacting like any other industrial union and forgot all about the kids. This short-sighted, if understandable, response has exacted an enormous cost in public sympathy and support that teacher union enemies are exploiting.

For their part, most public school administrators have yet to figure out that their actions provoked the union's folly to begin with. Far too often they still treat teachers with the sort of contempt and condescension that characterize labor/management relations in badly managed coal mines.

Meanwhile Republican attacks on teacher unions and public schooling amp up while businessmen and private school interests kick in campaign money and lick their chops in anticipation of ever bigger wads of tax payer dollars.

What about educating the kids? That's just a side show.

For more on this and related subjects visit http:///www.newfoundations.com

Why Top-Down School Reform Rarely Works

2010-08-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

One of the most critical aspects of the present wave of school reform is that would-be reformers don't bother to ask teachers what they think. Emboldened by their own ignorance and impelled by a desire to posture for the electorate, politicians concoct top-down changes then try to force-feed them to gagging teachers.

This condescending style of management dates back to the era when classroom teachers were long-suffering females and the power holders were self-satisfied males. Today this style is alarmingly bisexual. Consider Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of Education, Washington, DC. She is a top-down reformer par excellence.

Top down reform also used to be a right wing specialty. William Bennett, President Reagan's blowhard Clown Prince of Education, for instance, combined top-down reform with unrestrained teacher bashing. These days, however, progressives like Arne Duncan, our conspicuously untrained, but politically connected, Secretary of Education, has adopted it without reservation.

The chief problem with this heavy-handed approach is that it rarely works. As far back as the 1970's a Rand Corporation study clearly demonstrated that successful introduction of innovations requires voluntary, highly motivated participants.

Think about it. It is teachers who must implement these so-called reforms. And once they close that classroom door there are a thousand ways to resist ranging from inaction, through half-hearted implementation, to sabotage.

The perception that teachers stand in the way of needed reform is one motivation for imposing non-consultative change. But resistance to change is hardly distinctive to teachers. Resistance is an inevitable response to any major change in any organization.[3] And when those changes are being pushed on you by the same people who disrespect you and ignore your advice, resistance is not only more likely, but sensible.
Nevertheless, teacher resistance so frustrates policy makers that if they ever thought about soliciting teacher consent and cooperation, they think about it no longer. Instead they become ever more controlling, autocratic and disrespectful. They implement straight jacket policies, eliminate delegated authority, and ratchet up coercion via so-called "merit pay."

The trouble is such policies only increase the sort of frustration and anxiety that stiffens teacher resistance. Nevertheless, politicians exercise their power with complete disregard for its impact on teacher morale. In fact, they seem to have lost all concern for the actual consequences of their "reforms" on those who must carry them out. Perhaps these reformers can't imagine the negative state of mind their actions promote — much less the negative consequences they have on instruction.

One reason policy makers underestimate the need for teacher cooperation is that they are too far removed from classroom realities. Unilaterally imposed "reforms" might seem plausible when viewed from the Olympus of Capital Hill or the White House. Imposed change might even seem credible in the less rarified atmosphere of a state capital. But on the ground, at the classroom level, the top=down approach fuels opposition, lowers teacher morale, and decreases teacher effectiveness.

Sure teachers must be held accountable for being informed, caring and doing their best with the resources they command. But contemporary reformers are going way beyond that. They demand that teachers be miracle workers who must somehow nullify anything that impacts school achievement. Never mind what goes on in the home, on the street, in the community, the economy, or in the school in general. There are to be "no excuses." If a child fails in school it is ultimately attributable to a teacher! What humbug!

Teachers know from bitter experience that what the boss calls "excuses" are often well-founded explanations. And researchers have found that a major source of employee resistance to change is fear of failure in the new environment.[4] So what are the reformers doing? They are demanding that teachers embrace a change that literally allows no room for failure no matter what. Who wouldn't be fearful of that kind of craziness?

Arne Duncan and Teacher Education: Still More "Bullshit"

2009-12-19T12:29:00.000-08:00

Those who can do, those who can’t teach, and those who can’t teach, teach teachers.
—Anonymous

Teacher education has long been a low status activity, and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan isn’t making it any better. Lacking any professional preparation himself, Duncan nevertheless confidently asserts that many, if not most, of the nation’s teacher preparation programs are second-rate. He claims that they attract inferior students and weak faculty. He also charges that colleges and universities use them as “cash cows,” bleeding off the revenues they generate.

Politics, Not Logic
There is truth in Duncan's allegations. But at the same time he demands increased rigor in teacher preparation, Duncan also praises alternative “quickie” routes into teaching.

Logic demands that if teacher education lacks rigor, it must be made tougher, not easier. How shall we account for Duncan's illogic? The explanation is that Duncan holds a political office, and naturally prefers politics to logic. So let's forget his observation that: It’s no surprise that studies repeatedly document that the single biggest influence on student achievement is the quality of the teacher standing in the front of the classroom. For Duncan it's politics that takes first priority.

Mr. Duncan says he favors getting to the root of the nation’s educational problems. Time magazine, for instance, quotes him as saying,
It’s obvious the [educational] system’s broken. Let’s admit it’s broken, let’s admit it’s dysfunctional, and let’s do something dramatically different, and let’s do it now. But don’t just tinker around the edges. Don’t just play with it. Let’s fix the thing.
The trouble is, at least when it comes to teacher education, Duncan doesn’t follow his own advice.

Letting State Officials Off the Hook
Duncan conveniently ignores the fact that state governments set, and enforce, standards for teacher education. So if programs are lousy, Duncan’s primary quarrel is with state officials.

Duncan could use the big bag of non-earmarked money that the Obama administration is injecting into schooling as a means to compel those officials to raise teacher education standards.

Would state officials do a good job of improving teacher education? Probably not, but since Duncan is inordinately fond of top-down reform, his inattention to state responsibility suggests he isn't really serious.

Professional Education Schools
Also, if Duncan were not just “tinkering around the edges,” but truly serious about improving teacher education, he would advocate the complete abolition of undergraduate programs. In their place, he would demand graduate-level professional schools of education modeled on the training required by other established professions.

Consider what is required of aspiring physicians, attorneys, architects, optometrists, dentists, podiatrists, veterinarians, and chiropractors, for example. Entrance into any of these occupations requires selective, tough, graduate-level schooling in a specialized environment. To qualify for entrance, candidates first have to grow up, get a college education, and pass a tough examination.

In contrast, teacher education programs typically are mere undergraduate majors that must compete for student attention with other undergraduate requirements and campus social life. Most teacher education programs can’t even select their own applicants. They must accept anyone the university admits who declares they want to major in education. In consequence, teacher educators have to make do with many immature, unfocused, often marginally committed youngsters who aren’t developmentally ready for serious study.

By what magic is such raw material to be transformed into skilled, dedicated professionals?

Money Talks
Why the enormous difference between training in the true professions and in teaching? Is teaching easy? Just give it a try. Is there little to learn? Not the last time I checked. No, the reason those other occupations can charge a higher price for admission is because of the generous benefits that await graduates.

Forgetting his secret tape recorder was on, Richard Nixon once candidly observed, “Money talks and bullshit walks.” And Secretary Duncan emphasizes that sort of bullshit in his speeches. He specializes in fertilizer such as this:

There is no question that our country needs you. Our children need you.
[I]f you care about promoting opportunity and reducing inequality, the classroom is the place to start.
Great teaching is about so much more than education; it is a daily fight for social justice.
This call to teaching is the great public mission of our time. . . .[3]

Secretary Duncan goes on to say, “Put plain and simple, this country needs an army of great, new teachers.”[5]

What Duncan does not say is that this country is not about to offer sufficient rewards for teaching to attract many of the best and brightest, nor will it support truly professional preparation. In fact, Duncan's florid rhetoric indicates that the substantial benefits of teaching are slim indeed. That doesn’t mean that the symbolic benefits are unworthy, mind you, but in this materialistic society they don’t offer the same degree of motivation as money.

Warm Bodies
Given how we poorly we reward teachers and how enthusiastically we dump on them, professionalizing entrance requirements would cause the candidate pool to dry up. Then where would we find the roughly two hundred thousand new teachers per year that the United States will shortly need? Remember, it has been a long time since sexism forced nearly all the best and brightest women into teaching. Today’s competent women have many other options.

Conclusion
The truth is that America's politicos only pretend that they want high-quality teacher preparation. If they really wanted it they would not tolerate slack state regulation, ever-easier ways to enter teaching, and exploitation by short-sighted college officials. It's just that, given the current costs and benefits of being a teacher, it is absolutely necessary to make it cheap and easy to enter the occupation.

Of course, this slapdash approach creates many difficulties. But they can be dealt with by focusing still more blame on teachers and teacher educators. Duncan’s rhetoric provides a perfect example of this political sleight of hand.

What lies beyond Duncan's rhetorical smokescreen? In the end, it is more of the same old bullshit. We might as well still have William Bennett in the saddle. At least he offered comic relief.

In the end one can’t help but wonder if the Secretary of Education would encourage his own kids to become teachers. A quote from William C. Bagley comes to mind:

When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?[4]

To further examine these and similar issues, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

-- GKC

Psst! Hey buddy, Wanna Be A Teacher? Thoughts on Alternative Certification

2009-10-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

Back when there was a surplus of teachers, US politicians ignored the opportunity to toughen teacher preparation. Instead, they sat by while self-serving colleges graduated thousands of half-trained, half-committed, half-witted candidates in order to cash their parent’s tuition checks.

Now that there is a growing scarcity of teachers, however, state officials are rushing to weaken already wimpy teacher certification standards. Pennsylvania provides a particularly worrisome example. Pennsylvania's former Governor Tom Ridge, (You remember, he's the Homeland Security chief who advised us to use duck tape as a security measure.) declared that those who have a hankering to teach need only take a ten day summer seminar to qualify for a classroom of their very own. After no more than six credits of additional instruction in pedagogy they can be certified for life. How’s that for standards?

Ridge said he wanted to “…help local education agencies fill critical vacant positions in secondary or K-12 content areas with ‘outstanding’ candidates for eventual level I certification.” The truth is he wanted to fill teaching vacancies in the state’s educational wastelands with whatever warm bodies could be found.

He also wanted to weaken the state’s teachers unions, both of whom were smart enough to oppose his election.

Right-wingers, like Chester Finn, argue that thousands would jump right into teaching if they just didn’t have to expend any effort to first learn something about it. Besides, Finn asserts, kids taught by certified teachers don’t do any better on achievement tests than those taught by scrubs. Here’s what’s wrong with this argument:

• Research shows kids tend to do better when taught by certified teachers.

• So-called “achievement” tests are only one measure of a teacher’s success — and a weak one at that. We need only consider what they don’t measure to appreciate their limitations.

• Just because a teacher is certified doesn’t mean they have adequate preparation. Certification means little so long as state officials fail to enforce tough program approval standards and close down low quality cash cow programs that are used simply to generate tuition.

• You don’t get elite troops without tough training and you don’t get top-flight teachers with blue light special certification either. Requiring a candidate to prove their commitment and capabilities by surviving a tough training process is vitally important.

• Filling public schools with marginally committed, virtually untrained warm bodies destroys whatever hope teaching has of becoming a full-fledged profession. This neatly fits the political agenda of “conservative” politicians, but it undermines efforts to make schools better.

• However weak they presently are, most certification programs sort out at least some of the candidates who are lazy, uncaring, mentally unstable and so forth. God knows what kind of people will sneak through alternative certification processes like Ridge has instituted.

• Subject matter knowledge is necessary for teaching competence; but it is not sufficient. To be competent a teacher must also command a body of professional knowledge.

• Certification was introduced largely because teaching was bedeviled by patronage. Hiring was based on everything but professional competence. Without tough certification standards that’s where we’ll end up again. Political affiliation, religious preference or who your brother-in-law is will be what gets you a teaching job.

• Alternative certification and cash cow traditional programs demoralize those teacher educators who continue to care. It’s tough to continue to insist on quality when the governor himself doesn’t give a damn about it.

In fact, alternative certification and cash-cow programs threaten to drive demanding programs out of existence. Why spend a lot of time and effort qualifying for certification when there are far easier ways?

Debasing Education: Preparing Kids for the World of Work

2009-09-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

Recently I was involved in interviewing a candidate for Director of Graduate Teacher Education at my university. She was a twenty year administrative veteran of a big city school district and, more recently, superintendent of several different suburban districts.

During the interview she kept referring to schools preparing children for the world of work. After a while I began to wonder if she thought schools should do anything else. When I asked her about that she looked bewildered and said, "Like what?"

I suggested that perhaps schooling should have something to do with truth and beauty, for example. She frowned in disapproval and said that this sort of thing was up to parents or other non-school agencies. Then she added, "I seem to have a broader vision than you do of what education is about."

How she came to that conclusion I am at a loss to explain. But I am not at a loss to explain her commitment to the notion that schools should concentrate on preparing kids for the world of work. That ominously unimaginative priority has dominated every governmental education "reform" since A Nation At Risk. That was the sensationalistic Reagan administration sponsored 1983 report on American education which claimed our schools were so awful that if a foreign power had caused their deterioration it would be a cause for war. No Child Left Behind simply reiterates this report's alarming emphasis on schooling as a means of training internationally competitive workers.

This unimaginative goal fails to consider the unpatriotic nature of multinational corporations. They typically don't give a damn about the US or its workers. What they care about is profit. So if, say, the Vietnamese, sew shirts at less cost than US garment workers the jobs go to Vietnam regardless of how well schooled Americans are for the world of work.

Such an unimaginative goal also vulgarizes the proper ends of education. At its best schooling is not about improving international competitiveness. Schooling is about cultivating wisdom, it is about discovering what is universal in the human experience, it is about discovering that truth and beauty are more valuable than profit, and it is about learning how to assess value, not just price. Such transcendendent values must not be replaced with beating the Chinese at making widgits. In the best case, an exclusive focus on preparing school kids for the world of work will succeed only in creating more competitive barbarians.

Bootlicking and Teacher Merit Pay

2009-09-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

President Obama’s education agenda, which turns out to be George W. Bush’s program squared, has a particular feature that could have an unfortunate impact on teachers — merit pay.

Whenever I think about teacher merit pay I’m reminded of a situation that occurred when I taught seventh grade. Our school’s scarce audio-visual equipment was “stored” in the classroom of the principal’s favorite teacher. The practical consequence was that this teacher, we’ll call him George, had first claim on it— a privilege he routinely abused.

How did George become the principal’s favorite? It wasn’t that he was the most skillful teacher. He actually bored the kids half to death. His talent was boot licking. The man stroked the principal’s ego like Paganini bowed a violin. And since he taught nothing of consequence nor dared anything different, he never made waves. The principal loved him for that too. This is how George got the AV equipment, as well as choice assignments; and this is what would have won him merit pay if such a thing had then existed.

Yes, teacher merit pay could easily turn into bonuses for brown-nosers. And even if standardized test scores become the soul criteria, favoritism could still play a role in who gets the money. That’s because the principal’s favorites often end up with the easiest classes and particularly difficult kids are quickly reassigned to some less favored soul.

One doesn’t even have to be the principal’s favorite to gain such advantages. Sometimes being a secretary’s favorite will do. I personally know of a school secretary who annually let her favorite pick the kids she wanted in her class because the secretary was her friend and neighbor. The other same grade level teachers got, as one of them dejectedly put it, “the dregs.”

Will favoritism result in unfair competition for merit pay? It’s a good bet.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

The Christian Right and Abstainence-Only Sex Education

2009-08-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

As Governor of Texas, a born-again George W. Bush was unequivocal in his support for abstinence-only sex education. And when he became President he put the full weight of the federal government behind it, spending $1.5 billion trying to convince hormone-addled adolescents that self-denial was their only suitable standard of sexual behavior prior to marriage. The abstinence-only approach also encouraged, some say, “pressured,” teens to sign a pledge that they would remains virgins until marriage.

In order for schools to qualify for federal funding all other types of sexual and reproductive education, particularly those dealing with birth control and safe sex, had to be excluded from the curriculum. The use of contraceptives could be mentioned only to emphasize their failure rates — which often were grossly exaggerated.

An overwhelming majority of experts opposed the President’s program. In fact, abstinence-only education was officially criticized as unscientific and ineffective by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American College Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Health Association.

The general public also was opposed to the abstinence-only approach. Even at the height of Bush's popularity, a solid majority of the public did not support it. In fact, fully 82 percent wanted other methods of preventing pregnancy taught, and a surprising 70 percent supported teaching kids how to use condoms properly.

If the experts were so opposed, who supported it? Many social conservatives did. But the Christian right, particularly televangelists such as Jerry Falwell, John Hagee and Pat Robertson, were its most passionate champions. They used their nationally televised pulpits to recklessly, and often falsely, attack existing sex education programming and promote the total abstinence approach.

Pat Robertson’s fulminations were typical. In one broadcast, for instance, he said, "Sexuality is a sacred thing. It is the creation of human life, made in the image of God. …. It isn't just something where you hook up with this one and then you hook up with that one. But, that's the message. It is on college campuses. It is in these schools, and the educators are buying into it. If you want to fix some of this you'll stop the teachers from pushing that thing that was going on -- I think it was a program called SIECUS by Mary Calderone and it must have been 30 or more years ago that was free sex and the whole thing. That's Planned Parenthood's plan -- to have kids have as many babies as they can, then we can start sterilizing them."

Where did such reckless charges originate? They were "borrowed" from an earlier, and very successful, religious right campaign against sex education that began in the 1960’s. Reverend Robertson was just inaccurately repeating an old discredited con.

OK, so both experts and the public weren't behind abstinence-only — the Christian right was. But experts, even an overwhelming majority of experts can be wrong. So can the general public. Maybe the program actually worked.

No, it was a bust. Research clearly demonstrates that abstinence-only had no enduring effect on teen’s sexual behavior. As a matter of fact, teens who took the much
publicized virginity pledge not only had sex just as often as those who didn’t; they also engaged in more far-more-dangerous substitutes and protected themselves less often from disease and unwanted pregnancy.

The facts are that almost 75 percent of U.S. teenagers have had sexual intercourse before they reach age twenty. American teens under fifteen also are more likely to have sex, and with more than one partner in a year, than teenagers in Sweden, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. And the U.S. has the highest level of teen pregnancy of any developed nation—eight times higher than Holland and Japan, for example.

Disregarding these realities, Republican Party leaders adopted abstinence-only sex education as a component of their 2008 party platform. They also chose Sarah Palin, a particularly vigorous abstinence-only proponent, as their candidate for vice president. (Incongruously, Palin’s unmarried daughter was pregnant at the time.)

During the campaign the Republicans did their best to tap into America’s once-vast reservoir of sexual anxiety. A McCain TV ad claimed, for example, that Obama's “one accomplishment” as a congressman was a bill to teach sex education to kindergartners. But unlike previous eras in American history, this sexually sensational charge had little impact on voters. The Republicans lost in a landslide, and abstinence-only sex education went down with them.

The Obama administration’s first budget abolished almost all spending for abstinence-only, transferring the money to teen-pregnancy prevention instead. The director of the team that organizes White House domestic policy commented dryly that the sex education budget Obama sent to Congress, “reflects the research.”

Has ideologically inspired opposition to research-based sex education finally run its course? Is access to full and complete information about sexuality now broadly accepted as necessary for the nation’s youth? So it seems for the moment. But the US has a long history of sexual anxiety and repression, so only time will tell.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Imprisoning and Silencing America's First Sex Educators

2009-08-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

Remember how quickly Congress reacted to the Janice Jackson "wardrobe malfunction?" Lawmakers have long been hitching a ride on America’s sexual hang-ups. In fact, Congress began throttling sex education, and cutting off access to sexually related materials, in the 1870’s. That is when they joined forces with the notorious self-appointed sexual morals activist, Anthony Comstock.

Comstock was the founder of the highly influential New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. (Consider its apparent similarity to the present-day Saudi Commission for the Protection of Virtue and Suppression of Vice.) Blocking access to information about birth control was Comstock’s chief concern. He also wanted to stiffle information on abortion. And while he was at it, he also campaigned to stamp out “obscene” books including serious novels, “dirty” pictures, birth control devices, and so forth.

Comstock’s Society kicked off its activities by conducting vigilante raids on retailers; confiscating and handing over to the police, “bad books” and “articles made of rubber for immoral purposes and used by both sexes.” Then, emboldened by the success of this campaign, Comstock and his Society launched a national political campaign to criminalize sex education, sex toys, racy illustrations and “bad books.”

Their efforts were one hundred percent successful. In 1873 Congress passed, without debate, the Comstock inspired, Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use. Significantly, sex education, particularly as it pertained to preventing conception, was defined as obscene. Here is an excerpt from that statute:

Whoever … shall sell, or lend, or give away, or in any manner exhibit … or shall otherwise publish … or shall have in his possession, any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, … or instrument … of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, … shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court.

The law also specified that it was a serious crime to send such materials through the mail.

That last provision created a government job for Comstock because, when this legislation became law, he was appointed a special agent of the US Post Office with exclusive enforcement powers. He held this position, — in essence, America’s sexual morality czar — for the next 42 years.

As an agent of the government Comstock prosecuted anyone who provided information about birth control or who committed any of other sexual “offenses” involving the mail. Upon retirement Comstock boasted that he had successfully prosecuted more than 3,600 defendants and destroyed 160 tons of sexual materials.

He also provoked at least one famous suicide when feminist Ida Craddock killed herself rather than be imprisoned for sending sex education information by mail. Her suicide note reads, in part,

“I am taking my life because a judge, at the instigation of Anthony Comstock, has declared me guilty of a crime I did not commit -- the circulation of obscene literature. Perhaps it may be that in my death, more than in my life, the American people may be shocked into investigating the dreadful state of affairs which permits that unctuous sexual hypocrite Anthony Comstock to wax fat and arrogant and to trample upon the liberties of the people, invading, in my own case, both my right to freedom of religion and to freedom of the press."

Thus ended the life of one sex education pioneer. Hundreds of others ended up in federal prison. How far have we come since then? You decide.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Are Most Humans Beings Educable?

2009-07-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Certainly a great deal of human misery could be prevented if people could be taught to think more deeply and effectively. But is the common failure to do so a consequence of a lack of education as many suppose?

Perhaps,the real culprit is a widespread lack of capacity and/or inclination for learning. After all, in order for education to be a cure — much less a cure-all — for what ails the human condition the majority of humans must be capable of sufficient reason and understanding to be improved by that means. Plus, they must willing.

Suppose this is not the case? Suppose a great many humans, possibly even most humans, are not truly educable in any deep and abiding sense?

Is such speculation excessive? Perhaps it is; but consider the long-standing popularity of P.T. Barnum’s observation that “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Ponder also the durability of H.L. Mencken’s dictum that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Perhaps these and many similar observations are so durable because they are deeply rooted in reality.

This line of reasoning is heretical to those accustomed to the obligatory optimism that is so current regarding schooling. Nevertheless, there is evidence to support this more pessimistic view.

Consider, for example, that most Americans are more interested in how Michael Jackson died than the fact that we are are blithely destroying our own habitat, increasing our population at an unsustainable rate, and heating the globe to a potentially catastrophic level.

What are we to make of widespread indifference in the face of mortal threats to our very survival? Are they merely the result of inadequate education? Maybe so. But what if a very substantial number of humans, perhaps even a majority, are not educable?

Such folks are not necessarily stupid — though we shouldn't join the politicians in pretending stupid people don't exist. No,uneducable people may be too scared, mentally or physically ill, lazy, angry, or what have, to think deeply and effectively. Such people can only be trained.

What proportion of the population fits this description? Is it, say 10%? (According to the US Department of Education, this is the approximate total population prevalence rate of Americans who qualify for special education.) Is it really higher than that? You decide.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

HIDDEN FACTORS: What Competent Teachers Really Need to Know

2009-07-16T05:56:00.000-07:00

My first year of teaching I taught seventh graders. Things went reasonably well, except for one youngster who drove me to distraction. He did it by echoing me. I tried a variety of tactics to get him to stop, but to no avail. In fact, if I said, "David, please stop repeating me" he frequently would respond by saying, "Repeating me."

This behavior went on and on and it was having a disruptive impact on the class. Finally, having exhausted everything I knew about behavior management, I felt I had no choice. The school, which was in the heart of the Bible Belt, still subscribed to the "Spare the rod and spoil the child" principle. In fact, on the first day of school I found a paddle sitting in the chalk tray of my classroom. It was red with "El Diablo inscribed on it." When I asked the principal about it he told me that paddles were made by kids in wood shop and I should feel free to use it.

He did the same. A giant of a man with a misleading Gomer Pyle manner, he wielded a mean paddle himself. School legend had it that no one ever returned for a second treatment from him; and there was no doubt why. When he administered punishment the crack of his two handed paddle resounded throughout the halls and the school's biggest behavior problems left his office in tears. The net effect was an orderly school.

Anyway, after weeks of trying everything I could think of, I reluctantly said to David, "If you don't quit repeating me I'm going to have to paddle you." "Paddle you" David said quietly. With that I ordered him out into the hall for the administration of corporal punishment.

As required, I asked a neighboring teacher to witness punishment. At the sight of my witness David realized I was serious and dissolved into hysteria. "Oh my God, he screeched, "don't hit me!" I tried to quiet him by saying, "Come on David, take it like a man." But David squalled, "I'm not a man, I'm a little boy!" By the way, he was uncommonly small.

The commotion attracted a crowd — chiefly the kitchen staff from the nearby cafeteria. The janitor and some passing students assembled as well. As my colleague struggled to put David over his knee, David screeched for help from the Almighty. The cooks clucked in disapproval and looked at me as if I were a war criminal.

Embarrassed and deeply regretting my decision, I just gave David a light swat. But he reacted as if I had hit him full force with a cat-of-nine-tails. When I returned to the classroom with a sobbing David the kids looked shocked and frightened.

That was the end of corporal punishment for me. For a long time I felt that the chief lesson I had learned was that there were better ways to control behavior. But years later I discovered, quite by accident, that repetitions such as David's are a classic symptom of Tourrete's Syndrome — a psychological disorder three times more common in males than females and most often found in children. So there is a very good chance that I paddled David because he was ill. So the second lesson to be learned from this incident is that teachers had better know their business better than I did.

Clearly aspiring teachers should learn much more than they typically do about youngsters and what either empowers or impedes their learning. In other words, teacher training must transcend mere methods and require in-depth understanding of both learning and learners as well as possible abnormalities such as Davids. Lacking this knowledge, novice teachers will surely make damaging mistakes.

The shame of it is that teacher preparation is moving in the opposite direction. The "highly qualified teachers" requirement of No Child Left Behind has turned out to be a joke. To save money and find "teachers" for America's educational wastelands, many states are requiring less, not more, of future teachers. The financial savings this makes possible are obvious; the human costs are typically hidden. But they are real nonetheless.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Course Evaluations and Teacher DIsempowerment

2009-07-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

At sixty-seven years of age, I have survived good times and bad and have the scars to prove it. I have raised two children to happy, productive adulthood and stayed married to the same loving woman for forty-eight years. I have worked as a day laborer, a janitor, a night watchman,a store clerk, a barber’s apprentice, an Army officer, a seventh-grade teacher, and, for thirty-nine years, a teacher educator and author. Yet every semester I am required to submit to anonymous evaluations of my teaching by unripe undergraduates who frequently are more interested in partying and petting than in studying and learning. I should add that I don’t consider my faring well in these ratings as sufficient compensation.

To make matters worse, a disempowering ritual accompanies these evaluations. Professors are sternly instructed to distribute the evaluation forms and then to leave the room. They are not permitted to touch the envelope containing the completed evaluations. The last student finishing must seal the envelope, sign it on the seal, and hand carry it to the department secretary, who presumably is licensed to kill.

This humiliation is accomplished under the pretense that it is a course
evaluation, not an evaluation of the professor. But that fools no one.

Had someone asked me to evaluate my professors when I was in college, I would have thought they had taken leave of their senses. I knew, and my classmates knew, that we were green kids in the presence of full-scale adults who had accomplished a great deal more than we had. It was their business to do the evaluating. It was our business to try to learn — or at least pretend to.

Perhaps I knew my place better than most. As a teenager I apprenticed in my
dad’s barbershop, largely populated by tough, no-nonsense railroaders, coal miners and war veterans. I learned the hard way to be respectful of my elders. For example, I remember voicing an opinion on an adult subject only to have a grizzled railroader tell me that I reminded him of the barber's cat, "full of piss and wind." After that I kept my opinions to myself.

Professors might be able to learn something useful from “course” evaluations if they only knew which students wrote them. (After all, one doesn’t want to take a class-cutting dullard’s comments seriously; but the opinion of accomplished students are another thing entirely.) Unfortunately, student anonymity precludes the professor from knowing who is saying what, while it simultaneously teaches students to hold their tongues unless they can totally avoid responsibility for what they say.

Professors are generally not afforded the commensurate privilege of evaluating their chairs, deans, provosts, or presidents. And professors are almost always expressly forbidden from initiating communication with anyone on the board of trustee's. And all of thie pertains despite the fact that mature, experienced professors with expert knowledge are far better qualified to evaluate college administrators than immature. inexperienced and often strikingly ignorant youngsters are their professors.

Of course college administrators know full well that granting professors the power to evaluate them would disempower them as much as their present policies disempower the professors. Wisely, they are having none of that. What's sauce for the goose turns out, in this case, to be gall for the gander.

Sadly, student "course" evaluations are part of an emerging pattern of teacher disempowerment that is causing teachers at all levels to become more and more impotent. Yet, at the same time, teachers are being held more and more accountable. What a deadly combination. No wonder teachers are leaving the occupation in droves.

Things would change a great deal if faculty evaluations of college administrators served the same purpose that student "course" evaluations serve for the professoriate. Namely, as a gauge for the administrator's promotion and firing. But don't hold your breath waiting for that innovation.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Wardrobe Malfunctions, Murder and Children's Values

2009-06-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

Remember the reaction to Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction?” That one-second revelation created such a public furor that Congress, the FCC and the Supreme Court all got involved.

Most complaints about the incident emphasized that children were watching. Yet the average US child watches 8,000 murders on TV by the time they finish elementary school and this generates little public protest.

A glimpse of a breast is more damaging to children than watching thousands of murders? What is one to make of these priorities? What it points to is a moral cretinism that infests US culture. Objectively speaking only moral idiots think that murder as entertainment is tolerable while bare breasts are not. Yet, right now at least, such idiocy is pretty standard in America.

Sure, the argument is that kids know these TV murders are not real. And for normal kids at least, this is so. But what does a normal child learn by living in a culture that accepts murder as entertainment? And what do they learn about sexuality when a bare breast creates a national furor. They learn unworthy, fundamentally perverted values.

Preaching at kids does little to shape their values. Most of what shapes their sense of right and wrong is caught rather than taught That is to say, they absorb it just by living in a given environment. And what they are absorbing at the moment is unwise and unworthy of their promise.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Does Truancy Cause Social Problems?

2009-06-05T16:27:00.000-07:00

Like many cities, Trenton, New Jersey has a Truancy prevention program. The City, The Trenton Police Department and the Trenton Public Schools cooperate to conduct daily truancy sweeps. If a school child is found on the street, he/she are apprehended by the police and brought to the truancy center. Parents then are called to pick up their child.

The justification for this program is that truancy causes many social problems. For instance, the Trenton Truancy Prevention Program notes that
95% of juvenile offenders started as truants. It then adds that truants:

Are more likely to join a gang running the risk of disease, injury or death.
Are more likely than other children to use marijuana, alcohol and hard drugs.
Are more likely to become pregnant and drop out of school.
Are more likely to have a low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure.
Are more likely to be illiterate or have serious trouble reading.
Are more likely to engage in violent and criminal activities.

As regards the first point, 100% of juvenile offenders started out as babies. But starting life as a baby obviously does not cause a youngster to become a juvenile offender. And why should we assume that gang membership begins with truancy? It seems more likely that gang membership encourages truancy. The reasons kids join gangs are many and varied; but you can bet it rarely is caused by truancy. We might first take a look at broken families, for instance.

The same applies to using marijuana, alcohol and hard drug use. Sure truants might be more likely to engage in such behavior. But why assume truancy is the cause?

Are truants more likely to become pregnant and drop out of school? Probably, but here too truancy is an unlikely cause. Wanting to be loved is more likely. As to low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure. they seem likely causes of truancy, rather than the other way around.

How about illiteracy and serious difficulties reading? Is truancy the cause? Isn't it more more reasonable to think that kids with serious reading difficulties are truant out of frustration? And so far as violence and criminal activities are concerned, those things are caused by the same long-neglected social problems that also cause truancy: poverty, broken homes, violent neighborhoods, lack of legitimate economic opportunity, and so forth.

A cardinal rule of research is that correlation is not causation. In other words, just because A correlates with B it does not necessarily mean that A causes B. That's the error underlying all of the Trenton Truancy Prevention Program's assertions. Perhaps they know better. Maybe, in the end, all these bogus claims are nothing more than a defense of the truant industry. But in any case, their claims are bogus.

Given all the problems created in schools by unmotivated, disruptive kids, maybe it's better to give up on compulsory education. After all, we can drag them kicking and screaming to school; but we can't make them learn once they are there. That requires effort on their part.

Stupidity Is Not The Only Impediment to Reason

2009-04-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Stupidity is not the only thing, perhaps not even the main thing, that prevents intelligent reflection. Many individuals with considerable native intelligence cannot, or will not, engage in careful thought because they are too emotionally needy. In other words, they are not too dumb to think straight; they are too unloved, angry, scared, insecure, guilty, depressed, and so forth. Our prisons, for example, are overflowing with intelligent people who, for a variety of reasons, including childhood neglect and abuse, simply will not or cannot think deeply about the costs and benefits of their own behavior.

Additionally, many intelligent people willfully shut off their intelligence in order to gain psychological reassurance from one or another true belief. The folks who joined Jim Jones's People's Temple, the Koresh's Branch Dravidians or Bo and Peep's Heaven’s Gate cult, were not necessarily stupid. Their emotional needs may simply have gotten the better of them, causing them to willingly put intellectual blinders on.

As a matter of fact, there are entire sub-cultures within generally more enlightened cultures that willfully reject learning in order to preserve key beliefs The Amish are a clear-cut example. Reason and understanding are effectively ruled out of key aspects of member’s lives in return for community and religious certitude. Many other religious sub-cultures, some quite large in numbers, also fit this description.

Culture itself can be another barrier to reason. Some cultures facilitate reasoning by providing rich resources for reflection, but others stifle it. After all, many cultures never experienced an enlightenment. Fine native intelligence can be smothered in the cradle by pre-enlightenment social surroundings.

Let us also not forget good old-fashioned laziness. Some folks avoid thinking simply because it takes effort and can generate discomfort. It isn’t that they can’t think; they just refuse to think. They are, in affect, bone idle when it comes to exercising their mind.

We also should not assume, as many do, that increased schooling necessarily equals improved reasoning and understanding. Too often schooling is less about reasoning than it is about conformity and the mere mastery of technical skills. Consider the scientists who eagerly apply their technical competence to the creation of unimaginably vicious weapons. Is the man or woman who applies their knowledge of biology to perfect a vaccine-resistant plague virus, for instance, really reasoning the thing through as well as they should?

And what evidence is there that the average MBA or Ph.D. degree holder, is more reasonable or thoughtful than those who are less well schooled? Sure, they have hopefully mastered a range of techniques, but can they think more deeply and well? Consider Lyndon Banes Johnson’s top staffers. They were supposed to be “the best and brightest” minds of that era. There was Secretary of Defense Robert Strange MacNamara, B.A. U.C. Berkely, M.B.A., Harvard; Special Assistant to the President McGeorge Bundy, Groton, Yale and Harvard; and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford and U.C. Berkeley, for example. And what did these well schooled can-do guys accomplish? They bogged us down in a loosing ten thousand day war in Vietnam. Forty eight thousand Americans died; another three hundred and four thousand were wounded and many more were psychologically maimed for life. In fact in the five years following the war there were an additional nine thousand suicides resulting from wartime trauma. On top of all this there were an appalling 5.1 million Vietnamese casualties. Not to mention that one hundred and eleven billion dollars was wasted and America was torn apart domestically. Does that sound like the work of men with superior reasoning?

More recently we have the example of George W. Bush, perhaps the most clueless President in living memory. Yet he has a B.A. in history from Yale University and a Harvard M.B.A. Were his reasoning and understanding improved in consequence of this schooling?

What percent of the general populace has the innate capacity to be think things through in the sense we’ve used it here? Many. What percent of them actually use it? Far fewer.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

100% Americans Censor Textbooks

2009-04-13T08:07:00.000-07:00

One hundred percent Americans usually are the very first to ignore the most fundamental values of the Constitution. Consider that, for many years, the American Legion, a self-proclaimed first priority guardian of the Constitution, searched schoolbooks for un-American content, and then whipped up witch-hunts against bewildered educators who had adopted books the Legion’s censors didn’t like.

The Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization “dedicated to promoting patriotism, preserving American history, and securing America's future through better education for children,” also censored textbooks. In fact, in the 1960’s they published a “Textbook Study” listing a disquieting total of 170 books that they deemed unfit for the nation’s youth. The hyper-patriots at the DAR, charged that these offending e texts “described the U.S. as a democracy rather than a republic” and “emphasized the Bill of Rights rather than the Constitution.” One hundred percent Americans often worry about overemphasizing democracy and the Bill of Rights.

Such attacks haven't gone away. Textbooks are routinely criticized for their un-Americanism by everyone from home-brewed schoolbook review websites to right wing pundits at Fox News.

Faced with such complaints, state school authorities and local school boards typically grant them deference. It seems public servants are often reluctant to challenge the legitimacy of these complainant’s convictions or their self-serving interpretation of Americanism. Instead they treat the most ludicrous complaints with earnest attentiveness, thus exposing educators to insult and intimidation. These folks need to toughen up and tell our native-born Taliban where to get off. But, given the nature of the beast, such courage seems unlikely. -- GKC

See also Education for Democracy: is this more than rhetoric?

True Believers Target Educators

2009-04-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

A few years ago a suburban school district was the site of a memorable incident. A 10-year-old boy, ostensibly protesting the presence of costumed witches and demons in his public school’s Halloween parade, declared he was going to march as Jesus — complete with white robe, paper crown and twig crown of thorns.

The boy’s mother, host of a local gospel radio talk show, claimed that the principal told her son to forget the Jesus costume and instead parade as a Roman emperor. The principal claimed that a meeting with the youngster and his mother resulted in a mutual decision that the boy would parade as a contemporary of Jesus.

The mother took the matter to Federal Court, charging that the district had attacked freedom of religion. She added that the district was giving unbridled discretion to school officials to suppress free speech. A self-described Christian conservative organization backed the mother’s suit, claiming that it “Defends the right to hear and speak the Truth.” (Note it is “the Truth,” not “our truth.”)

Before deciding the merits of the mother’s case, one should first ask: “Whom would Jesus sue?” After all, it was he who advised his followers thus:

“You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile,] carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow."
- Matthew 5:38-39

Why do so few self=professed Christians take this absolutely clear injunction to heart? Are they hypocrites professing beliefs and opinions that they do not actually hold? Are they befuddled and honestly fail to recognize that they simultaneously hold, and selectively act on, incompatible beliefs. Maybe they confuse their own desires with those of the almighty. Doubtless some are bunko artists looking to mine other people’s religiosity for money, status or fame. Still others might be mentally ill. But whatever the origin of their behavior, such individuals are dangerous. For what they lack in truthfulness, clarity, insight, honesty or mental health, they make up for in unscrupulousness or narcissistic conviction that their 'holy' end justifies most any means. Thus does religious dogma become synonymous with personal peculiarity, criminality or pathology.

Why should educators care about this sort of thing? Because religious true believers regularly target teachers, principals and superintendents, that’s why. Who better for these folks to stick a bull’s eye on than relatively powerless public educators?
Compounding this vulnerability, local school boards often grant serious regard to these hypocritical, opportunistic, narcissistic, befuddled, self-righteous or just plain crazy individuals.

Americans get along as well as they do by generally holding their tongue about their fellow citizen’s most deeply held beliefs. Most of us understand that doing otherwise destroys community. But such civility lends inadvertent cover and misplaced authority to the hypocrites, narcissists, numskulls, fools, knaves and scoundrels who misrepresent, or mistake, their own agendas for the teachings of Jesus.

The End of Ignorance?

2009-04-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that no one is ignorant anymore? They're just part of the "low information" crowd. The folks who voted against Barrack Obama because he is a Muslim, for example, weren't ignorant. They were just low on information.

Note how delightfully nonjudgmental this is. No one is ignorant, they're just less informed. It's like being left handed as opposed to right handed!

We seem to have forgotten that ignorance, unlike congenital stupidity, is an achieved trait. Sure, the ignorance of the mentally incapacitated is due to diminished capacity. But what about a person of normal intelligence who, for example, still insists that Saddam Hussein was in league with El Quaeda and in possession of weapons of mass destruction? Given decisive evidence to the contrary, such ignorance is entirely their own handiwork.

The politically correct would have us believe that ignoramuses have disappeared. Such folks are just low on information. The next thing you know "less informed" will be out and "differently informed" will be in. Think the earth is a mere 6,000 years old? Well that's just as good as any other age. It all depends on how you look at it.

How far shall we take this nonsense? Has personal responsibility been removed from our lexicon? And what about the implications of this rampant political correctness for schooling? Don't even ask. -- GKC

For similarly irreverent ruminations and lots of other interesting stuff on education visit www.newfoundations.com

Why Not Cheat?

2009-04-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

When it comes to schoolwork, why not cheat?
Essentially, there are two sorts of reasons. The first involves looking out for number one. The other has to do with doing the right thing. Let’s examine them both.

Looking Out for Number One
If you are smart, you won't cheat because the potential costs far outweigh the likely benefits. This is not a moral argument. The point here isn’t that cheating is wrong, though it is, it’s that cheating isn’t smart.

Sometimes students cheat because they don’t realize the seriousness of the consequences if they get caught. Don’t make that mistake. Few things enrage educators more than cheating and they often take serious measures against students who are guilty of it. They include:

• Double weighted zeros on the test or assignment
• An informative phone call to parents
• Course failure
• A letter of reprimand in the student’s permanent record
• Compulsory community service
• Expulsion from a program
• Expulsion from school

Another selfish reason for not cheating is that it stifles the development of the cheater’s own human potential. In other words, cheaters cheat themselves of their own possibilities as persons. That’s pretty basic.

Here is a final selfish reason not to cheat. Often it only postpones the inevitable. Let’s say you cheat your way through a math course. Your lack of actual skill will typically catch up with you in the next math course. In other words, cheating usually only postpones the inevitable. Plus, as time goes by, the odds that you will be able to keep cheating your way through get slimmer and slimmer.

Ethical Arguments
The Judeo-Christian tradition offers one well-known ethical argument against cheating. “Thou shalt not steal,” states the commandment. And since you are getting a grade you didn't earn, cheating is stealing.

An additional ethical argument against cheating is that it produces unfair and unjust consequences. Justice requires that each person gets what he or she deserves. Sometimes deciding what people deserve isn’t easy. But that's not the case with a cheater. He or she didn’t do the work and their honest classmates did. Therefore, the cheater doesn’t deserve the same grade.

A further ethical argument against cheating is that it involves using others to advance a personal goal without regard for their rights as human beings. People aren't things and should not be treated as if they were.

Finally. in deciding what is morally right it's helpful to consider the total good that will come from our action as well as the total harm. With cheating, the total harm outweighs the good. What is more, honest effort provides greater benefits to a greater number. Therefore, cheating is wrong.

Summary
You’ve seen there are two kinds of reasons not to cheat. The first involves looking out for number one. The second involves ethical considerations of right and wrong. The combined force of both arguments suggests cheating is a bad idea.

Psychological research reveals that when people have a chance to reflect on a moral issue, they are much more likely to behave in accord with their consciences. Give yourself that opportunity.

CAN EVERY CHILD LEARN?

2009-03-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

The key element in teaching success isn't technical skill, or more resources, or smaller classes; the key to success is higher expectations. Teachers will get more if they expect more. The mantra to chant daily is, “Every child can learn.”

That’s the tune that a lot of people are dancing to these days. A remarkably diverse assortment of governors, national and state legislators, educational entrepreneurs, school superintendents and ordinary, right thinking Americans all assert “Every child can learn.” In fact, this overworked and under considered motto is a ubiquitous as dog doo on the public green.

Ignoring definitive research that points to non-school factors as key to school success or failure, those embracing this mindless motto dismiss the idea that “schooling failures" are largely a symptom of social failures. Do they honestly believe that positive thinking can cancel out the educational consequences of a fifth of all U.S. children living in poverty. Do they honestly believe that positive thinking can defeat the problems that cause infants born in US inner cities being less likely to survive than babies born in the “third world.” Do they honestly believe that positive thinking can save the education of hundreds of thousands of U.S. youngsters who literally don’t have a home to do homework in. (On an average night in D.C., for instance, 1,300 youngsters are in shelters for the homeless.)

Any fool can see that such beliefs are humbug. The plain fact is that “every child’s” learning is stifled if they are homeless, abused, malnourished, and way past angry. Sure they can learn to stay away from Mom when she’s high or to keep out of the way of Mom’s boyfriend when he’s looking for someone to abuse. But most kids living in misery can’t, or won’t, learn to do algebra, appreciate Shakespeare or conjugate verbs. Some won’t even learn to read. They’re too busy trying to survive.

Only a numskull really expects quality schoolwork from children in such situations. So let’s quit pretending that positive thinking will make the difference and face the ugly fact that social problems erode school effectiveness all across America.

To further examine these and similar issues, see
Power Failure: Why U.S. School Reform Persistently Misses the Target

--- GKC

Why Educational Leaders Always Fall Short

2009-03-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

Here is the skinny on educational leadership. No matter how good school leaders are, they can never be good enough. America's diversity generates immutable disagreements regarding what schools should teach and how they should teach it. The only way to generate consensus is with vague slogans — for example, "Every school a good school!"Since we don't agree on what these slogans mean, however, implementation quickly bogs down in endless disagreements.

What individuals want from schools and school administrators changes with their circumstances. In certain situations they want schools that are temples and educational leaders who are moral leaders — high priests of rectitude and knowledge. In other circumstances they want schools to be business-like and school administrators to be executives or production managers. In still other circumstances they want schools to be town meetings where policies and procedures are subject to negotiation, politics, and compromise and administrators are arbitrators mediating disputes.

Even the most gifted administrators finds such different roles very difficult to play. And if they must be played simultaneously, it becomes impossible.

A school administrator's troubles do not end there either. Irreconcilable organizational conflicts also are built into school leadership. To the extent that school leaders exercise power, they undermine morale. To the extent that they follow policy, they must ignore individual differences. To the extent that they pursue authorized goals, they must limit their subordinates discretion. In short, school administration involves a series of difficult and unclear choices. What does all this imply? That a school administrator's job performance will inevitably fall short of many people's expectations.

Many educational pundits imagine that school administrators can be miracle workers — pedagogical shamans who magically reconcile competing expectations for schools and schooling through the purity of their motivations and the force of their will.The literature on "transformational" school leadership, for example, is replete with solemn assurances that visionary change agents, expert at dealing with complexity and ambiguity, can successfully convince everyone to serve goodness, righteousness, duty, and obligation.

This is pure humbug —just more of the wishful thinking that too often substitutes for thought in education. And for a wide variety of reasons, it's dangerous to expect educational leaders to achieve the unachievable. The best any school administrator can hope for is partial success. Sometimes, however, that can make the needed difference.

To examine these and similar issues further, see http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/MoralLeadership.html

What's "Special" About Special Education?

2009-03-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

America’s public schools (and parochial schools for that matter) are factories. Mass schooling’s enormous scale requires processing the most students at the least cost.

Cutting costs requires an emphasis on efficiency, rather than community, individuality, or even moral principle. Thus the desolate truth is that the broad mass of school kids are, and always have been, processed like so many cans of soup.

Consider the “school plant” as it’s revealingly called. Signs of its factory-like nature are everywhere. It has numbered rooms in repetitive order, mail boxes uniformly arranged, sign-in sheets or time clocks, a daily inventory (roll) of the “raw material,” buzzers that set things in motion or bring motion to a halt, chairs in ordered ranks, children segregated by age and teachers by function, and an “office” that commands in metallic tone via the P.A. system. The whole thing reeks of the repetitive, impersonal but efficient monotony of a factory.

Yes, competent teachers group kids by skill level, teach lessons that exploit various kinds of intelligence, capitalize on interests, that sort of thing. Such “accommodations” are what makes some factory schools better than others. But in the end mass schooling is still factory-like because limited resources demand efficiency.

What about kids who are so "different" they can't be mass processed. In the "good old days" children who held up production were “exempted” from compulsory school attendance . Later, youngsters too out of the ordinary for efficient processing were only removed from the assembly line and placed in “special” classes. Now federal law requires that "special" children be placed in the least restrictive environment possible. In other words, put back on the assembly line. The trouble is how to do this and still maintain efficiency.

Making matters worse, the very same politicians who order inclusion fail to fully fund it. Yet they assure the public that no child will be left behind and press relentlessly for more and more high stakes testing. This places educators in an impossible situation. They must leave no child behind. They must turn no child away. They must place every child in the least restrictive environment possible. Test scores must get better. But don’t ask for more resources or smaller classes because there’s no more money. Thus, factory type schools are the only option. This is a no-win situation no matter how you look at it. Is it any wonder that teacher attrition is scandalously high? Is it a surprise that enthusiasm for school administration is drying up?

Ultimately, the difficulties “special” children create for factory schools are unresolvable. Such kids inevitably slow production. That’s why these kids are labeled “special” to begin with; the school as factory can’t process them.

This is what is special about special education? It’s the one aspect of public schooling that isn’t factory-like. It’s the only place in school where individual differences really matter. But inclusion requires that more and more "special" kids be put back on the assembly line. Hence, the factory becomes loses efficiency and special needs go largely unmet. Is that what inclusion advocates want? Well, it’s what they’re getting.

To further examine these and similar issues, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Ya Can't Pick Boogers With Gloves On

2009-02-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

There are public schools in Philadelphia that have a daily absentee rate of 20%. That means 1/5 of the youngsters are absent on any given day. Nevertheless, their teachers are held to account when these same kids score poorly on high stakes tests.

It is plainly ridiculous, even Kafkaesque, to hold educators accountable for failing to teach children who are absent from school. Nevertheless, this is precisely what is happening.

Then there are the thousands of children who are physically present, but emotionally and intellectually absent. Instead of focusing on learning, they are wondering where their next meal is coming from or if they will be homeless tonight. Others fear Mom is going to be "entertaining" another guy, get high again, or end up beaten half to death by her abusive boyfriend. Still others worry that they are going to be assaulted or killed by a gang, or are too depressed or angry to even care about school. And a few are making far to much money selling drugs to be bothered.

Then too, some schools are so poorly managed that learning and teaching are impossible. Some "educational leaders" fail to back teachers in matters relating to order and discipline, for instance, and the school is a scary mad house. No one, no matter how skilled or determined, can learn or teach in the midst of chaos. Nevertheless, this is what is being demanded.

It's not as if these impediments to learning are invisible. They could not be more obvious. Yet no allowances are made when the politicos enforce teacher "accountability." Instead teachers are held to account for learning failures that they have no means to control.

There is no surer way to demoralize and embitter a caring teacher. There is no more effective way to drive the best and the brightest out of teaching.

Faced with such nonsense, kids usually tune out and turn off. But teachers generally put up with it. Perhaps they feel powerless and are demoralized to the point of inaction. Maybe they have bought the total "accountability" nonsense and blame themselves. It's hard to tell. But what isn't hard to tell is that holding teacher's feet to the fire while ignoring anything and everything that stifles learning is damned foolishness.

No one should be held accountable for things they can't control. As my life-hardened Granny put it, "Ya can't pick boogers with gloves on."

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

The Ultimate Silliness: Holding Teachers Accountable For Kids Who Aren't There

2009-01-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

In the School District of Philadelphia's public high schools absenteeism averages nearly 20%; and the 14 worst high schools average nearly 30%.1 That means almost 1/5 of high school youngsters are absent on any given day. And we aren't even counting the large number of kids who come in an hour or more late. Yet their teachers are held accountable when absent kids score poorly on high stakes tests. Indeed, the entire school is held to account by No Child Left Behind.

NCLB requires that states and districts include at least 95% of all students, (including the disability subgroup) in assessment results in order to meet the accountability requirements. The 5% is supposed to allow for absenteeism and other events not under the school’s control."2

Plainly, the law presupposes that no more than 5% of the youngsters in any school will be chronically absent. Yet the earlier noted 30% absentee rate alone gives the lie to this. The fact is that there are many schools where this 5% allowance for intervening variables is so low as to be laughable.

1/ http://www.thenotebook.org/editions/2005/fall/Page_15_F05.pdf

2. Accountability for Assessment Results in the No Child Left Behind Act, National Center on Educational Outcomes, http://cehd.umn.edu/nceo/OnlinePubs/NCLBdisabilities.html

When Should Teachers Lie?

2009-01-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

Imagine a high school science teacher being asked about evolution by a youngster from a religiously conservative family. The student might say something like this: “My church teaches, and my family believes, that the earth is just 6,000 years old. But the text claims that the earth is nearly 800,000 times older. What am I to think?”

Clearly the claim that the earth is a mere 6,000 years old lacks scientific credibility, and our teacher knows it. How, then, should he or she respond?

Here are some possibilities. You decide how our teacher might best respond and still honor her profession.

1. “A 6,000 year old earth is not supported by scientific evidence.”
2. “The Biblical account might best be understood as an allegory.”
3. “Which account do you think is more credible?”
4. “That’s a question for your parents and pastor.”
5. “If you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, it is - for you.”
6. “Your parents and pastor are correct.”

Answer 1 is the unvarnished truth, 2 offers an alternative, and 3 begs the question. Regarding 4, the student knows what his parents think; he wants an answer from the teacher. Answer 5 is evasive, though it’s possibly wise. Response 6 is a lie, pure and simple. Which of these responses can our high school instructor choose and still properly call themselves a teacher?

Given teachers’ compensation and often shoddy treatment, it might be naïve to expect them to take risks for honesty’s sake. But you’re not asked to decide what is prudent here. You’re only deciding what this teacher must do to remain true to the essential nature of teaching.

Does anything change if we reduce the grade level? Let’s take this inquiry to first grade. Six-year-olds frequently ask their teacher if Santa Claus is real. Here are some possible responses.

1. “No, Santa Claus is not real.”
2. “Santa Claus represents the spirit of giving.”
3. “Do you think Santa is real?”
4. “That’s a question for your parents.”
5. “If you believe in him, he’s real for you.”
6. “Certainly he’s real — I’ve seen him myself.”

Which of these answers can our teacher give without betraying his calling? Can you think of a better one?

A wide range of vital topics are shunned or rendered harmless by educators wishing to avoid becoming the target of no-nothing parents, civic “activists,” opportunistic politicians, or self-appointed guardians of public morality. What inevitably suffers are truth and relevance. This is why public schooling is often devitalized, immaterial, and boring. This also is how teachers become irrelevant, neutered apologists.

Admittedly, one person’s truth is another’s foolishness. Nevertheless, education without candor is no education at all. Moreover, a teacher’s character, including his or her honesty, is what students remember after they’ve forgotten everything else.

Notes
1. “College Suspends Ellis for War Lies.” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 18, 2001, p. 4.
2. “California Children See How a Steer Is Slaughtered.” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 2001, p. 6.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

School House or Mad House: Reconsidering Corporal Punishment

2009-01-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

Educators and other school officials have a non-negotiable obligation to maintain a safe school in which those who want to can learn. This is an irreducible minimum which must take precedence over well-intentioned efforts at social reclamation, racial pride building, AIDS prevention, or whatever.

This means that serious disruptions, bullying, extortion, and predation, must not be tolerated under any circumstances. If this can be accomplished without administering corporal punishment, so much the better. After all, the physical punishment of children has weighty opposition. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers all oppose or strongly discourage corporal punishment of children and the United Nations has initiated a world-wide program to eliminate it.

But what if educators with thirty plus impoverished kids per class do not command the resources necessary to maintain order without this option? For 6000 years such punishment was readily, available. Make other kid's lives miserable or learning impossible and it would cost you a red behind. These days, most school districts, even entire states have ruled this consequence out.

What has taken its place? Sermonettes, ineffectual detentions, forced transfers, or trying to teach the malefactors conflict resolution techniques. Unfortunately, the recipients of these remedies typically continue to lay waste to everyone's safety and learning.

Suspension is the worst that usually happens to school kids who specialize in making other people's lives insufferable. For many kids this sanction is a joke — time off to run the streets. With corporal punishment banned by people who escape the price of its banning, school officials command few if any sanctions that impress hooligans. As one young hoodlum assured a more novice delinquent in the presence of a Philadelphia teacher friend of mine, "Don't worry, they can't do shit to you here."

Sure, corporal punishment might well damage children thus corrected. It also might encourage them to think that might makes right or that violence is the best way to resolve conflicts. (They probably think that anyway.) But even if it always damages aggressors in one way or another, that, by itself, is not decisive until the rights and safety of others have been factored in.

Put simply, educators absolutely must nor forget about the rights of victims. Children who are being subjected to merciless bullying, for example. Don't they have rights and feelings? Remember, children are compelled to attend school by force of law, and that means that they have an absolute right to safety once they are there.

Teachers have similar rights. They must be free of the threats and assaults of disturbed or malevolent youngsters; and sociopaths, whatever the origins of their behavior, must not be permitted to destroy lessons much less the peace and happiness of others. And for this to happen, school officials must command meaningful sanctions that tough kids respect.

In the best of all possible worlds, corporal punishment would never have to be inflicted on anyone for any reason. And much can and should still be done to make schooling more palatable and more effective for a broader range of kids. This would reduce misbehavior. But the world is far from perfect, school resources are strictly limited, order is absolutely necessary for reforms to take hold and the right of the innocent to safety and security must take precedence. Meaningful penalties, then, still are required.

Is corporal punishment the answer? Is it the only practical way to make inner-city schools safe places where kids can learn. If so, it must be scrupulously fair and carefully controlled or abuse is guaranteed. But let's reiterate the main point. Without meaningful sanctions of some sort incivility and social predation simply take over.

It is sadly certain that present day sanctions are so weak that they insure that good kids, kids who want to learn, are being compelled to attend mad houses rather than school houses.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Tougher Teacher Preparation: The Most Essential Step Toward Better Schools

2008-12-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

“When one considers in its length and breadth the importance of a nation’s young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous inertia with which (education) is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage”

Alfred North Whitehead
The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1929) p.22.

Really want to improve American schooling? Here is the first and most essential step. Recognize that better teachers are the key ingredient for improving our schools; and wake up to the fact that nothing, or at least nothing good, will happen until we strengthen their preparation.

How can this be done? Most undergraduates are too immature, ignorant and unmotivated for serious teacher preparation. What is required is thorough professional preparation in a post-graduate professional school similar to that required of lawyers, medical doctors, veterinarians, opticians, and podiatrists. In other words, make teacher preparation similar to that of trades we really care about.

This is no pipe dream. Advances in the teaching knowledge base make it possible to transform teacher preparation into a meaningfully rigorous and truly empowering process. But instead of exploiting this opportunity, state and federal officials have been fostering lax, disempowering short cuts into teaching.

Not content with the already slap dash preparation offered in undergraduate schools of education, thirty-eight states also offer so-called alternative certification programs as well. Most of these programs are so undemanding they do little or nothing to eliminate incompetence. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, these short cuts are set up to license “teachers” on the cheap.

If our politicos were really serious about improving the nation’s schools, they would forget about quickie teacher preparation alternatives; close marginal teacher preparation programs at profiteering colleges who specialize in cut-rate certification; and simultaneously set up graduate level professional schools of pedagogy that feature demanding entrance and graduation requirements.

Remember, it took guilds, with their rigorous training, to build enduring masterpieces such as Europe’s great cathedrals. Master glass workers or stone masons certainly didn’t invite “creative, idealistic and enthusiastic” people in off the street, as politicians do with teaching, to try their hand at stained glass or stone carving. They were unrelenting in their apprenticeship requirements and the results speak for themselves. We need a similar approach in teacher preparation.

Sadly, too many public officials have a hidden agenda that is inimical to quality teacher preparation. They want to increase the supply of teachers by cheapening certification requirements. That drives down salaries and cuts the cost of government.

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that higher salaries would have to be paid for highly trained, deeply committed teachers who really command the skills of their trade. And the average American simply isn’t willing to dig deep enough into their pocket to pay this tab. So there is little political benefit in supporting more rigorous requirements.

What is more, if the people entering teaching are less knowledgeable and less committed to the profession, it weakens teacher unions — a prime goal of Republican politicians whose election bids are routinely opposed by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

What needs to be done is obvious. What is equally obvious is that this is not going to happen any time soon. So, in the meantime, our politicians will keep messing about with high stakes tests, charter schools and any other 'remedy' that can be accomplished on the cheap.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

How Multi-Cultural a Teacher Are You Prepared to Be?

2008-12-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

Immigrant children are flooding into our schools in record numbers. And since they herald from every niche and cranny of the globe, they bring with them a bewildering, and often conflicting, variety of cultural beliefs and practices.

Teachers are heavily impacted by this development. The world’s first world culture is struggling to life in their classrooms; and this generates many new and very difficult problems.

What help do besieged front-line teachers get in the face of this assault? Chiefly warm, fuzzy slogans issued by pedagogical staff officers safe in the rear. While those in the trenches agonize over extremely challenging questions, these rear echelon commandos crank out simple-minded slogans in which schools become rainbows where “You can be you and I can be me.” Would that it were that simple.

Why can’t our public schools become one big happy family where everyone just gets along? Because the various cultural values and behaviors brought into the schoolhouse often are at odds with one another. And because these same values and behaviors can also be incompatible with core American values — such as the very tolerance that makes multiculturalism possible in the first place.

Consider, for example, that some cultures define themselves in terms of their animosity for other cultures — Afghanistan's Hazzara and Pashtun come to mind. School children from such antagonistic cultures sometimes refuse to even sit together, much less work together. Then what should an educator do?

It’s pretty clear that even the most ardent multi-culturalists don’t want the teacher to deal with problems such as this by saying, “See how these kids hate one another? They’re expressing their respective cultures. Isn’t that great!” And what’s equally clear is that many advocates of multicultural education haven’t even thought about difficulties such as this. In fact, they haven’t thought about the whole multicultural thing very much at all. For them it is not a topic for thinking, but emoting.

Certainly aspects of an immigrant child’s native culture can be valuable for America as a nation. Nevertheless, many cultural practices must be regarded as anathema to a tolerant, democratic way of life. If, for example, we value free and unfettered expression or think that women’s rights should equal those of men, the native culture of many children stands in opposition.

Besides, many children do not want to be defined by their parent’s cultural practices and affiliations. In fact, many long to escape those confines and join mainstream America. Should educators nevertheless join forces with their parents to keep these kids in the old-world fold? For instance, suppose a 17 or 18 year-old young lady confides to her teacher that she is going to run away with the American boyfriend she loves, rather than fly home to, let’s say India, and enter into an arranged marriage with a middle aged man her parents picked for her. Should the teacher tell her parents?

The hard core reality in all this is that multicultural education is more problematic than it’s evangelicals would have us believe. Any careful consideration of multi-culturalism in light of how different cultures really are turns simple-minded tolerance into worried reflection.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

A MOST ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How Many Are Truly Educable?

2008-12-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

“Essential questions” are much in vogue in teaching. They are intended to guide instruction and help students discover the big ideas that constitute the core of a topic of study. But suppose we apply this methodology to education itself. What is the most essential question we can ask about it? How about this? How many people are truly educable?

Reason and Understanding

What’s the difference between being “educable” and “trainable?” Let’s stipulate that for a person to be “educable” they must be “capable of being improved in ways that depend on reason and understanding.” A trainable person, in contrast, is incapable of being improved in these ways.

Education as Panacea

It must be widely supposed that most people are educable, for Americans have long had a peculiar faith in the power of education. Indeed, it is frequently regarded as the answer for most human difficulties. Consequently our schools are expected to resolve a daunting array of problems such as the cultural integration of immigrants, difficulties with national competitiveness, the elimination of racial injustice, the control of sexually transmitted diseases, and so forth. Indeed, the list of problems thought to be susceptible to educational solution seems almost inexhaustible.

Lack of Education or Educability?

Certainly a great deal of human misery could be prevented if people could be taught to think more deeply and effectively. But is the common failure to do so a consequence of a lack of education as many suppose? Perhaps, just perhaps, the real culprit is a widespread lack of capacity and/or inclination for education. After all, in order for education to be a cure, much less a cure-all, the majority of humans must be capable of sufficient reason and understanding to be improved by that means; plus they also must willing. Suppose this is not the case? Perhaps a great many humans, possibly even most humans, are not truly educable in any deep and abiding sense.

Is such speculation too pessimistic? Perhaps it is; but consider the long-standing popularity of P.T. Barnum’s observation that “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Ponder also the durability of H.L. Mencken’s dictum that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Perhaps these and many similar observations remain current because they are deeply rooted in reality.

Too Dumb, Too Scared, Or What?

This line of reasoning sounds heretical to those accustomed to the obligatory, optimism that engulphs schooling. Nevertheless, there is evidence to support such a view. Consider how many humans willingly trot off to slaughter every time someone idecides to gives a war. And instead of learning from repeated previous slaughters, we humans continue to enthusiastically divide ourselves into pseudo-species, carefully nurture distrust and hatred toward one another, and then, sooner or later, join in still another horrific mutual slaughter that is utterly foreign to any “lesser species.”

For instance, fully fifteen million people were killed and twenty two million wounded in World War I. Yet just nineteen years later homo sapiens (man the thinker?) got himself into a far worse slaughter — WW II, This ghastly tribute to human folly cost 60 million people their lives and loosed hellish suffering on many more. Does any of this sound like the behavior of a species that is educable, i.e. “capable of being improved in ways that depend on reason and understanding?”

On the other hand, how much power did the average person have to change the course of these events? And they only knew what they were told. Perhaps it is true, as radicals have long maintained, that wars are creations of the rich and powerful and serve only their purposes while the rest are forced to “serve.”

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Still, home sapiens displays a peculiar reluctance, or inability, to employ reason and understanding even when the truth is readily apparent. The Harris Poll reported, for instance, that despite repeated official reports that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, the belief that Iraq possessed such weapons increased substantially after the war was over and the evidence in.

That’s right, despite massive and widely publicized evidence to the contrary, the number of Americans who thought that Iraq possessed such weapons prior to Operation “Enduring Freedom” actually went up as evidence to the contrary became widely known. As a matter of fact, in February of 2005 only 36% thought Iraq was so armed; but in July of 2006 fully 50% believed they were. Does that sound like a conviction that grew out of widespread capacity for reason and understanding?

To be fair, those who changed their mind about those weapons of mass destruction might have done so out of an unconscious desire to rationalize their own original enthusiasm for the war and/or to justify the tremendous costs it has generated. In short, what seems to be evidence of public credulity might just be people being human, all to human. But that still leaves us wondering why the species is so very eager to cling to the mindless tribalism, hatred and the organized murder we call warfare? Is that evidence of Homo sapiens' educability?

And what about our destruction of the very environment that sustains us? With happy oblivion we are rapidly destroying the basis of our species very existence. In this case, it might turn out that homo sapiens, “man the thinker,” will ultimately prove too dumb to live.

Campaign Appeals

On a less global scale one can also profitably consider the success of political campaign strategies that are based on the principle that many people are fools. In Pennsylvania, for example Senator Rick Santorum cut down challenger Bob Casey’s very substantial lead by means of a $3.5 million TV ad blitz that repeatedly referred to Casey as “Bobby” in order to make him seem juvenile and inconsequential. Casey countered with an equally unsophisticated attack ad. The plain truth of the matter is that ads like this work and work well. Does that suggest there is a great deal of deep thought going on out there?

Of course, political propagandists know how to play on emotions such as fear of the unknown, the alien and the complex. Moreover, the simplicity they offer is beguilingly attractive to a public that has to reach conclusions based on imperfect information and deliberate disinformation. Maybe that, rather than widespread intellectual ineffectiveness, is why the general public remains so exploitable and so oblivious to many urgently important issues. Let’s hope so.

The Media

Evidence of a widespread ineducability is not confined to the repetitive insanity of war, assaults on the environment, or crass political chicanery. Consider, the quality of the media. More specifically, let’s consider infomercials or “paid programming.”
Multiplied millions of dollars are spent buying TV time to peddle bogus nostrums, physical or spiritual, and many, many more millions are realized in consequence. Psychic hotlines generate fortunes for their bogus operators even though they have absolutely nothing but hot air to sell. Omega 3 fish oil is successfully huckstered as a cure for an impossible range of maladies and tens of thousands have been convinced that purging their bowels will have the same beneficial effects on their body that emptying a full sweeper bag can effect for s clogged up Electrolux.

Also consider how dozens of televangelist,s of dubious background and motive, repeatedly and successfully con the public by means of such obvious scams as packets of “miracle spring water,” or dollar green “prosperity prayer cloths”, that allegedly convey magical pecuniary powers. “Pastor, right after I got that prayer cloth a thousand dollars mysteriously appeared in my bank account. Praise God!”

The fact is there is a small army of prosperity “pastors” on TV convincing tens of thousands of financially desperate people that giving generously — to the pastor, of course— will not only eliminate some benighted fools financial troubles but prompt a ten-fold return on their “offering.” One oily, but particularly persuasive, televangelists lives in a multi-million dollar California beach front mansion and flies to world-renown resorts in his private jet. And just today I saw him wheedling still more money out of the faithful so he can buy an even bigger jet —the price tag is nine million dollars! Let’s pump this sacerdotal bunko artist full of truth serum then ask him about the educability of the average American. Can you guess what he would say?

Ponder also the generally appalling quality of media programming in general. TV, for instance, is still the same cultural wilderness it was in 1961 when FCC Chairman Newton Minnow invited us to:

“…sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”

Newton was right on target until he got to that very last sentence. Since TV bored him, he concluded that the broad masses must also be bored. But Minnow failed to consider that shows remain on the air by virtue of their ratings. TV content is a function of the public tuning in or tuning out. Hence the generally mindless quality of TV programming must be regarded as an indirect index of widespread public preference for drivel. Network executives long ago learned that they pan the most gold by designing a preponderance of their shows for people of limited capacity and less sophistication — i.e. the general public.

Radio programming is similarly selected via public popularity. So what do the masses tune to? Well here in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, home to almost 6 million people, it is unlikely to be classical music because the one commercial station that played it switched to soft rock. Philadelphians can listen to hip-hop, dance, country, soft rock, hard rock, pop/rock, stupidly one-sided right wing “talk” shows and endless gassing about sports, but the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn are out so far as commercial radio is concerned. Why? The broad masses weren’t tuning in. Evidently the broad masses prefer Rap to the Ode to Joy.

The Desolation of the Hinterlands

Keep in mind that even greater desolation exists in the hinterlands where semi-literate pastors read God’s mind for the masses while country music grinds on endlessly in cacophonous concert. That is nearly all there is in the heartland.
To be fair, no one knows for sure how many people are deeply disgusted with this media garbage. And many people might have far better discernment if they had more knowledge to work with. American schooling helps little here. It is woefully inadequate when it comes to the arts and the discernment they can develop and it shies completely away from anything that might help kids see through bogus divines. As a matter of fact, by the time budget cuts slash “frills” from the curriculum, high stakes testing takes its share and the self-appointed censors finish off anything that might trigger thought, the curriculum is a cultural wasteland par excellence. Perhaps, then, we should beware of blaming the victim for the wasteland’s results.

Space does not permit extending these considerations. Suffice it to say that there is abundant evidence of widespread vulnerability, gullibility, wishful thinking and tastelessness among the broad masses. What shall we make of this? Is it evidence of a deeper, fundamental immunity to any and all improvements that depend on reason and understanding? Alternatively, is it the inevitable consequence of a society where avarice trumps all and schooling is generally so narrow and unimaginative that it is unworthy of the name?

general populace has the intelligence and the emotional capacity to be educated in the sense we’ve used it here? You decide.

Roses for Baboons? Some Unique Difficulties in Teaching the Arts

2008-12-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

I once asked a colleague who was walking out of his college survey of literature class what he had been up to. His wry response was, “Casting fake pearls before real swine.” I laughed; but over time I’ve concluded that my colleague’s comment has deeper meaning. It reflects what can go distinctively wrong for educators who teach the arts to the broad masses.

Unlike non-artistic fields, such as math or grammar for example, the value of music, dance, painting, and other art forms is almost purely intrinsic. People who listen to classical music, for example, don’t do so in order to make money, maintain mental health, aid their digestion, or lower their blood pressure. They listen because they love it. The experience has intrinsic value; it is worthwhile in and of itself. It does not normally serve as a means to other ends unless you want to impress.

Of course, non-artistic fields, such as mathematics, can have intrinsic value too. For some, a well-solved equation is just as beautiful as a well-danced pas-de-du. But, and this is as absolutely crucial point, that typically isn’t the only reason to give a damn about it. Technical subjects such a math can also readily serve as means to other ends. If one has no intrinsic interest in algebra; for instance, it’s still potentially useful for solving a variety of problems.

So students taking technical subjects have two reasons to try to learn them:

• the subject is intrinsically interesting,

• the skills learned are potentially useful.

Those teaching the arts cannot rely on two levels of motivation. If students don’t find learning the art worthwhile for it’s own sake, the game is up. Under such circumstances teaching becomes an all or nothing affair. That works out very well when students love what they’re being taught. When enthusiastic drama majors learn stagecraft, for instance, both teacher and student have it all. What’s more, gifted teachers of the arts can kindle an intense love of their art in at least some indifferent students. My own appreciation of opera came about in exactly that way. A teacher who loved it managed to show me why he found it so wonderful. Now, thanks to him, I love it too.

But of what use is the course to those who remain unmoved, who prove immune to the most ardent suasion? The answer is, no use whatsoever. And those who find it useless usually just hang around sucking the joy from the course by their very presence. In fact, if there are enough of them, they can overwhelm the teacher’s efforts by their mere presence.

It’s at this point that teaching the arts can turn into “casting fake pearls before real swine.” Here is how that happens. Imagine a musician who is not good enough, or not lucky enough, to qualify for one of the few serious music jobs available. The only way she can make a reasonable living and not abandon music is to become a teacher. Eventually she lands a teaching job at St. Mediocritus College. The college’s only music course is Music Appreciation 101. So, day after day, semester after semester, year after year, our music lover exhibits what she loves to section after section of reluctant scholars whose usual reason for enrolling is that the course is required for graduation.

Finally, after years of having her spirit abraded, comes the breaking point. “Listen,” she says, as she plays an utterly glorious Chopin waltz for a class of freshmen. In spite of the wondrous beauty, a majority of the class is unmoved. Some even seem annoyed because the seriousness of the teacher’s effort implies they will be expected to do something in return.

Only one student has anything to say as the music dies away. With studied indifference, he asks, “Is this stuff gonna be on the test?”

That does it. The teacher thinks to her self, “I’m showing roses to baboons!” So she puts the roses away and instead gets out bananas, in the form of worksheets and multiple-choice tests. Never again does she try to convey the majesty and wonder she experiences in music. To spare herself pain and fury, she just goes through the motions. In other words, she pretends to teach. The students, knowing the drill, approve and pretend to learn. When the semester ends and they fill in their course evaluation questionnaires, the Dean is pleased to learn that our music teacher is finally improving.

Here’s an alternative scenario. Instead of landing a college job, let’s say our music-loving teacher can only find work in neglected, over-crowded Al Sharpton Middle School in a particularly putrescent part of New York City. Pedagogical Pollyanna’s like Chester Finn would have us believe that a truly dedicated teacher, fervently believing every student can learn, will have these street-wise kids playing Beethoven with feeling by Christmas even if she has to improvise instruments out of empty beer cans and discarded crack syringes.

Sadly, that sort of thing only happens in the movies. In real life our music teacher learns, to her sorrow, that she would be better off dead than spend her life trying to teach inner city middle schoolers to love Mozart, Puccini or Mendelsohn. She appreciates how desperately these kids need beauty in their lives. In fact, she did manage to throw a musical life preserver to a couple of them. But she has also learned that an overwhelming majority of the kids in her class are too worried, too unloved, too hungry, too sad, too angry, too high, too weary, too frightened, too mean, or too intimidated, for that. In fact they’re needs are so outside the scope of school that they won’t even pretend to learn if she pretends to teach.

Eventually, to save herself, she quits and takes up selling cars. Her piano sits silent, covered with dust.

Of course, in places like Al Sharpton even teachers who teach subjects of unmistakable practical utility have serious problems motivating students. The instrumental value of knowing how to do basic math, for example, is obvious. But, in spite of this matter-of-fact, child after child remains uncaring about learning those skills. Yes, in schools like this the backs of all teachers, not just teachers of the arts, are against the wall. But even here, the arts teachers face a unique challenge for he or she has only wonder and beauty to sell.

We started off casting fake pearls before real swine. Are students who turn their back on the arts swine? Is that what I’ve been hinting? No, they’re not swine or anything like that. They’re just not able to reach out and grab the gift that’s being offered — at least not at that moment. But when that happens, there is nothing else the teacher can offer, All they have left is the threat of failure. But for those who love an art, that sort of extortion is a desperate perversion. And when that perversion becomes at all common, it utterly smashes the joy and vitality of the enterprise for everybody.
The arts are not just another subject, they are special; and the way educators think about them has to be special too.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

When Is It Sexual Harassment?

2008-11-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

When does touching or sexual humor become sexual harassment? If an employee displays a framed photo of his bikini-clad wife on his desk is that sexual harassment? Is it sexual harassment for a teacher to treat female students different than males? Is it sexual harassment if a male student persistently asks a female student for a date? Are school officials liable if a driver fails to stop alleged sexual insults on a school bus? When does a school curriculum create a sexually "hostile environment?" For answers to these and similar questions refer to:
• the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education
• federal and state case law
• state anti-discrimination agencies,
• criminal law enforcement agencies
• local institutional policies
Better check them all too, because each may have a different interpretation.
Deciding what should count as "sexual harassment" is highly problematic.

Local level definitions and policies are commonly set out in some sort of Supervisory Guide. I have one such collegiate level "Guide" in front of me. It defines sexual harassment as: "Any unwelcome sexual attention, sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and any other verbal, visual or physical conduct of a sexual nature whenever:

a.) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's continued employment: or

b.) submission to or rejection of such conduct is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual; or

c.) such conduct is intended to, or has the effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance;

d.) such conduct has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment."

The Guide then elaborates.that comments like "you look nice today" are all right if not repeated frequently, but comments like "you look nice today in that tight or short (article of clothing)" are inappropriate and may be sexual harassment."

Let's examine some of this. With regard to leering, for instance, who judges if an alleged glance was sideways or oblique much less motivated by lascivious interest? With regard to touching, who decides when it is "unnecessary?" And who renders the verdict on what is "sexually offensive?" or "inappropriate?" In each and every instance it is: 1. the complainant then 2. some school bureaucrat. (Sense any potential problems here?) Also note that one even has to be careful about saying, "You look nice today." Why? Because the recipient of the compliment and the bureaucrat get to decide if that was said "too often." (Franz Kafka did a lot with this sort of thing.)

There also are procedural problems. The Guide urges anyone "...who believes that they have been or are being sexually harassed to tell the harassor (sic) politely but firmly that his or her conduct is not welcome and must stop." The Guide then confides, "If the conduct persists, or the harassed person is afraid for any reason to confront the harassor ... the individual should bring the problem confidentially to the attention of the Affirmative Action Officer." " This officer, "...will immediately investigate any such allegations of sexual harassment in as confidential a manner as possible. While confidentiality might protect the accused, there is nothing quite like secrecy for generating injustice. (That is why England did in their infamous Star Chamber in the 1640's.)

To encourage denunciations, hesitant accusers are urged to "...bring the problem confidentially to the attention of the Affirmative Action Officer, without fear of any retaliation, humiliation or recrimination." The Guide even reassures those contemplating this maneuver, "Retaliation in any form (emphasis added)against a complainant who has exercised his or her right to make a complaint under this policy is strictly prohibited, even if the investigation concludes that no sexual harassment has occurred (emphasis added), and will be cause for appropriate discipline, up to and including discharge." In other words, you can even bring false charges and risk little or nothing. Falsely denounce someone and risk little or nothing. Now there is an incentive for evil.

Let's now examine the rights of the accused. The Guide advises, "The alleged harassor will be given an opportunity to respond to the allegations, but ordered not to confront or retaliate against the complaining person concerning the allegations. When possible, neutral witnesses will be interrogated [again, confidentially]."

Is their a different tone here? The alleged victim is encouraged, even prompted to denounce, the accused has "an opportunity to respond," but...".

What is the accused permitted while making this "response?" Pretty much what was permitted by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy during his Senate hearing days. Unable to confront their accuser; never knowing what has been said about them during secret interrogations; not being permitted to question so-called neutral witnesses; being denied a record of the proceedings; the accused is permitted to deny the allegation — provided he takes it lying down.

Lastly, the accused is guilty if the investigator decides guilt is "...more likely than not." In other words, the accused can be found guilty enough. By whom? By the investigator, of course. (Never mind that this bureaucrat's job security may depend on unearthing a "harasser" now and then.)

By the way, the complaining person is assured that all documents "will be expunged" from their record that might have been "tainted" by the harassment. But if the alleged harasser is found innocent, there are NO guarantees that his/her personnel file will be similarly "expunged." How's that for fairness?

Secret denunciations, clandestine hearings, immunity for traducers, trashing reasonable doubt, all are thought necessary to offset the purported victim's fear of retaliation. Of course, such procedures also encourage false charges from people who are just plain nuts or vindictive. The thought must be that, given the urgency of the sexual harassment problem, justice is something we just can't afford.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Really Preparing the Kiddies for Corporate Life

2008-11-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

In spite of the fact that corporate chieftens are always consulted on school reform, many worry that America's still schools don't do enough to prepare kids for the world of work. So here are some modest proposals intended to satisfy corporate America’s bedrock requirements:

• To further enhance profits and boost stock prices, corporate chiefs routinely offer tens of thousands of employees “career change opportunities” through “involuntary separation from payroll” — often at an age when they can’t buy another job.

Are public schools adequately getting kids ready for this? It seems unlikely. Why? Because every time a major corporation “strengthens its global effectiveness” through “reductions in force” former employees whine and carry on something fierce. Some even kill themselves. Clearly, public schooling is failing to adequately prepare kids to accept this new corporate order.

Here is a modest proposal for doing just that. Let youngsters progress to 12th grade; then, just when they anticipate graduation, initiate “force management.” In other words, “right size” the school by imposing “involuntary severance” on a random selection of seniors — making certain, of course, that those “repositioned” don’t find another school to graduate from. This will better prepare youngsters for layoffs late in their careers. Alternatively, educators might make “schedule adjustments” to achieve “focused reduction” a few kids at a time. This prepares them for the common corporate experience of suddenly finding the next cubicle vacant.

• Executives sometimes are compelled to dip into their employee’s pension funds. Employees, failing to understand this necessity, react angrily and create turmoil. (A few have even tried, largely unsuccessfully, to get law-makers to interfere.) What can public schools do to help corporate managers with this problem? How about persuading students to start school-based college savings accounts. School officials could then spend this money and declare the school bankrupt. Do this to kids two or three times and you wouldn’t have all this whining and complaining every time pension funds have to be sacrificed for the corporate good.

• Corporate execs find it increasingly profitable to ship American jobs abroad. Unfortunately, foreign workers aren’t always well-prepared for such employment; and American workers stubbornly resist the loss of their livelihood. What can be done? Let’s begin closing American schools and use the savings to export US schooling to developing nations. That way third world kids will be better prepared to work for American corporations and Americans would be displaced by foreign competition early in their lives while they still are developmentally receptive.
.
• Corporate managers routinely promote lickspittles. Why not do more of this in schools? Eliminate the present slippage and leakage that's taking place and always select the biggest brown nosers for promotion and honors. Make certain to fail any youngster who questions anything. That should get the ready for corporate life.

• The rise of multinational corporations also makes it necessary to eliminate patriotism. Presently, only the chiefs of multinational corporations seem to understand that nationalism is passé. Such awareness must be broadened. Let’s begin by eliminating the traditional pledge of allegiance. Later we can move on to the social studies curriculum.

These and similar measures are essential if schools are to truly prepare kids to meet the needs of modern corporations. In fairness, though, public schooling already meets many of the most fundamental needs of corporate America. After a few years in elementary school, for instance, most kids have learned they have to go along to get along. That’s solid preparation for corporate life. Twelve years of public schooling also teaches kids to live with dumb rules, red tape and managerial double talk. This is basic to the needs of corporations.

Come to think of it, public schooling might be way “ahead of the curve” in meeting some corporate needs. For instance, business has only recently gotten into “densifying” the work environment — moving employees out of their offices into a maze of relentlessly public cubicles. Public schools have been densified for years. Even teachers lack cubicles, much less the students. So school kids have long been prepared for densification.

Similarly, corporate bosses only recently begun lurching from one management reform fad to another., Reform manias have erupted regularly in public schooling for more than a century. By the time a youngster reaches twelfth grade, he or she has already lived through two or three improvement crazes. That’s more than enough to prepare them for the new corporate America.

Even if all the above-mentioined reform proposals are adopted, however, we’ve only minimally satisfied the real needs of modern corporate executives. For instance, when “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap fired 11,000 Scott Paper employees, sold the company to its chief rival and walked away with 100 million dollars, a lot of people utterly failed to realize that as chief executive “Chainsaw” had no obligations other than to make a profit and take care of himself. One newly fired thirty six year veteran of Scott even whined on national television that Dunlap, “... took my life and put it into his pocket ...”. More effective public schooling would have brought this churlish fellow to realize that Dunlap was simply exercising corporate leadership.

It is a big, big job to school kids in a manner that allows them to properly appreciate “Chainsaw Al” and the modern corporate values he represents. However, it is not impossible. We could, for example, eliminate the teaching of sharing in grade school, instead substituting activities which inculcate Mr. Dunlap’s guiding principle. He puts it this way. “The meek shall not inherit the earth; and, for sure, they won’t get the mineral rights!”

To prepare kids for “Chainsaw’s” world, we have to start early. Kindergarten and first grade teachers must stop teaching kids to share crayons, for instance, and encourage struggle for them instead. The victors should then be encouraged to sell crayons to the losers — provided, of course, the losers can pay. We also must end all this folderol about “inclusion.” Kids in inclusive classrooms sometimes start to enjoy helping others; and we all know what can happen to profits when you let that camel get its nose under the tent.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

-- GKC

Oppositional Disorder

2008-10-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time parents who lacked the courage and/or interest required to set limits and impose responsibilities were thought to produce lamed and defiled children. "Spoiled brats" was the common lexicon. Happily, this benighted notion no longer enjoys currency. We now know that a child's upbringing really has little to do with what was mistakenly regarded as "brattiness."

Kids who are mistaken for "brats" actually are suffering from an illness. It’s called “oppositional disorder.” According to the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders, oppositional disorder's symptoms include:

(1) violations of minor rules
(2) temper tantrums
(3) argumentativeness
(4) provocative behavior
(5) stubbornness

No wonder children suffering the heartbreak of oppositional disorder have historically been thought of as brats. Insidiously, the malady mimics brattiness with uncanny verisimilitude. Doubtless, this nearly perfect disguise is why the malady escaped detection until the late 20th Century. Today, however, there is a growing awareness of the disorder and increasing appreciation of its insidious subtlety.

Parents who used to "cure" Johnny by sending him to bed without supper, are now beginning to realize that he instead needs:

• clinical diagnosis via psychological testing and assessment
• chart notes, a case history, test reports, and probably
• psychotherapy and/or behavior therapy possibly combined with
• psychopharmacological treatment using drugs like:
Ritilin, Xanax, Librium, Klonopin, Tranxene, Valium, Dalmane, Paxipam, Ativan, Serax, Centrax, Doral, Restoril, Halcion, Thorazine, Vesprin, Mellaril, Serentil, Tindal, Prolixin, Trilafon, Stelazine, Taractan, Navane, Loxitane or Haldol.

Just think how misguided a trip to the woodshed was, and how off of the mark more modern remedies like "grounding" still are. Thankfully, however, we are just now emerging from the dark ages of child rearing.

I report the discovery of oppositional syndrome with considerable personal mortification, recalling when I misconceived my own children's ominous symptoms as mere brattiness. I recall with chagrin, for instance, the time I asked my adolescent son to take out the trash. He griped, "Why should I do that?" I thoughtlessly responded "Because I'll kick your butt if you don't!" He appraised my response, replied, "That's a good reason!" and took out the trash. At the time I thought I had provided an effective answer. After all, he took out the trash. Besides, wasn’t I following the Bible’s admonition to "raise up a child in the way he should go.”? Today, the Bible notwithstanding, I belatedly recognize that he required treatment, not threats.

The young man in question is long out of college, married and making his own way in the world. Still, I wonder. Was his choice of a philosophy major in college symptomatic of his untreated malady? Was oppositional disorder the reason he never joined the Young Republican Club, hated Pat Boone and refused to wear a pocket protector? Is it why, today, he distrusts George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and thinks Sarah Palin a sick joke?

Having come to realize that oppositional disorder was at the root of my son’s sometimes-troublesome adolescent behavior, I wonder if the malady still lingers in his psyche — perhaps even his genes. Is it lying dormant, like malaria, just waiting to erupt and rain ruin on his marriage or career? (After all, wives and bosses value compliance, not opposition.) Moreover, might the disorder be genetic? I await the future with dread.

Reactionaries claim that the therapeutic model of child rearing (and school teaching, for that matter) has gotten entirely out of hand. This archetype, these Neanderthals contend, has surreptitiously, and without much reflection, become the doctrine that "informs" contemporary child rearing and schooling. They erroneously assert that kids who are "diagnosed" as disordered, typically just need more love, more limits and, perhaps, an occasional kick in the kiester. They even misleadingly maintain that the therapeutic approach to child rearing is nose-bleed high in popularity because it:

• lets parents off the hook,
• enriches clinicians,
• increases drug company profits and
• relieves school officials of onerous responsibilities.

Those of us with an enlightened therapeutic world-view know better. We appreciate that "brattiness," like guilt and responsibility, is passé — a curious, even dangerous, coprolite of a by-gone age. We’ve recognized that, given understanding, adequate therapy and appropriate drugs, every child can learn to behave like a perfect lady or gentleman.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

What Blocks School Improvement

2008-10-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

Before No Child Left Behind was even a glint in the nation's eye, Bill Clinton proposed Goals 2000 (the Educate America Act)in the early years of his first term. Originally its focus was on the formulation of national educational standards; but this emphasis quickly failed. What happened?

Education Week claims “Fears that the program would lead to federal control over local curriculum decisions drove Congress, governors and school administrators to move Goals 2000 away from its standards emphasis toward a loosely affiliated series of projects and computer purchases.” But was fear of federal control the real bugbear?

I don’t think so. We shy away from meaningful national education standards because every attempt at their formulation collides with the elemental fact that there is no consensus regarding what American kids should know and be able to do; nor is there agreement on how they should do it. When we launch national educational goal setting efforts, they inevitably founder on this rock of disagreement.

An alternative, imposed by No Child Left Behind, is to require states to set standards. But that doesn't alter the fact that there is little or no deep agreement at the state level. As soon as state legislators begin to define the details the whole thing tends to either break down into acrimonious haggling or we end up with standards that lack broad public support.

What about generating standards at the level of the 16,000 plus school districts? After all districts are often far more uniform than entire states can be. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of districts deep agreement still is non-existent. Try to reach agreement on any truly fundamental matter, say at a school board meeting, and just watch blood pressures rise as consensus evaporates.

This fundamental lack of agreement concerning the means and ends of public schooling is the basic reality that has troubled, presently troubles and will continue to trouble every serious effort at school improvement. The only way to generate consensus, and it will be a superficial one at that, is by formulating goals that are so vague as to be practically useless.

Google a sample of school district mission statements and see for yourself. Every one of them will rely on happy talk and buzz words. In this way a shallow and practically useless consensus is maintained. And as soon as we press for details the whole thing falls apart.

What is to be done? Continue to concoct superficial, warm and fuzzy goals and then ignore them when real work needs to be done.

Trouble is that strategy puts real pressure on superintendents, principals and, especially, teachers. That's because the closer you get to actual classroom practice the more useless, or even counterproductive, vague goals become. When its time to teach reading, for example, detailed decisions have to be made. That's why every classroom teacher should adopt Harry Truman's motto, "THE BUCK STOPS HERE!"

To further examine these and related issues, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Clabaugh's Index of Educational Indicators

2008-09-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

Way too much is made of standardized test scores. At their best, such tests indirectly measure trivial things. They tell us nothing at all about whether schooling is having a positive impact on the way children will live their lives.
Many admit the weaknesses of such tests, but still argue for their administration. “We need some measure of school effectiveness,” they say. This argument is utter humbug. There already are widely available gauges that offer a much better way of measuring educational progress. All we need do is pay attention to them.

Departing from my customary humility, I propose we call this compilation of indices Clabaugh's Index of Leading Educational Indicators. Here is a preliminary list.

• THE NIELSON RATINGS
What folks watch on TV is an uncannily accurate indicator of the success or failure of their schooling.Count the number of adults regularly viewing professional wrestling, for example, and we are counting people that schooling somehow failed. The same thing applies to "Jerry Springe." The higher his Nielsons, the gloomier we should be about the nation's schooling. If, on the other hand, viewership is high for, say, National Geographic Specials, History Channel or Discovery Channel offerings, there is reason for optimism.

• CD AND MUSIC VIDEO SALES
Here we need to keep tabs on the sales figures of various musical artists and genres. Like the popularity of paintings of Elvis on black velvet, it reveals a great deal about schooling’s success or failure. We could, for example, compare gangsta rap music sales with classical music sales. Schooling has surely failed if most consumers prefer Snoop Doggy Dog to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Biggy Small to Frederick Chopin.

• CULT MEMBERSHIP
Every Jonestown resident who eagerly swigged cyanide laced Cool Aid represented a schooling failure. So did the men in David Koresh's cult who allowed Dave to sexually service their wives and daughters because, as Koresh patiently explained to them, he was the only man pure enough for the job. And what about the schooling of that Heaven's Gate crowd who in conformity with "Bo" and "Peep's" teachings, "left their containers" to rendezvous with a space ship concealed behind the Hale-Bopp comet. They seem a bit deficient in critical thinking skills.

• SUPERMARKET TABLOID SALES
The sales figures of these grotesque gazettes provide a far more valid measure of educational progress than anything ETS could dream up. I'm talking about those tabloids that headline things like "WOMEN COMMITS SUICIDE IN DISHWASHER!", or "HALF BOY, HALF DOLPHIN WASHES UP ON BEACH!" Tabloid sales figures are an inverse measure of educational progress.

• THE POPULARITY OF CON-ARTIST TELEVANGELIST'S
Their income figures, available from the IRS Tax Exempt Branch, are a sure measure of schooling's effectiveness. The more money these characters make, the less well our schools have done. Consider, for example, the Reverend Benny Hinn's television ministry. Hinn, the subject of a most unflattering CNN expose, is the chap who claims to lapse into "trances" while conducting worship services. Then, according to the Reverend, the Holy Spirit uses his vocal apparatus to speak to the congregation. Hinn, by the way, alleges he has no idea what the Spirit says while he is unconscious. He has to ask the congregation after he regains consciousness. The amount of money sent to guys like Hinn should be monitored carefully. Like tablid sales, it to is an inverse measure of school effectiveness.

• THE POPULARITY OF FORTUNE TELLERS
Imagine stopping in at Madam Margarita, Seer and Advisor, for advice on whom and when to marry, find out if the one you love loves you, or learn how to make a person at a distance think of you. That many people seriously do this is a telling measure of schooling's ineffectiveness.

•THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER LIST
It’s encouraging if people read books at all. But the quality of the books on this list testifies eloquently about school success or failure. A few years back lots of people purchased The Bible Code because they found it plausible to think that God had secretly constructed his own seek and find word game in the Holy Bible. Then there are the folks, God forgive them, who sent Howard Stern's Private Parts rocketing to the top of this best seller list. These folk's English teachers should prefer self-immolation over living with such failure.

•THE CREDIBILITY OF CREATION "SCIENCE"
The popularity of this humbug constitute irrefutable, if unintentional, proof that schools very often aren’t getting it done science wise.

Yes friends, this is the way we should measure school effectiveness. Of course this index isn't complete. You probably have your own ideas of what should be added and you can submit them here. But the point is that this sort of index is much more powerful than anything Educational Testing Service or Psychological Corporation could possibly contrive.

Perhaps some of you are thinking that schools are not exclusively, or even mainly, responsible for dismal state of affairs revealed by these measures. You might be thinking you can't fix dumb, for example. So what? Educators aren’t chiefly responsible for standardized test scores either. The point isn't to be fair, but to blame some one; and it might as well be educators, since they generally don't fight back.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

School Reform? Let's Ask Teachers

2008-09-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

When it comes to school reform, corporate cheifs get their say, congress and president's make epic decisions. governors set statewide policy, bureaucrats imposes rules and regulations, superintendents hatch and enforce procedures, and opinion makers declare all manner of 'truths.' But there is one critical voice that is rarely heard. It is that of the classroom teacher.

Everyone feels free to fault teachers, but who troubles to ask them, "What do you think"? This state of affairs is a sign of fundamental disrespect. And it's a disprespect that powerholders had better get over if school improvement is really what they are up to, because nothing good is going to happen without the wholehearted cooperation of frontline teachers.

The Limits of Multiculturalism

2008-09-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

A quarter of a century ago a friend of mine was growing up in a largely Italian-American working class section of Baltimore. Because he liked school, succeeded in his studies and enjoyed reading, he found himself the subject of merciless bullying and negative peer pressure. So pervasive was the anti-intellectual attitude of the community that when a competitive full college scholarship was offered to young people from this particular environment, my colleague, who had persevered in his interests, won it by default. There were no other applicants!

I asked my friend, “What would have happened to you had an emphasis on “multi-culturalism” further legitimized the community’s hostility toward learning?” He responded, “I imagine I would have begun selling numbers, or even become a gang member. And I suppose, if I was lucky enough to avoid involvement with organized crime, I would have ended up as some of my relatives did, surreptitiously expressing their anger by urinating in the pizza sauce of a local restaurant where they had found marginal employment.”

Anti-school attitudes are or were common in many ethnic or racial communities. For instance, we are all aware of the difficulties serious students experience in many African-American neighborhoods. Earnest students are often accused of “acting white.” And there is plenty of “encouragement” (read coercion) to forget school and just “hang” on the corner. What are we to make of this in the context of “multiculturalism?” Shall we, in our desire to accommodate or celebrate other cultures and other ways of life, embrace this value? Should we smile benignly at just “kicking back” and “being cool?”

There is also the matter of bribery to consider. A front page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer described how many Italians have become concerned about Italy’s national character. It seems that bribes recently have become a part of everyday life, not just the customary politics. This trend is making life in Italy more and more unpleasant. We all know that the “greasy palm” is not unique to Italy. Bribery is a way of life in many cultures. Does “multiculturalism” require us to celebrate, or at least wink at, such behavior if it is transplanted from foreign soil?

There is also the matter of the treatment of women. A recent episode of the real action T.V. show “Cops” featured a domestic disturbance. The “cops” arrived to find an enraged and bloodied Latino woman and her teenage daughter confronting the woman’s battering, common-law husband. The husband readily confessed to having thrashed his wife, explaining that she had not prepared his dinner for three days running and that in his culture of origin, this negligence required a beating. Failing to do so, he explained, would emasculate him. The beaten wife called the police at the insistence of her Americanized daughter, who had convinced her mother that no woman should ever endure such abuse. Wife beatings are an accepted part of many civilizations. Does “multiculturalism” require us to accept or even celebrate this fact? And if school officials helped the daughter redefine how women should react to beatings, was this a disservice to her, her mother, or even her father?

France recently had a national fracas over another “multicultural” matter affecting women. African immigrants had brought their practice of clitorectomy with them. When French authorities learned that an immigrant woman had had her 13 year-old daughter’s clitoris excised so that she would never experience sexual pleasure, they arrested her for child abuse. Tribal members were furious, alleging that the French authorities were destroying their culture. Would “multiculturalism” require them to take no action or even to celebrate this mutilation?

In India it is common for pregnant women to have ultra-sound testing in order to determine the sex of the unborn. Females are then aborted because they are unwanted. How about arranged marriages or the fact that some languages (like Korean) have female deference built in? Are these the sorts of things we want to hold most worthy or should we give precedence to the emancipation of women?

We need also to consider intolerance. Many cultures partially define themselves via traditional conflicts with, and intolerance of, others. Is it acceptable for Palestinian-Americans to define themselves in terms of antipathy toward Jewish-Americans or vice-versa? And what about the anti-Korean feelings of some African-Americans? Is the destruction and looting of an estimated 5,000 businesses justified if black L.A. street culture endorses it? Consider also the bigoted intolerance of religious extremists like David Koresh. Did “multiculturalism” require us to celebrate the Branch Davidian’s dogmatic exclusionism? Did it require us to honor Koresh’s sexual claims on all the women (and post eleven year old girls) in that community?

Does “multiculturalism” include an appreciation of the Skinheads or the Klan? Shall we be charmed when Vietnamese-Americans express hatred toward Cambodian-Americans or when Korean-Americans define themselves in terms of their contempt for Japanese-Americans? This sort of intolerance is a common feature of many of the world’s cultures; and it is a particular feature of such truly “multicultural” places as Yugoslavia.. Yet such intolerance destroys the very tolerance that makes “multiculturalism” possible. How shall we reconcile this contradiction?

Even relatively tolerant cultures reject members of other cultures in order to preserve their own integrity. Consider the Jew who views marriages to non-Jews as a “problem.” It is a “problem” from the standpoint of perpetuating Judaism. But intolerance toward someone whom one’s daughter or son might truly love is also a problem for most of us who place a high value on our common humanity. Shall we celebrate such exclusionism in order to honor human differences? Should Jews give up being Jewish in order to embrace “multiculturalism?”

We also should remember that, as the old saying goes, “What is sauce for the goose, is often gall for the gander” For example, at North Carolina Central University, the oldest state-supported black public university in the nation, student responses to multicultural initiatives were broadly negative. Fully 74% of the students polled said they were “somewhat” to “greatly concerned and disapproving” of the university becoming more racially/ethnically diverse. Many indicated they were opposed to “anyone other than African-Americans,” which means excluding even Africans. Enthusiasm for Black colleges would seem a logical outgrowth of “multiculturalism.” How, then, shall we understand the fact that they seem to harbor and possibly encourage the very exclusionism “multiculturalism” seeks to avoid? Perhaps by considering that any far-reaching “multiculturalism” could well be self-defeating. After all, once we are all divided into little in-groups, who will be left to urge inclusivism?

“Multiculturalism” is easy if we avoid the tough issues. Just stick to relatively trivial things like the Frugal Gourmet’s celebration of ethnic foods or everyone’s wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. Then conflict is minimized. Try to go beyond that, however, and the slogan soon slams against the sort of limits illustrated above.

Mindless chauvinism and knee-jerk negativity toward anything or anyone who is different has bred much misery. And the best possibility of “multiculturalism” is that in carefully adjusted amounts it will help us check this sort of hatred and intolerance. A bit too much, however, and we are headed down the same road as the former Yugoslavia.

There is much to be gained by trying to learn from cultures different from our own. And this is true even if such openness is only a one-way street. But we risk national unity if we continue to play with “multiculturalism” uncritically. The sloganistic and essentially mindless (or merely opportunistic) definitions of the day lead inevitably to disunity and acceptance of nearly everything. And if you allow all, you stand for NOTHING.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Let's Test the Politicians

2008-08-25T17:08:00.001-07:00

No Child Left Behind's emphasis on one-size-fits-all standardized testing alarms many. But the cure for this federally induced craze may be to require passing standardized tests of every political candidate. If you don’t pass the test, you can’t join the fest. And to make sure no deserving individual escapes our net, aspiring high level government appointees, such as the Secretary of Education to be, would also have to pass the test battery.

The best way to go about this testing would be to make the punishment fit the crime. This means requiring every aspiring office holder to take the same tests he prescribes for others. Before being allowed to run for President, for example, Dubya would have had to pass the self-same tests he championed for highschoolers. Ten to one he couldn’t pass.

This plan really gets juicy when it’s applied to political appointees that have educational responsibilities. Let's require every aspiring state Secretary of Education to pass the battery of tests they require of aspiring teachers. Here in Pennsylvania, for example, he or she would have to pass separate NTE tests in Reading, Writing, Listening Skills, (there's a tough one for these chaps) Mathematics and Principles of Teaching and Learning. We might also want to add a content specialty test in their college major (secondary educators have to take these) or, alternatively, tests in Elementary Ed: Content and Curriculum — since they presume to tell elementary teachers what to do and when to do it. I for one, think that few chief state school officers could pass what they now prescribe. After all, they’re usually politically connected B.S. artists, not professionally trained educators.

The beauty of this host them on their own petard approach should be apparent. Officials will typically be reluctant to mandate any testing because they too will have to take whatever they prescribe.

An alternate plan is to design brand new tests for those aspiring to high office. This would be expensive and involved, but it might be worth it. We could turn to ETS and the Psychological Corporation to devise the test. They would have to craft enough items for multiple versions of the test since cheating is a particular concern.)
No Child Left Behind's emphasis on one-size-fits-all standardized testing is a concern of many. But the cure for this federally induced malady may be the hair of the dog. In other words, require every political candidate to pass a battery of standardized tests to be eligible for office. If you don’t pass the test, you can’t join the fest. And to make sure no deserving individual escapes our net, we will require aspiring high level government appointees, such as the Secretary of Education to be, to also pass the test battery.

One way to go about this testing would be to require every aspiring office holder to take the same tests he/she prescribes for others. Before being allowed to run for President, for example, Dubya would have had to pass the self-same tests he championed for high schoolers. Do you think he could pass? And imagine requiring every aspiring state Secretary of Education to pass the battery of tests they propose requiring of aspiring teachers. In Pennsylvania, for example, he or she would have to pass separate NTE tests in Reading, Writing, and Listening Skills, (The later would be a tough one for these chaps.).

An alternate plan is to design brand new tests for those aspiring to high office. We could turn to ETS or the Psychological Corporation to craft enough items for multiple versions of the test since cheating would be a particular concern. Test items would be finalized only after a painstaking vetting. Committees both inside and outside these non-profit firms would appraise and reappraise every question. In the end we might have items roughly like these:

1. Given an unprecedented federal budget deficit, the very worst course of action would be to:
a. borrow money to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure
b. cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans
c. privatize Social Security
d. tighten the nation's belt and spend only what we have

2. If an attractive intern offers oral sex a public official should:
a. quickly take him or her up on it before he or she changes their mind
b. agree, but be sure to be discreet
c. politely decline
d. sask them what they mean by "sex."

3. If, as President, you plan to have our schools emphasize “character education,” the best model to base the curriculum on would be:
a. J. Edgar Hoover
b. Richard Nixon
c. Bill Clinton
d. none of the above

4. Should a terrorist attack against the US originate in country A, the best course of action would be to:
a. invade country B
b. invade country C
c. invade country A
d. invade some damn body

Admittedly, on a test like this dishonest answers would be a problem. Safeguards are required. One possibility is to administer the test while test-takers are hooked up to lie detectors. Imagine a candidate sweating and squirming as the polygraph relentlessly tells the tale. “Is that your actual answer? Is that your final honest answer?” (Philadelphia’s infamous late Duce/Mayor Frank Rizzo once failed a lie detector test while trying to prove the device’s reliability. Evidently the polygraph was more discerning than the voters.) Alternatively, we could inject test-takers with scopolamine, a truth serum favored by secret policemen the world over. The test would be administered orally as the subjects drift guilelessly on a tripped out cloud.

Regardless of the method, however, we must be absolutely certain that our subjects are answering truthfully. And we should keep in mind that most of them would be unaccustomed to doing this.

That, in broad outline, is the plan. But it needs filling in. That’s where you can help. Tell us what you think. Should aspirants for public office take the same tests they prescribe for others, or should they be required to take brand new custom designed tests? If so should we measure wisdom, rectitude, practical knowledge, educational expertise, sexual cravings or what? And should we test just once, or longitudinally every year the person is in office? (Longitudinal testing has the obvious advantage of measuring whether or not the subject is improving while “serving.”)

You also might like to suggest specific test items. They need not be multiple choice as exemplified in this commentary. Any types of questions typically found on standardized tests are welcome. Rush your comments and suggestions to The Worm Turns Foundation, c/o Newfoundations, P.O. Box 94, Oreland, PA 19075, or post them here.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Index of Leading Educational Indicators

2008-08-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

Way too much is made of standardized test scores. Public officials worry over them the way a hypochondriac frets about his bowel movements. Politicians point to them as if they were the pronouncements of Moses. School officials anticipate their public unveiling as a condemned man awaits his own execution.

All of this is more than passing odd. At their best, standardized tests indirectly measure trivial things. They tell us nothing at all about whether schooling is having a positive impact on the way children will live their lives.

Many admit the weaknesses of high stakes tests, but still argue for their administration. They say, “We need some measure of school effectiveness.” But there already are widely available measures that offer a much better measure of educational progress. All we need do is start monitoring them.

Let's call this compilation the Index of Leading Educational Indicators. Here is a preliminary list. Keep in mind, it is tentative and subject to amendment.

• THE NIELSON RATINGS
Here is an enormously powerful index of schooling's effectiveness. Count the number of adults regularly viewing, say, professional wrestling, for example, and we are measuring how badly schooling has failed. The same thing applies to "Jerry Springer." The higher his Nielsons, the gloomier we should be about the nation's schools. If, on the other hand, viewership is high for, say, National Geographic Specials, History Channel or Discovery Channel, there is reason for optimism.

• CD AND MUSIC VIDEO SALES
Here I’m thinking of keeping tabs on the sales figures of various musical artists and genres. Like the popularity of paintings of Elvis on black velvet, it reveals a great deal about schooling’s success. We could, for example, compare gangsta rap music sales with classical music sales. Our schools surely have failed miserably if most consumers prefer Snoop Doggy Dog to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Biggy Small to Frederick Chopin.

• CULT MEMBERSHIP
Every Jonestown resident who eagerky swigged lethal Cool Aid represented a schooling failure. So did the men in David Koresh's cult who allowed Dave to sexually service their wives and daughters because, as Koresh patiently explained to them, he was the only man pure enough for the job. And what about the schooling of that Heaven's Gate crowd who had themselves castrated to conform with "Bo" and "Peep's" teachings, then "left their containers" to rendezvous with a space ship concealed behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Maybe all such followers should have repeated first grade.

• SUPERMARKET TABLOID SALES
The sales figures of these grotesque gazettes provide a far more valid measure of educational progress than anything ETS could dream up. I'm talking about those papers that headline things like "WOMEN COMMITS SUICIDE IN DISHWASHER!", or "HALF BOY, HALF DOLPHIN WASHES UP ON BEACH!" Of course, tabloid sales figures are an inverse measure of educational progress.

• THE POPULARITY OF SHADY TELEVANGELISTS
The income figures of bunko artist TV preachers, available from the IRS Tax Exempt Branch, are a sure measure of schooling's effectiveness. The more money they make, the less well our schools have done. Consider the chap who lapses into "trances" while conducting worship services. The Holy Spirit then allegedly uses the preacher's vocal apparatus to speak to the congregation. The reverend claims he has no idea what the Spirit says. He has to ask the congregation after he regains consciousness. The amount of money sent to guys like this should be monitored carefully because it is an inverse measure of school effectiveness.

• THE POPULARITY OF FORTUNE TELLERS AND PSYCHICS
Imagine visiting a psychic to decide who and when you should marry, if the one you love loves you, or how to make a person at a distance think of you. That many people seriously do this is a telling measure of schooling's ineffectiveness.

•THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER LIST
It’s encouraging when people read books at all. But the quality of the books on this best-sellers list testifies eloquently about schooling's success or failure. A few years ago, for example, millions of folks found it plausible to think that God had secretly constructed his own seek and find word game in the Holy Bible. The teachers of those who took The Bible Code seriously might prefer suicide over living with such failure.

•THE QUALITY OF SCHOOL REFORM PROPOSALS
Opinions on school reform provide irrefutable, if unintentional, proof that schools aren’t getting it done. Let’s keep tabs on these proposals. When they become better reasoned, more factual, less political and linked to conditions outside of school we’ll know our educational system is doing a better job.

WHO'S AT FAULT?
Such an index is more powerful than anything Educational Testing Service or Psychological Corporation can contrive. But perhaps you are thinking that schools are not exclusively, even mainly, responsible for the presently dismal state of affairs such an index would reveal. You're thinking that some people lack native intelligence and can't be well taught and that others are too lonely, angry, scared, or what have you, to think straight. So what? Educators aren’t chiefly responsible for standardized test scores either. The point is to blame some one, and it might as well be people who haven’t shown a disposition to fight back.

How about suggesting additional measures so that we can perfect this Index of Leading Educational Indicators? Post your comments here.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Educational Reform Begins at Home

2008-08-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

One of the most fundamental problems American teachers face is unloving, uncaring and/or unskillful parents. If you are a veteran teacher, you doubtless have had this experience. On Home and School day, or whatever it is called locally, the parents of your best students show up en masse. The parents of your most difficult students typically are no where to be found. Or, if they are there, reveal through their behavior why their child is a problem to begin with.

School critics demand "educational" reform. And when they do they intend that schooling should be the recipient of their tender mercies. But what is actually required is not mere school reform, but educational reform. And, at bottom, educational reform begins with better parenting. Parents are, after all, the preeminent educators of children.

Recognizing this reality is politically "incorrect." The party line is that child rearing practices vary from group to group and no one way of raising children is better than any other. This "nonjudgmental" view is fine so long as you don't have to accomplish anything with kids in school. If you do, however, it is another matter. When it comes to a child’s school success, there is NO substitute for caring, concerned parents who do their level best to insure that their children are well brought up.

It’s not hard to figure out why the parental dimension of "educational" reform is ignored. It’s a political minefield. Imagine the reaction if the President of the United States went on national television and told America's parents something like this,

“You parents are, far and away, your child’s most important teacher. That is why educational reform must begin with you. Too often you provide inappropriate examples or fail to provide adequate love, limits, direction or support. No child asks to be born and when you bring life into this world you have a non-negotiable obligation to nurture and properly direct that life. That means you must sometimes sacrifice for your child, but that is what good parenting has always required. And don’t expect teachers, or anyone else, to do this for you. This is one job that requires YOUR best effort.”

Such a message would not be popular with many, but it is long overdue.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

First Rate Teachers Key to School Reform

2008-08-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Really want to improve American schooling? Here is the first and most essential step. Respect teaching and recognize that it requires special knowledge and skill. Teachers are the key participants in improving our schools: and nothing, or at least nothing good, will happen without strengthening their preparation and licensure.

This is no pipe dream. Advances in the teaching knowledge base make it possible to transform teacher preparation into a meaningfully rigorous and truly empowering process. But instead of exploiting this unprecedented opportunity, state and federal officials have been fostering lax, disempowering short cuts into teaching. For instance, thirty eight states now offer so-called alternative certification programs. And most of these alternatives are so undemanding they virtually insure incompetence, indolence or both. And, depite deceptive rhetoric to the contrary, their sole purpose is to license “teachers” on the cheap.

This lack of commitment to quality teacher preparatione betrays a lack of genuine commitment to school improvement. Instead of weakening already anemic certification requirements, officials who really were serious about school reform would forget about quickie alternatives to meaningful preparation and, while they were at it, decommision marginal teacher preparation programs at profiteering colleges who specialize in cut-rate certification programs.

Serious school reformers would also stop appointing pedagogical simpletons to educational positions of power and influence. When billionaire Ross Perot was appointed to head up school “reform” in Texas, for instance, he was totally, perhaps invincibly, ignorant of the teaching and learning knowledge base. He had no clue about the research that disproved his own blustering encyclicals. And, emboldened by this ignorance, Perot and his accomplices in the Texas legislature made sure that Lone Star state teacher preparation would be brief and superficial.

The liberal arts professoriate typified by former Secretary of Education William Bennett are another set of pedagogical ignoramuses who have great influence on teacher preparation. What did Bennett know about schooling, teaching or learning that qualified him to become the nation’s Secretary of Education? Or how about Lynne Cheney, former Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities and wife of the Darth Vader of the Bush administration. As Chair of the NEH, Cheney routinely supported alternative teacher certification while assuring us that an academic education was not only necessary but sufficient for teacher preparation. A large body of research contradicts her assertion.

Most scary of all are the big-city school district bosses that want to train their own teachers. What sort of teacher do you think they long for? The same sort of coal miners, coal barons longed for ot the same sort of steel workers the steel barons longed for. Compliant, docile and predictable. With big city school bosses in charge of preparing their own teachers you can be utterly certain that whatever else these aspirants are trained to do, it won’t be to disagree with what these schools are presently doing.

Those who care about teaching can be forgiven a certain indignation at the influential trifling of educational incompetents. As the famed philosopher Alfred North Whitehead puts it:
When one considers in its length and breadth the importance of a nation’s young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous inertia with which (education) is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage”
Alfred North Whitehead
The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1929) p.22.

Some say that that arguments of this sort are just a “special interest” of college based teacher educators who are merely “protecting their guild.” But are the interests of teacher educators more “special” than any other human being who cares about what they do. And remember, it took guilds, with their rigorous training, to build enduring masterpieces such as Europe’s great cathedrals. Master glass workers or stone masons certainly didn’t invite “creative, idealistic and enthusiastic” people in off the street to try their hand at stained glass or stone carving. They were unrelenting in their apprenticeship requirements and the results speak for themselves.

Mos

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

The Perils of Deregulating Schooling: the charter school example

2008-08-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

The same sort of people who loosened the government rules that regulated airlines, trucking and savings and loans in the 1980'sare working to eliminate many rules concerning teaching and schooling. These “reformers” claim that removing government regulations and encouraging competition will encourage school improvement.

They assure us that deregulating teaching will open up a whole new source of talent. Opening public schools to competition will drive out the bad schools, encourage innovation and make educators responsive to the need for change. David Kearns, former chairman of Xerox and highly placed Bush appointee to the U. S. Department of Education, puts it this way, “Public schools acting as monopolies are failing. Providing choice means allowing schools to compete with one another for the most valuable of assets: students.” (Kearns fails to consider that some kids will inevitably be regarded as liabilities. Hopefully he had better foresight when he headed up Xerox)

As the fires of competition purify pedagogy many schools and teaching jobs will perish. That is part of the plan. When he was Governor of Minnesota, Rudy Perpich described this social Darwinism with suitable detachment when he observed: “...[Failed schools] will file for ‘bankruptcy’ like any other business.” We are assured, however, that the only schools forced into bankruptcy will be those that fail to become more effective. “Effective” at what? The meaning of that slogan is left to our imagination. Hopefully, it will not be "effective" in seducing the masses or confirming our worst prejudices.

It is not difficult to determine why reformers long for public schooling to be cleansed by competition. Too many school districts, particularly large urban ones, echo the worst aspects of the former Soviet Union. Some of these conditions are caused by too many regulations. But let's not kid ourselves. Even a conservative Republican should be able to recognize that most school problems will not be alleviated by deregulation. Consider the underfunding of urban schools. City schools have the nation's largest number of needy students, yet every year they are starved for money. Deregulation doesn't address, much less resolve, this and other systemic problems rooted in out of school realities.

And let's not forget the costs of deregulation. WHen the Reagan administration deregulated Savings and Loans,for example, taxpayers eventually had to pay a half trillion dollars to bail them out of self-induced catastrophe. Now, in Philadelphia, PA, where there is an unusual concentration of 61 charter schools, the costs of this particular deregulation are bubbling to the surface. They include mismanagement, corruption, profiteering, conflicts of interest and self-dealing, In short, deregulation has been accompanied by alarming abuses. Raise your hand if you find that surprising.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

-- GKC

Triumph of the School as Factory

2008-08-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

It has been well over one hundred years since this nation embarked on the breathtakingly ambitious venture of universal public schooling. The costs of this endeavor quickly proved to be extraordinarily burdensome, and it was decided early on to carry it out in as cost effective a manner as possible. The consequence of this push for efficiency was public schools modeled on factories with an emphasis on mass production and cost-effectiveness, rather than democracy or individuality.

For the most part, today’s public schools still are factories. In fact, the organization and management that typifies the most unenlightened factories characterizes much, if not most, public schooling. Management is top-down all the way. The federal government sets basic rules. State authorities implement them while adding many more rules. School boards make decisions based on these federal and state rules plus fiscal and political realities. The superintendent executes the will of the board. Principals tell teachers what to do and when to do it; and they, in turn, direct the youngsters in similar manner.

Sometimes this industrial approach produces monstrously undemocratic results. A past Superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, for example, boasted to the press that she could tell them what was happening in every classroom in the city at any given moment. What was actually happening was administratively induced chaos because the standardized, teacher-proof curriculum was incapable of accommodating individual differences. For instance, second grade teachers found they were forbidden to use anything other than second grade readers and the canned lesson of the day even if some of those second grade kids still couldn’t read. Similarly, seventh grade math teachers were forced to ‘teach’ algebra to kids who couldn’t even do fractions or long division, and so forth.

With this superintendent, as with many others, autonomy, freedom and choice are low, or non-existent, priorities. The industry is focused on standardization, teacher proofing and measured outcomes. We should also remember that there is a powerful new restriction on autonomy, freedom, choice, and democracy in schooling. With its emphasis on measurable results, quality control, instrumental and extrinsic motivations, atomization and fragmentation of knowledge, No Child Left Behind represents the near total triumph of factory model schooling in contemporary America. In short, the whole weight of the federal government arc welds the school as factory in place as never before.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Longing to Know Versus the Comfort of Ignorance

2008-07-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

In 1615 “His Holiness and the Most Eminent Lords, Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition” declared that Galileo had “rendered (himself) vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy” and commanded him “to abjure, curse and detest the said error and heresies in our presence.”
Galileo’s “crimes” were:

1. “Making the proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.”

2. “Making the proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous of faith.”

Wielding the authority of their offices, the Pope and the Lords of the Inquisition decided, in essence, that Galileo had strayed from virtue into vice when he abandoned the scriptures and instead heeded his own observations and calculations. It was at this point that Galileo’s curiosity became “unlawful” as well as “disordered and immoderate.” Of course, it also led him to the truth.

This is no isolated instance. History is stuffed full with example after example of authorities declaring highly creative curiosity “disordered and immoderate” whenever it frightened them or threatened their interests. Consider just the history of medicine. Here are a few of the many vital medical interests that were originally regarded as disordered and immoderate:

• The structure and function of the human body.

• Inoculation.

• Vaccination.

• The germ theory of disease.

• Anesthesia.

In these and hundreds of other instances, Big Brother used the equivalent of Orwell's Thought Police and the Ministry of Truth to try to wipe out unwelcome curiosity.

What would remain should the enemies of curiosity succeed? Ultimately, we would be left with what George Orwell describes as "a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face."

There is an essential tension between a longing to know and the comfort of ignorance. The ignorant intuit that the glue that holds their world together is soluble when immersed in inquiry. So, given half a chance, they act to wipe out that threat by stifling the search and condemning the searcher.

To similar considerations see www.newfoundations.com

Christa McAuliffe's Death and Reagan's Reelection

2008-07-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

Christa McAuliffe, a high school social studies teacher and mother of two, was the "first citizen passenger" scheduled to go into space. Superficially, the presence of a teacher was to signify America's high regard for teaching and schooling.

Unknown to Christa McAuliffe, however, the more basic mission was aiding President Reagan's reelection. A teacher in Challenger was the cheapest way of making the incumbent President look like a supporter of teachers and schooling even though he had set out to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and was making drastic cuts in the Federal education budget.

When the decision was made to launch a Teacher-in-Space, the Reagan-Bush re-election campaign was already underway. Reagan-Bush was known to be vulnerable to Mondale-Ferraro on several issues. One of the most important was education. Mondale effectively highlighted Reagan's "second-rate leadership" that produced "an appalling record" of “educational neglect.” His campaign issued a "report card" on Reagan educational policy that gave the President "F's" in everything but dramatics and sports.

Shortly after Mondale launched this offensive a Gallup Poll revealed that a large majority of Americans thought Mondale more likely than President Reagan to improve public schooling. This pro Mondale trend concerned Reagan campaign officials. They felt the President needed to recapture at least some of the "education vote?" To do so they planned a counter offensive. It was launched on August 27, 1984.

While speaking at a District of Columbia junior high school, the President first announced several new members of his Advisory Council on Education. That was a warm-up. Then he proudly told the world who America's first passenger in space would be. "Today" the President said" I'm directing NASA to begin a search in all of our elementary and secondary schools and choose as the first citizen passenger in the history of our space program one of America's finest — a teacher. One year later Christa McCauliffe was selected from over 11,000 applicants.

Late Night THoughts on the Death of Christa McCauliffe

SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT CHILDREN LEARNING WHAT THEY LIVE

2008-07-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

John Dewey famously argued that children learn what they live. For instance, teachers can talk at youngsters about the virtues of democracy, but if they live in a despotic school, they will learn to tolerate despotism.

This line of reasoning seems compelling, but in the real world things work more subtly. The person who taught me most about the value of freedom and democracy, for example, was my despotic forth grade teacher. Feared by all, she extorted compliance by very credible threats and actual violence.

She finally went too far, even for those antediluvian times, when she held a youngster against a very hot steam radiator until he demonstrated sufficient servility. His burns got her transferred to another school. But not before she taught me how dangerous unrestrained power really is and how precious is control over one’s own life.
A similar thing sometimes happened in the good old days of Catholic schooling when some nuns occasionally bullied, slapped or otherwise humiliated children. Presumably, what these nuns had in mind by not sparing the rod was making better Catholics. But the actual consequences were often to turn some kids off, not just with regards to Catholic schooling, but Catholicism altogether.

The point is that what we learn in school is often contrary to what the instructor or administrator intends. Imagine, for instance, a ‘free and democratic’ classroom where chaos makes learning difficult, and where vast amounts of faculty and student time are spent mediating petty disputes. Some students might come away from such an experience longing for a strong leader who would end the chaos and quickly settle petty disputes. In short, poorly managed democratic classrooms could make some kids eager for despotism.

So when it’s said that children learn what they live, keep in mind that this learning might be other than what is intended.

To examine these and similar issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

The Difficulties of Schooling for the Future

2008-07-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

Most of us have seen articles in popular magazines that attempt to portray the future. How accurate are these prognostications? There is little room for optimism. Writers of the 1920's and 30's trying to look fifty years into the future, for instance, predicted bigger and faster airplanes, safer and more reliable cars, people commuting via autogyros or personal jet packs, and entire cities encased in plastic bubbles within which was a man-made environment of pristine perfection.

We now are beyond that “future.” To be sure, planes are even bigger and faster than predicted, but no one is whizzing to work in their own autogyro. Car are safer and more reliable than ever, but they are often gridlocked in traffic. Cities are not encased in plastic bubbles but in envelopes of noxious man-made effluvium that eats away at both person and property.

Yes, the futurists of the 20's and 30's only got some things right when they speculated about the material future. And there are other things these futururists tended to miss altogether. They rarely anticipated the changes in race relations that have since occurred. They did not imagine the change in attitude toward the handicapped, gays, sexual behavior, the pill or opportunities for women. As a matter of fact, the people depicted in the illustrations accompanying those old time futuristic articles were all white and able-bodied with the women smiling happily in kitchens of the future.

Why did the popular writers of the 20's and 30's commonly dream of sleeker cars and more efficient kitchens but not of a more humane and compassionate America? Why was it unexceptional for them to predict faster planes but exceptional for them to visualize anything like the Voting Rights Act? Because they took much of their culture for granted. In fact it was transparent to them. That’s just the way things were.

We too are like that. We also take aspects of our culture as a given, yet many of the things we never question, perhaps never notice, will change in the future. That’s the difficulty of schooling children for the future. We can’t really imagine what that future will be like. Perhaps educators should be satisfied with preparing students for the present. That's hard enough.

To examine these issues further, see Dissecting School Benefits: a typology of conflicting goals

How Educable Are Americans

2008-07-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

It must be widely supposed that most people are educable, for Americans have long had a peculiar faith in the power of education. Indeed, it is frequently regarded as the answer for most human difficulties. That is why our schools are expected to resolve a daunting array of problems such as the cultural integration of immigrants, difficulties with national competitiveness, the elimination of racial injustice, the control of sexually transmitted diseases, and so forth. Indeed, the list of problems thought to be susceptible to educational solution seems almost inexhaustible.

Certainly a great deal of human misery could be prevented if people could be taught to think more deeply and effectively. But is the common failure to do so a consequence of a lack of education as many suppose? Perhaps, just perhaps, the real culprit is a widespread lack of capacity and/or inclination for education. After all, in order for education to be a cure, much less a cure-all, the majority of humans must be capable of sufficient reason and understanding to be improved by that means; plus they also must willing. Suppose this is not the case? Perhaps a great many humans, possibly even most humans, are not truly educable in any deep and abiding sense,?

Is such speculation too pessimistic? Perhaps it is; but consider the long-standing popularity of P.T. Barnum’s observation that “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Ponder also the durability of H.L. Mencken’s dictum that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Perhaps these and many similar observations remain current because they are deeply rooted in reality.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Raising Adolescents: The Myth of Control

2008-07-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

As a girl of my acquaintance emerged into adolescence, her parents relentlessly tried to control her behavior. Each time she did something they disapproved of they vainly tried to reestablish the control they had over her in childhood. The daughter responded by becoming ever more disobedient and devious. The escalation ended in an unwanted pregnancy, abortion, bitterness and estrangement. In short, the costs to all involved far exceeded the benefits.

There is a moral to this story — one every parent of an adolescent needs to know. Do not cling to the myth that you can still have the same level of control you had when your child was young. Such attempts are not only futile, but also counterproductive..

For good or ill, adolescents pretty much control their own lives particularly in today’s world Yes, those who respect their parent(s) often avoid doing things because they don’t want to embarrass or disappoint them. But this is something the adolescent, not the parent, chooses. Gentle parental influence remains, certainly; but being able to insure compliance is over forever.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Schools as Concentration Camps

2008-07-11T07:18:00.000-07:00

Some schools resemble prisons. But others are more like concentration camps. In the November 1988 Readers Digest, for instance, former Secretary of Education William Bennett praises a principal who took over a troubled inner-city Washington, D. C. school. The first day of school this "educational leader" assembled the student body and, in Bennett's words, "... with practiced eye chose 20 potential troublemakers to help enforce her tough new standard of discipline."

Can you imagine? The school is out of control and the principal's solution is to put the bullies in charge! How is that like a concentration camp? Hitler's SS used bully boy inmates, called Kapos, to maintain order there too. Frankly,even a former Secretary of Education should be able to see how extraordinarily cruel and stupid such a policy is.

Perhaps Bennett was too busy working on his The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories to think the right and wrong of this one through.

To examine these issues further, see School Bullies

-- GKC

Schools: What Limits Their Technological Transformation?

2008-07-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the New York Times cheerily reports that in the schools of the future:

"students will use free Internet applications to complete their classroom assignments on school-issued laptops that also substitute for text books;"
"parents will use instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress;"
"educators will track students' academic growth with sophisticated software that allows them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level."

Certainly, all of this is possible and more besides. But the realists among us recognize a fundamental limitation — the kids. They have to buy into these possibilities before technology can ever transform the process of schooling.

There is no guarantee that this buy in will happen. And this is particularly true of the schools that most urgently require transformation, the schools of our inner cities.

Here is a brief cautionary tale that makes this point. Once upon a time there was a Philadelphia inner city school that was technologically impoverished. Through some miracle several ancient classrooms were equipped with new computers. The following week, during class change, two male adolescents went into the classroom and chased one another across the desktops, trampling the computers in the process. There was no money for repairs or replacements. Thus ended all of the bulleted possibilities above.

For more detailed realistic considerations of educational issues, visit newfoundations.com

What Do Online Courses Portend for Teachers and Teaching?

2008-07-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

U.S. enrollment in online virtual classes is increasing with remarkable rapidity. Right now the level of enrollment is 22 times that of 2000 and shows every sign of continuing rapid growth. And this year, for the first time ever, on line enrollment reached the one million mark.

As this transformation progresses how will it impact teachers? It might mean job loss. And it at least means dramatic job change. Today only one percent of high school courses are taught online. But the Innosite Institute, a nonprofit thinktank, projects that 50% of all high school courses might be taught online by 2019. Perhaps that figure is inflated. So let's suppose that it will only half that That still means that in just eleven years one out of four high school course will be taught on line.

Why such rapid growth? Online instruction offers many advantages. Text books can be replaced by less expensive instructional packages with features and a level of student interest that individual teachers can never hope to match. Ability grouping, not to mention mass instruction, could become a thing of the past because online instruction permits every individual student to work at their own level in the same classroom.

Tracking student progress becomes remarkably more detailed and individualized as well as much more efficient. Plus online instruction often works for kids who are turned off by traditional schooling. But effective implementation of this instruction implies vast change for teachers. Indeed, the role of the classroom teacher may well be transformed.

Online instruction may also cause unemployment for an appreciable number of teachers. In the first place, kids can learn on their own with minimal supervision. That appeals to school boards if it means lower instructional costs. Plus much of the growth in this type of instructionoccurs in newly minted virtual charter schools. And Morgan Stanley's experts say that these type "school"s will capture an increasing share of the U.S. education market as states encourage, rather than just permit, this type of instruction.

No one can predict the future with complete accuracy. But one thing seems certain. Online education promises major changes for schools, teaching and teachers.

For more on educational matters, including straightforward considerations of often avoided topics, visit newfoundations.com.

Should We Decrease the Supply of High School Diplomas?

2008-07-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

It is obligatory for politicians to call for an increase in the high school graduation rate. But if this actually happens who will benefit and who will lose?

Practically speaking, as the percentage of youngsters getting high school diplomas increases, the value of that credential decreases. In the job market its value depends on its scarcity. If everyone receives a diploma, for instance, the credential offers no competitive advantage.

Let’s suppose the politicos get their wish. What would happen? Youngsters who do not, perhaps cannot, go to college would be hardest hit. They depend on their high school diploma to open doors. So an increase in the graduation rate will create problems for every youngster counting on their high school diploma for competitive advantage.

Admittedly, even if they become more plentiful diplomas still retain a certain defensive utility. In other words, if nearly everyone has one, the absence of a diploma is a major handicap .

It might make more sense to toughen graduation requirements and actually reduce the number of diplomas issued. This would increase the diploma’s value and offer a boost to those who must depend on them.

-GKC

For a more detailed examination of this and related issues See Dissecting School Benefits"

Let's Test the Candidates

2008-06-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

No Child Left Behind's emphasis on one-size-fits-all standardized testing is a concern of many. But the remedy for this federal spree just may be the hair of the dog. In other words, require every political candidate to pass a battery of standardized tests to be eligible for office. If you don’t pass the test, you can’t join the fest. And to make sure no deserving individual escapes our net, we also will require aspiring high level government appointees, such as the future Secretary of Education, to also pass.

We could require every aspiring office holder to take the same tests he/she prescribes for others. Before being allowed to run for President, for example, Dubya would have had to pass the self-same tests he championed for high schoolers. Imagine him sweating and scratching his noggin. Similarly we could require every aspiring state Secretary of Education to pass the battery of tests they propose requiring of aspiring teachers. In Pennsylvania, for example, he or she would have to pass separate NTE tests in Reading, Writing, and Listening Skills, (The later would be a tough one for any politician.).

An alternate plan is to design office specific tests for those aspiring to high office. We could turn to ETS or the Psychological Corporation to craft enough items for multiple versions of the test since cheating would be a particular concern. Test items would be finalized only after a painstaking vetting. Blue ribbon boards would appraise and reappraise every question. In the end we might have questions roughly like these:

1. Given an unprecedented federal budget deficit, the best course of action is to:
a. borrow money to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure
b. cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans
c. privatize Social Security
d. tighten the nation's belt and spend only what we have

2. If an attractive intern offers oral sex a public official should:
a. quickly take him or her up on it before he or she changes their mind
b. be discreet
c. politely decline
d. ask them what they mean by "sex."

3. If, as President, you plan to have our schools emphasize “character education,” the best model to base the curriculum on would be:
a. J. Edgar Hoover
b. Richard Nixon
c. Bill Clinton
d. none of the above

4. If an attack against the US originated in Afghanistan, the best course of action would be to:
a. invade Iraq
b. invade Iran
c. invade Afghanistan
d. invade anybody

Admittedly, on a test such as this dishonest answers might be a problem. Safeguards clearly are required. One possibility is to administer the test while test-takers are hooked up to lie detectors. Imagine a candidate sweating and squirming as the polygraph relentlessly tells the tale. “Is that your actual answer? Is that your final honest answer?” (Philadelphia’s infamous late Duce/Mayor Frank Rizzo once failed a lie detector test while trying to prove the device’s reliability. Evidently the polygraph was more discerning than voters.) Alternatively, we could inject test-takers with scopolamine, a truth serum favored by secret policemen the world over. The test would be administered orally as the subjects drift guilelessly on a tripped out cloud.

Regardless of the method, however, we must be absolutely certain that our subjects are answering truthfully. And we should keep in mind that most of them would be unaccustomed to doing this.

That, in broad outline, is the plan. But it needs filling in. That’s where you can help. Tell us what you think. Should aspirants for public office take the same tests they prescribe for others, or should they be required to take brand new custom designed tests? If so should we measure wisdom, rectitude, practical knowledge, educational expertise, sexual cravings or what? And should we test just once, or longitudinally every year the person is in office? (Longitudinal testing has the obvious advantage of measuring whether or not the subject is improving while “serving.”)

You also might like to suggest specific test items. They need not be multiple choice as exemplified in this commentary. Any types of questions typically found on standardized tests are welcome. Rush your comments and suggestions to The Worm Turns Foundation, c/o Newfoundations, P.O. Box 94, Oreland, PA 19075, or post them here.

To examine these issues further, see articles at www.newfoundations.com

Why Teaching Critical ThinkingTypically Is a Farce

2008-06-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

Critical Thinking About “Critical Thinking”

There are more than 16,000 school districts in the United States and nearly all of them boast that they teach ‘critical thinking.’ In fact if you Google “critical thinking,” “school district,” and “mission statement” combined you get an astonishing 182,000 matches. Click on them and you will find page after page of heart-warming affirmations like this one from the Lordstown, Ohio School District: “We believe in the development of critical thinking skills.”

A commendable belief; but what would happen if critical thinking actually were effectively taught? Suppose the youngsters truly, seriously and boldly scrutinized their community and nation’s customs, principles, and beliefs. Suppose they were encouraged to critically examine the authorities that most of us defer to in directing our lives and defining the good, the true, the beautiful? No doubt that would be critical thinking. But would educators who encourage this sort of analytical inquiry receive hearty congratulations or have to flee a rampaging mob of angry, torch-wielding villagers?

Let’s be clear that by critical thinking we do not mean mere logic chopping. You know, the “these are the premises” and “this is a conclusion,” sort of thing. That kind of ‘critical thinking’ is generally harmless in that it rarely results in serious challenges to anything deeply believed. That is why this is the common style of ‘critical thinking’ taught in school. No,by critical thinking we mean systematically reconsidering the deep assumptions that many, including student’s parents, take to be true. We also include questioning basic authority — including sacred and semi-sacred documents and those who interpret them. Thinking critically has to include that sort of thing or it is hardly critical.

Some might argue that it isn't necessary to tackle these issues head on; that by teaching generic methods of thinking critically learners will, sooner or later, bring these tools to bear on those deep assumptions and basic authorities that are central to their lives. But too many things can interfere with transfer of learning to rely on it. If you want young people to really think critically, it is far better to provide them with a direct and well focused opportunity to do so. Just be prepared to find another job shortly thereafter.

-- GKC
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Tiers

2008-06-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

The Philadelphia Inquirer just published a letter to the editor from a taxpayer irate about the terms of a settlement that ended a teacher's strike. Smarting over the prospect of teachers making still more money, the taxpayer insists the remedy is a three-tiered teacher salary system. He wants to pay the most to those teaching math, science, physics, biology, etc. Next in pay would be teachers of English, literature, foreign languages, social studies, business and vocational subjects. The lowest pay tier would be elementary, special education and physical education teachers.

One wonders how he arrived at these priorities. Is it that he thinks math and science are the most worthwhile subjects? Perhaps he think that it takes more skill and effort to qualify to teach them? Perhaps he is of the opinion that it is harder to teach these subjects. But how did special and elementary education teachers end up at the bottom of his three tiered sytem? Surely he doesn't think this type of teaching is easier than teaching, say, algebra. If he does he could use some special education himself. With respect to elementary education being easier, perhaps he should try his hand at teaching 30+ six year olds like Philadelphia teachers have been doing for years if he thinks this is true.

Does he think that kids with special difficulties are worth less public investment? That seems unlikely because he also wants elementary in the bottom pay tier, and few argue that young "normal" children are least worthy of public resources. Perhaps he has some other criteria in mind. But what could it be? Does he just like math and science? But the foundation of both those subjects, indeed of all subjects, is laid in elementary school.

Perhaps, like some theological matters, the criteria for his rankings must forever remain a mystery. One can only hope they were not divinely inspired.

By the way, this chap also thinks teacher's salaries should be capped at no more than $20,000 above the starting salary. Presumably he thinks this will insure retention of the best and brightest.

-- GKC
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Fairness in Educational Practice

2008-06-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

Affirmative Action in Educational Practice: Neglected Considerations

Educators who plan to take affirmative action to undo the effects of past and current unjust discrimination should take the following into consideration . Social psychological research has consistently demonstrate that many genuine handicaps are seldom even considered when administering such a policy. Consider the following as possible sources of unjust discrimination and ask why affirmative action should not be extended to these and similar classes of people.

Physical Attractiveness

In a study entitled "What Is Beautiful Is Good," researchers from the American Psychological Association experimentally documented a phenomenon referred to as the physical-attractiveness stereotype. Investigators showed photographs of attractive, average, and unattractive people to university undergraduates. The students were asked to rate the people in the photos on various personality traits and behavioral tendencies, based solely on their appearance in the pictures.

Results showed that compared to unattractive people, attractive people were assumed to possess a higher number of positive traits. The students rated them confident, strong, assertive, candid, warm, honest, kind, outgoing, sensitive, poised, sociable, exciting, and nurturing (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 1972). Startling as these results may be, the physical-attractiveness stereotype is robust, replicated in several different experimental paradigms (Feingold 1992). As Aristotle noted, "Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction."

Obesity

Weight is another, often overlooked, physical characteristic associated with discrimination and unfair treatment. Social psychological research on attitudes toward overweight people has shown they are often perceived as lazy, unintelligent, slovenly, and unattractive (Grover, Keel, and Mitchell 2003). Several studies have demonstrated that such negative attitudes toward obese individuals may contribute to discrimination in the work place. Specifically, obese people are not hired as often as people of normal weight (Roe and Eickwort 1976); are less likely to be promoted (Larkin and Pines 1979); and often report being discriminated against by managers and peers (Rothblum, Brand, Miller, and Oetjen 1990).

Short Stature

Height, particularly in men, is another physical attribute associated with negative stereotypes and discrimination. A 1992 study by researchers from Michigan State University demonstrated that short men are often judged inferior to tall men in several personal attributes. People tend to judge taller men as more socially attractive, higher in professional status, more masculine, more athletically inclined, and more physically attractive than short men (Jackson and Ervin 1992). Similar studies have found that short men often experience discrimination in professional settings. For example, short job applicants are not hired as often as taller applicants (Bonuso 1983); short employees earn less, on average, than taller employees (Loh 1993); and short political candidates lose elections more often than taller candidates (Gillis 1982).

Some Of The Other Factors

Social psychological research also indicates that people with red hair color are often stereotyped as "clownish" and "weird" (Heckert and Best 1997). Negative stereotyping based on language and dialect (i.e., Southern accents, ebonics) also is a common occurrence (Anisfield 1972). Additionally, children who wear brand-name clothing and shoes are judged "popular," "wealthy," and able to "fit in with their peers" compared to children who do not wear name brands (Elliot and Leonard 2004).

What does such research have to do with equity in the classroom? The answer is "Everything." If unattractive, obese, or short people, for example, experience discrimination in a broad setting, it is very likely that they experience similar discrimination in an educational setting. So shouldn't fair share educators be prepared to apply compensatory measures for any student victimized by prejudice? Why should some students qualify for fair share treatment just because their particular group has more political muscle?

Conclusion

Instead of focusing on skin color or other group differences, perhaps educators should embrace the character-based vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. If they have the freedom to do so and if they can overcome the natural human tendency to stereotype, perhaps they should focus on each child's individual humanity, rather than his or her race,ethnicity, or what have you. After all, in the end, isn't character, not group membership, the most important quality of all?

--GKC

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EQUAL SCHOOLING AS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

2008-06-13T17:06:00.001-07:00

In making No Child Left Behind the law of the land, Congress and President Bush got their school reform priorities backwards. Before demanding that no child be left behind, they first should have remedied the educational inequalities that insure that millions of American youngsters don't have a fair chance of keeping up.

How severe are these inequalities? Consider the School District of Philadelphia. Nearly 80 percent of its K-12 students live at or near the poverty level; and financial neediness spawns profound educational deficits. Nevertheless, a typical Philadelphia student has $2,215 less spent per year on his or her schooling than a typically less disadvantaged suburban student. As a matter of fact, six of those surrounding suburban districts spend over $5,000 more per pupil per year than Philadelphia. Given the School District of Philadelphia’s maximum class size of 32, that equals a $160,000.00 difference per classroom, per year.

It would be one thing if such educational inequalities were confined to the Philadelphia area or even to Pennsylvania. But outrageous inequalities in per student spending persist in district after district, and state after state. Here is a brief sampler of the unequal per-student spending that disadvantages so many American children.

• Camden, NJ $15,485 / Brick Township, NJ $9,472 – a difference of $6,013.
• Palo Alto Unified, CA $10,709 / Victor Valley Union High, CA $5,125 – a difference of $5,584.
• Yonkers, NY $15,148 / North Syracuse, NY $9,856 – a difference of $5,292.
• Atlanta, GA $11,502 / Columbia County, GA $6,580 – a difference of $4,922.
• Pittsburgh, PA $12,242 / Reading, PA $7,340 – a difference of $4,902.

These differences are typical of differences over most of the nation. Yet federal politicians, fully aware of this pitiable situation, are piously demanding that no child be left behind. Their hypocrisy is truly breath taking, even by Washington standards.

To be sure, federal tinkering attempts to deal with symptoms of this situation. But more than a century of outrageous inequality in school funding suggests that only a constitutional amendment would apply the consistent and persistent pressure necessary to sustain efforts at educational equalization from congress to congress and administration to administration. Plus federal judicial scrutiny, would pack the muscle necessary to insure state cooperation.

What would an Equal Education Amendment look like? It might read something like this:

EQUAL EDUCATION AMENDMENT
Section 1. Equality of Educational opportunity under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, sex, income or place of residence.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Would an equal education amendment have sufficient support in Congress? That seems highly doubtful. Would the required two thirds of the states ratify it? Possibly not. But just raising the issue of a constitutional amendment focuses attention on the inequities.

Who would oppose such an amendment? In George W. Bush's America, there should be no scarcity of opponents.

And what would be the stated grounds of opposition? Some would say that an equal education amendment establishes excessive federal control over what are properly state and local matters. But that concern seems bogus now that Republicans have taken the lead in the most massive federal infringement of state and local control of schooling in our history - No Child Left Behind.

A far more potent source of opposition to an equitable disposition of educational resources would be those who benefit from the present inequality. Barring massive new spending that would raise all boats to the same level, they would have to forfeit that advantage and Congresspersons would vote accordingly.

Make no mistake; the federal government commands the necessary resources to provide every American child with equal educational opportunity. But to do this legislators and the White House would have to massively rearrange national priorities. We might, for example, have to invest far more in children and far less in the warfare state. And this would threaten the financial interests of many powerful people who paid to get these politicians elected in the first place.

This gets us to the real advantage of putting an Equal Education Amendment on the table; it forces hands and reveals agendas. It puts a question out there that most politicians dearly want to dodge. What is more important to you, providing every American child with equal educational opportunity, or serving the special interests you are beholden to? It’s high time that we ask that question and insist on a straight answer. -- GKC

Bad Apples or Sour Pickles? Misinterpreting the Columbine Massacre

2008-06-13T15:29:00.001-07:00

While a few bad apples might spoil the barrel (filled with good fruit/people), a vinegar barrel will always transform sweet cucumbers into sour pickles—regardless of the best intentions, resilience, and genetic nature of the cucumbers. So does it make more sense to spend resources to identify, isolate, and destroy bad apples or to understand how vinegar works . . . ?
—Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo

It was 11:19 a.m. on April 20, 1999 — Hitler’s 110th birthday—when Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado. Hoping to kill most of the 400-plus students eating at the time, the pair planted two twenty-pound bombs in the school cafeteria. Then they waited outside the building, hoping to pick off blast survivors as they staggered out.
When the bombs failed to detonate, the pair stormed into the cafeteria and opened fire. Forty minutes later twelve students and a teacher lay lifeless; another twenty-three students were wounded—many gravely. Harris and Klebold also were dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Police worked into the next day to find and deactivate the thirty bombs the pair had planted throughout the school ( Wickipedia: Columbine high school massacre ).

The FBI’s Bad Apples
What set Harris and Klebold off? The FBI’s team of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, including a Michigan State University psychiatrist and Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier, the FBI’s chief Columbine investigator, and a clinical psychologist, assert that Harris killed because he was a “psychopath.” Klebold, they say, was “hotheaded, depressive, suicidal,” and under Harris’s influence.(Dave Cullen The depressive and the psychopath: At last we know why the Columbine killers did it. posted Tuesday, April 20, 2004.)
The FBI experts are not claiming that Harris was delusional or out of touch with reality. They are asserting that he was a world-class hater out to punish humanity for its inexcusable inferiority. Is the FBI correct? Was this horrific incident the evil spawn of a remorseless teenager with a world-class superiority complex and an angry, suicidal alter ego?

The Columbine Pickle Barrel
What was the situation at Columbine before the massacre? Was this high school one of those vinegar-filled barrels that transform sweet cucumbers into sour pickles, or were Harris and Kleebold bad apples who spoiled an otherwise good barrel?
A painstaking investigative report by the Washington Post describes pre-massacre Columbine as filled with social vinegar. The high school was dominated by a “cult of the athlete.” ( Lorraine Adams and Dale Russakoff, Dissecting Columbine’s cult of the athlete, Washington Post, June 12, 1999, Page A-1.) In this distorted environment a coterie of favored jocks—who wore white hats to set themselves apart—consistently bullied, hazed, and sexually harassed their classmates while receiving preferential treatment from school authorities.
Other students hated the abuses of “the steroid poster boys” but could do little. A former student testified, “Pretty much everyone was scared to take them on; if you said anything, they’d come after you, too.”
Here is more of what the Post found was going on at Columbine:

Bullying was rampant and unchecked. For instance, a father told Post reporters about two athletes mercilessly bullying his son, a Jew, in gym class. They sang songs about Hitler, pinned the youngster to the ground and did “body twisters” on him until he was black and blue, and even threatened to set him on fire. The father reported the bullying to the gym teacher as well as who also was the wrestling coach, but it continued. When the father took his complaint to the guidance counselor, he says, he was told, “This stuff can happen.” The outraged father had to complain to the school board to get relief for his son.
Athletes convicted of crimes were neither suspended from games nor expelled from school. The homecoming king, a star football player, was on parole for burglary yet still permitted to play. Columbine’s state wrestling champ was allowed to compete despite being on court-ordered probation, and school officials did nothing when he regularly parked his $100,000 Hummer all day in a fifteen-minute parking space.
Sexual harassment by athletes was common and ignored. For example, when a girl complained to her teacher that a football player was making lewd comments about her breasts in class, the teacher, also a football and wrestling coach, suggested she change her seat. When an athlete loudly made similar comments at a Columbine wrestling match, the girl complained to the same coach and he suggested she move to the other side of the gym. Finally, the girl complained to a woman working at the concession stand, who called police. The next day a school administrator tried to persuade the girl’s mother to drop the charges, telling her that pressing them would prevent the boy from playing football. When the youngster was found guilty, he still was permitted to play.

Homicidal Anger

How important were these injustices to Harris and Klebold? Did they care about them, or even know about them? The facts are they both knew and cared profoundly. In fact, the Post reports that dozens of interviews and court records alike show that the pair’s homicidal anger “. . . began with the injustices of the jocks.”
They became convinced that favored athletes could get away with anything. For instance, a close friend reported that the pair saw a star athlete, in front of a teacher, forcefully shove his girlfriend into a locker. The teacher did nothing. Such injustices enraged Harris and Klebold. That’s why, just before opening fire in the cafeteria, they demanded that all the jocks stand up. They planned to kill them first.
In sum, pre-massacre Columbine High seems to have been the kind of place that “will always transform sweet cucumbers into sour pickles.” The FBI’s experts clearly had fallen into something social psychologists call fundamental attribution error, which is falsely ascribing behavior to temperament or personality while underestimating the power of situational factors on the same behavior.

See ” at “Bad Apples or Sour Pickles? Fundamental Attribution Error and the Columbine Massacre
-- GKC

What Highly Qualified Teachers?

2008-06-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Once again comedians rule in education. Some months back Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan toured the country publicly ringing his hands about the urgent need to improve teacher quality in the good old US of A.

One might think that Secretary Duncan was worried about a Bush-era regulation classifying thousands of novice teachers who were just beginning their training as "highly qualified"as required by NCLB. No, Arne wasn't worried about that at all. In his department carried forward Bush's regulation, and when a federal judge ruled that the policy clearly violated No Child Left Behind, the President quickly signed a bill officially lowering that standard to next to nothing.

Just what did "highly qualified" mean before the President and Congress officially castrated it? It meant that if you wanted to teach math, science, social studies, the arts, reading and languages you must hold a long-term license and demonstrate your content knowledge by obtaining a college major, by passing a test in the subject taught, or by some other means established by the state. In other words, every state was allowed to choose its own criteria and there was no requirement that a candidate be actually trained in teaching!

Only in the politicized lala-land of public school policy would such a weak-kneed and ill-defined requirement be taken as too tough. Yet both George W. Bush and Barack Obama thought it necessary to water the law down. See why comedians rule in education?

For more such considerations please visit Highly Qualified Teachers: misgivings

-- GKC