Category Archives: Education

“Pop, there’s been radiation all over the place for a whole week now.” “Great. Clears the sinuses.”

A little eye-opener to go along with your mellow Easter afternoon. Here‘s the original if this copy is a little small for easy reading.

Let the schools burn

Daily Kos has a report about yet another maneuver from the rich conservative fuckknobs that have been financing destruction of American liberal organizations such as labor unions. This time the target is public education:

A new wave of school voucher bills is sweeping the nation, which would allow public education funds to be used in private or parochial schools.   As with past waves of voucher initiatives, these new bills are largely promoted and funded by the billionaire DeVos family and a core group of wealthy pro-privatization supporters. They include Pennsylvania SB-1, soon coming to a vote in the PA Senate, and the “Vouchers-for-All” bill approved by the Florida Senate Education Committee on April 14. Betsy DeVos is at the helm of organizations that have set the stage for both bills, but you would never know it based on the propaganda being marketed to Pennsylvanians.  Even if you are from another state, keep reading.  Chances are a Betsy DeVos-led campaign is already at work in your state or will be there soon…

The leaders of many of these DeVos/Koch/Scaife-funded institutes openly voice their ideological objections to all forms of public education. Some even proudly display their support for a proclamation posted at the Alliance for Separation of School and State, which reads,

“I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.”

Regardless of the individual merits of any particular charter school, the promotion of charter schools collectively is key to the hard religious right strategy for destroying public education, because voucher-funded charter schools will siphon money and the best students from public schools.

That, in turn, will degrade public schools, at which point advocates for charter schools and privatization will point to public schools and say, “look! Public schools are a failed experiment. We need more vouchers, more charter schools!”

My attitude about public education pretty much parallels those of John Taylor Gatto:

  1. It makes the children confused. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials that programming is similar to the television, it fills almost all the “free” time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
  2. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
  3. It makes them indifferent.
  4. It makes them emotionally dependent.
  5. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
  6. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.

The philosophy behind modern public education was conceived by 19th-century industrialists who sought to create a working class that was educated just enough to do the work and finish the paperwork, but not educated enough to exercise critical thinking:

My $0.03?

Let public education die. Let it burn.

School is not teaching your child anything really useful anyway, and it’s a tremendous waste of childhoods and educational opportunities.

If you really want your kids to be properly educated, to really learn something, homeschool them. The religious right has known for decades that homeschooling works stupifyingly better than public education; now it’s time for the secular world to learn the same thing (minus the religious indoctrination of which the right is so fond).

It’s been proven repeatedly that children pick up the essentials of literacy and thinking in about 100 hours of education (that’s twelve 8-hour school days, folks); the rest of a child’s education should reading, discussion, and regular exposure to educational opportunities, all of which can be easily handled by most parents.

“Always do the right thing.” “That’s it?” “That’s it.”

From former NBA player Don Amaechi’s blog concerning Kobe Bryant’s outburst of “fucking faggot!” aimed at a referree during last Tuesday’s NBA game:

“A young man from a Los Angeles public school e-mailed me. You are his idol. He is playing up, on the varsity team, he has your posters all over his room, and he hopes one day to play in college and then in the N.B.A. with you. He used to fall asleep with images of passing you the ball to sink a game-winning shot. He watched every game you played this season on television, but this week he feels less safe and less positive about himself because he stared adoringly into your face as you said the word that haunts him in school every single day. Kobe, stop fighting the fine. Use that money and your influence to set a new tone that tells sports fans, boys, men and the society that looks up to you that the word you said in anger is not O.K., not ever.”

“Think aboot the wee bairns, laddie!”

There are some public schools in the Chicago area that have a strict policy about lunch:

You can’t bring your own.

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices…”Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” [Little Village Academy principal Elsa] Carmona said. “It’s about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom).”

Uh-huh.

As you’ve undoubtedly figured out by now, money has changed hands somewhere:

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district’s food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

Drop a line to Elsa Carmona at LVA. Her number is 773-534-1880 and let her know (nicely, please) what you think about a principal who uses the “think about the children!” defense to make money, who takes bribes from a business so that children are forced to eat nutritionally poor, overly-cooked food packed with salt, corn syrup, and fat.

Ask her what she thinks when she sees dozens of unsophisticated 7th graders toss their lunch entrees uneaten.

Ask the principal where she eats her lunch.

Some laws aren’t as pinheaded as they appear at first glance

The Tennessee state legislature just passed a bill concerning science education in the state’s public schools. There are those who are panicking about the bill’s passage:

“…the Tennessee Science Teachers Association is on record describing the bill as “unnecessary, anti-scientific, and very likely unconstitutional.” Although the document is worded so as not to promote any particular doctrine, the thrust of the proposed law would elevate creationist theories about human evolution to the same status accorded by most educators to Darwin’s research.”

Really? Let’s take a look at what the bill actually says (emphases and inserted comments are mine):

~~~

SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 10, is amended by adding the following as a new, appropriately designated section:

(a) The general assembly finds that:

(1) An important purpose of science education is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills necessary to becoming intelligent, productive, and scientifically informed citizens;

(2) The teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy; and

Yes, that is true; some scientific subjects such as evolution have caused controversy due to the confusion between opinions held by faith and facts sustained by science and scientific methods.

(3) Some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects.

That is also true. Some teachers are pinheads despite possessing a modicum of education, and others don’t know how to handle the political ramifications.

(b) The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.

How about these for “appropriate” and “respectful” responses? “Creationism is a religious belief that doesn’t belong in the science classroom”, and “there are strong indications that global warming is a real event, even though the exact causes are not fully understood yet”? These responses are appropriate and respectful, stick strictly to scientific fact, and are responses that indicate use of scientific method and critical thinking.

(c) The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies. Toward this end, teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

Sounds like the acts of a properly taught science curriculum to me.

(d) Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

Still looking okay.

(e) This section only protects the teaching of scientific information, and shall not be construed to promote any religious or non-religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or non-beliefs, or promote  [d]iscrimination for or against religion or non-religion.

Again, looks good to me. No one gets dumped on or ridiculed. No one.

SECTION 2. By no later than the start of the 2011-2012 school term, the department of education shall notify all directors of schools of the provisions of this act. Each director shall notify all employees within the director’s school system of the provisions of this act.

SECTION 3. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law, the public welfare requiring it.

~~~

Now, the real question is what do school administrators and teachers do with this.

There is a neat easy answer: follow the letter of the law.

  • present scientific facts and encourage the use of critical thinking
  • discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the stances toward socially controversial subjects such as evolution and global warming
  • come to factually supported conclusions
  • do all this with a view toward respectful stances toward belief and non-belief

Aaaaaannd a quote from CBS News:

Presumably, that would also extend to teaching about alternative theories to global warming, a hot-button issue among conservative groups.

There is no “presumably” here. Any teacher who instructs students in “alternative” theories” about any controversial subject in science should, by law, just stick to facts and critical thinking. If they don’t, then there should be some heads stuck onto pikes warnings about violations of state laws.

“Boy, those were the days, weren’t they?”

I never fail to laugh when I hear college entrance candidates bitch when discussing how “tough” it is to get into school.

Let us take the Wayback Machine to the year 1869, and look in on those students taking the entrance examination for Harvard University. We see questions like:

  1. Bound the basin of the Po, of the Mississippi, and of the St. Lawrence.
  2. Compare Athens and Sparta.
  3. Find the cube root of 0.0093 to five decimal places.
  4. Prove that two regular polygons with the same number of sides are similar.
  5. Translate into Latin: I do not care how rich Gyges is.

See more tidbits here.

Waddaya mean, schools don’t work??

From the introduction (by David Albert) to John Taylor Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down:

“Central…is the fact that schools are not failing. On the contrary, they are spectacularly successful in doing precisely what they are intended to do, and what they have been intended to do since their inception. The system…funded by the captains of industry, was explicitly set up to ensure a docile, malleable workforce to meet the growing, changing demands of corporate capitalism…[the system] ensures a workforce that will not rebel–the greatest fear at the turn of the 20th century–that will be physically, intellectually, and emotionally dependent upon corporate institutions for their incomes, self-esteem, and stimulation, and that will near to find social meaning in their lives solely in the production and consumption of material goods.”

So, the next time you read a story about yet another middle school student who threatened others with a knife, or how American school children’s test scores have fallen again, or how American graduate schools in math, science, and engineering have to recruit students from overseas because there are literally not enough American applicants to fill available positions, contemplate one of Mr. Gatto’s points about American education:

U.S. labor statistics indicate that the four jobs most widely held by Americans (and the jobs that have seen the most growth in the last 30 years) are

  1. Wal-Mart clerk
  2. McDonald’s burger flipper
  3. Burger King burger flipper
  4. elementary school teacher

“We don’t want no nig…nee-gah-roes in ouah schools”

Just when the South was trying to shuck its stereotype of the dumb-as-shit, religious-as-hell white cracker segragationalist…

The Wake County School District in Raleigh NC (where I happen to be this week) has a school board which has pledged to “say no to the social engineers” who had the temerity to use school busing in an effort to racially and economically desegregate its schools. As a result, some of the best schools (academically) are in the inner city.

The nerve of those social engineers.

When asked to comment, board chairman Ron Margiotta of course directed questions to the board’s attorney, who like most lawyers clammed up at just the moment when something needed to be said. Board member John Tedesco says his “life is already integrated”, and that “we need a new paradigm”. (Someone keep the jar of $5 words out of the reach of grown children, please.)

Time to get those phones and computers out, pals and gals. Keep in mind that it’s the newbies on the board that brought this about. So call and/or drop all these fine folks a line (keep it concise, polite, and mad as hell) and let them know that it isn’t 1951 anymore.

Mr. Chris Malone
Wake Forest, North Carolina 27587
919-850-8865/office
919-562-6165/fax
Term Expires: November 2013 (recently elected)
cmalone2@wcpss.net

Mr. John Tedesco
Garner, North Carolina 27529
919-850-8866/office
Term Expires: November 2013 (recently elected)
jtedesco@wcpss.net

Mr. Kevin L. Hill
Raleigh, North Carolina 27614
919-850-8867/office
Term Expires: November 2011
klhill@wcpss.net

Mr. Keith Sutton
Raleigh, NC 27604
919-850-8868/office
919-231-5752/residence/fax
Term expires: November 2011
ksutton@wcpss.net

Dr. Anne McLaurin
Raleigh, North Carolina 27603
919-850-8869/office
919-508-9012/fax
Term Expires: November 2011
amclaurin@wcpss.net

Dr. Carolyn Morrison
Raleigh, North Carolina 27609
919-850-8870/office
919-954-5100/fax
Term Expires: November 2011
cbmorrison@wcpss.net

Ms. Deborah Prickett
Raleigh, North Carolina 27617
919-850-8871/office
919-544-6718/fax
Term Expires: November 2013 (recently elected)
dprickett@wcpss.net

Mr. Ron Margiotta, Chair
Apex, North Carolina 27523
919-850-8872/office
919-290-2043/residence, fax
Term Expires: November 2011
rmargiotta@wcpss.net

Ms. Debra Goldman, Vice Chair
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611
919-678-1090/office
919-678-1090/fax
Term Expires: November 2013 (recently elected)
dgoldman@wcpss.net

BTW, WCPSS, you need to not publish your board members’ personal street addresses. A private life is difficult enough to maintain without inviting disaster.

A disturbing fact about school districts

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) got $1.6 billion in tax revenue, and $1.6 billion in appropriations from the state government (more tax revenue) in 2010.

HISD services 202,000 students (as of 2007).

That comes to an expense of $16,337 per student per year. You will find similar figures throughout the U.S.

The tuition at St. John’s School (the most expensive private school in Houston) for a 5th-grader is $15,700 a year.

Do the math, and tell me again why public schools are a good idea.

Short-term memory loss, and marriage education

From an interesting piece by Jeff Goode about marriage:

[W]hich traditional definition of marriage do we want our Constitution to protect?

  • The one from Book of Genesis when family values meant multiple wives and concubines?
  • Or the marriages of the Middle Ages when women were traded like cattle and weddings were too bawdy for church?
  • Since this is America, should we preserve marriage as it existed in 1776 when arranged marriages were still commonplace?
  • Or the traditions of 1850 when California became a state and marriage was customarily between one man and one woman-or-girl of age 11 and up?
  • Or are we really seeking to protect a more modern vision of traditional marriage, say from the 1950s when it was illegal for whites to wed blacks or hispanics?
  • Or the traditional marriage of the late 1960s when couples were routinely excommunicated for marrying outside their faith?

No, the truth of the matter is, that we’re trying to preserve traditional marriage the way it “was and always has been” during a very narrow period in the late 70s / early 80s.

I can remember when blacks and white couldn’t marry each other. I remember when Catholics got excommunicated for marrying outside their own faith. I barely don’t remember when female divorcees rarely got married again because no one wanted them. (Widows were different for some reason.)

What the real problem with gay marriage is that people fear change–any change–that might challenge what they hold as truths.

The cure for that? Education.

Unfortunately, our judicial branch has been placed in the position of having to force that education on those who don’t want it. It was exactly the same thing when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down existing miscegenation laws when the Loving v. Virginia decision was handed down in 1967.

  • The one from Book of Genesis when family values meant multiple wives and concubines?
  • Or the marriages of the Middle Ages when women were traded like cattle and weddings were too bawdy for church?
  • Since this is America, should we preserve marriage as it existed in 1776 when arranged marriages were still commonplace?
  • Or the traditions of 1850 when California became a state and marriage was customarily between one man and one woman-or-girl of age 11 and up?
  • Or are we really seeking to protect a more modern vision of traditional marriage, say from the 1950s when it was illegal for whites to wed blacks or hispanics?
  • Or the traditional marriage of the late 1960s when couples were routinely excommunicated for marrying outside their faith?

Watch out for flying pigs!

Laura Bush revealed on Larry King’s CNN interview show last night that she supports gay marriage, and that she felt gay marriage (opposition to which is “a generational thing”) would inevitably be the law of the land. She is also pro-choice.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. The Fiancé© kept telling me that she really was a good person, while I kept seeing her as just another Political Wife.

My bad.

Now I just wish she’d done something substantive while she was in a influential position and not hawking for her new book. For every

Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library.

there is

I would never do anything to undermine my husband’s point of view.

“You wanna know how to help your children? Leave them the fuck alone!”

The New York Times can sure dish up some scary stories.

Schools in the New York City area, like Broadway Elementary in Newark, are now hiring recess coaches.

Yes, recesses are now coached by “specialists” who force children into structured activities during their recess break. At these schools children are not allowed to relax, stand around, or daydream, or free-form play during recess.

(Go ahead–scream. It’ll do you good.)

Children at these schools are now required to participate in the games chosen by the “coach” and voted on by the other children. Coaches are known to break up “renegade” games (those not organized by the coach), and children forced to do what everyone else is doing.

(I will wait until the howls of outrage quiet a bit.)

Isn’t it bad enough that we try to make children THINK alike (poor instruction), and LOOK alike (school uniforms)–now we’re trying to make them all PLAY alike???

Here are the names of the members of the Newark School Board and board meeting times, the name and phone number of the district Superintendent Clifford Janey, and the email address of Broadway Elementary’s principal Alejandro Echevarria. Drop them all concise, well-written notes or phone calls and tell them how concerned you are that regimenting children continually through an 8- or 9-hour day is not good for them.

In the meantime: Mr. Carlin, where the hell are you now? We need your insights badly, as ever.

I’m glad you asked

In case anyone’s interested in the links I run down the right side of my site page, here’s a brief description of the less obvious ones:

AURAL DELIGHTS: the last streaming show I have listened to from Hearts of Space. HoS is the best radio show on the airwaves these days, and their streaming service is worth every damned penny I’ve spent on it. Go support Stephen Hill and his crew in Sausalito.

SCENT OF THE DAY: the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume blend I’m wearing. Beth Moriarty and the BPAL crew make products that are sublimely wonderful, and production descriptions that are every bit as wonderful.

MORONS ON PARADE: The latest in a long line of liars, thieves, murderers, and other public figures that deserve little more than a smack with a big stick. (They’re lucky that heads spitted upon pikes lining the roadways have fallen out of fashion.)

A FUN FACT: Odd little nuggets of truth that I find every so often, mixed with a selection from that fathomless room in my mind that collects completely useless bits of trivia. (I do make some effort to determine the truth value.)

COMICS WONKINESS: Webcomics that I read regularly and think others might like. They are often injected with thoughtfulness, or interesting art. If we’re lucky, both.

If you hover your cursor over the links I put up, you can read my feeble witticisms and personal comments.

Just so you know.