Education's messed up--and how we fix it!

Why technology will never ever ever replace a good teacher

2012-02-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I was spending part of my working day as a volunteer in a 6th grade classroom in Southern California. I never liked ivory tower education professors and thought being out in the schools helped to keep me from turning into one of those people. The school where I volunteered was in a low-income neighborhood and had its share of troubled, struggling children.

One day while the teacher was working with a small reading group, I was moving around the classroom helping children who were engaged in individual reading activities. One student, though, just could not seem to settle down. I had tried to help him select a book but he kept wandering away. Finally I picked out a book I thought he might find interesting and asked him to sit on the carpet with me and read to me.

He did sit with me but just paged back and forth in the book without reading. I asked him how his day was going. "Really bad," he answered. I waited a bit and then he told me that the apartment he lived in with his mom and brother was being turned into a condo. His mother had to come up with a first and last month payment in order for them to stay where they were already living. "She doesn't have any money." He sat with his head down and then he added, " I think we're going to be living in our car in six weeks." We talked a bit about how he felt--scared--and how he could help his mom. Just talking about the situation helped him and he soon got on task and started reading to me. No, he wasn't happy but he was reading.

I think of that child these days when technology is being pushed as the end all, be all of education. "Just give every child an IPad! It's the magic bullet of education!" Baloney. You could have put that child in front of the greatest computer in the world but without an empathetic adult to listen to his concerns, nothing would have had that student reading. The idea that teacher training does not matter, that a machine can engage a student, is appalling and unworthy of our goals as a nation.

Yes, certainly, technology has a place in classrooms and it should be there as a good way to prepare our children for the future they will live in as adults. But it's not the same, can never be the same, as a teacher who is willing to listen even if that's all she can do.

Grading the "Bless You's"

2011-10-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

So this middle school math teacher decides he will deduct points from grades if a student says "Bless you." when someone sneezes in class. I never cease to be amazed that professional educators have so misconstrued their primary role in the lives of their students. Nothing is more important than equitably assessing student work and then recording grades that pass along accurate information about how well students have mastered the subjects being taught. That's what grades are and all that grades should ever be...the accurate reporting of how well a student has mastered a subject.

But teachers just cannot resist to use grades to control and punish students. Late to class? Two points off the next essay you write! Talking in class? An "F" on the homework you just handed in! Chewing gum? Ten points deducted from the worksheet you're doing!

Make sense? No! And here's why.

This gets a bit complicated and legalistic but bear with me. I promise it will be worth your while, especially if you're a student or a parent who questions the grading policies of a teacher. And if you are a teacher, this might just make you better at your job and result in fewer irate phone calls after grade cards come out.

The Fourteenth Amendment (No eye rolling please. Really! This is worth it!) guarantees protection for life, liberty and property. (Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Constitution.) Teachers don't deal with life issues in legal terms. A teacher may fantasize about issuing death penalties but, really, we don't do that. What teachers do deal with all the time is property and liberty.

Property is everything we know, have, own up until this moment in time. Liberty is everything we will know, will have, will own, and will become. Liberty is our future. The question then is , how do grades impact our future lives? Perhaps the better question is, how do they not?

Grades determine: whether or not a student will be passed from one grade level to another, whether a student will be in an advanced placement class or not, whether a student will graduate with honors or not, and which colleges or universities might accept or deny that student's admission. In addition, grades can influence insurance rates for new drivers, social status, resume building opportunities such as professional internships, etc., etc., etc. In other words, grades are all about liberty. And as public school employees, teachers are the government and their professional responsibilities must include protecting the liberty of the young citizens assigned to their classes.

This all comes down to the question of how the grade was derived? And now we get back to the true scenario I led off with. If that teacher's class was titled "Math and the avoidance of 'Bless you' ", then deducting points for students who say the forbidden phrase is legitimate. But if the course is labeled "Math", then a college admissions officer reading that a student received a "C" will rightfully assume the student has a less than stellar understanding of the subject and would benefit from a couple of years of remedial math before being admitted. The fact that the student is a very good math student but, in the kindest of ways, said "Bless you." when her fellow students sneezed in class is no where reflected in what the admissions officer sees. Get it? The grade must reflect what the student knows about the subject being taught. That and only that.

Thanks for wading through this with me and here's the bottom line.... Public school teachers are agents of the government and responsible for protecting the rights of each and every student they teach. Liberty is a cherished right and educators must consistently act to ensure students are able to realize their potential and their dreams. In order to do that, teachers have to be sure that grades reflect what students know about the subject being taught. Grades should not reflect behavior, bias, or a teacher who feels out of sorts on any particular day. Just to say it one more time, grades for math must be about what the student knows about math! Really! It's just that simple.

Nose Ring? Get over it!

2010-09-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

Well, the silly season has officially begun. A school administrator in North Carolina has decided that a young woman wearing a nose ring violates the school dress code and therefore must forfeit her education until she removes it.

She is a member of a religious sect that values Body Modifications and her expression is the nose ring. For this she has been kicked out of school. Now the state chapter of the ACLU is involved, the press is onto the story, and what could have been so amicably and peacefully resolved, instead has become a hoo-hah that you see when you open your Yahoo page.

Somehow Yahoo seems appropriate in this instance when considering the actions of the administrator. Good grief! Talk with the child, assess her commitment to her religion, and then back off! Her classes will not devolve into chaos if she is wearing a nose ring. Children need and deserve the opportunity to express their convictions in all sorts of ways and as long as that expression is not pornographic or sexually explicit or profane, then this school administrator should welcome her back, celebrate the fact that a young person has strong convictions and get the heck over it!

Welcome Back! School year 2010-2011 begins!

2010-09-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, another school year is beginning and with it all the politics surrounding the pressure for children to perform well on standardized tests, behave in ways that don’t drive their peers to fear coming to school, and actually learn something about how to function in a democratic society. So many commentators ponder the difference in student behaviors and try to figure out why children are meaner to each other than they have been in the past. So let me weigh in on that as my initial blog for this year. Trust me, there will be more to come.

Over the years I have seen management practices based on mutual respect, equity, and caring dwindle away while management that treats all students the same and relies on rewards and punishments for control became more and more prevalent. There was a time when many classrooms were relatively free of the carrot/stick mentality but by the end of my career I saw a marked increase in that thinking. While there may be many reasons, NCLB certainly is a highly visible suspect. As NCLB continues to erode all that is good about education, classroom management based on mutual respect, reasoned communication, and informed choices become a distant memory. Considering the opening scenario, I think it is hard to deny the incontrovertible connections between the two.

All the elementary, and even some middle school, classrooms I visited had embraced some form of management by rewards and punishment. Teachers may have moved in that direction out of desperation and the very real pressures to prepare their students for testing. However, they were also encouraged, if not required, to use these strategies by the school districts that employ them. I personally witnessed schools sponsoring teacher orientations, workshops, and professional development seminars on classroom management that offered strategies largely drawn from or based directly on the work of Lee Canter or Harry Wong—both of whom advocate management by rewards and punishments.

Sub-sets of these approaches include character education programs that bribe students into sanctioned behaviors in order to get play money, or candy, or stickers, or certificates. While bribery is certainly problematic, the bigger concern is teaching children that good character is not a goal in and of itself. Rather, the only reason to behave is reduced to “what’s in it for me.” Helping children learn to act in ways that are mutually beneficial and that preserve the common welfare just because it’s the right thing to do is becoming a quaint notion and all but entirely erased in far too many schools.

As rewards and punishment increase, so too does a continual requirement to acquiesce. It really is all part of the same trend and aimed at the same goal—obedience. Obedience is necessary to maintain an enforced curriculum of endless worksheets. Toward that end, some behaviors are imposed that have no immediate rewards attached but compliance certainly contributes to earning points, money, or other goodies.

The other half of the rewards and punishment approach basically boils down to “you better watch out” with teachers and administrators acting as pseudo Santa Claus figures. Students who do watch out and don’t shout get the goodies and those who do not receive the school’s equivalent of a lump of coal, including detention, Saturday school, suspension, or even expulsion. Despite all the obvious problems with these carrot/stick tactics, such practices are often justified because they are said to “work.” But that leaves us with the question, they work towards what end? Anything can work. Rewarding with trinkets, food, or money, controlling by requiring acquiescence, and punishing with scolding, intimidation, and humiliation can all “work” towards quieting students, but what lesson is ultimately taught? What is learned about self-management and personal responsibility? When competitions for food or other goodies are used to motivate students, what is learned about personal dignity and worth? When classmates are set against each other in a scramble to get the tokens and candy, what is learned about kindness, respect, and caring?

When students reach middle or high school the teasing, taunting, pushing, and shoving of their elementary school years often evolve into acts of violence. Schools are increasingly reporting student behaviors that directly or indirectly threaten or even harm other students. In an effort to address the problems, some school districts have instituted various programs that, in some cases and with appropriate training and preparation, can help to calm school environments. I see middle schools where administrators have designed schedules that provide time for advisory sessions, or they institute programs of peer mediation, or work with their faculties to create other opportunities for getting older students together to discuss and resolve their problems in reasoned ways. Why these behaviors are allowed to get to that level is a mystery. But when students spend their formative educational years being bribed and cajoled into good behaviors, it’s fairly easy to understand that as they grow bigger so do all the problems that were never resolved earlier.

What needs to happen is a return to management practices in elementary school that include forums for resolving problems such as class meetings. It makes no sense to spend 5 or 6 years failing to effectively address and correct the range of inappropriate behaviors I have seen from the back of the room but then decide to fix them when the students are bigger, angrier, and conditioned to think that the only reason to act respectfully is because someone will pay them to do so.

We can do better and we certainly need to. NCLB must not be allowed to countermand the very reasons people become teachers in the first place. Typically, we are drawn to education because we care about the welfare of future generations, we want to inspire young people, and we have compassion for the needs of children. Those are good and true feelings. Expressing them through the design of classrooms and curriculum is what educators should spend their time doing. And children deserve the opportunity to grow into adults who are capable of acting in ways that are mutually beneficial, safe, and respectful. Finally, it comes down to what our goals are for our children. As teachers slip a piece of fake money into the hands of their young students or demand unquestioning obedience to authority, perhaps they should ask themselves “What are the bigger lessons about appropriate adult behavior I could be teaching instead?” Our society deserves no less.

Don't know much about history....

2010-05-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

....or Geography or Social Studies. The Youtube link below is maddening and very depressing. If you're looking for reasons for the appalling ignorance displayed in this video, let me give you a few to consider.

One, who teaches Social Studies? Typically schools have no respect for this critically important subject area and demonstrate their contempt by hiring coaches for their various sports program and legitimize their hires by giving the coaches an academic subject to teach. The most common subject assigned to them is Social Studies. You can almost hear the discussion they use to justify their decisions. "Anyone can teach it. You just have to stay one chapter ahead of the students and use the test questions at the end of each chapter." What do students learn from this process? Nothing! Well, they do learn to memorize facts, spew those facts out on a True/False, Multiple Guess quiz and then promptly forget all of it so they can memorize the facts from the next chapter.

This is not just elementary or secondary education I'm talking about. As a freshman in college, I took a history class. You passed the class by memorizing the dates and corresponding events contained in the two fly-leaf pages of the book. Forget any of the book's content! Who cares anyway? It's just history.

I once was grousing about all this with a young woman thirty years my junior. I said that when I was in high school our books and our history classes never went beyond WWII. "Wow!" she replied, "Neither did mine."

Here's the thing, I don't think any of this is just a thing that happens. At some level I fear it's quite deliberate. How else can one explain outrageous misinformation put out there by right wing conservatives that go completely unchallenged unless one happens to watch Rachel Maddow? Glenn Beck rants regularly on TV making outlandish and completely inaccurate claims while diddling on his blackboard and people seem to be all too willing to believe the hogwash he expounds.

Getting back to education, since President Obama, so sad to say, appointed Arnie Duncan to head up Education we have not much chance of improving the situation anytime soon. Mr. Duncan is a supporter of NCLB and that program does not yet test for Social Studies, History, or Geography. So teachers, fearing for their jobs and ever concerned about the test scores of their students, teach what's on the test. Social Studies has almost disappeared from elementary education. How easy is it to convince people that the most hare-brained idea is worthy of consideration when they approach understanding from an utterly uninformed perspective? Pretty darned easy is the answer to that.

Conservatives yell about taking back this country. I have no idea what that means, but if one really wants to take it back, it might be wise to first know something about this country and other countries and where other countries are in relation to us--economically, historically, politically, and physically. So watch this video and do let me know what you think. Hope to hear from you soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=fJuNgBkloFE

The Challenge of Being Gay and Being in School at the same time

2010-03-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

She's gay. She wanted to go to her prom with another young woman. She wanted to wear a tux. The school's response? Tell her no. She went to the ACLU who advocated on her behalf. The school's response? Cancel the prom and make sure that her peers reject and even hate her now. None of this is the stuff of humor.

The rate of depression, drop outs, and even suicide among young gay people is sky high and very scary. Here's the thing folks! These kids get slammed every way from Sunday. In 2001 Human Rights Watch published Hatred in the Hallways: Violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in U.S. schools. The book shines a much-needed light on the incredible challenges young gay people face every day in their schools. From bulletin boards about families that only show Mom, Dad and the kids, to family images in textbooks from Dick and Jane to upper level Social Studies, to teacher desks with mini-shrines to their spouses and children, to the playgrounds where a game called "Smear the Queer" is played.

In this case the school deliberately set students against one female senior who happens to be gay. Can you imagine what the rest of her school year will be like? The loneliness and isolation she will experience? And what about other gay students in her school, city, state, and in our country? What's the message they're getting from this? Yes! Stay in that closet no matter how dark, close, and suffocating it might be. That's no way to grow up. That's no place to map out a promising future!

When African-Americans, or Latinos, or Muslims, or Jews experience discrimination they go home to their families who give their support, empathy, and love to their child. The pain might not go away but it's made easier with the understanding they receive from the ones who love them. Sadly, tragically, gay children often experience just the opposite. They get outed, teased, picked on, and brutalized by their peers and when they go home they might not be able to say anything for fear of receiving even worse from their parents.

Homophobic attitudes have no place in school. If teachers can't handle teaching gay children, restricting inappropriate comments by students, and just love to tell an anti-gay joke or two they should seriously consider leaving the profession. They have no business being near children who are gay, who have gay siblings or who have gay parents. Words hurt! Prejudice damages. Some kids are gay. They just are. Celebrate diversity and embrace all children! They deserve nothing less.

Diane Ravitch--Education's McNamara

2010-03-05T07:55:00.000-08:00

The time to stand up, speak out, and protest wrongs is before the wrong has become entrenched as policy. McNamara may have had his moment of looking in the mirror so many years after sending our young men to die in Vietnam and wondering why he didn't speak up sooner. That moment of clarity didn't win him any sympathizers but instead generated outrage among those of us who spoke out against such murderous decisions when they were actually being proposed and then carried out. Deciding maybe you were wrong long after the damage has been done is the cowardly way of trying to find grace when you deserve none.

And now we have Diane Ravitch who could not kiss up to the W enough when he proposed testing the hell out of children at every grade level and she said, ala Palin, "You bet'cha!" Now she has decided that maybe that wasn't the very best educational policy and that No Child Left Behind in fact left a lot of children behind because anyone who really knows anything about education knows that children acquire knowledge in very different ways and that one standardized test cannot possibly assess the learning of each and every one.

So, you're saying "Hey, this wasn't Vietnam! People didn't get killed by NCLB." And my response is that you're as wrong as you can be. What happened to the students who could not pass the tests? So many children whose language difficulties, learning disabilities, life challenges, hunger, lack of sleep, lack of a home, lack of parental supervision weighed so heavily against them that they could not pass tests developed by a company that was--by the way--owned by an old friend of the Bushes. Those children were pushed out or ended up dropping out of school--their futures in the toilet.

What career options are open to them? How many of those children are now in juvenile prisons or incarcerated as adults? Who knows? But I can tell you from first hand experience that teachers and administrators used strategies that would have made Machiavelli proud to either get troublesome students out of the school during the testing times or to get rid of them altogether--both strategies aimed at keeping the school's testing rates up.

And what did Diane Ravitch do? She waved her pompoms, jumped in the air, and chanted "Test them more! Test them more!" And now she says, looking back, maybe that wasn't the best of education policies.

Let us not forgive her! Let us not let her off the hook for the damage she has done! Let us not let her forget the real harm she has visited on the children, teachers, school administrators, and the quality of education in our country.

A doodle on the desk=jail time????

2010-02-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

This is just the latest chapter in our society's race to criminalize our children. A 12 year old girl in NY doodles on a desk. It's a peaceful message about loving her friends and it's in green marker. And what does her teacher do? You've got it. She has the child hauled off to the pokie! Isn't it amazing that someone with professional training, a degree in her field (one can only hope) and some years of experience could get it so incredibly wrong!

I spent a couple of years working with a teacher who practiced democratic education with her students from day one with amazing success. Here's her approach to writing on desks. On the first day of school she tells her 4th/5th grade class that they can write on desks--with some rules attached. 1) They can only write in pencil; 2) They can not write anything negative or inappropriate about a fellow classmate, themselves, or their teacher. She emphasized that they were a cooperative community and negative words could hurt them and their positive learning environment; 3) If they use another student's name, they have to have permission to do that from the student; 4) No gouging; and 5) They have to clean their desks at the end of the day.

So, what should a teacher do when a student writes on his or her desk? Yes! Have the student clean it! Duh! (And for heaven's sake, have the student only clean that one desk, not every desk.) Then students learn why this is not such a fun idea. The teacher whose classroom I just spoke of had very little desk writing to contend with and students did not have to be reminded to clean them off. Instead, they learned to take responsibility for their decisions and their actions.

What did the 12 year old girl in NY learn? Well, she learned that teachers can be treacherous bullies, that they can behave in amazingly unprofessional ways, that her school is not a safe, welcoming place, and that she has a police record that either needs to be expunged or that will follow her for some years.

What do we want our students to learn? That they are at the mercy of adults who can, on a whim, take actions that destroy trust or would we rather they learn to make appropriate, responsible decisions about how to manage their own behaviors?

My sincere hope is that this teacher finds another line of work quickly before she destroys any more lives. Selling aluminum siding might be a really positive option for her. And shame on her school district if they allow her to teach another single day!

That endless thing about hats!

2010-02-21T06:05:00.000-08:00

I have spoken with teachers, administrators, and school support staff all over the United States about student rights and the ways we can show respect for all students. When we'd get to the q and a time, always always they'd ask a question about whether boys should be allowed to wear hats. Rules banning boys from wearing hats abound in schools everywhere. The biggest excuse? It's not polite. Ok, let's deal with that one first.

In white European middle class society, men are expected to take off their hats when inside a home or other building. It's a social convention and only a social convention. It has nothing to do with common welfare, common sense, safety, or anything of any import.

In many social settings in the United States and elsewhere and in many other cultures men wear hats all the time. First, let's talk about exceptions to this social convention encountered in the United States on a daily basis. Enter a sports bar on game day and you'll see men of every color and class wearing a cap with their team's logo on it. Enter a truck stop and you'll see all sorts of men wearing all sorts of hats proudly proclaiming their state, their team affiliation, their desire to be recognized as a cowboy, the company who built their tractor, etc., etc., etc.

Then there are non-white, non-European people whose social conventions and religious dictates require covering heads of men and women. Are children from these cultures to be forced into a stale convention because they are students in an American public school? Is it appropriate in a free, public education setting to require these children to assume the aspect of another culture because they need to "fit in"? Is the goal of education to educate or to homogenize our children?

Here's what got me going on this topic again. Recently a local elementary school decided it would just be a great idea to tell their students that hats would be permitted on one Friday only and then only if a child contributed $2 to a Haiti relief fund. One day--for two bucks. Hmmm. Let's see if we can figure out all the ways that policy is flawed to the point of being ridiculous.

The issue of economic discrimination just bursts on to the stage grinning and doing a little buck and wing for our entertainment. Two dollars may not seem like a lot to those earning a regular salary that comes with medical benefits and a retirement plan. But more and more, especially in our economy, these are not typical demographics. So this school, in its attempt to do a nice thing for the people of Haiti, created a situation where children had to pony up a couple of bucks for the "privilege" of doing what should be a basic right in the first place. And those that don't have the two dollars? Well, tough! They get to watch their better off classmates enjoy doing something--for one day--that everyone should be able to do every day. These kids feel bad enough every day anyway. They know they don't have what others have. But, oh golly, this school found a really creative way to rub it in and make the kids without feel even worse about being without. What a great way to make them feel like school is the place they'd really like to get away from!

Before I end this blog, let me just briefly review the other reasons why teachers object to hats. Here's one I really like. Other students will steal the hat, throw it around and create a disturbance. This one is beyond ridiculous! Can you imagine teachers banning the wearing of necklaces because other students stole one? Can you imagine teachers banning anything because others stole it? If someone steals something, do we punish the victim or the thief? And if we punish the victim who wears a hat, then what message do we send to the thieves? It's ok to steal? Hey, what a great way to promote a sound social order.

Teachers worry that students will write test answers on the bills of their baseball caps. Solution? During a test, have students turn their hats around.

Worries about lice? Explain the need to not exchange caps.

When I asked teachers how they handle those who must wear a hat or other head covering because of their religion or because they are going through chemotherapy or some other compelling reason, they said they would make exceptions for those students. But here's the thing, if a school rule has to be waived on an individual basis then we get into the area of capricious rules being determined on an individual basis and therefore not having any substantive reason for existing in the first place.

Get over it!!!! Let kids wear hats, teach them to wear hats responsibly, help them make good decisions about what their hats say or don't say. Let them wear hats and then send a note home to parents providing a list of worthy recipients should families want to send financial assistance to any state or country experiencing a crisis.

Gender-omics!

2010-01-31T08:48:00.001-08:00

I was recently in an elementary school and heard some of the teachers talking about their strategies for keeping kids quiet. It was to seat children according to boy-girl-boy-girl. That fails on so many levels it makes one's head spin.

Let's start with the issue of gender stereotyping. Why is it assumed that gender separations improve any situation? "Boys will be boys" but only if they are seated next to each other? Boys, just because they're boys, can't be ever trusted to behave? Girls always act appropriately? (I really love that one!) Girls have a settling effect on boys especially as they both approach puberty?

But here's another aspect of this ineffectual strategy. There's a 14th Amendment issue tickling around its edges. The 14th Amendment states that the government, yes--that's all of you teachers in public schools, cannot discriminate on the basis on race, religion, national origin, disability, gender, marital status, and age. Did you catch that fifth one? Gender? Yes! Teachers in public schools cannot discriminate on the basis of gender!

Ok. You're probably aware of Title IX regs. But, you ask, how does that factor into classroom practice? Well, you wouldn't try to control behavior by seating children according to race. White, Black, Brown really would get you into a lot of hot water. Or how about seating children Jewish Christian Muslim Christian? The thing is boy-girl-boy-girl is not in any way different from these other examples. It reinforces gender stereotyping and does nothing to teach children how to manage their own behaviors.

And gender stereotyping can lead to very misguided and even dangerous practices. Recently in Ohio a teacher decided to humiliate a male student whose hair, according to her, was inappropriately long--for a boy. So she brought him up to the front of the class, tied his hair into three ponytails--one on each side and one on top--with rubber bands guaranteed to snarl and snag in long hair--and then had him stand their while encouraging the other students to make fun of him. Now what do you imagine he will remember about that grade level for the rest of his life. What he learned in math? Or what he learned about narrow-minded people who can't get past their own prejudices of what a young man should look like?

Criminalizing our children

2010-01-07T19:15:00.000-08:00

Once again we are seeing stories about school officials responding to students of color very differently from the way they respond to the actions of white children. This really is nothing new. When I first started teaching in 1969, it was very clear to me who the principal whacked with his all too ready paddle and who he left alone. The African-American males were his constant and desired victims.

It came back to me again some years later when I was asked to do student rights workshops with faculty of a juvenile detention facility in the state of Washington. They also asked me to talk about civil rights and responsibilities with some of the young men in lock-up. At that time Washington had an African-American population of about 3% but when I went into meet the young men and begin my workshop with them, I saw that at least 60% of them were African-Americans. The whites in the room were disengaged, one I recall was sleeping, and none of them responded to anything I had to say. The African-Americans were seated around the perimeter of the room. They were polite, attentive, and asked probing questions that challenged me the way a really interesting student in my college class might do.

What was going on in Washington schools? How did these young men end up here? As I continued to work with education law issues, I met a juvenile parole officer. He said that most of his case-load was made up of learning disabled students. Teachers couldn't or wouldn't adapt their teaching to the needs of the students and those who lacked the capability of coping with the classroom environment were pushed out.

Young people out of school and on their own is a dangerous mix for them and for our society. But the answer cannot be to lock them up. The juvenile parole officer confided to me that he dreaded sending the students back to school knowing they would not be welcome and might very well end up on the street again. Greeted by hostile teachers and cold shoulders from other students makes school the last place these troubled kids want to be.

Teachers are by law required to make their learning environments welcoming and accessible to every student who crosses their threshold. Our democracy would be on very shaky grounds if teachers arbitrarily decided to teach him but not him, her but not them. Every student is entitled to an equal educational opportunity and if teachers don't want to teach all of them, then I suggest they consider selling aluminum siding as a good professional alternative.

The Yearly Public School Christmas Hoohah!

2009-12-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

Here we go again. It's December and that always brings out those who slept through Civics 101. I'm telling you folks, if I see one more letter to the editor saying things like--yeah, this is a quote--"There are more of us than there are of them and this country was brought up on majority rules...If they do not like a Christmas tree in their kids' classroom, then they have the right not to look at it...Why are they allowing one single person to ruin a yearly tradition just because they don't like it."

Ok, here's the thing. The Constitution is all about the protection of individual rights! It's not about majority rule. The Bill of Rights says in the First Amendment that governments shall not establish religion and individuals have the right to exercise religion--of their choosing! Now, for those who managed to pay no attention when Social Studies teachers were trying to explain this, public schools get their funding from taxes. They are part of the government and therefore cannot establish religion. If a teacher puts up a Christmas tree in the classroom he or she is saying, in effect, this classroom is about being Christian. If students in that classroom do not have Christmas trees in their homes because they are Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, or of some other religion, they get the clear message that they are not as welcome in this educational environment as are those who do have Christmas trees.

Public education is for everyone and laws protecting the interests of students with special needs or Title IX or other educational acts are all aimed at creating a level playing field for learning. Equal Educational Opportunity is what this is all about. The teacher is free to have a Christmas tree at home, in church, and in any other environment desired. But the teacher is not free to establish religion in the classroom.

And if you're still not convinced, imagine if that teacher is a member of a minority religion or fringe sect and wants to display religious symbols meaningful to him or her. And your child is in that classroom. Still comfortable with the whole why-can't-we-have-a-Christmas-tree thing? That's why. Public schools should be--according to the Supreme Court--wholesomely neutral. And wholesome refers to the idea that every child, every child, who enters that classroom will feel welcome, safe and fully appreciated.

Now get over it! Christmas will be just fine. It just doesn't need to be in public schools.

What's the hang up with hair?

2009-12-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

I read about a sweet little 4 year old boy who was put into in school detention and then thrown out of school and then let back into school but forbidden contact with other children.

Why? Is this child a psychopath? Damian come to life with 666 emblazoned on his forehead? Is he the 4 year old equivalent of Typhoid Mary? Silly you! Of course not. He has been banned and branded an outcast because his hair barely touches his shoulders. Sacre bleu!

A very officious, pompous, and smuggly self satisfied school administrator explained that he's a distraction because of his hair. Oh, really? No child in his class can possibly add or subtract or read the sentence "See Spot run" because a child sitting in the vicinity has longish hair?

This is not about hair! This is about control! Beat the kids down. Make them look and act like some kind of Beaver Cleaver image a clearly misguided administration is seeking to promote and all will be well with the upcoming generation. This is not education! It's the preparation for subjugation! One can only hope that child finds himself a savvy lawyer and they sue the crap out of that school district.

Hopping Mad!

2009-12-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

I just heard a news story about a 1st grade teacher who thought a child was paying more attention to her hair than to what was being taught. The solution? Yeah, the teacher cut off one of her braids! I am full up with stories like this---I've heard them forever. How about the kindergarten teacher who, on the first day of class, put paper teddy bear name tags on each child's desk. Then, if any child spoke out of turn or did anything else to displease the teacher, the teacher would cut off a limb of the child's teddy bear. Here's another one, a teacher in Portland OR--he's white, made a 5 year old student (female, black) lick a blackboard clean to teach her to be quiet in class.

Ok, where does this come from. Why does anyone think that humiliation, degradation and assault teach children anything but to hate and distrust teachers, school and education. Ask yourself why children drop out. Maybe it's the only way they have to get away from situations that are unbearable.

I once spoke with a 6 year old who was waiting in a school office to be sent home. His crime? He talked in class. I asked him how his day was going. "Not so good, I have to go home." I said something like that was too bad. "No," he said, "I have new toys at home and I can play with them all day." "Oh dear," I thought, "what's this child learning from this? It sure isn't how to behave or to do it better next time!" I said to him that if he missed a lot of school, his friends would miss him. "No they won't. They don't care about me and I don't care about them." I still shake my head and sigh over this child who was, in 1st grade, already fast tracking to drop out.

If a child is playing with her hair, it might mean that she's active, it might mean she's bored, it might mean she's having trouble following what's being taught, or it might mean she's a tactile learner and can process information better when she's touching something or manipulating objects. Imagine the response of a teacher who didn't feel the need to command blind obedience but rather one who was professionally curious enough to want to know what motivated the child to play with her hair and how the teacher could use that trait to help the child learn and focus in class.

I once saw a show about a medical resident practicing in a Bronx hospital emergency room. "I got to diagnose leprosy," she said. She was speaking about the challenge of working with a high needs population and the energy she got from figuring out what their needs were. That's the spirit every teacher should bring to every classroom.

Children want to learn, they want to know people care about them, they want to succeed. They won't all be successful but they want to have a fair chance at it. What will that first grader carry with her for the rest of her life? Will she ever again be able to feel that her teacher really cares about her welfare? Will she ever be able to truly trust a teacher?

I'm not asking for much...just a sense of professional responsibility and a caring attitude. Otherwise why the hell become a teacher?

Tinker who?

2009-12-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

I'm wondering who out there knows about the Tinker Armband case (US Supreme Court, 1969) and its implications for how schools do business. It seems to me the numbers are limited especially when I read about students being kicked out of school for wearing this t-shirt, or that hair color, or sporting a pin that says whatever. How do we model democracy when our schools are run as autocracies? How many teachers subscribe to that misbegotten management concept of "My way or the highway?"

Here's the thing, if our young people are going to be fully realized citizens capable of exercising their constitutional freedoms and understanding how those freedoms are always balanced with civic responsibilities, they can't just throw a switch and acquire that knowledge at the age of 18. They need to have many opportunities to practice citizenship, make mistakes, learn from their mistakes and receive help doing it (whatever it is) better the next time.

But if teachers control students, and I do mean control, through bribery of candy, tokens, stickers to get good (that is obedient) behavior and humiliation to punish any behavior they deem to be inappropriate, our young people will internalize the idea that the only reason to act appropriately is to get something for it. If there's no treat forthcoming, then they might as well do whatever the heck they want.

We need to give some serious thought to all of this. I'd love to hear from you.

Chalkdust 1