50 More Things New Teachers Need To Know

“Don’t hit the kids and don’t hit on the kids.”  If I had to summarize my best advice about teaching in just one saying, that would be it.  However, last summer’s post, 50 Things New Teachers Need To Know, went into a bit more detail and has now garnered thousands of hits, making it this blog’s most popular post.

During the school year between then and now, I’ve made some more notes and now have this new collection ready.  As I say at the end, take it all with a grain of salt, but I have no doubt that this list is more useful than a bachelor’s degree in education.  Furthermore, I like this list even more than last year’s.  Enjoy!

 

1. Cover any windows on hallway-facing doors to your room from the inside with paper. If administrators complain about it, just cover as much as you can at eye level.  You don’t need lollygaggers out there distracting students by making faces at their friends in your class.

2. PC Myth #5: “Your teaching skills are more important than content knowledge.”  In my own undergrad days, an early class taught me that I wouldn’t need to worry about subject knowledge because I already had more than the students would, and I should just focus on methodology, classroom management, etc.  As a result, I spent my first couple of years as a teacher watching all those college theories go down in flames, and desperately playing catch up on the English facts that I needed to know to teach well. 

3.  Always remember: administrators are politicians. 

An Idea For Teacher Evaluation

Based on some reading I’ve done (such as that covered in some posts a couple of weeks ago), and my nine years of teaching experience, I’d like to suggest a way of more effectively measuring teacher competence.

Traditionally, administrators observe bits and pieces of a few classes, and spot check the teacher’s lesson plan book, basing their evaluations largely on criteria related to how the lesson plan book demonstrates cohesion with school district standards and syllabi. 

This really doesn’t work.  Lesson plan books are better at recording what has already happened than at committing to what will happen–in a good classroom, there is so much flexibility and adaptation as teachers respond to immediate needs that any lesson planned more then a few days in advance is essentially worthless, anyway.

What I suggest is evaluating teachers based on their grade books. 

More Research On Effective Teaching

I’m reading Richard E. Nisbett’s new book, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count.  Its chapter on effective teaching mentions the Department of Education’s web site, What Works Clearinghouse, and its sister site, Doing What Works.  

 

I checked them both out, and they look promising.  Like most education research, they’re clearly geared primarily towards elementary education, but there is some good stuff for math and science teachers, as well as for staff development, which I find myself caring more and more about. 

 

Regarding Nisbett’s book, I’ll simplify the chapter about effective teaching thusly:

 

Based on correlating extant research, do the following things make schools better?

 

Spending: no

Charter & private schools: no

Class size: yes, for younger children

Teacher education and certification: no

Inexperienced, rookie teachers: no (negative effect)

“Emotionally supportive classrooms”: yes

Computerized instruction (for math): yes

Two Recent Articles On Effective Teachers

What makes an effective teacher?  What’s the meaning of life?  What do women want?  (Blame Freud for that last one, not me.)  These three questions have excited so much postulating and pontificating that many thinkers have given up on trying to answer them at all, instead resigning themselves to the apparent inevitability of resolving such baffling conundrums.  However, recently, two of America’s best major magazines have run thought-provoking features intended to address the first query above. 

 

            Malcolm Gladwell (author of the bestsellers Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point) reported in December 2008 on the burgeoning field of statistical quantification as it relates to the field of education in The New Yorker.  Gladwell summarizes the findings of one expert in the piece as showing that “the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast,” noting that teacher competence has a far greater impact on student achievement than class size or even (perceived) school quality.  Another expert—Jacob Kounin—emphasizes the importance of what he calls “withitness”—a preternatural awareness of a class’s immediate climate.

 

           

Liberal Teachers

It surprises me that so many teachers are liberals.  My associations with many dozens of teachers over the years has shown that we’re almost unanimously in agreement on the things that hold back student achievement: apathetic parenting and cultural poison that subverts our efforts.  These are both (at least in our current political climate) essentially conservative concerns. 

And yet, our most vocal teachers, as well as administrators, unions, and districts, tend to obsess over ideas that are inherently liberal: increasing spending, adding more bureaucrats and programs to the system, and increasing regulation of what individual campuses can do.  This, despite the total failure of any of these things to do any good at all for the several decades that they’ve been in vogue.

Anybody else reminded of the caucus race in Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland?  Leftist policies tend to bring that to mind for me.

Anyway, I think I realize now why so many education professionals are liberals.  It must be an automatic defense mechanism, because being a conservative teacher is enough to drive anyone insane.

It’s easy to keep running around trying all these new programs in our schools and crying for more money, because that strategy can never fail: if results don’t improve, just insist that we haven’t come up with enough programs and money yet.  The beautiful thing with this strategy is that it allows us to focus on things we can control: the teaching profession can keep tweaking the details of campus routines endlessly and without benefit, but (much like the thinking behind the stimulus package) at least we’re doing something, right? 

Certainly this approach is much easier (and more sanity-friendly) than resigning to the truth that the vast majority of the factors that influence the quality of our work are well beyond our control.  Why would any administrator try to improve the conditions of a community that produces lackluster students–a Herculean task, to say the least–when he or she can just get on board with the established program: fiddle around with the procedures for department meetings in your school, assign teachers more paperwork, and lobby for more education spending?

There’s just no natural incentive for teachers to be conservatives, because it will only lead to more frustration. 

My students this year are ten times more productive than my students were during my first few years teaching.  Did I become a better teacher?  Not at all; I do most things exactly the same way.  I just got a job in a better part of town.

It’s Not The Money, Stupid…

The Clark County School District is facing a budget crisis; after having cut $130 million from its budget for this year, we now find ourselves having to cut even more for next year.  Some details are here. 

Schools are having emergency meetings with parents in the community to discuss ideas for cuts, and my school had such a meeting among its staff last week, as I’m sure many other schools have.  Everybody’s worried about salaries, perks, and even job security itself.

Let’s set a few things straight:

First, there is plenty of money out there for what we need.  There always has been and always will be.  It’s not a matter of needing more money, it’s a matter of better investing what we have.  It does not cost hundreds of millions of dollars to provide textbooks and necessary supplies.  Besides (the curmudgeon hastened to add), there is absolutely no relationship between education spending and academic achievement. 

But what about technology?  Doesn’t that cost a lot?  Yes, but that might as well be where we make some cuts, too, since…wait for it…students with greater access to computers statistically do worse academically than others. 

All this brouhaha reminds me of a letter that I had in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on July 11, 2007:

 

Here’s a shocking thought from a teacher: Raising our salaries won’t improve anything.

Recommended Reading: Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire

I first read about Rafe Esquith in an article in National Review.  After that, I read and enjoyed his book, There Are No Shortcuts.  Esquith espouses a teaching ethic that is heavy on emotion and personality, but that is more than balanced out by incredibly high academic standards and a work ethic that would make your average Marine cry. 

I don’t think everything in Esquith’s methods would work for me, but I can’t help but respect someone who gives 150% of himself to teaching, not to make kids feel good, but to guide them into becoming truly intellectual giants.  (Esquith is most famous for putting his students through a full professional production of a Shakespearean play each year, a task that, especially considering his many other ambitious units, has him running his classroom about twelve hours a day, six days a week.  And these are fifth graders.)

As I’ve been gearing up for the new year, I wanted to read something that was inspirational, practical, and not a bunch of warm fuzzy gobbledygook.  So I checked out Esquith’s more recent book, Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire.  Where There Are No Shortcuts focused on Esquith’s philosophy and anecdotes, this newer volume is a nuts and bolts how-to of teaching like he does.

Like I said, a lot of this stuff really wouldn’t transfer to my high school English class, but after reading the first two chapters–one about reading and the other about writing–I did go back and take some notes.  For someone whose language is often so reminiscent of PC nonsense (Esquith says the priority on the first day of school is to “establish trust”), his actual work routines are strenuous, and completely dedicated to independent achievement.  Rock on. 

Actually, I recommend this book for everybody, not just for teachers.  For one thing, even though we all went to school ourselves, unless you’ve spent time in the profession, you have no idea just how much corruption, stupidity, and heartbreak really exists behind the scenes of a school.  Esquith has great stories about these institutional failures, and isn’t afraid to name names.  Second, his class ranges the gamut of curriculum, from humanities to hard science to pop culture to character development, and his many specific examples are a joy to consider. 

Read the chapter where he describes, in painstaking detail, how to get the most out of a visit to Washington, D.C.  He bases this on decades of annual field trips there.  I’m going to copy it and use it as my official travel guide the next time I go.  And the chapter about his after-school classic film club…priceless.  My wife’s had a copy of Charadeon her shelf for years; I never thought I might like it until I read Esquith’s praise of it.  I think I might try to start something similar at my own school.  (Last year, during a discussion with a class, I made a passing reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The class came to a grinding halt as I faced thirty blank stares.  They had never seen it.  They had never even heard of it.  And this was an honors class.  Sad.)

One quibble, though.  Esquith makes a big deal out of how his success comes in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood where most homes don’t have English as a first language.  The implication is that he’s teaching “disadvantaged” minorities, yet this book has lots of pictures of his students…and virtually all of them are Asian.  Most every picture looks just like the one you see on the cover here.  There are a few Hispanic kids in the book, but only a few, and not a single black kid.  I have to wonder if Esquith’s school population is really a tough to teach as he suggests; all of the kids in the pictures have nice, preppy clothes, are clearly well nourished and groomed, and show no physical sign of coming from lower class homes. 

This isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it would be disingenuous of Esquith to sell himself as a master teacher of poverty-stricken youth if he’s really teaching primarily the children of hard working first or second generation Asian families with stable homes, a strong work ethic, and who place a high value on education.  I could be wrong, but the pictures make me wonder.

Still, it’s a great read, and it gave me exactly what I wanted: a boost of enthusiasm sprinkled with a few practical ideas.  It’d do the same for you, no matter what kind of teacher you are, or even if you aren’t a teacher at all.

On Teaching Literacy

A parent of a student recently sent me this survey as part of her masters’ program, and asked for my input.  Following up on my last post (and trying to make up for the deficit of education-related posts this summer), I thought I’d share some of my meager thoughts here.  Perhaps they’ll be of interest to someone.  My replies to the questions are in italics.

 

Upper Elementary through Middle School and High School

 

What grade do you currently teach? 10th–Sophomores

What grade have you taught? All grades 6-12 (and college)

What subjects have you taught? English I-IV, English R/W I-II, Composition, Forensics, American Literature Honors, Modern Literature (college: English 101 and 102, World Literature)

 

1. What aspects of literacy do you hope that your students have been exposed to prior to your level? These could include activities, state objectives, or materials (pieces of literature). By high school, the most important aspects of literacy would be reading fluency, genre awareness, basic literary terms (setting, plot, figures of speech, etc.), and, ideally, some memorization of literature.

 

2. What Reading deficits and disabilities do you encounter most? Comprehension, fluency, willingness to engage difficult material.

A. What are your most used remedial tactics for these problems? Reading aloud to them is the best overall intervention, as well as guided practice using strategies like making predictions, evaluating an author’s methods of narration, and identifying themes and encouraging students to analyze and apply them.

 

4. In regards to phonetic awareness skills, what theories of practice do you support and/or not support?

C. Do you see phonics facts like Math teachers see addition/subtraction/multiplication/ division facts; that if a student does not master these early, he or she will continue to have difficulties? Yes; for example, early training in Latin and Greek word roots is essential to development of advanced vocabulary.

B. How do students at your level need to use their phonics skills? Primarily for decoding difficult new vocabulary; at another level, for tracking complex sentence structures in difficult texts.

C. Do you see any outside influences that detract from phonics skills; such as popular language among peers or media influences? TEXT MESSAGING!

 

5. What are you feelings about parental involvement in Literacy? Describe your ideal situation. I’m unsure about this: we might be able to instruct students without parental help, but certainly not against parental illiteracy. Have you read Freakonomics? The best statistical predictor of student acquisition of literacy is a language-rich home environment, established by the parents’ own habits. As such, if schools are going to advocate for improving their communities, I sometimes wonder what we could do to “reach out” to parents better; offer more classes and activities that involve them in reading with their families, perhaps (maybe sponsoring family/community book clubs?).

 

6. What are your personal theories on literacy instruction; its practices and goals for you level?

A. What reading programs have worked best for you? Describe what element(s) of the program were the most beneficial.

B. How do you approach multi level reading groups? At the high school level, this is difficult. For independent reading projects (which I try to do quarterly), I encourage individual students in the library to select books of an appropriate difficulty level; I’ve even offered different reading lists to different groups of students based on their ability.

C. What are your best/ favorite reading comprehension instruction techniques? See my answer to 2A.

D. What are your major checkpoints/milestones throughout the year, and how often do assess; such as beginning, mid-year, and end of year? For literacy, I would my “major checkpoints” would be the tests I give on each our quarterly in-class novels(Huck Finn, Ender’s Game, etc.), which focus on comprehension of major aspects of writing (plot, character, style, etc.); and, for their independently-chosen novels, a report that focuses on summarizing those things, and responding to the text in various ways, including evaluating it and illustrating scenes from it. So, each quarter should have at least these two differing major assessments of their literacy, as demonstrated by how they’ve interacted with two differing texts.

 

7. What proportion should be given to literal questions vs. high order thinking questions? This might sound like a cop-out, but I say “lots of both.” Heavy doses of questions and activities that hit all six areas of Bloom’s taxonomy offer the best means of making the most of a text. I’ve found that if I offer “question starters” to students based on all six levels and have them finish the questions with material from their reading, then trade papers and answer each other’s questions, they usually impress me.

 

8. What proportions should be given to reading materials such as short story, novels, and nonfiction? Before the 20^th century, fiction was often seen as little more than a toy, but I would argue that it should predominate in our humanities studies. Reading fiction invites students to track character and plot development over time, as well to grapple with understanding narrative devices such as metaphor, theme, and satire, which are more rarely used in fairly direct non-fiction works. In addition, literate fiction can convey much the same factual information that non-fiction can, but with a greater artistic care and narrative craftsmanship that helps improve student interest.

 

9. List which written works you would consider classic, whether they are novels, short stories, novellas, or an author in general, for your grade level. Contemporary “young adult” literature is often touted as increasing student interest; my experience does not bear that out. Besides that, I’m an inveterate classicist, and prefer assisting students in studying the Western canon as much as possible. That being said, I also think it’s worthwhile to introduce students to superior, worthy materials in the world of current literary criticism, such as Harold Bloom. These two approaches reinforce each other quite well.

 

10. How much time do you devote to independent reading in your planning? How much would you with complete freedom? As implied in my answer to 6D, I use both assigned class readings as well independently-chosen works. However, the essays, stories, and novels used for class are obviously covered in greater depth. The “outside” readings are mostly offered to help spur lifelong reading interests. To that end, (I should append this to my answer to 6B), when I give lists of titles to be used as a guide for independent reading, I try to mediate small “book club” discussions in class based on groups arranged as per same/similar titles/authors/subjects. This works quite well. “Complete freedom” in a classroom only results in anarchy—titles for independent reading must always be approved by me before they begin. If a title is inappropriate or below their level, I try to redirect them to options that are more suitable.

 

11. Summarize the reading skills necessary for a student to be fully ready to pass your grade level. For the sake of space, I might refer you back to my answer to 6D.

 

12. How would you describe a student that is a fluent reader of any age? “Rare.” Ha! Sorry. Seriously, such a student can identify favorite genres, even specific titles and authors that interest him/her. He or she would likely have a library card. He or she would also likely be able to give examples of books that he/she “liked more than the movie version.”

 

13. How do you avoid being in a vacuum in your field? Um, I suppose by not getting inside a vacuum. Sorry, but I don’t know what you’re driving at here.

 

14. Do you have any comments or input that you think are necessary for Reading teachers of levels beyond yours are important to know about the students’ prior training, skills, or anything else? One important thing I can think of that hasn’t been covered yet is this: promoting lifelong reading interest is important and worthy, but not something that we can ultimately control. As such, expending too much energy on stimulating student interest is unproductive. We might want students to love reading as much as we do, but if there doesn’t seem to be much hope for individual students, or even whole classes, to attain that characteristic, we shouldn’t let it be a barrier for us. We need to be able to continue immersing them in the literary canon and reading skills that form the core of our civilization without feeling that we must “convert” students to our love of the subject.

 

Review of Gatto’s “Dumbing Us Down,” Chapter 2

After reading endless superlative references to him in the columns of Las Vegas Review-Journal author Vin Suprynowicz, I have decided to read a book by renegade educator John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.  Read the first part of my critique of this book here.  This essay covers chapter two of the book.

Gatto calls the public school model psychopathic, describing it with phrases like “a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class,” and “move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong.”  Never mind that the first is exactly how people choose to group themselves in normal adult life and that the second is a jaundiced version of what more objective observers would call organization and time management, rather than insidious tools in a soul-crushing, brain-washing conspiracy.

 

Gatto’s crude caricature of school fails because he never connects his vision of school—with its routines and schedules—directly to the academic malaise he bemoans at the beginning of the chapter. 

 

That being said, I’ll agree with him on one point.  Children are institutionalized at school.  Gatto would probably say because of school, but I merely share the observation that kids tend to mindlessly shuffle through their routine.  For example, I’ve lost count of how many students ditch school or neglect their work to the point that their grade barely registers as a percentage, but who show up on the last day for the final exam and work their hearts out for hours.  There is, of course, no chance for them to pass the class and get credit at that point, so why do they do it?  My only answer is that they must be very well programmed to follow the overall conventions of the school-centered life.  

 

But I see that “programming” as evidence of being spoiled, not brainwashed.  It’s the product of an entire childhood of being coddled, of being ensured a safety net—by entitlement-minded parents set on auto pilot, by a media that indulges their every hedonistic whim to a degree that Caligula would have thought excessive, and only partially by a school system that inflates grades and promotes them socially.  Ironically, the cure for the apathy that Gatto sees isn’t to make school far different in form, but to make it more strict—and therefore more effective—in its current form.  But that would only work partially, because the other aspects of a young person’s life which influence him or her far more than school—home and media—are beyond our control.  (To his credit, Gatto does admit that television has a greater effect on children than school, but neglects to propose solutions to the problems that causes.)

 

Gatto labels this malady “dependency,” and he’s absolutely right to do so.  But this dependency on “the man” to tell you how to live isn’t created by schools—in fact, it’s well in place before most students step into Kindergarten—it’s merely enabled by a school system that fails to combat it aggressively enough.  The structure of school isn’t broken, it just isn’t employed rigorously enough.

 

Higher standards and expectations would raise achievement like nothing else.  I know because that’s what worked for the colonial and pioneer eras that Gatto so adores.  He seems to imply that there was some radically alternative method of schooling back then that we’ve lost.  Sadly, he never gets around to explaining what this is (he doesn’t appear to have a very good conception of the old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse—where do rulers and paddles fit into your paradigm, Mr. Gatto?), but, yet again ironically, that system which was corrupted by the Industrial Revolution (another point on which we agree) was not individualistic, it was regimented, mechanical, and authoritarian.  (This truth is perhaps best laid bare in Dorothy Sayers’ classic essay, “The Lost Tools of Learning.”)

 

Perhaps the best argument against Gatto’s “school is an assembly line that only produces government-worshipping drones” thesis is this: where’s the beef?  Where do we see hordes of public school graduates whose eyes zone out at the very mention of school and robotically chant, “I love Big Brother”?  In actuality, school does the opposite of what Gatto claims: many, if not most, students, drunk on the intoxicant of countless media models, reflexively combat the school system via apathy, truancy, and shallow work, most often to their own detriment, and usually solidifying a lifelong hatred of school in the process.  To me, a hundred hostile parent conferences prove this. 

 

Gatto also decries the “loss of private time” foisted upon students by school.  Is he suggesting that less time drilling in algebra and more time staring at caterpillars under shady elm trees would boost math scores?  If so, he forgets to clarify it, much less document it, though the existing research (see my earlier post on this subject) and common sense dictate otherwise.  (Though perhaps Gatto would agree with Lowell Monke’s excellent essay, “Charlotte’s Webpage: Why children shouldn’t have the world at their fingertips,” which shares his concerns about the degradation of independence, interaction, and imagination, though Monke lays the blame squarely at the doorstep of electronic entertainment technology parading as educationally valuable.  Amen.)

 

Perhaps I’m not being charitable; in all fairness, Gatto does emphasize a loss of social and imaginative development in his comments against the unstructured time vampire that is school.  However, he does not account for the fact that much of today’s schools are disproportionately engaged in group work or “cooperative learning” or some similar counterproductive fad.  More than a few truculent students have told me over the years that the only reason they don’t drop out is because school is where they see their friends, which would seem to rebut Gatto’s school-as-Gulag position.  But at least it demonstrates that institutionalizing isn’t the only thing keeping our kids in school!  J

 

At one point, Gatto lists eight distressing facets of the identity of modern young people (all quite real), but in his zeal to blame them on school, he takes logic to a brave new world—how in the world do the bells between classes invariably lead to a dearth of curiosity?  Mr. Gatto, it’s not just the time spent watching television that hurts children, it’s the amoral content.  They get it there, not at school. 

 

I’m also confused when Gatto criticizes the doctrinaire public education system of “the last 140 years.”  All of the problems we see—mental and emotional—are products of the post-WWII period, less than half of the time the current models of public school have existed.  Perhaps Gatto ignores this because it would invalidate his anti-school thesis.

 

Gatto’s suggestions for solutions near the end of the chapter amount to engaging in a national “debate” (about what?) and, especially, letting children do more independent study.  I agree that ultimately a well-educated person must be an autodidact, but it is foolish to think that students who have little self-control or study skills, much less goals or ambitions that they can articulate, would benefit from being set loose to do it all on their own.  Also, Gatto’s scheme of encouraging ad-hoc apprenticeships would do little to inculcate literacy or computational skills.  Is he seriously suggesting that America’s intellectual deficit is the result of not enough unsupervised field trips? 

 

The most disturbing thing in the chapter is Gatto’s assertion that time needs to be taken away from school so that students might have “large doses of privacy and solitude,” when by his own accounting, students spend far more time watching television (55 hours—far lower than the actual 2008 total) than attending or preparing for school (45 hours—far inflated).  Such poor selection of targets makes for irresponsible reform.  By ignoring the media and lacerating school, Gatto is tilting at windmills.

 

Gatto’s call for a “curriculum of the family” is honorable, but in the age of day care, not practical.  I can’t believe that he would have us campaign for family-involved public education (this would certainly pose controversial problems for the large percentage of students with missing, uninterested, or otherwise unavailable “families”!), which assumes that we can count on community factors far beyond our control, yet he declines to include a head-on campaign against the abuse of electronic entertainment media, which is obviously the major culprit in America’s mental decline, and a goal for which we can conceivably make progress.

 

Or is it just easier to blame the big bad bogeyman of school than it is to ask America to reform its media-saturated lifestyle?

 

 

 

 

Letter: Tax Breaks For Good Parents

A shorter version of this letter was published in the Las Vegas Sun on Saturday, October 28, 2006.  It got universally positive feedback, including a hand written note of thanks from the superintendent.  Near the end, I say that my idea is tongue-in-cheek because it’s impractical: no doubt the law of unintended consequences would turn this into a circus of manipulation, intimidation, and blame.  Too bad.  In a better world, this idea would work just fine.

 

Dear Editor:

 

As the first quarter of the school year goes out not with a bang but a whimper, this frustrated educator wonders why. Indeed, teachers scrutinize and reform their methods far more often than you may realize.

 

We beat our heads against the wall trying to discover that magic detail that will turn our students into scholars. Is it curriculum? Scheduling?  But these and a thousand others have been endlessly honed! Only one thing has remained constant—apathetic parents.

 

It’s an old observation in teachers’ lounges across America that as society has grown less disciplined, children’s academic achievement has followed a parallel path.

 

Barring a wholesale overhaul of cultural mores, what are we to do to stem this tide of parents who model incompetence and get nothing else from their offspring? How could we actually work within the bloated, entitlement-minded bureaucracy that Joe Sixpack has abdicated his autonomy to and get his attention?

 

Here’s how: let’s give tax breaks and penalties based on children’s performance in school.

 

It’s easy: If your child gets an A one semester, you get a $100 tax credit. Perfect attendance, $50. And what about the cost for someone who has ten kids who always get straight A’s and never ditch school? God bless them. They’ve earned every dollar they get. They’re producing the kind of citizens this Republic needs to flourish.

 

But your kid failed two classes? Ooh, that’ll cost you $50. Skipped class ten times? Cough up a Franklin or two. Got suspended? Goodbye refund.

 

How is that fair? Think of it this way—why does public education exist?  It’s to ensure the future of the nation. And what better indicator is there that someone will be a benefit or burden to society in the future (via welfare, lost productivity, and crime) than performance in school?

 

Finally, parents who are doing their part could get some overdue recognition, and those who neglect to actually provide parenting might get a red flag to help them see their kids’ lives already going down the toilet.  Or at least they’ll pay for the mistakes they’re letting their children prepare to make in a needlessly wasted future.

 

Of course, this is all tongue-in-cheek.  The courts would choke on the glut of petty lawsuits from parents who want to sue their way out of having to pay for their children’s mistakes.  (And they would win—another reason why our schools are so weak: they’ve been neutered by such lawsuits.)

 

Even more distressing is that we even have these ideas.  Nobody wants schools checking up on parents!  But that leaves us where we are now—helplessly tweaking mundane details of education while the real power players, the parents, sit back and do nothing.

An Educational Anarchist And His Baseless Rant

To celebrate the last day of school here in Las Vegas, let me share some thoughts about the beginning of John Taylor Gatto’s “classic” work of subversion, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.  Gatto, an award-winning veteran public school teacher, has spent about the last twenty years shrieking about how awfully destructive the U.S. public school system is, claiming that it’s designed to promote widespread failure and should be abandoned altogether. 

It’s actually an intriguing thesis, and a worthwhile local news columnist is just ravished by anything Gatto has written, so I’m giving it a chance.  However, based on the first chapter, it’s a huge disappointment.  My references are to the newer 2005 edition:

 

From “About The Author”

 

Pages xxxiv-xxxv: “Although I continue to this day in those futile assays because of the nature of institutional teaching [Excuse me? Isn't this a confession of complicity with a system that, according to you, breaks down students' souls and enervates society? Isn't that monstrous?], wherever possible I have broken with teaching tradition [“whenever possible”? What's holding you back the rest of the time?] and sent kids down their separate paths to their own private truths. [More time spent explaining how this is to be done and less time heaping blame onto your shadowy bogeyman “system” would have been productive! Such reluctance to offer specific solutions suggests that you truly have none to offer.]”

 

From Chapter 1

 

Page 10: [regarding grades and assessment] “Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered a factor.” Name one “major philosophical system” in world history that not only allowed children to voice their own judgments of themselves, but gave formal credence to them! Isn’t this really only a feature of experimental, new-age educational doctrines? Haven’t the educational systems that built Western Civilization (especially the Trivium, and those 19^th century schoolbooks you rightfully admire) traditionally been strictly authoritarian, far more so than schools today?

 

Page 12: “No, the truth is that reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about one hundred hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn.”Oh, is that all? Gatto assumes that such motivation is inherent in all students, and that it has been sadistically squashed by school. Nonsense! Students start school these days used to being entertained and pandered to. The difficulty of sustained thought and the indoctrination of anti-intellectual media make them reject school with all the xenophobic zeal of any ethnocentric zombie.

 

Page 16: [Here, Gatto asserts that the modern “prison” model of school was formed as a hostile reaction towards immigrants, emancipated blacks, and the poor.] Then why create a universal, mandatory system that drags down their own (presumably WASPy) children with all the other children? More to the point…where’s your evidence for any of this? Without any kind of research or documentation, isn’t this just gross speculation? And since you’re using these assumptions to inveigh against generations of Americans (you know, those evil fat cats who gleefully consign undesirable children to the virtual slave mines), isn’t this conspiracy theory libelously irresponsible?

 

Page 17, 2^nd paragraph, and page 19, 2^ndparagraph: [Twice, Gatto accurately describes the degenerated nature of American youths' mental abilities. However, he blames school for these failings, still without a shred of evidence beyond, apparently, his own experience teaching in New York. On 19, though, he does mention television and two-income and single-parent homes as contributors to the failures of American children. Thanks for agreeing with me, Mr. Gatto.]

 

So far, Gatto appears to be just as dogmatic as the left-wing educrats he criticizes.  I’m no fan of a lot of things about schools today, but just because someone comes up with a criticism of them doesn’t mean it’s justified.  We’ll see if it gets any better.

 

My Sarcastic Campaign For Superintendent

Looking through my journal this week, I found a printout of a letter that was printed in the January 20, 2000 issue of Las Vegas Weekly.  Checking their web site showed that issues that old are no longer online.  In the interest of preserving one of my first published letters, as well as adding some spunk to this droll little blog and ushering in summer vacation time in style, here it is.

First, some background.  In 2000, I was a senior in college and the Clark County School District, which had ballooned almost overnight into one of the largest in the nation, found itself without a superintendent.  Nobody around here was qualified or wanted to do it.  Seriously.  So a committee scoured the country looking for people.  Some of those seemed promising, but they dropped out of the running.  We ended up with a guy from California who ditched us a couple years ago for a textbook company.  His administration was, uh, less than universally loved.

Anyway, during the debacle of trying to give away a powerful job to somebody, anybody, I wrote in the following:

 

After months of standing by and doing nothing while our city’s educational establishment has been reduced to a quivering bowl of pink jelly, I’ve decided I must act!  I am shocked, even outraged, that this endless search for a new superintendent has produced so little satire, which it so richly deserves.  Accordingly, I am officially throwing my hat in the ring of candidates to be considered for the position.

Months of sitting idly by watching this committee has left me, like most Las Vegans, somewhere between morbidly offended and slightly bemused.  But fear not, for I shall accept my patriotic duty and save you from further embarrassment and costly ad campaigns. 

This process has become a bloated, pathetic farce, and nobody is more prepared to benefit from it than I am.  I volunteer to take the job that nobody wants; I will be superintendent of the Clark County School District.

Who am I?  I am an education major at UNLV.  How can I be qualified for this position, you ask?  I’m the most qualified candidate you’ve had so far!

1.  As a teacher-in-training, I’ve had literally weeks of experience being in the general vicinity of classrooms, which already puts me head and shoulders above most administrative professionals.  Also, my own career as a public school student is much more recent than any other candidate’s, giving me an edge in understanding the issues facing children today and in manipulating the public’s desire to have quirky young people in figurehead positions of authority.

2.  So critical to being an effective superintendent are the abilities of making yourself look good by doing whatever’s trendy in your field and by putting politics ahead of actual success.  I have had ample exposure to the best of the best doing just this.  I have spent the last four years at an American college.

3.  My college indoctrination has prepared me to be a quality leader in cutting edge curriculum and instruction: I can spout all the right buzzwords and quote all the fashionable experts.  Just listen to my mission statement: “Celebrate diversity and multicultural empowerment with a vision of inclusive awareness and raise test scores if there’s any time left over.”  As superintendent, I will spearhead dozens of pointless programs that will consistently disappoint everybody.  Will any other candidate make this bold promise?

4.  Much of the debate has centered on the salary issue.  Let me settle this right now: if chosen to be superintendent, I will sacrifice my entry-level wages as a teacher and work for a measly, piddling $100,000 a year, a mere fraction of what others have been offered.  No, don’t protest.  I’ll get by on bread and water.

5.  What about my career as a teacher?  After researching the superintendent’s position, I have found that he’s not actually required to do anything.  I will delegate paperwork to my army of underlings, make token appearances at social functions, and humbly continue my service as an educator of our youth if my golf schedule permits.

I can confidently assert that I am the best option as I appear to be the only person who’s actually applying for the job.  Let’s end this circus.  Choose me.  I’m a little bit better than nobody, and a whole lot better than the other yahoos you’ve looked at.  Please contact me anytime for a resume and an interview.

Eight and a half years later, I think this holds up pretty well!

The Insidious IEP And Frivolous 504 Portend A Nightmare

I was assigned to substitute teach for a period of a special education class yesterday (actual substitute teachers are relatively scarce in Las Vegas, and teacher absences often need to be filled in by other teachers on campus during their prep period). It was quite an educational experience, but not for the class—for me.

 

As soon as the bell rang, the students started yelling obscenities at each other. It seemed in good humor, but it was still shocking to hear such extreme vulgarities shouted across the room so casually. I asked if they watched their language better than this on a normal day.

 

“Naw,” one teenager replied. “We all got IEP that say we cuss.” The rest of the class chimed in their agreement. I understood the implication. You see, even having the mental faculties that necessitated being in a special ed class, these kids all knew that they were part of a system that essentially amounts to diplomatic immunity for those who have mental or emotional problems, and they were happy to take advantage of it. My hands were tied.

 

Perhaps the most outrageous offenses of the nanny state in our schools are the IEP and the 504 Plan. They are an increasingly-popular aspect of the government’s many “fairness” doctrines meant to guarantee that everything is equally easy for everybody. Here are more technical definitions:

 

IEP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualized_Education_Program

 

504 Plan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_504_of_the_Rehabilitation_Act

 

It’s not just a special ed thing; a significant fraction of America’s middle-of-the-road and even honors students have these now. Basically, if your kid isn’t doing as well in school as you’d like, or isn’t naturally as gifted as somebody else, or just feels bad about their reputation as an airhead (I’m not exaggerating), you can pitch a fit and the school will have to bend over backwards to lower the bar for him. An IEP or 504 can get your child less work, more time to do it in, preferred seating in class, or whatever you can dream up. (Anybody else thinking of that old sci-fi classic, “Harrison Bergeron?” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron)

 

It can be for just about any reason, but it seems like most of these get issued for that granddaddy of bogeymen, ADHD. Parents who come to school and chant this magic word get whatever they want. Even though the correlation between intellectually lazy homes and this bad habit of lackadaisical impulse control are obvious, we all pretend not to notice so the parents don’t get offended. (The same student who answered my question above told a friend right before the end of class, during a conversation about drug busts, “My mom’s got plants bigger ‘n me!”) And the students suffer the stigma of the dunce diagnosis for the 21^st century.

 

Before I go on, let me defuse a potential misunderstanding. I’m not saying that these things are inherently evil, or that nobody should use them, or something like them. There are certainly situations—such as burn victims, sexual abuse victims suffering trauma, or those with dyslexia—where reasonable accommodations might be acceptable. Like the over-prescription of drugs such as Ritalin, the big problem here is how often these are employed, and how egregiously they are abused.

 

It’s bad enough that the government codified this excuse for accepting failure with so many loopholes to be exploited; what’s far worse is that so many parents are eager to milk it for all it’s worth and then some. Don’t you believe that America is full of parents who expect the schools to absolve them of responsibility for poor parenting, or that the schools should raise their kids for them? Teacher’s lounges are full of IEP horror stories. One mother bragged to me that she went to five different doctors before one would say her daughter had ADHD, so the mother could get the little favors from the school that she wanted.

 

As a counselor one year, a couple asked me about a 504 for their son, and after reviewing his grades, I saw that he had been doing well in every class for a year. I told them that a 504 didn’t seem necessary. They were livid. They were entitled to what they wanted, they said, and they declared their boy’s inability to take care of himself. Their son was right there. I wish they’d seen his face.

 

Of course, the ultimate IEP legend in this neck of the woods is the mother who found out her son had skipped school every day for two years and not graduated. However, since he had an IEP, she sued the school district for not keeping a better eye on her baby. And she won.

 

Anybody have the numbers on just how many of these things have been issued each year, and how much they’re probably increasing?  Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of a parent being denied an IEP or 504 plan, or any absurd “accommodation” they requested for one. Anywhere. Ever. Shouldn’t that send up some red flags?

 

In our increasingly victim-oriented national climate, snowballing from the tobacco lawsuits to the current witch hunts for scapegoats for obesity, which were only jokes on late night talk shows five years ago, I think I can see the next wave in this irresponsible dependency trend.

 

In the future, the public schools’ regulations will carry over into the workplace.

 

And it will bring our economy to a grinding halt.

 

Today, any parent who throws up their hands and lets their kid waste their life doing nothing in school can be given all the special options they want. When this generation that’s been used to practically having its diapers changed by the liberal safety net enters the work force and finds themselves unable to hold a job because they can’t focus, follow orders, or interact with others, they will return to the confines of that safety net. How much longer will it be until some lazy opportunist claims, “I’m being discriminated against at work for the same conditions that demanded legally-binding accommodations in school!”

 

It’ll go to the courtrooms. And if McDonald’s is seriously held liable for obesity today, GM and Microsoft will be required to continue the school system’s mandated lower expectations tomorrow.

 

Just imagine. You can’t reprimand an employee who only does half their work because the work environment distracts them; you have to send them to a special isolated room so a supervisor can assist them.

 

You have to give the best office to the guy whose constant profanity keeps others from doing their work because he has a “condition.” You can’t even fire the guy who takes twice as long to do his job as everybody else, and does it wrong, you can only file endless reports on it and confer with a professional babysitter.

 

You won’t be able to punish incompetent employees; you’ll have to bend over backwards to make them feel good, even at everyone else’s expense.

 

Maybe when this experiment with feel-good coddling cripples our economy, we’ll realize our national discipline has been on auto-pilot for too long.

 

Enabling Failure By Failing To Enable

Criticizing a student’s work or behavior, if they choose to feel offended by it, can now by legally construed as “verbal abuse.”  I kid you not.  I don’t know if this is what keeps us from criticizing young people more or not, but whatever the inhibitor is, the lack of realistic feedback is doing atrocious harm.

A couple of years ago, a student told me she wanted to be a neonatologist.  I advised her to take harder math and science classes, and pull her average grades up to A’s.  That afternoon, her dad called the school and screamed at us, furious that I’d made her feel bad.

“What?” I silently fumed.  “Would you be happier if she continued to fail and never reach her dream, but have better self-esteem along the way?”

Earlier this year, I held two belligerent stoners after class to ask them, point blank, why they came to school.  “To get an education,” they lamely regurgitated.  I denied it.  I pointed out that they skipped school so often, wasted time so blithely, and neglected to do any kind of serious work so assiduously, that they were obviously not getting an education; in fact, not graduating was the only possible outcome.

Being teenagers, they took it as an insult, and launched into a lecture about how I needed to “respect” them.

If “respect” means politely ignoring the fact that you’re throwing your life away, then forget it. 

Just last week, a girl who had voluntarily ditched for weeks (not that she ever does much work, anyway), came back and asked for “some make up work.”  I deflected the request and asked what was the point.  “So I can pass,” she retorted in a huff.  Once again, I explained that with three weeks left in the working year, and a semester average at this point of about 10%, such a goal was long past being realistic.  She was clearly offended.  I had had the audacity to point out the obvious.

(In another testament to the poor state of their lackadaisical math acquisition, most students today cannot understand how three months of apathy–resulting in a 20% total grade–cannot be turned around into a passing grade in a couple of weeks.  Many parents can’t picture this, either.  I wonder if this could be turned into a useful word problem in a math class?  Nah, that’d bother someone and we’d get in trouble.  Still, do we really think anyone deserves to graduate who can’t figure out if, numerically, they actually do deserve it or not?)

(By the way, this is why some “progressive” educators want to restructure the traditional grading system so the 0%-59% F-range is reduced to a much smaller one; they want to deal with student failure by…redefining failure down.)

If these kids didn’t have their heads stuck in the ground (or somewhere even darker), they’d realize that I’m their best friend.

What degree of coddling has gotten our 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds to the point where anyone who ever challenges their right to coast through life with a guaranteed outcome of success is pilloried like the proverbial bearer of bad news?  I admit, squeamish teachers, leery of yet another frustrating confrontation, share the blame.  But what of a system that–via endless credit retrieval opportunities, block scheduling, a neutered discipline system, a de facto policy of pandering to the most clueless elements of the public, and a pervasive mindset that students must feel comfortable above all else–erodes their emotional immune system better than any physical virus ever could?

“Comfort” is overrated.  Education means change, and that’s hard.  Change begins with humility, and if they don’t come to us humble, they may need to be humiliated. 

You may not like “tough love.”  Fine.  But at some point, unconditional affirmation simply becomes holding someone’s hand while they kill themselves.  There’s no honor in that.

On Popular Educational Philosophy: Presenting The Modern Gym!

For hundreds of years, Western Civilization produced literate societies by immersing their young in its intellectual heritage. Students practiced rigorous routines of reading, writing, and arithmetic. They memorized classic poetry and important dates in history. They solved math problem without calculators. They understood the Constitution.

In the 20^th century, we changed that. As we’ve experimented with styles of teaching, we’ve moved further and further away from the effective methods that built this great nation. To see how ridiculous this is, imagine these ideas being transplanted to a gym…

Presenting: Guidelines For Coaches In The Modern Gym!

 

 

 

 

 

Multiple Intelligences

 

The old-fashioned idea that strength training is best accomplished by weight lifting is narrow minded. Today we know that people have various natural gifts for building strength, and they need to be free to develop them in their own way. New activities might include:

• Getting in a group and discussing what we like and don’t like about weight lifting
• Listening to a guest speaker try to get them excited about weight lifting products
• Performing an interpretive dance to express how weight lifting makes them feel

Experiment with incorporating all these different ways of exercising into your own gym and just watch everybody’s biceps get ripped!

Multiculturalism

 

The world’s many diverse cultures have their own ways of developing strength, and they are all exactly as good as each other…and they’re all better than our own. To get students to respect these other cultures (which is the real purpose of gym, after all), try the following exercises:

• Like the indigenous tribes of South America, curl your pinky fingers and big toes at the same time. Hold. Repeat.
• Like the noble people of the Arabian deserts, sit on a rock and bounce on your bottom until you feel dizzy.
• Like the proud peoples of modern America, shout at people in a traditional gym that they’re making you feel bad.

Mainstreaming Special Ed

 

Every 98 pound weakling has a right to be in your Advanced Powerlifting class. We can’t technically guarantee every student success, but plenty of parents are willing to sue if that’s not what you deliver. If this means you have to neglect your talented, enthusiastic students in order to subtly lower the bar so another student can technically finish a work out, don’t complain. You’ll be sued for that, too.

Excused Absences and Make Up Work

 

 

The laws demand that students may be excused from work outs for any reason, any time, for any number of days, without penalty. Well, everybody treats it that way. So when a kid comes back to your gym from a week of officially-sanctioned truancy and then lamely demands all their make up work right away, be ready to give it to them.

If, after a year of missing frequent sessions with you, they aren’t in good shape, prepare to shrug your shoulders and pretend you don’t know why they didn’t make more progress. Suggest that they need more special accommodations during work outs.

Bilingual needs

 

A lot of students these days will come into your gym without any background in exercising. The best way to catch them up is to offer modified work outs where they can thrive in an anti-social subculture that mimics the fitness routines in the society they insist on thinking of as home. So, instead of demanding that they start lifting weights with everybody else, allow them to comfortably ease into their new environment by curling their pinky fingers and bouncing on rocks for a few years.

But be sure to check off on your paper work that they worked out like everybody else, though. It’s the law!

Career Planning

 

Thanks to our wonderfully materialistic society, every kid who comes into your gym will know that the best reason to get in shape is…to get a fancy job and make lots of money. So when they ask, “When will I ever need to do a push up in real life?” you can try to explain the intrinsic benefits of good health, or just tell them to be quiet and get back to work.

Block Scheduling

 

Regular, frequent periods of intense practice are overrated. Today’s fitness experts all know that the best way to improve health and build strength is to have extra long workouts just two or three times a week. In fact, with weekends, holidays, and assemblies, a serious student could go four or even five days between workouts! But don’t worry; on the days that they are in your gym, they can really focus on burning the same few muscles for an hour and a half. That’s the best way to go.

However, since students can no longer focus like they used to, be sure to interrupt their workout every few minutes so they can walk around and talk to each other. Research shows that this makes aerobic conditioning more intense!

Making the Curriculum Relevant

 

 

If today’s youth are going to be healthy and strong, they need to know how the exercises connect with their manufactured media youth culture. The best coaches explain workouts using current slang, and adapt their workouts to be more exciting. Instead of doing those boring, old fashioned curls or bench presses, let them skateboard their way to improved muscle tone! Pressing buttons on video games is a far more fun (and effective) method of burning calories than dumb old cross-training, anyway!

Technology

 

Computers are the future! Every good work out should include making a five minute PowerPoint presentation. Give extra credit on their upper body conditioning if their clip art is animated.

Self Esteem

 

If a student is performing poorly, be sure to correct them in such a manner that they’ll have no idea that they were performing poorly. Kids today interpret all advice as a personal attack, and if you make them feel bad about themselves, whether you mean to or not, you can get in trouble.

If a student chooses to sit around and do nothing in your gym, you may not say that he is “acting lazy.” Such verbal abuse will get you fired!

Behavior Problems

 

If students become disruptive in your gym to the point that it infringes on the workouts of others, you may begin a long series of paperwork that will eventually get the student removed from the gym for a week or two, max. You’re the coach–you solve their problems and get them in line while you train forty other students how to exercise. Just don’t make them feel bad while you do it (see previous section).

*************

Answers to Your Concerns

 

1. “How is it fair to judge my coaching if my students go home and spend ten hours staring at a computer screen and stuffing themselves with junk food?”

Answer: Shut up.

2. “How can I be a role model when the culture on which they pattern everything from their clothes to their speech indoctrinates them to hate me and everything I stand for?”

Answer: Shut up.

3. “If students are getting weaker, with shorter attention spans and less support from their communities, aren’t these flashy reforms just an appeasing kind of pandering? Why don’t we vigorously oppose these problems head on, especially by returning to the atmosphere and methods that worked so well for so many other generations?”

Answer: Shut up!

*******************

Yes, with these enlightened methods in place, we’re sure to produce a nation of fit, healthy athletes! Look out, Japan and Europe! Now, we’re finally ready to lead the way again!