Education

Here.

JACKSON, Miss. – A northern Mississippi school district will not be hosting a high school prom this spring after a lesbian student sought to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

The Itawamba County school district's board decided Wednesday to drop the prom because of what it called recent distractions but without specifically mentioning the girl's request, which was backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

..."It is our hope that private citizens will organize an event for the juniors and seniors," district officials said in the statement. "However, at this time, we feel that it is in the best interest of the Itawamba County School District, after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our students."

Proms are not educational (at least not academically) and therefore the school needn't hold one. Canceling the prom allows private organizations to host the event which is as it should be.

These kind of cultural events exist to promote an idea. As the ACLU has asserted in the past, when the government supports something, it renders onto that thing official approval. When there is controversy, the state might be better off not taking a side. What if an anti-romance person sues the school over promoting romance?

These events are cultural relics of a time when people agreed more or less on these issues. It's time for them to go.

I think it's harmful to foster anti-American, anti-Capitalist anger in children. It's also logically nonsensical: Do everything you can to get good grades so that you can participate in the system, work in the field of your choice. Oh, and that system is evil and your bosses will exploit you, if you don't start your own business, in which case you'll be evil.

I'm the coach of the Huntington Park Debate Team, and we had a tournament at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, by Echo Park. The faculty and administrators at LAUSD schools lean left, as you might imagine (most of the parents aren't attuned to the nuances of American politics). Still, I was sort of shocked by the completely lefty atmosphere. I took some pics and added commentary under each one. The flyers also have PDF downloads.

Please keep in mind that all but the last one was on the bulletin board of the teacher's class- the teacher put it up- this wasn't something one of the kids brought from their brother's Maoist reading section at the community college. Also, be aware that most of the students are first-generation Americans, if not immigrants themselves- this is pretty much the only view they get of the country: Welcome, now let us tell you how bad we are.

Not pictured is the copy of the Communist Manifesto- no kidding- in the teacher's bookshelf next to a bunch of other Marxo-racist books. I don't remember seeing Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; the teacher may have kept it in his desk.

Here, the school encourages students to seek free lunch because if 85% of the student population gets free lunch, everybody gets it. Talk about perverse incentives! The correct message would be: you should do everything possible to not be on government assistance.

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Our debate on Wednesday, December 9th was a great success primarily- in fact, almost exclusively- due to the hard work of the participating students. They chose a topic a couple of months ago and under the direction of the captains, Priscilla for the affirmative and Mabel for the negative, proceeded to do all of the research, studying after school and during some lunches.

The auditorium was 3/4 of the way full with maybe 20 classes and 500 people attending. Brett Flater, the coordinator of the Los Angeles Metro Debate League (LAMDL) scored the event. He's still tabulating, but said that it was close, a sign of a good debate.

The only issues was a delay caused by the microphone volume. That glitch robbed the students of their prep time and each teams' final rebuttal.

Riot, from my fourth period class took video, below:

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We held this debate early this year. The kids worked hard on the research and I think did a fine job.

Resolved: Religion has been a benefit to society.

Part 1:

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The High School where I teach (and love doing so), Huntington Park, celebrated it's 100th year today. I couldn't make it because I had Army drill today, but I heard from one of my colleagues that the Centennial celebration was a great success, .

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When I'm not blogging, I'm a high school teacher. I decided to show Obama's speech in my class.

Why, if I mostly disagree with the president?

First, he's the president of the United States and deserves some attention. Second, it wasn't a federal mandate, in which case I would have resented the imposition. Third, Americans have precious few unifying events and non-political presidential speeches can be one of them.

The speech itself was a triumph- Obama at his best. The theme was perfect, even conservative. It was a speech that could have been delivered by any president in our history, proof in itself of its non-partisan nature.

The liberal stereotype is that kids can't learn because of some material deprivation. Obama said that no matter how much we spend on education, it's the kid who has to allow the knowledge to enter his brain. Learners are the final barrier to knowledge, so to speak.

This is something I've been saying to my classes for years ("you have this and that: what else do you need to learn something today?").

So, what do we need him for? Obama managed to include a role for the government by telling children that he will provide everything students need to achieve- except for the excuse that they can't.

I liked the construction of the speech, especially the part about schoolwork being a way to see what students are good at.

As the leader of my school's debate team, I'm glad that he mentioned that. The military is an option. I liked the story of his mother: it was inspirational without being melodramatic or victim-ish.

Kids don't need to computers to learn. It's appropriate to tell kids to wash their hands in a way that it isn't to tell adults.

Politics:

Good students will like the speech. It won't matter to most of the bad ones. Democratic and Independent parents will love the speech. Conservatives who criticized it look pretty silly today. Hint: don't criticize something beforehand, as the person you're criticizing can always change it.

I didn't see too many outrageous examples in the story. In fact, I'm surprised that it was as balanced as it was.

To the extent that there's a difference, it's because many textbook writers probably see Christians as an ideological enemy- ones they battle on campus, in their classes, on television, etc.- and don't want to encourage them, while they see Muslims as an oppressed minority. It's an almost involuntary reflex in leftists to put the majority "oppressor" culture, as they perceive it, in its place and to protect those whom they consider weaker, creating in their mind a nice, creamy equality.

An example

I covered a history class the other day and took flipped open the textbook. I found that when discussing the spread of Christianity, the textbook gives a secular, psychological explanation that belittles both the faith and the people of the ancient world. According to the textbook, Christianity spread because the people of the time felt despair and needed something to "cling to," to paraphrase our president. This is the "crutch" theory.

Why it's bias

It's presumptuous to think that people felt greater despair then than now. A more non-biased, academic approach would have been to quote the contemporary sources, whom, I'm sure, would have felt that their acceptance of Christianity was a sincere one. Or, it could have just reported the facts with no commentary at all.

At the risk of sounding "anti-education" (free-thinking):

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to launch “the most sweeping effort ... this country has ever seen” to modernize school buildings and equip classrooms with computers as part of his economic-stimulus plan, prompting optimism among ed-tech advocates despite pervasive budget constraints.

Is there any evidence that more technology in the classroom helps kids in any way (I've done some looking and have read conflicting studies. Most say that technology helps if "done the right way." Well, anything "done the right way" is good. Paper and pencil instruction "done the right way" improves student achievement as well, I imagine. Using just my brain, however, I ask: Have students become much smarter in the past 15 years? In the past 50, since television?)? In my experience, most technology in schools ranges from mildly beneficial and interesting to neutral to counter-productive. We have a lab in my high school stocked with brand new iMacs. I stopped using it.** I'd rather have my students write their essays in class and then rewrite them on their computers at home- or, by hand. Who cares?

Obama is doing for the Internet what President John F. Kennedy did for television, says Hirsch, by encouraging the use of it as a common and essential staple of American life.

I thought that people liked TV because it wasn't intellectually taxing, sometimes compelling, and free. I didn't know that it was actually a government plan. Thanks JFK! It's worked out well. Kids now spend more time watching TV, probably, than engaging in any other activity, and who would argue that they're much better off for it? I'm calling my kids right now and force them to watch more TV. After that, more computers and video games!

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Obama, who will take office Jan. 20, said in a December radio address. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online,” he said, going on to link broadband access to the competitiveness of the U.S. economy.

More Youtube, MTV, Myspace, and porn (redundant, I know)! Because you know that when kids get online, they're checking out Encarta, right? Because kids can only get information from the internet, yes? How did our parents learn stuff? You need T-1 lines for encyclopedias?

“When the federal government begins to model very positive models of collaborative technology, it’s only a matter of time before schools do the same,” he says.

The government is my role model. It's not yours?

“He really is the first president-elect to have harnessed the power of technology,” she says. “His campaign systematically used technology not as an ATM machine but as an effective vehicle to communicate and develop a sense of engagement of individuals across the country and across all age groups.”

He protests too much. Obama used it mostly as an ATM machine.

Gray says President-elect Obama’s move to appoint a chief technology officer for the government demonstrates a shift in the way that technology is viewed nationally: “This is in fact recognizing the critical role that technology will play in America’s” quest to be more competitive in a global marketplace.

Lowering the corporate tax rates and cutting back on regulation would probably make us more competitive than the government wasting money on Carmen SanDiego and modeling efficient, competitive behavior.

Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?

In addition to providing schools with the technological infrastructure to teach students 21st-century skills, President-elect Obama has also promised to bolster professional development for teachers. Ann L. Flynn, for one, hopes that he follows through.

What, pray tell, is a "21st-century skill?" Why don't we get those 17th-century skills down first? Teaching isn't that complicated. It would be more productive to take the cash spent on teacher "development" and fling it towards one of those new wind mills. At least I wouldn't have to attend those boring teacher classes.

“We are celebrating the election of our first president who truly understands and embraces information and communication technology, connectivity and the power of the World Wide Web, and the democratization of information, knowledge, and 21st-century communications,” Knezek says. “The most important priorities for the U.S.—to regain a leadership role globally in education, to overcome the recent slippage among nations we’ve seen in almost every important statistic of international educational comparisons—are already on President-Elect Obama’s radar...”

...Keith R. Krueger, the executive director for the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking, or COSN, thinks that reforming the federal E-rate program, which has an annual budget of $2.25 billion, is a key step to achieving universal broadband access.

We're slipping internationally after Bill Clinton's E-rate technology initiative. Well, then what we need is more technology, obviously.

How much would you like to bet that the students with the most technology upgrades will get dumber?

But, which administrator will say "no" to more stuff?" Which politician will point out that school spending has no clothes? Onward towards waste!

Article here.

**I would like a projector at school. It may not help the kids, but what the heck?

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) The Last Judgment. I was going to put up a graffiti picture, but then it occurred to me that the taggers or graffiti artists would probably like that.

Reason number 4232 I hold mostly conservative views is an article I read while I was a teacher at Fred C. Nelles in Whittier (since closed), the California Youth Authority (CYA) or: a jail for California's juvenile offenders. The writer made the case for graffiti being "art" and a legitimate way to bring attention to the oppression of Mexican-Americans (I wonder what she thinks of the white, middle class students who vandalize property.).

Today, I happen to work in a Los Angeles high school, Hunting Park High School, plagued by graffiti. At the beginning of the year, I always give a speech to students which I'll paraphrase here:

Why is graffiti the dumbest crime of all time? Think about it:

Graffiti is the only crime in the world that costs you money to commit. A hungry person stealing fruit? OK, I might understand. But going to the store and spending $10.00 to commit a crime that will give you nothing back except the respect of other losers? Dumb.

It also costs you time. Imagine if you spent the same time studying that you do climbing freeway overpasses to scribble something that decent people, including, probably, your parents, think is disgusting.

It not only hurts you personally, but it hurts your parents, school, and neighborhood. Do you think your parents would be more proud of you for doing well in school, working, and raising a family- or for having to drive you from the police station?

Would you rather the school spend money on more teachers and activities- or on painting the walls every month?

Why do you think the houses in some neighborhoods are more expensive than in other neighborhoods? Because more people want to live there, right? Well, do you think people would prefer to live in a place where they run the risk of having their property defaced- or in a clean place? You are costing your parents' money by lowering the price of their house. Why don't you try to raise the price instead? It might be your house some day.

What about businesses? Do they want to paint over the graffiti on their buildings every week? Wouldn't they rather go to a cleaner area? When companies move into a neighborhood, they provide that community with jobs and tax revenue. In other words, more money out of you and your parents' pocket.

Let's imagine somebody driving through a city. Let's say the person is a non-Latino: If he notices that he's more likely to see graffiti cruising through a Latino or Mexican neighborhood than a Chinese or White one, what do you imagine he's thinking about each people? How does having that reputation help Latinos? Do you have a right to complain about somebody who holds negative stereotypes for your ethnic group if there's some merit to them?

The most important reason, however, is simple: It's wrong to write on other people's property. When people own something, they have a right to enjoy it without others ruining it. Apply the Golden Rule: How would you like to wake up and see your house or sidewalk with some gross paint strokes on it?

"Yeah, but it's still art," you say. Here's an idea that's a win for you because you get to practice your art and win for your parents, school, city, and whomever you think is watching you: Buy a little book and write in it or paper over your wall and practice there.

A lot of people today were talking about this article on graffiti in the Los Angeles Times describing how graffiti vandals are getting more aggressive.

Mayor Villaraigosa is a weirdo. Wouldn't you think a mayor would try to make his city look better rather than worse, "33%? Ha! Try 60%. In fact, only a few kids in my city care about school!"

What this actually shows are the incentives created by government's perverse funding philosophy: The worse you are, the more money you get.

From here.

Sharply disputing a state report, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday said he believes the dropout rate at Los Angeles schools is even worse than the dismal 33 percent estimated by state officials.

Villaraigosa, who previously used the dropout-rate issue as leverage to take control of a handful of schools, said the new state figures released Wednesday did not take into account all relevant factors.

For example, he said, the state report did not count students who dropped out before ninth grade.

"I'm heartened they are highlighting the dropout issue, but I know it is higher than they are saying," Villaraigosa said. "We know it's 50(percent) to 60 percent and in some parts of the city 65(percent) or 70percent."