Education

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?

In related news, the French declare deodorant an unnecessary expense. People print this with a strait face? 60% of undergraduate college students are women, but boys are OK (Are women better off by being the majority on college campuses?). Here's what the university women did: They looked at SAT and ACT tests and determined that since men score higher, there's no problem. Well, of course! Those tests correlate to IQ, a factor that doesn't change much despite disparities in education. Some minorities still do worse, the women pointed out. Hmmm, why would they point that out? (Hint: We need action for our favored groups!)

Anyways, my hypothesis is that, except for the sciences, school has become a place for girls. In high school, at least, if you look at literature anthologies, you'll notice that most of the stories involve an initially misunderstood person or group whom the dominant group accepts later on. In other words, the Oprah selection for months May through November (You can read more in this article and I'll have more later.). Where are the stories of adventure, conquest (without feeling bad about it. Well, sorry.), bravery, and all of those other things that have horrified moms and bored education researchers for centuries and decades respectively?

Makes you feel good about American education, although most American students would probably think that Sherlock Holmes is a Mexican gangster.

Report: 1 in 4 Britons Think Winston Churchill Never Existed:

One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey.

Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported Monday.

The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported.

The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

Young Britons under 20 lack a basic historical education according to the survey results, historian Correlli Barnett told the Daily Mail.

"This suggests a complete lack of common sense and respect for our greatest heroes of the past," Barnett said.

A nothing in thought.

What I like best about L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is his ability to bring people together. Just today in downtown L.A., I spent a good twenty minutes with a 19-year veteran teacher from Jordan high school- a woman with whom I'm sure I'd disagree with over many issues- laughing at the mayor.

She told me how Villaraigosa went to Jordan and artfully dodged any substantive questions (He must have picked that up from campaigning with Hillary Clinton), a good strategy on his part considering that his plan to take over LAUSD schools is idiotic.

Villaraigosa wants to take over schools from LAUSD. To do what? Nobody knows- not even him:

Specifics of how schools will operate under Villaraigosa's partnership will be worked out on individual campuses, the mayor said. Responding to numerous questions from teachers, he said repeatedly that he wants schools to come up with their own solutions and make decisions on curriculum and budgets independent of the central bureaucracy.

Sorry to cut in, but isn't it weird how the people who want to expand federal funding for education are the same ones who deride a "central bureaucracy?"

"The specific plan," Villaraigosa said to parents at Roosevelt, "is going to be developed and created by you in the schools."

Huh?

"I want to take over the schools at great expense and with considerable disruption so that you can come up with a plan."

Or, maybe he has a secret strategy: A television reporting magnet? Perhaps he thinks that statues of him in the cafeteria will inspire students to achieve.

Walk with me a little: Let's say he succeeds and places Jordan under his thumb. What does he want to do that hasn't already been tried a gazillion times before or that requires his unique, sage, guidance: Fire teachers? Fat chance. School uniforms? Whoopee!

Besides its sheer folly, Villaraigosa's fool's errand is profoundly insulting. He assumes that nobody else: parents, school board members, teachers, principals, etc. cares about education quite as much as he does- that only he can save the children. Does your mayor care more about your kids than you do?

Many teachers reconsider teaching as a profession after they begin working, and this incident probably made Ms. Mallon take a good look at her other options. Anyways, I'm almost sure she wasn't forced out.

Nor should she have been, necessarily. I don't think she did anything terribly wrong. She performed a cheerleading routine as she remembered it. How could she have done it differently? I would have been more concerned had she been behind her desk painting her fingernails.

Three more points:

1. Teachers, you'll save yourself a lot of aggravation if you assume that you're being recorded the whole time. It's probably close to the truth, anyways, what with the state of technology nowadays.

2. There's definitely a line between inappropriate and outrageously, but harmlessly fun. Individual teachers need to figure out where to place that line for themselves or else we'll have a wave of new, silly rules.

3. A little joking can make for an interesting class, but too much can lead to a breakdown of discipline and a lack of respect between students and teachers.

Anyways, I have to go change my routine now that everybody's seen it.

Story below:

Read more »

Jessyca Altenbach and Monica Cummings

I don't think these girls are dumb. What's foolish is their philosophy regarding the similarity or difference between sexes. To the equality fanatics, this is a simple case:

Read more »

Home of the Brave?

Read more »

This story reports that:

The State Board of Education voted in March to strip accreditation, saying the district came up short on academic and financial standards. A three-member board was appointed by the governor, mayor and alderman president to manage the schools.

I prefer local control of schools, but I don't doubt that the school was mismanaged and I'm sure the state will do some things better. If you think about it, however, this action isn't an insult to the managers of the St. Louis system so much as an insult to the residents of that community. What it's saying is that the local residents don't have the ability to elect responsible school board members or that they don't care enough about schools to even monitor what's going on.

The children of St. Louis have little chance of success if their parents can't even make sure that the people who work for them (the entire school district) are capable of taking care of business.

This article reports on a program in Maryland to use comic books in class. I'm not opposed to it. If the comic books don't focus on the adult or the political as many modern comic books do, it shouldn't present a problem and, let's face it, some children wouldn't read anything else.

Adopting comic books in schools may tell us something about the direction our society is heading, however. I remember when teachers would discourage kids from reading comic books because they felt that the students would be wasting time compared to reading the traditional, more substantive children's literature like Treasure Island or Alice in Wonderland.

Free Comic Book Day