Parent Update 050713

This is the update I sent my parents and students today on my online web grading system:

All,
We are in the middle of Marking Period 4. The English classes just finished '12 Angry Men'. Ask your child what the play was like - have him explain what the concepts were that we discussed. The class notes are a good resource for tying in the concepts and ideas. There was a connection between the Milgram Obedience to Authority experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment and the play itself. The idea was to show how Groupthink and ad verecundiam (the latin term for Fallacy of Authority) can be dangerous. Having your child verbalize this idea would be a good way to help his Active Literacy skills. Going forward we will watch "A Few Good Men" and analyze the themes of the movie and the connection it has to "12 Angry Men".

There are some links I've come across and some books that might help in these times of troubled schools and dumbed down education. I see what my children get at 'school' and most of the times I have to augment the history and the English classes, as well as de-program the effects of the textbook propaganda. I realize how that sounds, but I've spoken to many parents of late who are seeing the same thing. Let me share some of the resources that I've come across as of late:

Books: 1) What Smart Students Know - by Adam Robinson. Robinson is one of the co-founders of the Princeton Review. He explains how 'school' and much of what it does is something of a random game that fits the style of only a few students. Worth it for a strategy book for education, and rife with great quotes. Robinson sold his share of the Princeton Review in the '80's for millions and now speaks and writes. 2) Weapons of Mass Instruction - By John Taylor Gatto. Gatto uses his knowledge of the history of school to explain how people, modern day and in the past, have used their innate intelligence to live full lives. The book is rich in showing the wealth and experience or people who have 'written their own script', rather than followed others' ideas for them. Gatto's work is always worthwhile, and there are many youtube videos of his that are quite interesting.

Video: This latest video I showed my Strategic Reading classes. It is not only inspirational, it might change the course of schools in general. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU

Article: The One Laptop Per Child project is fascinating. This article at Technology Review explains how children in wretched conditions in Ethiopia were able to learn, on their own, how to hack the tablets they had been given. The ability of people to learn, when unshackled, is astounding. 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/ 
 

Rethinking School

"This is a great speech -- a model of how to give a speech. Its message is also almost beyond belief. A new age is dawning." - - Gary North



Mitra talks about learning in the most difficult places - the slums of India and the heights of the Himalayas.  His message is beyond the comprehension of those who populate and believe in static world of the 'schools':  people can and will learn with the power of curiousity and encouragement.  JT Gatto has written and spoken of such things for two decades.  The home school movement and the hard core libertarians and anarchists have been receptive to his message, but his effect on the mainstream has been exactly zero.

What Mitra doesn't mention - he only alludes to - is that this is the free market at work.  The army of bureaucrats and managers present in his talk: zero.

As of this writing the video has only 6278 views.  As the speed of information continues to increase, ideas such as these, which are mostly common sense, will propagate.  How necessary is the State to education?  Not at all.  What is now in the realm of propaganda - the idea that the Government MUST manage schools - will become more widespread as prices for laptops, tablets, solar panels and granny time falls.  As the price falls, more will be demanded by people who crave learning and knowledge - children.

"The #1 engine of government propaganda is about to go off the tracks."

I think this is correct.

Cover Letter

I am writing this, and you are reading this because of a woman who we will never meet and is probably no longer alive.  This nameless woman permanently altered the course of my life. My father was born in what is now Spanish Harlem.  His Italian immigrant parents were near destitute – to the point that they placed him in an orphanage (he had parents mind you) so they could feed his younger and less capable brothers.  As he bounced between varying caregivers, a teacher in his middle school noticed him.  This 8^th grade teacher told him that he was smart, and a little different than the other students, and got him signed up for the Specialized High School Achievement Test.  He got into Stuyvesant High School (class of 1953), followed by CCNY, University of Iowa, and, eventually, Columbia University for his PhD.  It was the initial leap to Stuyvesant HS that made all the difference.  Without that, none of the following actions would have happened.

What this woman did exemplifies the power of good teachers and good schools.  She took a poor student in the ‘bad’ neighborhood and reached out and radically changed his life.  As my father died when I was very young I never got the chance to ask him who this person was, but she was apparently astute, aware and awake to her mission.  She was a professional – in the sense that she provided rigor in the classroom, and saw it as necessary to raise as many deserving and capable young students as possible.  The fact that she was in one of the least affluent areas was irrelevant – it is ones capabilities can carry a person far, and it was her duty to see to it that the great equalizer, education, her purview, was fostered and handled correctly.

I wonder how this person would operate in today’s educational world.  Today we seem to have forgotten about the hard and fast truths of yesteryear.  About every five years or so there is an article in the Organ of the Establishment, the New York Times, about how it is time to re-think, close down, or offer open enrollment to the Specialized High Schools.  Why?  They don’t have the requisite ‘diversity’ that the Thought Controllers at the NY Times deem appropriate.  History is to be ignored by the Educational Establishment: the dismantling of the free, yet superb school that was CCNY as well as what happened to Dunbar HS in Washington DC are realities to be dismissed.  Merit based institutions like the Specialized High Schools are targets in today’s world, an unthinkable concept 60 years ago. 

Now we send our young people through a battery of State Exams, testing them into oblivion.  For what are we testing and why?  Is it the low functioning youth of today – a group of young people who have no idea when WWII took place, or what the Bill of Rights is, or who Odysseus was?  Why is the entity that has sent a once proud public education system off of a cliff is now given credence to “fix” what they broke?  To add insult to injury, their ‘fix’ is to create serial high stakes exams and place the fate of the school and the staff on the performance on these ‘tests’.  Any reputable college admissions counselor will tell you that the standardized tests are almost meaningless – yet that is the course of repair chosen by the Educrats.  It is my personal belief that the SAT and ACT are still used simply because the institutions are unwilling to upset the apple cart.

So what do we do now?  As we’ve lost our way so badly, how can the damage be repaired?  The road ahead involves re-thinking schools.  The use of technology is paramount.  As of this writing I write, in chalk, on a chalkboard and the Power Elite at my school demand to see an “Aim” and a “Do Now”.  One of my bosses showed us a video of students in Singapore using their phones and twitter to see who could get and send the correct answer to a physics problem the fastest, oblivious to the obvious irony that we do not allow cellphones in class.  We seem to be afraid of rigor while we embrace Educational Gobbledygook.  The “Core Content State Standards” – the initiative that Very Important People seem to be serious about – contains reams of jargon without mentioning the trivium or even active or passive literacy in the ELA standards. 

Let’s unshackle our students from High Stakes Testing.  All these seem to do is increase anxiety while affecting nothing with regard to future performance.  Students should be free to use technology in and out of class to complete serial projects – everything from History / Literature projects and Science / Math projects that have a natural harmony that is difficult to reproduce in class.

“Think outside of the box” is one of the current catchphrases in the Educational Business.  Let’s actually do it.

Links:

Kenny Hignite link:  http://rense.com/general75/pass.htm

What Happened to Dunbar HS?  http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html

Diversity, not performance, matters: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/at-top-city-schools-lack-of-diversity-persist/

3rd Quarter Report

We are in strange times.  The state of the schools, current affairs, and the economy are so odd, that they beggar description.

School: As I've probably mentioned in previous posts, this year has been a difficult one.  The intellectual curiosity of this crop of 9th graders is at an all time low.  The strange part is that it hasn't been a gradual decline, this year I have seen a cliff like drop of curiosity and academic performance.  I graded an exam as I would have graded an exam in 1998, and the class average, for both sections, was a 54.  I took into account spelling, grammar, content and appropriate answers.  As I do not give multiple choice exams (they have been proven to be useless, and the Power Elite school abolished them years ago), the writing was not only substandard, it showed a lack of awareness of the story we read and the English language.  There were misspellings of the main characters, obvious facts were incorrect, and the cheaters cheated off of someone who had no idea what happened in the story, so the answers all reflected the same incorrect nonsense.  It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Additionally, and tellingly, one of my top students told me that "I don't want to offend you, but, well, the reason that we didn't do well, is that, like, the times you were reading the story to us, we were talking because, well, I don't mean to offend you, but the story was boring."  This was told to me by one of the top students in my morning class.  The sad part is threefold, the guise of 'caring' about my feelings, the fact that a 'boring' story is license to talk while the teacher is reading the it to the class, and this was from one of the top students in the class - a young woman with a first class mind.

Current Affairs:  The Boston shooting and its aftermath is difficult to watch.  That a tragic event would be used to turn a major U.S. city and its environs into a tyrannical police state is sad.  The Herd cheers their oppressors as the police lockdown the area to catch - a 19 year old.  Only the online libertarian community and a few conspiracy minded people seem to notice what is transpiring.  I guess the words of a gov't official ring true:  "Never let a good crisis go to waste."  The American Herd, ahistorical and lacking a basic understanding of Human Rights or the Bill of Rights, tolerates scenes like this while they cheer the 'police' for keeping them 'safe'.  The works of Benjamin Franklin, a figure dimly familiar with the average American public school student, ring truer than ever:  "Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.”

The Economy:  The FED continues its operations of printing money, Congress continues to make rules for the people yet immunize itself from harm.  The gold price is crushed, simply hammered in a way that has not been seen in 30 years, and the depositors of Cyprus, the regular people, have their money simply taken from them as a way to pay back banker and government debts.  All the while, the economy is in the tank and the people, who have been trained in such a manner, beg for their overlords to 'do something!'

It is education that solves many of these problems, as the electorate has been schooled to extinction.  The free market, which allows for trial and error, mistakes to be made and then solved, is vilified and laughed at by the Power Brokers.  It's easy for them to maintain a stranglehold on minority wealth and power as they make the rules and regulations, thereby never needing to worry about any pesky little people crawling to the top.  Sometimes, someone breaks through and does this.  It is time to rip the cover off of the Educational Establishment, look at how and what they teach, so we can see how they created this unholy mess we're in now.

This is a good place to start:

Honus Wagner - Book Review

Bill James, in his Historical Baseball Abstract, lists Honus Wagner as the greatest shortstop of all time.  It isn't even close.  Number two on the list is Arky Vaughan - something of a surprise even to someone like me, a baseball stat freak who has been reading James' work since 1987.  James states clearly that the difference between the number one shortstop (Wagner) and the number two shortstop (Vaughan) is about the same distance between the number two shortstop and the number 30 shortstop.

With Wagner so completely superior to the rest of the shortstop field, I looked forward to Arthur Hittner's Honus Wagner.  James is not generous with praise, and, being pathologically independent minded, routinely finds flaws where conventional analysis does not.  That being said, I figured I had the key to the mystery that was Honus Wagner, as Hittner's book is well researched and filled with detail.  I was disappointed.

Hittner's book leaves a lot to be desired.  I didn't learn much about Honus Wagner that is not on his stat sheet or in a basic online biography.  Hittner's book reads like a series of news articles read in sequence at the library.  He reports on the news of the games found in the local papers of the day, and shares tidbits of commentary found in those articles.  The tone and tenor of the book is such.  I was never interested while reading the book, and at one point decided to read faster to get it over with.  There isn't one single event that is dealt with in an insightful manner.  I was looking forward to the section on the 1909 World Series.  The World Series was young - the American League was only 8 years old, and the Tigers had a young Ty Cobb, and the 110 win Pirates had an aging powerhouse led by Wagner.  I was expecting to get transported back to those days and 'see' the event.  Baseball at that time was still figuring itself out, and it was becoming the national pastime.  Hittner falls flat here as he covers the events of the game, and little material below the surface.  This is indicative of most of the book.

In Hittner's defense, Wagner was apparently a quiet loner of a man - almost secretive.  Wagner's  comments to the press were bland.  He was unwilling to share personal details with many friends, and spend his offseasons away from the game.  Toward the end of the book Wagner's marriage happens almost by surprise.  Hittner had no choice, it seems, than to recount the Wagner story from the press clippings.   Unfortunately, this created a dry read, one that lacks depth.

Scary Video of the Month

Lew Rockwell, in one of the many podcasts on his site, asked one of his guests if he sensed that "the propaganda was getting stupider?"  I think it is.  It is also getting more overt and frightening.  The apologia for The State seems to be reaching a fever pitch, with all the 'gun violence' rhetoric from the corporate controlled Mainstream Media (notice the framing of the issue), and the constant psychological pressure with regard to the need for the American Government to travel around the world and 'solve' every problem (North Korea, Kony, Libya, et al) by using its military.

The latest salvo intended to condition the Bewildered Herd comes from Stalinist Newsreader Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor at Tulane (!) and an MSNBC hostess.  According to Mrs. Perry, your children do not belong to you.

"We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everyone’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments."  

Let's analyze this.
1) It is logically false.  Since the time of Aristotle and Thucydides, the Tragedy of the Commons has been a way to explain the devolving and disrespect toward 'public' material.  If our children are 'everyone's responsibility', then they are no one's responsibility, and will become borderline feral.  Furthermore, if my children break something or steal, will I get the bill, or will it be sent to 'everyone'?

2) It is sloppy with pronouns.  Who are 'we'?  "We" is used by statists and propagandists as a way to achieve buy in, as if one were pitching a product.  Specifically, who are 'we'?  Does Mrs. Perry's daughter belong to her, or should she be released to the community?  Is she willing to give up her daughter to the group?  If not, why not?  Perhaps she should follow Jean-Jacques Rousseau, put her money where her mouth is, and give ALL of her children to The State.

3) It is hypocritical.  The State controlled Education Edifice, along with its rubber stamp media, have driven a once proud and rigorous Public Education system into the ground.  Now they seem to have all of the solutions, from the laughably byzantine 'common core state standards', to having your children raised by the community.  I am constantly amazed that the architects of the destruction of American Education are given credence by anyone at all.

4) It is bad propaganda.  Notice how the 'private' idea needs to be broken through.  "We" must get past this.  How much more clumsy could the wording be?  What is a 'private' idea?  Is this some sort of salvo against private property?  One's own body is his private property - this is an idea to devalue?  The Statists of the Organized Left have tried this, and it led to scores of millions of body bags during the 20th century.  Perhaps Prof. Harris-Perry needs to re-read Orwell's Animal Farm.  The use of the word 'private' as a pejorative is hardly befitting a professor, nor would it be accepted in a 7th grade debate without further clarification.

This is outrageous, and it shows the Statist mentality about how everything in your life should be controlled, including raising your children.  MSNBC, in pushing this, shows its true colors.

The Beginning of The End?

There was an event today that is worth notice.  The Ron Paul Curriculum came out this morning.  It is a  K - 12 program that is geared for independent thinking young people.  The initial sales pitch is toward the homeschooling community, but it will eventually spread.  When parents see what the children following this program are getting for their money, they'll re-think their huge taxpayer expense for the local public school.  Here is the part that is the lynchpin: the primary school grades are FREE.  K - 5th grades are there for a cost of $0.00.

The business model is one that makes sense.  The product that they offer is of the kind of quality that the parents will follow a successful free model up to the fifth grade.  The RPC people are confident that the parents will be happy enough to the point that after that, the curriculum will cost about $500 - $650 per year.  The intellectual powerhouses running the show will provide the 'hook' and then parents will be glad to pay for high quality education.  In case you are thinking that $650 is too much for a year, the least expensive private school around here is $4000 per year.  In case you think that your local public school is 'free', it costs you, at minimum, $10,000 per year per pupil to support that system.

This could be the beginning of the end for compulsory tax payer funded public school.  What are you getting for your 10 grand?  If you're in a good neighborhood, you're getting great facilities, solid teachers, horrid textbooks, peer pressure and government indoctrination.  If you're in a bad area, take any two or more of the above traits and make them negative, and add fighting, drugs and fornication.  Is that a good return on investment?

The end might be here.  Once people see how wonderful, independent, thoughtful, free market education can work, they might realize that the whole paradigm can operate in the same way.  Education does not, and should not be expensive.  For millennia there was no forced schooling.  It is a recent development, and it was not started for altruistic motives.  People can learn in a myriad of ways, often moving faster when they are at their own pace, exploring things that are in their interest.  Being in various rooms, confined with students of like age, in 40 minute blocks simply cannot be a one size fits all approach.  I think this might cause a sea change...