ROBUST discussion

http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

Powerful words about why #parents and #teachers matter in #education by Matt Posner http://bit.ly/1fkJ8s4 #RT

I sent this off to my oldest brother (science teacher for about 15 years, including four years in Title I districts).

What's a Title 1 district, a ghetto school next door to the gates of hell?

When I worked in advertising, one of the things the division I ran was in charge of was the largest non-governmental research budget in the world, about 160m spent annually by us on behalf of our clients on market research. As you can imagine, I thought nothing of spending some of their money on answering questions in principle when they occurred to me. One of the questions I had tick boxes added for on in-home interview sheets was, What reading matter can you see? What images?

When you collate this with a routine question used for fine-tuning people's socio-economic affiliation, about children's ages and schooling, you discover a very high correlation between reading matter in the home, parents being seen to read, and reading to their children, and children of school going age (in the perception of middle-class people) actually in school. My mother, a teacher, was convinced that the Catholics are right, the most important education happens before the child goes to school, and consists of a love for education itself, which is where Matt opens.

Title 1=>50% of the students come from families at or below the Federal poverty line.

Did your brother win any?

A teacher I knew, now deceased, before PCs became cheap enough for every desk to have some, begged some obsolete PDP-11s and associated terminals from an old student who'd become a a partner one of the big international accounting firms. So far so commonplace. It was what he did with those behemoths that was interesting. He left teaching programming to the brighter students entirely to younger colleagues and himself did one simple, almost mindless thing: he taught his classes of low achievers keyboard skills. By the time they left school, stock control everywhere was just transferring to MS-DOS, and his kids hit the market right, and they all got well-paying jobs with growth and promotion prospects Clever, eh?

Teaching programming is of course a good thing although the market is so specialized and shifting that such training doesn't guarantee employment like it did in the time you speak of.

You can't put kids in front of computers these days unless you have a system in place for keeping them from going off-task. At my school we have a website-blocker called Websense which will not allow access to games, youtube and other video, recognized social media sites, many blogging websites, or anything deemed "tasteless." Kids still know ways around these things ... games get posted on sites with addresses like .12101010101010111010.com (I made that one up) and they still play. But I don't know those sites so I miss out. Not having youtube prevents all sorts of teaching opportunities also.

My school used to help kids get A+ certification and we used to teach AUTOCAD, but those courses were cut to save budget. We still have a kids' "geek squad" which is nice. The kids hang around the particular computer teacher and stay after school helping him. That is a very nice thing -- reminds me of the kids in my own HS days who just stayed in the art room all day.

Wake up link number one:

http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/b...

Wake up link number two:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

That last link is a free ebook from an organization that I'm active with. Don't let the 'Oklahoma' part of the title steer anyone away. Include any state name you want, because this is coming from the top down...from the Feds...and it's pushed to all states. Not just stuff about today, but how the entire sha-bang got started in America, and it goes back farther than you may know.

In 2010, the curriculum for the current Common Core crap used to be a felony to show parents. Seriously. Back then, if an FBI agent found out a teacher shared information from this program to a parent, arrest time, prosecution and up to 10 years in a Federal prison. That is no tin hat thing, it was Law, until it got repealed near the end of 2012.

Who got it repealed? A ton of angry parents in Texas. God help me if asked for proof of that one. The internet scrubbers worked hard to nail all the archives.

Here is a final link, and it's what happens when a parent 'does' get involved.

http://benswann.com/maryland-parent-a...

Here's a brief paragraph from that link:

Third graders are taught to argue using emotionally charged language, and even to use such tactics against their own parents. The text of the Constitution has even been altered in textbooks adhering to the program’s standards, and in textbooks written by the College Board, which administers SAT and AP exams, and which will revise its own exams to adhere to the standards even in states in which they are not accepted. In addition, the program involves data mining of a wide variety of education and non-education-related topics, such as beliefs and disciplinary history.

I can go on and on about what's wrong with today's education, and it's easy to blame parents. To look at the one in a thousand slob who doesn't care, while the other 999 caring, involved parents are picking up the slob's blame while in a line at their Legislator's Office, making their case for giving the control of education back to the parents via their commissioned school boards.

Oh, wait... you actually thought your local school board has a say as to what our children learn anymore? Haha. That's hasn't been true for a long, long time now.

If you want proof, go back to the first link I provided. Then go find an 8th grade test today. Compare them.

1912 - School Board Control via Parents Who Care
2014 - Federal Department of Edumacation - Who Doesn't Care (Bad spelling of 'Education' is intentional, because under Common Core, if I explain why the word should be spelled that way, it will be counted as right. Seriously. Makes me sick!)

Welcome to today's world of Federally pushed education, where this will pass a grammar test with today's rules:

I is a high school student and gots me a diplomas!

I am not blaming parents for Common Core. I blame the corporations and their pet politicians and media tools for that. I am against common core. I do blame kids' disinterest in school partly on parents, but there are other issues. School has become emotionally toxic and boring, because people interfere with what teachers could otherwise do. And of course, the cultural shift toward electronics cannot be balanced by traditional educational methods.

I belong to a generation that sees the computer as a most desirable tool for extending my intellectual reach and a career maker for a whole generation of children, far, far beyond my example above, and a tool for teaching. But this clearly means something else:

Matt wrote: "And of course, the cultural shift toward electronics cannot be balanced by traditional educational methods."

Care to elucidate, Matt?

One of the puzzles that fascinates me is the notion of free will or really of any sort of action or capability. The example I mull over most frequently is global warming. Supposing all the coal we burn really is melting the polar ice caps etc. What can anybody do about it?

Similarly here. Cannot be balanced. What might that mean? Who cannot balance? What sort of entity might fit into that slot? In what sense can We the People do anything at all? Can a collective act? Is government our primary means of acting... perhaps that is what defines government, it is the means or vehicle of collective action. Of course it is always flawed, this being the real and imperfect world.

But of course families can act, corporations can act, churches can act, etc. Probably parents can be reasonable effective at balancing...

Ha! My life today! My partner's son is a sophomore in college, studying electrical engineering. Home this week for spring break. Studying his partial differential equations because that mid-term exam did not go so well. Or not studying because pulled by whatever computer game that is that I can occasionally glimpse before he hides the window. Yeah what really can parents do?

Matt wrote: "I am not blaming parents for Common Core. I blame the corporations and their pet politicians and media tools for that. I am against common core. "

Which of the Common Core standards are you opposed to? I'm very interested to hear an actual educator's perspective on this. I see a lot of opposition on the internet to what is called "Common Core" that turns out to be terrible local curriculum choices or poor teaching, but most of the complaints about the actual standards tuns out to be opposition to teaching evolution, or complaints about things like "They're taking To Kill a Mockingbird out of our high schools!" (It's used in the standards as an example of a text appropriate for reading in middle school/junior high under the Common Core, so while it's technically correct that it may be being taken out of high schools, Common Core in this instance is expecting higher reading comprehension, not lowering standards.)

J.D. wrote: "Which of the Common Core standards are you opposed to?"

I know this wasn't asked of me, but I am feeling compelled to respond, J.D.

Here is an answer in just under 5 minutes of your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6ekcj...

I have personally read some of the questions and lessons within common core. Here is an example.

Math Question: If you have 45 apples and 9 hungry people, how many apples can each hungry person have?

If you write it up as: 45 divided by 9 equals 5, so each hungry person can have 5 apples.

It will get marked wrong. Why?

Because Common Core doesn't want standard division to be practiced anymore. In order to get that math question marked as correct, the studen must draw 9 large circles in the area provided, and draw in five apples for each one, to evenly distribute them. Then it will be counted correct, not the other way.

Also, what part of this J.D., do you find acceptable?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governme...

Please visit and read it, and those answers you're asking for will become clear.

By technology, I didn't mean computers for education, but smart phones. More than half the high schoolers I see every day spend all their time looking at their phones. That is literally all they do, look at their phones. I spend more time dealing with that daily than I do dealing with content.

I don't like common core because it is unreasonable and narrow and statistically-based. Unreasonable because it selects concepts and topics that only the brightest students can handle in an age group and makes them standard for that age group. For example, common core algebra starts in fourth grade (age 9). Common core is narrow because in my field of English, and many other fields as I understand, its focus is only on argumentation and reasoning, which are supposedly needed for business, but probably really have been selected because most children will fail tests on those, assisting the union-breaking agenda. Every American child needs to prepare for a business career? Bullshit. As for statistically based standards, the idea is that, as in corporate performance standards, you test to check quality. Human beings are not products. Testing doesn't make sense; in fact, there is no standardizable method of evaluating results in education. Kids grow up and learn at different speeds with different specialties and benefit from school in ways that can't be tested. Tests, however, are excellent as a way to get rid of teachers, which is the real goal.

I hope I've clarified some. I could be more specific, but I'm tired...

Matt wrote: "Common core is narrow because ... its focus is only on argumentation and reasoning, which are supposedly needed for business."

If this is truly the reasoning and intention of the syllabus, it is spectacularly misguided. A very large part of business, encompassing all of marketing and parts of several other functions, depends on engendering and manipulating quite irrational desires and processes in target markets. That one can describe the methods of marketers with algebraic symbols doesn't in the least imply that processes which deliberately attempt to exclude argumentation and to bypass reasoning are rational or even logical. Psychology, which underlies so much of marketing, is to a very large extent the study of the irrational. Even economists admit that classical economics -- the model of the strictly rational man -- is not realistic. Stock markets are subject to irrational lemming rushes: pure mass psychology, nothing rational or even reasonable about it.

Andre Jute wrote: "If this is truly the reasoning and intention of the syllabus, it is spectacularly misguided. A very large part of business, encompassing all of marketing and parts of several other functions, depends on engendering and manipulating quite irrational desires and processes in target markets. That one can describe the methods of marketers with algebraic symbols doesn't in the least imply that processes which deliberately attempt to exclude argumentation and to bypass reasoning are rational or even logical. Psychology, which underlies so much of marketing, is to a very large extent the study of the irrational. Even economists admit that classical economics -- the model of the strictly rational man -- is not realistic. Stock markets are subject to irrational lemming rushes: pure mass psychology, nothing rational or even reasonable about it."

You can read the standards here: http://www.corestandards.org/read-the...

To address your point, Andre, it looks to me like the standards try to ensure that children will at least be taught how to identify the difference between claims backed by evidence and those that rely purely on rhetorical devices to persuade. Whether they'll also be expected to learn effective rhetorical skills seems to be open to interpretation by each state or district.

I don't think there is any real question that students who expect to be successful in college need to acquire the skills in the Common Core standards. Whether that is a goal all students have, should have, or are even capable of reaching seems to be something that is not open to discussion in most circles.

With respect to Matt's points, I'm not sure if this is a conspiracy to bust teachers unions, (Florida has adopted the standards, and unions are effectively powerless here), but that is a take on the development of these standards that I hadn't heard previously. I do know that, as has historically been the case, standards-linked assessments are likely to be a gold mine for testing companies who develop instruments they claim will be effective at evaluating student mastery (although I strongly doubt that you could really use a multiple-choice format to test what these standards require teaching), and I suspect that following that money might yield some thought-provoking results. The people who did the nuts-and-bolts work of developing the standards probably have no idea about any ulterior motives, though. I do suspect that the majority of the people who were involved in the development of the standards are college educated and move in college-educated circles, so their everyday experience of children is skewed by the sample they encounter, and their idea of what "average" children are ready for at a given age is probably actually more representative of what the children of the top 10-15% of the population with respect to income and educational background is ready for at a given age.

I think we could be doing a better job teaching reading, writing, math, and higher-level thinking skills than we are doing. Whether we are going to be able to improve them enough to reach a point where all children are going to be equipped for college success, and whether these particular standards are going to be instrumental in reaching that remains to be seen.

Thanks, Matt and J. D.

"Whether that [college] is a goal all students have, should have, or are even capable of reaching seems to be something that is not open to discussion in most circles."

It's ridiculous that a clerk in a shoe store is required to have a college degree.

Andre Jute wrote: "Thanks, Matt and J. D.

"Whether that [college] is a goal all students have, should have, or are even capable of reaching seems to be something that is not open to discussion in most circles."

It's ridiculous that a clerk in a shoe store is required to have a college degree."

I agree.

To break teacher's unions -- get around job protections and due process by linking teachers' jobs to test scores, and establish an impossible standard for success on those scores. Then give the veteran teachers with the highest pay incredibly difficult working conditions and students who are not going to perform well on the tests. Boom, veteran teachers fired, salaries done away with, and the whole basis of the civil service system discarded.

"I think we could be doing a better job teaching reading, writing, math, and higher-level thinking skills than we are doing."

If you want us teachers to do a better job of teaching these things, politicians, administration, and corporations should stop interfering with us by telling us how to do our jobs. We are in a continuous state of being retrained and retrained, and 95% of the things we are being told to do are not effective. Weekly professional development is like a weekly whipping.

Matt wrote: "stop interfering with us by telling us how to do our jobs."

Clearly teachers do get run around to a ridiculous extent by ignorant and greedy powerful figures. But "stop interfering" isn't an effective strategy either. Teachers provide one of the most essential services on the planet. Certainly there needs to be accountability, constant drive for improvement, etc.

What would be an effective structure for managing teachers?

A huge part of the problem of course is that there is no clear objective. Do we want to raise a new generation of young people ready to engage as active citizens with the issues of the community and the world? Do we want docile citizens who will follow orders and be productive workers in our ever more complex workplaces? Do we want self-reliant citizens who have the basic skills to get by in the world even as these complex institutions crumble under their own weight, as material resources dwindle?

It seems to me that the most successful core syllabus of all time was the three Rs without which no one can communicate with his fellows, reading, writing, arithmetic, and that the most successful and most widely copied instrument for setting these skills as an objective to teachers and letting them get on with the implementation was the Scottish Education Act of 1870, widely copied throughout the colonies and the Commonwealth.

None of the politically correct and ideologically motivated fiddling at the margins since then has added anything worthwhile; most of the fiddles brought nothing but illiterate and innumerate generations..

The problem I have in judging what is going on here is this core syllabus which causes so much anguish, on the face of it, looks good. But I have lots of teachers in my family, and I was educated in a school system where teachers had great prestige and decent salaries, as in the present German system, but in return were expected to offer leadership and inspiration outside school hours (which is unlike the present German system), and which they did in the community, in sports and other extra-mural activities, and in their houses, because their children went to the same schools. There is a huge sense in which I was made by my school and my teachers.

But I just don't see how you can do any of this -- or anything at all right, if what is intended is not what I read into it -- if you start out by demoralizing the workforce of teachers by telling them you don't trust them, which is what "assessment" comes down to. Of course the teachers who did so well with us were assessed, but it was discreetly done by the headmaster, and more overtly by the fact that the most successful went on to bigger jobs. For instance, the deputy head, who spent an entire week redoing the timetable so that I shouldn't be deprived of extra art classes, whose career was stalled, on the results of the gifted class of children I was in, was promoted to be headmaster of the biggest school in the country, where he was a riotous success. He stayed with me when he came to the city for sporting fixtures and told me my theoretically impossible matriculation result of 100% for bookkeeping, his subject, was a particularly useful tool for persuading the bureaucrats he should have the big job even though they thought his main skill was training up superior rugby teams.

The key to the hugely advantageous education I received, which elevated me from a small dusty town in an obscure country, wasn't the stately buildings, or the 1870 Act, or the distant administration of education, it was the men who implemented those standards on the sport, and their high morale and infectious enthusiasm, which has been a lifelong example to me.

But I don't for a minute imagine that these advantageous conditions can be created overnight even if the infrastructure exists, and very likely in the inner cities not at all. The physical infrastructure is the least of it: the right attitude must pre-exist.

By the way, this superior school I attended was a public school (in the American sense, not in the British one of a fee-paying school). A standard of excellence once set lasts a long time.

I went to two different high schools. I heard that the per student budget of the second high school was the larger of the two. But quality of education at the second was far inferior. I think it's mostly the community. The parents can see what and how their children are learning. Ah, local control must be a factor too. If there is a problem at school, what can the parents do? First of course the parents must recognize the problem. Then they must be able to exert some level of control to fix it.

This was a problem at my second school. There were some powerful but idiotic parents who would stomp out any actual education.

I suppose the basic issue is, to what extent can various aspects of the world be mechanized. The computer is pretty much the perfect machine. It can be completely controlled. Part of that is total standardization. A computer has no personality, no individuality.

This whole vision of the universe as a machine... maybe it defines modern times. Probably the clockwork universe of Laplace was the first full blossom. Then maybe Taylor's Efficiency Movement:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Of course the universe is not a machine. Education cannot be turned into a standard routine. Nor can medicine. Curiously, it doesn't work with computer programming either!

It's a fascinating topic actually. Look at how manufacturing gets moved to different countries. Can the culture of the worker be separated from the manufacturing process?