Tests & School [Archive] - Professional Soldiers ®

USANick7

10-16-2008, 00:59

Richard

10-16-2008, 05:28

An educational psychologist at USC's School of Education has offered a competing definition of education. He defined an education as a set of tools and skills that empower a student to reach goals that the student sets for himself. To me, this definition establishes a distinct difference between education and indoctrination.

My own experiences have led me to conclude that the educational system is tilted too far towards indoctrination. Educators, especially in the humanities and social sciences, already have an incredible opportunity to privilege their views over those of their students through the selection of course materials. Educators should (dare I say 'must'?) do a better job at letting students make up their own minds. While I do think a certain degree of indoctrination is needed to establish ground rules and expectations given the limited length of an academic term, it is simply not an educator's prerogative to attempt to rewrite the values of his or her students.

My own preference would be for young people to be taught the critical thinking skills and communication skills they need to evaluate rigorously the utility all information they encounter in regards how that information helps them meet their goals. I have less of a problem with a person who has read widely and thought deeply and disagrees with me than an indoctrinated person who may appear to share the same core beliefs.

Any information that has lasting merit will survive intense scrutiny; information that does not have merit will not. Faith in God endures because the faithful scrutinize and wrestle with their beliefs on a daily basis, not because they're indoctrinated. I am confident that such an approach will result in a citizenry that won't agree on every issue but, at least, would be able to give Senator Obama what he's thus far avoided: a thorough vetting.

You've hit upon a number of points which would make a good thread unto itself and, maybe, should be so. As a high school principal for some 13 years, let me hit just a couple of points which could be expanded under a dedicated thread to this topic.

There are as many types of schools in this country as there are shoes...and parents should find the type of school that "fits" their family/child.

Any major urban area will have a broad offering of public, private, and parochial schools. This is also becoming a trend in smaller communities, and remember, there is always the 'home school' option...which many do here in Texas. For the most rural areas, there are also 'distance learning' options where a student can attend high school in an interactive virtual classroom on-line through a university; Texas Tech and the University of Texas offer such programs here in Texas, as does the University of Nebraska.

"Core Curriculum" programs--which are mostly found in so-called 'inner city' environments--offer more of the type program defined by your professor.

Public and most traditional parochial (e.g., Catholic) schools offer very broad curriculums designed for a wide range of student needs and abilities.

Large numbers of private and more non-traditional parochial schools offer a more selective and challenging curriculum; such schools also usually require selective admission testing and application.

Any 'good' school today, high schools especially, do offer a challenging variety of choices in meeting curriculum objectives...much like good colleges...and do seek to teach their students 'how' to think as opposed to 'what' to think.

IMO, the national push to 'quantify' one's education through 'standardized' testing (as pushed by NCLB) is an educational disaster and is contrary to what scientific brain research has shown over the last two decades. In Texas, for example, students in kindergarten must take and pass a standardized skills test to enter 1st grade...which is wholly developmentally inappropriate practice. Texas has the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) at specified grade levels, and public schools spend a lot of time teaching students to specifically take that one test vice just teaching them to think and process.
A good book on this subject and college is titled "The Big Lie," the history of the SAT, which tested what was being taught in East Coast prep schools to keep 'westerners' out of the Ivy League and the resultant ACT to counter it. However, neither has proven to be a true indicator of how a student will perform in college.

Another problem with schools today is the national obsession with 'ranking' our schools. One of the worst offenders is the US News national ranking of high schools--which most private college-prep schools refuse to participate in. And how do they determine the ranking? They take the total number of AP classes being taken by the school's entire student body and divide that by the number of seniors in the school. :confused: Yep...and the stats are provided by the schools themselves...and have nothing to do with how well the students perform on their AP exams, how many students begin AP classes and then drop them, etc. Can you see a problem here?

The 'business' of educational assistive resources--as well as lobbying--has become HUGE and perpetuates the false idea that all it takes is $$$ vice 'teaching' to 'fix' our educational system...which, based on my experiences and in my opinion, is not nearly as broken as the MSM seeks to make us believe.

I could go on...and probably will if we get this thread started. Bottom line--this is America and America, as it always has, offers choice and opportunity, not guarantees.

FWIW, I, my wife, and my 3 sons are all products of a public school education because we believe in it and always sought to live where there were very good public schools...something we took seriously as being a part of our parental responsibility towards our childern. :)

Richard's $.025 :munchin

Pete

10-16-2008, 05:51

nmap

10-16-2008, 06:02

I could go on...and probably will if we get this thread started.

Sir, I hope the thread does get created.

I was unaware that homeschool students had a virtual classroom option - since online education is of particular interest to me, I have a particularly strong interest.

On Edit: I see the thread was created. Thank you!

nmap

10-16-2008, 06:17

Thank you, Sir, for starting this thread!

I have no personal experience with NCLB or the present high-stakes testing system; such things did not exist back when I was going to school, and I have no children. I always did well on standardized tests.

My understanding of the problem is that there are a great many students who do poorly on the tests and hence do not graduate. For example, students with limited English proficiency (LEP) students have significantly worse performance on the tests than do native English speakers. The schools receive poor marks if the LEP students perform badly, so the schools focus on bringing all students up to minimum score levels. Hence, teaching to the test.

On the other hand, there is the issue of teaching style. Again, according to my understanding, the current model is "student centered", which means the teacher tries to guide students as opposed to direct instruction. Traditional "teacher centered" methods - the one's we're used to, with the teacher at the front telling the students what to do - can work much better in preparing students for the tests. (I don't have the citation at hand, but I will try to find it if anyone cares). So, that might be an issue too.

I hope Richard adds his thoughts. Since he is in the trenches, I'm sure he will have some great insights.

Richard

10-16-2008, 07:50

When I went to school each student was required to pass each course at each grade level to be promoted.

I think somewhere in the 80's "some" schools shifted to social promotions and dumbing down the passing grades to move others along. It then became the norm in some areas. The result was grads who could not fill out a job application, make change etc.

This will probably become a very 'active' thread and I will, for my part, try to keep my own thoughts succinct by addressing only one issue at a time.

It has been my experience--and upon a great deal of study and reflection--that we all tend to view education through the lens of our own perception of that experience. For example, if we go back to the schools we attended, I think we will find that the idea that each student was required to pass each course at each grade level to be promoted does not hold true and that a great many 'exceptions' were in place; we just didn't need to know about them so weren't aware of them...and probably wouldn't have cared much about them anyway. Teens are like that.

This was certainly true at my school, a large and very high performing public high school (still is) which offered a wide variety of educatiional opportunities based on 'tracking'...of which I was not aware at that time (I graduated in 1968) but understand today.

For example, I discovered later in life that I was placed in a 'college prep' track, and my classes and the majority of my friends were arranged for me to fulfill that 'track.' The school also offered tracks in general education, industrial and business arts, and AG arts. Students in those programs did not have to meet the same 'core' math, science, English, social studies requirements as the 'college prep' track--nor, IMO, should they.

If you go to a state education agency web-site, you can access information on the various 'tracks' they offer--generally a minimum, a recommended, an honors, an AP/IB track--and the requirements for each to obtain a high school diploma. Independent School Districts also determine the criteria for these program's curriculums themselves--and it varies quite a bit throughout the state.

For example, in Texas, the minimum math requirement for a HS diploma is 3 credits--Alg1, Geometry, and 1 additional math credit (usually a Consumer Math, General Math, or Math Models course). Remember, not everyone really 'gets' math or the more theoretical aspects of higher level math.

The recommended HS program requires 4 credits--Alg1, Geometry, Alg2, and Trig/PreCalc.

The other programs require more of the higher levels of math and generally begin with Alg 1 in 7th grade, Geometry in 8th grade, Alg2 in 9th grade, Trig/Pre-Calc or Pre-AP Calc in 10th grade, Calc1 in 11th grade, and Calc2 in 12th grade or they will take a Calc course at a local college/junior college for college credit.

A few little known facts about AP coursework to consider:

A student does not have to take a course to challenge an AP exam. Like a CLEP exam, they can apply for the exam through their school, pay the fee, take the test, and--if the scores are high enough--may be eligible for being awarded college credit.

Whether or not a college awards credit for an AP test is wholly dependent upon the college, and many do not allow credit for them.

Many states use AP offerings and enrollment as part of their criteria for rating their high schools, the perception being that they are offering a more challenging preparatory curriculum. However, this is not always the case and many honors programs actually offer the most challenging curriculum.

Private and parochial schools do not have to follow the state's guidelines, although they generally do, with some programs being stricter and some being more lenient.

Colleges are aware of all these programs and take that into consideration when screening applicants. FYI--every HS program in the US has a school code which is used by the The College Board to collect data on that school in regards to college admissions, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, and teaching and learning.

As for the 'everyone passing every subject for promotion,' the issues of testing, grading and alternative courses to meet those requirements come into play--a topic we can address when we have the time.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Peregrino

10-16-2008, 08:23

Added (copied) the original posts to provide background.

Pete

10-16-2008, 08:40

Rich;

I agree with what you posted. My kids were in the top ten of the class, took the AP tests and were in the honors programs. The AP tests allowed them to knock out 2 years worth of the basic classes at college.

One will take a summer class here at the local Community College next summer so she can get a double major in 4 years.

My comments are based on the interaction with the teachers and other staff and how that impacted the other students. Parents who were not involved have no idea of the crap that went on.

It got so bad the last year my wife started writing MFRs after each run-in with school staff. Had them in a folder she carried in the car. The principle moved her office out of sight from the front desk and it had a side door. Call? Not in. If you went there to talk with the principle she would slip out the side door and the front desk would say "not in, sorry". Had to go up with two people, one at the desk and the other in the hallway.

Problem with a teacher? You could not get the teacher and the principle in a room together to talk about the issue. One wacked out AP teacher who couldn't cut it as a fast food manager took over an AP English Class and within 6 weeks had half the APs failing. Two almost dropped out - April of the senior year???? D2 said the nut case was a good intro to her college Prof's.

One wacked out principle and a couple of looney teachers can raise all kinds of heck with a class.

Seat time? Towards the end of the year D2 was in class and her teacher told her she had to make up seat time because she was absent. She asked what day she had missed and the teacher said the office had her down as missing "TODAY". You would think somebody could understand that it's hard to be absent when you're sitting in your chair but no - two hours of seat time after school.

Good thing my kids went to one of the better schools around here. Most parents have no idea whats going on at their local school.

Jack Moroney (RIP)

10-16-2008, 08:48

You've hit upon a number of points which would make a good thread unto itself and, maybe, should be so. As a high school principal for some 13 years, let me hit just a couple of points which could be expanded under a dedicated thread to this topic.

[LIST]
There are as many types of schools in this country as there are shoes...and parents should find the type of school that "fits" their family/child.

You have made many excellent points, however the first one needs to be modified to read "try to find" in the case of many folks who have military school age dependents. I know in my particular case my kids were bused to the schools that the post decided on and not what I decided was best. While my kids did great, they were discriminated against academically because of their ethnicity to the point where my son, who was number one in his class, was recognized as not number one but two because we received orders for OCONUS and he would not be returning. The student awarded the recognition for number one was of the ethnic majority as an example for that ethnic group.

OCONUS military kids, for the most part, have no other choice but the DOD system.

ZonieDiver

10-16-2008, 10:41

Richard stated:
You've hit upon a number of points which would make a good thread unto itself and, maybe, should be so. As a high school principal for some 13 years, let me hit just a couple of points which could be expanded under a dedicated thread to this topic.
There are as many types of schools in this country as there are shoes...and parents should find the type of school that "fits" their family/child.

Any major urban area will have a broad offering of public, private, and parochial schools. This is also becoming a trend in smaller communities, and remember, there is always the 'home school' option...which many do here in Texas.

For the most rural areas, there are also 'distance learning' options where a student can attend high school in an interactive virtual classroom on-line

Very good points! Another option we have in Arizona, and some other states, is "charter schools" which are public schools offering a particular curriculum. Years ago, most here were "bone-head" schools - for kids who couldn't make it in regular public schools. Now, most are "college-prep" or offer vocational type prep programs. If you have them in your area, look into them. Some can offer all the benefits of a private school - but it is taxpayer funded so there is no tuition.

My district (a large, urban HS district) has a "Cyber-High School" for kids who want that option. There are several charter HS here that offer the same thing. I will be teaching an online class through one next semester. A friend I taught with at another school teaches full-time for one. He meets "face to face" with students (who need the contact) on Friday - otherwise it is all online.

Where do I begin to state what is wrong - and right - with public education in the USA (or at least Arizona, Colorado, and Missouri - where I have first-hand experience)? Like Richard, I'll try to keep it brief.

Richard

10-16-2008, 12:44

My comments are based on the interaction with the teachers and other staff and how that impacted the other students. One wacked out principle and a couple of looney teachers can raise all kinds of heck with a class.

Leadership and personal responsibility. This is one of the major problems within education today--just as it is with business, the government, etc. I offer no excuses or remedies, but realize that it is an issue as individually and as collectively complex as building an ODA. Here is how my faculty and I view such an onerous task--as a Team.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

The Upper School Philosophy

I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions,
but none of them has done away with the need for character or the ability to think.
Bernard Baruch

The Upper School has a distinctive mission—to expand the hearts and minds of students and to nurture excellence through academic, creative and physical achievement. This mission carries within it two important ideas. The first is that students should engage in the expected facets of a college preparatory program, namely a rich academic, artistic, and athletic environment. The second is that the program to deliver this mission needs to be developmental in its approach. That is, the school believes that the students are not completed people and learners yet; that they are still growing into these roles. Therefore, our program takes this fact into account. The faculty has high expectations of the students but also the understanding that students enter with varying levels of ability to handle these expectations.

The development of the program is shaped by the following core values:

Committing to improvement and a desire for excellence,
Cultivating a sense of personal responsibility,
Developing a sense of service and pride within the school community and the greater community surrounding it,
Fostering creativity as a fundamental life skill,
Practicing mutual respect, support, honesty, and trust.

These core values led to the development of the key features of the program-- our advisory/mentoring system and our approach to classes.

Advisory/Mentoring

The mission statement of the school and its core values all imply a global, instead of piece-meal, approach to education. Therefore, built within the school is a system to track the global view of each student—the advisory system which is at the heart of our developmental approach to education. Through personalized attention, students are better able to develop their academic and social skills to successfully navigate the challenges of high school. It is within this system that they can discuss their capabilities, learn who they are and how they learn, and create a desire to push themselves academically. Also within this system, students can learn to problem-solve and work through difficult academic or social issues in a safe and trusting environment.

The primary goal of the advisor/mentor relationship is to aid each student in assuming responsibility for his or her own learning and life. Advisor relationships make time for assessment, inquiry and reflection, help students learn to make use of what they know, and allows advisors to help develop personalized learning strategies, support and reinforce a student's individual identity, and respond to each student as a whole person.

The advisor system is the network within which teachers share information about individual students and within which most student situations are resolved. The advisory relationship also assists in scheduling, problem-solving, counseling, and school - home communication. As a general rule, parents begin with the advisor to seek advice, have questions answered, and raise issues concerning their student.

Approach to Classes

The Upper School offers a full college preparatory educational program that adheres to the recommended guidelines of the Texas Education Agency. Additionally, students are encouraged to further challenge themselves while finishing their high school graduation requirements by availing themselves of the wide range of dual-credit college-level classes offered by local colleges.

What makes the Upper School's college prep program distinct is the manner in which the instruction is delivered. The classes explicitly build student academic skills, deliver factual content, and push students to grapple with the meaning of the subjects. The faculty has a solid understanding of this approach and develops its classes in response. To reflect this common understanding, the faculty follows a set of commonly applied curricular goals that reflects the approach to classes of the Upper School.

Goal 1: Every class builds students' academic skills. This means that every class explicitly deals with academic skills such as note taking, collecting, organizing, analyzing, and presenting information, and participating in class. This goal is based on the core values of personal responsibility, as students must take care of most of these things on their own, and a personal commitment to seeking excellence, as these skills lay the foundation for strong academic work.

Goal 2: Every class builds students' life skills. Each class deals with personal traits that lead to success in class, such as perseverance, dependability, and the ability to work with others. This goal is based on the core values of mutual trust, support, and respect, since developing these traits form the basis on which a person can be trusted, and personal responsibility, since each person has to develop these skills.

Goal 3: Every class is clear about the fundamental knowledge that students must learn, and then pushes each student to reach an explanatory level in the class. Every class makes clear to the students what the base-line assumptions are for the factual knowledge that must be learned. This information is used as a base to build explanations of the knowledge and understanding of how it integrates with other elements from the subjects and, further, how it relates to other subjects. This goal is based on the core value of a commitment to seeking excellence. Excellence in academic subjects is reached when a student is able to effectively handle the factual, process-oriented elements of a subject while also being able to explain its meaning and purpose. Additionally, this goal reflects both the core values of diversity and creativity. Diversity is reflected in the idea that many paths to true explanation exist; sometimes the explanations are verbal, sometimes written, sometimes logical, and sometimes more philosophical or emotive. Creativity is reflected in the many modes of explanation that exist and the ways in which students can combine them to reach an original or deeper understanding of subject material.

Goal 4: Every class holds students accountable for their learning and pushes them to become active participants in their education. Naturally, students are graded in every class as a means of accountability. Beyond this, however, students are often asked by their teachers and mentors to evaluate their own progress and to account for themselves for their learning. This goal is based on the core value of personal responsibility and students are pushed to continually work towards taking an ever larger role in their own education.

Goal 5: Every class personalizes the education and differentiates for the skills of students. This goal is met through means such as individualizing assignments and assessments, peer tutoring, ability grouping, and one-on-one instruction when necessary or requested. It is based on the core value of diversity, by recognizing that students come to us with a range of abilities and skill sets, and our need to attempt to meet student’s differing cognitive levels.

Goal 6: Every class uses a range of different instructional approaches to accommodate a variety of learning styles. The instructional approaches range from one-on-one instruction to lectures, group work, peer tutoring, independent projects, and guided discovery. This goal is based, in some measure, on all of the school's core values. In particular, it represents creativity by exemplifying the on-going search for new and better instructional methods. It also represents service when the instruction turns to peer tutoring and working groups and students aid one another through the learning process.

Goal 7: The information in each class is presented through multiple perspectives. Teachers push students to understand various subjects in multiple ways. For instance, in English classes, this involves reading texts that include a range of different authors and expressing understanding of the texts verbally and in written analysis. In mathematics classes, students deal with mathematical ideas in symbolic, graphical, structural, and written forms. This goal is designed to foster both a sense of diversity and creativity of thought: diversity by the very nature of the different ways of approaching subjects and creativity by being able to apply more than one approach to their problem solving.

Reading the set of curricular goals as a whole reveals a belief in our developmental approach to education. Goals 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 all stem from an understanding that the students do not come to us as whole, complete learners at the start of ninth grade. While focus on content mastery is clearly stated in goals 3 and 4, we recognize that students will grow in their academic ability over the course of high school and that one of our primary missions is to actively help them realize and achieve this growth in an increasingly technologically challenging world.

USANick7

10-16-2008, 16:48

Washington also has a program where you can send your kids to only those classes you wish, and home school them on the rest.

Your kids will also be permitted to participate in sports, drama, or any other school functions.

Personally I am very interested in the home school co-op.

Bottom line...

I WANT my kids to grow up with a particular world view. I don't want them taught morale or cultural relativism. And more and more that seems to be the trend in public education.

Now I am in favor of public financing of education to a degree, but not public administration of education.

Milton Friedman put it pretty well when he pointed out that...

"Unlike education, when the government wanted to help hungry people they distributed food vouchers; they didn't open up 20,000 grocery stores."

As long as a private school is not advocating the harming of innocent people or the violent over throw of the United States government, i think it should be eligible for an education voucher.

Past those 2 stipulations, let the parents hash it out.

stickey

10-16-2008, 17:37

nmap

10-16-2008, 18:18

Stickey, your experience reminds me of one of my own.

The scene...a summer course in beginning computer programming at a state university.

The students...a mix of college students, some interested in majoring in computer science and some gifted/talented senior HS students, along with some in a special scholarship program for disadvantaged students.

You know where this is going....

So, I teach the course. I put stuff on the board, work problems, create examples, and explain. The department makes tutoring available, free of charge, six days per week.

I give various assignments, complete with opportunities to work on the material in class. I plead for questions. The good students (who are doing well) ask. The others do not.

I give the first test. One simple problem, open book, open note, two hours of time...all for a test that should require less than an hour. Some students finished in 15 minutes, turned in their tests, and got perfect scores. Some went an hour or so and got bad scores. A couple went the whole two hours and demonstrated profound cluelessness.

I gave the biggest curve I ever gave in my life. One cannot flunk two-thirds of the class, even though they earned it.

Matters proceed.

I provide a sample test prior to test two. It is a precise duplicate in every detail except I changed the name of the variables. The results are essentially the same.

And so on to the final, which produces the same outcome.

Sure, I curved the grades. Yes, most passed. But the great majority knew absolutely nothing.

Oh well. :boohoo

The scary part is the trend. The test I gave was similar to one I have given in the past. It really should take much less than an hour, as judged by student performance. We are producing students with degress who are not educated. This is not good.

pheepster

10-16-2008, 19:14

nmap: I'm currently in a similar situation at the moment with a Composition course I'm teaching. I've had apathetic students in the past, but this one section of a lower level course I'm teaching this semester is something special. I've decided not to teach next semester, so for once I'm going to fail everyone who deserves it. My department will be rather upset, but I'm sure it will be better for everyone in the end. (I hope.)

stickey: Just out of curiosity, what subject are you teaching?

There's a picture on the other thread, so I thought I'd add one to this thread... an oldie but a goodie.

nmap

10-16-2008, 19:23

I've decided not to teach next semester, so for once I'm going to fail everyone who deserves it. My department will be rather upset, but I'm sure it will be better for everyone in the end. (I hope.)

I suspect you're right. The great students (and there are some) deserve a good class where they learn something. And the weak students may need motivation to either focus on learning or choose another path.

Sigaba

10-16-2008, 19:42

Nick--

Thank you for starting this thread. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this topic with members of this forum.

I believe we have similar definitions of indoctrination and prescriptive training.

I do not think there is anything inherently malignant about indoctrination. There are circumstances where it is beneficial to have something drilled into you so deeply that you react automatically. In our every day lives, we looks both ways before crossing a street, check one's blind spot before changing lanes, and wash all surfaces in a kitchen that have been touched by raw food because we've been indoctrinated.

In an academic setting, I believe that a certain level of indoctrination is also necessary to establish a learning environment. In history classes, students are indoctrinated to read a certain way, to make an argument when they write, to make use of various 'best practices' when writing (the passive voice should be avoided) and speaking (um, don't say, like, you know), and to document their sources. Students in history classes are also taught to analyze historical evidence and existing interpretations a certain way.

But much beyond that, I start to get a bit nervous.* The past makes a practice of proving historians wrong--especially America's role in the Vietnam War. We are at our best when we say to students "this is our collective understanding of this topic...here are the competing points of view...here is the evidence...here's where the debate needs to go. Now, what do you think?"

We are at our worst when we wed our opinions on how things should be today to the teaching of history. This frame of mind too quickly turns into a malignant form of indoctrination in which our appreciation of the complexities of causes becomes focused into polemics.

A polemical approach to history may not result automatically in a misleading presentation of facts, it may result in the selective presentation of facts and differing interpretations by established experts. (A way to test a historian is to ask "what is the best work that disagrees with this interpretation that you're presenting? The answer should be an immediate response or, if the interpretation is well established [such as the root cause of the American Civil War], the historian may need a couple of days.)

Ultimately, a polemical frame of mind is self destructive to the craft of teaching history because it sees us rewarding students who agree with our preferred interpretation and punishing those who disagree. This frame of mind results in students remembering teachers for their points of view "he really hated Reagan" rather than for enabling the students to shape and to articulate their own interpretations of the past.

[*And here I should disclose that I am an antiquarian who believes that history is a humanity, not a social science: you cannon forecast the future as if it were the weather. As senior historian said when CNN called and asked him what he would thought would happen after Iraq invaded Kuwait, this professor thought for half a second, said "I don't know" and hung up the phone.]

Sigba, This is very insightful...

I would like to discuss this a little bit more if your game, but I want to properly define what I understand as "indoctrination" first, so I know we are on the same sheet.

I look at "indoctrination" like I do "prescription" or "prescriptivism". Essentially telling someone what to believe. Or prescribing one system or belief over another.

Would you agree with that definition, or would you say that indoctrination is more malicious, in that it accepts the willful misleading, or manipulation of facts in order to attain its goals?

Thanks...

By the way, the reason I ask, is because I do see a place for prescriptivism in education along with critical thinking.

Surf n Turf

10-16-2008, 20:01

----------------------

Richard

10-16-2008, 20:33

I mentioned this in the other thread...but I don't care how many classes i took on education in college and how to get students motivated, but the mere 6 weeks i have been teaching social studies to 11th and 12th graders, the biggest disappointment are the students that do not want to learn. I have been receiving excellent advice from faculty and have come to realize, as they suggest, that you cannot make a student learn or do well as long as they do not want to learn. I explain my concerns with the teachers, they reassure my methods and attempts are noble and productive, then laugh and chuckle and say "welcome to teaching".

The old horse to the water analogy applies here. I have tried to spoon feed these kids the quiz and test material, throwing blatant hints as to what is going to be on them and what the answers are, and still, because they don't care, they still fail. What my fellow teachers are saying makes sense, the students that show effort are the students that have decent parents that support the idea of a good education. The other students come from families that don't care, therefore, they do not care.

As one who has taught in inner city schools where half my students were Hispanic gangbangers and the other half were black gangbangers; where many of the parents--if known--were gangbangers; where the veteran teachers, administration and district professed an open disdain for the potential of the students and an expectaion of nearly nothing; I will say, "Beware the insidious bog of disillusionment fed by the stagnant stream of those who have surrendered and occupy the perceived sanctuary of the faculty work room."

And I will discuss this topic tomorrow after a good night's sleep.

Richard :munchin

The Reaper

10-16-2008, 20:44

I want my kids to learn how to think, not what to think.

The public schools are saddled with kids who do not want to learn, parents who do not care, and in many cases, teachers who do not care either.

That is compounded by teachers who have their own agendas, usually liberal ones left over from the heady days of the 60s.

IMHO, our kids who want to learn will succeed regardless of that, so perhaps sometimes, Darwin is right.

TR

Richard

10-16-2008, 20:52

I want my kids to learn how to think, not what to think.

The public schools are saddled with kids who do not want to learn, parents who do not care, and in many cases, teachers who do not care either.

That is compounded by teachers who have their own agendas, usually liberal ones left over from the heady days of the 60s.

IMHO, our kids who want t learn succeed regardless of that, perhaps sometimes, Darwin is right.

TR

Guys,

This situation is--as are so many things in life--a situationally or regionally dependent one. Further discussion to follow.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

ZonieDiver

10-16-2008, 21:51

As one who has taught in inner city schools where half my students were Hispanic gandbangers and the other half were black gang bangers; where many of the parents--if known--were gangbangers; where the veteran teachers, administration and district professed an open disdain for the potential of the students and an expectaion of nearly nothing; I will say, "Beware the insidious bog of disillusionment fed by the stagnant stream of those who have surrendered and occupy the perceived sanctuary of the faculty work room."

And I will discuss this topic tomorrow after a good night's sleep.

Richard :munchin

This is an excellent point! I was warned by a college professor to "stay out of the faculty lounge" for that reason. However, had I followed that advice, I would never have made it past my third year. It is best to "listen" to the burned-out, but let it go in one ear and out the other - at least until you are a "continuing" teacher.

My first year of teaching, one of the "burn-outs" would bring a stack of one page essays into the lounge, slap them on the table, say "these kids can't write at all", and never give another. I kept the first week essays I assigned until the end of the semester (or year) in order to show the kids just how far they had actually progressed.

The key thing to remember is best expressed in a cheesy 1980's movie with Nick Nolte entitled "Teachers". During a fire drill, Nick (the teacher) tells his principal that the "school is for the kids," to which the principal replies, "Half of them aren't coming back from the fire drill." Nick replies, "Yeah, but half of them are." Teach the half.

stickey

10-17-2008, 04:18

nmap:

stickey: Just out of curiosity, what subject are you teaching?

Government and US History.

USANick7

10-17-2008, 04:59

Nick--

Thank you for starting this thread. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this topic with members of this forum.

I believe we have similar definitions of indoctrination and prescriptive training.

I do not think there is anything inherently malignant about indoctrination. There are circumstances where it is beneficial to have something drilled into you so deeply that you react automatically. In our every day lives, we looks both ways before crossing a street, check one's blind spot before changing lanes, and wash all surfaces in a kitchen that have been touched by raw food because we've been indoctrinated.

In an academic setting, I believe that a certain level of indoctrination is also necessary to establish a learning environment. In history classes, students are indoctrinated to read a certain way, to make an argument when they write, to make use of various 'best practices' when writing (the passive voice should be avoided) and speaking (um, don't say, like, you know), and to document their sources. Students in history classes are also taught to analyze historical evidence and existing interpretations a certain way.

But much beyond that, I start to get a bit nervous.* The past makes a practice of proving historians wrong--especially America's role in the Vietnam War. We are at our best when we say to students "this is our collective understanding of this topic...here are the competing points of view...here is the evidence...here's where the debate needs to go. Now, what do you think?"

We are at our worst when we wed our opinions on how things should be today to the teaching of history. This frame of mind too quickly turns into a malignant form of indoctrination in which our appreciation of the complexities of causes becomes focused into polemics.

A polemical approach to history may not result automatically in a misleading presentation of facts, it may result in the selective presentation of facts and differing interpretations by established experts. (A way to test a historian is to ask "what is the best work that disagrees with this interpretation that you're presenting? The answer should be an immediate response or, if the interpretation is well established [such as the root cause of the American Civil War], the historian may need a couple of days.)

Ultimately, a polemical frame of mind is self destructive to the craft of teaching history because it sees us rewarding students who agree with our preferred interpretation and punishing those who disagree. This frame of mind results in students remembering teachers for their points of view "he really hated Reagan" rather than for enabling the students to shape and to articulate their own interpretations of the past.

[*And here I should disclose that an antiquarian who believes that history is a humanity, not a social science: you cannon forecast the future as if it were the weather. As senior historian said when CNN called and asked him what he would thought would happen after Iraq invaded Kuwait, this professor thought for half a second, said "I don't know" and hung up the phone.]

Great points...

I think I'm on the same sheet as you are...

When I speak of "indoctrination" or "prescriptivism" I'm referring more to logic, and to some degree moral philosophy.

For instance, I absolutely believe that students should be taught that the "Law of Non-contradiction" is accurate and the foundation of logic. This is not to say that we should conceal other forms of "logic" such as dialectic reasoning, but to teach both without suggesting a preference for one or the other is counter productive in my opinion.

When it comes to topics such as moral philosophy, I do believe that we should teach our children from position which supports objective morale values. Which, I understand, is an inherently Theistic world view.

But this all goes back to my original position...

Schools should not be administered by government. Because where as I would not want a post modernist agnostic to teach my children, I also understand that they might not want a conservative theist to teach theirs...

So we are at an impasse...

The only solution to which is a voucher system where by we still publicly subsidize education to some degree, while privatizing the administration of education, thereby giving parents the greatest amount of control concerning school and there by curriculum choice.

So really there are 2 debates taking place...

1. How should education be financed and administered?

My Answer: Vouchers to subsidize education, and privatization in order to allow for the greatest amount of choice and competition.

2. What is the best way to impart knowledge to developing minds in such a fashion as to make them productive members of society?

My Answer: There is no completely comprehensive answer to such a question. While I do subscribe to fundamental principles like the teaching of logic, math, science, reading, history, etc. The methods whereby one learns can be varied. And so school choice is incredibly important.

very broad I know...but I'm playing around with the what i see as the broader principles rather than the details (which I hear is where the devil resides;))

Either way I would enjoy hearing various thoughts on the 2 questions I have posed...

Thanks

Jack Moroney (RIP)

10-17-2008, 05:17

but I don't care how many classes i took on education in college and how to get students motivated, but the mere 6 weeks i have been teaching social studies to 11th and 12th graders, the biggest disappointment are the students that do not want to learn. .

Now don't take this the wrong way or as a criticism, but you seem to have hit on thread about preping future teachers as being part of the problem. No one motivates anyone to do anything. Motivation comes from within. You do something because you want to or have to. You strive to excell because it helps you realize a goal. The key to teaching/leading students starts with finding out what makes them tick and how to tap into that to enable them to succeed. I realize that this is no easy task and student load and course constraints make this difficult, I mean who the hell wants to learn about something in which they have no subject interest.

Richard

10-17-2008, 06:40

Background:

I am a non-traditionally trained educator who went through an alternative certification program with a large urban school district and local university. I have a BS (History), an MA (Int'l Rels), and post-grad studies in Pol Econ from a German Uni and Ed from a local Uni. I am a certified teacher who taught World History and World Geography in "The Grove"--an impoverished area with a predominantly large, migrant immigrant and black population which allowed 95% of our students to have free breakfast and lunch. My classes were 32-37 students per class, with 6 class periods per day, 1 plan period and a 30 minute lunch period. I gave up my plan period 2 days per week to work with struggling students. It was not an unusual sight to find the local community picketing our school because we were adamant about "having their children learn" or to come to school and find a few bullet holes in the front of the building because somebody was upset with us. I came to work early for my students and remained late, I ate lunch with them because the lunchroom atmosphere was more positive and I engaged them in completing classwork for me while we ate and discussed it. I also chaired the faculty advisory committee. Teachers would quit or, in one case, 'go off the deep end' and be removed throughout the school year. I had one student tell me that I should be "capped"--I told him others had tried so he should give it his best shot--and he was sent away. Meetings with parents often meant confrontation. We worked as teams to provide a cross-curricular program which taught skills, reasoning, and general test-taking strategies...and were investigated because our students raised their state mandated standardized test scores so high. FWIW, I truly enjoyed my time there but left when offered a principal's position at a private, non-profit school because (1) it doubled my salary the first year and (2) did not have to abide by the state or federal govt's reg's. I left that position at the end of my contract in August of this year because I was tired after 13 years in "command"--and am looking to attain a PhD in History to pursue my dream job of teaching Miitary History at a small, private college.
*********
I mentioned this in the other thread...but I don't care how many classes i took on education in college and how to get students motivated, but the mere 6 weeks i have been teaching social studies to 11th and 12th graders, the biggest disappointment are the students that do not want to learn.

Guys, over the years, I've watched teachers collapse, falling hard into the seats of the faculty work room, heard them muttering from the experience of working with students who just wouldn't learn. I've listened to the long sighs of frustration and then the discussion of the "fact" that students are largely unmotivated, unwilling slugs taking up our time and best performances as teachers--that it just isn't like it was back when.

And though I, too, sometimes fell into this occasional form of educators "locker room talk" about students, I long ago found myself regretting my prior opinion. Over the years, I have gone out of my way to take time to get to know students, to talk honestly with them about who they are and what they want...from me, the school, themselves, and their education. Listening to them, they have taught me a great deal and I no longer believe that the real issue regarding the ways many of them often perform -- or fail to perform -- in the classroom is as simply defined as motivation.

Students I have known have made it clear that they embodied many sources of frustration regarding the learning process before I ever encountered them, frustrations that were difficult to set aside for the 50 minutes at a time they were in a classroom. And they carried in many problematic attitudes about the nature of learning. They came from diverse backgrounds. Some arrived immediately after junior high, but many others came to the Upper School after years of academic and social struggling in the "mainstream" high school educational system where the majority of teachers teach in the way the teacher learns instead of teaching in a multi-sensory style that best meets the variety of learning styles found in a class of students.

In general, most students are likely to be apprehensive about traditional classrooms -- paper and pencil work and "book learning" of the 'another day-another worksheet' variety or a shadow of a teacher reciting what is being projected from a PPT presentation -- and to perceive themselves as being outsiders when they consider the teacher's world. They are often uncomfortable with formality. They are often lacking study skills. And they are often struggling to work jobs, deal with financial responsibilities and limited funds, sometimes even having to assume an adult-like role in raising themselves and their siblings, all while trying to complete high school. When I think about all that is going on with them socially, psychologically, developmentally, and economically, it is no surprise that many students often do not see their classes or teachers as the pivotal points of their teenage existence.

Even knowing all the problems they carry with them, we always want to believe that their classes should be something they cherish and to which they would give themselves over completely. We want the best from students. If we could have our way, they would come to us as active learners, seeking assistance and insight at every opportunity. They would thrive on academic challenge, and they would challenge us to teach better than we have ever taught before. They would question every aspect of their education and seek an understanding of the "how's" and "why's" of the factors that touch their naturally curious minds.

Oh, what a wonderful experience that would be ... but, let's face it, that's not what most teens do. What a disappointment! How easy it is to blame them! And how easy it is to get frustrated ... and how easy it is to fall into the belief that they are passive, uninvolved, apolitical airheads. How easy it is to assert that they shun responsibility, that they never question anything that relieves them of responsibility, and that they often drag other students down with them by using their social networks in the classroom to undermine the value of the lessons being presented to the potentially "good" students. How foolish to think we do not have to teach them how they learn and how to learn!

The fact is -- as I have learned -- classrooms don't have to be deadly arenas of mortal combat between teachers and students, and students who seem unmotivated don't have to remain in the unmotivated stage. But making a change often requires a great deal of time, as well as sometimes uncomfortable levels of soul-searching and rethinking on all our parts. And, most difficult to accept, it requires that we all -- students, faculty, families -- accept some of the blame for what we are given in our students' responses to our demands.

Many of them don't know that they have the right to ask for anything other than what they are given. For the most part, they are the products of years of experience in schools where they were essentially told to sit down, shut up, listen, and learn - an experience that taught them that the teacher is the source of all knowledge and that learning is something magically injected into them at some point without their awareness.

When asked for their opinions (often a new experience for many of them), they express that there are instructional areas that they have strong opinions about. They include:

• Individualized instruction. They all want to have their individual needs met. They want to feel like they are more than part of a crowd, that their individual talents and abilities are respected and deemed worthy.
• Teachers who are real people, who recognize them as human beings -- teachers who care about them and not just their test performance.
• Wanting to be challenged and supported, not decimated and abandoned.
• Wanting caretakers who check on them regularly, who support their individual learning, who inform them individually of their progress, and who assign a variety of tasks that give them the opportunity to learn in modes that fit their individual styles and that are designed to meet their level of learning.
• Teachers who talk at their level, who can appropriately joke and take a joke, and who let them talk and learn with other students.
• Receiving clear, complete explanations and concrete examples, thorough (but brief) explanations of difficult concepts, and opportunities to have their questions answered.

When thinking about what students want, classes that deliver the same old message of "sit down, shut up, and listen so that you can memorize facts to dump onto a test sheet" (normally an A-E answer on a scantron versus an authentic assessment of their knowledge) are certainly not going to motivate them. It has been my experience that most students are not necessarily unmotivated or unwilling learners; they are simply uninvolved in the depersonalized environment of the traditional classroom. They are willing to learn; they simply may not be able to endure the way they are taught. We know that if we really want to see motivation in our students, we --teachers and parents -- have to be motivated to continually challenge ourselves as well as to rethink what it is we are doing to and demanding of them.

To paraphrase Dean Smith, the former basketball coach for the University of North Carolina, "We don't motivate anybody. We create the environment for motivation to develop."

The question I always asked myself and my faculty was, "How motivated are you?"

I also suggest reading two books--"Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt and "The Asphalt Jungle" by Evan Hunter.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

10-17-2008, 06:57

Now don't take this the wrong way or as a criticism, but you seem to have hit on thread about preping future teachers as being part of the problem. No one motivates anyone to do anything. Motivation comes from within. You do something because you want to or have to. You strive to excell because it helps you realize a goal. The key to teaching/leading students starts with finding out what makes them tick and how to tap into that to enable them to succeed. I realize that this is no easy task and student load and course constraints make this difficult, I mean who the hell wants to learn about something in which they have no subject interest.

That's always a challenge and, IMO, one of the more subtle yet most important missions of an Upper School to meet that challenge is to develop a connective relationship between students, families, faculty, and school because studies have shown that students are more likely to succeed when they feel connected to the school. School connection is the belief by students that adults in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals. The critical requirements for feeling connected include students’ experiencing solid academic expectations and rigor combined with support for learning, positive student/adult relationships, and physical and emotional safety.

Increasing the number of students connected to school influences critical accountability measures such as improved academic performance; lessened incidents of fighting, bullying, or vandalism; lower absenteeism; and greater school completion rates.

Strong scientific evidence demonstrates that increased student connection to school promotes motivation, classroom management, and improved school attendance. These three factors in turn increase academic achievement.

Likewise, there is strong evidence that a student who feels connected to school is less likely to exhibit disruptive behavior, school violence, substance abuse, and emotional distress.

Some strategies for increasing the likelihood that students will feel connected to school include solid academic standards and expectations and providing academic support for all students; applying reasonable and fair disciplinary policies that stress positive reinforcement; creating trusting relationships among students, teachers, staff, administrators and families; supporting capable teachers skilled in content, teaching techniques, and classroom management to meet each learner’s needs; fostering positive parent/family expectations for school performance and completion; and ensuring that every student feels close to at least one adult at school.

Does this guarantee success? Unfortunately, not always…but my experiences have shown that this philosophy does create a comfortably inclusive environment that allows students to connect in whatever way they feel will allow them to most likely achieve success—personally, socially, academically.

And isn't that what schools are for?

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Penn

10-17-2008, 10:33

Richard quote
“Large numbers of private and more non-traditional parochial schools offer a more selective and challenging curriculum; such schools also usually require selective admission testing and application”.

Parental responsibility: My parents moved our family to another state because the schools were inferior. They believed an education was their most important responsibility. Recently, in a discussion with one of my brothers; we marveled how their influence was projected on to our children. Their core belief was based in their faith that Jesuits and Franciscan, as well as the IHM nuns, were the leaders in teaching and organizing a young mind. As a product of the small parochial educational system, it has made a distinct difference in the choices that have been available to me throughout my life.

I distinctly remember a senior theology class taught by a Jesuit, where we were given the final exam the first day of class; one question, “Prove to me there is a God”. We spent nine months on that question, exploring every faith and possibility. The class was legendary. Kids from other classes would skip their lunch period to stand in the back of the room. That investigation of belief and myth systems changed everyone’s life and is with me to this day.
Another remarkable result of that education is that I recently attended my 40th eighth grade reunion. I am looking forward to the 45th in 2010.

Having said that, and whether you advocate a secular or public education, the end result is the combination of parental involvement and quality teachers. For my money, I agreed with my parents, and unless you are willing to spend at least 25K per/yr+ in the non secular private school sector, the best, at least imho, is the above, for a fraction of the cost. Unless of course, you are fortunate enough too lived in a community were the school system is the center of the community. As it is in Summit, Chatham, Madison and Millburn NJ.

Richard

10-17-2008, 12:04

We should all be glad our children didn't undergo the 'rigors' of the curriculum of South Carolina's schools like this young woman did. :eek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww&feature=related

I'd like to read some of the persuasive essays she must have written for some of her classes. :D

Richard's $.02 :munchin

pheepster

10-17-2008, 13:40

Richard

10-20-2008, 11:23

I was watching GMA this morning and they had a short segment which I have always thought was a problem in schools--that approximately 75% of teachers are women, that the majority of male teachers are also coaches, and--therefore--there is a noticable lack of solid male role models for students who aren't viewed primarily as jocks in the classroom.

And here's another interesting issue:

There is a new course being offered at UNC-Wilmington in the spring semester of 2009 called “Effective Interactions with African-American Males.” This course is offered for credit in both the Social Work and Education departments and, unbelievably, it is offered, not just for senior credit, but for potential graduate credit, too.

A brief course description may help understand why I think that social work and education are in a tight race to determine which can become the most intellectually vacuous and least relevant discipline in academia today.

Using an African-centered philosophical worldview and a racial socialization framework, this class will use participatory education to equip undergraduate and/or graduate students, to “better” understand and effectively work alongside and with young adult African-American men. The core tenets underlying this class are racial oppression exists, matters, is ubiquitous and pernicious and that those most affected are often ignorant of this reality.

Students will critically examine the social and emotional effects of racism on academic, occupational, cultural and relational well-being of African-American males. Students will discuss relevant readings, media analysis, community-based research, and self-reflection. Students will also examine and develop strategies to restore a healthy definition of African-American manhood and its significance for self, family, and community relationships; culminating in a community restoration initiative proposal.

Any ideas on these two topics?

Richard's $.02 :munchin

ZonieDiver

10-20-2008, 12:09

Using an African-centered philosophical worldview and a racial socialization framework, this class will use participatory education to equip undergraduate and/or graduate students, to “better” understand and effectively work alongside and with young adult African-American men. The core tenets underlying this class are racial oppression exists, matters, is ubiquitous and pernicious and that those most affected are often ignorant of this reality.

Students will critically examine the social and emotional effects of racism on academic, occupational, cultural and relational well-being of African-American males. Students will discuss relevant readings, media analysis, community-based research, and self-reflection. Students will also examine and develop strategies to restore a healthy definition of African-American manhood and its significance for self, family, and community relationships; culminating in a community restoration initiative proposal.

Students will also be required to demonstrate the ability to wear their pants in such a way that they sag below their buttocks but do NOT fall off, as well as properly wearing a hat almost sideways with the price tag still attached, and the correct way to say the word "Word"!

nmap

10-20-2008, 13:01

Any ideas on these two topics?

Sir, the description could very nearly apply to a pair of graduate classes I was required to take this semester.

So far, one young Hispanic woman (or Latina, or Chicana - she isn't sure which) has complained bitterly of her desire to be White, and the terrible suffering she has endured because of the oppression she endures from the dominant culture. Of course, San Antonio has had an Hispanic majority for as long as she's lived....

Another young woman, likewise Hispanic, is deeply distressed. Her brother has become a successful lawyer and acquired a White girl friend. He now pronounces the family name in a manner that diverges from traditional Hispanic pronunciations.

What any of this has to do with educational policy and leadership eludes me. On a positive note, it provides me with abundant opportunities for annoying behavior. :D

Seriously, however, such courses may tend to pick at the weave of our society. If one tells anyone that they are disadvantaged and abused long enough, they may come to believe it. At what point do such courses become actively destructive of our society? Perhaps we have already passed that point. I suspect genuine mutual understanding and respect does not come from a course.

Sigaba

10-20-2008, 13:39

Here are my two cents.

I think that the obvious bias of the class makes it highly problematic. The class itself has every indication of becoming a grouse session about The Man and how to stick it to him.

However, the concept, teachers learning how to interact with people from different cultures has promise but only in a less politically toxic context.

An autobiographical note in the interest of disclosure.

It can be unpleasant for an African-American student who stresses his education as his chief priority. Such a student can be subject to various displays of displeasure by his fellow African American students. These displays can range from curious forms of racial taunting, to acts of social ostracization, to daily beatings, just in case the point was missed.

In an effort to figure out this dynamic, a student, left to his own devices, may make less than ideal choices. Would such a student find it beneficial to have identifiable resources and instructors who were informed about the broader identity and cultural issues (dysfunctional and otherwise)? A former classmate of mine might have. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,965252,00.html)

Richard

10-20-2008, 13:56

It can be unpleasant for an African-American student who stresses his education as his chief priority. Such a student can be subject to various displays of displeasure by his fellow African American students. These displays can range from curious forms of racial taunting, to acts of social ostracization, to daily beatings, just in case the point was missed.[/URL]

FWIW, I've seen that mentality cross all cultural boundaries in the world of today's teens where the emphasis, for the most part until maturity kicks in, is on coolness and hip-hopness versus being a good student. For the young, white teen seeking peer acceptance and anti-establishment recognition by emulating the so-called 'gangsta' lifestyle, the commonly used derisive term is 'wigger.' Go figure.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Dad

10-20-2008, 14:18

Surf n Turf

10-20-2008, 15:25

Richard
Several years ago there was an article in the Chronicle about a school I believe in El Paso whcih served the poorest of the poor. Parents mostly non English speaking. Anyway, the school reportedly had the highest SAT scores in the state. Put students in Harvard, Stanford, UT etc. If I remember correctly, the whole idea the principal promoted was family involvement and absolutely no excuses for failure. I believe it was the principal said any child will fail if you give a child an excuse to fail. Are you familiar with this school? I bedlieve they also had a dress code, but I am not certain. wondering if they are still experiencing the success they were having. May have been more years ago than I realize

Dad,
I remembered a similiar article - made into a movie - Stand & Deliever. From Amazon Comments

SnT

Stand and deliver is one of my favorite movies. It's the story of a man who begins teaching at a high school in the slums of Los Angeles, expecting to teach Computer Science. When he arrives what he instead finds is that there is not computer department, and he's stuck teaching basic math to a bunch of social misfits. The beginning of this movie sets the stage wonderfully by showing us the kind of people who inhabit the city as he drives through it on the way to the first day of school. When he arrives at the school we see the students in their natural environment (and a rough one it is). What is a teacher to do?

The protagonist of this awe-inspiring story (Jaime Escalante) is a wonderful example of what can happen when a person chooses to adapt to certain environments and NOT adapt to others. When he's given the task of educating a group of kids that includes some scary gang-member type looking kids, instead of acting like a teacher he acts tough right back (reminding them that they're in HIS domain). Yet, when he's brought into a room with the other teachers and school staff, he goes against the grain. When the school's head advisor tells the principle that everyone is doing their best, he immediately says that he's not. And when she tells the principle that Escalante is asking too much of his students, he boldly tells her that the students will rise to the expectations of their teacher.
This alone makes the movie interesting. But what adds even more drama to situation is the fact that each and every student in the class Escalante teaches has their own peer pressures to deal with. Some students have unsavory friends who would laugh at their taking a class seriously. Some of the students have boyfriends or girlfriends who don't understand their sudden interest in school. And some of the students have to deal with parents who don't understand why their education should come before taking care of their own family.
As the movie progresses Escalante announces to the board that he wants to teach Calculus to his best students, despite the fact that the students hadn't studied any of the prerequisites for the course. Naturally this requires them to study through their summer break, and then six days a week with extra hours!

In any teen environment there is always peer pressure. But what happens when positive peer pressure conflicts with negative peer pressure? When our gang-member type Angel first starts the class he is hesitant to get involved because of his rough and tough friends. When Escalante singles him out however, the pressure of the teacher is greater than the pressure of his "friends". Over time this has a tremendous effect on him. Towards the end of the movie, he's riding with his friend and starts acting stupid, and gets his friend a traffic ticket. When the guy becomes angry with him and wants to fight, Angel just walks away. What does this say about him as a person? To me, it shows that whether he likes it or not, he no longer belongs with his old associates, he's now turning into a responsible individual.

As I said before, at the outset of the movie Escalante is the one who is thrown into pressure groups. He could become just like the other teachers, or just become uncaring like the kids in his class were initially. What he does instead is nothing short of a miracle.
He uses his understanding of human nature, and the natural tendency of people to work better when their thoughts are united to his advantage. His class becomes its own little world, a club for the elite, the strong and the brave. And early on, when one of the students refuses to take a test, the other students quickly turn against her and ridicule her. She then quickly becomes obedient and gets back to work (positive peer pressure was too much for her). The harder the students are pushed and the more is expected of them, the more they feel like a team (how can I forget the scene where a student says that the rest of the class will have a better chance of making it without him?).

The driving force of the scholastic miracle (and this movie) is Escalante. As he himself said, if the students don't have the desire, he will give it to them. And that's exactly what he did. He MADE them want to succeed. He MADE them have the motivation to keep pushing and striving for higher and higher goals. Basically, he educated them on how to be successful and hard-working individuals. People who normally wouldn't have anything to do with each other (computer nerds, homeboys, and rockers) all were united by their desire to achieve and make themselves into something great. They pushed themselves harder than anyone had ever done in their lives, and when push came to shove, they were successful in every way. Every single student Escalante taught passed the exam for college credit. Every one. Motivation is a powerful thing, and sometimes if you don't already have it an extraordinary person can give it too you.
Most of the real-life Escalante's calculus prodigies went on to complete college. When the film was released, several were in graduate school, and one had even joined Escalante as a colleague. "You can get anything you want in this country, as long as you are willing to pay the price and the price is right," Escalante declared, nine years after his story was told on screen. "You don't get anything unless you work for it." He also stressed that schools alone cannot be responsible for educating children, noting that he prescribes the "Three Ts" to parents: Tell your kid, 'I love you'; touch your kid; and time. "It is important to devote time to your kid. The best investment you can make in your kid is time."

http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Deliver-Edward-James-Olmos/dp/6305161917
http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/stand-and-deliver.html

Sigaba

10-20-2008, 16:07

Your point is well made.

Would today's teachers and school administrators benefit from some sort of training to help them relate to the issues that today's students face as young people or are these just recurring issues that cut across generations and cultures?

Or is the first step getting people in classrooms who want to teach and can do their best to motivate students to learn?

FWIW, I've seen that mentality cross all cultural boundaries in the world of today's teens where the emphasis, for the most part until maturity kicks in, is on coolness and hip-hopness versus being a good student. For the young, white teen seeking peer acceptance and anti-establishment recognition by emulating the so-called 'gangsta' lifestyle, the commonly used derisive term is 'wigger.' Go figure.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

[I'm of the opinion that hip-hop has been thoroughly co-opted as a cultural movement. In its initial form, it was meant as an alternative to many of the behaviors and viewpoints its current practitioners advocate.]

Sigaba

05-05-2009, 01:53

The Los Angeles Times published the first in a series of articles on California's public schools on 4 May 2009.

As the article is lengthy, only a portion is included below. The entire piece is available here (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,7565606,print.story).

FAILURE GETS A PASS
Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task
A Times investigation finds the process so arduous that many principals don't even try, except in the very worst cases. Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare.
By Jason Song

May 3, 2009

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

Polanco looked at the cuts and said they "were weak," according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. "Carve deeper next time," he was said to have told the boy.

"Look," Polanco allegedly said, "you can't even kill yourself."

The boy's classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.

"See," Polanco was quoted as saying, "even he knows how to commit suicide better than you."

The Los Angeles school board, citing Polanco's poor judgment, voted to fire him.

But Polanco, who contended that he had been misunderstood, kept his job. A little-known review commission overruled the board, saying that although the teacher had made the statements, he had meant no harm.

It's remarkably difficult to fire a tenured public school teacher in California, a Times investigation has found. The path can be laborious and labyrinthine, in some cases involving years of investigation, union grievances, administrative appeals, court challenges and re-hearings.

Not only is the process arduous, but some districts are particularly unsuccessful in navigating its complexities. The Los Angeles Unified School District sees the majority of its appealed dismissals overturned, and its administrators are far less likely even to try firing a tenured teacher than those in other districts.

The Times reviewed every case on record in the last 15 years in which a tenured employee was fired by a California school district and formally contested the decision before a review commission: 159 in all (not including about two dozen in which the records were destroyed). The newspaper also examined court and school district records and interviewed scores of people, including principals, teachers, union officials, district administrators, parents and students.

Among the findings:

* Building a case for dismissal is so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don't make the effort except in the most egregious cases. The vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse, other immoral or illegal behavior, insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as showing up on time.

* Although districts generally press ahead with only the strongest cases, even these get knocked down more than a third of the time by the specially convened review panels, which have the discretion to restore teachers' jobs even when grounds for dismissal are proved.

* Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare. In 80% of the dismissals that were upheld, classroom performance was not even a factor.

Sigaba

05-12-2009, 18:20

The source is here (http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2009may/zeugner.html?emtm0509k).

(Note: The Organization of American Historians is one of the two primary professional organizations for historians in the United States. The other is American Historical Association.)

Five Stealth Transformations of American Higher Education
John Zeugner

OAH Newsletter 37 (May 2009).
Copyright (c), Organization of American Historians.

Recent studies and data collections (Spellings, AFT, AAUP, NCES, DOE) have begun to adumbrate the elephant in the living room of American higher education. Below are five partial tracings of the behemoth’s outline—ones that, though crucial and controlling, somehow do not get much attention in the formal analyses. After a brief itemization of these five mostly hidden aspects, I proffer one possible future scenario that might allow the beast to placate and at the same time demolish its keepers.

1. The Growth of Contingent Faculty

This is of primary and immediate importance because this transformation conditions how all other transformations play out. Latest counts (themselves a few years out-of-date) indicate that at least fifty percent of all instruction in all universities is conducted by contingent faculty; at least sixty percent of all instruction in the first two years of all universities is delivered by contingent faculty; and that nearly seventy percent of instruction at two-year institutions is carried out by contingent faculty. Equally indicative is the universally accepted observation that three-fifths of all new hires are on the contingent track. Contingency has many names: adjuncts, visiting professors, staff appointments, instructors, TAs, professors of practice, administrative staff teaching appointees, lecturers, and outside mentors. All of these contingent faculty are underpaid, most without any benefits, and all are on temporary, highly insecure contracts. Thus substantial university instruction has been outsourced to an exploited, anxious, overworked contingent group. That decision, most probably driven by economic exigency, but undoubtedly exacerbated by an ever-diminishing tenure system (with its star salary system), profoundly shapes inattention to the student learning process, and puts extraordinary emphasis on immediate status quo satisfaction. Such focus panders to student evaluations, and banishes controversy and academic freedom. Given such working conditions, the possibility of curriculum development and evaluation recedes dramatically (see #2 below), and the precariousness of contingent faculty employment accelerates the collapse of rigor (see #3 below).

2. The Atomization and Dissolution of Curriculum

The end result of graduate education’s specialization and single discipline focus is a curricular vista without horizon markings, and the end result of tenure track’s usual rubrics of advancement is a candidate proffering facility in some microscopic arena and not much else. Consumer culture dictates an obsession with choice and elicits shallow responses, thus the university, in instructor and receptor, cannot comprehend, much less implement, core education. Most attempts at general or core education disintegrate into disguised specialized courses veneered with a “skills focus.” Linkage, connection, integrated intellectual scaffolding, and collaboration are wholly aleatory and unrewardable. The recent Spellings report in its call for uniformly exchangeable units of credit legitimizes pebbles of knowledge consumption. The university seems powerless to interdict its cornucopia nature and thereby accelerates its marginalization.

3. Investment Contracts and the Collapse of Rigor

The acceptance of massive debt always is predicated on some kind of contract and parents and students who incur $30,000 to $80,000 debt have expectations of some kind of reward, some measured success. Superior grades become the visible emblem the university bestows upon its regular renters, graduation its ultimate seal of contract completion. As the contract becomes ever more expensive, ever more certain become its terms. Presumably some tipping point arrives when the massive expenditure finally admits its premise—the direct purchase of degrees.

4. The Enshrinement of Facilities

Given the disciplinary differentiation inherent in the reward structures for faculty, there cannot be much consensus on what constitutes “the educational experience”; by default potential students and their parents end up evaluating facilities and consulting rating systems that, as the Spellings Report makes clear, have no capacity to judge student learning within any particular university setting. And in a market-driven splendid meshing, the compensation gap between tenure track and contingent faculty (who do the majority of the teaching) partially generates funds to keep competitive in the facilities game. The differential underwrites the lush accoutrements apparently required to fill the dorms—the cable connections, the meal options, the fitness rooms, the counseling, advising, and recreational settings.

5. The Digitization of Content

Perhaps the most difficult to grasp, this development is the most relentlessly accelerating transformation. As the software of data collection and analysis sophisticates, traditional scholarly inquiry methods get jettisoned or marginalized. The concept of intellectual property revises daily so that notions of “ownership” etiolate in the virtual universe. Collaboration and speed drives all before it. Knowledge that cannot be reduced to algorithms or emotional icons becomes worthlessly antiquarian. The cartoon graphic domain transforms thinking itself.

While new institutions of learning may emerge that can find marketable, relevant aspects of these transformations, it seems doubtful whether they will resemble current universities. One possible scenario might go as follows: heavily endowed elite institutions perpetuate themselves in the current irrelevant model, turning out “educated leaders” (à la the U.K.) who self-replicate leadership positions and articulate “liberal arts” values in governing, media, and entertainment arenas. But universities with less than one billion dollar endowments explode into satellite, credentialing operations linked directly (à la Japan) to company research institutes, or feeder employment agencies, or massive distance learning entities, or proliferating national service/military academies both at state and federal levels, achieving the “de-stealthing” of the five transformations above, and the full implementation of them.

(<jzeugner at wpi dot edu>) is professor of history, emeritus, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. He also taught extensively in London, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kobe.

A brief description of Professor Zeugner's career path and research interests is below. The source is from 2005 and is available here (http://www.wpi.edu/News/Conf/Roundtable/Barcelona/academic.html).

John Zeugner
Professor of History
John Zeugner, completed his undergraduate degree in 1959 at Harvard College. He spent the next eight years free lance writing in Florida, with brief intervals on active duty with the U.S. Coast Guard, or editing for American Heritage Magazine, or serving as a tennis pro in Sarasota, Florida. He returned to graduate school in 1967, finishing a masters and doctorate in American Studies and American history in 1971 from Florida State University, when he began as an assistant professor at WPI, teaching 20th century American cultural and diplomatic history.

As a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Osaka and Kobe universities in Japan from 1976 to 1978 his interest in Asia was vastly increased. He returned to that country as an invited visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo from 1981 to 1983, and at Kobe College from 1994 to 1995. He initiated and served as a first faculty advisor at WPI's overseas project sites in London (1987, '90, '91), Venice ('89, '90, '97), Taipei, Hong Kong, and Bangkok ('91-'95), Tokyo and Kobe ('95-'96) Melbourne ('94) and Ho Chi Minh City ('94). He did the preliminary exploration that led to the WPI Project site in Coimbatore, India in 1996. He was director of the Asian project efforts from 1989 to 1996. Seven times teams he has advised have won the President's IQP award competition at WPI. He won the Trustees Outstanding Teaching Award in 1985, and was the first recipient of the Trustees Advising Award in 1991. His publications include fiction, journalism, and scholarly articles. He has been awarded a National Endowment For the Arts Discovery Grant for fiction, and has been listed in Who's Who in America since 1985.

Synopsis - Globalization, Technology, and Culture
An inquiry, through anecdotes, of the practice and theory of globalization, technology, and culture. Although much as been attributed to information technology-the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian Economic Crisis of 1997-2001; the mummification of the Japanese Economy-this globalized technology's most lasting impact may be its reconfiguration and packaging of what has been called "knowledge." Utilizing the writings of Bell, Rifkin, Barber, Iyer, Friedman, Hoogevelt, Rosecrance, Johnson, and McLuhan the paper provides a post-industrial, post-modern, probe of the sentiment, "We've got algorithm, we've got music - who could ask for anything more?"

Richard

05-28-2009, 06:40

Some people still realize the value of an educational system which values and encourages the opportunities it can provide for the entire range of the needs of a society.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

The Case for Working With Your Hands
Matthew B. Crawford, NYT, 24 May 2009
(Part 1 of 4)

The television show “Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.

Is there a more “real” alternative (short of inseminating turkeys)?

High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.

This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid. This is not my experience. I have a small business as a motorcycle mechanic in Richmond, Va., which I started in 2002. I work on Japanese and European motorcycles, mostly older bikes with some “vintage” cachet that makes people willing to spend money on them. I have found the satisfactions of the work to be very much bound up with the intellectual challenges it presents. And yet my decision to go into this line of work is a choice that seems to perplex many people.

After finishing a Ph.D. in political philosophy at the University of Chicago in 2000, I managed to stay on with a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the university’s Committee on Social Thought. The academic job market was utterly bleak. In a state of professional panic, I retreated to a makeshift workshop I set up in the basement of a Hyde Park apartment building, where I spent the winter tearing down an old Honda motorcycle and rebuilding it. The physicality of it, and the clear specificity of what the project required of me, was a balm. Stumped by a starter motor that seemed to check out in every way but wouldn’t work, I started asking around at Honda dealerships. Nobody had an answer; finally one service manager told me to call Fred Cousins of Triple O Service. “If anyone can help you, Fred can.”

I called Fred, and he invited me to come to his independent motorcycle-repair shop, tucked discreetly into an unmarked warehouse on Goose Island. He told me to put the motor on a certain bench that was free of clutter. He checked the electrical resistance through the windings, as I had done, to confirm there was no short circuit or broken wire. He spun the shaft that ran through the center of the motor, as I had. No problem: it spun freely. Then he hooked it up to a battery. It moved ever so slightly but wouldn’t spin. He grasped the shaft, delicately, with three fingers, and tried to wiggle it side to side. “Too much free play,” he said. He suggested that the problem was with the bushing (a thick-walled sleeve of metal) that captured the end of the shaft in the end of the cylindrical motor housing. It was worn, so it wasn’t locating the shaft precisely enough. The shaft was free to move too much side to side (perhaps a couple of hundredths of an inch), causing the outer circumference of the rotor to bind on the inner circumference of the motor housing when a current was applied. Fred scrounged around for a Honda motor. He found one with the same bushing, then used a “blind hole bearing puller” to extract it, as well as the one in my motor. Then he gently tapped the new, or rather newer, one into place. The motor worked! Then Fred gave me an impromptu dissertation on the peculiar metallurgy of these Honda starter-motor bushings of the mid-’70s. Here was a scholar.

Over the next six months I spent a lot of time at Fred’s shop, learning, and put in only occasional appearances at the university. This was something of a regression: I worked on cars throughout high school and college, and one of my early jobs was at a Porsche repair shop. Now I was rediscovering the intensely absorbing nature of the work, and it got me thinking about possible livelihoods.

(cont'd)

Richard

05-28-2009, 06:46

The Case For Working With Your Hands
(Part 2 of 4)

As it happened, in the spring I landed a job as executive director of a policy organization in Washington. This felt like a coup. But certain perversities became apparent as I settled into the job. It sometimes required me to reason backward, from desired conclusion to suitable premise. The organization had taken certain positions, and there were some facts it was more fond of than others. As its figurehead, I was making arguments I didn’t fully buy myself. Further, my boss seemed intent on retraining me according to a certain cognitive style — that of the corporate world, from which he had recently come. This style demanded that I project an image of rationality but not indulge too much in actual reasoning. As I sat in my K Street office, Fred’s life as an independent tradesman gave me an image that I kept coming back to: someone who really knows what he is doing, losing himself in work that is genuinely useful and has a certain integrity to it. He also seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Seeing a motorcycle about to leave my shop under its own power, several days after arriving in the back of a pickup truck, I don’t feel tired even though I’ve been standing on a concrete floor all day. Peering into the portal of his helmet, I think I can make out the edges of a grin on the face of a guy who hasn’t ridden his bike in a while. I give him a wave. With one of his hands on the throttle and the other on the clutch, I know he can’t wave back. But I can hear his salute in the exuberant “bwaaAAAAP!” of a crisp throttle, gratuitously revved. That sound pleases me, as I know it does him. It’s a ventriloquist conversation in one mechanical voice, and the gist of it is “Yeah!”

After five months at the think tank, I’d saved enough money to buy some tools I needed, and I quit and went into business fixing bikes. My shop rate is $40 per hour. Other shops have rates as high as $70 per hour, but I tend to work pretty slowly. Further, only about half the time I spend in the shop ends up being billable (I have no employees; every little chore falls to me), so it usually works out closer to $20 per hour — a modest but decent wage. The business goes up and down; when it is down I have supplemented it with writing. The work is sometimes frustrating, but it is never irrational.

And it frequently requires complex thinking. In fixing motorcycles you come up with several imagined trains of cause and effect for manifest symptoms, and you judge their likelihood before tearing anything down. This imagining relies on a mental library that you develop. An internal combustion engine can work in any number of ways, and different manufacturers have tried different approaches. Each has its own proclivities for failure. You also develop a library of sounds and smells and feels. For example, the backfire of a too-lean fuel mixture is subtly different from an ignition backfire.

As in any learned profession, you just have to know a lot. If the motorcycle is 30 years old, from an obscure maker that went out of business 20 years ago, its tendencies are known mostly through lore. It would probably be impossible to do such work in isolation, without access to a collective historical memory; you have to be embedded in a community of mechanic-antiquarians. These relationships are maintained by telephone, in a network of reciprocal favors that spans the country. My most reliable source, Fred, has such an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure European motorcycles that all I have been able to offer him in exchange is deliveries of obscure European beer.

There is always a risk of introducing new complications when working on old motorcycles, and this enters the diagnostic logic. Measured in likelihood of screw-ups, the cost is not identical for all avenues of inquiry when deciding which hypothesis to pursue. Imagine you’re trying to figure out why a bike won’t start. The fasteners holding the engine covers on 1970s-era Hondas are Phillips head, and they are almost always rounded out and corroded. Do you really want to check the condition of the starter clutch if each of eight screws will need to be drilled out and extracted, risking damage to the engine case? Such impediments have to be taken into account. The attractiveness of any hypothesis is determined in part by physical circumstances that have no logical connection to the diagnostic problem at hand. The mechanic’s proper response to the situation cannot be anticipated by a set of rules or algorithms.

There probably aren’t many jobs that can be reduced to rule-following and still be done well. But in many jobs there is an attempt to do just this, and the perversity of it may go unnoticed by those who design the work process. Mechanics face something like this problem in the factory service manuals that we use. These manuals tell you to be systematic in eliminating variables, presenting an idealized image of diagnostic work. But they never take into account the risks of working on old machines. So you put the manual away and consider the facts before you. You do this because ultimately you are responsible to the motorcycle and its owner, not to some procedure.

Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around the lift. The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting. What you need now is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules. For me, at least, there is more real thinking going on in the bike shop than there was in the think tank.

Put differently, mechanical work has required me to cultivate different intellectual habits. Further, habits of mind have an ethical dimension that we don’t often think about. Good diagnosis requires attentiveness to the machine, almost a conversation with it, rather than assertiveness, as in the position papers produced on K Street. Cognitive psychologists speak of “metacognition,” which is the activity of stepping back and thinking about your own thinking. It is what you do when you stop for a moment in your pursuit of a solution, and wonder whether your understanding of the problem is adequate. The slap of worn-out pistons hitting their cylinders can sound a lot like loose valve tappets, so to be a good mechanic you have to be constantly open to the possibility that you may be mistaken. This is a virtue that is at once cognitive and moral. It seems to develop because the mechanic, if he is the sort who goes on to become good at it, internalizes the healthy functioning of the motorcycle as an object of passionate concern. How else can you explain the elation he gets when he identifies the root cause of some problem?

This active concern for the motorcycle is reinforced by the social aspects of the job. As is the case with many independent mechanics, my business is based entirely on word of mouth. I sometimes barter services with machinists and metal fabricators. This has a very different feel than transactions with money; it situates me in a community. The result is that I really don’t want to mess up anybody’s motorcycle or charge more than a fair price. You often hear people complain about mechanics and other tradespeople whom they take to be dishonest or incompetent. I am sure this is sometimes justified. But it is also true that the mechanic deals with a large element of chance.

I once accidentally dropped a feeler gauge down into the crankcase of a Kawasaki Ninja that was practically brand new, while performing its first scheduled valve adjustment. I escaped a complete tear-down of the motor only through an operation that involved the use of a stethoscope, another pair of trusted hands and the sort of concentration we associate with a bomb squad. When finally I laid my fingers on that feeler gauge, I felt as if I had cheated death. I don’t remember ever feeling so alive as in the hours that followed.

Often as not, however, such crises do not end in redemption. Moments of elation are counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking place right before your eyes. With stakes that are often high and immediate, the manual trades elicit heedful absorption in work. They are punctuated by moments of pleasure that take place against a darker backdrop: a keen awareness of catastrophe as an always-present possibility. The core experience is one of individual responsibility, supported by face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

(cont'd)

Richard

05-28-2009, 06:50

The Case For Working With Your Hands
(Part 3 of 4)

Contrast the experience of being a middle manager. This is a stock figure of ridicule, but the sociologist Robert Jackall spent years inhabiting the world of corporate managers, conducting interviews, and he poignantly describes the “moral maze” they feel trapped in. Like the mechanic, the manager faces the possibility of disaster at any time. But in his case these disasters feel arbitrary; they are typically a result of corporate restructurings, not of physics. A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It’s important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you. Survival depends on a crucial insight: you can’t back down from an argument that you initially made in straightforward language, with moral conviction, without seeming to lose your integrity. So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions. Nothing is set in concrete the way it is when you are, for example, pouring concrete.

Those who work on the lower rungs of the information-age office hierarchy face their own kinds of unreality, as I learned some time ago. After earning a master’s degree in the early 1990s, I had a hard time finding work but eventually landed a job in the Bay Area writing brief summaries of academic journal articles, which were then sold on CD-ROMs to subscribing libraries. When I got the phone call offering me the job, I was excited. I felt I had grabbed hold of the passing world — miraculously, through the mere filament of a classified ad — and reeled myself into its current. My new bosses immediately took up residence in my imagination, where I often surprised them with my hidden depths. As I was shown to my cubicle, I felt a real sense of being honored. It seemed more than spacious enough. It was my desk, where I would think my thoughts — my unique contribution to a common enterprise, in a real company with hundreds of employees. The regularity of the cubicles made me feel I had found a place in the order of things. I was to be a knowledge worker.

But the feel of the job changed on my first day. The company had gotten its start by providing libraries with a subject index of popular magazines like Sports Illustrated. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, it now found itself offering not just indexes but also abstracts (that is, summaries), and of a very different kind of material: scholarly works in the physical and biological sciences, humanities, social sciences and law. Some of this stuff was simply incomprehensible to anyone but an expert in the particular field covered by the journal. I was reading articles in Classical Philology where practically every other word was in Greek. Some of the scientific journals were no less mysterious. Yet the categorical difference between, say, Sports Illustrated and Nature Genetics seemed not to have impressed itself on the company’s decision makers. In some of the titles I was assigned, articles began with an abstract written by the author. But even in such cases I was to write my own. The reason offered was that unless I did so, there would be no “value added” by our product. It was hard to believe I was going to add anything other than error and confusion to such material. But then, I hadn’t yet been trained.

My job was structured on the supposition that in writing an abstract of an article there is a method that merely needs to be applied, and that this can be done without understanding the text. I was actually told this by the trainer, Monica, as she stood before a whiteboard, diagramming an abstract. Monica seemed a perfectly sensible person and gave no outward signs of suffering delusions. She didn’t insist too much on what she was telling us, and it became clear she was in a position similar to that of a veteran Soviet bureaucrat who must work on two levels at once: reality and official ideology. The official ideology was a bit like the factory service manuals I mentioned before, the ones that offer procedures that mechanics often have to ignore in order to do their jobs.

My starting quota, after finishing a week of training, was 15 articles per day. By my 11th month at the company, my quota was up to 28 articles per day (this was the normal, scheduled increase). I was always sleepy while at work, and I think this exhaustion was because I felt trapped in a contradiction: the fast pace demanded complete focus on the task, yet that pace also made any real concentration impossible. I had to actively suppress my own ability to think, because the more you think, the more the inadequacies in your understanding of an author’s argument come into focus. This can only slow you down. To not do justice to an author who had poured himself into the subject at hand felt like violence against what was best in myself.

The quota demanded, then, not just dumbing down but also a bit of moral re-education, the opposite of the kind that occurs in the heedful absorption of mechanical work. I had to suppress my sense of responsibility to the article itself, and to others — to the author, to begin with, as well as to the hapless users of the database, who might naïvely suppose that my abstract reflected the author’s work. Such detachment was made easy by the fact there was no immediate consequence for me; I could write any nonsense whatever.

Now, it is probably true that every job entails some kind of mutilation. I used to work as an electrician and had my own business doing it for a while. As an electrician you breathe a lot of unknown dust in crawl spaces, your knees get bruised, your neck gets strained from looking up at the ceiling while installing lights or ceiling fans and you get shocked regularly, sometimes while on a ladder. Your hands are sliced up from twisting wires together, handling junction boxes made out of stamped sheet metal and cutting metal conduit with a hacksaw. But none of this damage touches the best part of yourself.

You might wonder: Wasn’t there any quality control? My supervisor would periodically read a few of my abstracts, and I was sometimes corrected and told not to begin an abstract with a dependent clause. But I was never confronted with an abstract I had written and told that it did not adequately reflect the article. The quality standards were the generic ones of grammar, which could be applied without my supervisor having to read the article at hand. Rather, my supervisor and I both were held to a metric that was conjured by someone remote from the work process — an absentee decision maker armed with a (putatively) profit-maximizing calculus, one that took no account of the intrinsic nature of the job. I wonder whether the resulting perversity really made for maximum profits in the long term. Corporate managers are not, after all, the owners of the businesses they run.

(Cont'd)

Richard

05-28-2009, 06:53

The Case For Working With Your Hands
(Part 4 of 4)

At lunch I had a standing arrangement with two other abstracters. One was from my group, a laconic, disheveled man named Mike whom I liked instantly. He did about as well on his quota as I did on mine, but it didn’t seem to bother him too much. The other guy was from beyond the partition, a meticulously groomed Liberian named Henry who said he had worked for the C.I.A. He had to flee Liberia very suddenly one day and soon found himself resettled near the office parks of Foster City, Calif. Henry wasn’t going to sweat the quota. Come 12:30, the three of us would hike to the food court in the mall. This movement was always thrilling. It involved traversing several “campuses,” with ponds frequented by oddly real seagulls, then the lunch itself, which I always savored. (Marx writes that under conditions of estranged labor, man “no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions.”) Over his burrito, Mike would recount the outrageous things he had written in his abstracts. I could see my own future in such moments of sabotage — the compensating pleasures of a cubicle drone. Always funny and gentle, Mike confided one day that he was doing quite a bit of heroin. On the job. This actually made some sense.

How was it that I, once a proudly self-employed electrician, had ended up among these walking wounded, a “knowledge worker” at a salary of $23,000? I had a master’s degree, and it needed to be used. The escalating demand for academic credentials in the job market gives the impression of an ever-more-knowledgeable society, whose members perform cognitive feats their unschooled parents could scarcely conceive of. On paper, my abstracting job, multiplied a millionfold, is precisely what puts the futurologist in a rapture: we are getting to be so smart! Yet my M.A. obscures a more real stupidification of the work I secured with that credential, and a wage to match. When I first got the degree, I felt as if I had been inducted to a certain order of society. But despite the beautiful ties I wore, it turned out to be a more proletarian existence than I had known as an electrician. In that job I had made quite a bit more money. I also felt free and active, rather than confined and stultified.

A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.

Nor can big business or big government — those idols of the right and the left — reliably secure such work for us. Everyone is rightly concerned about economic growth on the one hand or unemployment and wages on the other, but the character of work doesn’t figure much in political debate. Labor unions address important concerns like workplace safety and family leave, and management looks for greater efficiency, but on the nature of the job itself, the dominant political and economic paradigms are mute. Yet work forms us, and deforms us, with broad public consequences.

The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions (like when I dropped that feeler gauge down into the Ninja). In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?

There is good reason to suppose that responsibility has to be installed in the foundation of your mental equipment — at the level of perception and habit. There is an ethic of paying attention that develops in the trades through hard experience. It inflects your perception of the world and your habitual responses to it. This is due to the immediate feedback you get from material objects and to the fact that the work is typically situated in face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

An economy that is more entrepreneurial, less managerial, would be less subject to the kind of distortions that occur when corporate managers’ compensation is tied to the short-term profit of distant shareholders. For most entrepreneurs, profit is at once a more capacious and a more concrete thing than this. It is a calculation in which the intrinsic satisfactions of work count — not least, the exercise of your own powers of reason.

Ultimately it is enlightened self-interest, then, not a harangue about humility or public-spiritedness, that will compel us to take a fresh look at the trades. The good life comes in a variety of forms. This variety has become difficult to see; our field of aspiration has narrowed into certain channels. But the current perplexity in the economy seems to be softening our gaze. Our peripheral vision is perhaps recovering, allowing us to consider the full range of lives worth choosing. For anyone who feels ill suited by disposition to spend his days sitting in an office, the question of what a good job looks like is now wide open.

Matthew B. Crawford lives in Richmond, Va. His book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work,” from which this essay is adapted, will be published this week by Penguin Press.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/ma...abor-t.html?em

Sigaba

06-08-2009, 13:40

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/opinion/08levy.html?em=&pagewanted=print).

June 8, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools
By HAROLD O. LEVY

AMERICAN education was once the best in the world. But today, our private and public universities are losing their competitive edge to foreign institutions, they are losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges and they are losing control over their own admissions because of an ill-conceived ranking system. With the recession causing big state budget cuts, the situation in higher education has turned critical. Here are a few radical ideas to improve matters:

• Raise the age of compulsory education. Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19. Simply completing high school no longer provides students with an education sufficient for them to compete in the 21st-century economy. So every child should receive a year of post-secondary education.

The benefits of an extra year of schooling are beyond question: high school graduates can earn more than dropouts, have better health, more stable lives and a longer life expectancy. College graduates do even better. Just as we are moving toward a longer school day (where is it written that learning should end at 3 p.m.?) and a longer school year (does anyone really believe pupils need a three-month summer vacation?), so we should move to a longer school career.

President Obama recently embraced the possibility of extending public education for a year after high school: “I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training.” He suggested that this compulsory post-secondary education could be in a “community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship.” (I helped start an accredited online school of education, and firmly believe that the coursework could also be delivered to students online.)

If the federal government ultimately pays for the extra year, it would be a turning point at least as important as the passage of the 1862 Morrill Act that gave rise to the state universities or the 1944 G.I. Bill that made college affordable to our returning service personnel after World War II. Every college trustee should be insisting that we make the president’s dream a reality.

And for those who graduate from high school early: they would receive, each year until they turn 19, a scholarship equal to their state’s per pupil spending. In New York, that could be nearly $15,000 per year. This proposal — which already has been tried in a few states — has the neat side effect of encouraging quick learners to graduate early and free up seats in our overcrowded high schools.

• Use high-pressure sales tactics to curb truancy. Casual truancy is epidemic; in many cities, including New York, roughly 30 percent of public school students are absent a total of a month each year. Not surprisingly, truants become dropouts.

But truant officers can borrow a page from salesmen, who have developed high-pressure tactics so effective they can overwhelm the consumer’s will. Making repeated home visits and early morning phone calls, securing written commitments and eliciting oral commitments in front of witnesses might be egregious tactics when used by, say, a credit card company. But these could be valuable ways to compel parents to ensure that their children go to school every day.

• Advertise creatively and aggressively to encourage college enrollment. The University of Phoenix, a private, for-profit institution, spent $278 million on advertising, most of it online, in 2007. It was one of the principal sponsors of Super Bowl XLII, which was held at University of Phoenix Stadium (not bad for an institution that doesn’t even have a football team). The University of Phoenix’s enrollment has clearly benefited from its advertising budget: with more than 350,000 students, its enrollment is surpassed by only a few state universities.

The University of Phoenix and other for profits have also established a crucial niche recruiting and serving older students. Traditional colleges need to do far better, using advertising to attract paying older students and to recruit the more than 70 percent of the population who lack a post-secondary degree. They have a built-in advantage, since attending a for-profit college instead of a more prestigious, less expensive public college makes no more sense than buying bottled water when the tap water tastes just as good.

• Unseal college accreditation reports so that the Department of Education can take over the business of ranking colleges and universities. Accreditation reports — rigorous evaluations, prepared by representatives of peer institutions — include everything students need to know when making decisions about schools, yet the specifics of most reports remain secret.

Instead, students and their parents rely on U.S. News & World Report rankings that are skewed by colleges, which contort their marketing efforts to maximize the number of applicants whom they already know they will never accept, just to improve their selectivity rankings. Meanwhile, private counselors charge thousands of dollars claiming to know the “secret” of admissions. Aspiring entrants submit far too many applications in the hope of beating the odds. Everyone loses. Opening the accreditation reports to the public would provide a better way.

• The biggest improvement we can make in higher education is to produce more qualified applicants. Half of the freshmen at community colleges and a third of freshmen at four-year colleges matriculate with academic skills in at least one subject too weak to allow them to do college work. Unsurprisingly, the average college graduation rates even at four-year institutions are less than 60 percent.

The story at the graduate level is entirely predictable: in 2007, more than a third of all research doctorates were awarded to foreigners, and the proportion is far higher in the hard sciences. The problem goes well beyond the fact that both our public schools and undergraduate institutions need to do a better job preparing their students: too many parents are failing to insure that their children are educated.

President Obama has again led the way: “As fathers and parents, we’ve got to spend more time with them, and help them with their homework, and replace the video game or the remote control with a book once in a while.” Better teachers, smaller classes and more modern schools are all part of the solution. But improving parenting skills and providing struggling parents with assistance are part of the solution too.

At a time when it seems we have ever fewer globally competitive industries, American higher education is a brand worth preserving.

Harold O. Levy, the New York City schools chancellor from 2000 to 2002, has been a trustee of several colleges.
Amazingly, Mr. Levy has nothing to say about the roles teachers or their unions play in the quality of today's education system.:rolleyes:

Richard

06-08-2009, 14:21

Harold O. Levy, the New York City schools chancellor from 2000 to 2002, has been a trustee of several colleges.

I read the article this morning and offer the following:

1. The reader has to know the author's background as having led one of the great failed school systems in the country to understand where his line of reasoning is coming from in his opinions.

2. I don't agree with the belief that the lengthening of high school will ensure a lower drop-out rate - apples and oranges in that line of reasoning - or that a high school education is insufficient for the general workforce as so many high schools do offer all levels of education - from better preparing someone to work in a warehouse to graduating students with upwards of two years of college coursework completed.

3. As far as the high pressure techniques he touts as a means for truant officers to curb truancy, those are nothing new and - for many reasons - offer little more than what many school systems use now. My experiences with that issue have been a bit different and my views on this can be read in my blog at - http://sfoda726.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html

4. Using the DOE - a failure from the get go - to further involve themselves in the educational processes at even higher levels is - IMO - the pervasive lunacy of a typical educational bureaucrat whose commitment is to systemic stasis vs real change and improvement.

Mr Levy isn't entirely wrong in some of his opinions - but he certainly isn't entirely correct in many of them, either. YMMV.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

06-12-2009, 17:14

The Economist's Lexington throws in his (her?) two cents on America's education system. Source is here (http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13825184).

The underworked American
Jun 11th 2009

Children are exceptions to the country’s work ethic

AMERICANS like to think of themselves as martyrs to work. They delight in telling stories about their punishing hours, snatched holidays and ever-intrusive BlackBerrys. At this time of the year they marvel at the laziness of their European cousins, particularly the French. Did you know that the French take the whole of August off to recover from their 35-hour work weeks? Have you heard that they are so addicted to their holidays that they leave the sick to die and the dead to moulder?

There is an element of exaggeration in this, of course, and not just about French burial habits; studies show that Americans are less Stakhanovite than they think. Still, the average American gets only four weeks of paid leave a year compared with seven for the French and eight for the Germans. In Paris many shops simply close down for August; in Washington, where the weather is sweltering, they remain open, some for 24 hours a day.

But when it comes to the young the situation is reversed. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy Europeans. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equivalent to an entire year.

American children also have one of the shortest school days, six-and-a-half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. By contrast, the school week is 37 hours in Luxembourg, 44 in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 in Sweden. On top of that, American children do only about an hour’s-worth of homework a day, a figure that stuns the Japanese and Chinese.

Americans also divide up their school time oddly. They cram the school day into the morning and early afternoon, and close their schools for three months in the summer. The country that tut-tuts at Europe’s mega-holidays thinks nothing of giving its children such a lazy summer. But the long summer vacation acts like a mental eraser, with the average child reportedly forgetting about a month’s-worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics. American academics have even invented a term for this phenomenon, “summer learning loss”. This pedagogical understretch is exacerbating social inequalities. Poorer children frequently have no one to look after them in the long hours between the end of the school day and the end of the average working day. They are also particularly prone to learning loss. They fall behind by an average of over two months in their reading. Richer children actually improve their performance.

The understretch is also leaving American children ill-equipped to compete. They usually perform poorly in international educational tests, coming behind Asian countries that spend less on education but work their children harder. California’s state universities have to send over a third of their entering class to take remedial courses in English and maths. At least a third of successful PhD students come from abroad.

A growing number of politicians from both sides of the aisle are waking up to the problem. Barack Obama has urged school administrators to “rethink the school day”, arguing that “we can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home ploughing the land at the end of each day.” Newt Gingrich has trumpeted a documentary arguing that Chinese and Indian children are much more academic than American ones.

These politicians have no shortage of evidence that America’s poor educational performance is weakening its economy. A recent report from McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the lagging performance of the country’s school pupils, particularly its poor and minority children, has wreaked more devastation on the economy than the current recession.

Learning the lesson

A growing number of schools are already doing what Mr Obama urges, and experimenting with lengthening the school day. About 1,000 of the country’s 90,000 schools have broken the shackles of the regular school day. In particular, charter schools in the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP) start the school day at 7.30am and end at 5pm, hold classes on some Saturdays and teach for a couple of weeks in the summer. All in all, KIPP students get about 60% more class time than their peers and routinely score better in tests.

Still, American schoolchildren are unlikely to end up working as hard as the French, let alone the South Koreans, any time soon. There are institutional reasons for this. The federal government has only a limited influence over the school system. Powerful interest groups, most notably the teachers’ unions, but also the summer-camp industry, have a vested interest in the status quo. But reformers are also up against powerful cultural forces.

One is sentimentality; the archetypical American child is Huckleberry Finn, who had little taste for formal education. Another is complacency. American parents have led grass-root protests against attempts to extend the school year into August or July, or to increase the amount of homework their little darlings have to do. They still find it hard to believe that all those Chinese students, beavering away at their books, will steal their children’s jobs. But Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884. And brain work is going the way of manual work, to whoever will provide the best value for money. The next time Americans make a joke about the Europeans and their taste for la dolce vita, they ought to take a look a bit closer to home.

ZonieDiver

06-12-2009, 18:10

I love your blog, Richard! Well done!

The school at which I toil (and the ONLY message on my voicemail aftter three weeks away was from my principal "offering" a student teacher - Thank you, God!- for next semester) is our district's "vocational magnet" school. Kids can get an education that affords them an opportunity to start in many fields, from cosmetolgy to auto body shop - or floral design to culinary - and most of the kids who opt for these things are goal-oriented and seriously want to succeed.

There are many problems in education. Those problems, for the most part, do not start with the students.

Richard

06-13-2009, 08:52

And then there's this - a steroidal version of the daunting college entrance exams most Europeans also face to ever have a chance to go to college within their own countries. MOO - our system has flaws - but the opportunity is always there when the college-capable individual is ready for it.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

China’s College Entry Test Is an Obsession
Sharon LaFraniere, NYT, 12 jun 2009

For the past year, Liu Qichao has focused on one thing, and only one thing: the gao kao, or the high test.

Fourteen to 16 hours a day, he studied for the college entrance examination, which this year will determine the fate of more than 10 million Chinese students. He took one day off every three weeks.

He was still carrying his textbook from room to room last Sunday morning before leaving for the exam site, still reviewing materials during the lunch break, still hard at work Sunday night, preparing for Part 2 of the exam that Monday.

“I want to study until the last minute,” he said. “I really hope to be successful.”

China may be changing at head-twirling speed, but the ritual of the gao kao (pronounced gow kow) remains as immutable as chopsticks. One Chinese saying compares the exam to a stampede of “a thousand soldiers and 10 horses across a single log bridge.”

The Chinese test is in some ways like the American SAT, except that it lasts more than twice as long. The nine-hour test is offered just once a year and is the sole determinant for admission to virtually all Chinese colleges and universities. About three in five students make the cut.

Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children’s scores. In Sichuan Province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygen containers, in hopes of improving their concentration.

Some girls take contraceptives so they will not get their periods during the exam. Some well-off parents dangle the promise of fabulous rewards for offspring whose scores get them into a top-ranked university: parties, 100,000 renminbi in cash, or about $14,600, or better.

“My father even promised me, if I get into a college like Nankai University in Tianjin, ‘I’ll give you a prize, an Audi,’ ” said Chen Qiong, a 17-year-old girl taking the exam in Beijing.

Outside the exam sites, parents keep vigil for hours, as anxious as husbands waiting for their wives to give birth. A tardy arrival is disastrous. One student who arrived four minutes late in 2007 was turned away, even though she and her mother knelt before the exam proctor, begging for leniency.

Cheating is increasingly sophisticated. One group of parents last year outfitted their children with tiny earpieces, persuaded a teacher to fax them the questions and then transmitted the answers by cellphone. Another father equipped a student with a miniscanner and had nine teachers on standby to provide the answers. In all, 2,645 cheaters were caught last year.

Critics complain that the gao kao illustrates the flaws in an education system that stresses memorization over independent thinking and creativity. Educators also say that rural students are at a disadvantage and that the quality of higher education has been sacrificed for quantity.

But the national obsession with the test also indicates progress. Despite a slight drop in registration this year — the first decline in seven years — five million more students signed up for the test than did so in 2002.

China now has more than 1,900 institutions of higher learning, nearly double the number in 2000. Close to 19 million students are enrolled, a sixfold jump in one decade.

Liu Qichao, 19, a big-boned student with careful habits, plans to be the first in his family to go to college. “There just were not a lot of universities then,” said his father, Liu Jie, who graduated from high school in 1980 and sells textile machinery. His son harbors hopes of getting into one of China’s top universities.

But the whole family was shaken by the results of his first try at the gao kao last June.

The night before the exam, he lingered at his parents’ bedside, unable to sleep for hours. “I was so nervous during the exam my mind went blank,” he said. He scored 432 points out of a possible 750, too low to be admitted even to a second-tier institution.

Silence reigned in the house for days afterward. “My mother was very angry,” he said. “She said, ‘All these years of raising you and washing your clothes and cooking for you, and you earn such a bad score.’

“I cried for half a month.”

Then the family arrived at a new plan: He would enroll in a military-style boarding school in Tianjin, devoting himself exclusively to test preparation, and retake the test this June.

Despite the annual school fee of 38,500 renminbi (about $5,640) — well above the average annual income for a Chinese family — he had plenty of company.

One of his classmates, Li Yiran, a cheerful 18-year-old, estimated that more than one-fourth of the seniors at their secondary school, Yangcun No. 1 Middle School, were “restudy” students.

Ms. Li said she learned the hard way about the school’s strict regimen. When her cellphone rang in class one day, the teacher smashed it against the radiator. Classes continue for three weeks straight, barely interrupted by a one-day break.

Days after most of their classmates left for home, Mr. Liu and Ms. Li were still holed up last week in their classrooms. Mr. Liu’s wrist was bruised from pressing the edge of his blue metal desk, piled with a foot-high stack of textbooks.

Ms. Li’s breakfast was a favorite among test-takers: a bread stick next to two eggs, symbolizing a 100 percent score.

Hours after they finished the test on Monday, both students had collected the answers from the district education bureau and begun the laborious process, with the help of their teachers, of estimating their scores.

Mr. Liu calculated that his score leaped by more than 100 points over last year’s dismal performance. But he was still downcast, uncertain whether he would make the cutoff to apply to top-tier universities. The cutoff mark can vary by an applicant’s place of residence and ethnicity.

Ms. Li, on the other hand, was exhilarated by her estimate of 482.5, figuring it was probably high enough for admittance to a college of the second rank.

By Wednesday evening, both were buoyed by news of the cutoff scores for their district. His estimated mark was well above the one needed to apply to first-tier schools, and hers was a solid five points above the notch for the second tier.

Before the test, Ms. Li’s aunt warned her that this was her last chance for a college degree. Even if she knelt before her mother and begged, her aunt said, her mother would refuse to let her take the test again.

But Ms. Li, a hardened veteran of not one but two gao kao ordeals, had a ready retort: “Come on. Even if my mother kneels down before me, I will refuse to take this test again.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/asia/13exam.html?ref=world

Sigaba

08-26-2009, 11:06

Source is here (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-schools26-2009aug26,0,15152,print.story).
Vote could open 250 L.A. schools to outside operators
Backers of the Board of Education decision tout choice and competition. Foes call the move illegal, illogical and improper.

By Howard Blume and Jason Song

11:16 PM PDT, August 25, 2009

In a startling acknowledgment that the Los Angeles school system cannot improve enough schools on its own, the city Board of Education approved a plan Tuesday that could turn over 250 campuses -- including 50 new multimillion-dollar facilities -- to charter groups and other outside operators.

The plan, approved on a 6-1 vote, gives Supt. Ramon C. Cortines the power to recommend the best option to run some of the worst-performing schools in the city as well as the newest campuses. Board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte dissented.

The vote occurred after a tense, nearly four-hour debate during which supporters characterized the resolution as a moral imperative. Foes called it illegal, illogical and improper.

The action signals a historic turning point for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has struggled for decades to boost student achievement. District officials and others have said their ability to achieve more than incremental progress is hindered by the powerful teachers union, whose contract makes it nearly impossible to fire ineffective tenured teachers. Union leaders blame a district bureaucracy that they say fails to include teachers in "top-down reforms."

"The premise of the resolution is first and foremost to create choice and competition," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, who brought the resolution, "and to really force and pressure the district to put forth a better educational plan."

She and other backers said they expected the district to improve its own performance and to also compete to turn around schools. Bidders could apply to manage schools by mid-January.

For the charter school operators, the biggest prize is 50 new schools scheduled to open over the next four years.

"It's absolutely indispensable, of critical importance to us," said Jed Wallace, chief executive of the California Charter Schools Assn. "It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity: 50 new school buildings coming online at the exact same time that a cadre of charter operators has demonstrated that it can generate unprecedented levels of student learning."

Charters are publicly funded but independently operated and free from some regulations governing the traditional administration of schools. They also are not required to be unionized.

Some of them have failed to outperform regular schools, according to some recent research. But backers of the new plan say that only the top-notch charter companies have a realistic shot at operating any of the 250 campuses that could be included, about a fourth of all district schools.

Finding locations for schools has been a paramount problem for charter groups. Synergy Academy in South Los Angeles, for example, occupies rented space in a church 500 feet from where a new L.A. Unified school is being built.

Among those who could take advantage of the board action is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who could use it to enlarge the 11-school effort run by a nonprofit that he controls. Villaraigosa, who helped elect a majority of the seven-member board, was an active participant Tuesday, speaking before more than 2,000 parents, teachers and others before the vote.

For several board members, particularly those with strong union ties, the debate was heated and often agonizing. Steve Zimmer, for one, sought to require that teachers, other union members and parents approve any school's reform plan through separate majority votes. At high schools students would also vote.

Lacking support from his colleagues, he settled for a watered-down process that includes only advisory ballots.

The final version included a provision that outside groups would likely contract with the school system for such services as cafeteria, custodial, maintenance, security and transportation. Some charter operators regarded this as a huge concession because they typically outsource these services to save money and say they get better attention from contractors than from the district.

But the language protecting these union jobs offers no long-term guarantee. And no union endorsed the resolution.

The protections didn't go far enough, said Bill Lloyd, executive director of Local 99 of Service Employees International. The local represents thousands of the district's lowest-wage workers, many of whom are district parents. "Historically we don't get a square deal because we're not teachers and we're branded as second-class citizens," he said.

Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles were once again frustrated that their own version of reform -- democratically run school sites with substantial and mandatory teacher input -- played second fiddle. Union President A.J. Duffy threatened legal action to thwart the Flores Aguilar plan.

Duffy chastised board members, especially those most closely allied with the mayor.

"When all is said and done you will have sold this district down the road for political gain for some of you," he said at the meeting, "and for a mayor whose own program has been a dismal failure. And if you end up . . . giving the mayor more schools, then shame on you."

Other critics have joined Duffy in questioning whether schools built with bond funds to relieve crowding, can be turned over to entities not under direct district control.

For their part, charter schools may have to operate differently in district-owned sites. They could be required to enroll more disabled students and higher numbers of lower-income students than at some current charter schools.

Both sides gathered coalitions of supporters. The charter-backed group Families That Can organized a massive rally outside district headquarters before the vote.

And the critics were not exclusively union members. Some called the plan an abdication of district responsibility or a failure to acknowledge district progress.

David Crippens, who chairs the committee overseeing school-construction spending, cautioned against "change for the sake of change."

But school board President Monica Garcia, a Villaraigosa ally, asserted that "kids can't wait. . . . My support for this resolution is in the hope that the district can move faster."

Shortly after the vote, Villaraigosa savored a political and policy victory at district headquarters in downtown L.A.

"We're not going to be held hostage by a small group of people," Villaraigosa said, referring to the teachers union and other opponents. "I'll let you infer who I'm talking about."

MOO, the LAUSD will not turn the corner on the issues it faces until stakeholders take a long hard look at the elephant in the room: the teachers' union.

FMF DOC

08-26-2009, 13:23

I mentioned this in the other thread...but I don't care how many classes i took on education in college and how to get students motivated, but the mere 6 weeks i have been teaching social studies to 11th and 12th graders, the biggest disappointment are the students that do not want to learn. I have been receiving excellent advice from faculty and have come to realize, as they suggest, that you cannot make a student learn or do well as long as they do not want to learn. I explain my concerns with the teachers, they reassure my methods and attempts are noble and productive, then laugh and chuckle and say "welcome to teaching".

The old horse to the water analogy applies here. I have tried to spoon feed these kids the quiz and test material, throwing blatant hints as to what is going to be on them and what the answers are, and still, because they don't care, they still fail. What my fellow teachers are saying makes sense, the students that show effort are the students that have decent parents that support the idea of a good education. The other students come from families that don't care, therefore, they do not care.

I believe one of the reasons your students are so unwilling to learn is that they have been trained that it doesn't matter, they are going to get a passing grade and move on anyway. When was the lasttime anyone has actually failed a grade? Students failing grades reflects upon the faculty of the school and that looks bad for the county/state ect ect.... and they wouldn't want that so they just pass them.

As far as preapring the students for the appropriate exams to pass that level or get into college I don't understand how hard that can be for a teacher. I'm sure at the beginning of each year the school is aware of it is required to teach and have the students prepared for. There are a 1,000 ways to go about teaching it but the results should always be the same that the students are well prepared to take and pass that exam. When I teach my medical classes I have the test, and answer key, it's my job to present the material to my students so they understand it and retain it and beable to pass the exam. It's not all balck & white but I feel they make it more complicated than need be. And parents are also a big part of the problem... Just my half cents worth..

Richard

08-26-2009, 13:39

I believe one of the reasons your students are so unwilling to learn is that they have been trained that it doesn't matter, they are going to get a passing grade and move on anyway. When was the lasttime anyone has actually failed a grade? Students failing grades reflects upon the faculty of the school and that looks bad for the county/state ect ect.... and they wouldn't want that so they just pass them.

As far as preapring the students for the appropriate exams to pass that level or get into college I don't understand how hard that can be for a teacher. I'm sure at the beginning of each year the school is aware of it is required to teach and have the students prepared for. There are a 1,000 ways to go about teaching it but the results should always be the same that the students are well prepared to take and pass that exam. When I teach my medical classes I have the test, and answer key, it's my job to present the material to my students so they understand it and retain it and beable to pass the exam. It's not all balck & white but I feel they make it more complicated than need be. And parents are also a big part of the problem... Just my half cents worth..

Here's my opinion on the subject from my blog:

http://sfoda726.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

08-26-2009, 13:52

nmap

08-26-2009, 16:53

OK...so how does one accomplish the various worthwhile ends at the undergraduate college level? Let's suppose one has about 700 students for the semester. One class was around 250, two others around 175 each and the fourth one was 100 or so.

Thank some divine power or other I had a grader.

Remember their names? Maybe some can get that done - I'm not one of them.

Reduce them to objects? Heck, they became mere aggregations of login IDs. A collection of ones and zeros.

Infantalize? Well, some were very smart, capable young people. A lot were sorta average, not particularly capable, but they did what they needed to do. In essence, they were gray men and women. But then there were those who did, in truth and in fact, engage in behavior that was best characterized as infantile.

And then we come to the papers. Now, let's think about this - 700 students, 4 papers, 500 words each. That aggregates to 1.4 million words - not counting the final project. Did my grader read that? Ha! Would I (could I) have read that much? No...neither could nor would.

The project was 1,000 words. So that's 700,000 more words.

Total words for the semester? 2.1 million.

So...read each paper, consider the ideas, make helpful comments, individualize the grading...:eek:

My grading procedure, when my grader was overwhelmed, got down to 10 seconds per paper. I would download in batches of 10, open them in word, do a word count, skim the paper for red underlines and to make sure nobody had written "gotcha!" 500 times, then assign a grade, generally 100 if they met the requirements.

I won't say I'm particularly proud of that. But...given the numbers...I didn't see any viable alternative.

And then there's the programming class. Again, some students were very, very smart. Others? (please insert the expletive of choice here.)

I taught the material. Encouraged them to use the free 6 day-per-week tutoring sessions. Gave assignments that connected to tasks on the test. Gave a practice test in class, and discussed each item in detail.

Did I mention that the practice test was exactly the same as the real one, except that the variable names needed to be changed? And the results? A few made 100%. I used a square root curve. Numerous students got well below 50. Several - who were getting full coverage for tuition, fees, and books, plus a stipend - turned in papers with nothing on them. And by nothing, I mean not so much as a tic-tac-toe game. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

And yet these worthy scholars deserve to be viewed as something more than infantile objects?

All I can say is, I admire the patience of those who can avoid such reactions.

Richard

08-26-2009, 18:43

nmap

08-26-2009, 19:40

I remember the college where I got my undergraduate degree...Trinity, here in San Antonio...and it had much the same format as the college you're at. I have very fond memories of Trinity - no doubt your students will say the same, some day.

Large public universities have to follow a bean counter philosophy, I suppose. The large survey classes subsidize the specialized upper-division and graduate courses. A graduate class may have as few as 10 students - a few years ago, it could have as few as 5! - and generally they are taught by senior faculty members. The strong/smart/capable undergraduates do fine; they probably would anyway. The weaker students are part of the retention problem. (shrug). As I mentioned, I'm glad I could enjoy Trinity as a student.

After I wrap up my doctorate, I hope to find a small college, not unlike what you've found. Perhaps I'll even learn the students' names. :o

Richard

08-26-2009, 19:52

Trinity is one of those schools which gets high marks in my book! Others around here are Austin College and St. Edwards. :)

As far as your quest - I have no doubt you'll get there - and, in the meantime, nil desperandum. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

08-27-2009, 09:40

Here's an interesting poll regarding perception vs reality in determining comprehension of resource materials and their content mastery in Japan.

It might be interesting - as a point of comparative analysis - to see the results of such a poll for the USA, UK, FR, FRG, AUS, etc.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Children do not comprehend textbook content to extent that teachers believe, survey shows
Mainichi News, 28 Aug 2009

Over 60 percent of elementary school teachers believe their students understand 80 percent or more of what they've been taught in their textbooks, but in reality fewer than 20 percent understand that much, according to the results of a survey conducted by a private research institute.

The questionnaire was conducted by Tokyo-based Chu-o Institute for Educational Research, which was founded in 1946 by professors at Tokyo Imperial University, the University of Tokyo's predecessor, and whose current operations are financed by various sources, including donations from textbook publishing companies. From late last year to early this year, the institute surveyed 1,257 elementary, junior high, and senior high school teachers, and a total of 715 elementary school fifth graders and second graders at junior and senior high schools.

While 61 percent of the elementary school teachers said they believed students understood more than 80 percent of the content covered in textbooks, only 18.6 percent of students said they picked up that much. The percentage of teachers who believed their students understood around 60 to 70 percent of what they were taught was close to that of students, at 36.3 percent and 34.6 percent respectively. Meanwhile, only 2.7 percent of teachers were under the impression that students had an understanding of approximately 40 to 50 percent of their textbooks, but 41.4 percent of students responded that that was how much they'd comprehended.

Such gaps in the understanding of student comprehension were evident at the junior and senior high school level as well. While 64.8 percent of junior high school teachers trusted that students grasped about 60 to 70 percent of textbook content, only 34.5 percent of students said they'd understood that much, and while 16.1 percent of teachers said they believed students had around 40 to 50 percent comprehension of their textbooks, 36.5 percent of students said they did.

At high schools, 52.9 percent of teachers were convinced that students understood approximately 60 to 70 percent while only 23.5 percent of students said that's how much they'd learned, and 25.1 percent of teachers said they believed students comprehended around 40 to 50 percent of their textbooks while the percentage of students who said they'd understood that much stood at 57.8 percent.

"Children do not comprehend the content covered in textbooks to the extent that teachers believe," said Bunpei Mizunuma, the director of the institute. "The challenge now is to develop textbooks that students can easily understand."

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090817p2a00m0na018000c.html

FMF DOC

08-27-2009, 10:38

If that is truly the state of such a bean-counter driven educational system as you have experienced and, admittedly, fostered - a system in which there cannot possibly be the perception of any real sense of value for the student's individual worth by either the students themselves or the faculty - then I fear "We have," as Pogo Opossum succinctly stated, "met the enemy...and he is us."

However, the scenario described by you is exactly why I chose a small college whose average undergrad classroom size (even for freshmen) was 25-30, where the professors did know the names of all their students, and where students did - therefore - feel a sense of obligation to adhere to the course requirements as set forth by their teachers. ;)

And so it goes...sadly... :(

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Very well put, But I think some (hopefully few) students choose the larger schools just for that reason, so they can slip through the cracks, show up for class do the very minimal maybe less and still get that degree in the end. And unfortunetly once you have that diploma it puts you well above others weather your better qualified for a job or not.

FMF DOC

08-27-2009, 13:16

I spoke with a friend of mine who is a professor at LSU, and shared with her alot of the thoughts on this forum and this was her response.

Here's what I would say to this person:

The situation outlined is unfortunately not that uncommon in higher ed. It speaks to how desperately underfunded many schools are and how that results in too many students per class and too many classes taught per faculty member. I'm lucky that I only teach 2 classes per semester (one while I'm in administration). To a lot of people this may sound as if I don't work very hard. To do it will, however, I have to devote at least 10 hours per week to preparing for class and at least that much time grading and assessing student work. And if you are not expected to teach 4 classes you are certainly expected to do something else. In addition to my teaching, I'm expected to conduct research that is published in nationally recognized journals. That takes time (and often a lot of money). And I'm expected to serve on committees and do a lot of bureaucratic crap.

So I don't buy that students can't or won't learn or that teachers can't or won't teach. Students, in my experience, generally try to reach whatever bar we set for them, but they are masters at managing expectations. If there are little or no rewards for excelling they won't. If we ask very little of them they will produce very little and if we set low standards they will only reach those standards. But sadly lot of teachers are overworked and/or burned out, making it near impossible to hold high standards.

To my mind, our countries greatest problem is that we generally don't place enough value in education. We pay a lot of lip service to it but it is often one of the first things cut from the state budget. In LA, the legislature just slashed higher ed. by 5% and will probably do so again next year. Other states are doing even worse. At the grade, middle and high school levels the same is true. This means the cost of educating is pushed onto the parents in the form of higher tuition costs. Education is a public good and should be treated as such. We should be willing to pay taxes that will allow children to receive high quality k-12 educations and college should be available for those who want it and are qualified.

All that being said, I don't think college is the end-all-be-all. Many of the smartest, most talented people I know didn't go to college. Sadly, without a college education, one's earning potential is much lower. So students, who neither want to be in college or really have the aptitude, go because they see the degree as a magic ticket. That dilutes the experience for everyone. We need a better community and technical college system and a culture that values those jobs as much as it values lawyers and doctors.

The Reaper

08-27-2009, 13:30

I do not think that we suffer from a lack of education funding.

IIRC, we spend much more on it than other countries which get better results.

That has been flogged to death elsewhere on this board.

TR

Pete

08-27-2009, 14:18

.... It speaks to how desperately underfunded many schools are and how that results in too many students per class and too many classes taught per faculty member........

A few years back when my kids were in the county system I pulled together the figures on funding per student. This included the county, state and federal funds.

Each classroom of 18 students was pulling in just over $90,000 per year. The teacher, based on a lot of +/-'s was around $35,000.

So that meant $55,000 was going for other stuff. Building utilities, other staff, upkeep, other staff, supplies, other staff, transportation, other staff, etc, etc.

Yet whenever a budget cut comes around it's the classroom teacher that takes it in the shorts. Heaven knows the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the vice toliet paper counter is vital to the smooth operation of the system.

The private school the little one goes to seems to get the job done with only $56,000 per classroom.

afchic

08-27-2009, 14:25

A few years back when my kids were in the county system I pulled together the figures on funding per student. This included the county, state and federal funds.

Each classroom of 18 students was pulling in just over $90,000 per year. The teacher, based on a lot of +/-'s was around $35,000.

So that meant $55,000 was going for other stuff. Building utilities, other staff, upkeep, other staff, supplies, other staff, transportation, other staff, etc, etc.

Yet whenever a budget cut comes around it's the classroom teacher that takes it in the shorts. Heaven knows the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the vice toliet paper counter is vital to the smooth operation of the system.

The private school the little one goes to seems to get the job done with only $56,000 per classroom.

Another thing to consider. When we were stationed in NJ, we lived in a little township called Indian Mills that had one elementary school, and one middle school, and it's own superintendant. The next little town over was called Tabernacle, same thing... Next town over same thing. So in a radius of about 5 miles you had no less than 6 little school districts all with their own superintendant and staff that goes with it. The high school was in a district all its own.

Our property taxes were ASTRONOMICAL. Every time all of us got together and proposed that in order to better utilize the school system, one district be cobbled together out of the 6, we were shot down every time. Because low and behold the administration would fight it like nobodies business.

No one can make me believe education is underfunded in this nation. If the administrators were as concerned about education as they say they are, they would cut all the pork out of the administation budget, not the class room budget.

One more thing we have to thank unions for.

nmap

08-27-2009, 15:25

No one can make me believe education is underfunded in this nation. If the administrators were as concerned about education as they say they are, they would cut all the pork out of the administation budget, not the class room budget.

One more thing we have to thank unions for.

Pork exists at many levels. At a certain university which shall remain nameless, a department had grant funding - and time was running out. So back in the day when large plasma-screen TVs cost $10,000 or so, the department used up the money to buy one. It was placed in a computer lab on the wall where all the students could see it.

Except...classes weren't taught in the lab. Students did individual work there. The screen was never used, except to display a screen-saver.

This was not a choice by administrators - rather, faculty made the decisions and the administration signed off on them. There is no union there. None. And there is, arguably, waste.

Perhaps the real question is what we want students to learn. A college degree is fine - but what should it encompass? (That's purely rhetorical. There are lots of opinions on that one.)

Maybe it is just in the nature of any bureaucratic organization to create waste.

Mobelizer

08-27-2009, 18:16

This is a very insightful thread.

/*A little about myself. I am now 21 college student with 3 more semesters to go for my BS. I was born in Germany and I also went to a German school. Throughout the years, I was a fairly average student. A teacher in 4th grade told my mom I would not make it to the Gymnasium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany)). She fought for it and I went to the 5th grade of the gymnasium. up the 11th grade I was still just an average student and I had a problem with pretty much every subject .

I moved to NC in 2004 and I went to a local HS. Good school, a mixed crowd (a big percentage of students being military dependents). I started to make better grades, based on study guides and example tests given by teachers. It was simple memorization of the questions on the study guide or any type of handout before the test. Multiple choice tests (even in math) made scoring higher grades even easier, and I used to be really bad at math....
Now with 3 semesters to go and a decent GPA I'm actually having to work alot harder for those grades to a point where I think I'm not going to make it.It feels like I'm in the German secondary school system again */

I would also like to add an opinion on this.I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned already, and I will take the risk of regurgitating.

I believe that a great deal of education comes from home. What a child experiences from early on, at home, is a primer for his or her future years.

On another note. I do believe testings/standardization can be a problem from early on also. Students are given all the information in study guides to get a good score on a test. (generalization)

My concluding $0.01. a students success in class also has to do with mindset.

I know these arguments seem a bit thrown together. I'd be glad to further elaborate my arguments.

These are just my few cents based on the experiences I've made, as a student, in the school system in Germany and here in the US.

nmap

08-27-2009, 18:20

I'd be glad to further elaborate my arguments.

I, for one, would very much like to see what you have to say.

Mobelizer

08-30-2009, 16:31

This might me more of a problem down the road once you get to college or so. I was only In high school from 11th and 12th grade.
But I do believe the students are "hand-fed" too much, and this might every by county/state. In most classes I've been , students(that includes me) were given everything to make at least a B on a test or Quiz. Study guides were given out in English and history that just had to be memorized. If you knew the study guide, you knew the test. If you didn't study those, that's your own fault. Same with math. Example problems comparable to test problems were given and solved.

I totally agree with formula sheets for math and physics at times, because there are alot of them, especially in physics. I think students have to get away from study guides, and make their own. I also think , teachers have to get away from study guides to an extent that they don't give the students some questions, help them answer those questions. and then have the same exact questions on the test.

This might be different in AP classes....as a matter of fact I had AP German and AP French and it was different. It was more challenging , and I think that's how classes should be. I think you deserve an A in a class if you did your own work at home, sat there in studied the books, instead of just memorizing the study guides.

This doesn't prepare one for college even though study guides exist in college also but not as detailed.

I've seen some of my fellow students from high school come back from one of the "big universities" after one semester...might also have to do with mindset.

I do admit, I was and I still am a lazy student sometimes. I could have gotten better grades in high school. If I was able to get decent grades with the least amount of work then I took that option. In high school I was less motivated to study than in college and that might be due to the fact that I pay for college and I go to an institution to study in my field of interest.
At times I see how risky it can be to be lazy, as it is not feasible at all when being a senior in college.

Another problem I see, and that's just my opinion: At times the teachers get too close to the student or vise versa. There should be a healthy mentoring relationship as well as a good channel of communication between the two.
But I've seen it where teaches hug students, or students hug teachers and talk on a very informal level. I just think that doesnt belong in the class room.

What would an educator's opinion be? Or in fact the opinion of anybody reading this thread.

stickey

08-30-2009, 18:05

I do not agree that objectifying and infantalizing one's students is a sustainable approach to teaching.

Nor do I. That was within the first few weeks of my internship and have learned a lot. I walked away from those 16 weeks having learned more than I ever thought i would or expected from that experience.

As far as what i have in my profile: "aka babysitter", it refers to the students with chronic behavioral problems, those with needs that go beyond the classroom. Needs that cannot be addressed in a classroom setting.

stickey

08-30-2009, 18:06

Here's my opinion on the subject from my blog:

http://sfoda726.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Point taken.

nmap

08-30-2009, 18:42

What would an educator's opinion be? Or in fact the opinion of anybody reading this thread.

I taught computer science at the undergraduate level at a large public university for a decade - so perhaps I can add a couple opinions.

By and large, my observations from my perspective are similar. Courses should be challenging, and an A should represent excellence rather than the grade handed out to everyone who can warm a seat.

But there is a fundamental problem - it's called retention. The public university I was at - and I get the strong impression this is a wide-spread problem - was expected to take turn out successful graduates. That means, they were expected to take in those who were admitted and get them out with a degree in 5 years or so. A student who made low grades, which were D, F, or WF (withdraw failing) had to repeat the course, and might have a GPA that would require academic probation or expulsion from the university. One other thing - at the time, the university admitted almost everyone who applied. As its gotten closer to its goal in terms of numbers of students, the admission standards have tightened a little.

One course I taught was Microcomputer Applications. The main OS was Windows 98 at the time, if I recall - and people weren't quite as familiar with software as they are today. Still, it was a large course. So let us consider how I taught it and the interesting consequences of my standards. (Note: pink denotes sarcasm)

There were 3 tests, each 25 questions, multiple choice. Each test covered 4 chapters from the text, open book, open note, questions were guaranteed to be from the book, and were sequential through the book. In other words, if a question from chapter 2 showed up on the test, the student could be certain that nothing from chapter 1 would appear on the remainder of the test. The course grade included the top 2 test grades, with the lowest test grade dropped. And, of course, the material was covered in class.

There were 5 homework assignments, 2 from Word and 3 from Excel. Each assignment was simple. In addition, I did the entire assignment, from beginning to end, in class in every instance. If students had questions, I answered them. If students wanted to see the whole thing again, I did it. All of this in a 50 minute class...

And there was a project, which consisted of creating a web page with 3 links. Web software wasn't quite as good then as it is today, but it was still a simple assignment. Again, I did the entire assignment in class so students could see how it was done.

Pretty low standards, I would say.

Still, about 10% of the students failed. Not sorta-kinda failed, not barely failed - no, they did a spectacular job of it. Final averages of 30 and below, for example. And neither I nor my grader were harsh.

For those unable to deal with such standards, I gave substantial extra credit for just coming to class. :o

Ahh, but I promised to mention consequences, didn't I?

The university was concerned about the retention problem, then as now. So they hired a consultant who had worked as the vice-chancellor at U.T. Austin. And the gentleman wanted to see me and my superior.

And what was he concerned about? It seems that the 10% fail rate was...ahem...too high. :rolleyes: The issue of low standards didn't matter - all that mattered was retention.

Fortunately, the course was no longer part of the core curriculum at the time, and hence was smaller and less important. So we all shrugged, agreed it didn't matter too much any more, and didn't worry about it. But the point is this - the university pandered (and panders) to the weakest students in pursuit of retention. It's hard for me to discern how one can maintain standards in such an environment.

This is not fair to the good student who wants to strive and learn. Nor is there an easy solution, given the politics of the situation.

Now this does not mean that students cannot learn - and learn quite a lot - in such an environment. But it does mean that the standards, the motivation, and the desire must come from within. If I may say so, the example of the Quiet Professionals (along with many other good people) is worthy of emulation.

Mobelizer

08-30-2009, 19:39

I taught computer science at the undergraduate level at a large public university for a decade - so perhaps I can add a couple opinions.

By and large, my observations from my perspective are similar. Courses should be challenging, and an A should represent excellence rather than the grade handed out to everyone who can warm a seat.

But there is a fundamental problem - it's called retention. The public university I was at - and I get the strong impression this is a wide-spread problem - was expected to take turn out successful graduates.

I'm attending a public university locally.

/* SIDE NOTE: there are 2 universities in my city. The public one I'm enrolled in right now and a private one. I didn't see the point in paying $10000, after scholarships, a semester for generally the same education I can get at a public university. The first year I pretty much didn't have to pay a dime. This year I'll have to pay some tuition due to budget cuts. Plus I'm doing research which I don't think I would have been able to do at the other school. */

The computer science department here is facing the issue of low enrollment.
College of course is a whole different ball game as high school, there are although similar issues. But I think high school should prepare students to work independently and be self reliant ,so that later on in college their jaw won't drop. Learning how to study shouldn't be taught in college, but in high school.

Did the %10 of failing students have a real interest in the course/major?

Sadly I must say I've gotten used to multiple choice tests. I think failure rate would be even high if there weren't any multiple choice test but tests where you have no educated guess and have to come up with your own answer.

nmap

08-30-2009, 19:52

I would say those %10 weren't really interested in computer science. But that was then and alot of things have changed in the computer science field.

The course was taught by the CS department - but learning a few windows applications is a long way from actual computer science! It was taught to the general student body, and did not count toward a CS degree. I agree absolutely that those who failed weren't interested.

And the tests in actual CS classes were free-response. For example, programming tests gave a programming problem, and then required students to write the code to solve the problem. The test generally provided a method declaration for each class.

And you're right about things changing, too.

Now I will say that in the actual computer science courses - from programming through architecture and algorithms courses - that the standards were quite high. The CS majors were well prepared, and hence sought-after in the job market.

Are you learning JAVA and object oriented programming?

Mobelizer

08-30-2009, 20:00

The course was taught by the CS department - but learning a few windows applications is a long way from actual computer science! It was taught to the general student body, and did not count toward a CS degree. I agree absolutely that those who failed weren't interested.

And you're right about things changing, too.

Now I will say that in the actual computer science courses - from programming through architecture and algorithms courses - that the standards were quite high. The CS majors were well prepared, and hence sought-after in the job market.

Are you learning JAVA and object oriented programming?

I learned JAVA as my first real language (can't really count COBOL).
programming methodology. Then the same language was used for Implementation and Design(a higher course in the sequence). As an introductory language they will introduce Python into the curriculum, which is easier to learn, and you can do more things with it. Right now I'm learning Data Structures, using Java as the main language. I'm also learning Scheme and programing logic. Also systems modeling and simulation. And the toughest course yet (everybody says that here) Computer organization and design (MIPS/Assembly).

I'm leaning C++ and C # on the side so I can code for my robot that I'll be using for my research.

Mobelizer

08-30-2009, 20:54

Tests in my CS classes are free response for the most part. Some definitions are tested via multiple choice.

I would say the standards in college are pretty good as far as how the classes are taught and the testing. I mean, PhD's are teaching, they have also done research or are actually still conducting research.

That is different from a High School teacher and students which has possibly only a BA in education with a respective concentration like the sciences or history etc.

The standards in high school though are not as demanding as they could be. Then again that's not taking into account most AP classes which I haven't taken. As well as some science classes that I didn't take.

But then if standards were to be risen, I'm sure failure rate would increase. So I guess the questions is how do you raise standards without increasing failure rate.

Richard

08-31-2009, 06:23

The standards in high school though are not as demanding as they could be. <snip> But then if standards were to be risen, I'm sure failure rate would increase. So I guess the questions is how do you raise standards without increasing failure rate.

This is a complex queston for which there is a world of studies and literature available. To keep it short, consider that many (not all) of the high schools in America today offer the following:

A certificate of attendance for those students who fail to achieve the necessary graduation requirements as specified (e.g., fail Exit Exams, severe special ed, etc).
A diploma for having met the state's minimum levels of competency for a high school diploma (generally a tech-based curriculum and probably ready for a tech school/community college but not yet ready for college).
A diploma for having met the state's recommended high school program (>90% ready for college).
A diploma for those having met an honors program (ready for college).
A diploma for having met an AP program (ready for college).
A diploma for having met an IB (International Baccalaureate) program (ready for college).
Additionally, many areas allow capable high school students who are Jrs/Srs to either concurrently dual enroll in courses at local colleges which give both high school and college credits or just enroll to take lower level college courses for college credit.

Even with all of these offerings, the same issues which have always been present - individual developmental delays, socio-economics, honest self-assessment, personal initiative or desire, and judgment - often preclude or interfere with any of the above from ensuring success in higher education.

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

08-31-2009, 06:48

The issue of low standards didn't matter - all that mattered was retention.

This is often a problem among colleges in which a bean-counting bottom-line and a view that a state college is some form of 'right' open to all (pretty much irregardless of demonstrated aptitude) drives the admissions process. Additionally, if there are mandated core courses for which a student either has little interest or aptitude (e.g., a student can be an honors level literature/foreign language or fine arts major and not do well in a mandated math or computer course), problems such as some have described here are inevitable.

MOO - based on experience with all types of colleges nation-wide, students, and families - an honest admissions evaluation process, combined with a student's strong and honest personal self-evaluation and good counseling, is the best way to overcome this problem. But the reality of the situation is...well...complicated.

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

09-01-2009, 05:30

And then there is this...:confused:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Virtual Ivy: Why The US Needs More e-colleges
CSM, 31 Aug 2009

Children born since the dawn of the Internet Age probably wouldn't think twice about learning online. They might just as soon read a Shakespeare sonnet on Twitter as hear it live from a teacher in a classroom.

And yet the educational establishment still debates whether e-learning (aka "virtual schooling" or "distance education") can be as good as traditional in-person teaching in a campus setting. Jokes are still being made about successful e-schools, such as the University of Phoenix, as being "diploma mills."

Now the results of a recent federal study should help "log out" of that tired debate. The study, released by the US Department of Education, found that many types of online education for a college degree are better at raising student achievement than face-to-face teaching is.

That's quite a seal of approval.

The big advantage in digital learning is the "time on task," or flexibility for a student to absorb the content of a subject. Once students are given "control of their interactions," they can set their own pace. They often study longer or visualize a problem differently. Professors are also forced to design better instructional techniques by the very nature of the technology.

The most effective learning occurs when a school combines e-learning with classroom teaching. Yet for many students, such as stay-at-home parents or those with day jobs or those with low income, online learning is all they can afford in time or money.

The Education Department is making plans to create free, online courses for the nation's 1,200 community colleges – which teach nearly half of undergrads – to make it easier for students to learn basic skills for jobs. The courses would be offered as part of a "national skills college" managed by the department.

The rapid rise of e-learning may finally help burst the bubble in rising tuition costs, which now average more than $25,000 a year for a degree from a private bricks-and-mortar institution.

Someday the best college teachers in the country won't need to be confined to one institution but will find their lectures and course materials spread to millions of students at low cost via the Internet. That would be a huge, historic leap in productivity for the education industry.

The US needs more competitive workers with advanced degrees, a goal set by President Obama. In the past decade, the number of university students worldwide is up by nearly half to 153 million. Any country that makes learning more accessible and less expensive through cutting-edge cybertechnology – say, by putting textbooks on devices such as the Kindle – will have a leg up in the global knowledge economy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090831/cm_csm/einternetcollege

Ret10Echo

09-01-2009, 05:40

I completed degree through an online university...and I will be the first to admit that a virtual environment is not for everyone. It fit my personality and OPTEMPO quite well. Tests were proctored at select testing centers and I felt that the tests were a good gauge of how well I had absorbed the material.
I have since taken other online courses through a couple of different online schools. Some of those schools do not have "tests" or other evaluations and simply base your grade on periodic assignment completion and participation in online discussions. For some that might work....adult students who are enrolled in a program that benefits them professionally may have more drive to learn and retain the information than. let's say, a teenager just out of high school.

I am not sure about the "affordability" of online education. I have paid up to $550 a credit-hour for certain classes......:eek:

Richard

09-01-2009, 06:19

And then there is the Charter School debate...

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Grade For Charter Schools? 'Needs improvement'
Walt Gardner, CSM, 31 Aug 2009

With the start of the fall semester upon us, President Obama has made charter schools the mainstay of his education reform movement. Although such schools are heavily promoted, concerns need to be addressed before their potential to shape a new course in US education can be fairly evaluated.

Charter schools represent a compromise for taxpayers who are frustrated over the glacial pace of improvement by public schools despite the expenditure of $667 billion on K-12 education last school year, up from $553 billion the prior year.

Publicly financed but operating free of many of the regulations applying to traditional public schools, they have grown in popularity since the first charter school began in Minnesota in 1991. They now total 4,600 nationwide and educate some 1.4 million of the nation's 50 million public school students.

Yet despite the claims made by supporters, a study released in June by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., casts doubt on whether the academic performance of students in charter schools is any better overall than that of their peers in regular public schools.

Though some states did have better overall results than others, researchers found nearly half of the 2,403 charter schools across the country involved in the study have results no different from regular public schools. In fact, more than a third of the charter schools posted results significantly worse. Only 17 percent provided superior educational outcomes. Advocates of charter schools assert that the study was slanted, but offer no convincing supporting evidence.

Whatever potential charter schools have to improve their performance will be affected by increasing pressure to unionize.

Because most of the nation's charter schools operate without unions, they have been free to innovate by lengthening the school day and year, dismissing ineffective teachers at will, and implementing merit pay. But disaffected by the long hours, high turnover, and lower pay than in other public schools, teachers are beginning to unionize.

Despite pessimism, Los Angeles has shown that a successful partnership between charter schools and teachers unions is possible. Over the past decade, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, has allowed the Green Dot Public Schools organization to run 12 charter schools in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. These were schools that had been largely written off. But a qualified turnaround seems to be emerging.

What makes the arrangement unusual is that Green Dot is the only large charter organization in the country that embraces unionized teachers. As a result, if Green Dot provides further evidence of its success in operating chronically failing schools, it could become a model.

In recent weeks, in part because of urging from Washington, several states have lifted their restrictions on charter schools. Tennessee, for example, raised the number of charter schools allowed from 50 to 90. Illinois doubled the number permitted to 120, and Louisiana abolished its cap. Charter school advocates charge that teachers' unions are largely responsible for obstacles to future growth. But a more likely explanation is that sloppily administered schools can harm students and undermine taxpayer confidence in the entire process.

California learned this lesson in 2004. The California Charter Academy, the largest chain of publicly financed but privately run charter schools, slid into bankruptcy after mismanaging money, leaving 6,000 students with no school to attend.

To guard against recurrence, reformers recommend the establishment of multiple independent authorizers with a proven record of academic results. Without that kind of safeguard in place, charter schools could become martyrs in the reform movement, instead of pioneers. That would be a severe setback for quality education.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0831/p09s02-coop.html

Mobelizer

09-01-2009, 06:29

I dislike online classes. They don't motivate me enough to really learn the material. I learn and do what is necessary to get good grades, but that doesn't mean I retain the material that I am supposed to know

I had a management class over a month period, as a summer class, and I have forgotten what was taught. Online classes in my opinion can be more difficult once you reach a certain level. You need that face-to-face / hands-on/lab time to get comfortable with the new material and apply it well in future assignments. I'm having problems with one my online CS classes right now, because nothing is being taught, it's just reading and completing assignments by a certain date.

uboat509

09-01-2009, 21:51

I currently have a second grader and a fourth grader at home. They both attend the local public school here in Pueblo, CO. We are fairly pleased with the education they have received thus far but we see trouble brewing on the horizon. My wife and I are very involved in our children's education. We check their homework each night before they are allowed to play or watch TV and my wife volunteers one or two days a week at the school. She is so well liked that when she recently applied for a substitute teaching position the principal of the school volunteered to write one of her recommendations. My wife's relationship with the school means that she gets a lot of information that many parents do not. For instance, we recently learned that this year our school would be losing a significant amount of funding because, I'm not making this up, the median income in the district went up too high. That's right, our district is too rich (based on pre-housing crash property appraisals, but that's another thread) ergo our children are less deserving of education funds. The result of that is that the school had to let some teachers go and make some of the classes even bigger than they already were. School materials are rationed, including copy machine copies. It is starting to sound like Army when I joined in the early '90s, if you needed supplies you could plan on purchasing them yourself.

Prior to moving here to Pueblo, my wife was planning on getting her degree in primary school education (is that the right term?) but after talking to a number of teachers she changed her mind. They all had pretty much the same story. They loved the kids but they were growing increasingly tired of apathetic or even confrontational parents. For too many parents have abrogated all responsibility for their children to the state. Teachers can do a lot but they can't do everything, nor should they be expected, or even allowed to. But the thing that the teachers hated the most that was causing the most burnout was the administrative side. There are the budget cuts that I already mentioned then there are some other cool things. For instance, teachers in this district are required to obtain Masters degrees in order to keep their jobs. That seems like a good thing on the surface but they are expected to do this on their own. They receive no financial assistance from the district nor do they receive any type of additional pay once they obtain the degree. They are just supposed to finance a masters on their teacher pay, which is woefully inadequate, if you ask me. Not to mention that many of the new teachers are still paying off college loans from when they got their bachelors. I have also been told that their insurance rates are exponent although, since I have been in the Army my adult life and have never payed for insurance I can't really comment on that. That just isn't a great incentive to become a teacher. And don't even get me started on the abortion that is NCLB.

A friend of mine told me that, at least locally, the teaching programs at the colleges here have some of the lowest GPAs, in large part because between poor school administration and NCLB many of the more talented and capable students are going into career fields that offer better pay with fewer hassles. That is a crime in my mind. I have always put teachers in the same category with Service Members, Fire Fighters, Paramedics, Nurses and LEOs. I honestly can't complain about my pay that much. The Fire Fighters and LEOs I know make a decent living if not what they deserve. Nurses are well paid, usually. Paramedics get paid crap unless they are also Fire Fighters. But teachers, in my opinion really get the shaft when it comes to pay. No, the vast majority of them are not rushing into harms way and they do not hold peoples lives in their hands but they do determine the future of our nation. That's pretty important to me. So when I here that people who want to become teachers chose not to because of the poor pay and worse administration , I get really angry. I don't know what the solution is, whether it is vouchers or some new revision of NCLB (one that works this time). I do believe that if the administration spent half the time working on a fix for our education problems that it has spent trying to get taxpayer funded healthcare for illegal aliens, we might just find a solution.

SFC W

nmap

09-03-2009, 14:22

So, how about a way to take college classes - all you want - for $99 per month?

With online tutoring (by a live human) 24/7?

Here's an interesting development. College may be about to change.

LINK (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_for_99_a_month.php)

Sigaba

10-19-2009, 15:33

Source is here (http://www.popecenter.org/print/print_article.html?id=2236).Retreat, But No Surrender for Military History
After several decades of disappearing from college campuses, the study of military history is poised to make a comeback.

By David J. Koon

September 24, 2009

Outside academia, military history appears alive and well. The shelves of Barnes and Noble and Borders bookstores are coated with nonfiction works from biographies of General George Patton to analyses of Civil War infantry maneuvers. Movies like Saving Private Ryan and Gods and Generals inundate cinema screens and television channels. And on college campuses in North Carolina and nationally, students line up for courses dealing with military history as soon as they become available.

But until recently, the field was on a slow march into scholarly obscurity. “While military history dominates the airwaves,” said Eastern Michigan University history professor Robert Citino a few years ago, “its academic footprint continues to shrink, and it has largely vanished from the curriculum of many of our elite universities.” John J. Miller in 2006 wrote in National Review that military history was in fact “dead” at many universities. “Where it isn’t dead and buried,” he added, “it’s either dying or under siege.” The New Republic, U.S. News and World Report, and other publications have echoed that sentiment.

Military history is a sub-discipline of history that focuses on the strategy, tactics, methods and operations of combatants in armed conflicts throughout human history. It is a traditional component of university history departments, although its emphasis varies tremendously among colleges and universities.

Miller and other conservative writers attributed the decline of military history to the rise of “tenured radicals” in universities. That is, the students of the 1960s who became professors in later decades found the study of war offensive and too aggressive for the curriculum of a “humanitarian” university. According to this thesis, military history was deliberately supplanted by multicultural or other politically correct studies.

An alternate view is that traditional military history’s popularity waned as other historical topics began to be explored. Beginning in the 1970s, historians became more interested in social history and, specifically, formerly neglected subjects such as African-American history, women’s history, and cultural history. Most who subscribe to this view don’t think military history’s abandonment was due to an agenda against it. Wayne Lee, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that there wasn’t a “deliberate policy of killing these positions.” The study of military strategy and tactics was deemphasized simply by default.

Data from the American Historical Review support the idea that a shift occurred. In 1975, 2.4 percent of college history departments listed a military history specialist while only 1.1 percent had a specialist in women’s studies. By 2005, 8.9 percent of history departments listed a women’s studies specialist while the percentage of departments that had a military history expert shrank to 1.9 percent. This change could mean that there was a deliberate replacement of military history by social history—or it could merely reflect the shifting interests of history scholars. [See attachment for data.]

And military history itself changed. In an effort to understand the social and cultural implications of war, military history redefined itself to encompass topics tangential to the battlefield. Historians still focused on the men who traded bullets but also looked at the wives, sons, and daughters who were left behind. “Military history,” explained Andrew Wiest of the University of Southern Mississippi, “began to include examining conflicts from new perspectives and historiographies,” generating “more complete and respected programs.” It wasn’t enough, however, to halt military history’s decline.

Many scholars—both within history departments and outside—began to regard traditional military history as “old news.” The field of drums and bugles is “finished,” they argue—there is nothing more to be gained from studying Jackson’s flanking maneuver at Chancellorsville or Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Mark Grimsley, a military historian at Ohio State University, was quoted by Inside Higher Ed as calling this attitude toward military history “incuriosity.”

But the incuriosity and rejection of military history may at last be ending. The past two to three years have seen a small surge in military history’s acceptance and respect in academia.

One change can be found in historical journals. Over the past thirty years, military history has been largely absent from the top historical journals. John Lynn, a well-known military historian now at Northwestern University, points out that during that period the American Historical Review, a highly respected history journal, “did not publish a single article focused on the conduct of the Hundred Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War, the War of Louis XIV, the War of American Independence, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic War, or World War II.” It did print a handful of articles about the atrocities of war, but not about the execution of the wars themselves.

But in March 2007, the Review published a fifty-page roundtable discussion of American military history that dealt with war in the context of its society. The Review has since published a number of articles directly and indirectly related to war. Other journals—including the Journal of American History—are also including more articles on the subject—even to the surprise of military historians.

It’s not just journals that suggest a revival. Other emerging trends hint that a corner has been turned.

This April, the long-empty professorial chair in military history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was finally filled. Stephen E. Ambrose, the late historian and best-selling author, had donated $250,000 to his alma mater to commemorate his mentor, William Hesseltine. Before he died in 2002, Ambrose had doubled his initial contribution and pressured others, too, to support that professorship. Ambrose, a World War II specialist and author of Band of Brothers, was one of the most popular military historians of his generation. But the position he supported sat controversially vacant for years. The failure to find a suitable professor generated speculation that the study of military history was finished at Wisconsin.

Now the University of Wisconsin hired the respected West Point graduate and professor John W. Hall, a specialist in unconventional warfare—wars that involve forces other than governmental armies. Hall received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. Wisconsin isn’t the only college hiring military historians this year. Duke University, Cornell University, Notre Dame University, and Sam Houston State University are searching for military specialists.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Peace, War, and Defense program, or PWAD, as it’s known on campus, has hired new faculty over the past three years as well. In fact, says Joseph Glatthaar, former head of the interdisciplinary curriculum, it is growing “like a rocket ship,” with enrollment up by 27% last year. The program focuses on the cultural impacts of war while also teaching traditional military history. It is nationally recognized, produces respected historians, and is bursting at the seams with undergraduate majors.

Military history seems to be gaining a stronghold at lesser-known universities. Many Ivy League and elite schools let their programs atrophy, creating a vacuum filled (most notably) by the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of North Texas. These institutions are leaders in the instruction of military history due to their “excellent programs,” says Wayne Lee of UNC-Chapel Hill.

As to precisely why military history is enjoying increased popularity, John Lynn thinks that it’s partly due to the fact that “the world has simply gotten nastier.” Terrorism, three wars, and international violence are all “staring you in the face” and “even humanists have to pay attention,” he says. This violence has granted military history greater traction in academia. “The past decade has been a decade of war,” says Frederick Schneid, a military historian at High Point University. “Historians are products of their environment, so the wars have, in a way, helped the profession.”

Just as surrender seemed imminent, military history has gathered unconventional reinforcements—less well-known colleges and, of all things, war and violence. These, along with broad student interest and an academy that now listens when military historians speak, may have positioned military history to climb out of the trenches and regain the field.IMO, the decline of military history was due to a combination of the two dynamics mentioned above as well as:

Widespread skepticism that the study of past wars could give special insight into the conduct of contemporary warfare. This is to say that throughout the Cold War, many wondered if nuclear weapons had fundamentally changed the nature of armed conflict.
The unwillingness of military historians to engage seriously the rise of "new" sensibilities among academics.
The popular belief among many Americans that all one needed to know about war could be learned through self-study. While this dynamic was especially pronounced among members of the left during the Vietnam era, one can trace this sensibility back to colonial times.
The continued strength of American Exceptionalism as a narrative construct.
The continued emphasis in military historiography on utilitarianism.

Costa

10-19-2009, 17:08

As a student finishing up at a pretty major university that has recently become pretty major... perhaps i can contribute.

I should preface this with a link from TED.com to a video about Sir Ken Robinson speaking about the current state of academic inflation. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)

First hand, I can see this happening. So many of my peers do not know what's going on in the world around them outside of the college campus. I remember telling my mom in the first week of moving that "this place is a bubble". Literally, an entire civilization exists in this bubble. A civilization that runs on Adderal, drinks huge amounts of alcohol every night, and cares only about who their next sexual encounter is with. Welcome to college. The best part? University media. Newspapers, news channels, and magazines put out by the university tell kids what to think by giving them the illusion of "covering all the issues". This is censorship at its very finest. The Pink Floyd song "Another brick in the wall p2" is now playing in your head.

So fast forward to when this civilization that has no real-world experience -because it is not necessary, no work ethic - because everything is payed for by parents, and no real communication skills outside of IMing each other or text messaging short hand.

What happens? Those graduating do not meet the standards for hiring into a career and graduates get stuck with "jobs" and experience a very rude awakening. Not a bad thing, as I feel you have to work a few "jobs" first to appreciate a "career". But this begs the question: What is a BS/BA degree really worth nowadays?

One of my old "associates" was a very strong example of the current phenomena. Her parents had payed for everything, she stood up all night hopped up on Adderal cramming for tests that easily could have been prepared for, and immediately forgot everything that she had learned or had been tested on. Obviously she didn't even make it far enough to learn anything practical about a subject matter that she could use in life. When it came time for her to graduate, she would complain about how she kept getting rejected from companies. I didn't even need to ask her the obvious rhetorical question: Why would a company take a chance and hire someone with no practical experience? She already knew the answer and now she was in for a very rude awakening.

Why? Because poor planning will yield poor results. What's really sad, is that universities are turning these kids out by the dozens.

Should we focus more on the arts? Should we get rid of standardized testing? Maybe we should just "wake" our students up to what things are really like. I think the answer only lies in necessity, and I see a world approaching that will continue to be unforgiving if you let it. Who's going to wake our students up? Not the universities. After all, there's too much money to be made off of pushing students through the machine. If we instill drive and motivation to succeed in our future, as well as a work ethic and practical sense of things all while not sheltering, the current situation can only get better. This must start happening immediately.

And there's my rant.....:munchin

If anyone is interested, visit http://academicearth.org for some free online courses and pass it on.

nmap

10-19-2009, 17:34

Who's going to wake our students up? Not the universities. After all, there's too much money to be made off of pushing students through the machine.

Perhaps it will be a self-correcting problem.

Once upon a time - before WWII and the GI bill - college wasn't really so important. A gentleman's C was an acceptable grade, and the sons and daughter's of the affluent went to college so they could make some contacts, find a mate, and transition to adulthood.

The GI bill brought in a more serious group - people who had seen and experienced the real world in the way only a war-time veteran can.

LINK (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/10/06/pm-gi-bill/)

But a funny thing happened along about the late 1960's. The college degree gained the image (delusion?) as the key to upward social mobility. So the theory went that if you wanted a good job, you needed a good education. What that good education might be was conveniently undefined. But notice that there are now two players in the game - the colleges were used to a large flow of undergraduates due to government money, and the public saw the college degree as the key to a better life.

So - colleges had every incentive to get more graduates. Making college accessible, increasing retention - these served to up the enrollment and hence the income. At the same time, college aid and various loan programs came into play.

I think the key issue here is: More and more money directed into an effort that lots of people thought was important, and expected to be a sure-fire winner.

Does this sound a lot like the housing bubble? Or any other financial bubble?

The colleges added faculty, staff, and facilities. They grew. The students saw everyone else going to college, and they (and their families) had the same expectations. The employers could demand a BA or BS degree - and so they did.

College costs have gone (and continue to go) up far faster than overall inflation. Students are burdened with brutally expensive loans. So what happens when costs and ability to pay cross? Generally, a crunch.

Premise: Higher education has entered a bubble phase. The present economic realities will assert themselves. Colleges will shrink a lot. And quite a few students will wind up with unsalable degrees, unpayable loans, and a load of bitterness.

Rhetorical Question: What happens if the one commonly accepted doorway to upward mobility is closed? And will this result in social upheaval? :munchin

Richard

10-19-2009, 17:37

Miller and other conservative writers attributed the decline of military history to the rise of “tenured radicals” in universities. That is, the students of the 1960s who became professors in later decades found the study of war offensive and too aggressive for the curriculum of a “humanitarian” university. According to this thesis, military history was deliberately supplanted by multicultural or other politically correct studies.

Although I agree the issue is far more complex than just this, I also agree it does play a part. I have run into a number of Professors who had used the 2S deferment to stay out of the draft and - when questioned by vets or someone interested in military history - were very uncomfortable with its discussion, often exhibiting a studied indifference or an attitude of it being of lesser importance to the overall study of History than other topics. I often wonder how much of a factor guilt played in their behavior - and how much it affected the direction of their studies and conclusions. :confused:

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

10-20-2009, 05:42

Imagine attempting to teach a military history course at Humboldt State University. :confused:

Here is Professor Harwood's current faculty bio -

http://www.wheaton.edu/psychology/graduate/faculty/harwood.html

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Intellectual Rapists
Mike Adams, TH, 23 Sep 2009

During his first year at Humboldt State University (HSU) - as a tenure-track professor in the Psychology Department - faculty and students tried to silence Mark Harwood on a number of occasions. He was hired primarily to teach Human Sexuality—a class he had taught in a variety of settings including a doctoral program in the UC-system, a psychology program in the second highest ranked City College in the nation, and at a private university.

Mark Harwood received excellent reviews from most students; however, with a class as personal as human sexuality, some found a way to be offended. His teaching evaluations were well above average and, in some instances, stellar. His first experience teaching human sexuality at HSU proved to be different. The students in the Master’s program simply couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea that males and females are different. They objected to his emphasis on techniques for treating sexual dysfunction – although this was the primary purpose of the class.

Professor Harwood’s second semester was even more distressing and he almost left HSU to take a position elsewhere. During the spring semester, he taught the undergraduate course in human sexuality. The course was cross-listed with Women’s Studies. Before the semester began, a student from the Women’s Studies department asked if he would allow her to be the T/A for the course. He agreed.

About four weeks into the course, the T/A indicated that she would like Dr. Harwood to cover domestic violence. He replied that because domestic violence isn’t directly related to human sexuality, he had not included it on the syllabus; however, he said that if they covered all the material in the syllabus and had time at the end of class, he would be happy to address this issue. As it turned out, he had the time.

Dr. Harwood sees domestic violence as a complex problem. Overall, he sees it as a relationship problem with both partners contributing to the dysfunctional relationship and one or both of them playing a role in the initiation and maintenance of the violence. This is recognized by virtually all experts in the field of family therapy. But to the Women’s Studies students, domestic violence is always entirely the fault of the male.

During class one day, Dr. Harwood handed out two peer-reviewed articles. The major findings of the articles were:

1. Women are more likely than men to initiate domestic violence.

2. Women are more likely than men to maintain domestic violence.

3. Women are more likely than men to report that they were victims of domestic violence.

4. Women suffer more serious physical injury than men when involved in domestic violence.

5. Women do not fear retaliation for physically abusing their male partner.

Before all the empirically supported findings had been presented, the class erupted with outbursts, primarily from the Women’s Studies students. One actually yelled that Dr. Harwood was a “privileged, rich, white male.”

The Women’s Studies students continued to disrupt class so it was generally unproductive—they simply didn’t want to hear what the researchers had discovered. What angered them the most was the applause Dr. Harwood received at the end of class by a large number of students who appreciated that he presented material most professors would shy away from.

A day or two after the class, Dr. Harwood received a call from the Chair of the Women’s Studies department, Kim Berry. She wanted to meet with him and the department Chair to discuss the complaints she received from some of her students.

Based on the complaints from some students, she decided that the way Harwood presented the research was improper. Berry did not bother to get feedback from the students who applauded after the lecture. Mark Harwood replied to Kim Berry saying that his time was limited. A meeting never took place. Instead, she called his department chair and insisted that he never be allowed to teach the class again. She threatened that she would not allow her Women’s Studies students to take the class if he taught it.

Dr. Harwood’s department capitulated to her demands.

I wish I could say that the story ends here. But HSU is a relatively small institution and rumors can be spread quickly, especially among the radical feminist students who constitute a large percentage of the student body. It was soon evident that a concerted effort to have Harwood dismissed was underway.

Near the end of his time at HSU, before he received tenure, Dr. Harwood was asked to attend a thesis proposal meeting for a student who was doing research on domestic violence. He had been asked to be on her committee almost two years earlier and, upon accepting, gave her copies of the aforementioned articles and instructed her to make sure these seminal studies were included in her literature review.

He was appalled to find that they were not mentioned anywhere in the literature review or thesis. Instead, junk research, “studies” from non-scientific organizations, and propaganda permeated the literature review.

Dr. Harwood was confident that the Chair for the thesis committee, Bettye Elmore, a full professor, would recognize the importance of including an unbiased treatment of the literature; however, he was wrong. The student and the professor became angry when he stated that these studies must be included in the literature review and the non-peer reviewed garbage that comprised the bulk of the review should be removed.

Elmore refused to read the research articles Harwood handed to her, and denied that they could be true. She went on to state that her ex-husband had depleted her savings and run off.

An hour later, the third committee member, a sociology professor arrived. The Chair then announced that Dr. Harwood had said women are more physically violent than men in domestic relationships. Harwood was surprised when he said, “Of course they are—we have known this for years”.

In Seattle, domestic violence calls were so frequent that a policy was instituted that stated when an officer arrives on the scene of a domestic violence call, someone must be arrested. It turned out, that in the very first year that the policy was in place, women were arrested for domestic violence 51% of the time. Upon hearing this, Elmore was visibly embarrassed and the student was angry. Harwood was later asked to relinquish his position as part of the thesis committee.

Once, when teaching a graduate class, Dr. Harwood used the symbol for male and female to designate the two groups and provide information under the categories. A female student became angered at the male symbol and erased the “arrow” that had an upward trajectory. She replaced it with an arrow that pointed down. Dr. Harwood asked if she was intimidated by male genitalia. He also asked if the Penis Monologues would offend her. Finally, he asked whether it would matter to her if all the males in the class began chanting “penis.” She filed a complaint with her department Chair.

Mark Harwood eventually left HSU because he realized he was in a dysfunctional intellectual relationship. And he knows feminists don’t fear retaliation for abusing their intellectual superiors. He now teaches at Wheaton College.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2009/09/23/intellectual_rapists?page=full

Sigaba

01-19-2010, 17:55

From the New York Times on line edition. Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html?em=&pagewanted=print).January 18, 2010
Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left
By PATRICIA COHEN

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.

A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is greatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal. Even though that may be an outdated stereotype, it influences younger people’s ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.

Jobs can be typecast in different ways, said Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse, who undertook the study. For instance, less than 6 percent of nurses today are men. Discrimination against male candidates may be a factor, but the primary reason for the disparity is that most people consider nursing to be a woman’s career, Mr. Gross said. That means not many men aspire to become nurses in the first place — a point made in the recent Lee Daniels film “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” When John (Lenny Kravitz) asks the 16-year-old Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) and her friends whether they’ve ever seen a male nurse before, all answer no amid giddy laughter.

Nursing is what sociologists call “gender typed.” Mr. Gross said that “professors and a number of other fields are politically typed.” Journalism, art, fashion, social work and therapy are dominated by liberals; while law enforcement, farming, dentistry, medicine and the military attract more conservatives.

“These types of occupational reputations affect people’s career aspirations,” he added in a telephone interview from his office at the University of British Columbia. Mr. Fosse, his co-author, is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard.

The academic profession “has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last 35 years few politically or religiously conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors,” they write in the paper, “Why Are Professors Liberal?” That is especially true of their own field, sociology, which has become associated with “the study of race, class and gender inequality — a set of concerns especially important to liberals.”

What distinguishes Mr. Gross and Mr. Fosse’s research from so much of the hubbub that surrounds this subject is their methodology. Whereas most arguments have primarily relied on anecdotes, this is one of the only studies to use data from the General Social Survey of opinions and social behaviors and compare professors with the rest of Americans.

Mr. Gross and Mr. Fosse linked those empirical results to the broader question of why some occupations — just like ethnic groups or religions — have a clear political hue. Using an econometric technique, they were then able to test which of the theories frequently bandied about were supported by evidence and which were not.

Intentional discrimination, one of the most frequent and volatile charges made by conservatives, turned out not to play a significant role.

To understand how a field gets typecast, one has to look at its history. From the early 1950s William F. Buckley Jr. and other founders of the modern conservative movement railed against academia’s liberal bias. Buckley even published a regular column, “From the Academy,” in the magazine he founded, The National Review.

“Conservatives weren’t just expressing outrage,” Mr. Gross said, “they were also trying to build a conservative identity.” They defined themselves in opposition to the New Deal liberals who occupied the establishment’s precincts. Hence Buckley’s quip in the early 1960s: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

In the 1960s college campuses, swelled by the large baby-boom generation, became a staging ground for radical leftist social and political movements, further moving the academy away from conservatism.

Typecasting, of course, is not the only cause for the liberal tilt. The characteristics that define one’s political orientation are also at the fore of certain jobs, the sociologists reported. Nearly half of the political lopsidedness in academia can be traced to four characteristics that liberals in general, and professors in particular, share: advanced degrees; a nonconservative religious theology (which includes liberal Protestants and Jews, and the nonreligious); an expressed tolerance for controversial ideas; and a disparity between education and income.

The mismatch between schooling and salary complements a theory that the Harvard professor Louis Menand raises in his new book “The Marketplace of Ideas.” He argues that the way higher education was structured by progressive reformers in the late 19th century is partly responsible for the political uniformity of today. In the view of the early reformers, the only way to ensure that quality, rather than profit, would be rewarded was to protect the profession from outside competition. The tradeoff for lower salaries was control; professors decide who gets to enter their profession and who doesn’t.

The tendency of people in any institution or organization to try to fit in also reinforces the political one-sidedness. In “The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope and Reforms,” a collection of essays published by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group, Daniel B. Klein, an economist at George Mason University in Virginia, and Charlotta Stern, a sociologist at Stockholm University, argue that when it comes to hiring, “the majority will tend to support candidates like them in the matter of fundamental beliefs, values and commitments.”

Other contributors to the book, Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner, who are husband and wife, also found that conservatives are less interested in pursuing advanced degrees than liberals.

Mr. Gross and Mr. Fosse have not yet published their results, but experts in the field have vetted their research and methods. Michèle Lamont, a Harvard professor and the author of “How Professors Think,” said, “I think their paper is very, very sophisticated and quite original.” She added that the theory better fits some disciplines, like literature and sociology, than others, like business or economics.

Mitchell L. Stevens, a professor of education at Stanford University, who also reviewed the research, finds the theory promising. Choosing an occupation is part of fashioning an identity, Mr. Stevens said, noting that people think of themselves as a “corporate type” or a free spirit, which is why you might find highly educated graduates working as bartenders instead of in an office.

He added that the gender-typing of a field like physics might also partly explain the dearth of women in it, another subject that has provoked heated disputes.

To Mr. Gross, accusations by conservatives of bias and student brainwashing are self-defeating. “The irony is that the more conservatives complain about academia’s liberalism,” he said, “the more likely it’s going to remain a bastion of liberalism.”"Why Are Professors Liberal?" is available here (http://www.soci.ubc.ca/fileadmin/template/main/images/departments/soci/faculty/gross/why_are_professors_liberal.pdf).
“The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope and Reforms” is available here (http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844743172.pdf).

craigepo

01-19-2010, 22:53

Entire post

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

No offense to any teachers. But, there is a hell of a lot of difference between teaching a business class and running a business.

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

MatthewD44

01-19-2010, 23:06

I personally don't think so because most teachers that are actually into teaching for what I think are the right reasons are there to HELP... didn't matter what the upbringing was... I was raised good ole Southern Baptist and I teach now.. and just so you know most teachers would take offense to the statement you made. I actually chose to do what I am doing now

Sigaba

01-19-2010, 23:17

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.An irony of this quote is that H. L. Mencken devoted so much energy trying to teach Americans how to be just like him.

nmap

01-19-2010, 23:22

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

Interesting idea. Presumably, it takes a certain amount of mental horsepower to earn a doctorate, which is the ticket to becoming a professor. That's partly genetic (nature) and partly upbringing (nurture) according to my understanding. Maybe both factors are at work. It would be fascinating to study it.

But I suspect that much of the effect is due to the tendency many people have to strive to fit in with others. Going from high school graduate to doctorate takes 10 years or more of schooling. If we suppose that most of the faculty are liberal, then the student faces some choices. They can slowly adjust their thinking to align with their teachers. They can smile, nod, and lie through their teeth about their views while keeping the truth close to their vest. Or, they can stand up for their particular views, which could result in a variety of problems.

I believe it is fair to say that the great majority of students will adopt the predominant view of those around them.

Perhaps a slight rephrasing of the problem is worthwhile.

"How many people can resist the views of those they are surrounded by for a decade or more and keep their own views secret throughout that time?'

PedOncoDoc

01-20-2010, 05:25

"How many people can resist the views of those they are surrounded by for a decade or more and keep their own views secret throughout that time?'

Or one could ask, "How many people, with tenets and beliefs radically different and, at times, in direct opposition to those of their superiors, can earn a prestigious title/position?"

If you don't think like those who reside higher in the ivory tower they will act to make sure you stay beneath them, because young men and women aren't responsible/smart enough to hear differences of opinion from authority figures and make up their own minds. And, in the opinion of the professors, anyone who does not think like them must be of inferior intellect, because, well, they are professors and those other guys aren't. (Stupid, huh?)

Richard

01-20-2010, 05:32

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. --G.B. Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists" in Man and Superman (1903)

Context is important when considering misciting such a quote and its implications.

FWIW - I had some professors who would fit the definition as cited but had many more who would not, who were excellent people, teachers and mentors, and who sought to foster in us the concept of how to think vs what to think.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Penn

01-20-2010, 06:25

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

This statement leads me to conclude you attended NU in Southern France; the University made famous for its continuous 40,000 year legacy, usage, contribution to art and humnoid development.

GratefulCitizen

01-20-2010, 14:35

Plinked away at college off and on for the better part of a decade before getting my degree.
Didn't encounter very many "liberal" instructors.

While at the Colorado School of Mines, "liberals" were rare in the faculty and student body.
The school had entire halls dedicated to subjects such as metullargy and petroleum engineering.
All of the humanities and non-economic social sciences were crammed into one floor of the smallest hall on campus.
The male/female ratio among students was about 5 to 1.
One dept made bumper stickers which read: strip mining prevents forest fires.

Finished my degree at a small college in Grand Junction, Colorado.
The physical sciences/math dept was headed by a guy whose former career was at NASA, and later by a guy who had formerly had a long career as an engineer.
Most of my courses were instructed by guys who previously had careers out in the "real world": several former engineers, former military, the afformentioned NASA guy, and another who worked on the ABM stuff (which we don't have :rolleyes: ) at what used to be Army Missle Command.

However, the few "liberals" encountered were, without exception, career academics.
YMMV.

Sigaba

02-05-2010, 16:19

Source is here (http://blog.cleveland.com/nationworld_impact/print.html?entry=/2010/02/osus_president_gordon_gee_chal.html).OSU's President Gordon Gee challenging faculty tenure at nation's biggest campus
By Associated Press
February 04, 2010, 3:43PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The leader of the country's largest university thinks it's time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia.

Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor's output over quality.

"Someone should gain recognition at the university for writing the great American novel or for discovering the cure for cancer," he told The Associated Press. "In a very complex world, you can no longer expect everyone to be great at everything."

Plenty of people have raised the issue over the years, but Gee is one of the few American college presidents with the reputation and political prowess — not to mention the golden touch at fundraising — who might be able to begin the transformation.

Still, some professors are already skeptical.

"The idea of awarding tenure based on teaching makes me anxious," said Jennifer Higginbotham, an English professor at Ohio State who's up for tenure in three years. By then, she will need to publish a book she's writing about conceptions of girlhood in the Middle Ages to have any chance at the promotion.

"There's a feeling, I think, that good teachers are a dime a dozen," said Higginbotham, 32. "I'm not sure what you'd have to do to distinguish yourself enough as a teacher to get tenure."

Tenure, which makes firing and other discipline difficult if not impossible, can seem ridiculously generous to outsiders. But the job protection gives professors the freedom to express ideas and conduct studies without fear of reprisal.

Tenure review, which took its current form in the 1940s, typically emphasizes publications over teaching and sometimes weighs whether a professor brings in research grants. Besides job protection, tenure also figures into salaries. A full professor with tenure at Ohio State earns about $126,000 annually.

The late Ernest Boyer, a former chancellor of New York's state university system, raised some of same issues in his groundbreaking 1990 book, "Reconsidering Scholarship."

A few universities have taken steps towards Boyer's model, including Portland State University and Western Carolina University.

At California State University at Monterey Bay, professors are graded on their teaching, research, service to the community and service to the university. Their teaching must be rated at least "commendable" — the second highest rating.

"We're asking faculty to look at their teaching really as an area of scholarship, just like they would their research," said Marsha Moroh, dean of the school's college of science, media arts and technology.

Gee is not yet giving specific examples of how a reformed tenure system would work. In order to make sweeping changes, he would need cooperation from faculty and administrators across the university system.

Taking on tenure will be the third big academic undertaking for Gee, who was hired away from Vanderbilt University in 2007 for his second stint at Ohio State after a term in the 1990s. Time magazine last year named him the country's best college president.

The 65-year-old is seemingly omnipresent on campus, striding from event to event in his trademark bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses at a pace that exhausts younger aides. He's up daily at 4:30 a.m. to exercise and stays busy into the evenings, popping into student parties or attending athletic events.

Gee earlier reorganized Ohio State's arts-and-sciences division and switched the school from a calendar based on quarters to one arranged by semester. Both changes ruffled plenty of feathers.

He raised a record $1.2 billion at Vanderbilt and is aiming for a record $2.5 billion at Ohio State.

Then there's the little matter of keeping tabs on one of the nation's biggest athletic departments and its outsized football program at a school with a total statewide enrollment of more than 63,000.

Gee said a new approach to tenure is needed to ensure the university stays relevant to students and the outside world. The recession has helped highlight the importance of higher education to the economy, he said, so now is the right time to make big changes.

"The universities of the 21st century are going to be the smokestacks of the century," Gee said, referring to the heavy industry that once dominated the American economy. "The notion of the large, massive public university that can exist in isolated splendor is dead."

One challenge is the complexity of big universities, which have numerous divisions accustomed to doing things their own way. Ohio State has more than 100 academic units capable of granting tenure.

"In effect, there are a hundred different sets of criteria for granting promotion or evaluating an individual faculty member's case," said Tim Weber, a longtime music professor and chairman of the university's faculty council.

The pressure to get tenure is also greater as universities rely more on part-time faculty and non-tenure track professors. While the number of tenure track positions grew by 7 percent between 1975 and 2007, the number of non-tenure track jobs more than tripled, according to the American Association of University Professors.

"There are many ways faculty members spend their time that may have been very important five years ago but may not be as important now," said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. "Maybe we need to free them up so their time can be directed in ways that have an impact on students."

Gee is the country's highest-paid public university president with an annual income of more than $1.5 million, including salary, retirement and deferred compensation.

His office is crammed with Ohio State memorabilia that includes a Gordon Gee bobblehead toy, but the first thing that grabs a visitor's attention is the framed poster of John Belushi from the 1978 college party film "Animal House."

The next poster to grab the eye is a quotation: "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."MOO, professors who take teaching as a primary responsibility should be rewarded if they do that job well.

Even so, I do not foresee "publish or perish" being rebooted to say "teach and/or publish or perish."

FWIW, every time I encounter the word "transformation," I check to make sure my wallet is still in my pocket.

HowardCohodas

02-05-2010, 17:45

From the New York Times on line edition. Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html?em=&pagewanted=print)."Why Are Professors Liberal?" is available here (http://www.soci.ubc.ca/fileadmin/template/main/images/departments/soci/faculty/gross/why_are_professors_liberal.pdf).
“The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope and Reforms” is available here (http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844743172.pdf).

Thanks. Now I have a lot of homework to do. ;)

I've added those to my copy of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (http://www.amazon.com/Professors-Most-Dangerous-Academics-America/dp/0895260034) to be read.

ZonieDiver

02-06-2010, 07:54

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

No offense to any teachers. But, there is a hell of a lot of difference between teaching a business class and running a business.

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!" :D

SF = Those who can and do - and also teach!

craigepo

02-06-2010, 11:58

ZonieDiver

02-06-2010, 14:14

"Context is important when considering misciting such a quote and its implications."
Richard, are you saying that I miscited this, thereby changing the meaning of the original, or misapplied the language to the discussion? Either way I would disagree, but just curious.

"This statement leads me to conclude you attended NU in Southern France; the University made famous for its continuous 40,000 year legacy, usage, contribution to art and humnoid development."
Penn---my use of a question mark was intended to mean imply a question, not a statement. My apologies.

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
SF = Those who can and do - and also teach! "
ZD---Aw, a little Rooster Cogburn. Indeed, SF is a unit whose members can both do and teach. Which, in my experience, is not a very common trait in academia. I am sure others have had other experience.

Again, my good friends, I do not mean to insult or denigrate. Just lending my personal observations to the discussion.

No offense taken in this quarter, Your Honor! I love a lively discussion, opposing opinions, intelligent banter among true professionals. After a high school teaching career that began almost 35 years ago - I know that quote is all too often TOO true.

On a side note, I anxiously await the Cohen Bros. take on "True Grit" - I hope that line remains, as well as the line "The Duke" said in reply. (I hope they can find an actor to fill his "bad guy" shoes.)

Razor

02-08-2010, 13:52

My question isn't what should a professor have to do to earn tenure, but rather why should they be granted tenure in the first place?

nmap

02-08-2010, 14:07

My question isn't what should a professor have to do to earn tenure, but rather why should they be granted tenure in the first place?

In theory - but not necessarily in practice - those who have tenure have the "freedom to teach" and the "freedom to learn". Thus, a tenured professor could take different (or even novel) approaches to teaching and in their research. So a tenured professor of sociology might study the problem of crime, determine that the kind of gun control that involves consistently hitting ones' target tends to reduce crime, and have no fear that the college will fire him for saying the unpopular thing. Likewise, a tenured professor might incorporate such a finding in their teaching.

Unfortunately, there are some who abuse such freedom. They're the ones who give tenure such a bad name.

However - the old-style tenure that implied secure employment for life is dying out. Post-tenure review can result in the termination of an unproductive faculty member. The shrinkage or elimination of a program can produce the same results.

I guess it all depends on how much one thinks that the academic - whether in the role of teacher or researcher - should be protected from the organization.

Rhetorical question: Suppose a QP who had extensive experience in various lands of the Middle East became a college professor. Would he be permitted to state his views and experiences clearly on the typical college campus? Should he be protected from firing in the interest of encouraging diversity of thought? Would the research he performed result in a richer and better body of literature because it incorporated his experiences?

Sigaba

02-08-2010, 14:23

My question isn't what should a professor have to do to earn tenure, but rather why should they be granted tenure in the first place?IMO, this is a good question that academics should address more often. Too often, the phrase "academic freedom" is tossed about as the justification for tenure without an explanation of what that phrase means.

FWIW, the American Association of University Professors has posted its 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure here (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1940statement.htm). The statement is available in PDF format here (http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/EBB1B330-33D3-4A51-B534-CEE0C7A90DAB/0/1940StatementofPrinciplesonAcademicFreedomandTenur e.pdf).

A recent editorial in the on-line edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education sought to distinguish "academic freedom" from the professional and ethical responsibilities that educators/professors have. The editorial, available here (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Limits-of-Academic-Freedom/49354/), points out that the former is not a blanket excuse for ignoring the latter.December 9, 2009
The Limits of Academic Freedom

By Gary A. Olson

Last summer I wrote a column attempting to clarify the meaning of shared governance (The Chronicle, July 24, 2009). Since then, some readers have requested that I do the same for academic freedom.

It's a particularly timely request, given that the American Association of University Professors recently announced a campaign to enhance academic freedom at public universities.

Most of us in academe cherish the protections afforded by academic freedom, but too many are unclear as to its limits. I have known colleagues who believed that academic freedom allows them to say anything they want, to anyone, in any venue, or to engage in behavior that most observers would assume to be inappropriate in any other workplace.

In fact, academic freedom has been claimed as an excuse for the most abusive and uncollegial behavior—shouting at colleagues, publicly berating students or staff members, defaming supervisors or other university administrators, shirking professional duties. One colleague even told me that academic freedom would protect her even if she indulged in slander and character assassination. "So long as you believe that what you are saying is the truth," she said, "then you are fully protected by academic freedom." (Needless to say, what a person "believes" is hardly an appropriate defense for violating a law.)

Department heads have told me countless stories of how academic freedom has become the generic excuse for any number of irresponsible acts. One chair described a senior professor who missed a substantial number of her classes. When confronted with evidence of her absenteeism, she told her chair that as an academic she had the freedom to conduct her courses in any way she deemed appropriate.

"I tried to explain that as an employee she has certain contractual obligations and that academic freedom did not free her from those responsibilities," the department head explained. "But it took the dean and, finally, the provost to convince her that not only did she have no such freedom but that she would be jeopardizing her future employment if her absenteeism persisted."

Another department head said one of her professors managed to avoid teaching his course the entire quarter by assigning a graduate research assistant to "facilitate discussions." The professor never showed up in class after the first day. In effect, the graduate student was forced to teach the course in addition to carrying out her research duties. When undergraduates brought the situation to the department head's attention, the professor angrily insisted he was protected by academic freedom and threatened to sue if the chair pursued the issue.

I know of yet another incident in which a fistfight erupted between two colleagues at a faculty meeting, resulting in bruises and a bloody nose. Both later contended during a formal hearing that they were "covered" by academic freedom and that the university had no recourse beyond reprimanding them for disrupting an official departmental meeting.

The practice of citing academic freedom to condone a limitless range of bad behavior has begun to take on the flavor of that hackneyed student excuse: The dog ate my paper (or, nowadays, My computer crashed). The magical incantation—"I'm protected by academic freedom"—is thought to offer instant indemnity. In reality, academic freedom, like tenure itself, is not a blanket protection.

The modern concept of academic freedom has two meanings. First, it refers to the right of an institution to manage its own curriculum and academic affairs without governmental interference. Colleges may determine, for example, what subject matter gets taught and who can teach it; establish their own admission criteria and graduation requirements; and develop their own academic mission and priorities. That is an important feature of American higher education. It establishes a crucial separation of power that discourages government from dictating that universities adopt particular positions or promote specific causes, and it prevents government from using educational institutions as part of a propaganda apparatus.

The second meaning of academic freedom involves the concept that faculty members may engage in research on controversial subjects (and, by extension, discuss those subjects in their classrooms) without fear of reprisal. This refers specifically to academic subjects and is not a blanket protection for any and all speech in any venue. As the AAUP's well-known statement on academic freedom cautions, professors "should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject."

The distinction between speech related to one's discipline, on the one hand, and utterances about extra-disciplinary matters, on the other, is key to understanding academic freedom. Without the protections afforded by academic freedom, some scholars might fear for their jobs were they to challenge treasured assumptions in their fields, oppose well-established intellectual traditions, rewrite commonly accepted historical narratives, create artistic works that offend some sensibilities, or conduct scientific experiments that run counter to some people's ethical codes.

Academic freedom, then, facilitates scholarship and teaching by eliminating that concern over personal safety. Institutions benefit from the system because their faculty members may go on to produce groundbreaking work that brings greater distinction to the institutions. But a college or university has no comparable incentive to protect extra-disciplinary speech because such discourse is peripheral to the normal workings of the campus.

Because academic freedom is specifically intended to foster the free exchange of ideas within a community of scholars, it does not protect us from other types of utterances and behavior, such as slander or libel, bullying co-workers, lying on a curriculum vitae, or conducting one's classes in irresponsible ways.

The AAUP reminds us that as professors we are both private citizens and officers of our institutions. When speaking as citizens (perhaps at a political rally, say) we should be immune from being disciplined by the institution for our speech, but when speaking in our unique capacity as representatives of the institution—as scholars and teachers in our disciplines—we have an obligation to exercise caution in what we say and how we say it. In the latter role, according to the AAUP, our "special position in the community imposes special obligations" because our words are likely to be construed to represent the official position of the institution rather than our own personal views.

Some people confuse the constitutional concept of freedom of speech with the less grandiose notion of academic freedom, but they are two distinct concepts. Academic freedom is limited to the confines of academic discourse while free speech is a broad constitutional right central to our democratic system of government.

But even free speech has its limits. The constitutional right of free speech is not meant to protect each and every utterance regardless of context (yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when no such danger exists, engaging in "hate speech," or threatening a police officer). It is intended to protect you from being incarcerated by the state for expressing your views.

Academic freedom is a right we should all cherish because it ensures an environment of free inquiry. That is precisely why we must guard against attempts to make the concept so limitless, so capacious, that it loses its power to protect the academic enterprise. When academic freedom becomes all things to all people, then it becomes nothing at all.

Gary A. Olson is provost and vice president for academic affairs at Idaho State University and co-editor, with John W. Presley, of the newly published "The Future of Higher Education: Perspectives From America's Academic Leaders" (Paradigm).

Richard

02-08-2010, 15:57

Richard, are you saying that I miscited this, thereby changing the meaning of the original, or misapplied the language to the discussion? Either way I would disagree, but just curious.

Shaw was using sarcasm in that bit of dramatic dialogue and the lines actually do not reflect his view of education - I did not think you were using the quote in the same context.

Were you?

Richard

Sigaba

04-05-2010, 15:13

An article from The Economist available here (http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=15819135).Desegregati on and schools

No easy answers
Mar 31st 2010 | RALEIGH
From The Economist print edition

Has Wake County thrown out the baby with the bathwater?

IN 1971, a young black lawyer brought up in rural North Carolina under Jim Crow laws argued on behalf of a boy from Charlotte called James Swann before the United States Supreme Court. In that case, Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the court held that school districts may use busing, quotas and other such methods to ensure integration. Nearly 40 years later that same lawyer, Julius Chambers, stood once again before nine people, this time the Wake County board of education, and this time as a concerned citizen rather than an advocate, to plead a case: that the county ought to retain its programme of assigning pupils to schools based on levels of family income. His suit failed: on March 23rd the board voted 5-4 to abandon that policy.

That vote ended a decade-long experiment. In 2000 Wake County’s school board decided to integrate its schools by income level rather than race. No more than 40% of students at any one school should be receiving free or subsidised lunches (which are given to children from poor families). Evidence dating back more than 40 years shows that schools with too great a concentration of poor pupils are undesirable. Teachers do not stay, and poor pupils tend to perform worse when they are put with others who are poor.

Under the new plan, Wake’s schools seemed to do well. In 2007-08 pupils in the third to eighth grades (eight- to 13-year-olds) outperformed the state average on standardised reading and maths tests in every grade, and high-school pupils did the same in every subject in statewide end-of-course exams. The average SAT score for the county’s high-school leavers that year was 54 points above the national average and 76 points above the state average.

Yet the picture grows less rosy on closer inspection. Black pupils lagged behind white in every grade and subject. Poor students fared markedly worse than their wealthier counterparts, and their graduation rate was 54% in 2009, lower than the state average. To some, this indicated that the assignment plan was hiding rather than solving problems: pupils were still failing, but they were just dispersed.

Most pupils attended schools near their homes, but some travelled across the county. Parents complained of a lack of choice and of high-handed treatment from the school board: one aggrieved father who grew up in bureaucracy-racked India said the board’s behaviour reminded him of home. When the board forced some pupils to attend “year-round” schools (where holidays are arranged as four three-week breaks throughout the year, rather than one long one), a group of parents sued. They lost, but within the court’s decision was a critical bit of advice: they could always elect more sympathetic board members. So they did: of the five candidates who voted to scrap the assignment policy, four were elected last October.

The vote attracted controversy: at last week’s meeting, three demonstrators were arrested. Earlier in the month, Ron Margiotta, the board’s chairman, referred to jeering opponents as “animals out of their cages”. Taunts of racism were thrown around. Now that the vote has been taken, tempers seem to have cooled, even if the future of Wake’s schools remains unclear.

John Tedesco, who chairs the board’s reassignment committee, has talked of splitting the county into neighbourhood zones. Parents in poor zones will be given the option of sending their children to schools in wealthier districts. Mr Tedesco maintains that the current plan was inefficient and placed an undue burden on parents. It also failed: 30% of schools exceeded the 40%-poor-student threshold in 2008.

Yet those facts—like the stubborn racial gap and the low graduation rate for poor pupils—could just as well argue for improving as ending the current system. After all, it is difficult to imagine that poor pupils would fare better in impoverished schools. One possible future can be seen in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, which scrapped its integration programme in favour of neighbourhood schools in 2002. Its schools have become more segregated, with minorities concentrated in poor schools: in 2006 16 of its elementary schools were at least 75% non-white, with at least 90% eating subsidised lunches. Parents in poor areas were offered the choice of transferring their children to wealthier schools, but capacity limits made many such requests impossible to grant.

Mr Tedesco bristles at the notion that Charlotte is the future; he believes that with better management and more efficient spending Wake can avoid Charlotte’s errors, and he may be right. But Wake’s school system faces a $20m shortfall, which makes the board’s task all the more daunting.

GratefulCitizen

04-05-2010, 19:09

Under the new plan, Wake’s schools seemed to do well. In 2007-08 pupils in the third to eighth grades (eight- to 13-year-olds) outperformed the state average on standardised reading and maths tests in every grade, and high-school pupils did the same in every subject in statewide end-of-course exams. The average SAT score for the county’s high-school leavers that year was 54 points above the national average and 76 points above the state average.

Yet the picture grows less rosy on closer inspection. Black pupils lagged behind white in every grade and subject. Poor students fared markedly worse than their wealthier counterparts, and their graduation rate was 54% in 2009, lower than the state average. To some, this indicated that the assignment plan was hiding rather than solving problems: pupils were still failing, but they were just dispersed.

This is something that just baffles me.

These tests use relative scoring.
How is everybody supposed to become "above average"?

Remember this sort of thing during a particular teachers' meeting some 8 1/2 years ago.
The principal was harping on about the scores various schools in the state were getting, and the importance of being a "+1" or better.

Most of the scores were between -2 and +2.
Foolishly, I asked the principal what exactly the scores represented.

A hush came over the lounge.
He didn't know.

They were z-scores: how many standard deviations away from the overall average a given school scored (relative scoring).
Ironically, grading on a curve was forbidden in this district. :rolleyes:

<shrug>
At least we can all take solace in the fact that we are all "above average" drivers.
Just ask anyone. :D

Richard

04-06-2010, 19:28

And round and round the perception goes...what it means or where it stops nobody knows...MOO, of course. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

05-03-2010, 09:45

The 30 April 2010 edition of PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly featured a story on Texas Board of Education's revisions of textbooks.LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Do you think that the history that we have a lot of in this country was written by liberals?

DON MCLEROY: Oh, absolutely, yes.

SEVERSON: Don McLeroy has been practicing dentistry for over 30 years, and until recently he was chairman of the Texas school board—the board that stirred up a hornet’s nest with its efforts to amend Texas history books for the state’s nearly 5 million students.

MCLEROY: Some people characterize, oh, we’re making our standards lean to the right, oh my gosh, you know. The left has dominated a lot of history.

SEVERSON: Barbara Cargill has been on the board [six] years. She teaches science to children and agrees with McLeroy on most issues.

BARBARA CARGILL: We want to take all of the content that liberal publishers might have and want to pour into the classroom, and we serve as the filter for the parents and students and the teachers to kind of make sure that what gets through is really the best information.The video and the whole transcript are available here (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/april-30-2010/texas-textbook-controversy/6187/).

Reports on this story from other outlets are available from Religion Dispatches <<LINK (http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/churchstate/2498/_texas_textbook_massacre%3A_deceitful_propaganda_c ampaign_or_tempest_in_a_teapot___)>>, Studio360 <<LINK2 (http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2010/04/23)>>, and the New York Times <<LINK3 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/weekinreview/21tanenhaus.html)>> and <<LINK4 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html)>>.

Richard

05-03-2010, 09:58

Much a-doodoo about little...

Proposed Revisions to 19 TAC Chapter 113, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies, Subchapter A, Elementary, Subchapter B, Middle School, and Subchapter C, High School, and 19 TAC Chapter 118, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System and Its Benefits, Subchapter A, High School

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/home/sboeprop.html

And so it goes...

Richard

Pete

05-03-2010, 11:32

"......Most pupils attended schools near their homes, but some travelled across the county. Parents complained of a lack of choice and of high-handed treatment from the school board: one aggrieved father who grew up in bureaucracy-racked India said the board’s behaviour reminded him of home..."

This has been a problem with Wake County Schools since they started the program. Every summer parents were up in arms when the new school lists were published. Parents were pissed that some kids were getting bounced to new schools every year just to make the numbers work.

Basing it on who gets free "School Lunch" is also a problem as the state schools encourage parents to lie on the forms.

So public education experts agree there is a class of students they can not teach? Or say they can not be taught in that school? My My, and we want to bus kids into that school?

Sigaba

05-03-2010, 12:16

Much a-doodoo about little...Richard--

I respectfully disagree. My chief concern is that under these guidelines, students may be at a disadvantage when they take history classes in a college environment. The emphasis on the board's values comes at the expense of thinking critically about our nation's past from a 'warts and all' perspective.

Granted, it may be unrealistic to expect high school students to focus intently on the cutting edge of historical scholarship. As a rule of thumb, textbooks are twenty to thirty years behind this edge. However, in many instances, the new guidelines are an amalgamation of historical interpretations that are (a) either very new--and subject to rigorous scholarly debate (i.e. the jury is still out)--or (b) interpretations that are very old--and have been largely discredited.

Examples of (a) include:

the proposition that VENONA vindicates the conduct of HUAC;
the debate over who was responsible for the resurgence of conservativism and when that resurgence began; and
that President Reagan's "leadership" in international affairs is worthy of more attention than other Cold War presidents who are not mentioned (especially Eisenhower).
Examples of (b) include:

the notion that elites operating in the sphere of politics drive historical change;
the suggestion that the Boston Tea Party was on par with the French-Indian War as a cause of the War of American Revolution;
the causes of the American Civil War;
the implicit suggestion that the United States adapted well to coalition warfare during the twentieth century;
the argument that the modern civil rights movement;

was but one movement per group;
was mostly political in nature;
began after the Second World War;
were largely top-down affairs.

Don't get me started on the treatment of American naval history!:confused::eek::mad::p

Richard

05-03-2010, 17:04

Sigaba,

I respectfully disagree with your stated disagreement - not regarding your concerns in general, but as regards your 'suppositions' as related to the TEKS vs their use in the Texas education system as 'broad guidelines' in the development of curriculum by ISDs and schools.

The TEKS are very broad guidelines which - by their nature - are not as concise as you would seem to desire. This is done purposefully to grant the independent school districts, curriculum developers, individual schools, and educators broad leeway in providing the levels of education necessary in meeting the demands of special education, general education, and votech education, as well as the higher demands of Honors, IB, and AP programs offered. The TEKS are 'minimum' guidelines - similar to a recommended minimum speed limit on an Interstate highway - and are often exceeded by schools and educators even in the general ed curriculum.

Districts and independent schools (curriculum specialists, teachers) design their own curriculum from the general guidelines of the TEKS, select their own texts (approved by the TEA upon recommendation from a state-wide reviewing board of teachers within the discipline), and teach the curriculum they developed - not the TEKS.

As far as college preparation goes, many high schools use the same texts the local colleges are using in their lower-level survey History classes, and many students - beyond the district offered Honors, IB, or AP courses - also take their social studies courses at local colleges under a dual-credit option in which they register and attend the college, complete the course along with the normal undergrads, and receive both high school and college credit. To do this requires the permission of the high school (what may be taken varies from school to school), and the student must be 16, have a solid SAT/ACT score, and register as any college student. The course is free at public institutions and the student must pay their own fees at private colleges.

Another option here in Texas for college bound students is the dual-credit degree program offered at schools like Richland College where students can apply their sophomore year of high school and - if accepted - finish their high school requirements while attending college and graduating with both a high school degree and an AA degree which earns them automatic enrollment (discipline and grade specific) as a Junior in specified colleges (e.g., UT-Dallas).

And did you misread the guidelines? For example (I'll just use one for brevity):

TEKS - describe how McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the arms race, and the space race increased Cold War tensions and how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government;

Sig - the proposition that VENONA vindicates the conduct of HUAC;

Did not the papers 'confirm suspicions' but do little to 'vindicate' the actions of HUAC and Senator McCarthy?

Again - based on my experiences here in Texas and the way TEKS are used in the development of curriculum - the foofarah over the 'suggested' changes to the Social Studies guidelines are far more 'fluff' than 'stuff' among those who actually have the responsibility of implementing their intended purpose.

However - YMMV - and so it goes...

Richard's $.02 :munchin

GratefulCitizen

05-03-2010, 19:18

The TEKS are 'minimum' guidelines - similar to a recommended minimum speed limit on an Interstate highway - and are often exceeded by schools and educators even in the general ed curriculum.

Like our freeways, it's doubtful that many people complain about the minimum standards.
The effective maximum "speed limit" imposed many school systems is the problem.

Regress everybody to the mean...

Sigaba

05-03-2010, 20:22

TEKS vs their use in the Texas education system as 'broad guidelines' in the development of curriculum by ISDs and schools.

<<SNIP>>

And did you misread the guidelines? For example (I'll just use one for brevity):

TEKS - describe how McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the arms race, and the space race increased Cold War tensions and how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government;

Sig - the proposition that VENONA vindicates the conduct of HUAC;

Did not the papers 'confirm suspicions' but do little to 'vindicate' the actions of HUAC and Senator McCarthy?

<<SNIP>>Richard--

Thanks for the clarification on the textbook issue. From watching the report, it seemed like the school board got "final cut" on the textbooks as well as the teaching guidelines and their say placed undue political pressure on those who might deviate.

(To be clear, my position towards the concision was one of concern, not desire. Nor was I questioning the intrepidity of teachers and the intellectual curiosity of students in the Lone Star state. Rather, my concern centered around the efforts of some members of the Texas Board of Education to politicize increasingly the learning environment.)

In regards to your secondary point--my readings of the guidelines themselves--I do not believe that I misread them. MOO--worth all of $0.02--the guidelines I highlighted reflect the political viewpoints of the board's conservative members as they discussed them in the video. While I now understand that the guidelines are very broad, their very structure (in terms of emphasis and sequence) privileges certain approaches to history at the expense of others. Indeed, some of these alternatives might advance the overall objectives of the guidelines more efficiently. So while thinking outside the box of the guidelines will take place, the shape of the box itself might influence greatly the nature of that thinking.

As for the Cold War, please recall that I listed that that topic under category (a) 'the jury is still out'. Some agree that events in the U.S. fueled tensions with the Soviets, while others emphasize external factors such as European politics.* Others argue that the Cold War itself was secondary to pre-existing conditions. As written, the guidelines re-enforce Henry Luce's claim of an "American Century" and helps students to understand better the notion of a nationalist approach to American history. However, by shunting away certain approaches to history, the guidelines, if followed too closely, might deprive those same students of an opportunity to understand the nuances of American exceptionalism in a broader global context. The twentieth century may have "belonged" to the United States, but the world itself remained much the same as it had in previous centuries--complex, contradictory, and contested.

In regards to VENONA, I used 'vindicate' deliberately. Since its declassification, commentators have VENONA to re-energize some of the more contentious political debates of that era <<EXAMPLE1 (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=exhuming_mccarthy)>> and <<EXAMPLE2 (http://www.michaelkeller.com/news/news891.htm)>>. However, as Michael Parrish indicated in a review essay of several recent works on Soviet espionage in the U.S., it is one thing to prove (or to disprove) specific charges and counter charges in the interests of national security, and quite another to fire scatter-shot accusations as acts of political theater.**
__________________________________________________ ___
* Compare Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (2009) to Fraser J. Harbutt, Yalta, 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads (2010). It should be noted that Mr. Campbell and Mr. Logevall are well versed in the "international" approach to the history of the Cold War that Harbutt helped to pioneer in the 1980s. (Their collaboration eschews international history so that they may answer the question: Why did the Cold War last so long? IMO, this question is somewhat ahistorical and essentially extends the "revisionist" historiography of the Cold War--now, the U.S. is not only responsible for starting the Cold War, it is also responsible for the conflict being unnecessarily long.)
** Michael E. Parrish, "Soviet Espionage and the Cold War," Diplomatic History, 25:1 (winter, 2001): 105-120.

Richard

05-04-2010, 04:57

Sigaba,

I do understand you position and POV - however - I cannot stress enough the difference between the political theater which goes on at the Texas Board of Education and the overall quality of actual teaching and learning (including History...minus Naval History, of course ;)) which occur at the ISD/school campus levels.

To this end, the use of TEKS guidelines vary greatly - much of it thematically driven and dependent upon the cumulative focus and agreement of the individual Departments. In this way, many more high schools around here today are more organized along the lines of colleges within a university with a tremendous range of options for learning.

FWIW - I have found this guideline - Texas College Readiness Standards, Adopted by the THECB, January 24,2008 - to be of greater importance to the process of curriculum development here in Texas high schools than the TEKS. http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=EADF962E-0E3E-DA80-BAAD2496062F3CD8

However - MOO - a greater problem here in Texas is the drop-out rate which - for a variety of complicated reasons - has held steady at around 30%, even as the overall testable learning standards have increased.

http://www.idra.org/IDRA_Newsletter/October_2009_School_Holding_Power/Texas_Dropout_Counts_2009/

An aside - but I recently finished reviewing and helping edit a 14 page History paper for a jumior at our local high school titled 'The Highway of Change." It was about DDE being recognized in hindsight as a more noteworthy POTUS for his time and the unforeseen on-going cultural and economic impact of his 1956 Interstate System and National Defense Highway Act. My point is that historiography is alive and well where the students and teachers dwell...although it might seem less so where the TBE vaudeville is staged.

Another aside - and although my opinion of standardized test scores is generally negative - here are the comparative SAT scores for where I live - JJ Pearce HS is our home campus http://www.richardson.k12.tx.us/Schools/Test_Scores/sat.htm and campus FAQ link http://www.richardson.k12.tx.us/Schools/schools.asp?OrgCode=004

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

06-22-2010, 05:58

Seems as if Texas is at it again...

Richard :munchin

Deep in the Heart of Texas
Stanley Fish, NYT, 21 June 2010

A number of responses to my column about the education I received at Classical High (a public school in Providence, RI) rehearsed a story of late-flowering gratitude after an earlier period of frustration and resentment. “I had a high school (or a college) experience like yours,” the poster typically said, “and I hated it and complained all the time about the homework, the demands and the discipline; but now I am so pleased that I stayed the course and acquired skills that have served me well throughout my entire life.”

Now suppose those who wrote in to me had been asked when they were young if they were satisfied with the instruction they were receiving? Were they getting their money’s worth? Would they recommend the renewal of their teachers’ contracts? I suspect the answers would have been “no,” “no” and “no,” and if their answers had been taken seriously and the curriculum they felt oppressed by had been altered accordingly, they would not have had the rich intellectual lives they now happily report, or acquired some of the skills that have stood them in good stead all these years.

The relationship between present action and the judgment of value is different in other contexts. If a waiter asks me, “Was everything to your taste, sir?”, I am in a position to answer him authoritatively (if I choose to). When I pick up my shirt from the dry cleaner, I immediately know whether the offending spot has been removed. But when, as a student, I exit from a class or even from an entire course, it may be years before I know whether I got my money’s worth, and that goes both ways. A course I absolutely loved may turn out be worthless because the instructor substituted wit and showmanship for an explanation of basic concepts. And a course that left me feeling confused and convinced I had learned very little might turn out to have planted seeds that later grew into mighty trees of understanding.

“Deferred judgment” or “judgment in the fullness of time” seems to be appropriate to the evaluation of teaching.

And that is why student evaluations (against which I have inveighed since I first saw them in the ’60s) are all wrong as a way of assessing teaching performance: they measure present satisfaction in relation to a set of expectations that may have little to do with the deep efficacy of learning. Students tend to like everything neatly laid out; they want to know exactly where they are; they don’t welcome the introduction of multiple perspectives, especially when no master perspective reconciles them; they want the answers.

But sometimes (although not always) effective teaching involves the deliberate inducing of confusion, the withholding of clarity, the refusal to provide answers; sometimes a class or an entire semester is spent being taken down various garden paths leading to dead ends that require inquiry to begin all over again, with the same discombobulating result; sometimes your expectations have been systematically disappointed. And sometimes that disappointment, while extremely annoying at the moment, is the sign that you’ve just been the beneficiary of a great course, although you may not realize it for decades.

Needless to say, that kind of teaching is unlikely to receive high marks on a questionnaire that rewards the linear delivery of information and penalizes a pedagogy that probes, discomforts and fails to provide closure. Student evaluations, by their very nature, can only recognize, and by recognizing encourage, assembly-line teaching that delivers a nicely packaged product that can be assessed as easily and immediately as one assesses the quality of a hamburger.

Now an entire state is on the brink of implementing just that bite-sized style of teaching under the rubric of “customer satisfaction.” Texas, currently in a contest with Arizona and South Carolina for the title “most retrograde,” is signing on to a plan of “reform” generated by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank dedicated to private property rights and limited government. Backed by Governor Rick Perry (yes, the one who thinks secession is a viable political option), the plan calls for college and university teachers to contract with their customers — that is, students — and to be rewarded by as much as $10,000 depending on whether they meet the contract’s terms. The idea is to hold “tenured professors more accountable” (“A&M regents push reforms,” The Eagle, June 13, 2010), and what they will be accountable to are not professional standards but the preferences of their students, who, in advance of being instructed, are presumed to be authorities on how best they should be taught.

A corollary proposal is to shift funding to the student-customers by giving them vouchers. “Instead of direct appropriations, every Texas high school graduate would get a set amount of state funds usable at any state university” (William Lutz, Lone Star Report, May 23, 2008). Once this gets going (and Texas A&M is already pushing it), you can expect professors to advertise: “Come to my college, sign up for my class, and I can guarantee you a fun-filled time and you won’t have to break a sweat.” If there ever was a recipe for non-risk-taking, entirely formulaic, dumbed-down teaching, this is it. One respondent to the June 13 story in The Eagle got it exactly right: “In the recent past, A&M announced that it wanted to be a top ten public university. Now it appears to be announcing it wants to be an investment firm, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and a car dealership.”

The people behind this cockamamie scheme wouldn’t be fazed by this description or regard it as an accusation. They actively want their colleges and universities to be like car dealerships, with an emphasis on the bottom line, efficiency and consumer choice. This means that the middleman has to be cut out, and in this case the middleman is the faculty member. Jeff Sandefer, whose presentation at a 2008 meeting with Governor Perry and the university Board of Regents established the tone and contours of “reform,” makes no bones about it. Professors, he complains, seem to believe “that our colleges and universities belong to them” (“Public Universities Belong to the Public, Not the Faculty,” Texas Public Policy Foundation, May 6, 2009). It’s time, he says, to stop writing “blank checks” to faculty members who occupy themselves “writing academic journal articles that few people read.”

That of course is an accurate description. Senior faculty members do in fact write articles that only their peers at the top of very rarefied disciplines can read.

That is what academic research is all about: highly qualified scholars working on problems that may have no practical payoff except the unquantifiable payoff of advancing our understanding of something in philosophy or nature that has long been a mystery.

More than occasionally in these columns I have mocked the pretensions of those faculty members who cry “academic freedom” at the slightest infringement of what they take to be their god-given liberty. But academic freedom does in fact have a meaning and a legitimate purpose: it protects faculty members from external constituencies intent on taking over the enterprise for mercenary or political reasons. The Texas “reform plan” is just that; its so called reforms would be funny were they not so dangerous. And it all began with student evaluations, or, rather, with the mistake of taking them seriously. Since then, it’s been all downhill.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/deep-in-the-heart-of-texas/?pagemode=print

Sigaba

12-07-2010, 10:08

From the New York Times, source is here (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/07/education/07education_graph/07education_graph-popup.jpg).

In a word, "zoiks!":eek:

Richard

12-07-2010, 10:18

Yes...but...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?_r=1&hp

Richard :munchin

Sigaba

12-07-2010, 10:35

Yes...but...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?_r=1&hp

Richard :munchinQP Richard--

Thanks. My Google Fu is weak this morning.:o

nmap

12-07-2010, 12:02

Not to worry - it will get worse. :D

Although the pink font is meant to suggest humor, the truth is that the students are unwilling to do the basics. Not unable - no. They have the ability, but not the willingness. That lack of motivation propagates such that they are not taught important concepts and do not correct the deficiency on their own. In any area, this is problematic. In math and science, it simply will not do. But the tendency exists, and the trend grows worse.

Now please understand that when it comes to grading, I am as lax as it is possible to be. I tend to be ever-so-understanding about any excuse, and permit extra credit, make-up work, late assignments and so forth. Furthermore, I make no secret of what I do.

The only time I got chewed on for grading was when I was routinely flunking 10% of the students...because...they didn't bother to turn anything in. No, I'm not kidding. This, by the way, is a University that aspires to tier one research status.

Cheating? Ha! I had a pair that turned in exact duplicate assignments, finished within 1 second of each other, had the exact same errors...quite unusual errors, BTW...and who signed the forms admitting they were cheating. My boss at the time refused to sign the forms. His reason? It was too much trouble.

Insist on attendance? Sure, try it! And the student's mother will call up the staff, scream, and threaten. They will fold like a wet Kleenex.

If we want some accomplishment, we might consider rewarding it....say, by giving most students a "B", and the top 30% or so an "A". Radical, I know. Not going to happen...

MOO, we cannot expect to correct the existing problem unless and until achievement is deemed worth the effort, and failure is a real possibility. Without that, the degree is devalued. And as intellectual failures get degrees with high GPAs, the value of such education is, again MOO, debased. And yet, we wonder why we are being surpassed elsewhere?

At some point, the affluence we have enjoyed will be lost to us. Is currently being lost, IMO. It will take a long time and a lot of work to regain it - and doing so is by no means a foregone conclusion.

YMMV.

Penn

02-11-2012, 21:32

http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse

Sigaba

03-31-2015, 16:55

The 28 March 2015 issue of The Economist has a special report on universities, with an emphasis on the state of American tertiary education. The on line edition of the issue is available here (http://www.economist.com/printedition/2015-03-28). An overview is provided in a leader, available here (http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647285-more-and-more-money-being-spent-higher-education-too-little-known-about-whether-it), and quoted below.“AFTER God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship and settled Civil Government, one of the next things we longed for and looked for was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity.” So ran the first university fundraising brochure, sent from Harvard College to England in 1643 to drum up cash.

America’s early and lasting enthusiasm for higher education has given it the biggest and best-funded system in the world. Hardly surprising, then, that other countries are emulating its model as they send ever more of their school-leavers to get a university education. But, as our special report argues, just as America’s system is spreading, there are growing concerns about whether it is really worth the vast sums spent on it.

The American way
The modern research university, a marriage of the Oxbridge college and the German research institute, was invented in America, and has become the gold standard for the world. Mass higher education started in America in the 19th century, spread to Europe and East Asia in the 20th and is now happening pretty much everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. The global tertiary-enrolment ratio—the share of the student-age population at university—went up from 14% to 32% in the two decades to 2012; in that time, the number of countries with a ratio of more than half rose from five to 54. University enrolment is growing faster even than demand for that ultimate consumer good, the car. The hunger for degrees is understandable: these days they are a requirement for a decent job and an entry ticket to the middle class.

There are, broadly, two ways of satisfying this huge demand. One is the continental European approach of state funding and provision, in which most institutions have equal resources and status. The second is the more market-based American model, of mixed private-public funding and provision, with brilliant, well-funded institutions at the top and poorer ones at the bottom.

The world is moving in the American direction. More universities in more countries are charging students tuition fees. And as politicians realise that the “knowledge economy” requires top-flight research, public resources are being focused on a few privileged institutions and the competition to create world-class universities is intensifying.

In some ways, that is excellent. The best universities are responsible for many of the discoveries that have made the world a safer, richer and more interesting place. But costs are rising. OECD countries spend 1.6% of GDP on higher education, compared with 1.3% in 2000. If the American model continues to spread, that share will rise further. America spends 2.7% of its GDP on higher education.

If America were getting its money’s worth from higher education, that would be fine. On the research side, it probably is. In 2014, 19 of the 20 universities in the world that produced the most highly cited research papers were American. But on the educational side, the picture is less clear. American graduates score poorly in international numeracy and literacy rankings, and are slipping. In a recent study of academic achievement, 45% of American students made no gains in their first two years of university. Meanwhile, tuition fees have nearly doubled, in real terms, in 20 years. Student debt, at nearly $1.2 trillion, has surpassed credit-card debt and car loans.

None of this means that going to university is a bad investment for a student. A bachelor’s degree in America still yields, on average, a 15% return. But it is less clear whether the growing investment in tertiary education makes sense for society as a whole. If graduates earn more than non-graduates because their studies have made them more productive, then university education will boost economic growth and society should want more of it. Yet poor student scores suggest otherwise. So, too, does the testimony of employers. A recent study of recruitment by professional-services firms found that they took graduates from the most prestigious universities not because of what the candidates might have learned but because of those institutions’ tough selection procedures. In short, students could be paying vast sums merely to go through a very elaborate sorting mechanism.

If America’s universities are indeed poor value for money, why might that be? The main reason is that the market for higher education, like that for health care, does not work well. The government rewards universities for research, so that is what professors concentrate on. Students are looking for a degree from an institution that will impress employers; employers are interested primarily in the selectivity of the institution a candidate has attended. Since the value of a degree from a selective institution depends on its scarcity, good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates. And, in the absence of a clear measure of educational output, price becomes a proxy for quality. By charging more, good universities gain both revenue and prestige.

What’s it worth?
More information would make the higher-education market work better. Common tests, which students would sit alongside their final exams, could provide a comparable measure of universities’ educational performance. Students would have a better idea of what was taught well where, and employers of how much job candidates had learned. Resources would flow towards universities that were providing value for money and away from those that were not. Institutions would have an incentive to improve teaching and use technology to cut costs. Online courses, which have so far failed to realise their promise of revolutionising higher education, would begin to make a bigger impact. The government would have a better idea of whether society should be investing more or less in higher education.

Sceptics argue that university education is too complex to be measured in this way. Certainly, testing 22-year-olds is harder than testing 12-year-olds. Yet many disciplines contain a core of material that all graduates in that subject should know. More generally, universities should be able to show that they have taught their students to think critically.

Some governments and institutions are trying to shed light on educational outcomes. A few American state-university systems already administer a common test to graduates. Testing is spreading in Latin America. Most important, the OECD, whose PISA assessments of secondary education gave governments a jolt, is also having a go. It wants to test subject-knowledge and reasoning ability, starting with economics and engineering, and marking institutions as well as countries. Asian governments are keen, partly because they believe that a measure of the quality of their universities will help them in the market for international students; rich countries, which have more to lose and less to gain, are not. Without funding and participation from them, the effort will remain grounded.

Governments need to get behind these efforts. America’s market-based system of well-funded, highly differentiated universities can be of huge benefit to society if students learn the right stuff. If not, a great deal of money will be wasted.