A Teacher on Teaching

Index of Education Posts

2013-05-24T08:03:00.000-04:00

MISSION STATEMENT

IF YOU CARE ABOUT America’s public schools, you may enjoy a few older posts.

Two years ago, I said in my very first entry (“Numbers Don’t Lie: Our Teachers and Doctors Are Failing”) that I planned to stand up for good teachers in every way possible, but never for bad ones.

I hold to that principle to this day. I would also note that most of America’s teachers are good.

If you are one of the good ones and have a topic that concerns you send me an email (vilejjv@yahoo.com). I’m curious what other teachers think. When I look at current reforms in education it appears to me experts are pushing disastrous policies. I can’t imagine how most of these “bold” policies are helping.

I am also convinced that it is time for good teachers to band together and start to fight back.

Our main foes are:

A) Arrogant reformers who don’t know anything about teaching and little about the needs of real children.

B) Politicians who know less than the reformers but mistake their arrogance for wisdom.

C) Critics who bash public school teachers—as if all 3,000,000 of us are a pathetic losers—and blame us for every problem in the schools.

Finally, I promise to say what I can to defend the true purpose of education. That purpose is to enhance maximum learning and personal growth for the maximum number of students in every way humanly possible.

INDEX OF EDUCATION POSTS

If you only read one entry, I suggest the post listed second at right. (The link also follows at the end of this paragraph). In my most popular education article yet we consider the question: “How many school reformers does it take to fix a school?” (If you’re a real teacher you probably know the answer already.)

Other topics are listed below.

ARMING TEACHERS

After the Newtown, Connecticut massacre I shared my thoughts on arming teachers. In 1985, one of my seventh grade students brought a gun to class, intending to shoot me and at least one classmate. So I have a particular interest in the topic.

The shooting at Chardon High (February 2012) tells us something about the problems teachers and students face in the real world.

BAD PARENTS

In the summer of 2012 Johns Hopkins University released a study on student absenteeism. Every good teacher could have predicted the results.

My friend teaches in a poor school district. What could she do to save Carl if he lived with a mother whose mind was addled by drugs? (Carl’s father was long gone from the picture, of course.)

Some kids are homeless and others live with crazy parents. Which bold idea in school reform (standardized testing, vouchers, charter schools, etc.) comes closest to addressing the critical needs of such children?

See also: June 18, 2011. July 8, 2011. November 11, 2011.

BLAMING TEACHERS—FOR EVERYTHING

Consider the ten great myths regarding this great nation’s public schools and public school teachers. (I debunk many of them in posts below.) Of course, if you’re a teacher you may be to dimwitted to read any of these articles. No, seriously. One of those myths is that we who teach are all morons.

Like all good teachers I did what I could to beat back the problems of society. It wasn’t easy when Kara admitted she was hooked on drugs and her friend Dominique turned up pregnant later.

Sometimes a careful look at numbers proves teachers aren’t failing. Maybe the society around them has issues.

Michelle Rhee, another one of our leading education reformers, once promised to use her broom and sweep out all the bad teachers in the Washington, D. C. schools. She failed to say what she would do about the students carrying knives.

Did know that America’s failing schools are undermining national security? I didn’t until I read an article in the New York Times.

BULLIES

I had good success in reducing bullying. In this post I lay out a few of my better ideas. I was bullied myself in seventh grade so I always understood how it felt. (My time in the U. S. Marine Corps later helped me address bullies after I became a teacher.)

CHARTER SCHOOLS

We know what happens when business interests run for-profit colleges. Crooks abound! It’s hard to see how they’ll do better when it comes to charter schools.

Actually, we already have evidence of what happens when shysters run charter schools. As an added bonus, you have a science curriculum that teaches kids the Loch Ness monster is actually a dinosaur.

Education experts love charter schools. It’s like a charter school—a building itself—can have magical powers. So: can charter schools save every child? What good does a charter school do in cases where parents are terrible?

One way to insure your charter school makes money and to get rid of kids with discipline issues at the same time: charge $140 for discipline packets when they get in trouble, like the Noble Schools in Chicago.

Once we set up more charter schools and hand out public funds we may get more than we bargained for in the way of religion.

CORPORATE SCHOOLS

If you bring business efficiency to public schools you’ll be introducing business morality too. What happens if businesses run charter schools the same way pharmaceutical companies market harmful drugs for children?

What could go wrong if Big Business starts running the public schools? Let the record of Big Business provide examples.

See also: June 30, 2011. November 4, 2011. June 8, 2012 (The latter focuses on shady dealings involving online charter schools.)

Corporate interests now have a foot in the door and hope to shape what happens in our public schools. This may not be a positive trend where Rupert Murdoch is involved.

Conservatives claim that the big problem in America’s schools is unions. We take a look at the great work sometimes done by business heroes to form a picture of how they might run schools.

EDUCATION EXPERTS

In this satiric post we send education experts to the doctor to get advice from car mechanics and plumbers. I mean, it could work. After all, none of our leading education reformers has ever spent much time in a classroom!

Making fun of education experts is too easy. William Shakespeare explains what school reformers miss.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a leader in school reform circles, tells audiences that dumb teachers are the biggest issue in U. S. education today. What is it that the brilliant billionaire might be missing?

Do the bureaucrats in Washington, D. C. actually help or hinder real teachers and real students? Um...it depends on how important you think it is to take a goat census.

Here in Ohio—when it comes to school reform—we’re on round ten. The ideas the experts come up with are still dumb.

Saving every child is not as easy as the education experts make it sound. After all, someone has to teach all the gang members in Salinas, California.

EDUCATION, KEY TO SUCCESS

I thought the key to my success in the classroom and the key to my students’ success was obvious.

Is the problem in education that we don’t have enough standards on paper or is the key the standards individuals set for themselves?

You can write all the education standards you want. It’s like changing the food plate standards. Individual willpower is the key to losing weight.

GOOD TEACHERS, EXISTENCE OF

Critics forget that there are hundreds of thousands of good teachers at work every day in this country. I asked former students to talk about educators who made a difference. They fill a series of posts with heartfelt comments.

January 31, 2012. January 15, 2012. January 13, 2012. January 10, 2012. January 5, 2012. July 12, 2012

GOOD TEACHERS; TEACH FOR AMERICA

If you’re a public school teacher and not yet familiar with this program you might want to pay attention. The Teach for America approach has its virtues but too many of the people who run it and support it are puffed up with arrogance. The premise of the program is simple. The teachers we have are idiots. We need to recruit more teachers from Harvard and Yale. Smarter teachers will fix all our school problems.

GRADING SCHOOLS

When do we give up on the idea that grading schools will solve our biggest problems? Maybe we need to grade society.

MERIT PAY

Is it a good public policy to tie teacher pay to test scores? We consider the speech therapist who reaches an autistic child and finally helps her communicate.

How do you “measure” what it means when a teacher convinces a seventh grader he has the talent to go to college eventually? Joey provides an answer in a letter he writes to his old history teacher from the University of Kentucky.

You can argue that tying pay to test scores is a good idea. You just have to ignore basic truths about learning.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

We’re now spending billions of dollars annually on all kinds of school reforms. So far, SAT scores have declined every year since No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2002. Scores reached record lows in 2012.

See also: September 19, 2011.

Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Performance have flat-lined in recent years. Leading reformers are puzzled.

PRAYER IN SCHOOL

It sounds like a good idea and seems harmless to many Americans. We might not like where it leads us.

RHEE, MICHELLE

No school reformer has done more to damage the image of public school teachers in recent years than Ms. Rhee. (Even Oprah fell for Rhee’s self-serving line of baloney.) Rhee’s claim to fame rests on raising test scores in miraculous fashion. It turns out, however, that it was all a giant Ponzi scheme.

See also: July 6, 2011 (this post includes some of the same language as the post above but goes into greater detail on the cheating.)

How come if education reformers are so smart they don’t realize that teachers can’t reach kids who don’t come to school?

SCHOOL CRISIS

The whole concept that the nation’s public schools are failing (compared to schools in Finland and Japan) is wrong. So what if American students rank 25th in math!!!! What if the same kind of lists prove that America ranks 24th in life expectancy? Are hospitals in America failing?

You can use the lists to prove that our dietitians are awful and our judges are great.

You can prove anything with simple lists. I prove that America’s cops are terrible (even though that’s not true).

If you haven’t heard the U. S. economy is collapsing because our students are unprepared to compete in a global economy. How does this argument hold up if we’re losing jobs to Bangladesh, not Finland?

How do American kids catch up with South Korean kids in international competitions if the latter are devoting fourteen hours daily to their studies?

STANDARDIZED TESTING

What happens if I bring in fourteen combat veterans to speak to 700 students at my old school? It’s not standardized education and the experiences these veterans share can’t be “measured” on any standardized test.

What did it really mean when the worst stutterer I ever had in class spoke in front of his peers for an entire period and won a standing ovation? This was the kind of learning experience that matters.

In my class students were required to read a number of books for outside reading as a part of their grade. I wanted to engage as many kids in reading as possible; so I gave them hundreds of books to choose from. Is that standardized teaching? Comments by former students help provide a critical answer.

We’ve farted around with standardized tests for two decades. So: Should I focus on Shay’s Rebellion, as the State of Ohio now insists, or will my students be more likely to hear about “The American Dream” in years to come? And, if you like standardized tests, what do you about Songhai trade?

George Stranahan (who taught for half-a-century) addresses a number of critical issues in his book, A Predicament of Innocents. He shares my disdain for standardized testing.

If the tragedy of 9/11 happened today could I cover it the story in my history class in any detail? Nothing about current events can end up on a standardized test at the end of the year—and that means testing is crazy.

I confess to my sins: I wasn’t all that interested in teaching to the test. I hope Katy and Jenab forgive me.

See also: May 31, 2011.

I loved teaching because of what students learned to do with their talents and what I was able to do to help bring those talents out. By the way, this would be the antithesis of standardized learning.

Students don’t have standardized talents. They’re talented individuals.

Stephanie’s creative thinking shows us why a focus on standardized learning is the policy of the insane.

STUDENTS, FORMER

I’m Facebook friends with hundreds of former students. They keep me posted on what they’re doing and remind me why I liked teaching so much. There’s really nothing wrong with young people today and these guys prove it.

See also: February 26, 2012. March 24, 2013. March 26, 2013.

(This series of posts will be continued soon.)

TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

New technology opens up new possibilities in any classroom. The battle to fire students with a desire for learning remains unchanged.

UNIONS, TEACHERS’

Fox News hates teachers’ unions. Fox News thinks public school teachers are lazy incompetents. Suddenly, Fox News loves poor down-trodden members of teachers’ unions? This tale is a head-scratcher.

Here in Ohio, lawmakers want teachers in “failing school districts” to start proving they’re not idiots. How is it that most of the “bad” teachers seem to end up working in the poorest schools in our nation?

Frank Bruni, writing in the New York Times, lays blame for the failure of school reform on recalcitrant teachers and their unions. The humble blogger explains why Mr. Bruni is full of goose stuffings.

Ever wonder why teachers need union protection? Consider the case of Miramonte Elementary School. (Two postings.)

Here in Ohio, if you listened to right-wingers talk, you’d think most members of teachers’ unions were ax murderers. Actually, we’re not.

VOUCHERS

We need some school reformer or education expert to explain how vouchers help if a child’s problems are severe and begin and end at home.

If we have to have vouchers let’s do it right. Make private schools that accept them operate by the same exact rules as the public schools. That means they have to take everyone. In fact, if a private school is so much better, let’s allow the public schools to send them their most troubled students.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Want to know why this movie was so stupid? Consider what director Davis Guggenheim and the critics missed.

Education always matters.
How best do we foster learning?

What One Student Rant by Jeff Bliss Doesn't Tell Us

2013-05-20T01:02:00.001-04:00

IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE NEWS REPORT AND VIDEO of Jeff Bliss going off on the teacher in his World History class, you should check out the link.

The “in-depth analysis” by Channel WFAA fills up two minutes and forty-one seconds of valuable air time. More than 3.8 million people have watched it. Thousands have felt a strange urge to comment. The actual rant lasts only ninety seconds. You can see the original on YouTube. It’s listed under the title: “Jeff Bliss Rant against Lazy Teacher.”

And here’s what’s so cool about this story.

All you need to do is invest a snippet of time. Once you finish you know all you need to know about U.S. education. You can be a school critic! That’s what many who enjoy this brief glimpse of life into one Texas classroom decide.

On one of the videos the “top comment” was: “That teacher ought to be fired.” It had 85 “likes” and no “dislikes” at all.

I added the first.

Admittedly, as a former educator, I watched the video and perused the comments with a bit of bias. I noticed, for example, that many newly-minted experts seemed minimally grounded in logic and reality. If anything, I felt bad because maybe schools aren’t doing a good job teaching critical thinking.

When I clicked on the “Lazy Teacher” video, for example, there were already 3,300 comments. Clearly, not all those who felt compelled to start typing spent as much time cogitating as they did whacking the keyboard with abandon:

Don’t you love the internet—a place where ignorant individuals can call other human beings “niggerdumb” and make informed judgments about all the black kids in class “there for the easy ride” and “not learning jack shit,” and you can somehow tell a teacher is a “fucking fat feminist” and not even realize who really, really, sounds dumb?

It’s bad enough you get this kind of thinking from fools who comment via YouTube; but the Bliss clip has been featured on Fox News.

(Motto: We Hate Unionized Teachers—You Should Hate Them, Too!)

Again, we are dealing with ninety seconds of video, in one classroom, an incident involving one teacher and one student. We have not heard the teacher’s explanation and if we rely on Fox News we never will.

Logically, then, we can’t draw broad conclusions. Nevertheless, many of the Fox Faithful still do (although not all are sympathetic to Mr. Bliss and his predicament):

Donna Ramsey Bowen: The Unions have ruined our schools....among other things. Unions were great when they were started. Now, they hurt more than they help. Teachers are a good example of that. Teachers do not actually have to "teach" any longer and they cannot be fired because the Unions have all these regulations the school must follow first. Most Unions require someone to get in trouble at least 3 times - and it has to be for the Exact same thing - before they can be fired

Betty Shelton: Teachers have gotten lazy over the last 30 years. That is why kids can't read at grade level. And End of Grade Or End Of Course test are ignored and child is passed to the next grade or gradeuated.

Mary Long: Right ON! This is why we have nothing but Illiteracy in this country...Teachers care about their pay, not the students. Public Education needs to GO AWAY! We have a PATHETIC work force with Teachers and Unions across the board....All about the money....NO QUALITY in Education.

Debi Krupna Mielach: LOVE this kid!!! More passion in that short clip than that teacher probably showed in the entire school year. God bless you, Mr. Bliss. Don't lose your fire!

Here, I am thinking to myself. I am wondering how Debi sees through walls into other rooms and around corners, etc. I am thinking I’d like to be able to ask: “Ms. Mielach, if I have a video of you sitting on the toilet for ninety seconds does that prove you have been seated on the toilet all year?

That’s what, logically, I am thinking. Many other commentators are apparently typing as fast as they can, which is faster than they can think:

Arlene Parson: This kid has a future as a motivational speaker at a teacher's convention. Keep it up Mr. Bliss.

Josh Stringer: I hope she gets fired. She was only doing the minimum to get a paycheck. Most places I know you would get fired unless you work at mcdonalds.

Sean Denaris: Listen to the teacher sounds so bored. Likely class taught the same way. Wish more people would stand up.

Beth McKenna Wade: Kudos to this kid... Sadly "teachers" like this are common place in alot of our schools these days!!

Jason Robertson: paid leave? for get that you don't work you don't get paid. I can not stand unions they have screwed up my childhood, rrrrrr and who pays to have a teacher that is not working

(Okay, now we know that the Fox Message has been sinking in to plenty of otherwise empty heads. Unions are terrible. Union members are bums.)

I decide if I’m going to comment, I should know more. I watch several interviews. There are plenty. All feature Mr. Bliss, none let us hear from the teacher. Her name is Julie Phung.

Jeff Bliss comments on an incident at Duncanville High School in Texas.

Here’s what I notice:

1. During the original rant the rest of the class appears to be working.

2. Say what you want about the young man's message, his rant eats up ninety seconds of education for every other kid in the room.

3. Bliss is far angrier than the teacher—and if her responses seem tepid we cannot know how much she cares about teaching. (If you are a teacher you don’t want to have this sort of situation escalate. You want the student to exit the room quickly and you want the rest of the kids to remain on task.)

4. Most of the Bliss interviews cut off the last part of the rant. If Bliss sounds eloquent in spots he sounds belligerent at the end. Again, we don’t know what sentiments motivate him.

5. What precipitated this incident? At some point Phung told him to “stop bitchin’.” It’s in inelegant choice of words but in a high school not something kids and teachers don’t hear every day.

6. Apparently, Bliss wanted to know why his class hadn’t had more time to prepare for the STAR test, the Texas standardized tests. These are the kinds of tests good teachers hate, the kind most teachers feel are making education worse. Bliss is angry because his instructor keeps handing out packets—but in my final year in the classroom that’s what we were ordered to do. Keep using those packets, specially prepared by the State of Ohio in my case case, because we must raise test scores!

I HATE TO BREAK IT TO THE CRITICS, to young Bliss, or to school reformers, but you don’t measure “inspiration” with standardized testing.

I still have an abiding interest in the future of American education. So I watch several more interviews. Not a peep from Ms. Phung. I only hear what Bliss thinks. I discover that he is an 18-year-old sophomore. By admission, he has failed once, during his freshman year. Based on age, I assume he has been held back twice.

He started ninth grade a second time, lasted a semester, and dropped out.

Was Bliss previously a terrible student? Did he have attendance problems? Were there substance abuse issues or problems in the home? How is he doing now in other classes? Has he truly turned his life around? Is he working diligently? Or, is he a troublemaker and a loose cannon? From the evidence we possess we don’t know.

We do know Bliss is back in school. That speaks greatly to his credit.

I spend ten minutes watching the “Jeff Bliss’ Interview on Fox4.” I find myself liking some of what he says. His mother sounds nice and she doesn’t want the teacher fired. I notice that there is no mention of a father in any of the stories. I think that might tell us something.

I come away from this excursion into the world of YouTube and Facebook commentary still not feeling like I can make any judgments.

Well, except one.

I have noticed in recent years that bashing public school teachers and making wild claims—that America’s public schools are failing—all failing—and all failing because of unions—has now become a right-wing sport.

The only definitive statement I will make is that people who make broad generalizations based on limited evidence are ignorant. It’s like convicting someone of a murder that took place in Dallas because at the time of the crime the “suspect” was, in fact, a human being living anywhere in Texas.

I’m amazed by how many unenlightened individuals feel they can judge Ms. Phung after ninety seconds—and then compound their error by using one erroneous conclusion as foundation for another.

SOMEONE IN THIS COUNTRY NEEDS TO SPEAK UP for all the good teachers. Ms. Phung may be one.

P. S. Let us wish Mr. Bliss great success in all his future educational endeavors.

Emperor of A, B, C and D.

2013-05-06T18:12:00.001-04:00

TO MAKE THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING let me write as if I were still teaching today.

Imagine that I am in my thirty-third year in the classroom. Lately, all I hear is that my primary purpose is to “teach to the test.”

I am a veteran teacher, however. There is a right way to teach and a wrong way to teach. And I don’t want to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

I want to teach right.

Again, I am a veteran educator. That means I tend to be skeptical because I’ve been around. When I first took a spot at the front of the classroom there were no standardized tests. Somehow I managed. In fact, I set my own very high standards. It was not until the late 80’s that Ohio and other states implemented the first big batteries of these kinds of tests.

State tests produced limited fruit in the 90’s. (Remember: I was there.) In 2002 those tests were replaced with new tests in response to No Child Left Behind. In Ohio one of the tests at the eighth grade level covered social studies, my area of expertise.

My colleagues and I devoted hundreds of hours of our time preparing ourselves to teach to this test. It was phased in slowly and died abruptly. When the social-studies sub-test proved hopelessly flawed the State of Ohio killed off its own child in 2009.

Now, in 2013 (for this example), my principal is harping on the idea that we must focus on a new set of standards tied to the Common Core Curriculum. I am a veteran teacher. I remain skeptical. I doubt these “core” standards will make any great difference.

NO, WORSE. I EXPECT THEM TO DO HARM.

I am also a grumbler, especially when bureaucrats interfere with teachers. I grumble with friends at lunch. “I already know which students are meeting my high standards,” I inform colleagues seated at a table in the lounge.

“You know how I ‘measure?’”

“It’s called ‘grading,’ I think,” replies our resident staff comedian in a feigned, dimwitted tone.

We all enjoy a laugh; but inside we are dying. Unfortunately—and I use that word with clear intent—we are dedicated teachers. We want students to learn as much as possible. In an era of standardized learning that can be dangerous to any educator.

I have spent my entire career on the prowl for good material to use in my classes. This is one of my strengths as an educator, my willingness to pursue knowledge. And I feel it in my bones—that this pursuit never ends—and see it as my primary goal to fire pupils with a love of learning.

My strengths as an educator are not standardized.

Twenty-five years ago, at the dawn of The Age of the Testing Fix, I stumbled upon a collection of poems by Langston Hughes. I don’t know if other social studies teachers have read them. I doubt bureaucrats who drew up the new standards bothered.

Yet, I know one poem is especially moving. Each year I use it as part of a unit my classes are about to begin: The Era of Reconstruction in U. S. History (1865-1877).

(See poem below.)

“Merry-Go-Round”

Colored child at carnival:

Where is the Jim Crow section

On this merry-go-round,

Mister, cause I want to ride?

Down South where I come from

White and colored

Can’t sit side by side.

Down South on the train

There’s a Jim Crow car.

On the bus we’re put in the back—

But there ain’t no back

To a merry-go-round!

Where’s the horse

For a kid that’s black?

The question today, of course, is not whether this poem is a good one nor whether it engages students. The question is: Will this be on the standardized test?

(Sadly, it will not.)

If I am left to my devices we don’t use this poem the first day of the new unit; but we do use it.

The day we do I will ask 150 teens to answer two questions (see below). I will do this because I know my students will fill the classroom with creative comment. I will use “Merry-Go-Round” because I know true learning comes in a thousand disguises:

1. Why do you think Hughes chose a child as focus for this poem?

2. What do you think the poet was trying to say about Jim Crow segregation by using a merry-go-round?

EVEN BEFORE WE START THIS NEW UNIT here is something else I know—because I am a veteran teacher—because I have eyes, ears and a nose. I know that adults in this country have no real knowledge of the Reconstruction Era.

To put it plainly, then, students won’t need to remember much from this era of our nation’s history. If they don’t know why President Andrew Johnson was impeached they’ll survive. (I doubt, if you read this far, you remember the reason.)

Before we start the unit I study the manual of standards the State of Ohio went to great trouble to develop. For purposes of this example, I refer to the standards from 2008, the year I retired. (Remember, this whole set of standards went into the dumpster.)

First, I know that these standards were drawn up by functionaries in Columbus, Ohio and pushed for by bureaucrats in Washington, D. C.

I know that none of these people have ever tried to engage a room filled with teens. Here is all the guidance they offer:

INDICATOR 11: Analyze the consequences of Reconstruction with emphasis on:

A. President Lincoln’s assassination and the ensuing struggle for control of Reconstruction, including the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.

B. Attempts to protect the rights of and enhance opportunities for the freedmen, including the basic provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

C. The Ku Klux Klan and the enactment of the black codes.

That’s it for the vaunted state standards. So, what exactly do I teach? What do the bureaucrats want my students to know?

And here’s my big problem. We are expected to teach to a test that will include only fifty questions. (The social studies test used in Ohio from 2003 to 2009 covered three years of material in that many questions.) So, there’s no way a standardized test will include more than two items from the Reconstruction period. There’s a fair chance there will be none.

I don’t want to find the single question in the academic haystack. I don’t have any desire to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

I don’t believe learning can be boiled down to a few paltry multiple-choice questions.

Yet I know—because I have been teaching for decades—that unless a person is named or a document mentioned or a term highlighted in the standardized curriculum those names and concepts cannot be turned into questions when it’s time for the test.

I look at the crappy standards provided: Langston Hughes isn’t mentioned; nor is his poem.

What about John Wilkes Booth? His name is missing. So, should I really expect students to know who he was? Every time an assassination occurs in this country it leads to comparisons, and people bring up Booth and Abraham Lincoln (or Lee Harvey Oswald and John F. Kennedy).

So, yes, I add Booth to my own standards. And I throw in Lee Harvey, too.

I notice that the standards also fail to mention the term “Jim Crow.” This concerns be because I read history for a living and almost no one today mentions “black codes.” Instead, those who wish to discuss race use the term “Jim Crow” segregation or speak of the “Jim Crow” era in sports. For this reason, if I am left to follow own judgment—and isn’t that why we hire good teachers in the first place—I am going to ask my classes to know this term.

The danger, however, is clear. Do I risk asking students to learn useful material if they won’t be tested? If I teach more than required am I ahead when it comes to standards of learning? Or do we only care about what ends up on the test?

I happen to be a decent writer. So, for years I have created my own classroom materials. Now I have a reading about “Jim Crow” laws to give to students, one that includes more than seventy examples of unfair laws.

I understand, of course, that none of my teens will ever need to know seventy examples. But the cumulative impact of all the limitations makes a deep impression on my classes.

You can’t measure emotional impact in A’s and B’s and C’s. You can use all the letters in the alphabet. You can’t do it.

The day to begin the unit arrives—and I ask my classes to list five ways blacks and whites were once legally separated. This sparks quick interest and just about everyone throws up a hand to provide a part of the answer. I know, from spending years in a classroom, that my kids will almost always end up giving the same handful of examples. These are: SCHOOL, BUSES, RESTAURANTS, DRINKING FOUNTAINS and SPORTS.

My problem is that I want to go deeper into the subject. That is, I want to set very high standards. I want my students—almost all of whom happen to be white—to grasp the depth and breadth of the racial divide that once existed in this country. I want them to have to deal with the bitter antipathy that made “Jim Crow” laws once seem necessary.

That’s where my handout enters the picture. The title is taken from an article by I. F. Stone, “A Twilight between Liberty and Freedom.”

The story opens:

The sad era of “Jim Crow” began officially in 1887. Florida started the process by ordering the separation of black and white passengers on railroads. Mississippi copied the idea, adding “Colored” and “White Only” waiting rooms. Other Southern states fell in line. But most made one exception: if a black nursemaid was caring for a white baby. Soon states like Alabama and Georgia had separate homes for the deaf, blind, and mentally ill. The races were divided in prisons and on chain gangs. By 1890 Jackson, Mississippi had instituted “Jim Crow” rules in city cemeteries.

“Think about it,” I say to my classes. I say this every year because this gets an entire class’s attention: “You’re blind! Isn’t everyone black if you’re blind?” I close my eyes and do a pantomime of a sightless person searching for a Negro.

I always put my hands on some student’s head and ask, “Are you black, because if you are, I don’t like you!”

The absurdity guarantees a laugh.

“What about cemeteries?” I add. “Do any of you think you might care who ends up buried next to you?” The kids laugh again and I know they are laughing at the idea of segregation. I believe they are seeing inequality as a mockery of what we say we stand for in this country.

The reading continues:

After 1915, Oklahoma required “separate phone booths for white and colored patrons [customers].” South Carolina factory workers were paid at different windows, used different stairways and could not use the same “drinking water buckets, cups, dippers or glasses.” In a move of stunning stupidity, Birmingham, Alabama made it “unlawful for a Negro and a white person to play together” at dominoes.

Checkers was also forbidden!

In a police-officer-like voice I shout, “Drop the checkers and come out with your hands up!”

To teens (who tend to be naturally fair-minded) it seems unfathomable anyone ever thought such laws were necessary.

I don’t want to blame the South only. So we turn to examples from the North where my own grandfather insisted on “Jim Crow” seating in his theaters in Akron, Ohio. I take time to relate a story once told me by an elderly black gentleman, about how black folk had to sit in the balcony, and how hard it was to resist the temptation to throw peanuts at the white folks below.

Then we keep reading:

The list of rules was as long as human imagination is twisted…Blood banks kept Negro blood on different shelves. “Public libraries” in the South denied blacks the right to check out books! Southern gas stations had three bathrooms. One was for “WHITE MEN,” one for “WHITE WOMEN.”

A third was marked “COLORED.”

During most of my career, Loveland, where I taught, had a single black teacher. I use him as an example. Both of us were born in 1949, I explain. “If Mr. Battle’s family pulled up to the same gas station as the Viall family, the Battles can’t go at the same time. Members have to take turns.”

“Think of how your mother would feel,” I add. You make it personal and every kid understands.

At this point, there are a hundred directions you can take. All involve learning. In 2013, one of the kids is sure to bring up gays when talk turns to discrimination. So we discuss that as long as it holds kids’ interest. Since the topic is controversial, I let students argue out their own ideas, adding very little input. Eventually, we spend part of a day going over the Hughes’ poem. For homework I ask students to draw a picture to show how “Jim Crow” laws made it hard for blacks to live full lives as citizens. An artistic young man in my fifth bell class draws a checkerboard seen from above. A white hand is holding a red piece, ready to jump. A black hand rests idly at the other side of the board.

Every year we discuss the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments as required. In addition, I ask students to do a reading from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. I believe his efforts to educate himself and other freed slaves are inspirational, even if you can’t measure inspiration on a test.

(Examples provided in an auxiliary post.)

Normally, I include a few details about discrimination directed towards Japanese-Americans after the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. My students love the story of Daniel Inouye, a Japanese-American war hero. So I tell it every year—because it works.

(See auxiliary post.)

TO BE HONEST, I HAVE NO DESIRE to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

I want to lead students in a thousand directions. So: we discuss the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia. That’s the 1967 case that put an end to state laws against interracial marriage. You don’t see it in the standards, but I throw out the word “lynching” and expect my kids to know the definition. I show them several harrowing pictures. (See auxiliary post.) One victim is chained to a tree and twisted in death agonies. The poor fellow has been killed when a mob uses a blow torch to heat up the heavy chain. Another victim, neck broken, head twisted sideways, is Leo Frank, a Jew lynched for his “crimes” in Georgia in 1915.

Even in America, students should realize that discrimination based on religion has been common. That means, of course, that the subject of anti-Muslim feelings in the United States after 9/11 may come up if we choose to examine it.

Naturally, we talk about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. And because I once read Crusade for Justice, the autobiography of Ida Wells, I may throw out her story. Wells was tossed from a train in 1883 after adamantly refusing to give up a seat in the “Whites Only” car and retreat to the “Colored” car in timely fashion. She had to be pried out of her place, but put up a hell of a fight before a conductor and two white gentlemen could subdue her. In the end, however, they dragged the African American educator off the car and deposited her by the side of the tracks miles from her destination.

You see. This is how my strengths come into play—through what I bring to the classroom—why standardized testing is crazy.

In the process of covering this topic I have managed over the years to get hundreds of students to read To Kill a Mockingbird and a significant number to read Native Son by Richard Wright, the story of a confused young black man growing up in 1920s Chicago. I read this last novel in college but I can get some teens to read it in eighth grade.

This is not how one behaves if one is content to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

According to the State of Ohio I am supposed to focus on the Ku Klux Klan. How, exactly, and how much is the question. I know the Klan was huge, not just down South, but also in Ohio and Indiana. So I throw that out and add details, including the story of the Grand Wizard who lives on a farm not far from Loveland, and his painted barn roof along Interstate 71 (below).

Then I have students complete a reading from The Leopard’s Spots, written in 1902 by Thomas Dixon Jr. The book drips racism from every syllable and shocks modern-day students. In Dixon's world, the KKK are the heroes.

(See auxiliary post.)

Barn visible off Interstate 71, near Morrow, Ohio.
There's also a burned cross visible in the orchard.

My second year in a classroom I had three elderly Loveland women come in as guest speakers and talk about what it was like growing up in the 20s and 30s. One of the trio happened to be black and told us all about a time when she was nine and saw a cross burning high on a hill above her home. She described her terror and explained how her father and friends got shotguns and prepared to defend their families. Her pride in talking about her Dad was obvious. She spoke, too, of the old Loveland school she attended—a separate facility for black students.

You can’t measure the impact of her stories with four letters of the alphabet.

Sometimes my classes might look at the case of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young blacks (ages 13-19) who were placed on trial in 1931 after supposedly raping two white Alabama women. Their trial proved to be such a farce that their convictions were appealed all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court and overturned on two separate occasions. I am familiar with this story because I did a paper on the topic in graduate school—proof again that individual teachers add value to any learning process. In fact if I am teaching in 2013, I bring up the case because the State of Alabama admitted its mistakes in the case this past April and pardoned the boys posthumously.

I don’t know.

I might even suggest to interested students that they bring parents along and meet up with me and two or three other teachers at the theater. We could see the movie “42,” the story of Jackie Robinson. It’s not what you do if all you want is to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

It’s what you would do if you care about learning.

I don't believe in an A, B, C, D education.
I do believe in all kinds of learning.
Standardized testing is a terrible way to try to improve schools.

Emperor of A, B, C, D (Auxiliary Post)

2013-05-06T18:12:00.000-04:00

HERE WE HAVE A SELECTION FROM A HANDOUT TAKEN FROM THE BOOK UP FROM SLAVERY. Young Booker T. Washington has just traveled 500 miles to attend school for the first time at the Hampton Institute. At this point in his life he is only a few years removed from a childhood spent living in slavery:

After reaching school Washington went to work in more ways than one. He rose daily at 4 a.m., cleaning the school buildings to earn room and board. He was poor and remembered:

...for some time, while I was a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single pair of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I might wear them again the next morning.

It was at this school that he saw beds with sheets for the first time. With a touch of humor he described his confusion:

The first night I slept under both of them, and the second night I slept on top of both of them; but by watching the other boys I learned my lesson in this, and have been trying to follow it ever since and to teach it to others.

After finishing his education Washington began a career in teaching. This led to a job at Tuskeegee, Alabama. One of his first “school buildings” was little better than a leaky shed:

I recall that during the first months of school that I taught in this building it was in such poor repair that, whenever it rained, one of the older students would very kindly leave his lessons to hold an umbrella over me while I heard the recitations [speeches] of the others.

Washington borrowed money to fix up a hen house and other farm buildings to provide for a growing enrollment.[1]

One day an old black woman came to offer the young teacher help.

She hobbled into the room where I was, leaning on a cane. She was clad [dressed] in rags; but they were clean. She said, “Mr. Washin’ton, God knows I spent de bes’ days of my life in slavery. God knows I’s ignorant an’ poor; but,” she added, “I knows what you an’ Miss Davidson [an- other teacher] is tryin’ to do. I knows you is tryin’ to make better men an’ women for de coloured race. I ain’t got no money, but I wants you to take dese six eggs, what I’s been savin’ up, an’ I wants you to put dese six eggs into the eddication of dese boys an’ gals.”

From such small beginnings, Washington built his own college, the famous Tuskeegee Institute.

Even after he became famous Mr. Washington had to walk a racial tightrope. By the time Tuskeegee was well established most Southern states had created a system of strict segregation. On a rail trip through Georgia two northern white ladies invited the college president to sit with them and talk.

Said Washington:

These good ladies were perfectly ignorant [unaware], it seems, of the customs of the South and in the goodness of their hearts insisted that I take a seat with them in their section.[2] After some hesitation I consented [agreed]. I had been there but a few minutes when one of them, without my knowledge, ordered supper to be served to the three of us. This embarrassed me still further. The car was full of white southern men most of whom had their eyes on our party. When I found that supper had been ordered, I tried to contrive [invent] some excuse that would permit me to leave the section, but the ladies insisted that I must eat with them. I finally settled back in my seat with a sigh, and said to myself, “I am in for it now, sure.”
...The meal...seemed the longest one I had ever eaten.

__________

[1] About this time Washington remembered talking to an ex-slave, about sixty years old. He asked about his past: “He said that he had been born in Virginia, and sold into Alabama in 1845. I asked him how many were sold at the time. He said, ‘There were five of us; myself and brother and three mules.’”
[2] That is: the “white” section of the passenger car.
____________________________________________________________

SOMETIMES WE WOULD TALK ABOUT what happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II. After Pearl Harbor was bombed more than a hundred thousand were sent to relocation camps. Almost three quarters were citizens.

I would remind students, “They had the same rights as you and me.”

Given a chance, thousands of young Japanese-American men later fought under the Stars and Stripes, winning praise for their courage. I felt the story of one soldier summed it up:

Daniel Inoyue was fighting in Italy when he and his men received orders to charge a German position. Inoyue led the way forward, was shot in the stomach, and kept going. A grenade almost blew off his right arm (which was later amputated). Inoyue cut down the German who tossed the grenade, by throwing one of his own left-handed! Then a bullet hit him in the right leg. Still, he kept going, personally destroying two enemy machine guns. Twenty-five German soldiers died in the action—and Inoyue received the Distinguished Service Cross for his courage.

On his way home after the war, however, Captain Inoyue was denied a haircut in a San Francisco barbershop. In uniform, with his battle ribbons and medals clearly displayed—and his empty sleeve pinned up—he was told: WE DON’T SERVE JAPS HERE!

JAPS!

Inoyue was no JAP.

Neither were thousands of others imprisoned during World War II. Sadly, they were Americans, even if others refused to treat them as such.
_____________________________________________________________

HERE IS A TYPICAL SCENE FROM THE READING BASED ON The Leopard's Spots. Here a poor white girl is visiting Tim Shelby. (Dixon calls him “an animal in human disguise.”) We quote from the novel:

Shelby, a former slave, now [in an era of Reconstruction] controls employment in the local schools. The unfortunate young lady desperately needs money. With rising fear she enters Shelby’s office to discuss a teaching position. Finally, she asks:
“May I have the place [job] then?”

“Well, now, you know it depends really altogether on my fancy [wishes]. [Tim replies] I'll tell you what I'll do. You’re still full of silly prejudices. I can see that. But if you will overcome them enough to do one thing for me as a test...I’ll give you the place...Will you do it?”

“What is it?” the girl asked, with pale, quivering lips.

“Let me kiss you--once!” he whispered.

With a scream, she sprang past him out of the door, ran like a deer across the lawn, and fell sobbing in her mother’s arms when she reached her home.

In Dixon’s story, it is time for the Ku Klux Klan to ride the following night:

At twelve o’clock two hundred white-robed horses assembled around the old home...where Tim was sleeping. The moon was full and flooded the lawn with silver glory. On those horses sat two hundred white-robed silent men whose close-fitting hood disguises looked like the... helmets of ancient knights.

It was the work of a moment to seize [take hold of] Tim and bind him across a horse’s back. Slowly the grim procession moved to the court-house square.

When the sun rose the next morning the lifeless body of Tim Shelby was dangling from a rope tied to the iron rail of the balcony of the courthouse. His neck was broken and his body was hanging low—scarcely three feet from the ground. His thick lips had been split with a sharp knife, and from his teeth hung this placard [sign]:

THE ANSWER OF THE ANGLO-SAXON [WHITE] RACE TO NEGRO LIPS THAT DARE TO POLLUTE WITH WORDS THE WOMENHOOD OF THE SOUTH. K. K. K.

This execution does not trouble Dixon. Nor does it seem to him extreme. He applauds such action and any steps necessary to guard against “race-mixing.” Any attempt to place blacks and whites on the same level, he once claimed, was “social dynamite.”

It was race suicide.

____________________________________________________________

IF A GOOD TEACHER DESIRED he or she might compare Dixon's ideas with a selection from a reading on Adolf Hitler. To put this together I had to wade through all the sick pages of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

A sample:

The more Adolf studied the problem the worse the “truth” seemed to be. The Jews were more than a religious group: “They are a race, and what a race!” Jews were “the great masters of the lie,” a “spider...slowly beginning to suck the blood out of the [German] people’s pores.”

Hitler came to believe they were at the root of all social problems. “If you cut even cautiously into...an abscess [boil or infection], you found, like a maggot in a rotting body...a kike [Jew].” The Jews were “incurable tumors,” “as dangerous as the Black Death.”

Given the opportunity “repulsive Jew b------s” would mix with pure German women. They would marry, he warned, and destroy “the racial foundations of our [national] existence and...[ruin] our people for all time.” Hitler insisted that the German people must not allow this. By defending their race from the Jews, he argued, the Germans would be “doing the work of the Lord.”
___________________________________________________________

IF I WANT STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IMPEACHMENT is about I can have them complete a reading on Watergate.

Here's how my story begins:

If you ask people today what they remember about Nixon’s time in office, any good he did is probably forgotten. The Watergate Affair is what Americans remember. Nixon is the only president ever driven from the White House before his term was over. His downfall began with a botched burglary at “The Watergate” office building in Washington, D. C. It was there, on June 17, 1972 that a night watchman with a flashlight noticed something out of the ordinary. The locks on several doors leading into the building and into the headquarters of the National Democratic Party were taped open. Police were called to the scene and five burglars were soon rounded up.

Burglary doesn’t usually make the national news; but this was no ordinary break-in. First, the suspects were carrying $1,754 cash, cameras, and film. They also had sophisticated equipment for tapping telephones and recording conversations. One of the five, James McCord, had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, the U. S. spy bureau. Stranger still, police found this notation in McCord’s address book: “Howard E. Hunt, W. House.”

From the start, the police were suspicious. Why would burglars want to break into the office of the Democrat Party? And could McCord’s note mean “the” White House? Could these suspects be spying on Democrats because 1972 was an election year?

Who had hired them and turned them loose?

The next day White House staff members spoke to reporters. No one who worked for the president, the said, knew anything about the Watergate break-in. President Nixon shrugged off the matter as a “third-rate burglary.” Then he assured reporters there was no reason to be concerned.

Everyone, from the president down, seemed surprised.

Almost all were lying.

____________________________________________________________

FINALLY, IN MY HISTORY CLASS WE HAMMERED on the principles set down in the Declaration of Independence.

I required all my students to memorize the section below and be able to answer the six questions on the unit test for the American Revolution as well as the final.

(We had to start by defining all the words in bold.)

The Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.

Thomas Jefferson

July 4, 1776

WHAT IT MEANS:

1. Government gets its power from ____________.

2. If government does not work we have the right to ____________________________.

3. Governments are set up to ______________________.

4. If government works as it should everyone will be treated __________.

5. Certain basic rights cannot be taken away from you by _____________.

6. Government should leave you alone to enjoy ________________________________.

NONE OF THIS WOULD BE STANDARDIZED EDUCATION.

My students were amazed that none of the people in this crowd seemed to be horrified.

Ten Myths about America’s Public Schools

2013-04-18T22:02:00.000-04:00

I’VE BEEN DOING A GOOD DEAL OF RESEARCH for a book about American education. In the process, I’ve had the dubious privilege of reading hundreds of articles on the current state of our nation’s public schools.

Certain trends in coverage are impossible to miss, including the glaring fact that almost no one bothers to ask real teachers what they think.

As a result, absolute nonsense spewed by critics and repeated without challenge becomes accepted gospel and, finally, myth.

Below are ten examples:

Myth of the Failing Public Schools: How do we know our schools are failing? Look at what happens in international competitions! U. S. kids can barely sharpen their pencils without sticking themselves in their eyes or getting writing devices stuck up their nostrils. In 2010 our fifteen-year-olds finished 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math compared to kids from around the world. We got our asses kicked by Liechtenstein!

And how about all the dropouts! At the rate we’re going the last high school graduate the United States will ever produce will don cap and gown c. 2050. This catastrophic dropout rate is entirely the fault of idiot teachers

Saga of the Idiot Teacher: The main reason public schools are failing is because teachers are stupid. According to critics the men and women at the front our classrooms are a “collection of warm bodies.” (Maybe even a few dead ones; they just haven’t reached an advanced stage of decomposition.) These dumb sods are “chosen from the bottom 20% of their college classes, and not of the best schools.” Teachers are “union thugs” who care only about their fat pay checks.

(Sources—Brent Staples in the New York Times—Michael R. Bloomberg in a speech at M.I.T.—pretty much any Fox News commentator.)

This is what a stupid teacher looks like.
He probably didn't even read all those books.

The Helsinki Myth (aka: The Tokyo or Vaduz Myth): We need to follow the lead of Finland or Japan because students from those nations score higher in international competitions. Finland—wow—Finland has awesome teachers. The same is true for Japan. And Liechtenstein! That little postage stamp of a nation has kick-ass educators.

We should send the Navy Seals to grab some of their teachers and bring them back to replace the losers we’re stuck with presently.

Ghost of the Middle Class Job: The failure of our public schools totally explains our nation’s declining position in a competitive global economy. All the good jobs are disappearing—to Liechtenstein!—because our schools produce graduates who can’t understand math or science or read ordinary street signs. Typical American job candidate on the way to an interview: “Does that sign say ‘Stop’ or ‘One Way?’ Never mind, I think it’s a mailbox.”

Fable of the Ivy-Covered Wall: Thank god for all the brilliant reformers—each armed with his or her plan to save children! These people are really smart, especially compared to the brain-dead rejects manning our classrooms. U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan graduated from Harvard...so he must be correct in every syllable he utters. Michelle Rhee graduated from Cornell. She would run Students First and give speeches (about how to fix education) for free if only fans would stop paying her five-figure speaker’s fees.

Michael R. Bloomberg, Joel I. Klein and Wendy Kopp all graduated from Ivy-League institutions. So, they will save us stupid people.

And let’s face it. Lawyers like Klein love children way more than regular teachers.

Test it and They Will Come: According to our greatest reformers if we do enough testing and “measuring” American schools can be great again. We test first graders in long division and third graders in physics and measure what every child does in gym. If some lard-ass boy or girl can’t run a 7:00 mile by the end of eighth grade we fire the lousy gym teacher. By god, we will blame speech therapists every time a six-year-old says “wabbit!”

The Voucher that Wouldn’t Die: Let’s say that standardized testing doesn’t work, even though brilliant reformers insist it will. Well then, we save every child by opening up more charter schools and passing out more vouchers so parents can send sons and daughters to good private schools. Public schools are the problem.

In fact the real cure for what’s wrong with the nation's public schools is probably exorcism.

The Teacher Who Walked on Water: If every child had an excellent teacher every year then every child would excel in school. In fact, every child would live happily ever after. All the girls would marry princes. The brilliant reformers will not rest until they put an excellent teacher into every classroom and even a few coat closets. Not themselves, of course. Oh no. Oh no. They are far too valuable—and well paid—serving as leaders.

These heroes will never stop until Teach for America, founded by Kopp on the principle that we need to replace all our idiot teachers with smart ones, puts 3,000,000 Harvard and Stanford and Yale graduates into classrooms across the nation. Out go the dumb shits we have. In go the smart people. Okay, sure. Since 1990, the organization has trained only 28,000 teachers; and no one can tell us how many have remained in the classrooms. (They commit to only two years. But not to worry, because the really smart people will save us.) We are going to demand excellence in the teaching profession, just like we do in Congress. While we are at it every child is going to get a puppy or kitten.

Maybe a bunny.

Myth of the Malevolent Thugs: Teachers’ unions are the only reason school reforms fail. The plans can’t be messed up because the planners are brilliant! If standardized testing isn’t working the failure has to be tied somehow to unions. Every union member is a sloth with the scruples of a purse-snatcher. These thugs entered the profession only because teaching is a cushy job, especially in inner city schools, and particularly for those men and women who make it past the five-year mark by which time half of all educators quit and find different employment.

Parable of the Adoring Mother: All parents will do right by their children if only we pass the right laws. If we hand out vouchers, as just one example, then every mom and every dad will sit down and start studying their “school choice” options. Every girl and every boy will suddenly have a parent (maybe two!!!) backing them up, working tirelessly to get them into the best schools. Before you can utter the words “Horace Mann” and click your ruby red slippers three times, poor kids will find elite private schools swinging their doors wide to admit them. Religious schools will start taking kids with severe behavior disorders because that’s what Jesus would do.

Parental drug and alcohol use, physical and mental abuse of children, homelessness and gang violence, neglect and stupidity, will vanish from the land.

SO, THERE YOU HAVE IT—the mythical path to educational perfection. Get rid of idiot teachers and hire some smart ones. Give all good parents—that’s the only kind there are, right?—plenty of good choices and that’s all you need, baby. All the good jobs in America will be saved—except maybe the job of “education reformer,” since education will finally be perfected.

On some glorious day in the future, when they test students internationally, America’s kids will finally finish 1st in reading, 1st in science, and 1st in math.

Then we will be able to say, as proud American’s, “Suck it, Liechtenstein.”

Some Hindu myth. The author was too dumb to check it.

A Predicament of Innocents

2013-04-02T21:26:00.001-04:00

IF YOU CARE ABOUT AMERICAN EDUCATION, I’ve just finished a thought-provoking book on the subject. Odd as this may sound, it made me want to start drinking.

I mean that as a compliment.

A Predicament of Innocents by George S. Stranahan (People’s Press) is filled with good sense if we want to improve schools and also highlights critical dangers we face moving forward.

First, let me note that the author has worked with students. I’ve been working on a book about education, myself, and it has been amazing to me to see how many people write about fixing schools and yet know nothing about:

a) Schools—or how to fix them.
b) Children.
c) Learning.

That’s what made reading the book and talking to Mr. Stranahan later both pleasant and painful. Here we have a gentleman who has excellent ideas about how to improve the learning experience of children and every one of those ideas flies in the face of accepted educational wisdom.

I was curious, when I spoke to him over the phone, about his background. Did he always know he wanted to be a teacher? No, the “bug bit him” during the Korean War after he was drafted into the U. S. Army. He helped train others in the use of radar systems and he’s been hanging around students now for half a century. He knows what he’s saying.

(Once I understood that I poured my first glass of whiskey.)

We don’t agree on every topic (he’s far more pessimistic about regular public schools and I would argue that I worked at an excellent regular public school) but his focus is clear. He cares about children. He cares about helping them become life-long learners. He knows, for example, that you don’t develop skilled learners by feeding them a diet of standardized tests. Stranahan, himself, has a PhD in physics and he’s an award-winning photographer. His wonderful photos of former students provide the skeleton for the book and his ideas give it flesh.

The focus: students and learning.
(Photograph by George Stranahan.)

I asked him to comment on a variety of issues. Did he think that current reform efforts were helping? No, he replied. “I don’t see any reform…I see a lot more damaging use of test scores.”

(I drain my whiskey and wait a moment to clear the burning in my throat before continuing.)

As head of the Aspen Community School for twenty years, he told me he put his ideas to the test. He hasn’t been buried in the bowels of bureaucracy, hasn’t been working for some think tank. He’s been teaching. I asked what ideas he had for improving learning in our schools. He knows education is a complex business, but if he had one magic bullet he’d push for the “democratic classroom model.” “If a decision affects students,” he says, “then they participate in the decision-making process.”

WHAT ABOUT THE IDEA—CURRENTLY ACCEPTED by reformers, backed by political figures and gaining traction with the general public—that we need more standardized tests to “measure” what teachers do? He scoffed at the notion, warning that we were “turning schools into assembly lines for kids and making assembly line workers out of teachers.”

(I paused a moment to pour a second shot. This one I downed in a gulp.)

Then, is there some way we can recognized good teaching? Stranahan believes the answer is yes, that in his experience it was an “instantaneous read” whether or not a classroom was “healthy.” He says that at Aspen teachers were expected to leave classroom doors open. He could look into a room, he believed, and “read the emotional content” in the faces of students. The quality he looked for in teachers—and here I totally agree—was the ability to make a classroom “a joyful place.”

(The words “standardized testing” and “joyful place” will probably never again be used in the same sentence after I finish this one.)

Aspen Community School serves the needs of 113 students, with emphasis on the “community.” The focus is on “learning to learn,” not learning hemmed in by Common Core Standards. As Stranahan sees it these new standards are designed to force young people to travel a single road, with no exits and one destination: training for job/college.

Citing the report of the “Committee of Ten,” which helped set U. S. school policy in 1892, that a college-prep education, including multiple years of Greek and Latin, was appropriate for all students, Stranahan challenges us to consider this possibility: Perhaps not all students need two years of algebra to function in adulthood.

I suppose the answer is obvious since I am not writing my sentences in Greek.

(I polish off another whiskey. At this point I hope I’m not slurring my speech; but George is talking sense and I know none of the Big Names in education reform have anywhere near as much experience with kids as he does, and I hope I am not getting maudlin.)

Meanwhile, Stranahan has studied the Common Core Standards. Ironically, these standards are intended to clean up the mess created by the last round of reforms triggered by passage of No Child Left Behind. He notes one particular requirement, that students learn to: “Represent addition, subtraction, multiplication and conjugation of complex numbers geometrically on the complex plane; use properties of this representation for computation. For example, (-1 + √3 i)³ = 8 because (-1 + √3 i)³ has modulus 2 and argument 120.°”

(Let’s all pause a moment to finish our computations.)

He cites a second example in A Predicament of Innocents, this time from the eighth grade math standards: “Understand that the patterns of association can also be seen as bivariate categorical data by displaying frequencies and relative frequencies in a two-way table.” He “asked our town mayor, who is also an architect, if he found this essential; he said he didn’t understand a word I said.”

(I pour my fourth whiskey. I am thinking about “mercantilism,” which is a long story, covered elsewhere.)

THERE ARE A HUNDRED TOPICS I’D LIKE TO ASK about, because here we have a gentleman who understands children, a man with learning in his marrow. I ask about the idea that we have an “achievement gap” in our poorest schools and must punish teachers for failing to close it. He sums up the dilemma in what I think is the funniest line in the entire book: “It is well-known that teaching in have-not schools is very hard work, and now you can be fired for trying.” Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind has made what goes on in our poorest schools worse. Now education is reduced to this: “It’s about how to correctly eliminate three out of four bubbles.”

(Down the hatch goes drink #4. I am tempted to start chugging straight from the bottle.)

I know Stranahan is making sense. That’s what troubles me to my core. I explain my theory that almost everything important educators do happens at the classroom level. “Could you ‘decapitate’ the educational system, at the level of school principal, and not do any lasting damage?” Stranahan says he believes you could. The key players are the teachers and school leaders who interact with students, the students themselves, and parents. “Home is the hidden partner in the education of our young,” he explains. So, at Aspen they involve parents directly in the decision making processes. When they had an influx of Hispanic students they held meetings in Spanish. Often they sent out cars to pick up low-income parents and help them get to school functions.

In his book he argues that the word “teach” must be broadly defined. To “teach” should mean “any practice that causes others to develop skill or knowledge.” A good teacher in a good school is a shepherd, a minister, a nurse (in this senses: “to look after carefully so as to promote growth.”). George describes the ideal relationship between student and teacher: “I take you seriously because you take me seriously.”

No reader will agree with everything Mr. Stranahan says; but here we have a veteran educator talking sense—so often lacking in education debates. He knows that good teachers make a difference. He also knows, “There’s just no easy answer to evaluating teachers, and if good teaching is important to us, we must be willing to look at difficult answers.”

THAT’S HOW THE BOOK ENDS, which may frustrate those who prefer tidy, definitive answers. What makes A Predicament of Innocents worth reading is not that Stranahan provides answers, so much as that he poses fundamental questions.

“What do you hope readers get out of your book?” I finally ask.

I hope it scares them. I hope they see it as a call to action. If we don’t wake up and pay attention to what’s going on in schools, nobody else will. Childhood is a special estate. We must learn to honor that for what it is, a strong and willful beingness, playful, irreverent, spontaneous, direct and honest, representing many behaviors that we might wish to reclaim as adults. I talk about innocence, and being around children helps me to reclaim my own innocence.

I want to get a whole school district to charter itself into a progressive school system and challenge a bit of authority on the way.

I thank him for his time and push a button and end the call.

Maybe the whiskey is clouding my judgment; but I feel I’ve just talked to someone who has insights into the heart and soul of education.

Loveland Students Make Good: Part Three

2013-04-01T13:35:00.000-04:00

IF YOU TEACH AS LONG AS I DID it’s inevitable that you will mix up former students in your mind. Some you see you believe are almost certain will go on to success. Most you think will lead happy, productive lives.

One young man I had in class, however, made Cincinnati’s “Ten Top Most-Wanted List” a quarter century later.

In his case, even that was no surprise.

Let’s start this installment with one of my favorite former students, Lynn Holman (Blessing), who, as far as I know it, has never been in jail in her life. This may sound funny; but I had Lynn in class during my early years in Loveland—during an era when corporal punishment was still regularly applied. Yep, I swatted this young lady.

For not doing her homework.

Certainly, that sounds strange today: “Teacher swats favorite student.” Yet it’s true. I also flunked Ms. Holman for history the first year I had her. Again: strange, but true.

Here’s what I discovered in those early years. It was not uncommon to have very bright students who didn’t use their talents and Lynn was one. The following year I asked the principal to place Ms. Holman back in my class. Again: that may sound counter-intuitive. I had faith, though. This time Lynn turned herself around and proved she had an excellent mind. Same nice young lady—same brain—but now a solid “B” student. I think she woke up and realized she could do so much more with her talents than she thought and I was never prouder of any young lady I had in my class.

What’s she up to these days? Raising a son she dearly loves. Recently remarried. Still using her talents—running her own business, “Garden Girl Landscaping” in Germantown, Ohio. In fact, her latest Facebook status says it all:

“I’m so excited. The dream I’ve dreamt of being a landscaper for the last 25 years has really come true. I have an awesome man who supports and helps me more than anyone ever has...and I’ve recently gotten some really great accounts for some really nice people.”

Ms. Lynn Blessing, right.
Not afraid of a little hard work.

That's my former student up in the tree,
getting ready to jump in the river. No wimp is she.

In the late 90s, as part of a “March Madness” unit for Language Arts classes, Loveland Middle School used to bus 300 seventh graders down to Lexington to tour the University of Kentucky. The idea for the trip was the product of the fertile imagination of Mrs. Jeane Weisbrod, one of my favorite colleagues, who also did most of the organizing for the trip. One year stands out, when our greeter at UK was Sarah Hager, a former student and Loveland High School grad.

It didn’t surprise us to see that the University of Kentucky would choose Sarah as the perfect spokesperson to create a good impression.

Sarah left a good impression wherever she went.

Eventually, Ms. Hager returned to Loveland Middle School, as an aide in the special education department. Today, she’s the Intervention Specialist at Norwood High School. She reports that “Bubba,” her brother Jeff (another star student from days of yore), is “a science teacher at the Buckeye Ranch in Grove City. It’s an alternative school for kids that have been removed from public school for behavioral and/or mental issues.” Sarah continues: “We both LOVE teaching. We had many great teachers growing up…and their positive influence helped guide us into the teaching field.”

If I was a young teacher, just now starting out, I’d try to keep a few brief notes about all of my students; because the names do jumble. I have one note that says Jeff “took a bow during his skit.” It had to have been funny or I wouldn’t have noted it. Today I can’t recall what the skit would have been about or why the bow was so timely.

All I remember is that Jeff could be hysterical in class.

Sad, but so true:
Sarah (standing) was once a fan of NSYNC.

If teaching doesn't work out, I think
Sarah and her husband are considering becoming sheep herders.

That's her brother, Jeff, right.

Josh Brock reminded me of myself when I had him in seventh grade. I could see he had talent; but his grades were up and down. (In seventh grade, mine were mostly down and down.) He could think for himself, however, and I liked that in any student.

His manners were flawless, too.

Mr. Brock was the kind of young man you figured would do well someday and so he has. The same is true for brother Justin, another good man to have in class, who just finished his second tour of duty in Afghanistan with the Marines.

Josh writes:

From a professional stand-point, after having come out of Cincinnati State for Biotechnology and Chemical Technology I find myself living near Louisville, Kentucky, working for a contract laboratory company specializing in DNA sequencing. Personally speaking, I am getting married on October 6th to a fine woman who has two great kids and can’t ever remember being happier.

Mr. Brock (left) in casual attire.
Unidentified friend (right).

These days Josh still plays a little hockey for fun.

It’s not often a teacher can say, “My former student is a professional poker player.” But with Noah Campbell, that statement is true.

At least it was. There was a time when Noah made good money playing in Texas Hold Em tournaments. Then he met a good woman, settled down, had a child, and decided to go into teaching.

Tragically, he remembers getting in trouble in my class one day, over some minor infraction. As many of my former students may fondly recall, I used to assign dumb ssays, as kind of a warning to everyone to stop any minor fooling around.

Noah had to write 200 words on the topic: “My Date with Smurfette.”

Noah was not scared by the experience and adds, “I ended up doing stuff like that with my students too. Turned a punishment into a fun writing assignment.”

Currently, he stays busy raising his daughter Sophia. For five years he taught third grade at Northpointe Academy, a Toledo charter school. Recently, he says, he “was promoted to the position of School Improvement Coordinator for The Leona Group, a management company that has about 60 schools nationwide. I oversee eight schools in Ohio and Michigan, working with them on their grant funding, and their school improvement planning.”

I think a quote he has posted on Facebook gives you some idea of what kind of young man Mr. Campbell has become: “Your beliefs don’t make you a better person. Your behavior does.”

Noah's daughter, Sophia.
I couldn't resist including her picture.

Noah (left above) sings in a barbershop quartet.
At least he made the paper for doing something good.

Mr. Campbell agreed to dye his hair pink
if students did well on the Ohio Achievement Assessment test.

I think Suzy Culbertson made it all the way through my history class without ever losing her good humor or her patented smile. I remember her, first, as a very fine writer (even though I once gave her an “F” on a paper after she made foul use of the dread words, “things,” or “stuff.” Again, students may recall that rule of writing in my class).

At any rate, Ms. Culbertson was fantastic in skits and plays in history and once served as the narrator in our famous play, “Jessica of Troy,” loosely based on Homer’s Iliad. I am blaming Mr. Sharpless, my trusted colleague, for that idea. The play focused on Helen of Troy, Hector and Achilles—and the inimitable Jessica Simpson.

Suzy was a fine student in all kinds of ways and a joy to have in class every day. She did drama in middle school, later dabbled in community theater, and right now…I mean this very instant…she is studying biology at the University of Iowa.

No doubt she’ll do well. The girl has incredible talents.

Suzy in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado.

Culbertson, tuckered out after hiking those mountains.

Betsy Barre stands out as one of the most mature teens I ever happened to meet. True, most of the time you can’t even use the word “maturity” in a sentence about teens, but Ms. Barre was preternaturally mature in eighth grade. Maybe she had to be—since her mother was also the dread principal of the school! Ha, ha, only kidding. Her mom was also cool.

I also remember how Betsy challenged herself to read more advanced books for my class.

So, what has she been up to recently? First, she attended Bowling Green State with the idea of becoming a music education major. One class in philosophy, however, and she was hooked and majored in philosophy. She met her husband around the same time and both went on to earn PhD’s at Florida State. Then they jumped around to various colleges. Ms. Barre taught Islamic Studies at Lake Forest College, then Philosophy and Religious Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. Now she and her husband both work at Rice University. She adds:

He’s teaching Poli Sci and I’m teaching in their new freshman seminar program. These courses are small (15!) and can be on just about any topic of interest. They’re designed to help introduce freshman to academic life (learning how to write, read, critically think, etc.) Last semester I taught a Religion & Politics course (on the philosophy and history of church-state relations in the U. S.) and this semester I’m teaching a course on Religion and Sexuality.

Again, as with the gentleman who went on to make the “Top Ten Most Wanted List,” but this time in a good way, I’m not surprised to hear what Ms. Barre is doing with her life.

(I might also add that her sister, Jill, another mature and excellent student of mine a few years back, is teaching at Milford High School. Kevin, their brother, escaped being in my class, and is currently an assistant principal at a middle school in Brunswick, Ohio.

The Barre’s have education in their bone marrow.

One of my favorite pictures: Betsy sent me this picture of her library
and said I helped turn her into a serious reader.

Betsy back in what she labels her
"nerd" days.

Besty and husband: Betsy looking a little more sophisticated.

Brandi Rush (Campbell) was born on Valentine’s Day—and grew up in Loveland. What are the chances of that!

Sometimes, I tend to mix up brothers or sisters from the same family in my old teaching brain. So, let me start by saying that all of the Rush siblings I had were entertaining in class. Brandi was lively and involved and a bright young lady. My memory is that she was a cheerleader in middle school, during the Big Poofy-Hair 80s.

Her sister Julie was also cool. Julie is now a police officer “somewhere in Cincinnati,” and I’ll put her picture in my blog sometime if I get permission—and let me say right here, to Julie, that if you should ever stop an old gray-haired man for speeding, and you notice the name “Viall” on his license, then maybe let him slide on the ticket.

As for Jerry, he was one of the most comical kids I ever had in history class and I always enjoyed students who could make me laugh. Today he’s in the restaurant business.

Here’s how Brandi describes herself on Facebook:

“What you see is what you get!!!!!!...I am married and have two kids Jack, and Liam, we have one dog his name is Chet. I love animals, Jam bands, beer, watching movies, hanging out with friends, riding my bike, swimming, painting abstract art, making my friends smile, camping, fishing, hiking, most importantly my family so you mess with them you will regret it!!!!!!!!!”

(I counted the exclamation points there—and decided Brandi meant it; plus, her sister is a cop. Okay, no messing with Ms. Campbell or her family)

Among things she hates (I didn’t use the word “things,” former students. Brandi did):

1. Snakes

2. People who think they’re better than you

3. Men that wear the pants past their butts

4. People that turn their radio so loud that it thumps, but their speakers suck, so it sounds like crap

She listed others; but that’s enough. What matters is she’s practicing her art, and raising two sons, which is art in itself, and says “I love all my friends and family very much.”

Like I say: if you’re a teacher you can expect that most of the kids you teach are going to turn out just fine as adults.

Brandi (left), Julie (right) back in the good old days.

Brandi's abstract art.

Brandi's art of raising good children.

Lynzi M. Engel (Beadle) was one of the hardest-working students I had back in 2002, not to mention one of the very nicest. I wasn’t surprised to find that she was full of fun and ideas. I knew it ran in the family. I had her brother, Adam three years later, another star student, and knew their dad from basketball, too. And…what the heck…how old am I??

I had mom in class back in…back in…crap…who can remember?

I think it was Lynne, her mom, and several of her “hoodlum friends,” who brought me a bag of potato chips one day, after I mentioned in class that I ate chips whenever frustrated. My memory is that their class had been frustrating as hell the day before.

So I think they thought I needed salty solace.

Normally, Lynne was a joy to have in class, too, and Lynzi was a chip off the Engel iceberg and always easy to teach. Here, I suppose I should apologize for repeatedly making her name the correct answer to joke questions on various tests.

(Did I mention that Lynzi had a great sense of humor?)

So how is Lynzi faring in 2013? She has her undergraduate degree in speech language pathology from Ohio State and she’s happily married. She sends word to me electronically: “When I further my education it will either be for Speech or Special Education…I will be working with either speech students as [a] special education teacher or vice versa. Still deciding and praying for a clear decision.”

Ms. Beadle calls herself “a follower of Jesus Christ” who “created me into the person I am today.” What that is that was created is a very good person, from what I remember.

I suspect Lynzi is the same fine young lady today.

Lynzi as a baby; Lynne holding her tight.
Both star students during my teaching career.
(Dad was really good in basketball, too.)

Lynzi, left, Adam, right.

Mr. and Mrs. Beadle
at their OSU-themed wedding.

Last, but not most assuredly not least, we have Ms. Jara Bonner. I remember her as a bright and caring and nice young lady. She, too, was mature beyond her years and wanted to do her best, which is the standard all of us should follow.

After she graduated from Loveland she went on to earn a degree at Xavier. I checked her Facebook page to see what she was up to. Right away, I noticed she included this statement:

“I love my son, he is the greatest gift that I will ever receive. I love to read, travel and spend time with my son and my family.”

I also noticed that Jara quotes Rene Descartes (I told you she was smart):

“All the same, it could be that I am mistaken, and what I take for gold and diamonds is perhaps nothing but a bit of copper and glass.”

So, I send her a message and ask her to fill me in on what she’s now doing. She replies:

I loved doing skits in your class, and I still remember that I had to write an essay on my date with Goofy! [Noah Campbell can relate.] !! I don't even remember what I did, I just remember having to write. LOL I am currently playing around with returning back to school to pursue a masters’ degree, in what I have no clue…When I am not working, I volunteer with a project entitled The Family Is First Project. This is a group/ministry for inmates, ex- offenders and their family members. The group encourages rehabilitation, education and self-development of those behind bars as well as providing support to the family members. The group currently meets inside Warren County Prison. I am also a Chemical Dependency Drug Counselor Assistant.

I will probably switch gears soon and move into more of a social service position. My son Markus is 18, and will be attending Mt. St. Joe in the fall, he will be playing football, and studying Law Enforcement. I still love to read, recently learned to ski, [and] I might take it up next season.

Raising a good son—helping people rebuild their lives—no surprise, from what I remember of this young lady.

So let me finish this post with a positive note for anyone who reads this far. When I hear people wondering, “What’s wrong with young people today?” I always want to reply, “Nothing.”

I must totally agree with Mr. Markus Bonner.
Mom! A Steelers' jersey???

Raise a good son and you have an accomplishment.
That's what Jara is about.

Old McDonald Had a Farm and Some Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in His Chicken

2013-03-28T14:30:00.003-04:00

IN NEWS YOU PROBABLY IGNORED—which means the lives of all your loved ones are now in danger—scientists in Britain and Denmark recently discovered a link between antibiotics used in animal feed and new strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

You may have heard this part already: They’ve been doing a lot of testing in Europe recently, after horse meat showed up in numerous products, such as products labeled “beef lasagna.” Secret ingredient: Secretariat.

In any case, you are probably asking yourselves right now, as you sit down for a tasty breakfast, lunch or dinner: “Is it safe to eat this sausage patty or hamburger?”

We could explain the science behind this sordid tale. But let’s be honest. You are probably too busy to take time out of your day to read a long story involving complex science terminology—and a certain author is too slothful to offer in-depth analysis.

Anyway, who cares about that? What matters is that cows are trying to kill you.

Don't laugh. He plans to kill you.

Why haven’t we been warned about these bovine assassins? Not to mention killer flies? Do some research people! Four years ago we were warned when another study found that flies were transferring drug-resistant bacteria to humans. How you ask? You don’t want to know.

You do? Then let scientists bear the bad news:

“Flies are well-known vectors of disease and have been implicated in the spread of various viral and bacterial infections affecting humans, including enteric fever, cholera, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis and shigellosis…”

… And, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that was Dr. Jay Graham, speaking. His report explains that he and other scientists collected chicken poop and flies and compared the genes of the bacteria…oh, hell…the key takeaway is this:

“Our study found similarities in the antibiotic-resistant bacteria in both the flies and poultry litter we sampled. The evidence is another example of the risks associated with the inadequate treatment of animal wastes.”

How is this happening—right under our noses—right there on our dinner plates? Damn! Get away from here you flies.

Let’s keep it simple. Old McDonald has some chickens, “with a cluck, cluck, here…” He feeds the chickens, low levels of antibiotics so they don’t get sick, or if they do, they feel better. “With a cluck, cluck, there…” Sometimes these antibiotics make the chickens grow faster. (Feel free to bust out with an “E-I-E-I-O” whenever the mood strikes you.) So Old McDonald makes more money and buys Mrs. Old McDonald a shiny new tractor.

Meanwhile, the chickens (cows, pigs, etc.) take dumps in the barnyard.

Unfortunately, the animals have been fed so many antibiotics that various forms of bacteria—forms with names much too long to include here—have developed resistance to antibiotics humans use to protect themselves from killer infections. In other words: you eat meat from the cow Old McDonald sold to the slaughterhouse and the cow gets his revenge by trying to kill you. Or: the fly lands in the pile of chicken crap and walks around for a while and gets his tennis shoes all dirty and disgusting and then flies over to where you are having your pancakes.

You are probably asking yourself at this point, “What can I do to protect my loved ones and what can we as a society do to defend ourselves from dangerous farmyard denizens, not to mention deadly insect aerial attack?”

The U. S. government, in the guise of the Food and Drug Administration might step in, and in a way they have tried. But you know what the Tea Party types like to say: Government is always the problem, never the solution. Free enterprise and antibiotic resistant bacteria! Not to mention those profits! And lobbyists for big farmers’ groups and drug manufacturers all agree. If you limit antibiotic use on the farm, what you really want to do is unplug Granny Chicken. So, what’s a politician supposed to do? Turn down a fat campaign contribution? According to David A. Kessler, writing in the New York Times today, there’s lots of money to be made here, and where money is involved, maybe public safety will come…how might one say this…second.

Kessler notes that drug manufacturers sold 30,000,000 pounds of antibiotics for livestock last year alone. That represents 80% of their business. He adds:

“We have more than enough scientific evidence to justify curbing the rampant use of antibiotics for livestock, yet the food and drug industries are not only fighting proposed legislation to reduce these practices, they also oppose collecting the data. Unfortunately, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, as well as the F.D.A., is aiding and abetting them.”

Well, what are you going to do? That’s how it goes in Congress these days. Nothing ever gets done and our elected officials have an approval rating about as low as the approval rating we accord drug-resistant bacteria.

Just because there are growing signs of significant dangers from antibiotic-resistant bacteria coming in from around the world—you might think drug companies and giant agribusinesses should be more careful and take a hit to the bottom line if necessary.

And…you’d be dreaming.

Loveland Students Make Good: Part Two

2013-03-26T06:14:00.001-04:00

AS LOYAL READERS OF MY BLOG already know (and I mean, of course, both of them), I decided to do a post or two about what former students are currently doing in their lives. I keep in touch with as many as I can.

Sometimes I visit them in jail...

Ha, ha. No, seriously, when I hear people say, “What’s wrong with young people today?” I think to myself, “Nothing.”

I should also note that some of my former students no longer classify as “young.”

So here’s Part Two.

Wes Greiwe said he wasn’t sure I’d want to include him because he hadn’t been doing that much since he graduated; but I must disagree. The year I had Mr. Greiwe in class he was one of my favorite students. Wes did in school what all of us should do every day. He made the absolute most of his talents.

I hate it when people say: “He gave 110%.” So, I will say that Wes gave 100% effort every day and that’s the highest any of us can go.

He explained in a note what he’s doing as a grown up person:

I still have a great work ethic…I know I used to bore my teachers and other kids in class always talking about old cars. I’m involved with old cars more than ever now. I restored my 1968 Chevy Corvair and I’m heavily involved in two local car clubs and hold office in both. I love to volunteer and I do a lot of work with Big Brothers Big Sisters. I have a 16-year-old little brother that I’ve been matched with for over 2 years.

I love this picture Wes sent (he’s at left) and I’m willing to say if Mr. G. can help mold this young man, he’s going to turn out just fine.

Wes Greiwe and his little brother.

His Corvair looks like new!

My memory of Brian Pope is of a funny young man who didn’t necessarily have the best grades. I didn’t either as a youth, so I always believed every kid had untapped talents and tried to bring them out. I think Mr. Pope liked school about as much as I did in seventh grade—which wasn’t very much. So, maybe one time he got in trouble in my class.

I’m sure it was never more than that.

He sent me a kind message recently when I asked if former students would like to be included in this kind of post: “Anything for you…It would be an honor, sir! My fondest memories during what could’ve been the toughest part of my childhood were in your classroom. I’m glad you played a role in molding me into the man I am today (including my times spent in the hallway in ‘time out’).”

How, then, is Bryan doing these days? He’s doing great. On Facebook, under “About,” he has a heading called “Keepin’ it Real.” Under that he has: “Integrity. Character. Truth.” I’d call that an excellent standard for living.

I was checking out his photos and saw he worked for Habitat for Humanity down in New Orleans. For a regular job, he fixes helicopters and...flies them. Not bad, Mr. Pope, your talents are clear.

Bryan Pope delivers a bride and groom to the ceremony.

I'm sure you all recognize Bryan.

Gerri Sroka, center rear.

Gerri Sroka was a bubbling fountain of enthusiasm when I had her in my history class. She was a caring, kind individual and from what I can tell she should be perfect for her present tasks in life. Having completed the nursing program at Galen College of Nursing, where she received her Associates Degree, she went on to earn a Bachelors of Science at Grand Canyon University and did a few online courses along the way. She is now a health professional, working as a registered nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Clifton, Ohio.

It’s tough work, she says, but she knows she makes a difference.

She works the night shift on a medical/surgical/detox unit as one of the RN leaders for detox patients. In her spare time she works at Midwest Cheer Elite coaching special needs teams. She’s been involved with that for seven years now.

(I will not mention that Gerri, below, makes me envious because she is still thin.)

Kelly Harris, looking quite dapper.
Michele in yellow, once a star student of mine.

Let’s just say I had Kelly Harris in class a long time ago. (Michele Bigham Harris, his lovely wife is also a former student; but she must be like thirty years younger, or something.)

Kelly wasn’t stacking up A’s and B’s when I met him—but he was one of those guys you could tell could grow into something good and he did.

Here’s how he remembers life in junior high (Loveland became a middle school in 1991, I think) and what he has been doing more recently:

As a junior high student I was pathetic! I did poorly in school, I quit sports, I was always told I day dreamed all the time, even from you! (Later found out ADHD). I barely passed both years. I was the smallest male or female in my grade. I was extremely introverted.

I didn’t come out of my shell until about 17 years old then it was “GAME ON!!!!”

I have no idea how and when it happened or why but something clicked at one point because I can answer almost every question on Jeopardy, I have been self-taught in LEAN manufacturing and World Class manufacturing methods. I have owned 5 different businesses, all did well. I currently own a roofing company and am starting up a hunting and fishing website.

Oh and can we put on your blog I am huge 2nd Amendment supporter????? Just kidding I know, I know, it’s your blog.

Kelly also had a guiding hand in starting up the Miller Brewery in Trenton, Ohio. Well, I think you can tell, Kelly has worked hard and done well and I will keep sending him postings on Facebook until I convince him that Barack Obama is the best president ever.

That might take some time.

Kelly and daughter Morgan spending some quality time together in the woods.

Okay, I'm cheating here. This is Morgan Harris.
(I was never so lucky as to have her in class.)
She's a five-year survivor of cancer,
which means she's tougher than a platoon of Navy Seals.
Throw in a few ninjas and marines. Still tougher!!!

Stephanie Jacob was one of the true unfortunates in Loveland Middle School history—having been stuck in my classes two years in a row. (In a bizarre turn of events, I was shifted out of my seventh grade position before the start of my final year in teaching and moved up to eighth grade.) I remember occasionally reminding Stephanie to push herself; because I knew she had wonderful talents. Her writing, for example, impressed me.

Her cheerful personality was a bonus and in two years of working with Stephanie I don’t think I ever saw her in a bad mood.

What is this young lady up to at present? She explains:

I am now studying Nursing at the University of Cincinnati, although I am switching to Good Samaritan College of Nursing next year. I’m excited to get out of school and start helping people! I had you for 7th and 8th grade (the year you retired). I remember on your last day how we all made a tunnel and chanted your name as you ran through it and left your classroom for the last time. You were the first teacher going through school that I felt treated us like young adults instead of little kids.

Stephanie was easy to treat like a young adult—and I’m willing to bet she’ll be a success as an adult adult, too.

Stephanie thinking:
"What kind of vegetable is this?"

Ms. Jacobs and a certain young man.
They look like a nice young couple.

One of the pleasures of teaching so long in the same place was that you were able to see how many former students turned out—and sometimes have their children come into your class a generation later. This was the case when Toni Gardner showed up on my roster in 2006.

Something about her seemed familiar.

Pleasant demeanor. Yes. Open, frank look. Yes, I’d seen it before. That smile, that hair…and what I later found Toni had…that hard-work ethic.

Angie Baxter Gardner, former student
at the time of this picture;
future student, Toni Gardner, in lap.

Just as I suspected, her mother was a former student (we won’t say from how far back), Angie Baxter Gardner, a star in my class during an era when I wore polyester pants. Angie was super-dependable, even as a teen, and more than one teacher used her to babysit his or her children.

So, you know Angie had to be cool.

Toni was like a Mini-Me version of Mom, but with plenty of character of her own. It was a pleasure to have her in class every day and she filled me in on what she’s up to of late:

I’ve been working at Dewey’s pizza in harpers point for almost 2 years as a hostess, and I’ve recently started to manage and serve a little too, even though I’m not suppose to till I’m 19 but I’ll be 19 in may so almost there. I also have been going to the University of Cincinnati without a major as of right now but I have been applying to nursing schools including Christ college of nursing at Christ hospital and Good Samaritan college at the hospital. I will be working as a day camp counselor this summer along with Dewey's and helping my mom with her conceal and carry classes. Ill actually be taking my conceal and carry on the 6th of April! Really pumped for that!

In other words, two classy ladies—now packing heat.

Toni in show choir at LHS.
Standing one row higher, to the left (in the picture) of the young man at center.

The Gardner Ladies.

It’s too bad I failed to keep better notes on all of my students and all of the great work they did. I’ll mention two young ladies together here and then tell you about them separately and we’ll see what two former star students are up to right now. I had Cam Catalfu in class in 2001 and Andrea Dubell in 2006.

They don’t know each other. But what fantastic work they both did. I used to ask every student to do one project per quarter, or four for the year. You could pick skits, or do creative writing, or art or make models or movies or write poems. Cam did four highly creative projects, that I know, and earned four perfect 100’s. I wish I remembered what they were all about; but trust me, her talents were clear. Andrea was the same kind of quality student. I know she did one amazing project involved puppets…but can’t remember exactly how it was set up.

Andrea had real character, too. (Cam was the same.)

Both young ladies made the job of a teacher almost embarrassingly easy. So, what are they both up to now?

Let’s check with Cam first: She attended Wittenberg University first, where she majored in East Asian Studies, then earned a Masters in Japanese Studies at Michigan. Naturally, she decided to put her education to work and it was off to Japan she went. Today she’s living and in Mizunami, Japan. She’s an assistant language instructor and having a great time.

It turns out that Andrea and Cam have something else in common: an abiding interest in languages. Andrea is currently studying French at Ohio University (and we commend her for her wisdom in choosing to attend that bastion of learning nestled beside the beautiful Hocking River). Last year she was fortunate enough to take a bit of time and travel to France.

Since Ms. Dubell is still in college we cannot know where she is headed five or ten or thirty years from now. Wherever it is, it’s assuredly good.

At Hikone Castle: Cam's the one in red hair in case you didn't guess.

My experience was that everything Cam did
was creative and unique.

Andrea Dubell (second from left) in France.

Andrea is also a skilled photographer: Fort St. Andre, France.

Since teachers hope to aid students along the path to success, it seems fitting to end with this photo (below), taken by Andrea on her trip to France.

The path in life is open. You can go almost any way.

For teachers, it can be reassuring to know most of your students are going to find their own path; and they are going to do just fine.

Loveland Students Make Good: Part One

2013-03-24T11:08:00.000-04:00

IT HIT ME RECENTLY, that if I was going to keep doing my blog about teaching, I should say more about former students. I still keep in touch with as many as I can, as many of my peers in the profession like to do. We go into teaching, after all, because we hope we can help young people develop their talents and succeed in life. It’s fun to see that almost all of them do.

The idea for this post came to me when Mark Brotherton sent me a message via Facebook. He admitted he wasn’t always the hardest-working student—and I reminded him I wasn’t much of a student either when I was young. But here’s what stood out. Mark thanked me for what I had done and mentioned how proud he was to have raised three fine sons.

I thought that said all that needed to be said of any father and the kind of man Mr. Brotherton had become.

Mark still looks as thin as he did more than 30 years ago.
(I wish I could say the same.)

Lindsay Elizabeth just happened to “friend” me on Facebook while I was working on this idea; so she gets included quick. She’s an art teacher now and doesn’t use her last name on Facebook; so I won’t use it either. I will mention that I had her in class, probably in seventh grade, in 1995 or 1996.

She was “funny and hard-working” according to brief notes I kept about students, a practice I started around that time. (I wish I had kept better records in the early years because teachers do forget.) Now she’s making a difference in her own inimitable way. Having Lindsay in class (and the same was true of her brother and sister) made my job easier, but I appreciate her saying that I had something to do with inspiring her to go into the profession.

The note (below) says a lot about how much teachers like Lindsay make an impact on young minds.

Lindsay Elizabeth (left) demonstrates
her way with kids.

Jonathan Davis.

Jonathan Davis (above) was in my seventh bell class my final year of teaching. What I noticed was that any time a question of right and wrong came up (as such questions often do in discussing human history), I knew Mr. Davis would take a strong stand for the right.

He also helped me get a young veteran, named Seth Judy, to come to school and talk about the time he spent in combat in Iraq. (It might not look like it from this picture—since he looks kind of like Satan—but Jonathan has the sort of strong Christian values I admire…even though I’m pretty much a non-church goer myself.)

I figure Mr. D., now attending Bob Jones College, is going to leave a positive mark on the world once he’s out of school.

Proof that Jonathan isn't just painting himself in college.
He's in the foreground, with glasses,
behind the student with a green shirt.

Deana Callahan a few years back.

Deana Callahan Wilisch (pictured above) found herself seated in my class in 1982. Now she’s a proud mother determined to raise her three daughters right: Kelsey, 15, Jessica, 11, and Kenzie, 9. Anyone who can raise good kids has my respect. I used to ask students to do 1000-word interviews with someone over the age of sixty (sounded old to me back then). Deana did a great report on her grandfather and I still remember how hard he said he had to work as a boy.

You can kind of tell from the picture, Deana was a nice young lady to have in class, and she was kind not to kill me, even when I kept calling her “Deanna.”

And I’m still sorry that boy pulled her bra strap.

Deana and her girls, with husband.

Trinity Campbell with mom and dad.
Daughter of Davin and Jilian Partin Campbell.

Jilian with the ball. Mr. Miller trailing behind.
And who is that guy in blue shorts playing defense?

Jilian Campbell (seen above and once feared on hardwoods all over Cincinnati when she played under the name “Partin”) was in my history class in 2000. I thought at that time, and still think today, that she was one of the hardest-working kids I ever saw come through my door.

Jilian wrote to tell me what she’s been up to:

Davin is my husband, Trinity is my daughter and she’s 19 months old. I am a family support specialist at The Next Door’s Freedom Recovery Community, a non-profit serving women and their children overcoming addiction here in Nashville. We are permanent housing for up to 20 families with on-site supportive services. I came to this job in November after working 3 years at juvenile court as a probation officer.

I’m assuming (safely, I think), that Jilian is working hard at her new job.

The Vargo sisters: Mandi, left, Abby, middle (I think I had her in class, too,
and Molly right (I believe she had Mr. Sharpless).
I often mix up sets of brothers and sisters in my mind. Curses!
Matt Vargo was also cool.

Mandi Vargo (pictured above), was another student in my class who stood out because she always wanted to do right. Hard worker. Lively and enthusiastic.

She got into education by way of a program called “Teach for America.” Today she does chemistry and physics for a Louisiana charter school. Most students come from poor homes, 93% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and almost all are minorities. So Mandi has to work a little harder to help—and that is what she does. She sent me a great email recently and described the course she’s been on for the last four years. “I realized early into that first year [in the classroom] that, not only did I have a knack for teaching, I truly enjoyed it.”

Mandi explained how she goes about her business:

Being a tiny white woman from the North who looks about the age of my students on a good day does not garner much respect based on physicality. I however, have (and have always had) one of the most productive and well behaved classrooms on campus. Why? Because I treat my kids like young adults, I allow them to earn freedoms by showing me that I can trust them, and I never ever bullshit them…Despite race, religion, income, or education level, every person craves respect and that can go a long way in the classroom and in building skills and confidence for life after high school.

If that isn’t what a teacher should be thinking, I’m dreaming. Mandi added, “Give me 4 walls and some kids and I promise you, learning will happen.”

Mandi, lower left. I think this is in her school.

Katelyn Altieri.

I remember having Katelyn (seen above, left) in class for several reasons. Not that she talked much—oh, no, no, not Katelyn. Mums the word with Katelyn.

Okay: Seriously, Ms. Altieri had a wonderful sense of humor and students who could make me laugh always made my job enjoyable. I also remember the day she did an oral book report on Night, Elie Weisel’s classic account of survival in a Nazi concentration when he was a teen. When Katelyn started telling about the book she wasn't smiling.

She was crying.

Now she sends me an instant message and tells me she’s a student “at northern Kentucky university for BFA Musical theatre. I was in the Main Stage show Legally Blonde. I was Galena (a delta nu) I am highly active in a sorority called Theta Phi Alpha, which is the singing sorority.”

I told her I thought she’d make a real contribution in years to come. She responded:

I’m trying my best. I really wanna head to New York when i graduate and audition like crazy and then have my own academy where kids can come and learn everything they need to know about musical theatre. dance singing. construction. costumes. all that jazz and put on a show too! and yes sir i did [read Night]. to this day i still love that book.

Brian Gorman.

Brian Gorman walked into my class a decade ago—and what I noticed as the year went by was his work kept improving. I always believed that was the mark any of us ought to be aiming for. A nice young man, always. Now, he’s working at Disney World down in Orlando. Based on his photo, I believe he’s dating Cinderella. (Brian above, left.)

On Facebook he describes himself: “I am currently fulfilling one of my biggest dreams. With the help and support of my family and friends, I moved down to Orlando, Florida to continue work with Walt Disney World as a lifeguard. I love my job and I love to make people happy. I couldn’t ask for anything else at the moment!”

You can kind of tell why he was a good young man to have in class just by reading that statement.

Wait a minute! That's Bryan but not Cinderella!!!
(This could be an episode on "Cheaters.")

Phil McDaniel.

I had Phil McDaniel for American history back in 1999. You never had a dull moment with Mr. McDaniel around. He liked history and he had a quip for every occasion. He was musically inclined, as well, and later joined the United States Marines.

The Marines let him play with guns (see above).

Looking for something to add about Phil, I checked his “favorite quotes” section on Facebook and had to smile. As always, when I had the young man in class, I got a laugh. One favorite of Phil’s choices:

“I’m gonna pistol whip the next one who says shenanigans.”

(And, yes, Phil, like an old teacher, I corrected the spelling on that last word. Phil can be seen below. I’m sure you recognize him in red.)

Pigs in the River: How Rupert Murdoch Got His Foot in the Classroom Door

2013-03-21T12:32:00.001-04:00

HERE’S YOUR RIDDLE FOR THE DAY: What do Rupert Murdoch and dead pigs in a river have to do with American education?

First, the pigs. No, not Murdoch. The real pigs.

If you don’t follow news out of China you may not have heard that 13,000 animal carcasses have been found recently floating in the river that supplies the drinking water to the city of Shanghai. Hard to believe, that’s the good news.

In recent years, with China’s industry and trading influence booming, a hybrid communist-capitalist economy has taken shape. The result has been to combine the worst excesses of capitalist greed with the many forms of communist oppression. Chinese leaders apply their iron grip to squeeze billions out of the system for themselves and their families. Yet, while there may be no limits to rapacity and greed—even among leaders of a nominally communist nation—the environment has its limits. Spreading air and water pollution, and now thousands of rotting pigs, have forced officials to take action. This past December seventeen business people were sentenced to jail, including one for life, after they were found guilty of slaughtering and selling meat from more than 77,000 diseased pigs.

That’s why pigs in the river represent a sort of progress. Some shady operation was clearly dumping evidence.

Considering how hard communist authorities work to stifle dissent, including monitoring the internet, it was hard for reporters to ascertain the truth. At least one official suggested that—well—what can you do? The pigs had died during an unusual cold spat of winter weather. Bloggers skilled in circumventing the web censorship picked up the story and noted that weather had been typical for that time of year and that place in China, and started to investigate.

One humorist wondered if the pigs were part of some mass porcine suicide pact.

SO, WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO with Mr. Murdoch? The point is this: that many business people will stop at nothing when it comes to piling up large stacks of dollars. Here, then, we turn to dear Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation, a man whose career proves that point at every turning.

When you think of Mr. Murdoch you are probably not saying to yourself, “This is the very fellow I would most trust to save America’s schools.” Still, here he is, one foot already firmly inside the schoolhouse door. Few Americans paid the slightest attention at the time—but two years ago Murdoch forked out $360 million to gain a controlling interest in Wireless Generation, a major player in the sale of education-related technology.

What exactly led our favorite billionaire to jump into the field of American education? Let’s go to the News Corporation website and allow him to explain:

“When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching,” said News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch. “Wireless Generation is at the forefront of individualized, technology-based learning that is poised to revolutionize public education for a new generation of students.”

If you are keeping all those bobbing carcasses in mind you will not be surprised to notice that Murdoch mentioned “$500 billion” first instead of “students.”

In fact, if you want to know what News Corporation might do if it ever came down to putting kids ahead of dollars, or dollars ahead of kids, simply Google: “Millie Dowler.”

That’s the overarching danger as corporations extend their reach into American classrooms. We know, where profits are concerned, that they won’t hesitate to dump dead pigs in the academic river. Fox News, of course, will assure us this business push into education is certain to work out just fine. The evidence shows otherwise. We already know about corporations’ crooked practices at for-profit colleges. We’ve seen the shady charter schools they found, too.

What else should we expect? We’re talking $500 billion in government spending; and no business person worth his or her bank account wouldn’t want to get a healthy slice of all that cash.

The question then is: will the companies truly care about kids first, or will their motivation be profit? The testing industry, bloated by a decade of standardized testing, is already worth an estimated $1.7 billion annually. It’s only to be expected, then, when companies like Pearson spend millions to lobby politicians and keep those mandated tests on coming. It doesn’t bother anyone at testing companies to know that scores on the SAT have tumbled in the last ten years at the very time when public schools have been forced to focus on such testing. It doesn’t bother them to know that last fall 232 Texas school districts joined in denouncing a growing reliance on high-stakes testing, either. Dollars do come first.

Children are a distant second.

Now, Murdoch brings his ruthless methods to the field of education. Amplify, a new division of News Corporation, hopes to expand its presence into every U. S. classroom. The company already markets curriculum materials. Recently, Joel I. Klein, former chancellor of the New York City schools and now chief executive of Amplify, announced that the company “will not sell just its curriculum on existing tablets, but will also offer the Amplify Tablet, its own 10-inch Android tablet designed for K-12 schoolchildren.” According to the New York Times the new tablet has a sleek touch screen. If a child’s attention wanders a voice prompts them: “Eyes on the teacher.” (It might be cool if Amplify recorded Bill O'Reilly at his snarling best to scare all those inattentive pupils.)

As Klein explains, the tablet is designed “so that schools can provide each student with one to take home each night.” There’s a huge learning opportunity he claims, if we get kids excited about educational games. “We understand technology and we understand education,” Klein told reporters. “A lot of people who understand technology don’t understand education.”

Unfortunately, what Klein and Murdoch really understand is how to pile up profits. You don’t pay $360 million for a controlling interest in an education-related company or offer the head of your education division a munificent salary (Klein earns $4.5 million) unless you expect a healthy return on your investment.

In recent months, Amplify has been hard at work field-testing the tablet in hundreds of schools. They even donated tablets to the poorest students and schools—which if you watch Fox News, you know only encourages all those “moochers” and “takers” who comprise the loathsome “47%.” But not to worry! Capitalism will triumph in the end. A loaded device, with advice on care and usage, will soon go on sale, for $299, along with a two-year subscription, $99 annually. “A higher-end Amplify Tablet Plus, for students who do not have wireless access at home comes with a 4G data plan and costs $349.”

Here’s the final irony.

How will schools afford all this new technology? Simple, says Klein. “Amplify estimates that many school districts could use grants from the Department of Education’s Race to the Top program, which brings technology and personalized learning to schools.”

That’s right. You read this correctly. Rupert Murdoch wants some of President Obama’s stimulus money! The old coot has made a pact with the Devil!

Tenth Anniversary of the Start of the Iraq War

2013-03-19T14:44:00.000-04:00

WHAT HAVE WE FORGOTTEN ON THIS TENTH ANNIVERSARY of the start of the Iraq War?

In the year leading up to the invasion support for war had been building. In his State of the Union Address in January 2002, President George W. Bush first mentioned the “Axis of Evil” and we were warned that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Condoleezza Rice hinted that inaction meant mushroom clouds in our future.

Remember?

For Fiscal Year 2001 the U. S. Defense Department budget was $291.1 billion. In the eight years to follow that figure would balloon to $515.4 billion.

(The federal budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2009 turned out to be $1.4 billion; and that budget was in place before Barack Obama took office.)

Harder to remember, too: In the days just before war began, Tim Russert asked Vice President Dick Cheney if he felt the American people would support a long and bloody conflict. Cheney, who managed to win five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, responded: “I really do believe we’ll be greeted as liberators.”

Bad call.

At the same time, Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative thinker, assured all who would listen that the war would cost the United States next to nothing. Expenses would be paid out of revenues from Iraqi oil sales.

Another bad call.

ON MARCH 19, 2003, U. S. FORCES launched the attack on Iraq, the only member of the “Axis of Evil” that had no credible nuclear weapons development program at that time. In years to come North Korea would develop real weapons of mass destruction. Iran would inch closer and closer as U. S. leaders looked the wrong way.

For all the good it did to invade Iraq we might as well have invaded the Tuvalu Islands.

Our troops did their job. Our leaders turned out to be clueless.

The hubris in Washington, a decade ago, was astonishing. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld overruled generals who asked for a larger force to carry out the mission. Rumsfeld’s press spokesmen explained: “We’re going to stand up an interim Iraqi government, hand power over to them, and get out of there in three to four months. All but twenty-five thousand soldiers will be out by the beginning of September.”

Bad call, really bad call.

At first, all went well, as U. S. ground forces smashed their way through enemy defenses. President George W. Bush’s approval ratings soared to 70%. On May 1 Mr. Bush felt sure enough of success to personally land a jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. With the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind him as backdrop, he assured the American people: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Worst call of all—and the consequences were terrible.

In the weeks to follow the neoconservatives who led us to war could do little more than watch in amazement as Iraq descended into chaos. In his book, The Assassin’s Gate, George Packer describes the results:

[Government buildings] had been looted down to the wiring and pipes; even the urinals had been unbolted from the bathroom walls…University classrooms and libraries across [Baghdad] and across the country were trashed and plundered, thousands of books and computers stolen, windows lifted from window frames, desks left lying in twisted heaps amid the dust and broken glass…The Iraqi state had collapsed, and there was nothing to take its place.

With scenes of widespread looting filling our television screens every night, reporters asked Secretary Rumsfeld if all the chaos concerned him. Rumsfeld responded gruffly, but with a twinkle in his eye: “Stuff happens, and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Untidy—and bloody—and bad things, indeed.

On July 2, 2003 President Bush responded to a query during a news conference in his inimitable fashion: “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such [in Iraq] that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on.”

At almost that exact moment, Jeffrey Wershow, a member of the Florida National Guard, was providing security for civilian advisers meeting with Iraqis on the campus of Baghdad University. He removed his helmet in the heat and entered the cafeteria to buy a ginger ale. A student pulled out a pistol, shot him in the head, and vanished into a crowd.

Untidy, yes.

Evidence built all that summer that the mission was not yet accomplished. On August 29, a car bomb outside the holiest Shiite mosque in Najaf killed a hundred innocent bystanders. Secular fighting spread, with Sunnis and Shiites slaughtering each other and a million Kurds added to the toxic mix. The death toll conntinued to rise. By 2008 the World Health Organization would estimate that 100,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths since the start of the war.

(The death toll might be twice as high.)

Invading Iraq turned out to be tough business for our troops.

On September 7 President Bush asked Congress to authorize $87 billion in extra war-related spending.
(Republicans weren’t the least bit worried in 2003 about all this extra spending.)

That fall and winter car-bombs and “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs) killed and wounded hundreds of U. S. soldiers. Not to worry said Rumsfeld. Such attacks were the work of a “few dead-enders.” Very bad call again.

On November 8, an IED, made from two 130-mm. artillery shells, exploded beside a Humvee. Seated on the right-hand passenger side, Private Kurt Frosheiser took a jagged metal splinter almost two inches long in the temple, just under the rim of his Kevlar helmet. By the end of the year 486 Americans, including Kurt Frosheiser, had died in Iraq.

The “the dead-enders” were still full of fight.

A new year dawned but the situation spiraled downward. No weapons of mass destruction were found, as we should all remember. Meanwhile, Moqtada al-Sadr and his Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, spread terror through large swaths of the country and launched hundreds of attacks against Coalition Forces. Hard again to remember: We did have limited support from other nations. In 2004, nothing seemed to go right. A subsidiary of Northrop Grumman won a contract for $48 million dollars, to train 22 battalions of Iraqi soldiers.

They trained six and then half of the new soldiers deserted.

On March 31, 2004 four private security contractors working for Blackwater International were killed in Fallujah and their charred corpses hung up on a bridge for the entire world to see. Donna Zovko saw the gruesome pictures on cable television news and learned that same day that one of the victims was Jerry Zovko, her son. A Marine division was ordered to surround the city and the fighting intensified. In April 140 Americans were killed and 1,215 wounded. During a firefight in Fallujah, a Marine rifleman spoke of seeing an Iraqi race across an empty street. He and his buddies opened fire but the insurgent did a somersault and disappeared down an alley. “Just missed him,” the surprised Marine explained to a reporter. “Kind of [a] crafty move,” he added with respect.

The killing continued and we were not treated as liberators, and the week before Christmas 2004 a suicide bomber walked into a mess hall at a U. S. base in Mosul and blew himself to bits. Twenty-two Americans died in the blast and dozens were wounded.

Oceans of blood, sweat, and tears were poured into the desert sands and wasted. On January 26, 2005 a U. S. chopper crashed in a sandstorm, killing all 31 men aboard. One of the dead was Navy medic John House. Days before, via videophone, he had seen his newborn son for the first time. On June 23 a U. S. convoy passing through Fallujah (by then theoretically under U. S. control) was hit by a suicide car bomber. The blast killed one driver and several Marines riding in the back of his truck, including Ramona Valdez, 20, and two other females. The three had been on duty at a nearby roadblock, searching Iraqi females as needed.

On August 3 an armored troop carrier ran over a huge IED “2 km. s. of Haditha” as the military reported. The blast was so strong it flipped the 25-ton vehicle upside down like a garbage can lid and killed fourteen U. S. Marines inside. All of the dead were in their twenties, except Chris Dyer, the youngest at 19. Dyer had been a top student at Princeton High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, but enlisted in the Marines shortly after he graduated. Before heading to Iraq he reassured his father. “Don’t worry, dad,” he insisted. “I’m coming home.”

But the young man was wrong.

At his funeral one of his teachers recalled that Dyer studied German for five years and played viola in the concert band. Talking with reporters afterwards Dyer’s father exclaimed sadly, “What a wonderful son he was.”

WE WERE LOSING ALL KINDS OF WONDERFUL SONS AND WONDERFUL DAUGHTERS, and still we could’t end the violence—not in 2005, not in 2006, either. It eventually became necessary to dispatch more troops to Iraq in 2007, the famous “surge,” or what the White House called the “New Way Forward.” David Finkel, in his masterful book, The Good Soldiers, wrote of that period: “more and more roadside bombs were exploding now that the surge was under way, killing soldiers, taking off arms, taking off legs, causing concussions, exploding ear drums, leaving some soldiers angry and others vomiting and others in sudden tears.”

Sgt. Michael Emory was shot in the back of the head during that fifth bloody spring of the war. Emory would end up in an army hospital, diapered and facing years of rehabilitation. A few days later Sgt. Jared Stevens was luckier by far, when a bullet “grazed his lip, butterflying it open from one side to the other.” Emory and Stevens were just two of 32,000 Americans wounded during this conflict.“We’re still at the beginning of this offensive,” President Bush explained to reporters at a press conference on June 30, 2007, “but we’re seeing some hopeful signs.”

Meanwhile, U. S. servicemen and women were doing multiple tours of duty and for them the hopeful signs were harder to see.

Sgt. Adam Schumann, considered one of the best soldiers in his battalion, came home a broken man after his third tour in Iraq in 2007, more than a thousand days in a combat zone by his reckoning. Like many he had trouble forgetting the horrors he had witnessed and found himself tormented by thoughts of suicide. Studies later suggested that 1 in 5 veterans of the Iraq War suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

On September 4 the blast of another IED, just one of tens of thousands, this time on the dusty streets of Rustamiyah, cost an American soldier both legs. Three members of his unit were killed. A fifth, Duncan Crookston, “lost both legs and an arm and most of his other arm” and suffered burns over what was left of his body. He lost his ears. He lost his nose. He lost his eyelids and lips. The young man would undergo thirty operations in coming months to save his life but would die nevertheless.

That same week, in a private meeting with the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Bush was asked how the war was going.

We’re kicking ass,” he responded.

Relative stability was finally achieved in Iraq—with most observers crediting the “surge.” But the costs continued rising. In March 2008, the total number of U. S. dead passed 4,000. The numbers kept climbing, slowly, but surely, through 2009 and 2010. Specialist David Emanuel Hickman, from North Carolina, is the last member of United States forces listed as killed in action in Iraq. He died in Baghdad in the blast of another IED on November 14, 2011.

The final costs of the war, according to a study done for Brown University are estimated to be at least $2.2 trillion.

NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WERE EVER FOUND.

IEDs in Iraq killed and maimed thousands of American troops.

How Many Reformers Does it Take to Really Fix a School?

2013-03-04T16:39:00.000-05:00

IF YOU’RE AN AMERICAN TEACHER it’s likely you’ve noticed a depressing trend. Deep into a second decade of all-out school reform, or third, depending on who's counting, we’re still going nowhere fast.

“Backward” doesn’t count.

School reformers seem baffled; but baffled school reformers don’t stay baffled long. When one reform plan doesn’t work they conjure up another plan. They’re school reformers for god sakes. That’s just what they do.

Perhaps we need to look at schools like automobiles to grasp why it is we’re not speeding down the intellectual Interstate like the reformers say we must. Imagine that there are three autos, all broken down alongside I-10, in the Arizona desert. The drivers are three real teachers. Each has been carrying five passengers, five students. One car is a new Lexus LX 570. The second is a 2006 Honda Civic. The third is a battered 1972 Chevrolet Impala.

None of them will run.

A bus load of school reformers heading for a convention in Las Vegas sees them stranded by the side of the road and screeches to a halt. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan climbs out to survey the dire situation. Other famous passengers include Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor of New York, and Joel I. Klein, his one-time school chancellor. (Klein got worn out after trying for eight years to fix the city schools. Now he’s back in the cozy corporate world, earning millions, giving Rupert Murdoch legal and education-related advice.) Michelle Rhee is a passenger, too, and there are all kinds of politicians and lobbyists and sales persons for big testing companies filling the seats. Sadly, none of them knows a pile of shit from a spark plug when it comes to car repairs.

What could possibly go wrong
when Rupert Murdoch, left, and Joel I. Klein, right,
go to work to fix America's public schools?

Duncan is first to suggest a solution to the problem of the three stalled-out cars. “We are going to paint the Impala red to make it run.”

“We will call this plan ‘Race to the Garage.’ We will offer states $4.35 billion in federal aid if they agree to paint all their cars red.” A call is made, and at great expense, apparatus is brought out to the desert, and the car is painted red. It still won’t run.

Arne scratches his head.

Arne will point the way.
And, no, Duncan never actually taught.

Michelle Rhee pipes up next. Even the other reformers roll their eyes. After hours spent together on the bus they realize this lady’s favorite topic is herself and her second favorite is Michelle Rhee.

“I say we make these drivers apply for new licenses.” she sneers. “If you had better drivers the cars would surely run. I once taught for three years. So I know everything there could possibly be to know about saving children. These drivers must be terrible. Every child deserves an excellent driver. I am thinking... someone pretty much like me.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Galt agrees. He was behind the wheel of the Civic until it died and he has thirty-three years of experience in the classroom. “Paved roads don’t matter…or guard rails…or laws against drunk driving…or bridges.”

Rhee misses the veteran’s sarcasm. Galt continues: “Or turn signals…or windshields. Hell...not even wheels.”

Suddenly, Rhee suspects she’s being mocked and shoots Galt a look.

Rhee now cashes in on her three years as a classroom teacher.
Trust us: She doesn't offer free advice.

No matter, because Mayor Bloomberg is quick to agree with Rhee. “The problem in U. S. education is that we hire drivers from the bottom 20% of their graduating college classes—and not of the best schools.”

The Harvard-educated billionaire informs everyone that the driver of the Honda will have to go. Another call goes out and a graduate of Teach for America is brought to the desert. The young professional gets behind the wheel and tries twice to start the engine. When it won’t turn over, the Teach for American kid exclaims, “Well, I only signed up for two tries. My work is done, my resume is padded.” The car she arrived in is still idling by the side of the Interstate and she jumps back in, saying to the driver, “Take me to the nearest law school, and step on it. I never planned to make a career in education anyway.”

Joel I. Klein, who never taught a single solitary minute in his life, offers up another plan. Of course he does. “I have a plan! And my plan is sure to fix the problem. We grade the cars. Then parents can choose the best cars for their children and all mechanical problems will go away. He gives the Impala an ‘F’ and the Honda gets a ‘D+.’ The Lexus gets a ‘B’ because it went a hundred yards farther down the highway before its engine coughed and died. Klein slaps bumper stickers with grades on all three cars.

They still don’t run.

A Tea Party governor speaks up. It’s John Kasich. (Kasich knows all about schools because he used to be an investment banker.) “We are going to require drivers in failing cars to take tests,” he explains to his reforming buddies, “and prove they know their subject matter. We are also going to give that third grader in the back of the Lexus a reading test. If they fail—we will fire the driver of the Impala and hold the kid back. In Ohio this will be known as the ‘Third Grade Reading Guarantee.’ I will be the hero who saved the Ohio schools and maybe get some fat campaign contributions from lobbyists!”

The three drivers mutter darkly and the third grader stares at the governor in disbelief. Kasich hands the driver of the Impala and the kid the requisite tests and tells them to sit in the shade, if they can find any, maybe behind the stalled-out vehicles.

Kasich decides it’s too warm outside for him and jumps back on the air-conditioned bus. It’s hot and heading for 100° as the sun climbs high in the noon sky. The teacher and the student wipe their sweating brows and finish up their tests.

Sadly, when they’re done, the cars still don’t run.

Charles and David Koch are next to have a say. They’re not school reformers at all; but they love to lobby politicians. They want states to pay for vouchers, allowing more kids to go to private schools, and want corporations to take over whatever public schools manage to stay alive. The brothers hand out five-figure checks to lawmakers and governors seated on the bus. Naturally, Kasich and Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin get their share. The brothers can afford to spread around a little extra cash. Each has a personal fortune of $31 billion and now—money dispensed—they expect some action.

Walker agrees to take union protection away from all the drivers in his state. Calls are made to lawmakers back home and the necessary law (already written by a shadowy “non-partisan group” called the American Legislative Exchange Council, which the Koch brothers just so happen to fund) is enacted quickly. The drivers are ordered to get back behind the wheel and crank the engines or they’ll be terminated.

Regardless, none of the cars comes close to starting.

The Koch brothers don’t really care about education, generally, or the children stranded in the desert, specifically. They hate unions—because unions usually back Democrats for political office—and what the Koch brothers really care about is political power. And taxes. Those boys loathe paying taxes on their personal fortunes.

Taxes make them mad.

Their wealth has actually increased since 2011.
They can afford to buy a few politicians.

A representative of Pearson Education offers up yet another plan. “What we need are more standardized tests, which my company will be happy to provide for a small fee, just a few million dollars, every year, from every state. We test students in all subjects and grades and maybe charge for scoliosis testing.” She opens a large briefcase filled with tests and all fifteen kids are ordered to get to work again. They complete this new set of tests and turn them in and the Pearson representative hails the next passing auto and climbs inside. She’s taking the tests to the nearest testing center for grading. “I’ll send you the bill,” she calls out cheerfully to Mr. Duncan. Then she’s gone.

Tired of all the delays—not to mention the failures—the various reformers fall to arguing. One insists that if they added new technology to the Impala it would run. Technology, he insists, will save us. A second says the problem with the cars comes down to owners’ manuals. What is needed is a Common Core Standards Owners’ Manual, the same for every car in our great land. A third expert says, no, we need charter garages. If we park a car that doesn’t run in a charter garage it’s sure to start right up—or something.

It’s now a donnybrook and bold plans are flying in all directions.

Suddenly, Rhee exclaims: “I’m late for a speech I’m supposed to give about the future of American education, during which I will hint that I am the savior everyone must follow. I can’t miss out on this. I’m being paid a $50,000 fee.” She jumps back on the bus.

“I’m a brilliant billionaire,” Bloomberg reminds the others. “Surely no one can expect a man as important as me to stand here in the desert and cook my mega-brain.” He climbs aboard the bus. All the politicians and lobbyists and testing company execs follow and off they go.

“Good luck, kids,” a former Texas governor named George W. Bush shouts from an open rear window. “No Child Left Behind!”

Bloomberg might try teaching;
we know he's more than smart enough.

THE THREE TEACHERS AND THEIR FIFTEEN STUDENTS watch as the bus disappears into a glorious red and orange and yellow Arizona sunset. They’re on their own again. Ms. Beasley, the driver of the Lexus, turns to face the others. “The key to moving forward in any car or any school,” she says, “comes down to just one word.

“That is: ‘motive.’”

“Like ‘motivation?’” asks Wanda, one of Beasley’s better students.

“Yes,” Ms. Beasley agrees. “If we expect to get out of this desert it doesn’t make an ounce of difference what color the cars might be or what kind of garage we’re going to park in once we arrive. We’re going to have to put our backs into it and shove.”

Rick, a high school senior who had been riding in the Civic, immediately grasps her point. “The key part of ‘automotive,’ is not ‘auto,’ but ‘motive.’ The car can’t move without some source of motive power.”

“Looks like we’re going to have to do some sweating if we expect to move these cars along,” says Shaquille, who was riding in the Impala. “If we expect to get anywhere in education we, as students, are going to have to push.”

“Teachers must push, too,” Ms. Beasley notes.

They all look off down the highway. Only twelve miles to go to Tucson and it isn’t going to be getting any easier. Still, even Carlos, a first grader, has the proper attitude. “Well, I guess we better start,” he says and prepares to put his fifty pounds of muscle to work.

He thinks a moment, though, and adds: “It would have been nice if all those people on that bus had stuck around to help.”

The three drivers give each other knowing looks. Then all the teachers and all the students lean in together and do their part.

FELLOW TEACHERS: IF YOU AGREE THIS ANALOGY IS ACCURATE PLEASE SPREAD IT TO COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS.

TIME TO STAND UP TO THE INEPT REFORMERS WHO ARE SO BUSY RUINING AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY.

P. S. Answer to the title question: NONE.

ADDENDUM: Several of my administrator friends have read this post; to be fair, I should include a principal who comes looking for the missing teachers and students and gives one of the cars a tow.

In the real world, we should also keep in mind that not ALL teachers and not ALL students are really anxious to push. Again, motivation becomes the key.

The key in education is always motive power.
School reformers don't get it. They think the key is some new plan.

Making a Difference in Untestable Ways

2013-02-17T19:01:00.001-05:00

AS ALL OF MY AVID READERS know (yes, I’m talking about both of you), I was a junior high and middle school teacher for 33 years.

That’s right. I spent my life in the company of hormonal teens.

So I learned to use some “unconventional” methods to keep students interested. Not that my lectures weren’t scintillating, I don’t mean.

I hated wasting class time for any reason whatsoever; but if I thought I could keep kids engaged I was ready to try anything. One day, Susan -----, a lively, funny young lady, made the mistake of telling me class was boring. She was an exceptional student. If she said class was boring it probably was.

I said we needed to liven up.

Susan foolishly agreed.

So, I picked up her books and threw them out a window onto the school lawn.

That woke Susan and everyone else up, even me.

Another time, the homework paper of a top student floated off her desk and landed in the center of the room. (We had desks in a horseshoe arrangement.) I walked over to pick it up and had an inspiration. Saying, “Here, let me get that,” I placed one foot on the paper, grabbed to pick it up and ripped it in two. I stood there staring at half a paper in disbelief.

“That was my HOMEWORK,” the owner of the dismembered assignment exclaimed.“What am I going to do now?”

“I’ll give you an automatic A,” I replied, and the class roared and that’s what we did.

IF I EVER WONDERED WHETHER these kinds of tactics were effective, the first great letter I received from a former student resolved the question. It came in the mail one day, after I had been teaching seven or eight years.

Joey was bright and impossible not to like but his grades in my class and every other were terrible. He missed homework diligently. He missed five assignments. We talked. He missed seven more. We talked. He ran his string of missing assignments to twenty—thirty—headed towards forty, like Joe DiMaggio in reverse.

Around that time, I hit upon the idea of fishing in my pocket occasionally and saying to my class in a game show announcer’s voice: “You can win all the money (jingling sound) in this pocket if you answer the next question.” Sometimes I would pull out the coins and show them for effect.“This entire thirteen cents, one dime and three pennies, can be yours if you tell me who wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

Every so often I offered “big money.” In morning classes one day I gave a quarter to the first student who could name the first astronaut to walk on the moon. In every class someone could. So it took a few dimes to generate a little enthusiasm. I started offering fifty cents—a huge prize—if anyone could name the three astronauts who took part in the first moon landing mission. The letter I received explains what happened next and shows how much teaching can matter.

If you will, try and think back 5 or 6 years…In your history class I received the honor of having the most consecutive zeroes in your teaching career, I believe it was 32 or 37. In class I also received 50¢ for naming the two other astronauts that were with Neil Armstrong. And I will never forget your ability to throw erasers at pupils who were talking while you were conducting class, namely myself. I was one of the worst students in the junior high that year. Can you remember.

The reason I am writing you is... to say thanks. You made me realize that if I didn’t straighten my life out I would end up being a bum.

It took me 2 years after having you for history to realize you were right. After my freshman year at Loveland Hurst, which was a joke, I moved to Grant County, Kentucky. I figured I would start out with a clean slate and settle down. I started doing my homework, a first, right? Believe it or not I was well respected there. I found enjoyment in excelling in my school work. I almost majored in mathematics in high school. I received an award in my poetry class. Get this I Joey ----- was the only student to keep an “A” average in poetry class. I also got a couple of awards in Band. I have graduated high school this year and I am now attending the University of Kentucky. You will never believe what I plan to study, I am a pre-medicine student. You didn’t faint did you? I am doing fine in college and I want to repeat a humble thank you. It seemed that you knew I had the potential and tried to bring it out of me but I would not allow you. Thank you.

Your friend forever,

Joey -----

You see: teaching always matters.

P. S.: IF THERE IS ANY TEACHER OUT THERE who wants to copy my “big cash prize idea,” I say go ahead.

I would warn you, however. NEVER offer $5 to anyone who can answer some question you consider hopelessly abstruse. When they do you will end up poorer and wiser.

Where do we lead students?
We may never know.
Drawing by Matt Mouser, former student.

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby: 50th Anniversary of The Feminine Mystique

2013-02-17T13:25:00.002-05:00

YOU’RE NOT LIKELY TO HEAR RUSH LIMBAUGH celebrating this week, but fifty years ago Betty Friedan helped launch the modern feminist movement and change life for American women forever.

The Feminine Mystique was first published in February 1963.

If you’re young or haven’t read Friedan’s book, it can be hard to understand how far women had to go to achieve equality in 1963. Life on the domestic front—the only front that really seemed to matter—was slowly getting better. Fifty years ago, the average housewife had an automatic washing machine and possibly a clothes dryer, too. She had an electric can-opener on her kitchen counter, a garbage disposal in her sink.

If she was rich she might have an automatic dish washer.

What else did a typical housewife have to be thankful for? Wrinkle-free synthetic fabrics had taken the “iron” out of “ironing day.” Frozen foods, cake mixes, TV dinners and a growing fast-food industry were making meal time less taxing.

More importantly, birth control pills had been on the market for three years and use was spreading. (It was still a crime to send birth control information through the mail, however. Something to do with “pornography,” you understand) Experts—male experts, anyway—reported that America’s females had never had it so good.

In reality a revolution was brewing.

THE PATRICK HENRY OF THE MOMENT was Betty Friedan, mother of three small children, a stay-at-home mom (pretty much the only kind in 1963) and college graduate. Growing up, she had heard the same message again and again: “A woman’s place is in the home. A woman’s place is in the home.” A girl must learn to cook and sew. A girl must make herself attractive to young men. Still, she must be careful. She must not be too aggressive or act “too smart.” She must not curse. She must not engage in activities which made her sweat. She must not discuss sex! Mercy! No mentioning that word!

She must be a “lady.”

At times, it seemed, nothing else mattered more than looking good for, and then finding, and roping in “Mr. Right.” The husband was the key—and landing him was like reeling in a prized fish. Looking good was as important to a woman, as realistic bait is to a fisherman. Slogans like: “Blondes have more fun.” said it all. American women were trained to think that happiness could be found in a bottle of coloring. Even the first Barbie dolls (which sold in 1959) helped bolster the simple message.

Barbie was all body and no brain. Her hair was perfect. Her clothes were lovely. Her head was empty.

Still, Barbie found her Ken.

Marriage was almost the only real goal for any sensible young woman and caring for a family would be her first and only career. A female who went beyond this role was flirting with disaster. She would be deserting her family, a gentleman of the period warned, leaving nothing behind but an “empty house and [an] empty cookie jar.” What, for her poor children, could ever be worse than that?

Even the vows recited in almost every wedding ceremony made the limits on a new wife’s world clear. A bride promised to love, honor, cherish and obey her husband. A young wife explained what this meant in an interview: “If he [the husband] doesn’t want me to wear a certain color or a certain kind of dress then I truly don’t want to either. The thing is, whatever he has wanted is what I also want...I don’t believe in fifty-fifty marriages.” She had attended college herself, she admitted, but only long enough to find a husband. When it became clear she was going to marry, naturally, she dropped out, putting off graduation, probably forever. Now she explained, she “never disputed [with] her husband in anything.”

A doctor’s wife and mother of three described a similar way of living in talking to Betty Friedan: “I always knew as a child that I was going to grow up and go to college, and then get married, and that’s as far as a girl has to think.

After that your husband determines and fills your life.”

Asked in 1963 what they might have thought about “careers” for daughters, almost all fathers and probably mothers would have laughed at such a ridiculous idea. School books, television shows, and magazines all supported this limited view. Women were meant to serve as housewives and discover happiness as mother. Even advertising focused on this theme. Commercials showed women who enjoyed getting laundry white and understood the joys—the joys—of turning dirty kitchen floors spotless and getting them to shine.

In working on her book, however, Friedan ran into countless women who admitted having trouble accepting such limits. They did because that was what was expected of them. But these were wives and mothers who tried their best to find happiness in such roles, but for whom nothing seemed to work. Not even matching pillows and drapes brought them contentment. Peanut butter sandwiches in lunch boxes wouldn’t do, and not dusting, or making beds, gave them pleasure. Sadly, one woman explained: “I feel so empty, somehow, useless, as if I don’t exist.” “Do you know what America is?” another frustrated housewife asked Friedan. “It’s a big, soapy dishpan of boredom.”

A third woman told how she turned to gardening, hobbies, and the PTA to fill the emptiness she felt:

I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem you can put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bed-maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?

Friedan called this feeling “the problem with no name,” or “the feminine mystique.” This was the myth that said women could find happiness in life only in their roles as wives and stay-home mothers.

It was, Friedan now warned in 1963, a belief that had “succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.” The “dull routine of housework” was not enough to give meaning to their lives. The typical American home, she continued, was really no more than a “comfortable concentration camp.”

Disgusted by what she now found, Friedan launched a broad-based attack. It was time she said to “stop giving lip service to the idea that there are no battles left to be fought for women in America, that women’s rights have already been won.” Women should accept nothing less than full participation in school, work, sports and government. “If women were really people, no more [and] no less,” Friedan thundered, “then all the things that kept them from being full people in our society would have to be changed.”

The Feminine Mystique stormed up the best-seller list and stayed there fifty years ago. The book helped unhappy, thinking women focus their anger. Friedan had issued the rallying cry for the “war” which was fast approaching.

Putting Prayer Back in School? Better Keep the Lid on Pandora’s Box

2013-01-30T17:11:00.001-05:00

AH, FACEBOOK! THE PLACE WHERE ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE go to post pictures of the meal they’re about to eat and share all kinds of ideas, even their bad ones. Today a friend sent me a link to a petition request: “Put Prayer Back in School.” As a retired teacher and fan of prayer myself, I decided to visit the site to see how the drive was doing.

I discovered that backers were just over half way to a goal of 200,000 signatures.

What would this accomplish? Simple:

“IF PRAYER IS PUT BACK INTO SCHOOLS KIDS WOULD BE BETTER AND DO BETTER IN SCHOOLS[.]”

Sounds good to me! If this works maybe we can even drop the expensive standardized testing! We know standardized testing isn’t working. Unfortunately, like so much of what passes for conservative thought in early years of the 21st century, it’s more “wishful thinking” than a serious attempt to come to grips with complex issues.

You can't even stop anyone from praying in school if they want to. If a teacher sits at her desk in her third grade classroom and in her mind forms a thought: “Please Lord, keep all my students safe today,” that’s prayer in school, is it not? If a young boy recites “The Lord’s Prayer” to himself, God (if He exists) will hear.

That’s how it works we've been told.

Indeed, if a seventh grade girl hasn’t studied for her history test, she can pray to her heart’s content: “Dear Lord, please unleash a storm of locusts and drive us from this temple of learning.” You never know. It could happen. And it can’t hurt. (Pascal was right about gambling on the existence of God.) If the locusts don’t come you’re no worse off than before.

Boy on far right: "Please, God, next year let me have the hot young teacher."

The big problem, when people talk about prayer in school is that what they usually mean is their kind of prayer. They say, for example, “Let’s put the Bible back in school.” History shows that they can’t even agree on which version.

So you go to the petition site for guidance and find comments like these:

John Gbla: I agree with this petition. Society is suffering from moral decay. We need to go back to nature and meet with our first love to understand the essence of our being.

Mr. Gbla’s kindly sentiment garners 572 “likes;” but it’s not long before you begin to sniff the odor, not of fire and brimstone, but intolerance in the comments of others:

Greg Jeppson: I wish that Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance to our Flag was brought back in. If Muslims can pray why cant we. Why do Americans disregard their history because it offends some one else.

LeAnna Turner: Whoever allowed Muslims those rights should allow Christians their rights. And as Christians, we need to stand up and let our voices be heard. The other religions have no problems speaking out and getting what they want done. In some way, this has been done to Christians because we have allowed it

Jose' Mercado: As a retired teacher of over 30 years…I have seen a great change in kids. When I started we were allowed to pray and as the years went on it disappeared. It was called separation of church and state but actually it became separation from God! I did see a great difference when we used to pray for our kids and fellow teachers and now you see the consequences of taking Jesus out.

Finally, a contributor goes straight to the point:

Janice Spears: I would love to see Christian values returned to our schools.

She garners 170 “likes.”

A voice of reason interjects and poses a question for Spears:

David Miller: What "Christian values" are you referring to exactly? It's wrong to kill? Cheat? Steal? Rape? I have news for you honey, those ideas and others aren't unique to Christianity, it's called being a decent human being. It's pretty arrogant if you think morality is singular to religious belief.

This brings a rather un-Christian response:

Tyson Garza: @David Christian values you libertarians know nothing about and should just as well join a mosk to pray with the Muslims even at your age you can see the difference in school and children today because of what you lack of faith had achieved... so find God or get bent!!!

It’s the start of a theological donnybrook! Jimmy Stull, an avowed atheist weighs in, saying he doesn’t want his kids to have religion forced down their throats. Not all the religious folks are happy:

William Larry Stockton: get rid of the muslems

Ruth Ann Sargent: David MillerDavid and Jimmy something has happen in your life we have no control over,you had better get rigt with the Lord, before it's to late or your going to be like the rest of these idiots out there.. God Bless!

Pamela Benton: Yes the Muslims kill there little girl Babies if they don't want them.. Just throw them in the river, let them drown. NO ONE Cares over there.. But I think it is Sad..

Walter Terrell: Jimmy Stull REad And Study the Koran , The Haditth, and Mohammed's, life I did for 8-10 years, It is Violent and Brutal , I have 2 close Muslem friends that are either CLULESS to their own so called religious Doctrines , or Blatantly Practicing TAQUIYYA , Taquiyya defined = use lies and deciet in any way possible to promote the spread of Islam…

Terrell continues his little diatribe; but you get the idea. Apparently his “close Muslem friends” are all liars.

Ruby Jean Roberts: @ Jimmy Stull..."most atheists like myself have read and studied the Bible". So, you HAVE read the Bible, and you HAVE studied the Bible. How much time did you spend in it? Are you STUPID or just obtuse? You blatently said you "reject God", well, Jimmy Stull, oneday you WILL stand before your Creator, you see, you are not an accident, God chose you or you wouldn't be here to write this. How long have you been studying Muslim? Budda or whatever? None of them died for you Jimmy Stull. There is one God and one Man between us and God, our Mediator, Jesus Christ. And oneday, EVERY (including you) KNEE WILL BOW AND EVERY TONGUE CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD.

SO: THAT’S HOW IT GOES on this harmless-sounding petition site, where the point is to put God back into public schools. The religious ideas—and the anger—fly in all directions. I’m tempted to ask one fan of the Bible if he’d be okay, in a state like Utah, where Mormons are the majority, if teachers substituted the Book of Mormon when it came to “prayer in school.” Or, could a Muslim teacher bust out a good old “Allah Akbar?” I decide it’s probably not worth my time to ask.

I leave the site without signing the petition. In fact, this is why they “took prayer out of schools” in the first place.

Opinions in religion differ; that's why people go to different places of worship.
One size-fits-all-prayers don't work in the public schools.

Fox News Paid Sarah Palin Well for Babbling

2013-01-29T21:09:00.000-05:00

NOW THAT SARAH PALIN HAS VANISHED FROM FOX NEWS it’s hard to say who’s going to miss that zany lady most. Will it be lusty right-wing males of an advanced age, a critical Fox demographic? They’ve been fantasizing about shapely Caribou Barbie since the moment she made her appearance on the national scene during the 2008 election.

In the long run, however, those likely to suffer most will be sensible Americans, who appreciated the comedy of hearing her babble.

We do know now, thanks to a review by Smart Politics, what the going price of right-wing bullshit in America is today. During her three-year tenure as a foxy Fox News political analyst (an oxymoron if there ever was one) Palin pulled down $3 million, appeared on air roughly once every week, and offered up 189,221 words of her own brand of blather. Or, to put it in terms any “maker” can understand, Palin earned $15.85 for every word uttered, or $3.17 per syllable each time she used a five-syllable word.

That was probably never.

(Before we continue, however, let us quash the rumor that the people at Smart Politics who had to sit down and listen to, and keep count of, all those thousands of nonsensical words blew their brains out shortly thereafter.)

How then do we begin to measure the lasting mark Palin left in the long annals of American political discourse? What profound words of wisdom are we left with today? Some of what follows—like Palin, herself, on Fox News—we swear is not just shit we’re totally making up.

Among all those rambling sentences Palin uttered so prettily, some phrases, but not very many real ideas stand out:

“Barrack Hussein Obama” was mentioned 786 times (that’s true); meaning Fox spent $12,458.10 to help convince ignorant people that America’s 44th president was a Muslim usurper with no birth certificate at all.

“You betcha’s,” (surprisingly, uttered but twice on air, or $31.70); “darns,” 9, ($142.65), “heck’s,” 28, ($443.80).

“Amen’s” on 111 occasions ($1759.35); assorted “God’s,” “Christians’,” three “Moses’” and one “Jesus,” 77 total uses, ($1220.45).

Mentioning “tyranny” 695 times, causing angry old white men to rush out and buy more guns ($11,015.75).

“Unplugging granny’s,” 91 times, causing angry old white ladies to clutch at their hearts and send check to Tea Party candidates, ($1,442.35).

Use of the word “terrorist,” as in: “Obama pals around with terrorists,” 496 occasions, or $7,861.60.

Use of the phrase: “Drill, baby, drill.” 16 times ($760.80).

Mentioning the word “newspaper.” Never. (No cost to Fox News.)

Mentioning actual books she read—not counting books without pictures: Never (0 dollars).

“Socialism,” “communism,” “fascism” and or “liberals,” usually in sequence, separated only by commas (Palin never did figure out that these terms were not interchangeable and apparently no Fox News listener has ever actually opened a dictionary), or in changeable combinations: 1,542 uses ($24,440.70).

Times the word “dictionary” was uttered: 0 (0 dollars).

“Thesaurus,” a single usage: “Up here in Alaska we know global warming is fake, drill me baby, that scientists make stuff up, that evolution is not true, heck, that the tyrannosaurus and thesaurus roamed the earth together, 6,000 years ago, with Adam and Eve. But, you betcha,’ not Adam and Steve.” ($744.95).

“Hunting,” 10 times, “fishing,” 9 times, “Don’t fire at that moose until you see the whites of his eyes.” 1 usage (total: $507.20).

Let’s face it, sensible Americans. We’re all going to miss her chats with Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren. These appearances gave us comic gems like this one in regard to U. S. and NATO air strikes in Libya: “I haven’t heard the president state that we’re at war. That’s why I too am not knowing—do we use the term intervention? Do we use war? Do we use squirmish? What is it?” ($538.90).

Or this one, where Governor (Briefly) Palin tried to explain how the government should have responded to the Gulf Oil spill: “What the federal government should have done is accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solution that they wanted presented...The Dutch and the Norwegians, they are known for dikes and for cleaning up water and for dealing with spills.” ($697.40).

And you had classics like this, on Hannity, when Palin tried to deny charges leveled by the NAACP that the Tea Party movement was rife with racist language and imagery: “[Barack and Michelle Obama] have power in their words. They could refudiate what it is that this group is saying.” ($317.00).

Truly, listening to Palin these last three years—it’s been more than worth the $15.85 she earned for every “who,” “what, “where” and “when.” You might try to make the case that what Rupert Murdoch actually did was waste three million bucks. But for those of us of a liberal persuasion, hearing Palin coin words like “refudiate” and “squirmish?”

Priceless!

Finally: Some Good News on Standardized Testing

2013-01-11T22:43:00.001-05:00

YOU WON’T HEAR THIS OFTEN HERE: but after a decade of school reform, all in response to No Child Left Behind, we have good news to report about standardized tests!

Yes! And it only took a few billion dollars.

Okay. No. Average scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college bound seniors haven’t gone up. They’ve been in steady decline ever since that landmark legislation passed. Those scores:

Math Reading Writing

2003 507 519

2004 508 518

2005 508 520

2006 503 518 497**

2007 501 513 493

2008 500 514 493

2009 499 514 492

2010 500 515 491

2011 497 514 489

2012 496 514 488

**Writing test added in 2006; clearly, the trend has not been positive.

Well, then, what about all that the money spent annually on standardized testing? Is it well spent? According to the Brookings Institute the annual cost to the fifty states is $1.7 billion dollars. So, with billions paid out to designers of test, implementers of tests, and graders of standardized tests, maybe scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are up.

Then again, maybe not.

We have no appreciable progress to report according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Reading scores have remained as flat as a fifth grade teacher run over by a stampeding herd of test company executives. Math scores have increased slightly, but at a pace no faster than before all the testing began.

If you want to know how bad it has really been, consider the Lone Star State, also known as “The Land Where Testing Began.” You may recall that a reforming governor named George W. Bush came charging out of the south in 2000, touting his success in revolutionizing education in that state.

Testing has been big in Texas, big like Texas, itself, but the results are more reminiscent of the Alamo. According to KXAN TV in Austin, between 2000 and 2015, the bill to taxpayers for all the extra testing will total $1.2 billion, and almost all of that cash has flowed into the pockets of a company called Pearson, “which develops the test questions, prints and distributes test booklets and scores the exams before sending them back to 8,000 schools.”

Well, with all that money being spent, you pretty much figure the Lone Star State is kicking knowledge butt.

Or not. Or not.

Looking at results for 2011, the last year for which figures are available, it turns out Texas students are scoring fourteen points lower in reading on the SAT’s in the last ten years and scores in writing have plummeted seven points since 2006. So what did taxpayers get for almost a billion dollars of testing?

A three point rise in math scores over the last decade.

How about one of the strongest arguments first posited in favor of No Child Left Behind? This was the idea that school reform would magically close racial gaps. Total SAT scores, combining scores for reading, math and writing, were as follows:

Asian American: 1626
Black Students: 1273
White Students: 1566

In other words, a billion dollars has gone down the testing drain, and the gaps in racial performance still remain.

Worst yet, it is now estimated that Texas students in grades 3-8, spend an average of 19 to 27 days of class annually taking state-mandated practice test and then the actual standardized tests. Robert Scott, the state education commissioner, and a Republican himself, has lost faith. In a story for the Washington Post last February, Scott called the growing emphasis on testing a “perversion” of what a quality education should be.

He went so far as to compare the growing testing industry to the “military-industrial complex.” (That’s still not the good news.)

“What we’ve done in the past decade, is we’ve doubled down on the test every couple of years, and used it for more and more things, to make it the end-all, be-all,” Scott said. “... You’ve reached a point now of having this one thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of the vampire, so to speak.”

SO WHAT IS THE GOOD NEWS? I’m glad you finally asked. It turns out teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle are standing up and refusing to give the latest round of district-required standardized tests known as Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP.

Does this mean wild-eyed rebels armed with pointers and sharp pencils are loose in all Seattle classrooms? Are anti-testing Luddites watching over our children? Not really. No revolutionary thinking is involved. Simply put, like growing numbers of teachers across the nation, the faculty at Garfield High is convinced that testing doesn’t work, that it’s a huge drain of time that might be devoted to better purpose, and narrows the learning focus.

In fact, if you want to assess the value of standardized testing, talk to the people who actually teach for a living. They’ll tell you that school reformers (and their highly enthusiastic supporters in the testing business) who have pushed for more testing have handed the American people an expensive sack of education excrement.

The backlash is beginning to build; but it’s time for more teachers like those at Garfield High to stand up against standardized tests.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

I have tried to explain the dilemma I faced before, bringing fourteen combat veterans from five different wars to talk to 700 students where I worked. What could Joe Whitt, who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, say that would ever appear as a question on a standardized test? How could what Seth Judy talked about be turned into a test question, if all he did was get blasted by a suicide bomber in Iraq?

If interested, go to the previous post:

http://ateacheronteaching.blogspot.com/2011/05/sham-standards-governor-kasich-and.html

The Sum of All Right-Wing Fears

2013-01-07T19:58:00.000-05:00

IN THE WAKE OF THE BLOODBATH at Newtown, Connecticut and the strange year that was 2012, it seems we might need to try to interpret a little conservative thinking.

I’ve been studying the matter and believe I’ve got it down. I think—if I understand it right—that Mr. Obama has been having illicit sex with circus clowns.

I think that’s about the level of most of what has been passing for conservative logic in recent months.

What else have conservatives been trying to tell us? Where are they going at the start of this new year? For starters: Obama is a tyrant. Since he took office the Bill of Rights has been turned into fast food wrapping paper. (Angry white guys can hardly watch Fox News excoriate the President on a daily basis any more.)

So conservatives must rise up and…take back America...and buy guns and vote. Because nothing says tyranny like allowing political opponents to cast ballots and stock up on ammo. It didn’t really matter though, because everyone on their side knew they were going to kick butt in the 2012 election. That’s what Fox News said; and the polls were all wrong, because only gay people care about percentages. What? Obama won???

Obama is like Hitler!

Under Obamacare insurance companies can no longer refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. This includes toddlers with rare genetic disorders and type-1 diabetic teens. What’s the next step, you ask?

Gas chambers for granny.

If taxes go up on the superrich, like the Koch brothers, then we are one step from a communist takeover. This is why the Koch brothers, worth $31 billion apiece, donate tens of millions of dollars to right wing causes, including smashing labor unions. Nothing says “communism” like teachers and fire fighters and bakers of Twinkies trying to win improved wages and benefits. These people want to remain in the great American middle class?

Yep: to the right, that’s “communism.”

Speaking of unions, how greedy can those thugs be? All they want to do is kill good jobs in this country. This is why job creators—here we are thinking, people just like Mitt Romney—have no choice but to create jobs in Bangladesh, where the minimum wage is $37 per month.

Gun sales in this country reached record highs in 2012, with 16.8 million background checks carried out by the F.B.I. You can’t fool conservatives—even if that does mean 45,902 guns were sold daily (it was a Leap Year). Obama plans to take away all their guns.

Glenn Beck says there may be giant magnets.

If anyone (even NASA scientists) mentions global warming or climate change or even says, “Boy, it’s a hot one today,” clearly they are part of a plot to destroy capitalism. They want to create a world government where BP and Shell Oil are denied their inalienable rights—since corporations are now people—to drill in Arctic waters and Americans are forced to eat vegan.

If gay people marry, traditional marriage will be dead, because gay people want to marry in a traditional way. Wedding cakes will no longer be baked.

Tuxedo sales will plummet.

The Chicken Dance will be only a memory.

Anyone who says, “Happy holidays,” in the weeks leading up to Christmas secretly hopes Christians spontaneously combust. (Yeah: some psychologist on Fox News explained it! Obama hates Christmas because when he was a boy his father never gave him a pony.)

We don’t need gun control to keep kids in school safe. We need to put God back in the schools. That means everyone reads the King James Bible—even Buddhists and Mormons and Jews. We need to arm teachers or maybe issue Kevlar-covered Bibles because nothing says “happy children” quite like defensive weaponry stacked near the reading center in a second grade classroom.

SPEAKING OF GOD, IF YOU GET RAPED and end up pregnant that’s His way of showing He loves you. If a mugger crushes your skull and you wind up with no health insurance and stuck in an emergency room it’s His way of saying Obamacare is socialized medicine.

And don’t say He didn’t warn you.

God believes all fifty states need concealed carry laws and He doesn’t like the 47% either.

The Founding Fathers knew everything and you couldn’t possibly beat any of them if you played them in Jeopardy. If the Founding Fathers were for freedom of religion then freedom of religion is still good enough for Christians today. Liberals, those people who hate America, insist that American citizens who happen to be Muslim should be able to build mosques where they want, such as in towns where they live. The Founding Fathers weren’t a pack of Muslims. They weren’t gay, either.

Okay, they weren’t black or female or poor white males either; but that’s not the point.

The Founding Fathers wanted pregnant women who were considering abortions to undergo invasive vaginal probes. It’s all laid out in Article III, Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution.

And you know why Obama is a tyrant? He’s planning to ignore the 22nd Amendment, which limits the chief executive to two terms—because the Founding Fathers never thought to limit a president’s tenure. You can’t fool right-wing thinkers! They know evolution and Hawaiian birth certificates can be faked. They know Obama plans to seize power and run for a third term in 2016, a fourth in 2020, a fifth in 2024, a sixth, a seventh, and an eighth!

My God, how long can that man last?

In summation, have we mentioned that Obama sends Kwanza cards to terrorists? And what about those circus clowns? Sean Hannity says Obama is a lepidopterist.

And if you hear it on Fox News it has to be true.

You can't fool conservatives, they know he's plotting for 2016 and beyond.
Well beyond! Time to stock up on more guns.

Arming Teachers: A Stupid Idea

2012-12-21T06:16:00.000-05:00

VICTORIA SOTO, 27, WAS BURIED THURSDAY under a cold winter sky. Soto, as you may know, was the teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary who stood in front of students in a vain attempt to save their lives.

Jack Pinto, 6, another victim, was buried on Monday. Tragically, that promising young man will never know if his favorite football team made the playoffs. He was laid to rest in his New York Giants football jersey: Number 80, Victor Cruz. (For Jack’s sake, let’s hope God hates the Dallas Cowboys.)

In stricken Newtown, Connecticut, Jack’s best friend penned this sorrowing letter:

And now, with twenty-six fresh graves filled or to fill, what do the most strident gun-rights advocates want to discuss? What do Second Amendment absolutists—those who say the right to bear arms cannot be infringed—suggest that we do to protect innocents like Jack Pinto?

Of course! We arm people like Ms. Soto. We arm teachers.

Why is this idea stupid?

As a former teacher, allow me to explain. First and foremost, it won’t work. It won’t guarantee the kind of safety our children deserve. And we, as a nation, can no longer afford the luxury of wishful thinking where these kinds of attacks are concerned. We owe the victims of this horrendous attack better. We owe it to all our children, both living and dead, to face reality and craft sensible national policies. Here are a few reasons why arming teachers is an absurd place to start:

1. If we place a gun in the office, ready to a principal's hand (or to the hand of some other school defender), as some absolutists are suggesting, what happens if the heavily-armed intruder shoots his way in through a different doorway?

2. What if two maniacal killers are involved? Then one defender isn’t enough (See: Columbine, 1999).

3. If the psychopath has a semi-automatic weapon clearly the defender will require (at minimum) a semi-automatic weapon. How exactly does this gun vs. gun strategy play out if the attack occurs at the start of the school day, or during a class change, when halls are crowded with children? How many bullets do the absolutists want to see flying around our schools?

4. How do we protect kids on a playground during recess if a psycho shows up and starts spraying fire? (That’s already been done. See: Stockton, 1989.)

5. What if the psycho lurks by the roadside and waits in the morning until a bus loaded with children passes? What if he opens fire at them? (Same idea: end of the day.)

6. What if the killer forces his way in through the kitchen and into the cafeteria at lunch? (Arm cooks with guns? At least they already have knives.)

7. How do we defend if the perpetrator calls in a fake bomb threat and children empty out onto the lawn; and then he arrives to start shooting?

8. What do we do if the psycho pulls up in a car in front of any school, which is exactly what happened at Sandy Hook, and jumps out and starts shooting as students enter some morning? (Same idea, exiting: afternoon.)

9. What if the perpetrator parks his car, walks up to just about any first floor classroom in America and starts firing through windows?

10. Suppose a killer approaches a high school soccer field during the first period of a tie game and starts blasting? (Same idea: track meet, softball game, tennis match, marching band or cheer leading practice.)

AND LET’S NOT FORGET PSYCHO PLAN B: What if the killer can’t get into the school? What if he heads for a college campus, a theater, a Sikh temple or mall in frustration? (We do know that’s been done, don’t we?)

If the idea of arming teachers is dumb, what about doubling down on dumb? After all, the Second Amendment is sacred, according to absolutists, and all gun-control is wrong. What choice, then, do we have other than to arm everyone in schools—every teacher and the nurse too.

Drop that mop, Mr. Janitor.

From now on you patrol the halls with an Uzi.

Is that the sad state our nation is in? Are we too cowardly and too blind to face hard American-made facts? Can’t we at least be honest about where we stand? If we have 300 million guns in private hands and those aren’t enough, then guns for all educators is but a tiny first step. Next we need to issue every public school employee body armor. And there’s the whole idea of child-size bullet-proof vests for kids to consider.

If we can’t pass reasonable legislation, hell, let’s just give the fuck up and armor buses. Place guards on board, riding shotgun beside drivers, like stagecoaches of yore. Brick up those first floor windows—except for maybe loopholes. Cancel outdoor school activities. Maybe forever. Come on, we want kids to be safe. So let’s create schools that resemble bunkers. Screw it. Let’s add 12-foot high walls. Let’s require our teachers (when they’re not preparing for standardized tests) to take turns guarding the perimeter instead of wasting time grading and creating lesson plans.

Maybe we need moats.

A conservative friend of mine suggested recently that I should stop “prattling on” about gun control. Maybe I am. Prattling on. I don’t think so. I think I’m just pissed because Jesse Lewis, on the day he was murdered, told his father in an excited voice before heading to school, “Dad, this is going to be the best Christmas ever.” I’m pissed because that little boy believed what he said and we as a nation allowed a killer to prove him wrong.

I’m pissed because Ms. Soto, possessed of “captivating blue eyes,” is dead.

I’m pissed because Grace McDonnell is no longer with us and can never follow her dreams.

I’m pissed to know that Anne Marie Murphy, another teacher at Sandy Hook, died cradling Dylan Hockley, 6, in her arms.

I’m pissed because all of them died in a “firestorm of bullets.”

In the wake of great tragedy, I’m pissed because gun-toting absolutists refuse to admit that it’s an indictment of a gun-loving culture when teachers and children are swept away in a “firestorm of bullets.”

Like mechanical men, they keep repeating a single refrain: “My Second Amendment rights cannot be infringed. My. Rights. Cannot. Be. Infringed.”

So let’s follow their logic and end with a look at the amendment in question:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Clearly, the rights of gun owners are sacred. Clearly, they cannot be infringed. Clearly, to protect our freedoms the Founding Fathers understood that what was needed was a well-regulated militia. Got all that? We need armed citizens to repel foreign invasions. Check. And to shoot back at government oppressors. (There’s a strong element of anti-Obama paranoia at play in the minds of a number of absolutists.) Sure. There are already 300 million guns; but that’s not enough, even though it’s pretty much one for every adult in America.

In other words, we need to man up. A modern militia—even though the militia no longer exists—would logically require firepower. (You can argue, and should, that the National Guard is now our militia; but then you get stuck, because they already have their own guns.) Ergo: a private citizen, following absolutist logic, who thinks he’s part of an imaginary militia, and thinks he’s getting ready to repulse imaginary invaders (because, frankly, the U. S. Navy can’t do it) or boogie man oppressors (Muslim Obama), has a god given right to purchase any kind of weapon his heart might desire. And come to think of it that should include a .50 caliber machine gun, an M1A1 tank and an F-16 fighter jet if they want one.

SEE, THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS SACROSANCT. So we do the next best thing. We put ourselves in position to brag to foreign visitors (of the non-invading type), “Here in America we build schools that double as forts!”

We owe Grace McDonnell and the others better than this.

A Timely Warning from the Mayans?

2012-12-19T18:47:00.000-05:00

USUALLY, AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, Americans are too busy searching for holiday bargains (or, if they watch Fox News, worrying about losing the imaginary “War on Christmas”) to focus on world events. This year it’s different.

Fear is building with each passing hour as we count down to the Mayan Apocalypse, just two days away. You think the fiscal cliff is a concern? Not really a problem. Let them raise your taxes if you’re a millionaire! Who cares! Not one taxpayer is going to be around to pay the bills after December 21, 2012. The planets and stars are going to align and bam!

That will be that.

We’re never going to know if President Obama and Speaker John Boehner might have worked out some kind of compromise. We’ll never learn who would have been this season’s winner on The Voice. The Chicago Cubs will never ever reach the World Series again.

Neither will anyone else.

Some skeptics, of course, may still be saying, “Screw the Mayans. I’m going Christmas shopping.” This writer admits to being skeptical, himself, until he received this ominous letter from his dentist, who claims to be “retiring” after 46 years in the field. Look at the date! My god, he’s just trying not to create a panic:

Now that you understand how short the time you—personally—have left on earth you might like to know a little about these Mayans, who somehow knew, thirteen centuries ago, that we were going to be screwed. First, they were math wizards, expert at charting stars and planets and heavenly cycles. They built impressive temples and developed a written language. They understood the concept of “zero” at a time when our European ancestors were trying to divide and multiply using Roman numerals. The Mayan people were skilled farmers, working communally to build vast reservoirs and irrigation channels. They grew corn and beans and actually liked squash.

An advanced people.

They had a monetary system (involving jade and cacao beans, the stuff of chocolate). They lived in cities like Tikal, population 60,000. They traded for hundreds of miles up and down the coast of what we know as Central America and out across the Caribbean. And they computed time backwards and forwards. According to their figures the first date in human history was August 13, 3114 B. C. Or is it August 10? My history books disagree.

Wikipedia says: August 11.

Who cares! The Mayans knew we we’re doomed. They knew it wouldn’t make any difference, not even if Obama kicked Boehner square in the nuts.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE THEY WEREN’T SO SMART. Their civilization collapsed around 900 A. D.; and somehow they failed to predict that.

Maybe the Mayans are wrong about December 21; but maybe they still have a warning to offer. From what we know, as Mayan population grew, farmers cut down the forests and planted more and more crops. With forest cover gone there was heavy erosion and fields produced smaller and smaller yields. According to archaeologist Richardson Gill, when a long drought hit their homeland around A. D. 900 water tables dropped so fast, “There was nothing they could do. There was nowhere they could go. Their whole world, as they knew it, was in the throes of a burning, searing, brutal drought...There was nothing to eat. Their water reservoirs were depleted, and there was nothing to drink.”

It might make you feel safer knowing that the Mayans never saw their own collapse coming. Maybe we have plenty of time left. Maybe the Cubs do reach the World Series in this century.

Well, that’s the moral of that story. It’s time to quit worrying and head for the mall to do some serious shopping. When you get home, maybe, turn on the television and relax and watch Fox News. At Fox News, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, fear itself and labor unions.

And Muslims.

Oh, and gay marriage.

Otherwise, Fox News is like a powerful sedative. Gretchen Carlson doesn’t scare fans with stories about melting Arctic ice and rising sea levels. Sean Hannity won’t bring up altered weather patterns and wonder why the Mississippi River was almost unnavigable last summer. The weather babes at Fox aren’t concerned about why Superstorm Sandy packed an unusually powerful punch. Megyn Kelly doesn’t care if the Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the heartland of America, is being drained at a fearful rate putting farming at risk. (Even the Wall Street Journal took note of that story). No one who works for Rupert Murdoch or Roger Ailes is ever going to admit there’s a problem when toxic chemicals show up all over the world in women’s breast milk or when traces of Prozac show up in fish. Nope. Nothing to worry about when it comes to the environment.

Even the fish are relaxed.

Did you hear? Steve Doocy says Obama is crazy because he’s pushing solar energy. So, sit back and crank up the volume because Sarah Palin is coming on after a commercial. Listen to her coo seductively, “Oh, baby, oh baby, drill me baby, drill me!”

After that, it’s time to listen to Bill O'Reilly fume about the “War on Christmas.” So, yeah, screw those Mayans.

What did they know?

Problem Solved? Arm All the Teachers?

2012-12-18T16:47:00.001-05:00

I GUESS I’M FINALLY CONVINCED. Those who cherish Second Amendment rights and guard against all limitations have shown me I’m wrong. I’ve been trying to argue that we can limit gun sales and ban military-style assault rifles and high capacity of ammunition clips. Now I understand. Tyranny is just one unsold pistol or rifle or shotgun away.

I didn’t realize until now that we needed more guns. (We also need to turn our schools into forts, it would seem.)

Here, I thought, we were talking about children like Madeline Hsu, Charlotte Bacon and Olivia Engel, all 6, who died Friday after being hit in a spray of gunfire. Now I know. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This is an absolute truth, is it not? Or, as one no-limits-on-guns thinker sagely noted, we might as well ban forks and spoons as ban guns. People in America are fat and obesity kills.

True. SO true. If we start banning guns, what comes next? I think that’s what he was trying to say. Are we ready to ban donuts?

I’m not being sarcastic at all. I’m not saying this kind of thinking is for idiots. I’m saying these absolutists are right. There’s no other way to address the incredible carnage.

Except to get our hands on more guns.

Madeliene F. Hsu,
one of twenty children cut down at Sandy Hook

You want to protect first graders in schools? You can’t do it by limiting guns. How could you think that? Now our greatest leaders are stepping forward to offer solutions. A member of Congress has already expressed sorrow to learn that Dawn Hochsprung, the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was unarmed at the time of attack. If only Hochsprung had had an assault rifle hanging on the wall in her office! (I’m not joking. That’s what he said.) Then she might have engaged the shooter and possibly won.

I’m embarrassed to say I’m a retired teacher—and all those years I spent in a classroom I never saw the logic of this kind of position. I had a student who brought a gun to school to shoot me and at least one of his classmates back in 1985. Now I see. The gun that troubled young man picked up so easily at home, that wasn’t the problem. No, I needed my own gun for protection. He had a loaded pistol in his book bag. I should have had one holstered on my hip. It would have been hard to teach without turning my back to the class; but, hey, if it means protecting the Second Amendment, I could have adjusted.

NO WAY CAN WE LIMIT GUNS. We don’t limit freedoms in America. No sir. The Founding Fathers knew their freedom shit. (Okay, true, maybe some did own slaves.) Ignore that. We are talking here about teachers fighting back.

Fight fire with return fire, you might say.

Yes, it’s the deepest kind of human tragedy that Noah Pozner, 6, had to die, hit by gunfire unleashed by a disturbed individual with a military-style assault rifle. According to his mother, Noah hoped to grow up to become a doctor or maybe own a taco factory. He loved tacos, that wonderful little boy, and that way he could have tacos whenever he wanted.

He’d be alive today, according to gun-rights absolutists, if only his teacher, Lauren Rousseau, 30, had been armed.

Why didn’t we see this before it was too late? You can’t arm just one teacher in every building. What if that teacher is out sick? What if the shooter enters from a different direction? If we want children to be safe we have to arm every educator in the land. We do it for the kids, or the gun companies, at least. Until recently, Ms. Rousseau had been a substitute teacher and before Friday she had to feel fortunate to land a regular job. What if the school had provided her gun training? Sure. We train every teacher in America in the handling of heavy weapons. Because, let’s face it, we all have Second Amendment rights and they cannot be infringed. Read your Second Amendment. Don’t make me quote it, now that I’ve seen the light:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

We can’t infringe on freedom. Not a spec. If we do we’re open to invasion by Iranians or North Koreans or maybe Redcoats. I know some no-limits Americans worry about invasion by U. N. inspectors coming to take their weapons away; or agents in black helicopters sent by Mr. Obama. What if they’re right! We can’t limit guns. In one fell swoop, U. N. inspectors could grab them all, all 300 million currently in private hands. We can’t do psychological profiling, either, before we put assault rifles in private hands.

That would be crazy, right?

It may seem incomprehensible to most of us to think that Allison Wyatt, age 6, died with most of her friends in a room blown to bits like a set in a Rambo movie. But guns don’t kill people. Don't you see? Lack of guns kills people. Her teacher, Ms. Rousseau, would be alive today if she’d been armed and ready. In fact, I apologize to NRA leaders who love America and freedom ten times more than I do. I see now that they don’t have foul blood dripping from their hands. A first grade classroom in an elementary school in a peaceful town in Connecticut was turned into a slaughterhouse.

Well, it was my fault.

It was yours, if you think there’s a way to limit guns.

One of the first responders on the scene was a veteran of two combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq; and he told friends what he saw in that room, with the torn bodies of twenty little children strewn about, was worse than anything he could have imagined in wartime. And look, we have to have guns to stop guns.

ROUSSEAU SHOULD HAVE HAD AN ASSAULT RIFLE lying atop her desk, loaded and ready. She’d never hit any pupils. She’d be trained, don’t you see? Now that you think about it, she should have been wearing body armor. It’s perfectly clear. In the future all teachers shall be issued body armor. This is America and we believe in freedom without limits. I am not being sarcastic. We can only expect safety in theaters and malls and on college campuses if every citizen has weapons within immediate reach.

We’re Americans. We don’t joke about freedom. If we ban clips that hold twenty or thirty or a hundred bullets, only criminals will have clips that hold enough bullets to take out an entire first grade classroom; and then our teachers will have no chance to fend off attacks by maniacal intruders (or Redcoats).

The logic is clear. Cannon don’t kill people, people kill people. If there had been a cannon in the hallway, trained on the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary School, the principal could have stopped that killer cold. James Mattioli, age 6, and Chase Kowalski, age 7, would still be alive today and excited about the presents wrapped and already under the family trees. Victoria Soto, 27, who dived in front of students to shield them, allowing some to escape, might be looking forward to the holidays to rest up and recharge—since working with first graders requires limitless energy. Too bad she didn’t have a rifle.

Or a cannon.

I’m not angry, except with myself. Those poor children, each hit at least three times, some as many as eleven, they’d be alive if we all had more guns.

What can we do, then, to insure that these kinds of tragedies don't happen again? Let’s follow the lead of the strident no-limits NRA types. There are six shopping days left until Christmas. Go out and get your child’s favorite teacher an assault rifle. After all, you’re either part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem.

SAY A PRAYER FOR THE INNOCENT VICTIMS.

P. S. If anyone thinks that I’m being serious read this post again. Arming teachers is a ludicrous idea; I thought that was crystal clear.

Cut off guns before they reach the schools.

Guns and Innocent Blood: What Are We Going to Do?

2012-12-14T16:43:00.000-05:00

EVER AMERICAN OUGHT TO BE SICK TONIGHT. Gun-owners and non-gun owners, alike, it doesn’t matter. Every one of us should be ill.

How else does one react to news of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown? We now know that twenty children, mostly first graders, were cut down in a fusillade of gunfire. An elementary school here in America was reduced to a charnel house. Eight adults are dead, too, six of them men and women who rose this morning for work, never expecting to die, and dedicated only to helping children learn to sing and spell and subtract and smile at the dawn of knowledge.

Maybe, I’m too emotional.

I’m a retired teacher and a parent and I think about all the terrified children inside that slaughter pen and parents outside, not knowing the scope of the tragedy, praying sons and daughters were safe, learning, horribly, that they weren’t. I think back to my own experience in 1985, when a young man brought a gun to my school to shoot me.

At times like this, most of us shake our heads and have no idea what to say. There’s no pattern to this kind of violence. It can happen anytime, anywhere, we think.

The problem is that there’s a pattern. It keeps happening all the time and it keeps happening here, in this country. In Ohio, where I live, a bloody shooting occurred at Chardon High this past February. Before the carnage finally ended three teenagers were dead and two others badly wounded.

You can find Demetrius Hewlin’s obituary on line if you care. Known as “D” to friends, he was one of the slain. Born March 8, 1995. Died February 28, 2012. A sixteen-year-old gunned down in the cafeteria by another teen with a gun.

That’s the thread that runs through all these stories, the guns. Don’t you see? Don’t you care? When do we admit that we are already the “best-armed” nation in modern history? When do we agree that guns are absurdly easy to acquire? Already, there are 88 handguns, rifles and shotguns in private hands for every 100 Americans. Boil down the pro- and anti-gun arguments to their essence. You don’t read about people in this country killing each other with hand grenades. That’s because it’s not easy to get your hands on hand grenades.

Guns are easy, though.

As a result, we lead all modern nations in murder rates and lead by a gory mile. The murder rate in Iceland is close to zero. In Japan it’s .5 per 100,000 people. If you study a list of 32 advanced nations The Netherlands comes in tenth, with 1 murder per 100,000. Finland is 31st with 2.5. The United States stands last with 5.2 per 100,000.

Guns in America are a problem and that fact is written again in the blood of innocent children. Think of the guns, the guns, the guns. Twelve dead, fifty-eight injured in a theater in Aurora, Colorado. The massacre in Arizona that ended with 9-year-old Christina Green-Taylor and five others dead, twelve wounded, including Gabby Gifford. Thirty-two dead and seventeen wounded at Virginia Tech in 2007.

The list is long and horrific and it comes down to guns.

Better than most, I understand what it’s like to have a loaded weapon carried into a classroom. Twenty-seven years ago a young man brought a pistol to school to shoot me and to shoot one of his teammates on the wrestling squad. The other boy had been taunting him about weight and I had caught the boy during class drawing an obscene picture and told him to take it home and show his dad. That was all it took—a teen with emotional issues—easy access to guns—a potential disaster in the making. The boy carried a loaded weapon around all day in our school, hidden in a book bag, but for reasons unknown never pulled it out to start shooting. He didn’t shoot me. He didn’t shoot his classmates by mistake. He didn’t shoot his wrestling teammate. Ten years later, however, he picked up another gun—still just as easily accessible—and shot himself.

IN THE END, THIS ISN’T about gun owners vs. non-gun owners, or hunters vs. vegans, or conservatives vs. liberals. This is about the massacre of elementary school kids. It’s about blood on the floor—in classrooms —theaters—and malls.

It’s about guns.

You can either address the issue in a reasonable fashion or you can keep burying the innocent—this time mostly six and seven-year-olds. Or you can make some absurdist argument that we’re all better off the more guns we have, that first grade teachers (and everyone else in America) should be armed and ready.

In the face of this tragedy every American should be asking today, “What are we, as a society, going to do?”

Say a prayer for the dead.

Allison Wyatt, murdered at age 6.
Sandy Hook Elementary.

Grading Schools, Grading Society?

2012-12-13T14:33:00.001-05:00

I WAS GETTING MY HAIR CUT LAST SATURDAY and while waiting had time to read a good portion of the Cincinnati Enquirer. One story noted that President Obama’s “approval ratings” were going up. That’s good.

I usually vote Democratic.

There was a story about Joey Votto and how the Reds’ playoff loss stings. A third article focused on a missing bulldozer and driver down in Kentucky after his machine slid off a steep embankment into a coal slurry pond. That sounded a lot worse than losing a deciding fifth game to the Giants.

I also had time to read two stories that touched on education. The headline on one read: “What Makes a Grade A School?” The other might not have looked like an education story; but considering the other it was:

“Teen Inmate Seeks Parole in Resentencing.”

I suppose I could say, “Hell, I’m retired. Why do I care?” But it troubles me that in Ohio and elsewhere, politicians believe we can grade schools in simplistic ways. The school where I taught, Loveland Middle School, would doubtless earn high marks from the State of Ohio under the new system. (Rich, suburban district’s usually do.) I’m just not sure what that proves. We had our slice of dysfunctional families and messed up kids; but for the most part, I was seeing bright, motivated teens come through my door.

So, how do you measure schools? Based on the dropout rate? We now have a system that says you do. I scratch my head on that one. Can a teacher make a kid drop out of school? A teen can join a gang and get in trouble with the law and drop out, as a result. A teen can get pregnant by mistake and drop out of school. A teen can get addicted to drugs and drop out. Is this the fault of the school?

I once had a student (a really nice kid, too) who, by the time I had him in eighth grade, had piled up an incredible record of unnecessary absences. In seven years in the Loveland City Schools, John had racked up 452 missed days of class.

That’s the equivalent of 2 1/2 years. So, do we grade the school in this situation, if John fails to make adequate yearly progress? The new system says we do. (I’m thinking we grade his parents. Or maybe we grade pediatricians!) If you’re not a teacher, you might believe kids like John are rare.

You would be mistaken.

A study recently for the Chicago Public Schools found that the “average” student was out of class 26 days each year. That means for every kid who shows up diligently and misses 1 or 2 or 4 days, you have another who misses 51, or 50, or 48.

Try that at your job and see if the boss feels he deserves a failing grade based on your failure to appear for work.

I TAUGHT A LONG TIME. I KNOW there are crappy teachers. I understand that; and we need to do the best job possible to get them out of America’s classrooms. But grading schools is a shotgun approach and a stupid idea.

I also understand that teachers must try to save every child. I think I only gave up on one kid out of the 5,000 I taught during my career.

That doesn't mean it isn’t ten times harder to save some than to save others and nearly impossible to save some. Since I taught seventh and eighth grade, I saw girls come to school who were pregnant; and many ended up wrecking their educations. That wasn’t the fault of teachers. I remember a girl, so wasted on drugs that she shit herself in class, passed out, and left our building on a stretcher. I remember a young man who came to us after release from juvenile detention. At the time he had the longest criminal record of any teen in Hamilton County. And his chances for a quality education were hardly enhanced one afternoon when he told his science teacher he was going to kill her.

So, what do our politicians decide to do to address these kinds of problems, which, to a greater or lesser extent, beset all schools? Um....grade schools.

How does the other story fit in, you ask? The one about the teen seeking parole? It involves the case of Emily Ball, 14, when she was charged with involvement in the murder of another teen, Travis White, 17. At a hearing to discuss her fate (now that she has turned 18 and is old enough to go to an adult facility) her public defender, Amanda Mullins explained to the judge:

“I’m not here to talk about a 14-year-old Emily Ball whose life was characterized by violence and chaos and extreme poverty. We are here today to talk about the 18-year-old Emily whose life is now filled with growth and progress and hope.

“This is a girl that has had an unwavering hope that life has something better in store for her. You have the opportunity today to let her continue to grow, progress and hope.”

As a former teacher I notice that line about a girl “whose life was characterized by violence and chaos and extreme poverty.” I worked in a good district but taught a few kids like that. My wife taught in a poor district and had to save all kinds of young kids like Emily Ball.

Regardless, the prosecutor countered testimony in Ms. Ball's favor, calling retired Covington police Detective Mike McGuffey to the stand. Mullins had explained to the judge that while her client did lure White into ambush she left the scene before she knew what was going to happen.

McGuffey disagreed:

“[He explained that] Emily left only after the ambush began and then returned three times to check on the progress. McGuffey knew this because Emily’s whereabouts was being tracked by an ankle monitor she was ordered to wear because she was a habitual truant.

“He had never investigated a crime where someone was so severely beaten during his 26 years in law enforcement.

“McGuffey recounted finding the ‘huge’ wrench, hammer and baseball bat used to kill Travis, whose body was stripped to his underwear, rolled into a red carpet and dumped along train tracks. Travis had been stabbed or hit more than 40 times. There were crude gang or satanic symbols carved into his chest. Cigarette burns were too plentiful to count.”

It’s a sad story, no matter what the judge might decide. But I read it like a former teacher. I wonder: “How is grading schools ever going to help these kind of kids, kids who absolutely need help the most?”

I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER. I do know politicians and school reformers are ignoring this critical question.

Saving Emily was never going to be easy?
How do we justify grading schools if they fail to do it?

P. S. Think this sort of case is rare? Think that schools can be tasked with saving every single child? Google “teen murders” and start asking yourself how.

Right-to-Work Laws, Horse Meat and Wal-Mart

2012-12-12T08:23:00.001-05:00

WELL, WHAT’S NEW IN RIGHTWINGLAND? Oh boy! In Michigan, GOP lawmakers have passed a “right-to-work” law in an attempt to break labor unions.

The Koch brothers, Charles and David (and isn’t there a third brother, Beelzebub) are really happy.

They might even donate another ten bazillion to right-wing political causes.

This means, according to voices on the right, that great days are ahead for American business. Jobs will be created left and right. Crappy paying jobs, with no benefits, true. Still, as Gertrude Stein once said, a job is a job is a job.

Isn’t that right?

It’s gospel if you listen to Tea Party voices that Big Government and Big Unions are crippling the economy. (Not to mention terrible public schools, producing uneducated workers and terrible unionized teachers). We must free Business Heroes from regulation. We must defeat the machinations of unions, which are collections of greedy bastards.

We must hand over control of public schools to corporations.

That’s the Tea Party mantra. Business Heroes are always good. Not half the time. Not ninety percent. Always.

ALWAYS? YOU MIGHT THINK TWICE if you’re planning a trip to Europe any time soon and plan to do a little eating. It has long been legal to ship broken-down American horses to slaughterhouses in Canada or Mexico. Then the slaughterhouses sell the meat for consumption on the other side of the Atlantic. In Paris horse meat is considered a delicacy. Lately, though, there have been concerns about what’s in the food chain. It seems at race tracks across the United States sleazy owners and trainers (no, wait, we mean Business Heroes) have been shooting mounts full of steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs and pain killers. This allows badly injured horses to keep running, even if they tend to break down at times in the middle of the races that they are running.

See! We’re already talking job creation! After all, someone has to inject those drugs into the animals.

Someone has to shoot all those horses.

Wait…what was the big problem in America again? Oh yeah, unions. And too much government regulation. Canadian authorities just had to start meddling when they found phenylbutazone and clenbuterol, which mimic anabolic steroids, in slaughtered horse meat. You damn Canadians stick to your hockey and leave our Business Heroes alone.

If restaurants in Paris want to serve horse meat let them.

Trust the Koch brothers and the Business Heroes. These people aren’t greedy bastards doing everything they can to drive down wages for working men and women. They’re humble bazillionaires who happen to have bazillions of dollars.

UNIONS…THOSE ARE SOME GREEDY BASTARDS, driving jobs away from places like Michigan. Then Business Heroes have no choice but to send those jobs to Bangladesh. No greedy unions there. No stupid safety regulations, either.

Great place to do business and pile up stacks of money. No, no. These business folks aren’t greedy.

You say a factory in Bangladesh, where clothing was being produced for Wal-Mart, went up in flames a few days after Thanksgiving? A hundred and twelve workers died as a result? Hell, in a way, that’s job creation. Kill off one set of underpaid, non-union workers, with no health benefits (who don't need them anymore, anyway) and replace them with another set of desperate human beings.

Down with unions! Up with right-to-work freedoms! Let’s have some horse meat for supper and go Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart because their checkout people and greeters and truck drivers aren’t unionized. This is America friends. And Merry Christmas to bazillionaires everywhere and good night.

If you think unions are the problem in America today, you’ve been listening to way too much right-wing horseshit.

___________________________________________________________________

ADDENDUM: For the poor fools who think unions are ruining America (see comments at end of this post) here are a few facts:

The average construction worker in a union makes $361 more weekly than a non-union worker in the same field. This is partly true because non-union jobs often go to illegal immigrants. Unions used to be able to protect such jobs.

Factory workers in unions make $56 more per week. That might not sound like much but it comes to $2,912 per year.

Transportation and warehousing: union guys make 30% more than non-union workers.

Even a business newsletter, citing advantages of non-union workers, admits that union workers make $200 more per week ($917 vs. $717). So: you’re either for the average working guy getting higher pay. Or you’re not. Unions fight for the average American who wants to insure a place in the middle class.

The billionaires and millionaires are doing fine. Think Wal-Mart couldn’t pay more? Think the Koch brothers are hurting?

Go to the Forbes 400 list for 2012. Unless you’re blind you might notice some eye-popping figures.

4. Charles Koch is worth (in billions): $31

5. David Koch: $31

6. Christy Walton $27.9

7. Jim Walton $26.8

8. Alice Walton $26.3

9. S. Robson Walton $26.1

No wonder these people fear unions and their wild wage demands, like for a Wal-Mart clerk to make $13.50 an hour and not $12.

Other famous right-wingers to make the cut: Sheldon Adelson, who gave more than $100 million to GOP candidates in 2012. He’s not greedy at all, way down there in 12^th place, just getting by on $20.5 billion.

Ron Perelman? He might not support the GOP (that I don’t know). But he did make his money in leveraged buyouts, which is the very essence of killing American companies and jobs with it. He’s in 26^th with $11 billion.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News—which fills the empty heads of viewers every chance it gets with hatred for greedy unions? Poor Murdoch. How does he get up every morning, realizing he’s mired in 36^th with only $9.4 billion?

It’s interesting to note that Ann Walton Kroenke shows up at #79 on the list, with a crappy $4.5 billion.

Every family has at least one loser.