According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the Volusia County School Board suspended Daniel Marquis for three days without pay Friday.
A school district investigative report says Marquis held the pizza to the student’s mouth and continued trying to force him to eat it. The report goes on to say another staff member stepped in, and Marquis told the student he “was spoiled and his mother does not make him try any food."
According to the report, Marquis then yelled at another worker in front of the students.
Marquis, 60, says he politely asked the student to try the pizza, and stopped offering it when the student refused.
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]]>Someone recently referred me to a book that they thought I'd like. It's a 2009 book, aimed toward teachers of grades K through 12, titled Why Don't Students Like School? It's by a cognitive scientist named Daniel T. Willingham, and it has received rave reviews by countless people involved in the school system. Google the title and author and you'll find pages and pages of doting reviews and nobody pointing out that the book totally and utterly fails to answer the question posed by its title.
Willingham's thesis is that students don't like school because their teachers don't have a full understanding of certain cognitive principles and therefore don't teach as well as they could. They don't present material in ways that appeal best to students' minds. Presumably, if teachers followed Willingham's advice and used the latest information cognitive science has to offer about how the mind works, students would love school.
Talk about avoiding the elephant in the room!
Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you. "School is prison." They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, "School is prison."
Let me say that a few more times: School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison.
Willingham surely knows that school is prison. He can't help but know it; everyone knows it. But here he writes a whole book entitled "Why Don't Students Like School," and not once does he suggest that just possibly they don't like school because they like freedom, and in school they are not free.
I shouldn't be too harsh on Willingham. He's not the only one avoiding this particular elephant in the room. Everyone who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody says it. It's not polite to say it. We all tiptoe around this truth, that school is prison, because telling the truth makes us all seem so mean. How could all these nice people be sending their children to prison for a good share of the first 18 years of their lives? How could our democratic government, which is founded on principles of freedom and self-determination, make laws requiring children and adolescents to spend a good portion of their days in prison? It's unthinkable, and so we try hard to avoid thinking it. Or, if we think it, we at least don't say it. When we talk about what's wrong with schools we pretend not to see the elephant, and we talk instead about some of the dander that's gathered around the elephant's periphery.
But I think it is time that we say it out loud. School is prison.
If you think school is not prison, please explain the difference.
The only difference I can think of is that to get into prison you have to commit a crime, but they put you in school just because of your age. In other respects school and prison are the same. In both places you are stripped of your freedom and dignity. You are told exactly what you must do, and you are punished for failing to comply. Actually, in school you must spend more time doing exactly what you are told to do than is true in adult prisons, so in that sense school is worse than prison.
At some level of their consciousness, everyone who has ever been to school knows that it is prison. How could they not know? But people rationalize it by saying (not usually in these words) that children need this particular kind of prison and may even like it if the prison is run well. If children don't like school, according to this rationalization, it's not because school is prison, but is because the wardens are not kind enough, or amusing enough, or smart enough to keep the children's minds occupied appropriately.
But anyone who knows anything about children and who allows himself or herself to think honestly should be able to see through this rationalization. Children, like all human beings, crave freedom. They hate to have their freedom restricted. To a large extent they use their freedom precisely to educate themselves. They are biologically prepared to do that. That's what many of my previous posts have been about (for an overview, see my July 16, 2008, post). Children explore and play, freely, in ways designed to learn about the physical and social world in which they are developing. In school they are told they must stop following their interests and, instead, do just what the teacher is telling them they must do. That is why they don't like school.
As a society we could, perhaps, rationalize forcing children to go to school if we could prove that they need this particular kind of prison in order to gain the skills and knowledge necesary to become good citizens, to be happy in adulthood, and to get good jobs. Many people, perhaps most people, think this has been proven, because the educational establishment talks about it as if it has. But, in truth, it has not been proven at all.
In fact, for decades, families who have chosen to "unschool" their children, or to send them to the Sudbury Valley School (which is, essentially, an "unschool" school) have been proving the opposite (see, for example, my August 13, 2008, post). Children who are provided the tools for learning, including access to a wide range of other people from whom to learn, learn what they need to know--and much more--through their own self-directed play and exploration. There is no evidence at all that children who are sent to prison come out better than those who are provided the tools and allowed to use them freely. How, then, can we continue to rationalize sending children to prison?
I think the educational establishment deliberately avoids looking honestly at the experiences of unschoolers and Sudbury Valley because they are afraid of what they will find. If school as prison isn't necessary, then what becomes of this whole huge enterprise, which employs so many and is so fully embedded in the culture (see my posts on Why Schools Are What they Are)?
Willingham's book is in a long tradition of attempts to bring the "latest findings" of psychology to bear on issues of education. All of those efforts have avoided the elephant and focused instead on trying to clean up the dander. But as long as the elephant is there, the dander just keeps piling up.
In a future post I'll talk about some of the history of psychology's failed attempts to improve education. Every new generation of parents, and every new batch of fresh and eager teachers, hears or reads about some "new theory" or "new findings" from psychology that, at long last, will make schools more fun and improve learning. But none of it has worked. And none of it will until people face the truth: Children hate school because in school they are not free. Joyful learning requires freedom.
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Peter Gray is a research professor of psychology at Boston College. He has conducted and published research in comparative, evolutionary, developmental, and educational psychology; published articles on innovative teaching methods and alternative approaches to education; and is author of Psychology (Worth Publishers), an introductory college textbook now in its 5th edition. He did his undergraduate study at Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences at Rockefeller University. He is currently working on a book about the lifelong nature and functions of human play, tentatively titled Born to Play. His own play includes not only his research and writing, but also long distance bicycling, kayaking, and back-woods skiing.
His PT blog is Freedom to Learn.
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]]>Stephen Zeldag, a student at Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, said his Algebra II teacher crushed a fly between his hands during class last month and dared any of his students to eat it.
"He said, 'If anybody eats this fly then I will give them an A on this test,'" Stephen said. He volunteered and swallowed the fly, sealing the deal with a handshake with his teacher.
"I didn't think he was joking at all," he said.
Stephen didn't get an A on his test: He got an F, with a score of nine out of 46.
"He said that I told you I'd give you an A on your test, so here's your A, but it's not going in the gradebook," Stephen said.
The teacher even wrote, "Here is your A on your test," when he returned the paper to the student.
Stephen claims he realized what he thought was a deal was really just a joke at his expense.
"I usually study, but not this one," Stephen said. "I thought it would be an easy way out."
Stephen said he did ask to retake the test but the teacher refused.
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]]>At the Youth Study Center, the 16-year-old teen was placed in the boys' unit, where, she said, staff and residents harassed her despite a judge's order that she be addressed by her preferred female name and female pronouns.
Last week, a national civil-rights group filed a complaint on her behalf with the Pensylvania Commission on Human Relations alleging unlawful discrimination. The commission can enforce state antidiscrimination laws.
The complaint contends she was physically attacked by other residents and orally abused by staff every day for almost a year and a half.
The teen, now 17, is in foster care but is no longer in custody. The Youth Study Center, which was on the Parkway, has been torn down.
"We are seeking the commission to investigate the charges and take appropriate measures to end discrimination and harassment against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered youth," said Flor Bermudez, a lawyer with Lambda Legal in New York City.
The complaint also asks DHS to adopt "explicit written policies" for staffers on how to meet the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youths in the city's juvenile justice system.
While DHS has not yet reviewed the complaint, the agency has "made great strides over the last couple of years in handling issues" regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, said Alicia Taylor, DHS communications director.
DHS now has a nondiscrimination policy, in May held a town-hall meeting, and posted on its Web site resources for families and youths, she said.
The teen, identified in the complaint as L.P., was born male but has wanted to be a girl since age 9. She has been in DHS custody since she was 11.
In November 2007, the teen was admitted to the Youth Study Center.
During a psychological evaluation in January 2008, she told a social worker that she wanted a vagina and wanted to be "castrated as soon as possible."
The social worker diagnosed gender identity disorder, a condition marked by the persistent discomfort of a person's own sexual anatomy and a strong identification with the opposite sex.
The next month, Common Pleas Court Judge Abram Frank Reynolds ordered that the teen be addressed with her female name and that female pronouns be used when referring to her. He also authorized DHS to administer hormone therapy to the teen to delay puberty.
The complaint contends that staff at the Youth Study Center ignored the order and heaped abuse on her.
One staffer allegedly told her that as long as she had male genitalia, "I'm not going to call you by [her female name]." When she asked for a bra and panties, another staffer hurled an insult and refused to accommodate her.
The complaint states that she filed several formal reports but that administrators failed to discipline the staff.
Residents taunted and insulted the teen, calling her "gay" and "a wannabe girl." When she asked the staff to protect her, the ridicule only escalated to include physical abuse by other residents, the complaint states.
Though she repeatedly asked to be placed with girls, she was kept in the boys' unit, where residents threatened her, it states.
Staff allowed her to spend one night on the girls' unit. That was the only night in the custody of the Youth Study Center that she slept without fear of being harassed and abused, the complaint states.
As a result of the alleged harassment, the teen became depressed and suffered "significant emotional distress," the complaint states.
It contends she was subject to unlawful gender identity discrimination, sex discrimination, and disability discrimination.
By Sam Wood
Inquirer Staff Writer
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]]>Best Buy's entry into the child monitoring market is aimed squarely at budget-minded parents with young children.
The concept isn't new -- Verizon Wireless and Sprint cell phones offered a similar service three years ago, but the child had to have a cell phone. Other dedicated tracking products are typically more expensive -- the Amber Alert GPS 2G, for example, costs $379, though it can do more than the Little Buddy, such as send an alert when a child reaches a destination or is in a car that is speeding.
"Child tracking is an established market, but we're offering a lower-cost dedicated device," said Ari Silkey, global product manager for Best Buy's in-house brand names. "We're focusing on the pre-cell-phone market, kids aged 3 to 10 that are too young to have cell phones.
"We've gotten pretty positive feedback from parents, who see it as a tool to help them manage their lives," Silkey added.
The Little Buddy, which hit Best Buy stores this week, retails for $100. A limited quantity sold out on the company's website after being available for about a week, with a one- to two-week back order.
Marketed under Best Buy's Insignia store brand, the device fits in a backpack or lunch box and broadcasts a Global Positioning System (GPS) signal to nearby cell phone towers. Using a computer or smart phone, you can get an online map that shows your child's location. If the child leaves a designated location at the wrong time, you automatically get a text message.
The device requires either a $14.99 a month subscription fee for unlimited use or a pay-as-you-go fee of 99 cents per request.
Little Buddy has been getting notice on Web chat rooms, though for some parents the concept is a bit too evocative of Big Brother.
"As the father of three daughters under the age of 10, this sounds like an intriguing, although kind of creepy device," said one blogger on Blog Tech.rightpundits.com.
Steve Alexander • 612-673-4553
Source
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]]>Yet as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explained to an audience of aspiring educators at the University of Virginia, as a nation, “we still have not fully achieved the dream of equal educational opportunity.”
Today, nearly 30 percent of students drop out or fail to complete high school on time. These students can’t afford to lag behind in the competitive and ever-changing workplace. It is predicted that by 2016, four out of every 10 new jobs will require advanced education or training.
There is more motivation than ever to bring change to the classroom, with the Department of Education recently receiving $100 billion through the Recovery Act.
Education reform has proved itself to be a daunting task.
It was only seven years ago No Child Left Behind was passed with overwhelming praise, only to be denounced later for its shortcomings. President Obama and Duncan are willing to take on the challenge again and invest billions in the process.
The first step toward reform should be establishing national standards. A big part of our educational system’s problems is an absence of a reliable data system to monitor the progress of students.
When we speak of our “failing schools” and “plummeting test scores,” it’s a dilemma we have labeled as a national epidemic, but by approaching the problem state by state, we have denied ourselves the tools to locate and solve our problems.
The test scores collected through state-administrated assessments cannot always be trusted.
Under No Child Left Behind, states must meet federal goals for adequate yearly progress to receive funding, which Duncan attributes to the “dumbing down of academic standards” by states.
For the 2008-09 school year, Mississippi found that 46.6 percent of fourth-graders scored proficient in mathematics on its state standardized test.
However, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the closet thing the U.S. has to a standard test, tells a different tale with only 15 percent of fourth-graders at proficient.
These gaps between state results and national testing have confirmed fears that some states have been lowering their standards to make it appear as if they have been improving.
“For too long, we’ve been lying to kids,” Duncan said in a speech this summer. “We tell them they’re doing fine, give them good grades, and then they get to college and they’re put into remedial classes. Or they go into the work force and find out that they don’t have the skills they need to succeed.”
With unreliable test scores, how can we as citizens believe in the quality of education supposedly granted to every student in America when standards are at the mercy of interpretation?
Opponents of common standards argue that standardized testing will only encourage federal over-reaching, but it’s important to realize that the force spearheading this movement is the states.
Duncan made it clear during his speech at the 2009 Governors Education Symposium that “education is a state and local issue” and that “this effort is being led by governors and chief state schools’ officers.”
The steps taken by the government so far include the Common Core State Standards Initiative and a federal fund called Race to the Top, which rewards states for education innovation and reform.
Through these initiatives, Duncan hopes that states will take the “opportunity to be bold and creative” in pushing for fundamental change.
Pennsylvania already has made strides toward improving education in the commonwealth and is actively reviewing these proposals.
As a student, it’s easy to dismiss education policy as boring paper work on Capitol Hill. But in the end, the legislation created by our government will determine what I’m taught in school and whether I will spend a semester learning about Shakespeare or doing vocabulary drills from a workbook.
This is our chance to bring change and vision to the classroom and it’s imperative that not only state representatives get involved but also teachers, parents, students and other members of the community.
The money is there.
Now it’s just a question of whether we, as a nation, have the courage to take the first step for equality and adopt higher standards.
BANNA GEBRE is a Patriot-News Davenport Fellow and a student at Palmyra Area High School.
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]]>"Once a liar, always a liar" is a proverbial parental admonishment.
A new study claims there is truth to the adage: People who cheated on exams in high school are considerably more likely to be dishonest later in life, according to a report to be released today by the Josephson Institute of Ethics.
The study, which surveyed nearly 7,000 people in various age groups nationwide, offers a sobering assessment of today's youth as cynics who are aware that their behavior crosses boundaries but believe it is necessary to succeed.
And the findings suggest that habits formed in childhood persist: Those who cheated in high school are more likely as adults to lie to a customer, inflate an insurance or expense claim, cheat on taxes and lie to their spouses.
"When you see that teens are five times more likely than adults to think it's OK to cheat to get ahead, we have a problem," said Rich Jarc, executive director of the Los Angeles-based institute. "Just think if five times the number of people in business, politics and banking hold those beliefs. That's alarming."
The institute issues biennial reports on the ethics of American high school students that have charted a steady increase in those admitting to cheating, lying and stealing. The new study is the first to connect teen behavior to dishonest activities in adulthood.
Among the findings: Teens 17 and younger are five times more likely than those older than 50 to believe that lying and cheating are necessary to succeed (51% vs. 10%), those in the 17 and younger group are nearly four times as likely to deceive their boss (31% vs. 8%) and three times more likely to keep change mistakenly given to them (49% vs. 15%).
More young adults ages 18 to 24 reported lying to a spouse or partner than did the 41- to 50-year-old members of their parents' generation (48% vs. 22%), more made an unauthorized copy of music or a video (69% vs. 27%) and they were more likely to have misrepresented or omitted a fact in a job interview (14% vs. 4%).
The older generation outdid its younger counterparts in one area: 69% of adults 41 to 50 and 58% of those older than 50 reported using the Internet for personal reasons at work, compared with 53% of those 18 to 24.
The report did not speculate about what is driving teen attitudes, but Jarc noted that many of the business people, politicians and athletes that have dominated media coverage in recent years gained notoriety for misdeeds.
Robert A. deMayo, a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, suggested that new technology has created a generational shift in the ethics of many activities, such as illegal music downloads and plagiarism.
"The young do that in a widespread fashion and say yes, they know it's wrong; yes, it's stealing, but everybody is doing it. It becomes normalized, it becomes almost irrelevant that it's against the letter of the law."
In defense of teens, he noted that many expressed positive views about ethnic and gender rights and rights to education that were not necessarily held by previous generations.
"We want to denounce young people as immoral, but certain basic values that represent American ideals of freedom and equality seem to be on the rise with young adults," he said.
Today's students are also under more social and parental pressure to excel than perhaps any earlier generation, said educators. The same federal mandates and state requirements for testing that tax school systems may affect student behavior, said Jeff Sherrill, associate director of the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals.
"I cannot say for sure if the pressure to test creates pressures to cheat," Sherrill said, "but we know one reaction is a natural instinct to try to figure out how to finish ahead."
He said the Josephson report is an opportunity to spark dialogue on campuses.
Officials in the Downey Unified School District, which adopted a curriculum created by the Josephson Institute, report progress on that front. In four years of promoting such characteristics as fairness, respect and responsibility, suspensions and expulsions have dropped and attendance is up, said Supt. Wendy L. Doty, adding that schools must assist parents in teaching positive character traits.
carla.rivera@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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]]>CalTrain spokeswoman Tasha Bartholomew said the latest suicide of a student from high-performing Gunn High School occurred at 10:50 p.m. Monday. Another Gunn student, a boy, 17, killed himself the same way at the same spot at 8:20 a.m on May 5.
His death was followed by the suicide of a girl, 17, on the tracks at 9:59 p.m. on June 2. The third suicide occurred at the same location on Aug. 21 at 10:45 p.m.
Palo Alto police told the San Jose Mercury News that police are limiting publicity about the suicides for fear of a growing cluster.
"The research we're being told is that the more we talk about it and romanticize it, the easier it is that mentally ill or depressed people will make that leap,'' Sgt. Dan Ryan was quoted as saying. "We're taking a stand and not releasing more information."
Ryan was unavailable today, and another detective in the department's juvenile section did not return a telephone inquiry.
Suicide clusters are relatively rare, although they have existed since ancient times.
One study found that between 1% and 5% of all teen suicides in the U.S. occur in clusters, taking the lives of 100 to 200 teenagers a year. Suicide contagion has involved prison inmates, marines, religious sects and Native Americans, but in the U.S. teens and young adults make up most of the clusters, according to Suicide and Mental Health Assn. International.
Clusters have included friends or acquaintances from a single school or church and also teens who have never had any direct contact with one another, according to the organization. Some share an "environmental stressor," the association said.
The Centers for Disease Control reported that four teenagers in a New Jersey suburb committed suicide on March 11, 1987 by locking themselves in a garage with a car engine running. Six days later, a 17-year-old boy and a woman, 20, attempted suicide in the same garage by the same means, the centers reported. The garage door was later removed.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests that suicides early in a cluster may influence the persons who commit suicide later in the cluster," the centers reported. "There is also research evidence that exposure to a suicide that was not part of a cluster may lead certain persons to take their own lives."
--Maura Dolan
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]]>"From today, all the school establishments in Ukraine -- be they private or public -- will be put on three weeks of holiday," she told her cabinet in comments carried on Ukrainian television.
Tymoshenko said the government would also be banning "all public gatherings, every concert and every cinema showing for three weeks."
The government will also introduce "special regimes" to limit the movement of Ukraine's citizens from one region to another for non-urgent purposes, she said. Ukraine has borders with four EU countries.
The prime minister's tough actions came as Ukraine confirmed its first deaths from the A(H1N1) virus, amid a growing panic over several dozen unexplained deaths in the west of the country.
Four people in Ukraine are now confirmed to have died from the virus, the secretary of the country's national security council Raisa Bogatyriova said, according to the Ukrainian presidency.
In the Ternopil region alone in western Ukraine, 30 people have died of unexplained causes in the last days, health ministry spokeswoman Lyudmila Gordon told reporters.
Tymoshenko also threatened to revoke the licenses of pharmacies that failed to stock the appropriate level of anti-flu medicine and masks.
"We can say today that Ukraine has entered into the zone of the swine flu epidemic," Health Minister Vassyl Kniazevich said.
AFP correspondents in Kiev and the western city of Lviv said there had been long queues outside pharmacies in the past days as the population stocked up on anti-flu masks.
Many students whose courses were cancelled in Lviv and Ternopil left the cities, while those who remained were frequently seen wearing masks in public places.
Lemons, a traditional anti-flu remedy, sold out at markets in Lviv while supermarkets were selling them at double price.
There is currently only enough anti-flu medication in Lviv to last three to four days but central authorities have promised to make additional deliveries, said Lviv governor Mykola Kmit.
Tymoshenko will travel to the affected western Ternopil region later Friday to visit the "epicentre" of the epidemic, a government statement said.
The country's politicians, including Tymoshenko, have just started official campaigning for presidential elections scheduled for January 17.
The prime minister on Saturday held a mass outdoor rally in the centre of Kiev attended by tens of thousands of people to mark her party's confirmation of her candidacy in the presidential race.
President Viktor Yushchenko, Tymoshenko's political arch-rival who is also standing in the elections, was due to hold his own rally on Sunday but it is now unclear whether this can go ahead.
Residents of Kiev meanwhile were asking pharmacies for masks and medication but these were not always to be found in stock.
Related stuff:
Swine Flu reaches the Ukraine
Warning – Has Pneumonic Plague Hit Ukraine?
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]]>The rest of the article was removed because of this email I received:
Your website has published my article in full without my permission or permission from Examiner.com. This is in violation of US and International Copyright Law and it is causing me financial damages as I am losing income on page views.
You have one of two options:
1) Remove this article from your website immediatley. or
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Lynda Altman
http://www.examiner.com/x-10007-Little-Rock-Homeschooling-Examiner
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