Saturday, May 31, 2008

Raising a gifted child

What a sad world where talent is seen as a burden. My son (now a mathematician) was definitely seen as "different" as a child but it was so obvious that he was like his academic father that it was seldom held against him

A very good friend of mine was pulled aside yesterday by her son's daycare teacher to be told in hushed, sympathetic tones, "We think your son is gifted". Her heart sank. Rather than being thrilled at the virtually limitless potential contained within her child, her first reaction was tearful. "I don't want my child to be different, I just want him to be normal, to be average," she said sadly. In those first moments she could only see the difficulties ahead for a child who didn't fit into the cookiecutter establishment.

And this is a common first reaction for parents when a teacher pulls them aside for that talk. In fact, according to Judith Hewton, the current secretary and past president of Queensland Association for Gifted and Talented Children (QAGTC), it's virtually the only thing a parent can think about when the possibility is first raised. She has 20 years' experience with gifted children and at the QAGTC she is the first port of call for parents who have been given "the chat".

"It takes a while for them to process what it all means and embrace it," she says. "At the beginning, when parents come in to see us, they're not big-noting themselves, `Ooh, my child is better than yours'. It's not like that. All they know is someone has noticed their child is different," she says.

Even at just three years of age, my friend Melissa's son, Billy, is old enough to be assessed. Hewton says it's crucial to find out early if your child falls into the `high achieving' category. In a society where the establishment - from daycare to primary school and high school - is built to cater for the masses, for the ordinary, it's very difficult to manage the extraordinary when they occasionally turn up. Which is why early detection is crucial and it can make all the difference to the child's self-esteem and development.

"Research indicates gifted children need to be with other children with similar minds, ideas and attitudes; we all need that. They need to be able to go as fast as they want to (through the curriculum)," Hewton says. "Another key finding from research is that many of these children are looking for (validation) from teachers. They don't necessarily want the teachers to be gifted also, or want them to know everything or even do a lot for them. They just want recognition and respect," she says.

And high achieving children aren't necessarily the top of the class. In fact, often the opposite is true. Gifted children in the classroom are often the underachievers. For those children who go on undetected, boredom sets in and behavioural problems arise. They don't do well academically and experience a broad range of problems. These problems are often mis-diagnosed by the system, which is usually better versed in conditions such as ADHD or Asperger's Syndrome.

"Teachers aren't trained at college to identify gifted children,'' says Hewton. "And yet, we (at QAGTC) estimate the top 10 per cent of the population fall into the gifted category. So in Queensland we're talking about 80,000 children. That's a high incidence group, so we've got a gifted child in every classroom, possibly even two," she says.

Hewton believes more could be done to support the gifted child in the classroom, beginning with making it compulsory for schools to develop a program and actively manage gifted children. "(The Education Department) puts out policies but there's no way of forcing schools to adhere to them. There is some funding and some training and people in different areas who (are employed at the school) have `gifted' next to their name but they're usually only part-time. It seems there's only enough funding for part-time, never full-time," she laments.

Finding out your child is gifted needn't be a tragedy. Through education and learning how to extend the gifted child parents can find that home life becomes harmonious and school life is no longer the drudge it once was. Properly raised, gifted children can achieve great things. And when they are being challenged and extended in the right ways by parents and teachers, they are no more demanding than raising a child whose abilities fall within the `normal' range.

For parents the rewards of raising a gifted child can be many. Hewton urges parents to be active in extending their gifted child. The Association runs seminars, conferences and offers significant support to parents in their education of how to raise a gifted child. "They are delightful," Hewton says of gifted children. "And have enormous potential to create a lasting, positive impact on the world. How many of us can say that?"

Source






BOOK REVIEW of "Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life" By Anthony T. Kronman

Review by Christopher Orlet

How many English majors does it take to make a cinnamon dolce latte? (That's actually the set-up and the punch line.) If current trends continue, java junkies will have to rely not on tragically tattooed English majors but on high school drop-outs and illegal immigrants to mix our ridiculously expensive frappacinos and caramel macchiatos.

With university costs topping $50,000 a year and the cost of food, fuel, insurance, and pretty much everything else rising, majoring in the Humanities seems to make little economic sense. Which is why universities in the US and the UK have seen dramatic decreases in the number of students majoring in English, philosophy, fine arts, classics and history. (The Humanities still thrive in the rarified air of the Ivy League and Oxbridge where money is not generally an issue, but these few schools are the exceptions.)

Indeed the Humanities are a tough sell in the best of times, and God knows it is tough to pay off those student loans on a barista's wages. Today, business savvy students are demanding more bang for their buck, which translates into specialized training, not education.

It is not just the new crop of students who think so. Recently in the UK, an Education Minister drew flak when he called some history professors "ornaments" and suggested their departments did not deserve state funding.

Rising costs, however, cannot completely explain the decline of the Humanities. There must be other factors at work.

The decline of the American university has been a perennially popular subject for editorialists since Henry Adams' day. Nearly 75 years ago, Albert Jay Nock complained that universities were offering training, not education, for the obvious reason that "education is a flat liability," and a "subversive influence." Nock noted that, "circumstances have enabled our society to get along rather prosperously, though by no means creditably, without thought and without regard for thought, proceeding merely by a series of improvisations; hence it has always instinctively resented thought, as likely to interfere with what it was doing."

As early as 1987, Allan Bloom's surprise bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind, alleged that universities had "extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life." In subsequent decades Dinesh D'Souza and Roger Kimball have taken up the subject.

Now a self-described non-partisan academic has seen the fading light. Yale law professor Anthony T. Kronman's Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life attempts to explain why the Humanities have been relegated to second-class status somewhere above Physical Ed, but below HVAC repair, and what this may mean for our civilization.

AT ONE TIME the purpose of a university education was to give future leaders an opportunity -- before they shouldered the dull burdens of civic responsibility -- to explore the purpose and value of life. By instilling a strong sense of history, of reason, of logic, of the best of what has been thought and said, a background in the Humanities would prepare a young scholar for whatever may lie ahead.

This, at least, had been the belief going back to Plato's Republic.

Like Nock, Bloom believed the university should provide the student with four years of freedom, "a space between the intellectual wasteland he has left behind and the inevitable dreary professional training that awaits him after the baccalaureate." More important, the college years were "civilization's only chance to get to him." (Somehow I doubt Tom Wolfe would agree.)

The Humanities also served a primary existential purpose, which was to counterbalance "the defects of a democratic order" (Bloom's phrase), and to fill "a void by pointing to the human ends which the ideals of liberty and equal rights are unable to prescribe," adds James Pierson in the New Criterion.

The Sixties Generation broke with this four-thousand-year tradition. If the bugbears of early 20th Century radicals were the consumer-driven economy and the thoughtless pursuit of material comfort, then the Baby Boomers' bete noire was Western Civilization and all it entailed.

From then on, social change, rather than concerns about work and consumption, would be paramount on college campuses. Such change would not come from the government or the people, but from the university, since the university was uniquely situated to tackle moral issues. After all where else could one find so many smart, morally superior persons? First, however, the university, and its Humanities departments (the propagandizer of the elitist, racist, sexist, imperial tradition of Western culture) must change and adapt.

In the subsequent 40 years the radicals and their political agenda have triumphed unopposed on the college campus, so much so that today's student is compelled to conform to an intolerant progressive doctrine if he hopes to receive his sheepskin. Students are now told that there is a single right answer and, like the Sphinx, only he, the professor, possesses it.

Inevitably this atmosphere of conformity and groupthink results in a sterile learning environment, where dialogue and debate are limited for fear of uttering the wrong sentiment and facing disciplinary action.

A RADICAL FREE MARKETER might say that the Humanities deserve their fate since they proved unable to compete in both the marketplace and the marketplace of ideas. However it wasn't the marketplace that killed the Humanities, says Kronman. Rather, it was the one-two punch of political correctness and research specialization.

Of these, political correctness and its offspring diversity, multiculturalism and constructivism (which gave us such wonders as "rainforest math" and "African math") have done the most damage. With more women than men on college campuses, and near majorities of foreign students, to say nothing of the distinctive viewpoints, experiences and traditions they bring, political correctness is seen as an "instrument of corrective justice" -- payback for the sins of all of the Dead White Males that created the racist, patriarchic and imperial West.

Not only are the ideas and institutions of the West and the works that embody them no more valuable than those of other non-Western civilizations, but professors find it difficult to teach Western Civilization courses when they loathe its chief representatives. Lost in this political quagmire is the question of how we can hope to understand or appreciate or compare and contrast ourselves to other cultures if we are wholly ignorant of our own?

The final blow to the Humanities has come in the form of the modern research ideal, an idea that honors and rewards original scholarship, specialization, and incremental thinking, and whereby academics "choose an inch or two of the garden to cultivate," and which the Greeks and the renaissance scholars knew was the antithesis of true learning.

Kronman reminds us that specialization is anathema to the broad study of the "great conversation" that has been going on throughout the history of Western Civilization. When he focuses on original discoveries, Kronman argues, "a scholar does not aim to stand where his ancestors did. His goal is not to join but supersede them and his success is measured not by the proximity of his thoughts to theirs, but by the distance between them -- by how far he has progressed beyond his ancestors' inferior state of knowledge," all of which leads him to pretentious philosophical departures like deconstruction, where one misses the big picture by focusing on the minutiae. As Pauline Kael's reminded, "Taking it apart is far less important than trying to see it whole."

Despite the obvious doom and gloom Kronman sees reason for optimism. Political correctness has had a 40-year run and at long last seems to be on the wane. A few universities are even dusting off their Great Books courses.

And then there is obstinate human nature. The instinct to find an ultimate meaning remains as powerful as ever, it has just been directed away from its proper home in the universities toward fundamentalist religion, New Age spiritualism, and Barack Obama's campaign.

It's time to bring the eternal questions home. Can I get a "Yes we can?"

Source

Friday, May 30, 2008

New Hampshire - Druggie Teaching Grade School?

(North Conway, New Hampshire) A 26-year-old sixth-grade teacher at John Fuller Elementary School, Kelly Horrigan, was arrested early this month for possession of marijuana.

Police stopped a car for erratic driving and found Horrigan and Lauren Kulberg, 23, smelling of marijuana and in possession of two small bags of the drug.

Notably, Horrigan assists local police officers in teaching anti-drug DARE classes to her sixth-grade students. Nevertheless, her teaching position is not in jeopardy. The Conway School Board has ruled that drug charges or convictions for misdemeanor actions away from school grounds cannot be used as a basis for dismissal.
Are Students Canaries In the Free Speech Coal Mine?

After 12 years of censorship and regimentation, many high school students will graduate this spring with little or no idea about what it means to be a free, active and engaged citizen in a democracy. When they march across the stage to get their diploma, let's hope someone slips them a copy of the First Amendment - with instructions on how to use it.

Far too many public school officials are afraid of freedom and avoid anything that looks like democracy. Under the heading of "safety and discipline," administrators censor student religious and political speech, shut down student newspapers and limit student government to discussions about decorations at the prom.

Fortunately, a growing number of brave students defy the odds and take seriously what they hear about free speech in civics class. Earlier this month, Heather Gillman won her fight when a federal judge ruled that her Florida high school violated the First Amendment by prohibiting students from displaying any symbol of support for gay rights, including rainbow stickers. And last month, Alexander Nuxoll won the right to express the opposite viewpoint when the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that his suburban Chicago school must allow him to wear a "Be Happy, Not Gay" T-shirt while his civil rights case proceeds.

Of course, students don't always win in court - in fact, they often lose. On May 12, Kimberly Jacobs lost her battle to wear a religious message on her shirt when a 9th Circuit panel upheld a Nevada school district's dress code prohibiting messages (including political or religious expression) on student uniforms.

But win or lose, students shouldn't need to call a lawyer in the first place. Public schools are supposed to be places that teach and model what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, especially what it means to use the basic freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Instead, many school officials are convinced that keeping order means ordering students to leave their religious and political convictions at the schoolhouse door.

Yes, schools have an important interest in maintaining safety and discipline. Schools can and should prohibit speech that is obscene or defamatory or promotes illegal activity. And schools may draw the line at student speech that can be clearly shown to cause a substantial disruption in the school. But the widespread practice of censoring the political and religious views of students simply because their speech might offend someone or might be controversial contradicts everything schools are supposed to teach about freedom of expression.

Students have become canaries in the free-speech coal mine: We can predict the future health of freedom of speech in America by looking at how public schools live up to - or fail to live up to - the First Amendment. Right now, there are a lot of sick canaries out there. It's no mystery why so many young people tune out public-policy debates, stay home from the polls and become cynical about their government.

Not all school officials make the false choice between security and freedom. In a small number of schools across the nation - Federal Hocking High School in Ohio and Fairview Elementary School in California are two stellar examples - students are given a real voice in the life of the school.

When schools uphold the First Amendment, they become learning environments that are not only free, but also far safer than schools where students are alienated by censorship and repression. The challenge is for schools to promote freedom through lessons in civic responsibility. This includes, among other things, involving students in decision-making, teaching peer mediation of conflicts, encouraging a free student press, offering instruction in the ethical use of the Internet, and integrating lessons in civic character across the curriculum.

Here's a concept: Freedom works. Freedom and democracy, not censorship and repression, create safer schools for students - and ensure a more secure society for us all. Freedom also takes work. Many school officials complain that in this era of high-stakes testing they don't have time for such "extras" as supporting meaningful student government, promoting student journalism or creating opportunities for student engagement in public policy and service. But if we can send young people to fight and die in the name of freedom and democracy abroad, surely we can take time to practice freedom and democracy at home.

Source





US Can't Pass English 101

Most Americans can't write a decent college paper. It's not exactly news. Half a century ago Bernard Malamud, smart Jewish kid from Brooklyn, taught English at Oregon State University. He found the experience so grueling that he wrote it up in A New Life. His fictional hero, Levin,

"lectured his students on this thinness of their themes, for their pleasant good-natured selves without a critical attitude to life."

Then he wondered why "people disappeared from his classes" and transferred to other courses.

The boneheadedness of the average college student is, of course, a favorite theme of the educated classes, so it is not surprising to read in the June Atlantic the lament of an adjunct college instructor. In "The Basement of the Ivory Tower" we learn of the experiences of "Professor X" teaching English "at a small private college and at a community college."

Professor X is not teaching the children of The Atlantic readers. He is teaching evening classes to other peoples' children, students whose college applications showed "blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go." Nor are many of the students children. Many of them are health-care workers, would-be police officers, and municipal employees who need college level credits to "advance at work," or, in short, get a raise.

The students' chosen path to increased emoluments is not easy, for many of them are not well prepared for college work. Never mind the agonies of the "compare-and-contrast paper, the argument paper, the process-analysis paper... and the dreaded research paper." Many of the students "cannot write a coherent sentence."

Professor X wonders when he's going to get a note from the college to pass more students, and he worries "about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass."

Since we are worrying about "larger implications" let us escape from the bell jar of liberal thinking and wonder why it is that after a century and a half of "free" public education so many students present themselves at college unable to write a coherent sentence. If you read the latest National Assessment of Adult Literacy you will find that only 13 percent of US adults are rated "proficient" in prose literacy, e.g., "comparing viewpoints in two editorials." We are not talking here about 87 percent of Americans lacking the skill to write a scintillating article comparing foolish liberal with wise conservative viewpoints on education. We are talking about 87 percent of adults being not quite up to the task reading a couple of editorials and getting the point.

Could it be that the vast majority of Americans aren't particularly interested in reading and writing? Could it be that they don't really need advanced literary skills in order to hold down a decent job and enjoy a comfortable life in these United States? The "larger implication" of unprepared students attempting entry-level college English is that maybe the program of universal K-16 education is fatally flawed, for it suggests that for an unknown proportion of students the program of compulsory bums-on-seats education that is a central article of faith for the governing elite is a mistake.

If we have made a mistake in the development of our government education system we ought to do something about it. Liberals were properly outraged that President Bush tolerated two years of failure in Iraq before he would agree to change his strategy. For some reason they are not in quite such a hurry about the K-12 education system that was excoriated over twenty years ago in A Nation at Risk.

But if the current education system is broken what should we do to fix it? Laurence Gonzales' intriguing Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why suggests a different understanding of learning. Gonzales warns that you cannot confront the crises of life with just book learning. If you fall down a crevasse on a mountain or your yacht sinks a hurricane you need more than a rational appreciation of natural hazards to survive. You need practice, and actual experience in decision-making under duress so that your rational knowledge becomes internalized as an instinct. That's the way they teach you to fly airplanes. When the weather starts to close in good pilot must combine knowledge, skill, experience, and judgment to make the decisions that will get him out of a jam. The same applies to ordinary life crises like losing a job or getting divorced.

The day will come, perhaps sooner than we think, when the American people will be ready for education reform. Yet after a century and a half of government stasis it is difficult to know what to do. There is not even consensus on the notion of a "learning style." Perhaps the only thing to do will be to let the American people decide for themselves.

One thing is certain. The future of education will not have much to do with forcing government bureaucrats to jump through hoops in order to get their next raise.

Source






Some Australian teachers to be paid on merit

THOUSANDS of teachers are set to be judged partly on the academic performance of their students under a ground-breaking accreditation scheme to recognise excellence in the classroom. In an Australian first, the state's most outstanding classroom teachers will be able to apply for merit promotion to newly created advanced level positions. To qualify, teachers will have to demonstrate their students' achievements, provide work samples, submit references from parents and others and allow inspectors to assess their classroom performance.

The new positions - professional accomplishment and professional leadership - will eventually attract higher pay after negotiations with the Government or school authorities. The changes provide a new layer of seniority over the decades-old system of grading teachers automatically on length of service, and gazump the Rudd Government's agenda to reward classroom excellence. They also open the floodgates potentially for an even more comprehensive overhaul of teacher quality aimed at retaining the best teachers and weeding out duds.

Education Minister John Della Bosca said yesterday NSW would have the first comprehensive scheme in Australia to recognise excellence across the whole teaching profession in the state. All schools in the state will come under the new merit scheme judged on standards laid down by the NSW Institute of Teachers. "Outstanding teachers in NSW public, Catholic and independent schools will now have the opportunity to be formally recognised by the profession and the community by meeting high level professional teaching standards," Mr Della Bosca said.

Teachers yesterday welcomed the opportunity to gain recognition at an advanced level and said it would encourage many to remain in the classroom. The Teachers' Federation said it had a range of concerns about how the scheme would work and called for talks with the Government. It is now mandatory for all new teachers to be accredited at the level of professional competence but it is voluntary to apply for the two higher levels. Mr Della Bosca said the Institute of Teachers had developed standards setting out whole of career pathways for teachers in Government and non-government systems.

Source

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Arizona Raza unit survives under fire

Calls are heating up to kill the Tucson Unified School District's ethnic studies program - at the same time it becomes more likely that the district's most controversial department could expand to reach more, and younger, students. Critics, from the state's schools chief to lawmakers to conservative talk-show hosts and columnists, have singled out Mexican-American/Raza Studies in particular, saying it's divisive and turns students into angry revolutionaries. But supporters say the program's reach is too limited, given that it boosts student achievement by providing relevant and rigorous work to students all too often overlooked.

In a ruling last month that conditionally lifted the district's decades-old racial balance order, a federal judge noted that "it is unimaginable that the eight-staff Mexican American/Raza Studies department would be capable of serving the (district's) 30,118 Hispanic students."

TUSD's budget crisis is putting the kibosh on any new money for this coming school year, but Governing Board member Adelita Grijalva says she's committed to seeing the program grow the following year. For now, she's asking for a discussion about equity within the ethnic studies' $2.3 million budget, given that African-American Studies gets more funding and staff in a district overwhelmingly Latino. Raza Studies serves about 500 high school students, who take a four-course block of history, social justice and two Chicano literature classes.

The program should reach younger students, a 2006 outside audit said. Auditors recommended a feeder pipeline starting in the elementary schools. Although they criticized the African-American, Pan-Asian and Native American departments for too few accountability measures, they lauded Raza Studies as the program's "flagship."

It's the end of the school year and Raza Studies students at Tucson High Magnet School are presenting research findings to their principal. Their PowerPoint presentation is critical of policies toward English learners; some concerns hinge on whether students are funneled to vocational tracks, and some focus on inferior equipment. Then comes an exploration of classroom decor, with photos of classroom items students consider culturally insensitive.

First up is a baseball poster, which they say should be soccer or rugby to validate other cultures. Next up flashes the Pledge of Allegiance and a patriotic poster featuring the Statue of Liberty, the American flag and an eagle. "Most of the kids are from a different country, and this is showing them that this is the country that's the greatest and yours doesn't matter," a student maintains.

Principal Abel Morado tells the students he disagrees with their perspective. An initial role of public education was to mold a citizenry united under one democratic blanket, he says. "It's in our DNA in public schools to be sure we're teaching you about being citizens of this nation," Morado says. Morado says he considers the dialogue valuable because it's important to reflect that America does not have just one culture or value system.

Tom Horne, the state's superintendent of public instruction, considers the program's very premise grounds to publicly rail against it, and, if necessary, to ban it through legislation. "One of the most basic American values is that we judge people as individuals based on what they know and what they can do and what their character is like - and not based on what ethnic group they happen to have been born into," Horne says. "I think it's profoundly wrong to divide students up by ethnicity."

Augustine Romero took over as head of ethnic studies two years ago, after running Raza Studies for four years. In his view, the system already divides students by ethnicity. When he was a senior at Tucson High, his father asked school counselors to make military recruiters stop calling. His counselor couldn't believe Romero planned to go to college. He proved the counselor wrong, and the 41-year-old just finished his doctorate. "Yes, there are examples of people who have made it, but we've made it by having to work harder than most people because we've had to endure the inequities of the system," he says.

Romero summons the work of Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire to explain the premise of the program, hauling out a dog-eared and extensively highlighted copy of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." He points to a passage: "This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well." If people don't like being called oppressors, Romero offers no apology. "We have to be able to be honest. If we have cancer, should we not name the cancer and overcome it? If oppression and subordination are our cancers, should we not name them?"

Anglos often don't see racism, he says, so it needs to be pointed out, even though it has led to accusations that he propagates reverse racism. "When you name racism, people think you're playing the race card and then they say, 'You don't like me because I'm white.' No, I don't like what was said. Because I'm one who names these things, some have the perception that I'm a racist and that I only care about children of color."

Those children clearly need advocates, Romero says. There are glaring performance disparities between white and minority students - even in this district, where whites are only 30 percent of the student body. The recent court ruling noted test scores for black and Hispanic students lagged 10 percent to 15 percent behind those of their white counterparts, and up to 21 percent for Native Americans.....

The program's critics range from elected state officials to high school students. The campus Republicans at Tucson High circulated a petition in April to rein in the class after seeing a banner in a class window asking, "Who's the illegal alien, pilgrim?" The petition, signed by 50 of the school's 2,900 students, was forwarded to a handful of state legislators, along with a note that maintained the department "is creating a hostile environment for non-Hispanic students and students who oppose creating a racially charged school environment." ....

More here






Child abuse by teacher in Florida

Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class. After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton said. By a 14 to 2 margin, the class voted him out of the class.

Barton said her son is in the process of being diagnosed with Aspberger's, a type of high-functioning autism. Alex began the testing process in February for an official diagnosis under the suggestion of Morningside Principal Marsha Cully. Alex has had disciplinary issues because of his disabilities, Barton said. The school and district has met with Barton and her son to create an individual education plan, she said. His teacher, Wendy Portillo, has attended these meetings, she said.

Barton said after the vote, Alex's teacher asked him how he felt. "He said, 'I feel sad,'" she said. Alex left the classroom and spent the rest of the day in the nurse's office, she said. Barton said when she came to pick up her son at the school on Wednesday, he was leaving the nurse's office. "He was shaken up," she said. Barton said the nurse told her to talk with the child's teacher, who told her what happened.

Alex hasn't been back to school since then, and Barton said he won't be returning. He starts screaming when she brings him with her to drop off his sibling at school. Thursday night, his mother heard him saying "I'm not special." Barton said Alex is reliving the incident. They said he was "disgusting" and "annoying," Barton said. "He was incredibly upset," Barton said. "The only friend he has ever made in his life was forced to do this."

The child's mother filed a complaint with the school resource officer, who investigated the matter, said Port St. Lucie spokeswoman Michelle Steele said. But the state attorney's office concluded the matter did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse, so no criminal charges will be filed, Steele said. Port St. Lucie Police is no longer investigating, but is documenting the complaint, she said.

Steele said the teacher confirmed the incident did occur. St. Lucie School's spokeswoman Janice Karst said the district is investigating the incident, but could not make any further comment. Vern Melvin, Department of Children and Families circuit administrator, confirmed the agency is investigating an allegation of abuse at Morningside, but said he could not elaborate

Source. Some comments by another teacher here






London schools must be Greener, says British regulator

Schools are failing to teach children to be green and are treating environmental awareness as a peripheral issue, Ofsted has found. Inspectors said that the majority of schools they visited did not pay enough attention to sustainable development. "Ethical purchasing was usually confined to buying Fairtrade products for the staff room," its report on schools and sustainability said. The report praised schools for their imaginative projects and excellent teaching on sustainability, but it said that work tended to be uncoordinated. Primary schools were better than secondary schools at putting children's passion for being environmentally friendly to good use.

Christine Blower, from the National Union of Teachers, said: "Far too few schools are teaching about the biggest issue facing the planet. Schools are over-burdened with a range of excessive and unreasonable external demands. This makes it harder to focus on teaching climate change and sustainability."

Ofsted recommended that the Government should give higher priority to sustainability in schools, support this through funding, and ensure that the curriculum reflected the importance of the subject. The Government wants all schools to become sustainable by 2020, as part of its ambitious 45billion pound Building Schools for the Future programme, which will rebuild or refurbish all schools in the country. Schools are responsible for 2 per cent of all carbon emissions in this country - and almost 15 per cent of those produced by thepublic sector in Britain.

The Government has admitted that it would be too expensive to make schools "zero carbon", in response to a committee of MPswhoasked for details about the environmental targets that BSF schools would reach.

Source

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Raza studies gives rise to racial hostility

As a former teacher in Tucson Unified School District's hotly debated ethnic studies department, I submit my perspective for the public's consideration. During the 2002-2003 school year, I taught a U.S. history course with a Mexican-American perspective. The course was part of the Raza/Chicano studies department. Within one week of the course beginning, I was told that I was a "teacher of record," meaning that I was expected only to assign grades. The Raza studies department staff would teach the class. I was assigned to be a "teacher of record" because some members of the Raza studies staff lacked teaching certificates. It was a convenient way of circumventing the rules.

I stated that I expected to do more than assign grades. I expected to be involved in teaching the class. The department was less than enthusiastic but agreed. Immediately it was clear that the class was not a U.S. history course, which the state of Arizona requires for graduation. The class was similar to a sociology course one expects to see at a university. Where history was missing from the course, it was filled by controversial and biased curriculum.

The basic theme of the curriculum was that Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites. In this narrative, whites are able to maintain their influence only if minorities are held down. Thus, social, political and economic events in America must be understood through this lens.

This biased and sole paradigm justified teaching that our community police officers are an extension of the white power structure and that they are the strongmen used "to keep minorities in their ghettos." It justified telling the class that there are fewer Mexican-Americans in Tucson Magnet High School's advanced placement courses because their "white teachers" do not believe they are capable and do not want them to get ahead. It justified teaching that the Southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired his values from the corrupted ethos of Western civilization. It was taught that the Southwest is "Atzlan," the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, and still rightfully belongs to their descendants - to all people of indigenous Mexican heritage.

As an educator, I refused to be complicit in a curriculum that engendered racial hostility, irresponsibly demeaned America's civil institutions, undermined our public servants, discounted any virtues in Western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty. When I raised these concerns, I was told that I was a "racist," despite being Hispanic. Acknowledging my heritage, the Raza studies staff also informed me that I was a vendido, the Spanish term for "sellout."

The culmination of my challenge to the department's curriculum was my removal from that particular class. The Raza studies department and its district-level allies pressured the Tucson High administration to silence my concerns through reassignment to another class during that one period. The Raza studies department used the "racist" card, which is probably the most worn-out and desperate maneuver used to silence competing perspectives. It is fundamentally anti-intellectual because it immediately stops debate by threatening to destroy the reputation of those who would provide counter arguments.

Unfortunately, I am not the only one to have been intimidated by the Raza studies department in this way. The diplomatic and flattering language that the department and its proponents use to describe the Raza studies program is an attempt to avoid public scrutiny. When necessary, the department invokes terms such as "witch hunt" and "McCarthyism" to diminish the validity of whatever public scrutiny it does get.

The proponents of this program may conceal its reality to the public. But as a former teacher in the program, I am witness to its ugly underbelly. Arizona taxpayers should ask themselves whether they should pay for the messages engendered in these classrooms with their hard-earned tax dollars. The Raza studies department has powerful allies in TUSD, on its governing board and in the U.S. House of Representatives and thus operates with much impunity. Occasionally there are minor irritations from the state superintendent of public instruction and the Legislature.

Ultimately, Arizona taxpayers own TUSD and have the right to change it. The change will have to come from replacing the board if its members refuse to make the Raza studies department respect the public trust.

Source





The Creation myth taught in government schools

Post below is inspired by the story above. It is recycled from Kenn Gividen. See the original for links

Ignore the title. It was composed for two reasons: First, to attract liberals and, second, to emphasize their hypocrisy. Case in point: Liberals love to bemoan teaching creationism in government schools. "It's not true science," they claim. "It's a myth!" Some universities refuse to recognize creation science classes when considering student applications.

But move from the Science Department to the History Department and the liberal shift is precisely 180 degrees. Mythology is required teaching. John A Ward, a former teacher in Tucson, explains how American history has succumbed to indoctrination in our tax-funded government schools: "The basic theme of the curriculum was that Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.

"In this narrative, whites are able to maintain their influence only if minorities are held down. Thus, social, political and economic events in America must be understood through this lens. "This biased and sole paradigm justified teaching that our community police officers are an extension of the white power structure and that they are the strongmen used 'to keep minorities in their ghettos.'"

My conclusion?

Liberals say they oppose the creation myth being taught in government schools while creating history myths to replace the true history. No wonder liberals oppose school choice. It afford students to learn true history. And with truth working against them, liberals can't win.





Australia: No excuses for indigenous students

This guy is right but he is pissing into the wind. What he wants "aint gunna happen" -- though there are always individual exceptions, of course

The indigenous community has to discard the misguided notion that gaining an education makes them less Aboriginal. One of the nation's most respected indigenous educators, Chris Sarra, has called on the Aboriginal community to ensure children take their rightful place in the Rudd Government's education revolution. Ahead of his address to the National Press Club today to mark Sorry Day, Dr Sarra said Australian society had to stop making excuses for Aboriginal students being chronic under-achievers who failed to attend school, and expect the same of them as any other student.

He said the Aboriginal community had a responsibility to embrace the education revolution and discard any idea that it threatened indigenous culture. "We have to stop making excuses now and stop thinking schools are turning our kids into being like white kids," he told The Australian. "We have to understand the more educated we become, the greater the scope for us to enhance our culture and sense of Aboriginal identity."

Dr Sarra is a member of the federal Government's Australian Social Inclusion Board, announced last week, and director of the Indigenous Education Leadership Institute in Queensland. He was principal of Cherbourg State School, with a predominantly indigenous student population, where he introduced initiatives that cut absenteeism by 94per cent and brought literacy and numeracy results to the state average.

Dr Sarra said the perception that school was bad for indigenous culture stemmed partly from the older generation's memories of school and how Aborigines were represented. But the feeling was sustained by non-indigenous people holding the "romantic view" that remote communities should be left to their own devices to follow their own culture. "That's fine for tourists who are driving through and want to see them as museum pieces," he said.

In his speech today, Dr Sarra intends to present a way forward for indigenous education and says the Government's education revolution must include Aboriginal Australians. "If we lift the education standard for indigenous Australian children, we lift the overall education standard of all Australians," his speech says. "We must demand that indigenous Australian children have access to that which we would consider quality education outcomes for any Australian child."

Dr Sarra outlines what he says are the five most fundamental strategies to ensure Aboriginal children perform at the same level as other school students: developing a positive Aboriginal identity in schools, embracing Aboriginal leadership in schools, high expectations of Aboriginal students, innovative schools and innovative staffing models.

But the biggest challenge is providing schools Aboriginal children want to go to, and that requires rethinking the way things are done outside the traditional school day of 9am to 3pm. Dr Sarra says secondary school education for remote students needs to be redesigned, with options such as residential or boarding facilities in bigger regional centres considered. Also required was greater flexibility in the school calendar to better address the wet-dry seasonal issues in northern Australia and more flexibility about teaching hours to better engage and meet the needs of students.

Source

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Subway for illiterates

This story has been going around the blogs a bit in the last day or so, so I thought I might mention it here:

The Subway sandwich chain is running a writing contest for kids from which homeschooled kids are specifically excluded. Excluding a potential one million customers seems pretty dumb to start with but the stupidity does not end there. In their promo they write (down the very bottom) of the "Untied" States and homeschoolers are described as "home schools". Note that there was another misspelling too: "bastket".

And to top it off it is pre-schoolers that they are asking to compose sentences. A bit ambitious! See here and here for more.

So why did they do it? I think Bob McCarty has the best explanation.

Update:

As I had had a small eye operation only a few hours before I wrote the above, I could not see very well and missed a couple of things (funnily enough). Now corrected.

Jerry Lerman has grabbed a copy of the original promo in case they wake up long enough to correct the original. See here. You may have to use the resize gadget to enlarge the pic. Jerry has highlighted the bloopers in red.






Fantasizing "The New McCarthyism"

By Phil Orenstein (Excerpt:)

After the lengthy front page tribute in the New York Times treating Deborah Almontaser, founder and former principle of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), as the later day Mother Theresa, I thought the public forum she would be addressing later that evening, alongside her embattled sister in solidarity, City University of New York (CUNY) faculty union official Susan O'Malley, would be thronged by numerous admirers and reporters. But there were no such crowds or media. Wandering the endless corridors of the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan, I bumped into the panelists Susan O'Malley and Ms. Almontaser, who were just as lost as I was, looking for the classroom where the public forum, "Academic Freedom and the Attack on Diversity at CUNY," was to be held.

A little more than 20 people including CUNY faculty, students as well as the speakers showed up. The poor attendance may be due to the fact that the CUNY Senate Forum email list received the announcement on Sunday after 10 PM, the day before the event. I was the only person at this "public" forum sponsored by the Middle East Student's Association (MESO), who attempted to speak up to dispute the cunning agenda and break through the monolithic conformity of the group.

Billed as an important forum to address the issues of Islamophobia at CUNY, the email announcement stated: "Around the country, Islamophobic and Anti-Arab attacks on professors have increased, most notably at Columbia and Barnard. This movement to attack and discredit dissent has been called "the New McCarthyism" - shutting down reasoned debate on important issues... Ms. Almontaser will appear on this panel along with CUNY Professor Susan O' Malley and others working to expose the attack on academic freedom across the nation.There is some urgency here as these attacks are one tip of a vast ideological iceberg that is also threatening to impact the current election campaign."

Although the issue of the "anti-Arab attacks" at Columbia and Barnard was not broached in the forum they were most likely referring to the recent public uproar of Columbia and Barnard alumni over the ill-advised tenure decision of Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj granted by virtue of her unimpressive scholarship of one book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society based on flimsy evidence and hearsay, which purports that the historical origins of the State of Israel are fictitious.

What I witnessed was a closed forum dedicated to a veiled radical agenda, riddled by hysterical paranoia, name-calling, slanderous accusations against prominent scholars and city officials, and strategies for their ouster, where the panelists professed that "attacks" against Arabs and professors are a coordinated right wing smear campaign launched by Daniel Pipes, CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld and their ilk, which they dubbed the "New McCarthyism." But Mr. Pipes and company whom they demonized with such venom, have simply exercised their First Amendment rights of critical journalism and free speech, civilly exchanging opinions and information in online magazine articles, speeches, op-eds and blogs, where all sides of the issues were often given a fair hearing in the media.

I was confused as to the reasons for their excessive paranoia. How are Pipes and company threatening their academic freedom? The so-called "New McCarthyites" have been vociferous, no doubt, but they demonstrated nothing resembling the violent student mob attacks at Columbia University on Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist, because he expressed disagreeable views. Mr. Pipes and a few opinionated bloggers, including myself, are not U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy. What is this "vast ideological iceberg" that is "threatening to impact the current election campaign" of which the so-called attacks on academic freedom are only the tip?

Deborah Almontaser: Founder and Former Principle of KGIA

One of the featured panelists was Deborah Almontaser, who resigned as principal of KGIA after she stirred up controversy over her misleading explanation of the term "intifada" as "shaking off of oppression" in response to a reporter's question about the inflammatory "Intifada NYC" slogan on the AWAAM organization's T-shirts. She recently filed a lawsuit against the New York Department of Education and Mayor Bloomberg, charging that her First Amendment rights were violated when she was wrongfully forced to resign. A federal appeals court ruled that she will not be reinstated as principle and she is now appealing. In the words of a sympathetic anti-bigotry activist present at the forum, Almontaser is "a traditionalist-leaning Muslim and as such, has ties to the more fundamentalist Muslim groups," thus apparently not a moderate Muslim as many supporters claim.

Almontaser and the KGIA public school are enthusiastically supported by a number of radical individuals and Islamic groups such as AWAAM, CAIR -- currently under federal investigation as an unindicted co-conspirator for terrorist financing, the American Muslim Association of Lawyers (AMAL) - which defended the notorious "6 imams" who threatened to sue passengers for profiling, cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, anti-Israel Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, and others. Three radical Imams are on KGIA's board of advisors composed of 12 Islamic, Jewish and Christian religious leaders. Almontaser has expressed virulent blame America attitudes in the past making statements in interviews such as: "I have realized that our foreign policy is racist; in the `war against terror' people of color are the target..the terrorist attacks have been triggered by the way the USA breaks its promises with countries across the world, especially in the Middle East."

In her talk, she described her activities for tolerance and understanding in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11th. She visited synagogues, churches and mosques lecturing on religious and cultural sensitivity, spreading the message that Islam is a religion of peace. In a post 9/11 world of anti-Muslim backlash and discrimination, she described the lack of understanding of what her people were faced with and her contributions to a "September 11th Curriculum Project" to alleviate the backlash and discrimination in the New York public school system, training teachers and students in cultural sensitivity. She spoke of the weekly protest efforts together with Mona Eldahry seeking justice for Arab and Muslim detainees some of whom "suffered abuses in the name of our country."

She described how people lobbied and a movement was mobilized against the KGIA. Almontaser was the unfortunate victim of a movement by a "loud minority of voices" which she dubbed "McCarthyism of 2008." One writer to the New York Times called this movement of Daniel Pipes, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld and company, "the thought police." The moderator asked why this is happening to you, why are you so under attack? In answer, she described the role played by cultural tolerance and understanding in bridging the gap between East and West and opening doors to peace, so you don't need war anymore. The purpose of KGIA is to create "ambassadors of peace and hope," as the New York Times article mentioned. She said "the school is aiming to humanize the enemy" we're supposed to be at war with. This is a threat to many people who claim that "we're at war" and "we need to keep the war going" in order to thrive. "If you don't have an enemy, you can't keep Lockheed in business." She clarified.

She further characterized her "attackers" as those who feel "we need to have an enemy, a bad guy." What they find threatening is the whole notion of "learning the language and culture of people that we should be hating because we're at war with them." Members of the audience contributed to the theme that "this country is engaged in an imperial war and needs to build up an enemy." Someone elaborated that conservatives, by the same token need to build an enemy on a smaller scale so they target local Muslims, Arabs and the KGIA, and Wiesenfeld lashes out at CUNY and public education, to fulfill their need for an enemy and someone to hate, in order to ultimately support the imperial war.

A little latter someone in the audience continued on this theme, mentioning that anyone who visits the Stop the Madrassa website will notice that they "subscribe to an extreme version of the `Clash of Civilizations,'" and they see the battle to close the KGIA as "one local fight in a broad national battle against Islam" and what they call the "Islamization of America." They see the same Islamic colonizing phenomena that produced "Eurabia" slowly happening here and "they are drawing battle lines wherever they can." They see themselves as "great crusaders or heroes protecting Christendom and Western Civilization" against barbarians. They will "lie, distort, smear and destroy careers and people themselves," and they will do "anything and everything to further their cause. "They are not a civil debating society." They are not interested in ideas. That's why you can't sit down and talk to them or have a civil debate.

Although I witnessed a paranoia which reached astonishing new levels of hysteria, I would imagine that the morning New York Times article must have taken some of the wind out of their sails, for how could they complain about intolerance and anti-Muslim "attacks" when such a display of sympathy and veneration in pictures and words on page one of the newspaper of record limits their outrage to just a handful of critics like myself who disagree with their outlandish premises and challenge their dubious motives? ....

Susan O'Malley: CUNY Trustee Ex-officio and PSC Executive Committee Official

The third and final panelist was CUNY faculty union official Susan O'Malley, who has filed an ongoing $2 million defamation lawsuit against Professor Emeritus Sharad Karkhanis, for his audacity to state that it's not appropriate to place convicted terrorists, Mohamed Yousry and Susan Rosenberg on the CUNY payroll. In his introduction, the moderator stated O'Malley has been "attacked" as a "so-called terrorist sympathizer" as he listed her credentials. She defended herself with the same cries of Islamophobia and racism as Almontaser but only O'Malley's persecution came from a "crazy man" and his conservative allies. She cried that in her case, for at least 13 years she has been "attacked by a crazy man named Sharad Karkhanis."

To explain the methods Karkhanis and his friends used to "attack" her, she expounded on the "craziness" of guilt by association that was used to smear KGIA and its founder, Ms. Almontaser. The same strategy is being used to attack Senator Obama, by associating him with controversial figures, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, the unrepentant former leader of the Weather Underground. The method is to take something irrelevant out of context and repeat it over and over again until it is cited as established fact. This leads to the "establishment of lies" which inadvertently appear in everyday conversation, as people rehash them as household words. That is how she was smeared by Karkhanis and she proceeded to tell her tale of anguish.

Karkhanis put out a newsletter, The Patriot Returns, which he distributes to 13,000 CUNY faculty, in which she's been "red-baited, lesbian-baited and everything-baited," called "a terrorist" and a "friend of terrorists," and even declared that she was "at an al-Qaeda training camp." She claimed to have endured "about 50 attacks" from the various issues of the newsletter. He doesn't do it alone, she explained. It's an effort of a group of rightwing conservatives, probably including Daniel Pipes, from whom she's received emails. Jeffrey Wiesenfeld was also closely "connected with these attacks."

O'Malley continued, saying he put out these "attacks" over and over, for such a long period of time that everywhere she went, even up in Albany, "people knew her as the butt of this person's attacks" and were afraid to associate with her. The attacks became such a nightmare and she "started really freaking out." She feared boarding an airplane one day and being turned away because she's a terrorist. She said she would have loved to respond to his accusations, but it was just impossible, so she had her lawyer friend send a letter to Karkhanis asking him to "please stop attacking her, and he said he would not." She wanted it to stop, she wanted quiet and since she was no longer head of the CUNY University Faculty Senate (UFS), she filed a libel suit against him.

She continued in defense of her actions to try to hire Mohamed Yousry and Susan Rosenberg. She explained that the "attacks" on her became most virulent after 9/11 when Yousry, an adjunct at York College was removed from the classroom without discussion or due process rights, after he was convicted for aiding terrorism. As UFS chair she was in a position to protect faculty, especially adjuncts whose "academic freedom and right to due process were limited." After calling her UFS office in desperation since he couldn't find work, she tried to find a teaching position for him since his academic career and his life were destroyed after his dismissal. She knew Yousry to be "very fine teacher" and a "man of stature." She rationalized that he should be considered "innocent until proven guilty which is part of the law in this country."

Essentially, Ms. O'Malley is either unfamiliar with the U.S. legal system or is feigning ignorance as a cover for her actions in her capacity as CUNY union official. Yousry was convicted along with co-conspirator Lynne Stewart in federal court and found guilty as charged for providing material support for terrorism and defrauding the government. How could a man with a terrorist conviction be "a man of stature?"

O'Malley conveniently forgot to mention a few things about Mohamed Yousry. He was removed from his adjunct position only after he was indicted, but was paid salary for the entire semester. O'Malley should also be grateful that Yousry did indeed receive contractual and legal rights of due process as his grievance followed all the proper channels from "step one" at the college level all the way up to arbitration with all expenses paid by dues paying union members. Mr. Yousry lost his case. This was all spelled out in plain English in The Patriot Returns 35.4. What makes her think that "the CUNY administration was going to roll out a welcome mat in CUNY for this terrorist and put him back on the payroll after his conviction in Federal Court and after CUNY prevailed in arbitration?"

She has yet to answer the following question raised in the same issue of The Patriot Returns: "Has Queen O'Malley ever made a "Job Wanted" announcement like this for a non-convicted, non-violent, peace loving American educator for a job in CUNY? There are hundreds of qualified people looking for teaching jobs. Why does she prefer convicted terrorists who are bent on harming our people and our nation, over peace-loving Americans?"

In a similar fashion, O'Malley sought to help find employment for former John Jay College adjunct Susan Rosenberg who was a Weather Underground terrorist convicted as an accomplice in the murder of two police officers and a security guard and for her role in the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol and was imprisoned for a 58 year sentence for the possession of 700 pounds of dynamite and weapons. She served 16 years of her sentence until she was pardoned by President Bill Clinton.....

O'Malley had plenty of opportunities to take on Dr. Karkhanis and refute his accusations. She could have responded in the Clarion, the CUNY faculty union newspaper or the UFS faculty newsletter, which at one point she was an editor. Instead she chose to hire a lawyer and sue Karkhanis in New York State Supreme Court in order to silence his critical tongue and shut down The Patriot Returns. The poor retired professor, Dr. Karkhanis's First Amendment rights have been threatened more than anyone of the fakers in the room.....

At one point in the discussion the true condescending nature toward "people of color" slipped out accidentally. Almontaser described the KGIA as a school that caters to children of Arab descent immersed in their own culture, but welcomes students of all backgrounds and ethnicities as well. But only a dozen of the 60 students presently enrolled are Arab. Her dream that this school would function as a home to Arabs and Muslims was shattered, and now regrettably the school caters mostly to non-Arabs. One person in the audience said that mostly African Americans and Puerto Ricans enrolled their kids at KGIA because they think it would lead to a great job as a translator, as others in the room seemed to agree and chuckle quietly. How telling that they should look down their noses at the very people they claim to protect and defend, for attempting to rise above their surroundings and strive to build valuable marketable skills.

While posing as the paragons of diversity and multiculturalism, Ms. Almontaser and Prof. O'Malley betray a patronizing nature that they try to conceal. They demonize their critics in order to bully them into silence, while posturing as hapless victims of a hateful "vigilant squad" of anti-Muslim "attacks." The same type of scrutiny that they christen "guilt by association" that is used to vet politicians running for the highest offices must be utilized to examine the actions of lesser public officials.

No one who chooses a leadership role is immune from scrutiny. Echoing the sentiments of President Harry Truman, Hillary Clinton admonished Senator Obama: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." If a public official were to associate with David Duke, participate in Stormfront rallies and condone the message of "White Pride" T-shirts, there would be universal condemnation and justified public outrage. Whether this person was a public school principle, a CUNY union official or Barack Obama, he or she would summarily be toast. Any teacher will tell you that a student caught hanging out with troublemakers would be severely reprimanded. These lesser public officials likewise should continue to be rigorously vetted and judged by virtue of the troublemakers they associate with and recruit. Any attempt to thwart the process of freedom of criticism via the courts or any other forms of intimidation or censorship, will be viewed as a direct threat to the First Amendment rights of all and a danger to our national security at a time of global crisis and Islamic terrorism.

Source




British schools in revolt over under-5s curriculum

A powerful coalition of England’s leading independent schools is demanding that the Government scale back its new national curriculum for the under-fives, claiming that it violates parents’ human rights by denying them the freedom to choose how they educate their children.

The Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents 1,280 fee-paying schools educating more than 500,000 children, has written a blistering letter to Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, complaining that the new curriculum will mean that the education of under-fives is subject to greater government interference than that of any other age group.

A leaked copy of the letter, seen by The Times, says that the curriculum, known as the Early Years Foundation Stage framework, will compromise its member schools’ independence. “This clumsy intrusion into the early years’ curriculum of independent schools is both unjustified and unnecessary. More importantly, this interference conflicts with the rights of parents to privacy in their home life, which includes the freedom to choose how they educate their children and to educate them free from the control of the state,” the letter states.

The letter, copied to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, also complains that the framework is likely to hold back children’s progress and to lower standards. George Marsh, who is headmaster of Dulwich College Preparatory School in South London and chairman of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, said he was concerned that the framework might eventually herald greater interference in the curriculum for older children.

The framework becomes law in the autumn and will affect all 25,000 nurseries and childcare settings in England, whether they are run by the state, charities or private companies. It sets out up to 500 developmental milestones between birth and primary school and requires under-fives to be assessed on 69 writing, problem solving and numeracy skills. The framework has come under heavy fire from a number of leading child development experts and academics, including members of the Government’s own early education advisory group.

Some argue that it relies too heavily on formal learning at the expense of free play, while others fear that its formal literacy targets will instill a sense of failure in teachers and children because they are beyond the reach of most under-fives. There are also fears that the legislation, which requires nursery staff to make constant written observations on children to note their progress, will interfere with teachers’ ability to interact with children.

Ms Hughes has so far resisted any attempts to water down the new curriculum, arguing that standards have to be set high to ensure that children from deprived backgrounds are given the same opportunities for learning in the crucial early years as middle-class children. She said that the 69 early learning goals were aspirations, and not targets.

The entrance of the ISC into the debate will raise the stakes considerably, not least because the independent schools have chosen parents’ human rights, not just child well-being, as their main point of attack. Unlike the national curriculum for schools, which does not apply to independent schools, the framework will apply to all pre-school settings.

The letter, signed by Chris Parry, the ISC’s chief executive, outlines a number of other objections to the framework, which will apply to 946 of its member schools, which cater for children up to five years old. It complains that an anomaly in the legislation will leave independent schools with stricter staffing controls than the state sector, requiring private schools to hire three or four adults for each reception class of 30, compared with one in the state sector. Mr Parry says: “It seems ridiculous that [the framework] should dictate rules relating to staffing in the independent sector and this prescription smacks of an ideological approach.”

The ISC also complains that the requirements for teachers to produce written observations on each child will result in teachers “acting as time and motion experts hovering around children with clipboards, Post-it notes and cameras to collect ‘evidence’ ”. This will not raise standards, but will “simply distract teachers from their teaching responsibilities”.

Mr Parry says that there was inadequate consultation with ISC members over the new law, adding that the regulatory impact assessment which followed the so-called consultation was “materially misleading”. ISC schools, the letter adds, have been given contradictory advice from local authorities as to how the framework should be implemented. Some have not been able to get any advice at all. It says that, given this lack of consultation, there should be a 12-month transition period for the implementation of the framework.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, said that individual parents would have the option of applying for an exemption for their child for some or all of the learning and development requirements of the framework. He added that the framework was flexible enough to support a wide range of approaches to education.

Source

Monday, May 26, 2008

Does Academe Hinder Parenthood?

Numerous reports and accounts suggest that balancing parenthood and academic careers can be difficult, particularly for women. Two new studies suggest that, possibly as a result, many female academics may be opting not to have kids.

One study compares female academics to those in other professions that have substantial training time and finds professors far less likely to procreate. The other study, in anthropology, finds male anthropologists more likely to have children than are their female counterparts — and finds significant evidence that women in academe (even in a discipline not seen as promoting outdated gender roles) find their careers limited by responsibilities at home.

The study comparing professions tracks recent household “birth events” (having a child aged zero or one) in households of physicians, lawyers, and academics — with the thinking being that all three professions require many years of training and long work hours to succeed. The study, based on 2000 Census data, finds that academics are the least likely to have experienced recent birth events, and that the gap is greatest for women. (Physicians are most likely to have had children recently, and lawyers are in the middle.)

Controlling for such factors as age, weekly hours worked, and race or ethnicity, male faculty members are 21 percent less likely than male physicians to have recently had a birth in their households. Controlling the same factors for women, those who are academics are 41 percent less likely than physicians to have recently had children. When controlling for marital status, the gap between female faculty members and physicians narrows, but the study finds that female faculty members are the most likely of the three job categories to be separated, divorced or widowed.

One factor that makes it easier for the male doctors to have recent offspring is that, in addition to earning more than professors, the M.D.’s are less likely to have child-care needs. That’s because male doctors are almost twice as likely to have spouses out of the labor force as are male academics (40 percent vs. 22 percent). In another sign of the impact of academic careers on parenthood, male professionals whose wives are physicians or lawyers are disproportionately likely to have had recent birth events, while male professionals whose wives are academics do not have any greater than average chance of new parenthood.

“Given the high rate at which academics marry other academics, it appears likely that the low fertility of female professors ... can account for the relative paucity of birth events among male faculty,” the report finds.

The study, “Alone in the Ivory Tower: How Birth Events Vary Among Fast-Track Professionals,” was presented at the meeting this spring of the Population Association of America. The authors are Nicholas Wolfinger, associate professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah; Mary Ann Mason, former graduate dean at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Mothers on the Fast Track; and Marc Goulden, director of data initiatives in academic affairs at Berkeley. Mason and Goulden are also members of the team that leads research work at the UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge, which promotes policies to help academics with family obligations.

While the population study compared academics to other professions, a committee of the American Anthropological Association has just released a report on the status of women in the field — featuring survey comparisons of male and female anthropologists. The report notes a number of differences between men and women in anthropology, and a greater satisfaction by men than women with the work environment. Men were more likely than women in a national survey of faculty members to feel that policies were supportive, while many women felt that they were burdened with a disproportionate share of administrative work in departments.

Key differences were found with regard to work/home balance: men in the field are more likely to be parents, but women are more likely to be more responsible for child care or other family obligations. For instance, of men who experienced a career interruption, 7.4 percent cited child care as the reason and 3.7 percent cited the experience of being a “trailing spouse,” one who moves when a partner is hired elsewhere. Of women who experienced career interruptions, 22.9 percent cited child care and 9.1 percent cited being a trailing spouse. And women were much more likely (52.9 percent to 5.6 percent) to anticipate a future career interruption due to child care responsibilities.

In looking at marital and parental status, men were more likely than women to be married and to have children. But given those gaps and the large gender gaps in career interruption due to childcare, one surprising figure in the survey is the percentage of men with children reporting that they are the primary caregiver — not as high a percentage as women with children, but high. (Of course, it is self-reported.)

Source




Britain: Disruptive pupils to be privatized

Private companies are to be given the go-ahead to take over the running of specialist units for teaching the country's most disruptive state school pupils. Ministers are considering allowing them to profit from the provision under a shake-up of the way specialist pupil referral units are run, outlined in a White Paper yesterday. The move is expected to pave the way for firms such as Group 4 Securicor and Serco, which are already highly involved in the public sector, to take over units. A spokesman for Group 4 Securicor said the firm would study the proposals and "assess whether there are opportunities to provide additional public services".

The proposal to allow the involvement of commercial companies alarmed Britain's biggest teachers' union, the National Union of Teachers, which said it was "a deeply worrying rubicon" for the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, to cross. In the past, firms running local authority services have been allowed to make profits, but not mainstream schools.

Christine Blower, the acting general secretary of the NUT, said it would lead to companies "making economies in provision for the most vulnerable people". She added: "The last thing pupil referral units need is to be outsourced to private companies. Such a move would only increase their sense of isolation from other local authority provision."

The White Paper published research that showed that 99 per cent of pupils taught in the units failed to reach the Government's benchmark of five top-grade GCSE passes. Nearly nine out of 10 of the 135,000 children taught in the units every year also fail to obtain five GCSE passes at any grade.

Under the proposals, ministers plan to invite competition for running pupil referral units, nicknamed "sin bins". They are anxious to encourage private companies and voluntary groups or charities - such as the Prince's Trust and Barnardo's to run the units. Independent schools with a record of offering boarding places for deprived children in danger of being taken into care - such as Rugby - would also be invited to apply as would sponsors of the Government's flagship academies.

Sir Alan Steer, the headteacher appointed by the Government to head an inquiry into school discipline, warned that the pupil referral units had become "the forgotten service". "Vulnerable children can be placed with others who are displaying serious criminal tendencies," he said in a letter to Mr Balls. Mr Balls said he wanted the units to offer more places to pupils at risk of expulsion - rather than those already excluded from school. "We can then help them to access the right support before the behaviour spirals out of control and reaches the point of exclusion," he said.

Source






States holding back schools, warns Australian Federal minister

Sounds hopeful but a bit hard to follow.

The federal Government has effectively put the states and territories on notice over the reporting of school and student performance, saying they are hampering efforts to raise standards. Education Minister Julia Gillard has also announced an overhaul of the funding model for private schools, which is understood to include the controversial guarantees that keep funding for about 60 per cent of non-government schools at inflated levels.

In a speech to the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, Ms Gillard implicitly criticised states such as NSW, Queensland and South Australia, which are opposed to publicly releasing national test results. "It does not serve the interests of Australian students to have schooling policies delivered through structures and reporting systems which operate in parallel but allow no meaningful comparison or exchange between them," she said. "While different jurisdictions and authorities treat the use of data as part of a competition between themselves, they are short-changing the students and families who rely on them for a high-quality education."

Ms Gillard said she was not interested in establishing a crude form of league tables ranking schools according to raw test results. "(But) I believe there is an overwhelming public interest in developing a more comprehensive, more reliable and more open picture of school and student performance," she said.

Ms Gillard said the National Data Centre, announced last week in the budget, would act as an independent agency to validate and report on education statistics and that she expected the states and territories to contribute to its running costs. She said the centre would examine the results of national tests as well as other sources of data measuring the effect on education, such as socioeconomic status and early development. "I want to promote a more sophisticated understanding of what influences educational success," she said.

In the speech on Wednesday night, Ms Gillard said she expected a government review of the funding model for private schools to conclude in 2011 and new arrangements to start from 2013 that provide funding according to student needs as determined by socioeconomic status. The Government guaranteed existing funding levels for non-government schools until 2012 to defuse the issue during the election campaign last year. The "hit list" of private schools to lose money drawn up by previous Labor leader Mark Latham is credited with being a major factor in the ALP losing the 2004 election.

Ms Gillard described the schools funding system as "one of the most complex, most opaque and most confusing in the developed world" and she called for an end to the debate pitting public against private schools. [Stopping Leftist attacks on private school would be a good place to start]

As a first step to improving transparency, Ms Gillard will release the new socioeconomic status scores for all non-government schools, which will determine the amount of funding each school receives from next year to 2012. [Class-war Leftism again]

Source

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Does Academe Hinder Parenthood?

Numerous reports and accounts suggest that balancing parenthood and academic careers can be difficult, particularly for women. Two new studies suggest that, possibly as a result, many female academics may be opting not to have kids.

One study compares female academics to those in other professions that have substantial training time and finds professors far less likely to procreate. The other study, in anthropology, finds male anthropologists more likely to have children than are their female counterparts — and finds significant evidence that women in academe (even in a discipline not seen as promoting outdated gender roles) find their careers limited by responsibilities at home.

The study comparing professions tracks recent household “birth events” (having a child aged zero or one) in households of physicians, lawyers, and academics — with the thinking being that all three professions require many years of training and long work hours to succeed. The study, based on 2000 Census data, finds that academics are the least likely to have experienced recent birth events, and that the gap is greatest for women. (Physicians are most likely to have had children recently, and lawyers are in the middle.)

Controlling for such factors as age, weekly hours worked, and race or ethnicity, male faculty members are 21 percent less likely than male physicians to have recently had a birth in their households. Controlling the same factors for women, those who are academics are 41 percent less likely than physicians to have recently had children. When controlling for marital status, the gap between female faculty members and physicians narrows, but the study finds that female faculty members are the most likely of the three job categories to be separated, divorced or widowed.

One factor that makes it easier for the male doctors to have recent offspring is that, in addition to earning more than professors, the M.D.’s are less likely to have child-care needs. That’s because male doctors are almost twice as likely to have spouses out of the labor force as are male academics (40 percent vs. 22 percent). In another sign of the impact of academic careers on parenthood, male professionals whose wives are physicians or lawyers are disproportionately likely to have had recent birth events, while male professionals whose wives are academics do not have any greater than average chance of new parenthood.

“Given the high rate at which academics marry other academics, it appears likely that the low fertility of female professors ... can account for the relative paucity of birth events among male faculty,” the report finds.

The study, “Alone in the Ivory Tower: How Birth Events Vary Among Fast-Track Professionals,” was presented at the meeting this spring of the Population Association of America. The authors are Nicholas Wolfinger, associate professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah; Mary Ann Mason, former graduate dean at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Mothers on the Fast Track; and Marc Goulden, director of data initiatives in academic affairs at Berkeley. Mason and Goulden are also members of the team that leads research work at the UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge, which promotes policies to help academics with family obligations.

While the population study compared academics to other professions, a committee of the American Anthropological Association has just released a report on the status of women in the field — featuring survey comparisons of male and female anthropologists. The report notes a number of differences between men and women in anthropology, and a greater satisfaction by men than women with the work environment. Men were more likely than women in a national survey of faculty members to feel that policies were supportive, while many women felt that they were burdened with a disproportionate share of administrative work in departments.

Key differences were found with regard to work/home balance: men in the field are more likely to be parents, but women are more likely to be more responsible for child care or other family obligations. For instance, of men who experienced a career interruption, 7.4 percent cited child care as the reason and 3.7 percent cited the experience of being a “trailing spouse,” one who moves when a partner is hired elsewhere. Of women who experienced career interruptions, 22.9 percent cited child care and 9.1 percent cited being a trailing spouse. And women were much more likely (52.9 percent to 5.6 percent) to anticipate a future career interruption due to child care responsibilities.

In looking at marital and parental status, men were more likely than women to be married and to have children. But given those gaps and the large gender gaps in career interruption due to childcare, one surprising figure in the survey is the percentage of men with children reporting that they are the primary caregiver — not as high a percentage as women with children, but high. (Of course, it is self-reported.)

Source




Britain: Disruptive pupils to be privatized

Private companies are to be given the go-ahead to take over the running of specialist units for teaching the country's most disruptive state school pupils. Ministers are considering allowing them to profit from the provision under a shake-up of the way specialist pupil referral units are run, outlined in a White Paper yesterday. The move is expected to pave the way for firms such as Group 4 Securicor and Serco, which are already highly involved in the public sector, to take over units. A spokesman for Group 4 Securicor said the firm would study the proposals and "assess whether there are opportunities to provide additional public services".

The proposal to allow the involvement of commercial companies alarmed Britain's biggest teachers' union, the National Union of Teachers, which said it was "a deeply worrying rubicon" for the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, to cross. In the past, firms running local authority services have been allowed to make profits, but not mainstream schools.

Christine Blower, the acting general secretary of the NUT, said it would lead to companies "making economies in provision for the most vulnerable people". She added: "The last thing pupil referral units need is to be outsourced to private companies. Such a move would only increase their sense of isolation from other local authority provision."

The White Paper published research that showed that 99 per cent of pupils taught in the units failed to reach the Government's benchmark of five top-grade GCSE passes. Nearly nine out of 10 of the 135,000 children taught in the units every year also fail to obtain five GCSE passes at any grade.

Under the proposals, ministers plan to invite competition for running pupil referral units, nicknamed "sin bins". They are anxious to encourage private companies and voluntary groups or charities - such as the Prince's Trust and Barnardo's to run the units. Independent schools with a record of offering boarding places for deprived children in danger of being taken into care - such as Rugby - would also be invited to apply as would sponsors of the Government's flagship academies.

Sir Alan Steer, the headteacher appointed by the Government to head an inquiry into school discipline, warned that the pupil referral units had become "the forgotten service". "Vulnerable children can be placed with others who are displaying serious criminal tendencies," he said in a letter to Mr Balls. Mr Balls said he wanted the units to offer more places to pupils at risk of expulsion - rather than those already excluded from school. "We can then help them to access the right support before the behaviour spirals out of control and reaches the point of exclusion," he said.

Source






States holding back schools, warns Australian Federal minister

Sounds hopeful but a bit hard to follow.

The federal Government has effectively put the states and territories on notice over the reporting of school and student performance, saying they are hampering efforts to raise standards. Education Minister Julia Gillard has also announced an overhaul of the funding model for private schools, which is understood to include the controversial guarantees that keep funding for about 60 per cent of non-government schools at inflated levels.

In a speech to the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, Ms Gillard implicitly criticised states such as NSW, Queensland and South Australia, which are opposed to publicly releasing national test results. "It does not serve the interests of Australian students to have schooling policies delivered through structures and reporting systems which operate in parallel but allow no meaningful comparison or exchange between them," she said. "While different jurisdictions and authorities treat the use of data as part of a competition between themselves, they are short-changing the students and families who rely on them for a high-quality education."

Ms Gillard said she was not interested in establishing a crude form of league tables ranking schools according to raw test results. "(But) I believe there is an overwhelming public interest in developing a more comprehensive, more reliable and more open picture of school and student performance," she said.

Ms Gillard said the National Data Centre, announced last week in the budget, would act as an independent agency to validate and report on education statistics and that she expected the states and territories to contribute to its running costs. She said the centre would examine the results of national tests as well as other sources of data measuring the effect on education, such as socioeconomic status and early development. "I want to promote a more sophisticated understanding of what influences educational success," she said.

In the speech on Wednesday night, Ms Gillard said she expected a government review of the funding model for private schools to conclude in 2011 and new arrangements to start from 2013 that provide funding according to student needs as determined by socioeconomic status. The Government guaranteed existing funding levels for non-government schools until 2012 to defuse the issue during the election campaign last year. The "hit list" of private schools to lose money drawn up by previous Labor leader Mark Latham is credited with being a major factor in the ALP losing the 2004 election.

Ms Gillard described the schools funding system as "one of the most complex, most opaque and most confusing in the developed world" and she called for an end to the debate pitting public against private schools. [Stopping Leftist attacks on private school would be a good place to start]

As a first step to improving transparency, Ms Gillard will release the new socioeconomic status scores for all non-government schools, which will determine the amount of funding each school receives from next year to 2012. [Class-war Leftism again]

Source