Dumbing down the election
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winner and senior fellow at the Nation Institute, argues that our political differences aren’t so much red and blue, conservative and liberal, or Republican and Democrat. Instead, they’re the difference between the educated and the illiterate. Those with the capacity to analyze and argue versus those influenced by propaganda:
There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.
And our candidates debate at a 7th to 9th grade vocabulary level, compared to the 11th and 12th grade levels of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Buy a book for your kids, for your siblings, for your friends. Buy one through the Amazon link here, and I’ll buy more books for kids at LHS.
Column of the Day: Taking Obama to School
Unfortunately, the economy, the war in Iraq, and a few other things are higher on President-elect Obama’s list than education. But if we want to compete in this global economy (even as it tanks), we must invest in human capital. And the best place to do it is in our public schools. Nicholas Kristof examines the issue today, and mentions these possible improvements:
A study by the Hamilton Project, a public policy group at the Brookings Institution, outlines several steps to boost weak schools: end rigid requirements for teacher certification that impede hiring, make tenure more difficult to get so that ineffective teachers can be weeded out after three years on the job and award hefty bonuses to good teachers willing to teach in low-income areas. If we want outstanding, inspiring teachers in difficult classrooms, we’re going to have to pay much more — and it would be a bargain.
$125,000/year to teach at-risk students? Sign me up!
An idea in education reform that just might work.
A heartbeat away? "Say it ain’t so, Joe!"
I tried, I really tried to give her a chance. Until this:
Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.
And Joe Biden didn’t impress me with his bit on yesterday’s oxymoron, clean coal:
Oh, on clean coal. My record, just take a look at the record. My record for 25 years has supported clean coal technology. A comment made in a rope line was taken out of context. I was talking about exporting that technology to China so when they burn their dirty coal, it won’t be as dirty, it will be clean.
Education: Attention Must Be Paid
While the candidates debate who will really bring change (answer: either of them, duh), one issue that needs more time in the public eye is education. From EdWeek’s blog Bridging Differences, some suggestions for the next president. Key quote:
The habits of work and mind that schools instill can carry over, but teachers and schools should not be expected to wash away the effects of health care, nutrition, housing, poverty, abuse, street crime, and the extraordinarily high percentage of our young living in jail. In all these categories we out-perform every single other industrialized nation, and by such a long shot.
A Poem for the First Day of School
September, The First Day Of School – by Howard Nemerov
I
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible
Bow down before it, as in Joseph’s dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.
II
A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare’s Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler’s Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,
The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form
Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.
Back to School
And The Onion, as usual, captures the sentiment of the K-12 set.
Back to School Blogging
While the kids enjoy their final days of freedom, teachers are getting classrooms ready for another school year. Here’s a few articles that caught my attention:
- Susan Hobart conveys how No Child Left Behind takes the joy out of our profession (Amen, sister!)
- Louise Parker ponders how to make Shakespeare relevant for boys
- Jan Freeman explores the least-sexy piece of punctuation, the semicolon
ACT Scores Drop – No Big Deal, Really
Before anyone begins the “our public schools are failing our kids” routine, let’s keep one thing in mind about the overall drop in ACT scores: three states, including Michigan, made the test mandatory for all of their students. When you test all students instead of just those who intend to go to college, you’re more likely to see a drop in overall scores.
It’s Back to School Time!
Well, that’s what the Meijer and Target inserts tell me. As we enjoy our last month of summer vacation, I thought it appropriate to put school – especially testing in schools – in perspective. Fortunately for you, dear reader, I found this from Regina Brett and Tom Chapin’s satiric ditty “It’s Not On The Test”. (Tom’s brother, the late Harry Chapin, wrote “Flowers Are Red” – another one that fits this discussion.)
No Child Left Behind? Nah. No Child Gets Ahead. Or No Teacher Left Standing.
