How Long Can A Democracy Survive Dishonesty?

Moving from educational issues to the world of political issues….

 We live in a political world where the belief is that if you tell citizens something often enough, citizens will come to believe what they have been told is the truth. We were told that tobacco doesn’t harm our health.  The John Kerry Swift Boaters come to mind as do the “birthers” who believe that President Obama was not born in the United States and should not be President. 

What is troubling about this is that it seems that the “facts” or “truth” about something makes little or no difference regarding what some people choose believe.  Obama’s birth certificate won’t necessarily change a “birther’s” view of reality. What is it that makes people hold onto their beliefs, no matter what?  

Speaking untruths or saying anything they want to say, has been justified by many as simply exercising their First Amendment Right to free speech.  For this group, free speech trumps factually verifiable and responsible speech.  

Things have gone so far down this road that we, now, have to rely on “fact checking” services to know if what is being said about a candidate, issue or proposition is accurate.  In fact, we are being warned “voters beware.”  In effect, we are being treated as consumers and not as citizens.

Is this dishonesty something that our country can withstand? And, at what cost?  Do the ends really justify the means?  When George W. Bush told us that we invaded Iraq because they were a threat to our security due to having weapons of mass destruction, the American people believed what they were being told and supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq.  Then we were told that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was not a threat to the United States. A choking sense of betrayal was felt by many.  What made it even more upsetting was the way the administration tried to justify their actions by saying "but we got Saddam Hussein,” as if that justified their misleading the American people.

 In truth, if we cannot believe what we are being told by those who represent us, our trust and confidence in our leaders is destroyed.  Where does such a sense of betrayal leave us?

Our Constitution was written to create a secure structure within which citizens are protected from those who would take away their rights, liberty and jeopardize their welfare.  Within the structure of our Constitution, government is meant to protect us from those who would cause us harm.  Our elected leaders swear to uphold this Constitution and its pledge to the American citizen, so help them God.

 We have those who believe government restrictions deprive citizens from reaching their potentials in life.  Others feel that business regulations are “un-American.” Even after 2008, there are those who insist that we should “let the market correct itself.” The truth is that there are those like Bernard Madoff and before him Charles Keating who only cared about themselves.  Without regulations we have had the Savings and Loan, Tyco, World Com, Enron and sub-prime disasters. 

People’s lives were devastated by these attempts to take advantage of the unprotected.  Jobs, investments, retirement programs and saving were wrenched away from the unsuspecting victims of these deliberate fraudulent acts.  So the lesson is that we do need regulations to safeguard citizens.

 

In time dishonesty rots the very foundation of trust that the Constitution was intended to instill in citizens. If we cannot trust our institutions and our leaders, what are we left to believe or do? To whom are we to turn to find an alternative to the injustices that have been experienced? Might today’s Wall Street protests be a beginning in the process of addressing the dishonesty and injustices that have been experienced by a betrayed Main street?

Might our present economic uncertainty, in part, be due to our distrust in those very institutions that caused our economic disaster in the first place? As the pithy Mollie Ivins might have said, who wants to trust someone who already has screwed us once?

Thanks for checking in.

Namaste,

Jim Farwell

The Need For Teaching Values in Public Schools

Another education fad in today's world is to separate the issues that the child faces in life with the family and on the streets, from what goes on in the classroom. The rationalization for this is that the teacher and school have little or no impact on what is going on in the child's life outside of school. What teachers can have an impact on is what takes place in the classroom around the teaching of the basics and course content.

There are even those individuals who claim that schools should not be teaching values and that values education should only be done in the home. Not only is this inconsistent with Thomas Jefferson's view that schools are the place where the values of responsible citizenship are taught, it begs the question, in the absence of family, where are our children suppose to develop values? Are they to learn them from the streets?

If 70% of inner city children are born to an unmarried woman who is illiterate, unemployable and a child herself, where will these newborns receive their values education? Might not a family living class with a sex education component to its curriculum provide some children with an alternative to an education based on street values regarding sex, marriage and parenting practices?

Many of our children come from living situations where there is a single parent who is working two or more jobs to provide for basic needs; food, clothing, a place to sleep, heat, lights, medical and dental care.

Others come from living situations where parent figures are strung out on drugs, are incarcerated or have simply left the scene all together. If it weren't for our public schools where would children from such life experiences receive stability in life? In the absence of stable family life, public schools are the next available support system to provide our children with safety, food, acknowledgement, support, values and yes, love and hope.

For children from such situations to learn to sit still, to raise their hands to get attention and to trust that their needs will be met often by a stranger, is truly asking a child to take a huge leap of faith. And yet, if there is going to be any semblance of classroom order and safety, this one teacher, along with an instructional assistent, if one exists, are going to have to address all of these issues and more.

Often a classroom teacher is confronted with the reality that the child's family will instructd the child in one way to handle conflicts, while the school system requires another means of handling a conflict situation. I have known family members who will tell the child that if so and so "gets in their face," to get into his or her face. If someone hits you, you had better hit them back.

There is a "street logic" to this counsel. If, on the street, a child did not stand up to someone who was "dissing" (disrespecting them), their lack of retaliation will be considered a sign of weakness and they will be considered an easy mark for repeated confrontations and bullying. Those who do not stand their ground may receive abuse as a constant diet from those with whom he or she would come in contact. In this context, to get back into "someone's face" is a matter of basic survival.

On the other hand, the school cannot tolerate such an approach to "conflict resolution. If this street mentality were to rule the day in a classroom, there would be no semblance of order at all. In truth, in order for the classroom to be a safe place for children to be able to learn, the opposite of this street mentality must be the rule and not the exception.

The difficulty with this different approach to conflict resolution is that it requires the ability for the child to verbalize needs and feelings. For many of these children, their facility with understanding and speaking classroom or "Standard English" is limited. In addition for many of these children to verbalize needs and feelings, in essence their expressing what makes them feel vulnerable is totally foreign to their means of daily survival. Often it takes years of consistent, supportive work within the classroom for these children to be able to "learn" to verbalize their needs, feelings, and wants. Before such a learning process takes place, the child is caught between two worlds, the world of surviving on the street and the world of conforming to the expectations of the classroom.

In order to create a nurturing, safe, supportive and effective learning environment,we need to be conscious of the real life issues that our children and those who work with our children are dealing with on a daily basis. In order to meet the needs and provide for the safety and welfare of our students, we cannot be held prisoner by those who are prejudiced or ignorant about what public schools' address to protect and support our children's development of social and learning skills. And yet, we still have those in politics and those who have a hand in creating educational policies who maintain that the public school is no place to teach values. What do you think?

Thank you for stopping by.

Namaste,

Jim Farwell

What Would Real Public School Reform Look Like?

Public School reform seems to boil down to closing schools, sending students to higher-achieving schools; converting a “failing” school to a charter school; replacing the principal, reforming instruction and increasing learning time; and giving teachers monetary incentives to do better.  Such “reform,” really restructuring, seems as nondescript and ineffective as placing a band aid on a melanoma. So, the question that needs to be asked is what would real public school reform look like?

As a society, we the “village that it takes to raise a child,” need to make a conscious commitment to our children receiving a free and quality public education. Without such a commitment and education, our children will not be able to differentiate between sound bites, propaganda, demagogy and the facts of a situation or position. Without an education, our very governance by informed consent is in jeopardy, not to mention preparing future generations for parenthood, employment and creative efforts for the betterment of all.

We need to determine how much it actually costs to educate a child for a year of schooling, including programs that the child requires in order to learn to their potential.

We need to create a system of funding for this education that is not compromised by the ebbs and flows of the economy or by political whims.  This would mean that we create a payment system where all members of the “village” share equally in the effort to have our children receive a public education.  A 1% sales tax on all nonessential goods and services is one example of such an approach.

We need to have the Federal Government pay for any program that it mandates that the states follow.  This includes the money to develop, implement and maintain such a program.

We need a system of oversight to ensure that revenues for education are received and properly allocated for what they are intended.  This can be done through an independent agency that is created for this purpose.

We need to view our children as the unique and special people that they are.  Our schools need to become the “neighborhoods,” to use Fred Rogers’ term, that create the means for each child’s uniqueness and potential to be realized.

One qualification for anyone who works in schools is a love and respect for children.  If someone lacks in these two areas, they should seek employment elsewhere.

We need to approach each child as a whole person, as someone who has physical, emotional, social, intellectual, artistic and spiritual needs.  Our children are more than just brains and candidates for the job market. 

We need to realize that not all children are developmentally ready for learning basic skills at the same time, learn in the same way, or show what they have learned by using only one means for measuring learning success.

We need to recommit ourselves to the project Head Start concept of exposing children, to experiences that will assist and prepare a youngster for beginning kindergarten. This is especially necessary in poverty communities where illiteracy rates are high and where children come from fractured families and where community violence is a way of life.

We need to do away with a graded K-3.  Instead we need to provide for an ungraded learning environment during these 4 critical years of discovery and development of basic skills. We need to focus on meeting the needs of each child so that at the end of this time, all children are ready to go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” and have become proficient is all areas of basic skill development.

Each child in the primary and elementary grades requires a needs assessment at the beginning of the school year.  Each child needs to be provided with an individualized learning program.  This program is closely monitored and, at years end, evaluated to determine how well the teacher and child did in meeting the goals and objectives that were initially established. This can be part of the teacher’s evaluation process.

Each school site reflects the community within which it is placed.  Each site needs to perform a needs assessment to determine how best to provide for the needs of their students. Part of this assessment will determine the impact that poverty, abuse, gangs, violence, family transience, and lack of parent support have on children’s learning experience.

We need to focus on the development of the neighborhood school as essential child and family support centers within a community.

We need to guarantee that each school site is a safe learning environment for every child who is placed in our care.  All of the ills of society cross the thresholds of our public schools each and every day.  The stress of daily life that our children face is so daunting that vast numbers of our children live with post traumatic like stress symptoms.  Our schools need to be places where our kids can come and feel safe from the stressors that surround them outside of school.  It has been shown that stress significantly inhibits a child’s ability to learn. This is also true for kids who come to school with empty tummies. 

Instead of charter schools, neighborhood schools need to become the learning laboratories that provide modeling for best educational practice.  Charter school should not become a substitute for our neighborhood schools.  In some ways, charter schools are a means of avoiding the issues that need to be addressed to make public schools successful and “all that they can be.”

All children need to be able to understand, speak, read and write Class Room English to ensure equal opportunities for employment and to participate as informed citizens.

We need to reintroduce the teaching of civics in middle and high school along with the implementation of a constitution test that needs to be passed in order to graduate from high school.

We need to ensure that all children are computer proficient and internet savey.  

We need to introduce a life skills curriculum which developes the awareness that we all have needs and feelings, that we all need to feel safe and acknowledged, where we learn to communicate nonviolently, to listen and to be present with our classmates and learn the process of problem solving where each persons needs and feelings are respected and where a healthy outcome to a conflict is achieved.  A program that extends from kindergarten through high school and discusses and relates to life issuess throughout the emerging childs life experience.

We need to have those who are professionals in curriculum, pedagogy, school psychology; speech and language pathology, public health, educational finance, administration and educational research determine educational policy, instead of think tanks, special interest groups and politicians.  Professional educators need to be allowed to do what they know works for children.

Within each district we need to create a community consensus building approach to problem solving that embraces input from all sectors of the school community prior to the creation and implementation of any educational policy.

There needs to be a conscious process of thinking through the consequences of any educational policy before it is implemented.

Our philosophy of education needs to be predicated on what we know works and not on the next educational funding fad.

Our educational training programs need to be based on a professional school model for those who teach primary grades. This approach requires three years of “apprenticeship” with master teachers, as a part of a five year credentialing program.

Our professional school model needs to focus in on current research in teaching pedagogy and classroom management so that graduates are presented with the most recent information available to them regarding current thinking in education. They also need to provide them with a thorough grounding in educational history so that they can learn from the successes and failures of the past.

Training programs need to weed out those credential candidates who are emotionally, temperamentally or intellectually not suited to work with children.

District administrators need to exercise their responsibility in evaluating professional staff.  A probationary teacher is evaluated each of their probationary years.  If any issue presents itself during these beginning years, steps need to be taken to assist the teacher to improve.  If they are unable or unwilling to improve, they need to be terminated

We need to prioritize in-service training.  A minimum of 50 hours in-servicing per area of focus per year is required. This is a requirement for all personnel; classroom, support services, clerical and school service workers.  A critical area of focus is to address current best practices in all staffing areas.

New hire and probationary classroom and support services staff need hands on mentoring for their first two years on the job. 

We need to view the role of unions as a necessary check and balance against abuses of staff members, including the protection of their “due process” rights.

We need to stop the process of scapegoating and disparaging members of the educational community. Negativity breeds negativity and creates the destructive impact of unnecessary stress on those who work with children.  Acknowledgement and support breeds the development of team work and the heightened potential for success.

What true reform requires of us, the adults of our village is a consciousness about our ignorance, prejudices and fears so that we can move beyond them to genuinely provide for the needs and welfare of those who are entrusted into our care.  This is the very least that we owe our children.

Thanks for stopping by,

Namaste,

Jim Farwell

How to Remove Ignorance from Education Policy

How did California go from the most envied of public school systems in the country to its present state of disrepair? What has happened in the past 40 years to compromise our children’s public education?

There are three reasons for today’s public school difficulties.  First, we have had special interest groups and politicians creating poorly conceived school policy.  Secondly, trained, credentialed and experienced professional educators were not brought into these policy discussions.  Third, there was no consideration of the consequences of these policies prior to their implementation.

Three examples of these failed policies from the past serve to illustrate the point. Relevant Education believed that, instead of following a prescribed college preparatory curriculum, high school students needed to be presented with courses that were of interest to them. The result?  Students were not prepared for college.

 The Whole Language approach to reading removed the teaching of phonological awareness from reading along with word attack skills. The result? Generations of students did not learn how to read or write.

And finally, the decision was made to present  more complicated materials to children at an earlier age.  The result?  Large number of boys became frustrated with language oriented tasks and dropped out of school.  All of these policies failed, all dismantled curricula that had been effective and all turned teacher training on it’s head.   

Today, we have similar ignorance reflected in policy decisions. High stakes testing equates teaching children how to take multiple choice tests with learning the curriculum that the test is suppose to evaluate. It telescopes what is presented to children because other courses do not lend themselves to multiple choice tests.  It has been demonstrated, often times, that when a child is given a test, other than the one that s/he has been prepped to take, s/he does poorly.  So, in effect, the child is not learning the material that the test is suppose to be measuring.

Then we have the notion that if we take these misleading tests scores and couple them with certain statistical techniques, we can evaluate how well a teacher is doing.  This can be done without an evaluator even going into the teacher’s class. No such statistical technique exists.  So, here we are, laying a flawed foundation for evaluating future generations of teachers.

Then, we have corporate management principles being implemented into public schools.  This approach suggests that the more an administrative trainee knows about education, the more hampered they will be in making sound administrative decisions, that is, to see the “broader picture.”  Also, these folks assert, that untrained “teachers” do as well as credentialed, trained and experienced teachers.  Do we really want to trust our children to these same folks whose philosophy of management resulted in the 2008 financial disaster?

Finally, we have the present love affair with charter schools. Charter schools have proven to be no more effective than public schools. Present policy is to close down an underachieving school and hope that some charter school, somewhere will provide a better program than the school it is replacing.  This seems more like a game of craps, than a well thought out education policy.  Also, did it ever occur to someone to sit down and evaluate what it was about a school that was not achieving to determine what needed to be done to make that school more effective?

So what to do?  Don’t allow special interests groups and politicians to make education policy. Create communities of trained, credentialed and experienced  professional educators to be an integral part of any educational policy decision that is considered.  And, for god's sake, think through the consequences of any policy decision before it is implemented. We cannot afford to derail  the educations of future generations of children who have been entrusted into our care.

Thanks for stopping by,

Namaste,

Jim Farwell

Another View of Michelle Rhee's Impact on Public Education

Michelle Rhee appears to have become the poster child for public education's new "top down," business oriented "restructuring" fad.  What does Rhee represent? To begin with she taught school for 3 years. She left the classroom and spent 10 years as a recruiter for teachers.  How does someone with her background qualify to be the leader of a 46,000 student school district in Washington D.C.?  In this regard, Rhee represents the prevailing corporate view that training and experience in education isn't necessary or important for someone to go into school administration or the classroom.

Rhee seems to operate from a mind set that she holds onto regardless of what scientific or educational experts might say. "Teachers are the reason why children are not learning in classrooms" and "the unions are responsible for keeping poor teachers on the payroll."  This is her opinion, her belief and her mantra.  It is also the kind of scapegoating that creates an atmosphere of negativity and polarization between herself and those with whom she works.

What is equally disturbing is that she doesn't seem to know what she doesn't know.  She has made several public statements that reveal her ignorance about children in particular and education in general.  To paraphrase her, she has said on national television that work related stress "is good for people to experience."  She went on to say that the idea that a child's background effects their school experience is "crap." And, finally, she has responded that "if the test evaluates the curriculum, what is wrong with teaching children how to take the tests?"

Her assertion that work related stress is good for people, begs the staggering amounts of scientific evidence that suggest just the opposite.  People who work under stress are less effective, less productive and less able to adapt to the situation in which they find themselves.  Not only that, negative job stress litterly destroys the body of those who live with it as a daily companion.

The notion that a child's background has no impact on their ability to learn in school is beyond comprehension.  This does not mean that because of a child's background, we make excuses for their lack of achievement and essentially write them off.  What is does mean is that we need to appreciate what a child brings with them to school from their world of family and neighborhood so that we can begin to understand  and meet  their needs.

Many of our inner city children who are surviving in poverty are the products of fractured and dysfunctional families. They are often living in a world filled with empty bellies, drugs, violence, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

Many of these (our) children have poor health care, are never read to, hear a language other than what they hear in the classroom and are two years behind their more affluent counterparts by the they are ready to begin kindergarten.

Often these children sit on the floor at night so that the bullets that go through wall won't hit them.  Many of these youngsters attend school suffering from post traumatic stress like symptoms.  These same children come to school where, many times,  teachers with no training are suppose to teach them how to understand "classroom English," how to learn to read and how to go from "getting in your face" surviving on the streets to learning a whole new way of talking through conflicts and arriving at a verbal resolution to differences within the classroom.

Rhee's assertion that such a background has little or no impact on a child's learning at school indicates that she has become part of an educational movement that is genuinely ignorant  about what is necessary for real learning and real educational reform to take place.

And then, she asserts that "if the test evaluates the curriculum, what is wrong with teaching children how to take the tests?"  The problem with this rationalization is that tests define what can be evaluated and, thus, what can be taught. Today's "high stakes testing" fad is focused on training kids to take multiple choice tests on "skill sets" in reading and math.

In order for the child to be prepared to take a specific test, other areas of study are deemphasized.  What this means is that, rather than the focus being on a child receiving a well rounded and comprehensive education, they are being telescoped into a narrow area of curriculum and evaluated on their ability to learn how to pass a tested on those specific skill sets.

Rhee's approach to children's learning fails to appreciate that not all children are developmentally ready for learning basic skills at the same time, learn in the same way, or show what they have learned by using only one means for measuring learning success.

In addition, what is alarming about this process is the lack of transferability of what students are suppose to have learned, when given a test other than the one they have prepared to take.  This means that many children are only learning how to take a specific test and not learning the material that the test is suppose to be measuring.

Michelle Rhee also believes that it is not necessary to develop a community focused approach to working with teachers, support personnel and parents.  Her attitude has been that she only has to focus on gaining results and the results would validate her methods of achieving them.  The fire storm of push back against her methods were considered to be a source of annoyance and little more.

Top down, authoritarian management, of which she is a proponent, has never been successful in education. If we were to look at any successful K-12 educational program, the key to success is having people feel that they are an important and valued part of the creation of a problem solving process.  In successful school programs, we will find a community building focus in their approach to solving the problems and meeting the needs of those children whose lives have been intrusted into their care.

What Rhee failed to realize is that her agenda driven way of relating to those on whom she was ultimately dependant to achieve success was counter productive and a pathway to failure. When the Mayor of D.C. was voted out of office in 2010, her support system evaporated.  Her approach to restructuring schools alienated her from those with whom she worked and the parent community within the D.C. School system. And at what cost?  How many lives were treated as merely collateral damage in her quest to achieve her goals?

In the wake of her 31/2 year reign, what was gained?  Did her children benefit from her agenda?  Was the degree of improvement worth all of the turmoil that was characteristic of her style of top down leadership?  What might of happened if, instead of scapegoating teachers, she had worked with and supported professional and support staff in meeting the needs  of D.C. students?  She did not appear to have the awareness, experience or interpersonal skills to do other than what she did. And who suffered from these limitations?  In time, the children who endured the experience will let us know.

Thanks for stopping by.

Namaste,

Jim Farwell