Bird Droppings February 8, 2012

Going to school and chasing a sunrise

 

It has been several years since I looked at public education simply as school. This morning I was heading into the high school totally devoid of students and most of staff since we have an intersession break of sorts when I got side tracked. I pulled out of one of my favorite stores the local QT and the red streak across the eastern sky caught my attention. Instead of heading to school I began to chase down a sunrise. I parked and got out my camera and over six minutes watched a world awaken. As I think back on my own awakening to what is going on in education today it has taken nearly nine years of graduate studies innumerable articles, essays, magazines, videos, and several thousands of books at least it feels that way to see I am not alone in my thinking.

After reading Joel Spring’s book, Political agendas for education, and most would have a first thought of why do we even have schools, since it appears they are simply to create and mold youth into whatever it is those in power deem feasible. His idea is that powers to be want consumers first and then employees willing to work at meaningless tasks, wages and benefits and not to question those in power. Recent arguments over minimum wages could show some of this thinking at work as politicians argue virtues of the minimum wage and children working. I was really caught off guard when one politician commented on children at schools cleaning toilets and doing janitorial work to save money for schools. His concept was to have kids work for free and get rid of janitors. Back to my reading, Spring’s book is not quite to that extreme; the book raises questions about agendas of various groups, political entities and some very powerful people within our nation.

The shift to high stakes testing and accountability based on that testing leading to teaching to the tests rather than the actual needs of the children involved is where we have come to in this mess. I am curious with all the push for charter schools, vouchers, religious education why they are exempt from same standards as public education is tied too. We are literally forced into teaching specific curriculum, with that approved researched based curriculum has become the catch word. The big question always in research is who is backing the research. I used a reading program where all the research was done by the company producing the books and program and it was not a very reliable study yet according to Federal standards it is a research based study.

One of the segments used in the study which applied to my students was a group of fourteen emotionally and behaviorally disturbed middle school students with average to above average IQ’s and one to two years behind in reading and how successful the program was with this demographic group. They had a one hundred percent improvement to where all were on grade level. In years past I was told this study applied to a group of students I was working with who were eighteen to nineteen years of age and IQ’s less than seventy five and were ten to twelve years behind in reading level. I did question the data and program and actually called the publishing company to verify what type of student study group demographics the research was done on. My then department chairperson was angry about my research calling it unnecessary. So where do we go as teachers, educators and students?

 

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.” Bill Beattie

 

Each day I get up read, go to school and sit down to write. I hope I am teaching my students how to think. Hopefully I am teaching also a desire to learn and to question.

 

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” Sydney J. Harris

 

I was introduced to Harris’s columns nearly eleven years ago by a fellow teacher and refer to him often in my writing. Each time I find a thought I am intrigued anew. In life this is what education should be about creating windows in people’s lives.

 

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” Albert Einstein

 

Far too often we preach content especially now in our teaching to the test, when it is context that is the powerful glue that could hold it all together. Context is the how does this apply in real life, how is it relevant to me. All through the work of John Dewey is context and experience the cement of learning from his point of view. However if you talk to teachers very few will say experience is not the best teacher and counter there is just not enough time.

I have looked at reports from observers where a teacher ties geometry into the real world and how much more powerful is that lesson when we can see where and when and how it actually has meaning. It is about giving relevance.

 

“The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

For so many years we have said this yet education is one of those things so often put aside when budgets comes up in state and federal spending. In our own state our educational budget has been slashed every year. We are below the budget of 2006 and teachers continually are played with politically with promises of this year a four percent pay raise and then again we get furlough days and no increase. Recently a promised ten percent bonus given a number of years back to Georgia teachers for achieving National Teacher Certification was revoked and taken away. Nearly two thousand teachers in the state had spent their own money taking courses and their own time to build their portfolios for certification and it was gone in one budgetary move.

 

“It’ll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.” Dr. Ronald D. Fuchs

 

Amazing how we have spent hundreds of billions on the military, terrorists, wars, new embassy buildings in war zones and want more money for these pet industrial/military projects and then take away from education which could prevent the wars. Our military spending is significantly higher than what we spend on education.

 

“An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.” Author Unknown

 

Semantics so often is the dividing line and as I read this simple thought about making a living versus making a life I am made aware in a deeper way of how conflicted our system is. We so often put all into economic means a dollar value yet life is so much more than how much do you make.

 

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Derek Bok

 

Daily I will comment “swearing shows ignorance and currently you are pretty ignorant” as kids utter language of inappropriate content and even context. Yet this is what they hear at home and where many learn the words and meanings. It is these same parents that pay taxes and complain about the cost of education.

 

“Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” G.M. Trevelyan

 

I put my thoughts on several blogs, websites and in a daily email which now numbers over nine thousand potential readers. As I read comments on student’s sites one that so often bothers me is when they answer the question of what books do you read and many answer, none. When I question this I get back, read who reads when you have the internet and text messaging. How scary can it be when our children are not reading since it is far too easy to get on line or on the cell phone and pull up twitter, MySpace, Facebook or yahoo news? Perhaps even sadder is that much of this communication is in short hand. As I looked for apps for my ipad2 there is even a program that reads to you from written word although it is being tested in court as a copyright infringement on audio-books.

 

“Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education.  Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization.  We must make our choice; we cannot have both.” Abraham Flexner

 

 When the industrial/military/oil complex has a means of generating revenue from education, money will be spent there. About two years back a family friend of George W. Bush inTexas, actually a cousin raised nearly a hundred million in seed money from oil and mining interests for a computer module software company for schools. Interestingly enough it fits into federal legislation, NCLB as an alternative form of education. We pay companies to look for oil to develop new missiles and one of my favorites recently is we have stock piled millions of rounds of VX poisonous gas around the world. There were thirteen million rounds on an island in the pacific, was several million in the northwest, and was over nine million in Anniston Al. and now we are paying billions to clean up since containers are corroding and leaking VX gas. Just for the record that is the stuff movies have been made about and what we didn’t find inIraq. Although I read a report somewhere we found about three pints of nerve gas in Iraq in ten years. We had hundreds of millions of rounds produced illegally and stored, why?

 

“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” Edward Everett

 

Would it not be great if we could prove this?

 

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.  What you gain at one end you lose at the other.  It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail.  It won’t fatten the dog.” Mark Twain

 

The great humorist and author over a hundred years ago saw what was needed and how it affects society I find that amazing.

 

“Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?” Erich Fromm

 

Wise man and philosopher states that school should not be just for kids but an ongoing ever present learning effort and what a world could be built if we would educate truly educate all people.

 

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” Malcolm S. Forbes

 

I recall a button my father used in his safety campaigns in the steel mills ofPennsylvaniaback in the day, it read simply, “IF ONLY”. That was all that was on the button, and it represented, if only we could, if only I would, if only has so many applications.

 

“What does education often do?  It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.” Henry David Thoreau

 

I was never the fan of Thoreau and Emerson back in my own high school days perhaps I never tried to really read into their thoughts. This one line from Thoreau has significance for me. Education should be not forcing the content but allowing that content to be put into the context.

 

“Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use?  It’s nice to be number one, but we can fix that.  All we need to do is start the war on education.  If it’s anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we’ll all be ‘hooked on phonics’.” Leighann Lord

 

A bit long winded today but a good thought to end on as I think so many law makers are trying to destroy public education in theUS. What if we truly did apply ourselves, what if? So please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts till that day when no person is in harm’s way. As I watched a brilliant sunrise this morning I could not help but give thanks.

namaste

bird