SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Survey Question on bullying

SQE’s study of the demographic characteristics of Ontario families who choose private schools showed that the top reason for choosing private schools common to parents at both academically-defined and religiously-defined schools was safety.  Bullying is often the reason why parents move their children to other public schools or into private schools.  The next survey question asks about your personal experience with bullying either with your own child or grandchild, or friend’s child,  for instance.   There is an opportunity to leave your comments as well by clicking on View Results.  Results will be posted in the next newsletter. 

Last term’s survey question asked readers “Do you support school vouchers?”  79% said YES and 21% said NO

Why The Unwillingness To Debate Global Warming?

As a counterpoint to the horrors of global warming as presented in our schools, I suggest you read this letter from Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and many other important offices. Among other things, Dr. Lewis writes: “Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud that I have seen in my long life.”

Dr. Lewis is resigning from the American Physical Society because the APS refuses to sanction an open discussion on the scientific underpinnings of global warming science, alleging that the APS is motivated to behave in this unscientific way by the money flood to scientists who support the global warming theories. If the verdict on global warming is so cut and dried, why is the APS going to such lengths to evade its constitutional obligation to set up a Topical Group on Climate Science?

This is an important letter. As of this posting, there are 2494 comments on this site alone, and it is being discussed all over the Internet.

The Loss of Their Faculties

A recent editorial (Cracks in the Ivory Tower? Views of Education Professors Circa 2010) in “The Education Gadfly” (you have to scroll down a bit) points out that a new book on teaching techniques has been on Amazon’s top-100 list for most of the time since it was published earlier this year. So why would such a boring-sounding book on teaching techniques be popular? We thought you’d never ask!

The editorial goes on to explain that most education professors cling to their romantic/progressivist notions and disdain to (or are unable to) actually teach prospective teachers how to teach. The editorial cites a recent survey of American education professors, finding that:

• Only 24% believe it “absolutely essential” to produce “teachers who understand how to work with the state’s standards, tests and accountability systems”
• Just 37% say it is “absolutely essential” to focus on developing “teachers who maintain discipline and order in the classroom”
• Fewer than two in five consider it “absolutely essential” to “create teachers who are trained to address the challenges of high-needs students in urban districts”

It is probably safe to say that a similar survey of Canadian education professors would obtain similar results. It’s no wonder so many new teachers flee the classroom after one or two years! They’re bound to have a rough time unless they quickly realize that almost everything they were taught in teachers’ college was wrong and figure out on their own how to keep order and teach their students the curriculum.

90 Percent Perspiration

At the bottom of this post is a brief video about an important book, The Talent Code, that explains how and why you can become expert at anything you desire - from basketball to piano playing to flying an airplane. As the book’s subtitle says, “Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how.” One of the ways the author gets at the basis of so-called genius is to take a close look at clusters of “genius” production, for example Athens from 440 BC to 380 BC or the soccer fields of present-day Sao Pãolo, Brazil. Here’s an excerpt (pp 64-66) from the book that discusses the artistic flowering in Florence, Italy, a very small and obscure city during the period 1440 to 1490.

“As it turns out, Florence was an epicenter for the rise of a powerful social invention called craft guilds. Guilds (the word means ‘gold’) were associations of weavers, painters, goldsmiths, and hte like who organized themselves to regulate competition and control quality. Guilds worked like employee-owned corporations. They had management, dues, and tight policies dictating who coud work in the craft. what they did best, however, was grow talent. Guilds were built on the apprenticeship system, in which boys around seven years of age were sent to live with masters for fixed terms of five to ten years.

“An apprentice worked directly under the tutelage and supervision of the master, who frequently assumed rights as the child’s legal guardian. Apprentices learned the craft from the bottom up, not through lecture or theory but through action: mixing paint, preparing canvases, sharpening chisels. they cooperated and competed within a hierarchy, rising after some yaers to the status of journeyman and eventually, if they were skilled enough, master. They system created a chain of mentoring: da Vinci studied under Verrocchio, Verrocchio studied under Donatello, Donatello studied under Ghiberti; Michelangelo studied under Ghirlandaio, Ghirlandaio studied under Baldovinetti, and so on, all of them frequently visiting one another’s studios in a cooperative-competitive arrangement that today would be called social networking.

“In short, apprentices spent thousands of hours solving problems, trying and failing and trying agin, within the confines of a world built on the systematic production of excellence. Their life was roughly akin to that of a twelve-year-old intern who spends a decade under the direct supervision of Steven Spielberg, paining sets, sketching storyboards, setting cameras. The notion that such a kid might one day become a great film director would hardly be a surprise: it would be closer to unavoidable (see Ron Howard).

“Consider Michelangelo. From ages six to ten he lived with a stonecutter and his family, learning how to handle a hammer and chisel before he could read and write. After a brief, unhappy attempt at schooling, he apprenticed to the great Ghirlandaio. He worked on blockbuster commissions, sketching, copying, and preparing frescoes in one of Florence’s largest churches. He was then taught by master sculptor Bertoldo and tutored by other luminaries at the home of Lorenzo de’ Medici, where Michelangelo lived under he was seventeen. He was a promising but little-known artist until he produced the Pietà at age twenty-four. People called the Pietà pure genius, but its creator begged to differ. ‘If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery,’ Michelangelo later said, ‘it would not seem so wonderful at all.’

“The apprenticeship system, with its long period of study, early acquaintance with varied materials, copying, and collaborative work, somehow allowed boys who were probably quite ordinary in every respect to be turned into men possessing a high degree of artistic skills,’ wrote Bruce Cole in The Renaissance Artist at Work.’ Art - so the Renaissance believed - could be taught by a series of progressive steps from grinding colors, to making copies, to work on the master’s design, to inventing one’s own paintings or sculptures.’

“We tend to think of the great Renaissance artists as a homogeneous group, but the truth is that they were like any other randomly selected group of people. They came from rich and poor families alike; they had different personalities, different teachers, different motivations. But they had one thing in common; they all spent thousands of hours inside a deep-practice hothouse, firing and optimizing circuits, correcting errors, competing, and improving skills. They each took part in the greatest work of art anyone can construct: the architecture of their own talent.” 

Zero Tolerance for Tolerance

According to this story from across the pond, England’s Race Relations Act of 2000 has so far led to accusations of racism against more than a quarter of a million children. The requirement for teachers to report every incident of racism has resulted in heightened awareness of everyone’s race and ethnicity. 

When teachers dwell on things such as skin colour and other racial characteristics, their students naturally assume that such differences are important and significant. An emphasis on differences is, it seems, counter-productive when it comes to the goal of fostering non-racist attitudes. Much better simply to treat everyone as a respected individual. That way, children have no reason to consider a difference in skin colour to be any more important than a difference in eye colour.

Waiting for Superman Virtual Town Hall Tonight

The producers and director of Waiting for Superman are holding a Virtual Town Hall tonight.  Anyone can participate by clicking on this link. 

Invite You to a
VIRTUAL TOWN HALL
on
Public Education in America

Join

Arianna Huffington, Co-founder and Editor in Chief, Huffington Post

Joel Klein, Chancellor, NYC Schools

Davis Guggenheim, Director, WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”

Lesley Chilcott, Producer, WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”

in a conversation with online participants across the country as they discuss the film and the topic that has America talking. Submit your questions to the panel and identify your vantage point - teacher, parent, concerned citizen.

Friday, October 8
7:00 pm Eastern Time (4:00 pm Pacific)

Canadian Note: The film is opening in Montreal tonight, followed by Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Winnipeg.  Dates to be determined.

SQE is now a resource on their Canadian “Take Action” page!

School board elections

Ontario, and perhaps elsewhere in Canada, in a couple of weeks will be going to the polls to elect municipal governments, including school board trustees.   Often people can't be bothered to vote for the people who will be looking after budgets bigger than many corporations.  Our Sunshine on Ontario Schools website is a good place to see exactly how your local school board has been spending its money.  While SQE does not endorse any candidates, we know that school board elections can become as contentious as any election.  Here's a list of questions to ask trustee candidates.  While they had been designed for American school boards, they are a good start.

Ontario has changed legislation that pertains to trustees, school boards, and their governance.  Frankly, some of the election material that has come into my mailbox is quite laughable.  Trustee candidates have lists of promises that are  frankly so ridiculous I wonder about putting such  candidates in charge of a budget of billions of dollars.  Here's a sampling:  "be supportive of the Director of Education, the Superintendents, Principals, Teachers, and support staff; be respectful of others in all interactions with (then lists everyone in education from parent to ministry of education); practice integrity in all my actions as a trustee; be honest when dealing with funds provided by the Ontario Government for education;" and it goes on and on.  Like you would promise to be untrustworthy or not practice integrity.

One candidate says he will increase enrolment, but doesn't say how. (make people have more kids?)  The one that causes me to roll my eyes is this one chestnut that every trustee candidate swears by, "Put the children first when making decisions at the board."  Yeah right. 

What is tells me is that most of these people have NO IDEA what their proper role should be.  Trustees, in response to the constituents they represent, should:  make policy that does not conflict with Ministry of Education policy, set academic and financial goals for the board,  hire a director of education to carry them out, and finally monitor whether or not the director has successfully carried out that policy.   More often than not the tail wags the dog. 

Better to ask your trustee candidates how they would improve academic achievement at your board, how they will deal with school closures and property surpluses, what exactly is their plan to deal with falling enrolments? 

In Ontario we've seen several school boards that have been taken over by the Ministry and life seems to go on without trustees.  Better ask the tough questions now.

Kids Write the Darnedest Things!

Click here for additional illustrations of why teachers drink.

What Doesn’t Work

Jay Greene has a good column about the U.S. What Works Clearinghouse and asks how can you trust a government-sponsored organization to recommend research on topics and policy it doesn't support?

        According to Greene: "WWC makes mistakes, is subject to political manipulation, and applies arbitrary standards. In short, what WWC says is not The Truth. WWC is not necessarily less reliable than any other source that claims to adjudicate The Truth for you. Everyone may make mistakes, distort results, and apply arbitrary standards. The problem is that WWC has the official endorsement of the U.S. Department of Education, so many people fail to take their findings with the same grains of salt that they would to the findings of any other self-appointed truth committee. And with the possibility that government money may be conditioned on WWC endorsement, WWC's shortcomings are potentially more dangerous."

We could ask the same questions here in Canada.  We have similar organizations such as the Council of Ministers of Education,  Canadian Education Association and the Learning Partnership, organizations that get lots of tax-payer money for research that has generally been safe and politically acceptable.  

The CMEC is responsible for reporting on Canada's results in international testing.  The CEA looks to transform education by looking at equity issues and engaging teaching--whatever that means.  One of their policy papers on literacy states: "We no longer think of literacy as a prescribed set of skills to be acquired in a formal learning environment and measured simply by the ability to read and write."  Huh?  Nowhere does the document call for teachers to be trained in DI techniques or is the word phonics mentioned.   The Learning Partnership is the group started the "take your kid to work" programme and again offers research that generally supports the status quo.  They do nice safe feel-good things like annual teacher awards as well.

What you won't see is ground-breaking research on school choice or effective teaching practice that falls outside of the educrat-approved pedagogy---policies most current governments do not support. In other words as Greene points out:

         "We have no alternative to sorting through the evidence and trying to figure these things out ourselves. We may rely upon the expertise of others in helping us sort out competing claims, but we should always do so with caution, since those experts may be mistaken or even deceptive. But when the government starts weighing in as an expert, it speaks with far too much authority and can be much more coercive."

Doing research on what doesn't work doesn't help.

-----------------------------------

Update:  I received this email notice from the CEA today.  Seems Linda Darling-Hammond is coming to Toronto.  Notice who the sponsors are! So readers, what CAN schools do?

A Bully Pulpit

The incidence of bullying in schools continues to rise, as recent lawsuits in the Owen Sound area attest. In the US, as reported by this article, "a coalition of more than 70 civil rights, religious, education, professional, and civic activist groups is urging federal officials to step in with sweeping action - including a law to make bullying a federal crime". 

Anyone who thinks that a federal law will stop the bullies probably supports the prohibition of alcohol and the criminalization of prostitution. Instead, we suggest that the coalition read our blog on this topic and start urging educators and parents to forget about nurturing kids' self-esteem and instead start focusing on their capacity for self-control and self-discipline.