May I just say, Wow, Sir? You are really very impressive.
I know some people say you’re a stupid overgrown man child, but you really had an amazing comeback when you tweeted you were actually a “very stable genius.”
I mean “very stable genius”!
Well done, sir.
How could anyone ever come back from that devastating response?
Oh, and your answer to Michael Wolff was likewise inspiring.
Obama wouldn’t have done that. Neither would either of the Bushes, or Reagan or even your hero Andrew Jackson. They had too much respect for the First Amendment – whatever that is.
But what does he know? He’s not President. You are, sir. And as you once said, “I’m like a smart person.”
That you are, sir. Not actually smart, but very much LIKE a smart person.
You know you’re so smart that I think you might want to consider blocking the publication of some other books, too.
Why should someone as YUGE and important as you focus all your energy on people like Wolff… and Kim Jong-un?
You know the other day I was walking by my local book store – yes, they still exist. Believe me! – and I saw another book you should really think about coming down on.
It’s by this total nerd Steven Singer. He’s one of those liberal elites, an educator spending his whole day with little children most of whom are poor, black and brown.
Anyway, you might not think his book has anything to do with you, sir, but if you take a look inside, you’ll see he slams you and your administration again and again.
“…behold the glass menagerie of fools Trump has assembled to populate his administration…”
“…the tired rhetoric of Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South coming out of his [Trump’s] mouth…”
“…Trump is a monster and he’s assembled a cabinet of monstrosities to back him up. But that doesn’t make him scary. The best way to fight monsters is to turn on the light. And we have the brightest light of all – the light of knowledge, experience and wisdom.”
Could you imagine the look on this dude’s face if you were to send him a cease and desist letter? If you offered a criticism of his failing school at a press conference? Even if you just sent out a withering tweet about this sad loser?
Can you imagine how something like that might affect the sale of his book?
It’s selling pretty well for a book about education, but a comment from you would have a huge effect.
Since you took office, you got the cash registers ringing with increased sales of “1984” by George Orwell, “March: Book One” by John Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis, and “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood.
Republicans have stolen more than $1 trillion from our pockets to give to their mega-wealthy donors in the form of tax cuts. A 3-2 GOP majority on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed Net Neutrality. And the party of Lincoln endorsed and funded a child molester for US Senate – though he thankfully lost.
We’re in new territory. Politics has always appealed to the best and worst of our natures: Good people who really want to make a difference and sniveling cowards willing to do whatever their sugar daddies tell them. But unfortunately our world has increasingly rewarded the latter and almost extinguished the former.
However, don’t lose heart. The cockroaches are all out in the open. They’ve become so emboldened by the words “President” and “Trump” voiced together that they no longer feel the need to hug a wall.
All it would take is a good boot and a series of stomps to crush them forever.
Someone get me my shoes.
In the meantime, I sit here at my kitchen table recovering from a turkey coma preparing for a nostalgic look back at everything that’s happened here at Gadfly on the Wall in the past year.
Other than that, it’s been a busy year blogging. I wrote 118 articles! That’s about one every three days!
And people have been reading them.
I’ve had more than 364,000 hits – about the same as in 2016. This puts the total views over the 1 million mark at more than 1,216,000! That’s quite a landmark for a blog that’s only been around since July, 2014. And it doesn’t count all the readers I get from articles reposted on the Badass Teachers Association Blog, Huffington Post, Commondreams.org, the LA Progressive, Alternet, BillMoyers.com or other sites.
I’ve also gotten 1,510 more people to follow me for a total of 12,845.
I’m so honored that readers still like coming to this site for news and commentary. As long as you care to enter those virtual doors, I’ll be here, hunched over my computer, pounding away at the keys.
So without further ado, let’s take a look back at the top 10 articles from this blog that got the Inter-webs humming:
Description: At the end of every school year we get Teacher Appreciation Week. It’s nice. Educators get free donuts and cookies, a pat on the head and then the rest of the year we get all the blame for society’s problems without any additional funding, repealing terrible policies or even acknowledgement of what the real issues are in our schools. It’s a sham. Someone had to say it, so I did. Thanks for the snack, but it takes a village, folks! Get off your butts and take some responsibility!
Fun Fact: Some people, even teachers, were really upset by this article. They thought it was ungrateful. Don’t get me wrong, I am truly appreciative for any crumb the public wants to give us, teachers, but I’m not going to let it pass as if that counts as true support. Salving your conscience isn’t enough. We need true allies to get down in the mud and fight with us. Otherwise, it’s just an empty gesture.
Description: This one’s hot off the press! It describes a situation at one of the schools were I’ve taught over the years and how dress code policies can support white privilege. They’re the broken windows policing of academia, and we need to put much more thought into them before laying down blanket restrictions.
Fun Fact: Some readers took exception to this piece because they thought I didn’t do enough to stop a wayward administrator despite the fact that I never said what I did or didn’t do. Some even complained that it was dumb to simply acknowledge racism and racist policies and actions. I don’t know what world they’re living in. White folks voted for Donald J. Trump to be President. We’ve got a long way to go, and acknowledging everyday prejudice seems a worthy goal to me.
Description: The entire premise of school privatization goes against the founding principles of our nation. We were born out of the Enlightenment, not the profit motive. Our founders would look on in horror at charter and voucher schools. Though they aren’t perfect, only truly public schools embody the ideals of the Revolution. True conservatives and true patriots would support that system, not strive to blow it up for personal financial gain.
Fun Fact: Some people took issue with an appeal to the founders who were not exactly perfect. It’s true. In practice many of them did not live up to their own high ideals. However, who does? It is the ideal that matters, not the clay feet of our forebears.
Description: Teen suicides are up – especially among middle school age children. At the same time, we’ve been testing these kids into the ground. More standardized assessments – and these are unnecessarily more difficult to pass Common Core assessments. This is exactly what happens in countries that put such emphasis on testing – they have a higher suicide rate. It’s no wonder that this is happening here, too. Policymakers want us to be more like Asian countries? Be careful what you wish for!
Fun Fact: This article infuriated the good folks at the Education Post. Peter Cunningham had his flunkies attack me on Twitter complaining that I was an angry white dude making undue correlations. Yet every other explanation for the fact of increased middle school suicides was merely a correlation, too. Proving causation is almost impossible. It is just as reasonable – even more so – to conclude that testing is having an impact on the suicide rate as to intuit the cause being increased reliance on social media. The big money folks don’t want us making the connection I made here. All the more reason to believe there is truth behind it.
Description: School choice is a misnomer. It’s school privatization. It has very little to do with providing more options for parents or students. It’s about allowing big corporations to avoid public school regulations and profit off your child swiping your tax dollars. School choice is merely a marketing term.
Fun Fact: I must have really pissed someone off when I wrote this one because it caused Facebook to block me for a week. No matter. Readers liked this one so much they shared it for me all over. Why was I targeted? It could be personal since charter school cheerleader Campbell Brown is literally the arbiter of truth at Facebook. Or it could be the social media site’s attempt to bully me into spending money on advertising. Either way, their attempted censorship didn’t work.
Description: As teachers, we’re often expected to use new technology in our classrooms. However, we’re rarely involved in the decision making process. We’re rarely allowed to decide which technology to use and sometimes even how to use it. Software packages are just handed down from administration or school board. However, the EdTech Industry is not our friend. More often than not it is unscrupulous in the ways it is willing to profit off of our students through data mining, competency based learning and a variety of privacy threatening schemes. It’s up to us to be brave enough to say, “No.”
Fun Fact: I was surprised by how much the piece resonated with readers. So many other educators said they felt they were being bullied into using apps or programs that they thought were of low quality or downright harmful. Sure, there were some who called me a luddite, but the fact remains: we shouldn’t be using technology for technology’s sake. We should be doing so only to help students learn. That requires us to use our best judgment, not follow orders like good soldiers.
Description: Administrators love to gift teachers with tons and tons of data. They bury us under reams of standardized test results and expect us to somehow use that nonsense to inform our teaching. It’s crazy. We already collect authentic data on our students for 180 days a year in the classroom in the course of our teaching. Yet they think these mass produced corporate evaluated snap shots are going to somehow change everything? That’s not how you help educators. It’s how you abdicate any responsibility yourself.
Fun Fact: This one really took off especially on the Huffington Post. Many readers seemed to be truly surprised that teachers felt this way. No authentic educator gives in to being data driven. We’re data informed but student driven. And if you want us to do something else, you don’t have the best interests of the kids at heart.
Description: This was another tone deaf proclamation from the Republican majority in Harrisburg. It was pure meat for the regressive base in gerrymandered districts that if passed they knew would never be signed by our Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. It turns out the backlash was such that they didn’t even have the courage to put it to a vote.
Fun Fact: I never expected this one to be nearly as popular as it was. Usually articles about Pennsylvania get a few hundred local readers and that’s it. But this one infuriated everyone. How dare lawmakers propose this! Don’t they know how many bacteria teachers are exposed to!? Do they want us to come to school sick and spread the disease to our students!? I’d like to think that the article had something to do with this terrible piece of legislation disappearing, but I have no evidence to support it. However, I can say that it will probably be back when they think no one is looking, and it will still make me sick.
Description: Everyone says public schools are failing. I call bullshit. It depends on how you’re evaluating them, and – frankly – we’re not being fair to our American education system. Sure. There are plenty of ways we can improve, but there’s a lot we’re doing right, too. In fact, many of the things we get right, few other systems do around the world. We excel in our ideals. If we just had the courage of our convictions, our system would be beyond the moon! Even as it is, we have much to celebrate. And other nations would do well to emulate us in these ways.
Fun Fact: I’m quite proud of this one. It’s the only article in the Top 10 here that was included in my book. For the definitive version, you’ll have to go there. Some sections received major rewrites and clarifications. I think the published version is much better. But no matter which version you choose, I’m proud to have an answer for all those out there spreading the myth that our education system is an irredeemable mess. They want us to get rid of the good and replace it with more bad. I say we keep the good and build on it.
Description: Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing was an absolute horror show. It’s even worse when you consider she was confirmed by the Republican majority in a tie vote that was broken by Vice President Mike Pence (that still sends shivers down my spine). Here was someone who knows next to nothing about public education except that she wants to destroy it. She wouldn’t commit to protecting students rights even those under the umbrella of special education. There’s more I could say but I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Excuse me.
Fun Fact: I’m honored that so many readers turned to my blog for commentary about this. It was a moment of shared horror that hasn’t weakened much in the subsequent months. We’re all just waiting for sanity to return but at least we can do so together. We’re all in this side-by-side and hand-in-hand. We can defeat the Betsy DeVos’ and the Donald Trump’s of the world if we stay strong. It could happen any day now.
Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups
This wasn’t the first year I’ve done a countdown of the year’s greatest hits. I usually write one counting down my most popular articles (like the one you just read from 2017) and one listing articles that I thought deserved a second look. Here are all my end of the year articles since I began this crazy journey in 2014:
Yes, we endured many scars from the year that was. But we have gained something truly amazing – something that we probably could not have grasped without our sexual predator in chief, a reality TV show conman posing as a political leader.
People.
Are.
Awake.
They see the undeniable destruction, the naked power grabs, how our lawmakers are owned by the super-rich and the outright denial of democratic principles.
I’m reminded of the ending of John Carpenter’s cult classic “They Live.”
In the movie, Earth is conquered by aliens but no one noticed. The aliens took over the media and government using a transmitter to hide their ugly faces so that people couldn’t see what they truly look like. These intergalactic shepherds used the media and advertising to herd us human sheep to focus on naked consumerism and ignore how we’re being consumed by the powers that be.
At the end of the movie, the hero – played by Roddy Piper – sacrifices himself to destroy the transmitter so everyone finally can see the hideous aliens among us.
I remember watching the film the first time back in the ‘80s and wondering what people would do once they could see the truth.
Would they fight? Or would they try to convince themselves that they weren’t seeing the evidence of their own eyes?
(WARNING: The video below is NSFW, contains nudity and sexual situations.)
But now she’s coming off like a special education advocate!
What a turnaround!
It’s almost like David Duke coming out in favor of civil rights! Or Roy Moore coming out in favor of protecting young girls from pedophiles! Or Donald Trump coming out in favor of protecting women from crotch grabbing!
It begs the question – who exactly is she trying to fool?
“No two children are the same. Each has his or her own unique abilities and needs. Personalized, student-centered education can help all children thrive, especially children with disabilities.” (Emphasis mine)
Though few people really disagree with this statement, the use of the word “Personalized” sets off alarm bells.
The term has come to mean “personalized learning” or “competency based education” which is code for making students sit on a computer or a device for hours at a time completing stealth assessments. These are programs made to look like video games that really just assess the same standardized material on the typical fill-in-the-bubble high stakes test.
“We’ve just scratched the surface in the role technology can play. I only have to look at my young grandchildren to see how powerful tech is. It is a thousand flowers, and we haven’t planted the whole garden.”
Another place she can look is her investment portfolio.
What kind of government would you like? Republic, Monarchy, Dictatorship, Anarchy? Some combination or original system?
It’s all up to you.
How would you structure the economy? Capitalistic, Socialistic, Communistic? Something else?
You decide.
What would a family look like in your perfect world? How would careers be prepared for and chosen? What level of technology would you choose?
All these and more must be answered when creating the ideal community for you and I to live in.
It’s what Sir Thomas Moore famously did in his 1516 novel “Utopia” about an impossible “best state” for civil society.
And it’s what I had my 7th grade students do last week in preparation for reading Lois Lowery’s contemporary science fiction novel, “The Giver.”
In small groups, my little ones clustered together at their tables and gave social planning a go.
It was stunning the variety of societies they created.
A group of kids with a history of confronting authority designed a nominal anarchy with an inherited monarchy controlling the military. Those with the highest grades decided all the decisions should be made by people like them in an oligarchy while the underachievers just played video games.
One of my favorites though was a group equally divided between boys and girls that decided to let women make all the rules except who could marry whom. That was decided only by the men, but women got to decide when to have kids and how many to have.
It was fascinating to see how their little minds worked. And even more so how their ideal societies reflected their wants and values.
But it was all a preview to Lowery’s novel of a futuristic society where utopia soon descends into its opposite – dystopia.
In each case, these world builders do the same as my middle schoolers – they build a system that would be perfect – from their own individual point of views and biases.
Because… utopia is rooted in theory, it will not always work. In fact, more is written about the failure and impossibility of utopia than of its success, probably because the ideal has never been reached.
“Every utopia,” she says, “…faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?”
One person’s paradise is another person’s Hell.
So the idea of designing one system that fits all is essentially bound to fail.
But doesn’t that support the charter and voucher school ideal? They are marketed, after all, as “school choice.” They allegedly give parents and children a choice about which schools to attend.
It is the public school system that gives you choice. You decide to live in a certain community – you get to go to that community’s schools. Period.
Certainly some communities are more accessible than others, and they are more accessible for some people – whether that be for economic, social, racial or religious reasons.
By contrast, public schools tailor their curriculum to meet the needs of individual students. Each teacher does something different for every child in his or her charge whether those children are in special education, regular education, Emotional Support, the English as a Second Language Program, the academic or honors track.
Decisions are not made by duly-elected representatives of the community in the light of day. They are made behind closed doors by corporate stooges.
THAT is the great innovation behind these schools. Everything else is mere window dressing.
If one of these schools found a better way to teach, public schools could pick it up and do it even better because the teachers and principals would be accountable for doing it correctly.
These so-called lab schools have never produced a single repeatable, verifiable innovation that works for all students without cherry picking the best and brightest.
Not once.
That’s because the utopia these policy wonks are interested in building isn’t for the students or parents. It’s for the investors.
It may be the ideal situation for the moneymen, but it’s often pure torture for the students. Charter schools are closed without notice, the money stolen under cloak of night. Voucher schools fool kids into thinking creationism is science and then are no where to be found when reputable colleges want nothing to do with their graduates.
Let me be the first to say that public school is no utopia.
They are constantly changing. Teachers are constantly innovating.
A handful of years ago, I never had students design their own utopias before reading “The Giver.” But a colleague came up with the idea, I modified it for my students and we were off.
If I teach the same course next year, I’d modify it again based on what worked and what didn’t work this year.
Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible; no place to run, no place to hide, just take care of business here and now.
What kind of government would you like? Republic, Monarchy, Dictatorship, Anarchy? Some combination or original system?
It’s all up to you.
How would you structure the economy? Capitalistic, Socialistic, Communistic? Something else?
You decide.
What would a family look like in your perfect society? How would careers be prepared for and chosen? What level of technology would you choose?
All these and more must be answered when creating the ideal community for you and I to live in.
And that’s exactly what I had my 7th grade students do this week in preparation for reading Lois Lowery’s science fiction novel, “The Giver.”
In small groups, my little ones clustered together at their tables and gave social planning a go.
It was stunning the variety of societies they created.
One group had a nominal anarchy with an inherited monarchy controlling the military. Another had an oligarchy of the smartest people who got the best grades to make all the decisions while everyone else played video games.
One of my favorites though was a group who decided to let women make all the rules except who could marry whom. That was decided only by the men, but women got to decide when to have kids and how many to have.
It was fascinating to see how their little minds worked.
But it was all a preview to Lowery’s novel of a futuristic society where utopia soon descends into dystopia.
As it often does.
So it made me wonder about the most utopian thinking we find in modern life – education policy.
In each case, these world builders do the same as my middle schoolers – they build a system that would be perfect – from their own individual point of view.
Because… utopia is rooted in theory, it will not always work. In fact, more is written about the failure and impossibility of utopia than of its success, probably because the ideal has never been reached.
“Every utopia,” she says, “…faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?”
One person’s paradise is another person’s Hell.
So the idea of designing one system that fits all is essentially bound to fail.
But doesn’t that support the charter and voucher school ideal? They are marketed, after all, as “school choice.” They allegedly give parents and children a choice about which schools to attend.
It is the public school system that gives you choice. You decide to live in a certain community, you get to go to that community’s schools. Period.
Certainly some communities are more accessible than others, and they are more accessible for some people than others – whether that be for economic, social, racial or religious reasons.
By contrast, public schools tailor their curriculum to meet the needs of individual students. Each teacher does something different for every child in his or her charge whether those children are in special education, regular education, Emotional Support, the English as a Second Language Program, the academic or honors track.
Decisions are not made by duly-elected representatives of the community in the light of day. They are made behind closed doors by corporate stooges.
THAT is the great innovation behind these schools. Everything else is mere window dressing.
If one of these schools found a better way to teach, public schools could pick it up and do it even better because the teachers and principals would be accountable for doing it correctly.
These so-called lab schools have never produced a single repeatable, verifiable innovation that works for all students without cherry picking the best and brightest.
Not once.
That’s because the utopia these policy wonks are interested in building isn’t for the students or parents. It’s for the investors.
It may be the ideal situation for the moneymen, but it’s often pure dystopia for the students. Charter schools are closed without notice, the money stolen under cloak of night. Voucher schools fool kids into thinking creationism is science and then are no where to be found when reputable colleges want nothing to do with their graduates.
Let me be the first to say that public school is no utopia.
They are constantly changing. Teachers are constantly innovating.
A handful of years ago, I never had students design their own utopias before reading “The Giver.” But a colleague came up with the idea, I modified it for my students and we were off.
If I teach the same course next year, I’d modify it again based on what worked and what didn’t work this year.
Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible; no place to run, no place to hide, just take care of business here and now.
If the communications giants get to favor or block particular Websites, people-powered blogs like this one probably would become isolated and irrelevant.
Close your eyes and imagine a United States where you couldn’t access your favorite Websites without paying a fee or – as in China – maybe even at all.
Want to know why Betsy Devos’ latest plan to give your tax dollars to Roy Moore’s Christian Fundamentalist Middle School and Dating Center endangers child welfare? Sorry. That information is no longer available.
Sure, you could probably look it up in the library and find it in a book, but that requires a complete change in how we consume media.
Most of us get our news on-line. We don’t read paper newspapers or glossy photo-print magazines. Books, when we read them, are often occasional pleasures or e-texts.
Searching out such material would take a paradigm shift back to the way we used to do things 10 or 20 years ago. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be onerous.
Remember traveling everywhere with a pile of books weighing down your bag, or a newspaper and magazines folded under your arm? People seeking such information would really need to want it.
Additionally, writing and publishing such articles would become increasingly more difficult. Unless individuals or groups of activists bought up archaic printing presses or somehow funded mass media campaigns at Kinko’s and there were likewise an as yet undiscovered distribution engine that could disperse such periodicals across the country and the world – unless all of that, the resistance would be relegated to mostly scholarly tomes.
Whereas, with a blog, I can just write it and press “publish.”
The result isn’t as neat. It isn’t as error-proof. There’s bound to be spelling and grammar problems. It doesn’t pack nearly the authoritative punch. —But it’s so topical and subversive that it can slice through steel.
Sure this means that even the lunatic fringe gets a voice in the conversation that is American culture, but it also allows ideas to win or lose based more on merit than money.
If enough people share an article on-line, it gets read. People see it. They know it.
False information is eventually found out, disproven and neutralized. But a factually-based critique of bad policy? That can move mountains. It can change the world.
And it has!
Think of how even neoliberal policymakers have rushed to claim they’re in favor of reducing standardized testing. Longtime standardization supporters like former President Barack Obama had to distance themselves from their own policies or face the torches and pitchforks of moms and dads everywhere.
Think of how Democratic and Republican partisans clamored over each other to denounce Common Core. Heck! The movement was so successful President Donald Trump even jumped on the bandwagon and used it as a rallying cry to help install himself in office.
And think of how the reaction to Trump’s dismal and dimwitted Education Secretary, Devos, caused a stampede away from school vouchers and even to some extent charter schools. Even longtime champions of privatization like Jeb Bush and Cory Booker are afraid to offer even a tentative thumbs up for fear of the Web’s blitzkrieg of Tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and other shade.
None of this would be possible without the Internet and the blogosphere.
None of this would be possible without net neutrality.
It’s no wonder Trump and his cronies want to destroy it. The open communication and debate on the Internet is a clear and present danger to his policies.
It is dangerous to the neoliberals and conservative fascists alike.
Though the movement fighting against corporate education reform has been rightly critical of unlimited technology for technology’s sake in our classrooms, that same confederation owes a great debt to technology for its current power.
We meet on Facebook and plan actions to be conducted IRL – In Real Life. Groups like the Badass Teachers Association, the Network for Public Education and United Opt Out use the technology to spread truth and question authority.
If the life line of net neutrality is severed, so will much of our activist networks.
I know we’re all concerned about competency based education, Teach for America and toxic testing, but we have to make room for net neutrality, too.
The 99% rely on it for the free exchange of ideas and the unhindered expression of our speech.
If the Trump administration crushes that venue, it will seriously weaken our ability to resist.
So before that day comes, exercise your rights.
Raise your voice for net neutrality – before it’s too late.
While public schools certainly could do with a great deal of change to improve, this criticism is incredibly naïve.
It’s the intellectual equivalent of displaying a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses prominently on your bookshelf without actually having read it.
It’s like demanding everything you eat be gluten free without actually having celiac disease or a wheat allergy.
It’s the conceptual analogue to learning a trendy “word of the day” and trying desperately to fit it into your every conversation regardless of need or propriety.
Let’s examine the six main components of the video explaining why the charter operators think public schools are out of date and should be replaced:
1) Public Schools are Relics of the Industrial Age
The criticism goes like this. The public school model was created in the Industrial Age and thus prepares students to be factory workers. All day long in public schools students follow orders and do exactly what they’re told. Today’s workers need different skills. They need creativity, the ability to communicate ideas and collaborate.
First, while it is true that the American public school system was created during the Industrial Revolution, the same thing can be said for the United States, itself. Beginning in 1760 and going until 1840, manufacturing began to dominate the western economy. Does that mean the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped? Clearly our form of government could do with a few renovations, but not by appeal to its temporal genesis, to when it was created.
Second, IS it true that America’s public schools expect students to do nothing but listen to orders and follow them to the letter?
Absolutely not.
In fact, this is exactly what teachers across the country DON’T want their students to do. We work very hard to make sure students have as much choice and ownership of lessons as possible.
We often begin by assessing what they know and what they’d like to know on a given subject. We try to connect it to their lives and experiences. We try to bring it alive and show them how vital and important it is.
Do we exclude creativity, communication and collaboration from our lessons?
The idea that students are somehow all sitting in rigid rows while the teacher blabs on and on is pure fantasy. It betrays a complete ignorance of what really goes on in public schools.
2) Lack of Autonomy
The criticism goes that students in public school have no choices. Every minute of the day is controlled by the teacher, principals or other adults. However, in today’s world we need workers who can manage their own time and make their own decisions about what to do and when to do it.
Once again we see a complete ignorance of what goes on in public schools.
Today’s students are not only expected to make decisions and manage their time, they could not pass their classes without doing so.
Teachers often go to great lengths to give students choices. Would you like to read this story or that one? Would you like to demonstrate your learning through a test, a paper, an art project or through a digital medium?
For instance, my students are required to read silently for 15-minutes every other day. But they get to select which books to read. Eventually, they have to complete a project using their self-selected book, but they are in charge of ensuring the book they pick meets the requirements, how much they read each day in class and outside of class, and whether they should complete a given book or pick a new one.
Even when it comes to something as mundane as homework, students have to develop time management. I give my students the homework for the entire week on Monday, and it’s due on Friday. This means they have to decide how much to do each night and make sure it gets done on time.
Today’s students have much more ownership of their learning then I did when I went to school. Those throwing stones at our public school system would know that, if they actually talked to someone in it.
3) Inauthentic Learning
Critics say most of the learning in public schools is inauthentic because it relies on memorization and/or rote learning. It relies on a generic set of knowledge that all children must know and then we measure it with standardized tests. Learning should be deeper and its subjects should be something students intrinsically care about.
In short, yes, corporate education reform should be challenged and defeated. However, as in this instance, often the same people criticizing public schools for these practices don’t want to undo them – they just want to expand them so they can be more effectively monetized by big businesses like them!
4) No Room for Student Interests
Critics say the standardized public school system requires each child to learn the same things in the same ways at the same times. However, each of us are different and have individual interests and passions. The current system has no room for self-discovery, finding out what children enjoy doing, what they’re good at and where they fit in.
Once again, there is some truth to these criticisms.
The corporate education model is guilty of exactly these things. However, teachers have been pushing to include an increasing amount of individualization in lessons.
As it is, many teachers do what they can to ensure students interests are part of the lesson. They gauge student interest before beginning a lesson and let it guide their instruction. For instance, if students want to know more about the weaponry used by the two sides in the Trojan War, that can become part of the unit. If, instead, they wonder about the role of women in both societies, that can also become part of the curriculum. Just because the higher ups demand students learn about the Trojan War doesn’t mean student interest must be ignored. In fact, it is vital that it be a component.
Moreover, creative writing, journaling and class discussion can help students grow as learners and engage in authentic self-discovery. Two weeks don’t go by in my class without a Socratic Seminar group discussion where students debate thematic and textual questions about literature that often spark dialogues on life issues. When students hear what their peers have to say about a given subject, it often results in them changing their own opinions and rethinking unquestioned beliefs and values.
In short, less corporate education reform means room for more student passion, interest and self-discovery.
But these critics don’t want less. They want more!
5) They Don’t Respect How We Learn
Critics say that each student is different in terms of how they learn best and in how much time it takes to learn. As a result, students who comprehend something at a slower rate than others are considered failures by the current system.
In the corporate model, this is true. However, most districts take great pains to give students multiple chances to learn a given concept or skill.
The fact that not all students will know the same things at the same times is built in to the curriculum. Teachers are familiar with their students and know which children need more help with which skills. Concepts are reviewed and retaught – sometimes through copious mini-lessons, sometimes with one-on-one instruction, sometimes with exercises for the whole class.
The further one gets from standardized tests and Common Core, the more individual student needs are respected and met.
But again that’s not the goal of these critics. They blame public schools for what they only wish to continue at higher intensity.
6) Too Much Lecturing
Critics say that under the current system, students are lectured to for more than 5 hours a day. However, this requires students to be unable to interact with each other for long periods of time. Students are at different levels of understanding and nothing can be done to help them until the lecture is over. Wouldn’t it be better to let students pursue their own education through computers and the internet so they could proceed at their own pace like at the Khan Academy?
And here we have the real pitch at the heart of the criticism.
People who wish to tear down public schools are not agnostic about what should replace them. They often prefer privatized and computerized alternatives – like the Big Picture charter chain model!
However, these are not entirely novel and new approaches. We’ve tried them, though on a smaller scale than the traditional public school model, and unlike that traditional system, they’re an abject failure.
The reason? It is beyond naïve to expect children to be mature enough to control every aspect of their learning. Yes, they should have choice. Yes, they should be able to explore and develop as individuals at their own pace. But if you just let children go, most will choose something more immediately gratifying than learning. Most children would rather sit around all day playing Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty than watch even the most interesting educational video about math or science.
Adolescents need structure. They need motivation. In short, they need a teacher – a human authority figure in the same room with them who can help guide their learning and hold them accountable for their actions.
The mere presence of information on the Internet will not make children smarter just as the mere presence of a book won’t increase their knowledge. Certainly some children are self-motivated enough and may benefit from this approach, but the overwhelming majority will not and do not.
Our public schools do need a reformation, but this edtech-biased criticism only hits part of the mark.
The major problems are corporate education reform and standardization. And unfortunately edtech plans like privatization and competency based schemes only seek to increase these pedagogies.
At least their editors haven’t or perhaps they just don’t care.
Otherwise, why would self-respecting hard news purveyors publish the results of a study by charter school cheerleaders that pretends to “prove” how public school teachers are worse than charter school teachers?
That’s like publishing a study denigrating apples written by the national pear council.
Breaking news: Pepsi says, “Coke sucks!”
In a related story McDonalds has startling evidence against the Burger King!
And I know what many journalists are thinking when they do it, because I used to be one:
I’ll publish the report and include dissenting opinions and that will be okay because I will have shown both sides and readers can make up their own minds.
But what’s the headline? What’s the spin? Who is David in this story and who is Goliath? When multiple stories like this appear all over the news cycle, what impression is made on your readers?
And here we get one biased neoliberal think tank vs. millions of public school teachers all across the country and since you’ve given us an equal number to represent each side, you pretend THAT’S fair and balanced.
The Fordham Institute wrote a report called “Teacher Absenteeism in Charter and Traditional Public Schools.” They concluded that 28.3 percent of teachers in traditional public schools miss eleven or more days of school versus 10.3 percent of teachers at charter schools.
Look how bad public school teachers are and how much more dedicated is the charter school variety! Look at how much money is being lost! Look at the damage to student academic outcomes!
Won’t someone think of the children!?
WHY WON’T SOMEONE PLEEEEAAASSSEEE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!??
Second, look at all the important data Fordham conveniently leaves out.
Look at the number of hours public school teachers work in the United States vs. those in other comparable countries, say those included in The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
In fact, the OECD (which is not biased one way or another about American school privatization) released a mountain of statistics about how many hours teachers work in various countries.
American teachers spend on average 1,080 hours teaching each year. Across the O.E.C.D., the average for most countries is 794 hours on primary education, 709 hours on lower secondary education, and 653 hours on upper secondary education general programs.
Source: OECD
Yet American teachers start at lower salaries and even after 15 years in the profession, earn less money than their international counterparts.
So – assuming Fordham’s absenteeism statistics are accurate – why do public school teachers miss so much school? They’re exhausted from the hours we demand they keep!
But what about charter school teachers? Aren’t they exhausted, too?
Since they’re often not unionized, charter schools usually have younger, less experienced staff who don’t stay in the profession long. In fact, they rely on a constant turnover of staff. At many of the largest charter chains such as Success Academy and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), teachers average only 4 years before moving on to another career, according to the New York Times. And this is typical of most charter chains.
So why don’t charter school teachers take as many sick days as traditional public school teachers? Maybe because when they check out, they often don’t check back in.
Moreover, there is a significant difference in the student population at both kinds of school – privatized vs. public.
As their marketing departments will tell you, the students in a charter school choose to be there. The charter schools often weed out the students with behavior problems, special needs or those who are otherwise more difficult to teach. As a result, the strain on teachers may not be as severe. When you’re only serving kids who want to be there and who are easy to teach, maybe you don’t need as much downtime.
According to a study by Scholastic (that actually goes counter to its pro-privatization bias), we work 53 hours a week on average. That comes out to 7.5 hours a day in the classroom teaching. In addition, we spend 90 minutes before and/or after school mentoring, tutoring, attending staff meetings and collaborating with peers. Plus 95 additional minutes at home grading papers, preparing classroom activities and other job-related tasks.
And for teachers who oversee extracurricular clubs, that’s even more work – 11-20 additional hours a week, on average.
Add to that the additional trauma public school children have experienced over the last decade. More than half of public school students now live below the poverty line. That means increased behavior issues, increased emotional disturbances, increased special needs, increased malnutrition, increased drug use – you name it.
Public school teachers deal with that every day. And you seriously wonder that some of us need some downtime during the year to deal with it.
Moreover, let’s not forget the issue of disease.
Working in a public school is to immerse yourself in a petri dish of bacteria and viruses. My first year teaching, I got so sick I was out for weeks until I developed immunities to strains of illnesses I had never been exposed to before.
So, yeah, sometimes I need to take a sick day. But if you ask most teachers, they’d rather stay in the class and work through it.
Having the day off is often more trouble than it’s worth. You have to plan an entire lesson that can be conducted in your absence, you have to give the students an assignment to do and you have to grade it. Even with the day off, you have a mountain of work waiting for you when you return.
So as a practicing public school teacher, I dispute the findings of the Fordham Institute.
They don’t know what they’re talking about.
They have focused in on data to make their chosen targets, public school teachers, look bad while extolling the virtues of those who work in privatized systems.
Is anyone else left? Am I the only one still employed here?
Somedays it feels like it.
Somedays teaching in a public school is kind of like trying to run a resort hotel – ALL BY YOURSELF.
You’ve got to teach the classes and watch the lunch periods and cover the absences and monitor the halls and buy the pencils and tissues and fill out the lesson plans and conduct the staff meetings and…
Wouldn’t it be better if there were more people here?
So why did we let this happen? Why do we continue to let this happen?
First, you have to understand that there are two very different kinds of public school experience. There is the kind provided by the rich schools where the local tax base has enough money to give kids everything they need including small class sizes and hiring enough teachers to get things done efficiently. And there’s the poor schools where the majority of our kids get educated by the most dedicated put upon teachers who give 110% everyday but somehow can’t manage to keep all those plates spinning in the air at the same time so the media swoops in, wags its finger and proclaims them a “failure.”
Bull.
It’s not teachers who are failing. It’s a system that stacks the deck against them and anxiously anticipates them being unable to meet unfair and impossible expectations.
This is a chance to open a new market and scoop up buckets of juicy profit all for themselves and their donors.
It’s called privatized education. You know – charter schools and vouchers schools. Educational institutions not run by the public, not beholden to elected officials, but instead by bureaucrats who have the freedom to act in the shadows, cut student services and pocket the savings.
Those are people they have to pay a living wage. Those are people who know a thing or two and might complain about how the corporate scheme adversely affects the children in their care.
And to do that, the powers that be need to get rid of professional teachers.
People like me – folks with national board certification and a masters degree – they need to go.
THAT’S why class sizes are so large. That’s why so few young people are picking teaching as a major in college.
It’s exactly what the super-rich want.
And it doesn’t have to be some half mad Mr. Burns who makes the decisions. In my own district, the school board just decided to save money by cutting middle school math and language arts teachers – the core educators who teach the most important subjects on the standardized tests they pretend to value so much!
So number crunching administrators had a choice – straighten their backbones and fight, or suggest cutting flesh and bone to make the budget.
They chose the easier path.
As a result, middle school classes are noticeably larger, teachers have been moved to areas where they aren’t necessarily most prepared to teach and administrators actually have the gall to hold out their clipboards, show us the state test scores and cluck their tongues.
I actually heard an administrator this week claim that my subject, language arts, counts for double points on the state achievement rubric. I responded that this information should be presented to the school board as a reason to hire another language arts teacher, reduce class sizes and increase the chances of boosting test scores!
That went over like a lead balloon.
But it demonstrates why we’ve lost so much ground.
Everyone knows larger class sizes are bad – especially in core subjects, especially for younger students, especially for struggling students. Yet no one wants to do anything to cut class sizes.
Instead we’re warned that if we don’t somehow pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, they’ll close our school and give it to a private company to run – as if there were any evidence at all that this would help.
It’s a scam, ladies and gentlemen! And anyone who looks can see it.
But when you bring this up to administrators, they usually just nod and say that there’s nothing we can do about it. All we can do is keep trying to win the game – a game that’s rigged against us.
That’s exactly the attitude that’s gotten us where we are.
We can’t just keep doing it, keep appeasing the testing and privatization industry and their patsies in the media and government.
We must fight the system, itself, not go along with it.
gadflyonthewallblog 