On the Other Hand

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As the pressure to “reform” public education has mounted, I have written and spoken against adopting a business model or factory model in which our children are the products to which value must be added, value measurable by numbers meant to translate eventually to dollars. I am saddened by the recent death of Dr. Donald Graves, an outstanding educator whose book, Testing Is Not Teaching, I continue to find inspiring and encouraging, like a voice crying out in the wilderness of dehumanization, the current desert of the human spirit. I find the billionaires-generated push toward privatization nauseating as I brace for the waves of hatred and ignorant blame coming at teachers after the release of the propaganda film, “Waiting for Superman.”

Even so, I am haunted by Jonathan Kozol’s books, Amazing Grace and The Shame of the Nation (the latter subtitled, The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America).

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Restoring Our Nation’s Schools

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This article in The Nation, “Restoring Our Schools,” comes from Linda Darling-Hammond, the person many of us concerned about public education hoped would become Secretary of Education in the administration of President Barack Obama: click here.

Note:  As I re-read this article in 2012, I wonder where exactly Linda Darling-Hammond was, even then, and how willing she may have been to front for corporate ed reform, the administration, and Arne Duncan.  I wonder, also, how many thought they really might be able to improve education for economically and socially disadvantaged children, without realizing how quickly the whole enterprise would be seized by corporations for profit from public funds.

By the Numbers

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When and why did personnel departments become human resources? “Personnel” comes from person. “Human resources” sounds to me like stuff to be used, used up, and discarded as companies bring in new human stuff to be used up. I hope most companies have better understandings of HR.

In his book, The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen points out that people like to simplify their thinking by assigning a single, supposedly definitive number to a very complex human situation. The single number enables us to pretend to be able to quantify and measure the development of human lives and societies. For example, the Gross National Product (GNP) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are sometimes assumed to tell the whole story of a country’s status and quality of life. Sen, a Nobel Prize winning economist, discusses how very much of a nation’s life and its quality we cannot tell from the number and how effectively the number can be used to perpetuate injustices by hiding them.

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About Face, Forward March

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Anyone who cares about public education in this country, please read this piece in the Washington Post that was written by Diane Ravitch, formerly a major supporter of No Child Left Behind. I could quibble about some of her specific suggestions and about the missing focus on elementary education, but the overall force of what she has written is wonderful to read, especially coming from someone who commands so much respect and has, she declares, seen education so differently in the recent past. Ravitch admits she got it wrong and we, as a nation, got it wrong, and she says what we need to do now to correct the mistake and go forward in the right direction. Don’t miss this one. It’s here.

Further Comment on the Blueprint for Education

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The Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, has also submitted comment to the U.S. House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee on the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known since 2002 as No Child Left Behind. You may find and read his comment here.

Thanks for this link to Jan Resseger at the Justice & Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ whose Web page on the subject of the reauthorization is here. Included on the page is a link to the Blueprint itself as presented by the U.S. Department of Education.

Note:  It seems Jan Resseger’s article is no longer available on the UCC site (September 19, 2012).

Education and Training

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It is by no means self-evident to us, the people of the United States, that human beings should be educated rather than merely trained. Many among us look suspiciously upon those who are highly educated. Note the current disparagement of college and university professors by the angry and resentful who seem convinced life should be simple and should be kept simply the way they think life used to be. In a strange twist of logic, the reply to complexity of thought became the acronym KISS, standing for Keep It Simple, Stupid. Complexity, then, has been branded a mark of stupidity, while by implication, the simpleminded is wise.

What is it to be educated?

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Symbols and Tests

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In our adult forum last Sunday, we discussed symbols. After looking at a few frequently used Christian symbols, we turned to those we carry with us personally whether we carry them in our pockets, on our lapels or bodices, or in our minds. Our conversation was mostly light and uncritical, except when we talked about the cross and the fish, both of which retain their earlier meanings for many people of faith but, under the banner of Christendom, developed belligerent meanings and uses that put people who are not Christian on guard.

One further tendency of the symbolic also raised warning flags. From amulet to sacrament, the use of symbols always threatens to supplant the realities those symbols were meant to represent and reinforce. The outward expression of an inward truth, over time, tends to take over that truth itself and replace it.

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High Noon

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At noon today, President Barack Obama spoke to America’s school students, encouraging them to work at their own education, not only for themselves as individuals, but for the nation. We have public education because we believe all children and youths deserve opportunity to learn and become the adults education enables them to be, but also because we believe that an educated population is vital to the well-being of a liberal democracy and a forward-moving society.

I differ from President Obama in his apparent understandings of what is needed to improve public education for the nation’s children and youth. I wish he had kept Linda Darling Hammond and left Arne Duncan in Chicago. I continue to hope he will start listening to educators more than to business people and will dump No Child Left Behind with the invalid and detrimental correlation of standardized test scores with good teaching and real learning. But I also continue to believe he has the good of the nation and its children in mind, not merely the benefit of the testing/publishing companies and the entrepreneurs who want to privatize public education for their profit. I don’t yet believe he really wants to turn teachers into scripted drones and destroy the teaching profession. And I hope and pray my trust in him is not folly.

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