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EDUCATING THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
In their first seven debates, Democratic and Republican presidential
candidates have presented America with a cornucopia of plans for
solving a plethora of urgent issues -- health care, national
security, energy, and the economy. But the candidates in both
parties have had relatively little to say to most viewers about one
of the most prominent issues of the past several elections:
education. Education is falling off the nation’s priority list,
writes Arthur Levine in Education Week. Indeed, during the 2000
presidential election, Americans ranked education either first or
second among the nation’s priorities. In 2004, it fell to fifth. To
permit education to fall off the national agenda today is to accept
weak and inequitable schools. Not only is this bad policy, but it is
morally wrong for children to be denied a quality education at birth
because of their parents’ income or skin color. The reality is that
education is part of the answer to many of the issues that now
dominate the presidential debates. Preparation of experts and
general education of America’s population are key elements of
national defense, the war on terrorism, and energy policy. It is at
the heart of immigration, health care, and environmental protection.
According to Levine, the national education media and the
independent sector (nonprofit organizations) have a crucial role to
play in getting candidates to articulate -- and helping to delineate
-- their positions.
BRINGING A HUMAN RIGHTS VISION TO PUBLIC
SCHOOLS
Human rights are necessary for people to live life in freedom,
dignity and equality, and to have their basic needs met. There are
several categories of rights including, civil, political, economic,
social, cultural, and environmental. Human rights apply to every
person equally no matter where they come from, what race they are,
whether they have immigration papers, whether they are married or
not, what kind of family situation they have, or whether they are
poor or rich. The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI)
and Community Asset Development Re-defining Education (CADRE) have
produced a training manual for advocates, organizers, community
members, parents and youth interested in using human rights as a
tool for improving public education in the U.S. The manual includes
three training curricula: (1) Know Your Human Rights -- Introduces
participants to basic human rights principles, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and standards for the right to
education; (2) Using Human Rights for Social Change -- Introduces
participants to strategies for using the language and principles of
human rights in their campaigns and messaging; (3) Taking Action by
Documenting Human Rights Abuses -- Introduces participants to
research methods for documenting rights violations in schools and
tips for using documentation as an organizing tool. The appendix
includes training handouts and exercises, a glossary of human rights
terms, and excerpts from human rights treaties and declarations
recognizing the right to education. To order hard copies email
info@nesri.org or call
212-253-1710. Available in English and Spanish online in PDF format
at the above link.
THE ASSUMPTIONS WE MAKE ABOUT DIVERSITY IN
SCHOOLS
Diversity in schools is not always visible, but it is always
present. Just because your students appear relatively homogenous
does not mean your class is not diverse. The latest issue of
"Thriving in Academe" says that from gender and religion to social
class and family background, all aspects of inclusion should be
acknowledged and are integral to student learning. It’s all too easy
to slip into the bad habit of making assumptions based on outward
appearance. Students are diverse in more ways than we will probably
ever know, but starting with the assumption of great diversity opens
our classrooms up to exciting and constantly changing possibilities.
One reason many teachers avoid talking about diversity is the idea
that teaching "values" is not our job. But in reality, value-free
teaching does not exist.
THE DOWNSIDE OF DIVERSITY
It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic
diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to
pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our
differences make us stronger. But a massive new study, based on
detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has
concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert
Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining
civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a
community, there are fewer people who vote, people volunteer less,
they give less to charity and work less on community projects. In
the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half
as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the
largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually
all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. The
study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is
the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to
race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to
advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being
cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale
immigration causes to the nation's social fabric, reports Michael
Jonas in the Boston Globe. But with demographic trends already
pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real
question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social
changes that Putnam's research predicts. "Diversity, at least in the
short run," Putnam writes, "seems to bring out the turtle in all of
us." If ethnic diversity, at least in the short run, is a liability
for social connectedness, a parallel line of emerging research
suggests it can be a big asset when it comes to driving productivity
and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings, says Scott Page, a
University of Michigan political scientist, the different ways of
thinking among people from different cultures can be a boon.
"BABY EINSTEIN": NOT SUCH A BRIGHT IDEA
Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational
videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new
study. For every hour a day that babies six to 16 months old were
shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they
knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.
Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they
are still working on walking, each year buy hundreds of millions of
dollars' worth of the videos. Unfortunately it's all money down the
tubes, according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of
pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Christakis
and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and
Minnesota and determined their babies' vocabularies using a set of
90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo. The
researchers found that 32 percent of the babies were shown the
videos, and 17 percent of those were shown them for more than an
hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics. The
videos, which are designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from
scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images,
like a lava lamp. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no
television for children under 24 months, reports Amber Dance for the
Los Angeles Times. "I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than
these videos," Christakis said, explaining that there is at least a
chance their parents would watch with them -- which does have
developmental benefits.
THE ROLE OF ART IN SCHOOLS
In a new book due out this month, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland
argue forcefully for the benefits of art education. In their view,
art education should be championed for its own sake, not because of
a wishful sentiment that classes in painting, dance and music
improve pupils’ math and reading skills and standardized test
scores. The researchers found that the visual arts classes did have
broad indirect benefits, even if they were not directly related to
quantifiable performance in other subjects. "Students who study the
arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to
be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and
justify such judgments," the authors conclude. "When kids take a lot
of art, they don't improve in their core subject areas," Ms. Winner
said in an interview. "We simply found no evidence of that." When
students who take art also generally do well in school, reports
Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times, this may be because
academically strong schools tend to have strong arts programs, or
because families who value academic achievement also value
achievement in the arts. "You cannot conclude that because they're
taking art, they're doing well in school," Ms. Winner said. "There’s
just no way to conclude anything about causality." In campaigning
for keeping arts education, some educators say, advocates need to
form more realistic arguments. Art classes are often the first thing
to be jettisoned from a crowded curriculum. As a result, Ms. Winner
said, it is understandable that some arts advocates hew to the
academic argument to keep the arts in the curriculum. "The arts are
totally threatened in our schools," she said. "Arts advocates don't
even think about whether they're accurate -- they latch onto these
claims."
DEMOLISHING NCLB IDEOLOGY & PRACTICE
Jim Cummins, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, argued in a recent presentation that what is happening
now in the schools is not science but ideology, with federal and
state policies imposing a pedagogical divide in which "poor kids get
behaviorism and rich kids get social constructionism." In practice,
that means skills for the poor and knowledge for the rich. That
ideologically based approach ignores and rejects research into the
way students learn, particularly how they learn language and how to
read, writes Timothy Lange (aka Meteor Blades) for the blog Daily
Kos. Cummins has challenged educational practices resulting from
federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, with its emphasis
on standardized tests and consequent teaching "to the tests," saying
instructional approaches now being imposed are something that most
in the audience wouldn't want their own children to suffer. These
approaches have, he said, more to do with teaching rats than humans.
He urged his audience to reclaim good instruction with attention to
the lessons of social constructionism instead of treating students
with a behaviorist approach in which, as B.F. Skinner proved, even
pigeons can be taught to play ping-pong. Cummins offers an
alternative to the NCLB approach -- under which more and more
inner-city schools are failing every day. That alternative is
school-based language planning which instructs along the lines of
what the research has shown. Boiled down to its essentials,
according to Cummins, literacy attainment is directly related to
literacy engagement. Such engagement requires participation, and
effective participation requires that student identity is affirmed,
which means first language learning should not be discouraged
because "new understandings are constructed on a foundation of
existing understandings and experiences." His alternative focuses on
a four-element approach: scaffolding meaning, activating prior
knowledge and building background knowledge, affirming student
identity and extending language in a way that uses the students’
first language.
HOW NOT TO TALK TO YOUR KIDS: THE INVERSE POWER OF PRAISE
When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they
are ensuring that children do not sell their talents short. But a
growing body of research -- and a new study from the trenches of the
New York public-school system -- strongly suggests it might be the
other way around. Giving kids the label of "smart" does not prevent
them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it, writes
Po Bronson in New York magazine. After reviewing more than 200
studies, Dr. Roy Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem
didn't improve grades or career achievement. It didn't even reduce
alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort.
(Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of
themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make
up for low self-esteem.) Baumeister has come to believe the
continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in
their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that "when they praise
their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves." By and
large, the literature on praise shows that it can be effective -- a
positive, motivating force. However, the effects of praise can vary
significantly depending on the praise given. To be effective,
researchers have found, praise needs to be specific and sincere.
ENCOURAGING TEACHERS TO TEACH OFF THE SCRIPT &
EMBRACE SPONTANEITY
To the dismay of many educators throughout the country, the
popularity of scripted curricula has spread to many public schools,
especially those serving poor communities. In response to the
widespread belief that high-stakes testing will improve the nation’s
schools, teachers are pressured to teach to standardized tests and
not waste time on lessons or activities that won't be on one of
these tests. Even if there is a major event the children are eager
to discuss -- a presidential election, an eclipse, the collapse of a
freeway, or an earthquake -- many teachers fear spending precious
class time on anything that won't be on the end-of-the-year
standardized test. And in many districts, especially those that
serve children from the poorest families, teachers are handed
scripts and ordered to follow them to the letter. The companies that
produce these programs point to studies demonstrating that adhering
to the scripts will pay off in higher test scores. While they may in
fact raise scores somewhat, scripted lesson plans can be deadly to
children eager to learn more than what is covered on the test for
their grade level. These schools can be even more mind-numbing for
teachers who have been attracted to the profession by a desire to
engender in their students a passion for learning. While some new
teachers may welcome a script that spells out what to do with most
of the school day, veteran teachers and dynamic, creative young
teachers are more likely than ever to leave the profession,
disgusted by the tedium of drill-and-kill and saddened by the lack
of time or freedom to engage their students in the excitement of
learning interesting stuff. The idea of using high-stakes testing to
improve schools may stem from a genuine desire to offer all children
a high-quality education, writes Nancy Ginsburg Gill in Education
Week. But if higher test scores are achieved by mandating that
teachers follow a script and eschew spontaneity and passion, we will
find few great teachers left in the classroom. In fact, we might as
well save money on salaries and benefits and employ robots to run
the drills.
OVERCOMING NEW SCHOOL FEARS
Transitions to new schools can be hard, writes Katrina Andrews for
momready.com, an online parenting magazine. Parents can soften the
anxiety that a young student may have about starting at a new school
where they don't know anyone, including the teachers and
administrators. To help make this transition an exiting adventure,
and not a frightening experience, Andrews offers a few tips to take
off some of the pressure:
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1.
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Take a family trip to the school and tour the classrooms
together; |
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2.
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Introduce your child to the new school principal and main
office staff; |
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3.
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Meet some of the teachers in your child's grade; |
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4.
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Volunteer! Becoming part of a committee or a PTA group
helps the family transition and it will make your child proud that you
are becoming a part of the school as well; |
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5.
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Try to find a family that lives near you who already
attends the school and set up a summer play date; and, |
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6.
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Speak with your child about how they feel, not just the
night before school begins, but throughout the summer. |
It's important she or he knows that it's okay if they feel
afraid or anxious. They need to know that their feelings are
being taken seriously and that they can talk to you. With all
the plates that parents are juggling, this may seem unnecessary
or over the top, but the emotional health of a child is just as
important as their physical health. It's easy to see a scraped
knee, but not so easy to identify an emotionally lost or
frightened child who may not excel simply because they needed
someone to listen to them, to make them feel safe or to validate
their feelings.
MORE YOUNG ATHLETES OPEN ABOUT BEING GAY &
LESBIAN
An emerging generation of openly gay and lesbian athletes on high
school and college campuses across the country. These young men and
women are quietly venturing where no active professional football or
baseball star has gone, challenging the conformist, if not downright
homophobic, tradition of the playing fields. Their numbers are
difficult to gauge because many confide only in peers, reports David
Wharton for the Los Angeles Times. Experts chart the trend
anecdotally through athletes who join gay rights clubs at school,
e-mail gay rights advocates for advice or announce their sexual
orientation on websites such as Facebook and MySpace. "This is an
issue that's in transition even as we speak," said Jay Coakley, a
noted scholar and author on sports culture. "We're looking at how
the world is changing." Not all the stories have happy endings -- a
high-school football player in northern California tells of being
ostracized. But others say they were welcomed by their teams.
Sociologists see the openness as a generational shift. Polls suggest
a growing percentage of young people have more relaxed views about
sexual orientation. A 2007 Gallup Poll found that 57 percent of
Americans viewed homosexuality as an "acceptable alternative
lifestyle," an increase of 11 percentage points from four years ago.
IRONING OUT POLICIES ON SCHOOL UNIFORMS
As the new school year approaches, more schools are requiring
students to wear uniforms or otherwise restricting what they may
wear -- and parents are objecting. Their complaint: The policies
trample students' right of expression and parents' right to raise
children without government interference, says Vickie Crager,
founder of a parents rights group that opposes school uniforms.
About one in four public elementary schools and one in eight public
middle and high schools in the U.S. have policies dictating what a
student wears to school, says David Brunsma, a sociologist. Private
schools first imported the British tradition of student uniforms to
mark a student's social status, Brunsma says. Urban public schools
began to adopt uniforms in the late 1980s to reduce social pressure
from fashion-savvy students. The idea spread to suburban and rural
schools when President Clinton said uniforms make schools more
orderly. As the trend grew, so did the opposition, Brunsma says.
Most lawsuits against school uniforms fail, says David Hudson, a
First Amendment scholar. Judges usually decide that uniform policies
are meant to improve schools and not to suppress student speech,
reports Carol Motsinger for USA TODAY. |
