And now for some unintentional comedy courtesy of stupid conservatives

Stop me if you've heard this one ...

Parents and students alike should start asking whether they're getting their money's worth from colleges. Because, when it comes to understanding basic concepts about American history, evidence indicates they aren't.

This is part of an op-ed in today's Free-Lance Star by Ed Feulner, the president of conservative Heritage Foundation. In case you haven't figured it out, he's crowing about how stupid Americans are because they don't know exactly when the Civil War -- er, War Between the States -- er, War of Northern Aggression -- er, whatever the redneck down the block says the dixie flag on his shirt stands for in terms of "history" -- took place and they don't know the basic rights of the Frist Amendment. Oh, and this is the fault of two very liberal entities: American universities and Barack Obama.

That doesn't mean we need more federal spending on education. In fact, we ought to have less. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has already agreed to throw money at colleges. In July the maximum amount for Pell Grants will jump to $5,350, up $500 per year. Obama's 2010 budget declares it wants to "ensure the Pell Grant continues to grow steadily by making it an entitlement."

In case you're familiar with the Pell Grant, it provides (according to ed.gov)"need-based grants to low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students to promote access to postsecondary education." So it's one of your classic financial aid programs, one meant to promote education for low-income students. He makes the point that every time financial aid goes up, tuition goes up and I have heard that before but I'm not going to take him at his word because I wonder if that's really true or just a misconception that people who complain about giving money to poor people like to believe.

What gets me are two points that Fuelner makes that make his op-ed completely ridiculous. First, he says:

Instead, parents and elected officials should use their financial leverage to break the downward spiral in higher education. They should demand that colleges teach basic American history, political science, and economics. Schools should be graded so those that don't--or won't--teach these subjects can be punished by losing customers (students).

Um, Ed? Don't HIGH SCHOOLS teach basic American history, political science, and economics? Last I checked, the seniors graduating the high school I teach at are required to take social studies for four years and that includes U.S./VA History and English. At best in college they take one or two social science core classes before picking and specializing in a major which may or may not have anything to do with Andrew Jackson's role in destroying Native Americans (oh wait, that's "liberal" history. My bad).

Second, there's this:

What haven't American colleges taught well? "Only 24 percent of collegegraduates know the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States," ISI found, to cite one example.

Well, Ed, being a conservative, shouldn't you be happy as a pig in shit about this? President Obama acknowledges that *gasp* Muslims live in OUR country and you get your panties in a bunch and say that he defamed America because America is a "Christian" nation. Therefore, if students aren't learning that we don't have an official religion, it should be all good, right?

Look, if you want to piss and moan about the current administration's educational policies and what it's doing with money for education, that's all well and good. I certainly don't agree with much of the sentiment that Arne Duncan's been spewing for the last six months. BUT get a fucking clue. Your points make no sense in the context of higher education, whose purpose is not general education. Even if U.S. History 101 was required by most colleges, it wouldn't be the rote memorization of names and dates that you so desire; it would be analysis and *gasp* critical thinking about history that might lead to *SHOCKER!* students finding out the dirty secrets of American history.

If you're so concerned about whether or not student know enough about American history, focus on lower levels of education than a university.

Wait, I take that back. I don't want you anywhere near my school or my job. Pack it up, take it away, and go hunt wolves with Sarah Palin.

That's the idea, Rat. That's the attitude.

"The attitude dictates that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin'. Now when you got that, then you have the attitude. "

-Mike Damone

So a recently online Teacher Magazine piece is called "Upending the Negative Teacher Stereotype" and in it, John Norton discusses why the current political rhetoric about "getting rid of bad teachers" is detrimental to our profession and education as a whole ...

Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter risked a charge of “inciting teachers to riot” a couple of weeks ago when he used his bully pulpit to tell America that teachers are born, not made—and that “the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.”

While Alter’s commentary, “Peanut Butter Politics,” was politically insightful, it was remarkable for its failure to provide any acknowledgment of the legions of expert teachers in the U.S. His eagerness to identify teachers as public education’s number one problem stirred quite a conversation in the TLN Forum discussion group. TLN member Dan Brown kicked it off by sharing a link to his Huffington Post blog entry where he criticized Alter for “joining the teacher-scapegoating chorus.”

“I agree with Alter that there are some complacent, ineffective teachers out there who should be fired,” Brown wrote in his blog. “However, this obsessive focus on cleaning house and demanding or expecting superhuman performance misses a larger point.”

“Most teachers in America are smart and dedicated enough to help their students achieve. They're not the unaccountable fiends holding kids back, as Alter portrays them with his broad brush. Poverty, deficiency of support services, disjointed curricula, overemphasis on testing, and overcrowded classes do far more to impede student achievement.”

Norton goes on to quote several different people among the TLN bloggers, and many of them get at the root of this problem, including how the national media is largely detached from the classroom (see: Matthews, Jay) and how many who crow about "bad teachers" or anything like this are pushing an agenda into which education does fall. A lot of it to me was, "Well ... duh." But one point did stand out, made by Nancy (who I'm assuming is Nancy Wicklin, who has a TLN blog but I'm not entirely sure since I'm a casual reader at best) ...

Perhaps we're sitting ducks for targeted criticisms because we are too narrowly focused on being human and "all about the kids." We let other people speak for us, because we "don't have time." Sometimes, we are not respected because we have given away our power—to unions, to universities, to elected officials, to the media. I can't think of a single, orchestrated movement in the past to change the way people see schools, or to give them hope and purpose around changing our K-12 system.

[Before I make my point, allow me to be a whiny, bitchy brat ... uh, haven't I been posting on this since at least May and even before that? Isn't the image of a teacher and how it needs to change in order for this profession to grow kind of one of the purposes of my constant griping? Where's the love, Teacher Magazine?]

I think she's about 75% right here. Are we too narrowly focused on being human and "all about the kids"? Oh hell yes, that's the whole basis of the martyr complex that so many in this profession have, as this is not a job, it's a calling and if we don't do right by education the children will flounder and since the children are future we're putting our future in jeopardy--DEAR GOD, WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

Do we give away too much power to universities, teachers unions, the media because we "don't have time" to speak for ourselves? Well ... yes and no. I will say that those things have encroached on us and taken part of our voice away, but it goes beyond that. If you're trying to make yourself visible to the outside world and show off the accomplishments of your students, who do you have to deal with before you put up a display, call the local paper and television stations, or maybe even post it on your website?

An administrator.

This could be an assistant principal, principal, district public relations person, school board member, or even a superintendent. Just like any public entity -- celebrity, athlete, politician, organization, corporation -- school districts have people in place to make sure the image put forth of its teachers and students is a positive one. Of course, just like any public entity, things happen that spin out of control and land on the evening news before a press release or statement can be issued, but for the most part if you are doing something great in your classroom and you want to show it off, you have to go through the proper channels.

Now I'm not sure that any administrator would turn you down if you came to him and said, "My students have successfully discovered the existence of a parallel universe where the Cubs have won the last 10 World Series," because they always like a good photo op. But then again, that's not the issue. It's that so much of what we do every day goes unnoticed and is behind closed doors to the extent that I do kind of feel like I'm working for a company. Make that, The Company.

Shelly Blake-Plock had a great Change.org post the other day about how we as teachers are becoming more and more disconnected from our students because we are increasingly disconnected from the outside world. Our students live very public lives and are more or less "plugged in" to the world (although how plugged in they are is debatable considering they still very often have their heads plugged into their own asses but that's not the point). Part of the disconnection is our fault -- we tend to both consciously and unconcsiously perpetuate the notion of school being a vacuum -- but it's also the fault of those in charge, who block the students' very means of communication because of any number of reasons (don't want viruses on computers, don't trust students to misuse the internet, don't trust teachers to police their students, don't want "cyberbullying", the internet is eeeeeeevil, etc.).

And so our image continues to suffer.

We need to do two things and we need to do them now: first, plug in (more on that in a future post and I recommend reading all of Susan's recent Change.org posts); second, get some public relations and marketing skills. Yes, I know that's not part of the job description and we're all stressed for time and our ability to market ourselves should not be a measure of whether or not we are successful educators, but you know what? Those are bullshit excuses because it does matter. I may be biased with this opinion because I worked in marketing and my wife is a freaking marketing superstar (seriously, if I ever need a publicist, I'll look no further than the other end of the couch), but marketing? Runs the world.

So we need to be more savvy, more aware, and more slick. Teachers will not likely change who controls their school's PR. But anything can be manipulated and worked towards one's advantage, and that's what we need to do with our profession if we want to change the public's attitude towards it.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

I feel like two posts on Columbine 10 years after the massacre is ad nauseum enough; however, I recently finished Dave Cullen's comprehensive investigative retelling of the tragedy, which is an excellent piece of journalism even if it toes the line of sensationalism and cheesy "true crime" book at certain points.

In writing Columbine, Cullen--an investigative journalist who has covered the Columbine tragedy and its aftermath since 1999--fleshes out the complete story, going from the early lives of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to the present day in an effort to tell his audience what really happened, and what really caused it. His information comes from scouring what evidence is out there, including the killers' journals, tapes they made prior to April 20, 1999, police reports, what's already been published in the media, and many interviews with survivors and parents.

He constructs a careful narrative, beginning with the tragedy itself and then going back two years with Harris and Kelbold and examining their personalities and following them as they laid out their plans; concurrently, he deals with a cast of survivors, taking them from that day to 10 years later. To those who prefer something much more linear it might be off-putting, but it works very well because we don't need a long lead-in to what we more or less remember, and his speculation on how the two killers were thinking and feeling while they planned their attack contrasts well with the stories of Patrick Ireland, Misty Bernall, Frank DeAngelis, and several others, and all in an effort to give us the most detail about the event than has ever been given.

See, there are several myths about Columbine that still exist to this day and Cullen does what he can to set the record straight. The most important one, of course, is that the massacre was simply two students "snapping" after they and their group of "goth" friends (referred to as the Trench Coat Mafia) had been teased one too many times. And while bullying is a problem and was more than likely a problem at Columbine high school, the story he tells of the two is the story of two boys with serious mental problems--according to Cullen, Kelbold was suffering from clinical depression and Harris was a psychopath. In fact, Klebold was more suicidal than anything and it appeared he was more or less unconciously "drawn in" to the whole thing by Harris. The two planned to blow up the building and kill at least 500 people using homemade bombs and the weapons they were carrying; that they only killed 13 plus themselves was partially due to Harris's shoddy bomb construction. But the media bit into the bullying story because it fit a theme of the many school shootings that took place in the late 1990s, and the story grew for several reasons, including a police cover up of the killers' past criminal records and warnings from other parents.

That police cover-up and the media's "crafting" many of the stories and hounding the survivors and the community are the focus of much of the "aftermath" portions of the book, as are accounts of recovery from victims and their parents/spouses. Especially notable are Misty Bernall, the mother of Cassie Bernall, who supposedly was asked if she believed in God and replied "Yes," which helps provide the title of her biography, She Said Yes; and Patrick Ireland, who was seen on national television climbing out the library window after having been shot in the head. Cullen diffuses the Cassie Bernall myth very quickly with information that is more or less out there on the Internet--Cassie never said this and there are witnesses to corroborate that, yet despite the truth being known her mother and the publisher went ahead with the book. Patrick's story is a long, poignant tale--he learns to walk and talk again in a way that seems like it's out of a movie. He is one of the heroes of the book and one of the people you feel the most for walking away from it.

I think you're supposed to feel something for Klebold, too. Harris is treated with curiosity and horror, as he is a clinical psychopath who feels no remorse for anything he has done or he is about to do; Klebold is shown as more sympathetic, a lovesick kid who got manipulated into doing this. And you're supposed to feel that their parents are unjustly vilified because they were completely in the dark (especially Harris's, as he is shown as a master manipulator). It works on some level, especially with the parents, but it's hard to excuse Kelbold from his crimes, even if Harris manipulated him.

If nothing else, it's a gripping book. I didn't want to put it down but because everything is so haunting I found that I had to, so that I didn't get too caught up in it. The book has its detractors--read the 1-star reviews on Amazon and you'll see a couple of people who believe that Cullen gets a lot of things wrong and is fabricating others. And I agree that trying to put thoughts into the heads of Harris and Kelbold so that the narrative reads well is a little too sensationalistic for me and takes Columbine a little too much toward fiction.

But the planning, execution, and reaction are shown exactly as they always should have been: complex. The idea that this was revenge on jocks for bullying two poor kids trivializes the entire story, as does the constant blame game that happens to this day with just about any violent incident (the NRA, video games, Marilyn Manson, violent movies, and many others have been blamed for just about every school shooting before and since). To look at Columbine is to see what you may want to be looking for if you're trying to prevent an event like this from happening, or at least to help you understand what is going on in the head of someone who would actually take a significant amount of time to plan and carry something like this out.

'tis of thee

In time for the Fourth of July, New York Times writer Timothy Egan offers this ("Capture the Flag"):

It’s not unusual to see a flag in liberal provinces, of course. But in the Bush years of sanctioned torture and war built on deceit, many Americans withdrew from overt displays of patriotism. Some said they were ashamed of their country.

While following the length of the Lewis and Clark Trail several years ago, I was struck by the huge number of flags in places like rural Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and Montana. On Indian reservations, the same thing – though often with tribal symbols superimposed. But in the major cities along the trail, St. Louis and Portland among them, I was hard-pressed to find a flag in front of a home.

The article is about how more flags are flying in blue states than they were during the Bush administration. It's kind of a cheap piece, but I think that it might serve as a good teaching tool, especially around July 4 (a righteously patriotic holiday), which I will spend eating burgers and watching A Capitol Fourth on PBS. The lesson is one about symbolism and how those symbols can be appropriated for certain purposes, as well as how they can be interpreted by different groups of people (see also: Flag, Rebel).

Another thing worth mentioning this weekend is that the crown of the Statue of Liberty will reopen to tourists. When I was in elementary school and in high school, I went to the Statue of Liberty on field trips (the beauty of growing up on Long Island is the number of field trips into Manhattan) and never got to the crown because the line was worse than any given DMV. The National Parks Service will be allowing 240 visitors per day and getting up to the crown requires a reservation. This limit is for security and structural reasons--in fact, the crown will close again so that repairs can be done to reinforce the staircase.

The fact that this is happening is remarkable and symbolizes that the veil of fear that the country lived under during the Bush administration is lifting. We still have a long way to go, of course, and to list all of the problems this country has with its attitude and culture would take a lot more space. But this is a good first step.

Mr. Obama, Tear Down This School!

A guest post over at change.org ...

Someone needs to tell Arne Duncan and company that the Berlin Wall didn't come down because Germany wanted to simply "rebrand" itself.

The Washington Post has reported, tongue a bit in cheek, that the Obama administration recently tore down one of the more theatrical symbols of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law -- a red schoolhouse that served as the backdrop for NCLB's signing and for the last seven years has sat on the corner of Maryland Avenue SW, in front of the U.S. Department of Education building.

By the People, for the People, of the People ...

So I have finally finished reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of The United States, which was recently the subject of controversy in Stafford County public schools and that controversy was something I have blogged about on two separate occasions (here and here). In fact, the person who loaned me the book is the AP English teacher who will be using it in his "hishlish" course (a combined AP English and History course) next year, the very course that was the center of the white supremacist-led "controversy."

I condemn him for having the book on the reading list. Who the hell wants to subject high school students to something that LONG?

Okay, seriously now. I actually commend the teachers for picking this book because while it is long and it gets very dry in some places, it is a great alternative to the American history taught to elementary and middle school students, which at some times borders on indoctrination. Besides, nobody in the course in question is being told to flat-out accept Zinn's book as the be-all and end-all. In fact, this is a gateway to critical thinking about history and will help open students' eyes to the fact that "interpretation" is not done simply in English class with works of fiction.

As for the book, it is more or less "complete" coverage of what is general accepted as American history, starting with Columbus's landing in 1492 and ending with the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan (the edition I read was from 2002 and was obviously completed prior to the buildup to the current Iraq war). Zinn's goal, and he succeeds rather admirably, is to show American history from the perspective of those oppressed and often ignored -- blacks, women, workers, homosexuals, and the poor. He also undertakes a great deal of iconoclasm with some of the more mythical figures in American history -- Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and JFK, to name a few. It's supposed to be a fresh perspective.

What I was surprised by was actually how much I already knew. The first edition of the book was published in the early 1980s, so what Zinn was doing at that point was definitely a "fresh perspective," but by the time I went to high school in the early 1990s, at least in my school on Long Island, some of his themes had made it into the classroom. I remember doing an extensive unit on the plight of Native Americans, looking at the perspective of blacks and women during some of the major events, and looking at the homefront and not just the battlefields when talking about wars. No, Virginia, I didn't learn about Civil War battles because I was too busy learning about the stories of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island (located about 50 miles west of my hometown) and who were probably related to many of my classmates.

There are some downsides to A People's History. Zinn, no pun intended, belabors the point about the oppression of the working class and the American worker, although I wasn't sure if that was because I spent an inordinate amount of time in junior high, high school, and college studying the gilded age and the robber barons, which is one of my least favorite periods of American history; or because that's what he is really passionate about.

But his chapters on the 20th Century are amazing. The chapter on World War II is a refreshing look at the war that doesn't condemn it but looks at the machinations of American foreign policy and the playmaking going on behind the scenes, something you don't often see in the History Channel's GUNS! GUNS! BOMBS! BOMBS! USA! USA! coverage (that is, when Ice Road Truckers and the 1,000th airing of some decade-old special on Nostradamus aren't airing). The section on Vietnam was also refereshing because it restores some of the cache that the 1960s antiwar movement has lost to popular culture's caricature of the hippie flower child and the right's constant "you hippies didn't support the troops and that's un-American/rot in hell Hanoi Jane" drum-beating.

It's an important work for people to read, especially those students who are on the verge of turning 18 and voting for the first time and are likely to get frustrated with the American political system. And it always serves the student well to look at things from different perspectives.

Teacher Movie Theater: Summer School

Well, it's not like I wasn't going to eventually get around to covering this one in the ... summer.




There's really not much to Summer School beyond what you see in this trailer and the plot is pretty standard. Mark Harmon plays Freddie Shoop, a gym teacher that winds up teaching remedial English in summer school by virtue of the fact that he is literally the last teacher standing on the last day of school after the usual teacher wins $50,000 on a scratch-off lottery ticket and abruptly quits [one of the movie's most memorable scenes, btw -- Carl Reiner, who also directed, bursts into the principal's office holding the lottery ticket and quits, to which the assistant principal points out that he's seen men win more money and go right back to busing tables the very next day. Reiner's reply? "They're friggin' morons!" Brilliant.]. Shoop is put in charge of a class of flunkies that include a guy who sleeps all day so he can strip at night, a heretofore undiagnosed dyslexic girl who does nothing but run her mouth and drives horribly, a pregnant teenager, a geeky kid whose brothers and sisters were all straight-A students, and horror movie-obssessed Chainsaw and Dave (who are Bill & Ted about two years before Bill & Ted).

All of these students have failed a standardized reading test and have to retake it at the end of summer school. None of them are willing to take the class seriously and Shoop, who has no idea to teach, enlists the help of Robin Bishop (a Cheers-era Kirstie Alley). By the end of the movie, the students and Shoop bond, he makes repeated attempts to bed Robin, and while not everyone passes, the huge improvement in test scores is enough to convince the principal to give Shoop tenure.

Yeah, I just reread that too and this movie is a feel-good movie about test scores. And it's just the type of dumb comedy that George W. Bush would have watched ... wait a second, wait a minute ... THIS MOVIE IS WHAT GAVE US NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!!! THIS MOVIE IS TO BLAME FOR ALL THE ILLS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM!!! IT'S PEOPLE! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!

Seriously, though, this isn't the type of movie that you would show at a professional development workshop; it's not even some sort of intelligent, witty satire about the teaching profession. I'd put it up there with something like School of Rock, which is another movie that's awesome in its own right but not exactly Dangerous Minds. It's worth watching because Harmon's a pretty good doof and it's nice to be reminded of how Kirstie Alley used to be both funny and sexy ... and because of Dean Cameron and Gary Reily's Chainsaw and Dave. Their "At the Movies" schtick as well as their use, in one scene, of prosthetics and makeup to turn the entire classroom into something out of Tom Savini's workshop. Their comic timing and some of the more ridiculous physical humor make it worth the rental.

Although if you're teaching summer school, don't rent this because it definitely gives you the wrong impression.