Why Don't People Learn?

Our media is continuing to cover President Trump in the same way that he's been covered since the 2016 campaign, the same way that has contributed to his ability to continue to get away with ethical, legal, and personal transgressions. For anyone who understands that media coverage of the 2016 election was a big part of the problem, this is frustrating.

There is no question that the media covered Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump differently during the 2016 campaign. A study from Harvard found that, not only was Clinton covered more negatively than Trump, but also that the overwhelmingly negative coverage for the entire campaign meant that someone like Trump ("a charlatan") had an advantage. When all the media coverage is negative, a liar will have a distinct advantage.

I'm tired of the "horse-race coverage" that the media relies on so heavily, especially when they're measuring their success in clicks and likes. I don't care who's leading in polls; I want to know their ideas and policies, their plans, and their positions. Unfortunately, the media are showing very little sign of changing how they cover elections, so it's going to be up to the candidates, themselves, and their parties.

I want Trump to lose in 2020. So, I propose that every Democrat who gets in front of a reporter and/or a camera from now until November 2020 starts by saying something like, "It took the Trump administration SIX WEEKS to respond to the coronavirus, SIX WEEKS during which people got sick, people spread the disease, and people died." It should be pretty easy to focus on Trump's response to the coronavirus since it's likely to still be relevant in the summer and fall. There is plenty to criticize in his response, or lack thereof, and Democrats could score lots of rhetorical victories if they had a single, unifying message.

Yes, I know it's a negative message, which is something Democrats seem to shy away from in campaigns. But honestly, isn't it also a unifying message? Don't the majority of people think Trump wasted those six weeks, when he could have gotten the country on better footing for dealing with this virus? We could have worked harder and faster to develop tests, which are still lacking! We could have gotten Congress together earlier to develop a stimulus plan! We could have collaborated with other countries to distribute supplies and share expertise! We could have accepted the WHO's offer of testing kits!

Mission to Mars

It can be difficult to listen to the daily news when you see things from a different perspective. Somehow, I got saddled with a global view of things, a "big-picture perspective," and it's very hard for me to shake. I'm being genuine when I say that I often wish I could look at things on a much more local, individual level. I'd be a calmer, quieter person. I wouldn't be such a pain in the ass. 

For example, yesterday, as I was driving home from work, I heard a story on the radio about an effort involving students at some of our top universities (Duke, MIT, Stanford, UConn) to send a time capsule to Mars. They are now engaging in crowd funding this project, which will cost an estimated $25 million. The plan is to send a satellite, with the time capsule, on a rocket that is scheduled to launch in 2017. Now, I am normally a strong supporter of science and research, because I recognize that all of the world has benefited from the technological advances that came about from ideas that were once perceived as crazy, or at least impractical. And, maybe this is just a case of me getting old and jaded, rather than of me looking at the big picture. But, I couldn't help but feel a little exasperated when I heard this news story.

Seriously? This is what we're going to do with $25 million dollars? We're going to send a bunch of photos and videos and recordings of ourselves to Mars, where they will sit, untouched, forever because...wait for it....nobody lives there!?! Nobody even visits there! 

Setting aside the fact that time capsules have always seemed to me to be nothing more than ego stroking, I'm floored that a collection of brilliant young people would want to spend any of their intelligence on such a ridiculous project. There must be some important scientific knowledge that will be gained from this that I just cannot see. I'm not a scientist and I don't have the training and understanding that scientists have, so I must be missing something. Please, tell me I'm missing something!

When I heard they were raising $25 million from people paying, $1 at a time, to send their photos to Mars, I immediately thought of the Central African Republic, where a sectarian war has been raging for over a year, leading to a million displaced people and thousands of deaths. Today, about 20,000 people are trapped in 16 different communities because, if they leave their homes, they could get attacked before they can reach safety. Could we use $25 million to get these people to someplace safe, help them get re-settled, help them find jobs and get their kids in schools? Maybe.

I also thought of Syria. More than 6 million people have become refugees or been displaced by the civil war in that country. It's clear that $25 million would be a drop in the bucket to help those people, but gosh, it's better than nothing, right?

And, it's not just about the money, is it? I fully support space exploration. I support nearly all scientific endeavors, so it's painful for me to say this, but...shouldn't we be putting our great minds to work on clean water, healthy food, renewable energy, carbon-emissions reduction, and health care to every person on the planet? I mean, we should have nailed these things down by now, right? Hell, there are still people in the US that don't have the health care they need, while our politicians raise billions of dollars every year to get elected so they can go to Washington and make sure that those people continue to not have the health care they need! My perspective makes it hard for me to support any politician. When I look at one of them, all I see is someone who wants power in order to be powerful, not to help anyone. I don't see people who want to make things better. I see people who want to be powerful and rich and in charge. 

Are these the kinds of questions that philosophers wrestle with? Does anyone actually know a philosopher, someone who, when you ask, "What do you do for a living?" answers, "I'm a philosopher"?

Of course, it doesn't help that the Time Capsule To Mars web site declares that, "A focus market for educational engagement will include K-12-aged kids from all over the world." I've known for a long time that there were many people and organizations that viewed our public schools as opportunities to make lots of money, and I don't oppose making money, in general. We enjoy our standard of living because we have had generations of Americans who have focused on making lots of money, so I'm behind capitalism. I just don't like seeing people referring to students as a market, especially at a time in our history when our schools and the people who work in them are under attack. I became a teacher in 1987 and it's pretty much been a constant stream of attacks from politicians, business leaders, and pundits. My sister, Maggie, warned me about the damage Reagan would do back in 1984. I didn't realize that it was a turning point for public education. Maggie, you're like a prophet.

I seriously want a new perspective on things. Scientists, please help me see the value in this time capsule thing. Point out to me how I'm looking at it the wrong way. 

Extremism and Poverty

I’ve been particularly appalled by recent events in Nigeria. Boko Haram, a terrorist organization, has kidnapped hundreds of girls from their school and threatened to sell them. The Nigerian government has, so far, had little luck in finding the girls. Their efforts are hindered, to some degree, by the fact that many people in the area where the girls went to school support Boko Haram. Many others are indifferent. Although I’m sure nearly everyone would agree that it is wrong to kidnap people, attitudes toward extremist groups are often complex and difficult to navigate.

There’s so much in this issue to address, and I’d love to hold forth on how easy it appears to be for many people in the world to treat girls and women as property. But, that’s for another day. Right now, I’m thinking more about the relationship between extreme poverty and extremism/terrorism. For a long time, I thought I knew what poverty was and I felt grateful to have escaped it. After a little research on life in Nigeria and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I have revised my understanding of poverty. I know nothing about true poverty.

In Nigeria, most people are illiterate and hardly anyone goes to school at all. The average life expectancy in Nigeria is 52 and almost half of the people don’t have access to clean water. Electricity is just a dream to most Nigerians. Diseases that we thought were gone, such as polio and cholera, are still public health concerns for Nigerians. And yet, the country has the 30th highest GDP in the world and it is the second largest economy in Africa. People often live in mud brick houses, but there are also plenty of multimillionaires in Nigeria, including the President. So, there is a chasm between the wealthy and the rest of the Nigerian population.

Life has been difficult in Nigeria for a long time. It was a British colony from 1914 to 1960, when it gained independence. However, a series of military coups in the 1960s and military juntas through the 1990s left the country poor, underdeveloped, and divided along ethnic lines. Recently, there’s been significant economic development, but most elections are seen as fraught with fraud, and corruption continues to be pervasive. Child marriage is common and slavery still exists within Nigeria.

The DRC has been described as the “rape capital of the world,” which gives you an idea of what it’s like to be female in that country. Economically, the Congolese are among the world’s poorest, with the 4th lowest GDP per capita in 2013, according to the World Bank (the CIA puts it at 2nd lowest). There have been ongoing armed conflicts in the country since 1998 and, although there have been some recent signs that the government is gaining control, there are still armed groups in the eastern region of the DRC. Because of the conflicts, there have been few opportunities for children to attend school and 5.4 million Congolese have died since 1998, mostly due to diseases brought on by the unsanitary living conditions of displaced persons. Half of all children under the age of five are malnourished. Less than 10% of the country has electricity and most do not have clean water.

The DRC is also a former colony, although it belonged to Belgium. In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium took control of the territory and named it the Congo Free State. He set up an administration that was brutal in its treatment of the people and ruthless in its extraction of natural resources. In 1908, Leopold’s rule was ended by the Belgian Parliament. Eventually, the DRC was created when it gained independence in 1960. After armed struggles for control, the country came under the leadership of President Mobutu and changed its name to Zaire. Mobutu was forced out of the country in 1997 by Laurent Kabila’s forces and Kabila declared himself President and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has been president ever since.

In both Nigeria and the DRC, armed conflicts continue due to terrorist or insurgent groups in parts of the countries. What the groups are trying to achieve varies, but their goals are generally related to their ethnic or religious affiliations. In both countries, colonization meant that disparate ethnic groups were brought together in a newly created territory with foreign leaderships. Some of these groups had been hostile to each other prior to colonization. In some cases, those hostilities continue today. But the difficulties in these countries today aren’t caused exclusively by ethnic conflicts. 

Extremist groups continue to recruit, mainly among those living in rural regions. Some of these recruitments are forced, with some groups using children as soldiers. However, not all of them are forced. So I wonder why someone would choose to join an extremist group in an armed conflict. What I’m left to conclude is that abject poverty is the main reason. Poverty in these countries is so extreme, so different from what is currently poverty in the US, that it may be hard to really imagine what life is like for the poor in Nigeria and the DRC. 

Imagine you are a woman in your 20s living in a town in the north of the DRC. You have not attended school, you cannot read or write, and you live in a tent. Your tent is located in a small collection of tents of other families. You have no running water, no electricity, no mode of transportation. You have a young child. Your husband has left you to raise the child alone. Every day, you must walk to get fresh water and haul it back to your tent. You farm and gather food without any equipment. You wash your clothes by hand. There is no reliable local government, so no police force to help you when a soldier in the army comes to your tent one night and rapes you. The people around you see the rape as somehow your fault and tell you to be embarrassed by it. 

Would you be angry? Would you feel hopeless? Would you want revenge against the government that employs the soldier who raped you? The government that is full of corrupt individuals who are rich because they have taken the funds that could have been used to give you an education? The government that is led by people who have electricity, running water, all the food they can eat, and transportation? The government that allows you to live in fear, without a reliable source of food and water, without any health care? What kind of justice would you want?

This scares me, because I can see a possible future for the US in which economic disparities worsen, corruption worsens, and extremist groups get more powerful. Given the number of guns in the US that are not owned by our military, this could create a horrible situation in which there are multiple, well-armed extremist groups around the country. It would take a while for things to get that bad, but it could happen. If we don't change how we treat people who are poor, and if we don't change the rules that have made it so hard for people to get ahead, it could get very ugly, indeed.

Poverty is a terrible thing. Extreme poverty is dangerous. When people don’t have hope, they become desperate. Desperate people do dangerous things.  

An Awesome Weekend

I saw Rhett Miller perform on April 5th at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. This was, I think, the 4th time I’ve seen him performing solo and, as usual, he was great. He really throws himself into his performances and he’s got a charming stage personality. He did several songs that will be on the new Old 97s album and they sounded fantastic. I had a great time.

The coolest part, though, was that I got to meet him - twice. During the opening act, I was second in line for the bathroom, when who should come out but Rhett, himself! I was so surprised I just stared and yelled, “Oh my God!” The woman who was in front of me didn’t even seem to notice and just went straight into the bathroom. But I was dumbstruck. He was very nice and smiled and held his hand out for me to shake, saying, “I just washed my hands,” which was nice but I really don’t think I would have cared either way. I actually was able to speak after a few seconds, at least enough to answer him when he asked my name and to ask him if he was sick (his voice sounded hoarse). I then switched from fan-mode to mom-mode and asked him if he would be going home soon, because he needed to rest. Yes, I really did. Full-blown, dorky, mom-mode. He said he was flying home in the morning after a 2-week tour. I said, “You must really miss your kids.” Yes, I really did. He was very nice and didn’t seem to mind that I was acting like his mother and agreed that he did, indeed, miss his kids quite a bit. Awwwww!

After the show, he stuck around so that fans could get his autograph. Andrew was wonderfully patient and stood in line with me,even buying me a t-shirt (after I did some shameless whining) while we waited to get our picture taken with him. When it was our turn, I walked up and was going to re-introduce myself, but he looked at me and said, “You again.” Clearly, I had made a wonderful impression. Anyway, I did introduce Andrew to him and he even smiled for our picture, because he's just a great guy. 

So, I've had another brush with greatness. As I said to Andrew, now I've met Walter Payton and Rhett Miller. Not too shabby.

Have I mentioned, by the way, how much I love my husband? He puts up with my nerdy enthusiasms so patiently and in such good humor. The next day, when I insisted on sticking around in Chapel Hill until my favorite store, Office Supplies and More, opened at 1:00 PM, Andrew didn't complain at all. He even took our daughter to Subway for a drink so I could have time to browse alone. I got a Lamy Studio fountain pen in Imperial Blue. I've been wanting one of these pens for a while, so I think it was an outstanding weekend.

It's Music, Teacha!

What is it about music? It goes so directly to my emotions and memories, physically. It moves me and makes me move. And this seems to be universal. Everyone I know can identify some songs or music that are meaningful, that evoke moments or sensations. Some songs are triggers for me and can immediately make me melancholy, thrilled, wistful, randy, or whatever my association is. I’m like a dog hearing a bell and salivating because I associate it with being fed.

Thinking about something like this makes you realize how close we are to other animals. The difference is just that we have the ability to reflect on our reactions, although I guess we don’t know that other animals don’t also have that ability. Who can say what goes on in the mind of a dog or bear or elephant or ferret? 

My younger daughter has always been able to sing. When she was a toddler, before she could talk, she could sing along with songs she’d heard at home or at pre-school, even though she didn’t pronounce the words accurately and she had no idea what they meant. One of my saddest memories of her is sitting with our family in the food court of a mall while the song “Standing Still”, by Jewel, was playing, and hearing her sweet little voice singing along with it. Even though it made me unbelievably sad, it’s one of my most precious memories of her as a child. Just beautiful. 

She still sings, and now she can also talk. We know that music is an effective way to teach children and, in my daughter’s case, it worked pretty well. She learned songs and, eventually, the words transferred to allow her to communicate with people. But, it all started with that musical beginning; I think it was an emotional connection. Did she need to feel the emotional piece first, before she could understand or see the reason for speech? No idea, and I’m getting a little carried away here, starting to sound like one of those mystical, “I might not be religious, but I’m spiritual” people. I’m neither, but I know that there is a direct line between music and emotions and it’s great and powerful and terrifying. Educators should use it more and music should definitely be part of everyone’s schooling. Teachers have been told for years that their students will need to feel an emotional connection to them and to the content in order to learn deeply, so why not use music to help with that? When I was a teacher, I used music, albeit not as much as I could have, to teach culture and to help my students reflect and make connections. I was surprised, more than once, but the reactions they had, which were sometimes intense, sometimes disdainful, and always interesting.

Here are some songs that always get a strong reaction from me and what I associate them with:

• “Reach Out, I’ll Be There”  - The Four Tops (love, but the really intense first-time-falling-in-love kind that is also really scary)
• “April Fools” - Rufus Wainwright (happiness that comes with setting out on a vacation or road trip)
• “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” - The Temptations (fear)
• “Unsatisfied” - The Replacements (this one used to make me feel like the future was wide open and I had unlimited potential)
• “Freeze The Saints” - Stephen Malkmus (wistfulness)
• “You’re My Favorite Waste Of Time” - Marshall Crenshaw (bliss and love)
• "Summer Breeze" - Seals & Crofts (confusion and trepidation)
• “Brown Haired Daughter” - The Old 97s (sex, sorry if that creeps you out)
• “Every Line Of A Long Moment” - Roddy Woomble (I don’t know what this evokes in me. It’s sort of a painful kind of happiness? A slightly violent transcendence?)
• “This Will Be Our Year” - The Zombies (thrilled, like when someone whispers something really sweet in your ear and you get chills down your spine)

The Meaning of Grades

The Wake County Board of Education recently considered instituting a minimum grade of 50 (out of 100) for assignments that students failed to turn in, and limiting the penalty for work turned in late to 10% of the grade. They were concerned about the practice of teachers giving zeros for missing assignments and taking significant points off of late assignments. Wake County Public Schools is the largest school district in North Carolina, so this policy change would affect a lot of students. Some of the teachers in the county didn’t like the idea of the Board dictating their grading procedures, so the Board has dropped the idea of a mandate and has switched to making these ideas their “suggestions." While I understand and sympathize with the teachers’ discomfort with such specific grading requirements from the Board, I share the Board’s concerns when it comes to grading.

I am totally opposed to giving students zeros. I am also opposed to automatically subtracting points for late work. Allow me to explain.

I believe that, as teachers, we should be concerned with helping all of our students learn what we are trying to teach them. I don’t believe we should be concerned with making sure that they all learn it at the same speed. We know that people are individuals and learn at individual rates, in individual ways, and require individual supports at times. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, we insist on assigning grades to everything and we base our education system on the assumption that all students require one year or one semester to master whatever content we decide to throw at them. Does anyone else see a disconnect there?

First of all, grades are unnecessary and dehumanizing. No, that is not an exaggeration. We can determine whether a student has learned what we wanted him to learn without assigning an A, B, C, D, or F to him. We can simply say “Yes” or “No.” Why do we insist on this obsession with categorizing people, ordering them from best to worst, over and over again? We don’t need grade point averages or class rankings, either. We can eliminate the whole idea of the high-school class valedictorian without causing any harm to the well-being of anyone. Some school districts have already done this, and their students are doing just fine. In fact, I’m guessing it would help us all much more than it would hurt us to stop grading everything. It would put the focus where it ought to be — on the learning, on the skills, on whether students can do things with what they know.

When a student gets a zero, whether because he does a very poor job on an assignment or because he doesn’t do an assignment, what purpose does it serve? If the student’s grade for the course is based on cumulative points or weighted points, which most grades are, a zero can create a situation where, no matter how well he performs on every task remaining in that course, he will be unable to earn a grade that accurately reflects his level of knowledge and skill. Teachers who use 100-point grading scales should never give grades lower than 50, logically speaking. After all, the difference between an A and a B is 10 points. The same holds true for the difference between a B and a C, and between a C and a D. It is nothing more than excessive punishment when a teacher gives a student a zero for a missed assignment. Douglas Reeves wrote an excellent explanation of this in his article The Case Against the Zero.

Regarding penalties for late work, I can only ask again, why? What is the purpose in taking points off of a grade because the student turned it in late? What does this accomplish, other than punishment? If a grade is meant to communicate something about a student’s skills and knowledge, what does it communicate when you lower the grade for tardiness? That he learned too slowly? That, no matter what his work actually showed, he only learned, at most, 90% of what he needed to learn? The most common argument I hear from teachers about this issue is that they are using the late penalties to teach students the importance of respecting deadlines and of responsibility. To which I always want to reply, “Do you meet every deadline you’re given? When you’re late turning something in to your principal, are you penalized 10% of your salary? Or, are your evaluation ratings dropped by 10%?” Just because banks and libraries charge late fees doesn’t mean we have to do it, too. As educators, we should be more reasonable than that.

If grades are supposed to communicate accurate information about how well the students mastered the content, then that’s all they should be about. And, if grades don’t actually communicate accurate information about how well the students have mastered the content, because we have lowered the grades for late or missing assignments, then we need to stop giving them at all. This is where it becomes obvious that, although most teachers are trying to educate their students, a few of them are more interested in wielding power and doling out punishments than they are in pedagogy. They cling to the ideas of the zero and late penalties because they grew up with them and because they like having that power. They will claim it’s about integrity and life lessons, but it’s really just about power and hierarchy. The way our schools are structured only reinforces these dysfunctional power relationships and it is up to us, as the adults in the room, to be the voices of reason. We need to refocus the entire endeavor on the students and their learning, not on ranking and punishing them. 

It's a Family Affair

I don’t normally do this kind of thing, but I am moved to express my gratitude for my sisters. I'm thinking about what I would say to them if I knew it wouldn't make me burst into tears. This is why I don't say these things out loud - fear of crying in front of people. Anyway, I'm going to take advantage of technology and post here things I'd like them to know.

My sisters have been one of the major influences in my life. When I think back on my childhood, I first think of my sisters, not my parents. They were always much more prominent in my life than either my father or my mother and they, in many ways, raised me. I learned more from them than from anyone else.

Annie

Annie is the sister who always took care of me, taught me to have a sense of humor, and made me love silly British humor (think Monty Python). She inspired me to think about things like politics and social policy from a very young age. She was always the epitome of "cool" to me. None of the other 5th graders in my school had t-shirts with the NORML logo on them! It was never easy to find privacy in our house and there wasn't a lot of individual attention available. But Annie would take me with her when she went out on errands so it was just us, and she would let me sit with her and her friends when they were hanging out at our house. She was such a role model for me that I never looked anywhere else for examples of how to be a woman. Annie is the voice inside my head that stokes my ambition and makes me work hard. She also taught me to have fun and to find humor, even in very trying circumstances. She's a model of forgiveness and love and hope. She showed me how to be both openly emotional and strong, and I will forever be grateful to her.

Maggie

Maggie is the sister who, in many ways, is still a mystery to me. She taught me to read, one of my greatest pleasures in life, and wore me out on long walks. She is usually the first sister I mention when people ask me about my family because I'm so impressed by the major mid-life career changes she has made. Through her example, she showed me how to engage in intellectual and personal exploration. As a child, I always thought of Maggie as perfect, the ideal. She was always being pursued by boys and seemed to just know things about life. This made her seem distant from me, since I was swimming in imperfections and, being 5 years younger, knew next to nothing about life. But, just when I would be feeling like I would never understand her, she would reach out and connect with me. I could never predict what would make her laugh, and Maggie laughing is a pleasure to see. She’s a very serious person, but her smile transforms her face. I will always be grateful for her.

Katie

Katie is the sister I played with, fought with, and stuck to throughout most of my life. I guess sharing a bed with someone for 12 years creates a bond. She's opinionated, active, and thoroughly engaged in her life. She's the person who reminded me that I should bake cookies with my kids, carve pumpkins with them, eat meals with them, take them to festivals and shows, and make sure they had the resources they needed to pursue their passions. (Yes, I needed reminding of all of that.) Katie has made me a better parent than I would have been without her influence. I haven't always appreciated her as much as I should have and we've had some wicked arguments. But I know the ways that she has shaped me. She has been the force that has pulled me out of my own head and into the world, and I will be eternally grateful for her.

My sisters are so important to me that I named my children after them. That’s about the highest praise I can offer. So, as Thanksgiving approaches, I’m stating publicly that I am grateful for my sisters. 

Party in NC!

The Republican Party in North Carolina has control over both houses of the General Assembly for the first time since 1896. Add to that a Republican Governor, and now you've got a real clambake! Unfortunately, many of the clams being baked are the students and schools. 


Here's what these fellows have been up to:

• The Excellent Public Schools Act of 2012 (SL 2012-142): this law eliminates "social promotion," meaning that 3rd graders who can't pass the End-of-Grade (EOG) Reading test either have to enroll in "Summer Reading Camp" (we used to call this summer school) or be retained in the 3rd grade. There are some good cause exemptions, but not many. This stupid law flies in the face of years of research showing that HOLDING KIDS BACK DOESN'T WORK!* This law also requires that schools be graded on a scale of A to F based, almost entirely, on students' test scores. There is also the Excellent Public Schools Act of 2013, which is currently making its way through the legislature. It seeks to institute merit pay for teachers (which didn't make it through the 2012 version), would require the State Board of Education to issue performance reports and report cards on schools of education in NC (with "rewards and sanctions"), and would eliminate "career status" (NC's version of tenure) for teachers. NC is a "right-to-work" state, so career status is pretty much the only job protection teachers have.
• HB 146, which passed the House and is currently in the Senate, would require schools to teach students cursive writing and memorization of multiplication tables. This one just makes me laugh.
• HB 162, which passed its first reading in the House, would lengthen the replacement cycle of school buses to once every 250,000 miles. Because safety comes first.
• HB 944, which passed its first reading in the House, would create "opportunity scholarships" for poor students to attend private schools.  In other words, vouchers.
• HB 269, which passed the House and passed its first reading in the Senate, would create special education scholarship grants for students with disabilities to attend private schools.  In other words, vouchers.
• HB 144, which passed its first reading in the House back in February, would grant income tax credits for children who are homeschooled.
• HB 218, which passed its first reading in the House in March, would prohibit "illegal aliens" from attending NC community colleges and universities, even if they paid in cash, I'm assuming.

This legislature has also lifted the cap on charter schools in the state and seeks to create a separate board of education for charter schools, apart from the State Board of Education. 

This is a very hard time to be an advocate for public schools anywhere in the US, but I believe the NC General Assembly is trying to outdo all the other states in displaying its disdain for our work and for the children of the state. People of NC, is this what you want for your children?



*See: 

• http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp116798.pdf
• Peterson, L., & Hughes, J. N. (2011). Differences between retained and promoted children in educational services received prior to and after retention year. Psychology in the Schools, 48, 156-165
• http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/positionpapers/whitepaper_graderetentionandsocialpromotion.pdf
• Moser, S. E., West, S. G., & Hughes, J. N. (2012). Trajectories of math and reading achievement in low-achieving children in elementary school: Effects of early and later retention in grade. Journal of Educational Psychology

Integrity, schmintegrity!

I guess I can't do two positive posts in a row right now because there are several things I need to get off my chest today, the primary one being the complete and utter lack of regard that Congressmen seem to have for the people they "represent."  

WTF is going on?!? Polls, which politicians seem to only pay attention to when they support them, show overwhelming support for expanding background checks on gun purchases to include guns bought at gun shows and on line. This makes sense, particularly given that the Aurora shooter bought his supplies on line.  But, apparently, what we, the people, want is irrelevant. Clearly, it's much more important to our Congressmen that they retain their own power and money, which the NRA has been able to guarantee for them in the past. When I first became principal in my small town in North Carolina, I was given the advice, "Don't upset the DAR." I guess Congressmen must be given the advice, "Don't upset the NRA." But, when you have been hired to do something as important as directing the education of a town's young people, you cannot be swayed by special interest groups whose desires are contrary to what is educationally sound and in the best interests of the students. The same principle ought to apply to Congressmen. Where is their integrity?

Another thing that's been bothering me is the cheating on state tests that has happened since NCLB and Race to the Top were implemented. Earlier this month, dozens of employees and former employees of the Atlanta Public Schools were indicted under the RICO Act because they cheated on the state tests. The cheating was widespread and the system of rewards and punishments tied to students' test scores that the Superintendent implemented contributed to it. There have been documented incidents of cheating in schools in other states and there have been suspicions and allegations of cheating in even more. This will continue as long as teachers, principals, and superintendents are evaluated based on students' test scores. You could say that these educators don't have any integrity, and I wouldn't argue with you. But, let's not ignore the fact that the entire system of evaluating our schools lacks integrity, too. 

If you follow Diane Ravitch, you know her opinion as to why our schools are being subject to these senseless "accountability systems." Regardless of whether it's due to money, power, or prejudice, the pressure on educators for their students to score well on tests is insanely high and has done significant damage to our students and to our schools. We have only begun to reveal the ugliness that these laws have created. One of the most famous supporters of using test scores to reward and punish educators is Michelle Rhee, the former Chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools. Some people have been saying for several years that there was cheating  going on during her reign, but, to date, no one has been charged with any crimes. However, you should read this report if you want to know more about it.

When I've been frustrated by the attitudes and actions of the school board of my district, I have been heard to say, "We reap what we sow.  These people are graduates of our schools." I'm worried that we will all be forced to reap what our Congressmen and the Department of Education have sown. I am far from perfect, and I have made my share of mistakes, both personally and professionally. At times, I have lost my focus on what was best for students. But - and this is what I think is lacking in our Congressmen - I listened when someone told me that I needed to step back and re-think my position.

There's Beauty Everywhere!

If you ever have cause to visit Charlotte, I strongly recommend that you take the time to go to Wing Haven Gardens and Bird Sanctuary. Although it covers only 3.5 acres of land, Wing Haven manages to have a rose garden, a children's garden, an herb garden, 3 pools, 3 ponds, a fireplace, a woodland area, multiple fountains, and too many plants for me to list here. The designers of Wing Haven, Elizabeth and Edwin Clarkson, wanted to attract songbirds when they built their house, in the 1920s. Over time, they attracted a variety of wildlife and did everything they could to nurture their little biome, including taking injured animals into their home until they were well enough to live outdoors.

The entirety of Wing Haven is still attached to the Clarksons' home. What began as their private garden eventually became a place for bird lovers to visit and for elementary-school students to learn about the relationship between plants and birds. This is what is most charming about Wing Haven: it is still located in a residential neighborhood in the middle of Charlotte. On our recent trip, we had to pay close attention because there aren't big signs or billboards leading you there. It sneaks up on you quietly, looking like any other house on the street. To enter the gardens, we had to first enter the Clarksons' home (preserved as it was when they lived there) where a volunteer greeted us, asked us to share our name and address and to pay the $6 entrance fee, and gave us a brief history of Wing Haven. We were then led to the Education Building where a 20-minute video about the Clarksons and Wing Haven was showing in a perpetual loop. After the video, we went outside and entered the gardens through a gate. 

What I saw from the outside did not prepare me for the beauty and serenity of the gardens, themselves. I could hear very little of Charlotte inside the gardens and I forgot where I was, until the path led me up to one of the brick walls over which I could see a neighbor's house. All throughout the gardens, there are marble blocks with quotations carved into them placed among the brick paving stones. There are also several statues of religious figures and some plaques with quotes from the Bible. I loved the scents and the colors, but my favorite part was the sounds of the birds.

My daughter, who had been protesting this outing, became more interested as we walked along the paths and eventually said that it was, "sort of cool." She particularly enjoyed the chipmunks, one of whom let us get very close as it filled its cheeks with seeds from a platter on the ground. This is another unique thing about Wing Haven -- the wildlife is fed. Apparently, the birds eventually became so accustomed to the Clarksons that they would perch on their fingers and eat from cups they held in their hands.

When we lived in Illinois, we visited the Chicago Botanic Garden regularly and I spent some very happy days there with our older daughter, during our summer vacations. But after having visited Wing Haven, I think I prefer something smaller, more intimate. Or, maybe I'm just getting old and thinking how nice it would be to have a lush garden in my own backyard, where I could become familiar with the birds and chipmunks. The whole experience has made me wistful.

L'Ecole des Femmes

Have you read any Molière? He was a 17th century French playwright and, truly, a genius.  I adore Molière. His plays had some of the best social commentary and satire that you will ever encounter. Parts of his plays can make me laugh out loud, although I have a pretty low threshold.  
L'Ecole des Femmes (The School for Wives) is the story of a middle-aged man named Arnolphe who has a 17-year-old ward named Agnes. Agnes has been living in a nunnery since the age of 4, with Arnolphe paying all her bills and calling all the shots in terms of her education. Basically, he has insisted that the nuns not teacher anything that could "lead her astray." He is grooming her to be his wife and he wants her to be so unworldly that she wouldn't even think about cheating on him. He is super-paranoid about being cuckolded. But, of course, the joke's on him because, when he finally moves Agnes to one of his houses, she meets a young man and falls in love with him. All that work and he still doesn't have a wife!

I bring this up because, in recognition of International Women's Day, Human Rights Watch has published a report on child marriage, a practice in which girls under the age of 18 are basically sold to older men as brides. These marriages are common in some countries in Asia and Africa, particularly in the rural regions. Apparently, it can be as easy as going to a girl's father and saying, "Hey!  I'll give you 20 cows for your daughter." If the girl resists, as any sensible girl would, it's likely she'll be beaten by her family or raped by the guy with the cows, the idea being that, once she's lost her virginity, she'll have to stay with the man who took it from her.

Where do I even begin in my reaction to this practice? Well, I begin with a comparison to L'Ecole des Femmes, of course! It seems to me a middle-aged man wanting to buy a teenaged bride is quite like Arnolphe wanting to marry his 17-year-old ward. Any man who would want a girl for his wife is probably looking for the same things as Arnolphe -- someone virginal, sheltered, unworldly, meagerly educated (if at all), grateful for my wealth. Do these countries need their own Molières to help them see how foolish and short-sighted this is? 

Apparently, although I doubt even that would make much of a dent. It saddens me that, in countries where this is happening, there are generally laws against it that go unenforced. So, somewhere along the way, the leaders of these countries acknowledged that this was not a good practice and passed laws against it, but they haven't had the guts to insist that the laws be enforced. In the meantime, girls in these countries remain uneducated (only 39% of elementary-school students are female; only 30% of secondary students), abused, and dealt with (by their own parents!) as if they were livestock. Maybe we should work on staging productions of Lysistrata in these places.

Oh, The Humanity!

Maybe it's because I grew up in the 70s and my teachers had been in college in the 60s, but I've got some issues with our expectations of our teachers and schools right now. I'm not talking about the curriculum, although that would certainly be a good discussion. And, I'm not trying to say that we expect too much of our teachers and schools, even though we do. What I'm talking about is the pressure on teachers to focus relentlessly on academic achievement and closing the achievement gap, with little, if any, regard for the development of the individual student. This is particularly true in schools with high poverty rates. Yes, academic achievement is extremely important, and I agree that we have an unacceptably unequal situation in our public schools today. It's shameful that a country with our wealth and resources has allowed children in poverty to languish. It's horrific that we have allowed schools that serve children in poverty to accept significantly lower academic skills from them. I recognize all the reasons we have created this pressure on our teachers and schools to spend all their time and energy on covering the curriculum, getting higher achievement out of their students, and getting more of them to enroll in college. But what has the cost been? Because, there's always a cost.

I believe that the cost has been (bear with me, please) our humanity. OK, that's a sweeping and dramatic statement, but stop and think for a moment. I did not grow up in affluence. Until high school, I attended schools in a lower-middle-class/working-class neighborhood. My fellow students were white, black, Latino, and Asian. Most spoke English as their first language, but not all. In other words, my teachers were asked to work with the same demographic then that most teachers work with now. Yet, because of how the school and curriculum were structured, and because they were not being evaluated on how we performed on a test, they took the time to connect with each one of us. There were no high-stakes tests and no value-added evaluations. They made us feel valuable. They slowed down when we needed them to slow down and they asked us what we liked and what we wanted to be when we grew up. I personally witnessed several instances of my teachers stopping to talk one-on-one with a classmate about something entirely separate from the lesson. I can remember several instances when one of my teachers pulled me aside and talked with me about what was going on in my life and in my head. I felt loved.

My point is, do our schools today have the "luxury" of encouraging teachers to really get to know their students? Are those relationships valued? Gilbert Highet spends a significant amount of time in his book, The Art of Teaching, explaining the importance of the relationship between the teacher and the student. I worry that we have ventured so far from that realization, the realization that children need to know that their teachers care about them and that their personal development is truly important to them, that we are creating a situation we never intended to create. What will the long-term impact of this be on these students and, therefore, on our society? Will they ever feel fulfilled? Will they ever mature into the steady, responsible, happy people we will need them to be? How deeply will they care about their fellow human beings? Will they be capable of empathy?  

I hope I'm over-reacting, I really do. But I've got questions. Everyone who works in schools today has heard the "Rigor, relevance, and relationships," mantra. They're the Holy Trinity of education, or at least that's how some think of them. But how much attention have we paid to the third part of that group? In schools with high poverty/low achievement, how much attention have we been allowed to pay to that third one? We get so wrapped up in getting kids up to grade level or up to proficiency that we don't spend time on the truly important elements of childhood. We can't. The pressure is too great. 

In my opinion, we have so badly skewed the educational process that it is distorting our view of children. When did the goals of education become test scores? I want it to be about helping children develop into capable young people who understand themselves and the world, at least to a certain extent, and who have an idea of what will make them happy in life. I don't care how they score on standardized tests. If we want to "close the achievement gap," we should demand that our government take steps to greatly reduce the number of children living in poverty. Changing the dynamic between teachers and students isn't going to "close the achievement gap." It's going to exacerbate it.

The Festering Sore We Call Humanity

I've been sick lately, so this may be nothing more than the emotional wrecking ball that accompanies the flu, but I despair for our species.  If I see one more stray dog wandering along the highway or walking through a town looking for affection, I'm going to have an emotional breakdown.  Seriously, what is wrong with us?  How can we be this low, this bad, that we don't even take care of our pets?

I think you can learn all you need to know about someone if you observe the way he treats those who are the most vulnerable.  Someone who takes in a dog, then treats the dog badly, cannot be trusted.  Someone who hits a child or deprives a child of food or health care cannot be trusted.  Someone who sees a person being hurt by others and does nothing to stop it cannot be trusted.  The people with the most power are obligated to help those who are the most vulnerable.  If they don't, the rest of us are obligated to step in.  But how often does that happen?

On New Year's Day, as trite as it is, I was thinking about the future and trying to find reasons to be optimistic.  I was actually thinking about my own personal goals and how to achieve them, but eventually I expanded my reflection to include all of humanity and our relationships with each other and with other species.  I've spent my entire adult life working in and for public schools and I think I've just about reached the limit of my patience with them.  Let me rephrase that: I don't know if I can continue working in public schools if we're going to follow policies that force us to do things we know are wrong.  Anyone who knows me can tell you that I've been saying things like this for several years and that I've threatened to change careers more than once.  I can usually talk myself out of it or find reasons for hope that allow me to continue.  But this time, it might be different.

I feel like I'm living through the Dark Ages of Education, when everyone has forgotten everything he used to know about how children learn and grow.  This is absolutely personal for me, because I have devoted myself to education and I am currently at the mercy of bad public policies.  Anyone with a child in public schools right now knows what I'm talking about.  It's worse in some states and in some communities, but it's tough everywhere these days.  And how did we get to this point?  Where did we go so badly off the rails?  Well, I'm guessing it was when we decided to let the unlicensed people do the driving.

Honestly, I don't know if I'm up to the challenge of fighting for education anymore.  But it isn't just education that has me feeling so despondent.  It's the fact that we have so many people living in poverty in such a wealthy country, and the fact that we have shootings in public places for no apparent reason.  It's the way that we are so good at ignoring sorrow and suffering when it's right in front of us, but can express outrage over being charged a higher tax.  I'm as guilty as everyone else, but I want to do better.  It might seem small, but I want to start with dogs.  I understand dogs and can give them what they need.  The rest of it is just too overwhelming right now, but I can help dogs.  At the very least, I can help the dogs I see that need help.  I know it's not enough to do "the very least," but that's where I'm going to start.  People are just too tricky for me these days.

A Creative Life

After years of a relative creative drought, I suddenly find myself working on several creations at once.  How can this be?  Why can't my creativity be more evenly dispersed throughout my life, to give me a chance to be consistently productive?  Honestly, it feels almost as if I'm suddenly in a mild manic state (although that particular diagnosis has been officially ruled out, thank you very much!) and I'm just trying to keep up with all the ideas that are suddenly pouring out of me.  Where were these ideas 10 years ago, when I had more energy?

I really did think that I had become a boring slug who was destined to be an Art Appreciator for the remainder of my existence.  And, in most ways, I still am an Appreciator, because nothing I've done has seen the light of day yet.  But, this feeling of finally creating again, even if it's still just in private, is wonderful!  I feel useful and interesting and vibrant again.  It's my second wind.

I've always been curious about the creative processes of artists and how they work.  I remember hearing a writer say that he wrote every day for several hours, often in the nude. He said it took away distractions and obstacles to the creative process.  It seems to me that being naked at a computer would be more of a distraction than wearing clothes could ever be, but maybe it's a gender thing.  

Apparently, Jack Kerouac wrote most of On The Road in 20 days of writing, using multiple pieces of paper that were taped together and fed into the typewriter so that he wouldn't have to stop to change the paper.  His wife fed him pea soup and coffee to keep him going.  It took years, however, to get it published.  

Keith Richards has said that writing "Jumpin' Jack Flash" with Mick Jagger took about 30 minutes.  You could argue that they should have quit after that.  Instead, they've gone on for years, grinding out song after song of mediocrity.  

It took Alexander Calder about a year to create the Cirque Calder after starting the project by doing illustrations of the Ringling Brothers Circus.  He created miniature sculptures of animals, circus performers, and apparatuses from wire, wood, and found materials.  He carried them in suitcases and gave "performances" with narration (in French) while he was living in Paris.  After that, he had years of productivity, resulting in many sculptures, mobiles, drawings, and paintings.

Why are some artists creative throughout their lives, at a fairly even pace, while others have one or two spurts of creativity and long periods of producing very little? 

My Ideal Bookshelf

I just read a blurb about a new book called My Ideal Bookshelf.  It includes lists of famous people's favorite books with hand-made illustrations of what their bookshelves would look like.  So, naturally, I decided to try to list my favorite books.

I decided to include books that really affected me, along with books that inspired me to drive further down a road than I would have otherwise.  I tried not to pick books in order to impress anyone or with any other agenda.  Also, I can't draw, so there is no illustration.  I considered including a photograph of the books lined up on a bookshelf, but I discovered that I don't currently have a couple of them.  I guess I've moved too many times.  Anyway, here is my briefly annotated list:

1. The Catcher In The Rye:  A cliché, perhaps, but it had a great impact on me when I was 13.  The thoughts in Holden's head weren't that different from my own and I couldn't help but admire his commitment to his ideals, even as he went over the cliff. It also made me expect more from books than I had expected before.  
2. After You'd Gone:  Maggie O'Farrell's depiction of the love story and the grief of her protagonist is so real and so intense that I started to feel as if I had lost my fiancé.  
3. The Looming Tower:  Anyone who doesn't find this book as compelling as a bestselling thriller isn't alive.  This book made me want to learn more about the Middle East and led me to read more history of that part of the world.
4. The Last Mughal:  I was never really interested in India before I read this book.  I picked it up because I find details (human stories, political intrigues, economic impacts, etc.) of cultural collisions fascinating.  This history of the last days of the last Mughal in India made me want to pursue it further.  It led me to read more about India and to read more by the author, William Dalrymple.  (see #5)
5. White Mughals:  This is one of the most moving pieces of history I have ever read.  At its heart, it is a love story; but it is also the history of the actions and consequences of the East India Company.  Chronologically, the events detailed in this book took place before the events in The Last Mughal.  However, I listed them in the order in which I read them, because after I finished The Last Mughal I wanted more.
6. When Will There Be Good News?:  Kate Atkinson can write so well, it's breathtaking.  I think I've read all of her novels, and I've loved them all.  But, if I have to pick one, this one stands out for me.  
7. Savage Inequalities:  Public schools are my life.  So, it's not surprising that I have read a lot of books about them.  I can always count on Jonathan Kozol's books to remind me why I care so much about public education.
8. Amerika:  I discovered Kafka my freshman year of college, not because of any classes I was taking, but because I liked the cover of The Trial.  After I finished reading it, it stayed with me for days.  So, I went to the bookstore and bought The Castle and Amerika.  I finished Amerika in one day, on a Sunday that I spent in my room.  It actually made me laugh out loud at one point, which you might not expect from Kafka.  I loved it so much that I called my boyfriend to read parts of it to him.  Because he found it as funny as I did, I made him my husband.
9. Claudia:  I recognize that this is a children's book, but it's one of those books that I still re-read.  I love how independent Claudia is and how loyal she and Duffy are to each other.  I love that she has a secret diner that she visits once a week, and that she has a box that she locks her treasures in.  But what I love most about it is her relationship with her older brother.  I never had a brother, but Claudia's relationship with her brother always struck me as wonderful.
10. Young Men & Fire:  This is the horrific true story of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 and the deaths of 13 Smokejumpers.  It's told with real feeling and loving dedication to details and truth.
11. The House of Mirth:  My husband recommended this book to me, and I was grateful that he did, even though it was the first time I ever cried while reading a book.  This was particularly embarrassing, because I finished it while on a flight from San Antonio to Chicago.  When I reached the description of Lily's death, I couldn't stop the tears.  You know how your throat hurts when you try really hard not to cry?  My throat hurt that way, and I still got the pages wet.
12. A Case of Curiosities:  My sister gave me this book.  She has given me several books that I have enjoyed, but this is the one she gave me that I enjoyed the most.  It reminds me of my mother's memory box, which her sister gave to her.  I also love this book because it is, in the end, a mystery.

Saving Songs from Themselves

There are some songs that I hear and think, "This is a really good song.  Why don't I love it?"  In nearly every case, I can eventually identify something (or some things) that, if done differently, would have pushed my opinion of it over the top.  Sometimes, it's the use of a particular instrument, other times it's the singer's voice or the production.  It's made me wish for a collection of cover versions by people who feel the same way I do.

Here are some of the songs that need to be saved from themselves:

1. "Still The One," by Orleans.  This is a good pop song that manages to make me feel good, in spite of the awful singer and the excessive backing harmonies.  If someone with a better voice would cover the song with the same basic arrangement (minus harmonies), I'd be a very happy camper.
2. "Best of You," by Foo Fighters.  Prince's version, during the Super Bowl halftime show, was the best.  I want a recording of that.
3. "Free Ride," by Edgar Winter.  If someone would record it in exactly the same way, but without the dorky synthesizer break in the middle, it would be awesome.
4. "Philadelphia Freedom," by Elton John.  The song is great, the arrangement is fabulous, the production is perfect.  But, Elton John has got to go.  His singing is so affected, he adds so many syllables to the words, that you can barely understand the lyrics.  Someone who can just sing, without going to such great lengths to sound soulful, could push this song into heaven.

I'm sure there are more, but that's all that comes to mind.

The REAL Lesson From Columbine

I heard a story on the radio that made me sad and angry at the same time.  It was an interview with a man, named Sam Granillo, who was a junior at Colombine High School on April 20, 1999.  He was in the cafeteria when Harris and Klebold started their rampage and he hid, along with many other students, in an inner office of the kitchen.  He lost a close friend that day and he was offered free counseling, which he tried.  As adolescents are wont to do, he felt that it wasn't working for him; but he remembers being told that, for the rest of his life, free counseling would be available to him.  This was in recognition of the fact that there are sometimes emotional scars that don't show up immediately after a traumatic event.

Unfortunately, Sam discovered that the services were not available to him when he wanted to return to counseling several years after the event.  He was struggling with some symptoms that are fairly typical of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In his interactions with other survivors of Colombine, he found that counseling stopped being free for them about 2 years after April 20, 1999.  He also found that many of them had been told the counseling would be available for the rest of their lives.  

Thankfully, Sam works as a freelance camera assistant and production assistant, and he decided to put those skills to use in order to bring attention to the mental health needs of survivors of trauma.  Sam has been making a documentary about survivors of mass shootings, such as Colombine and Virginia Tech.  He calls it Columbine: Wounded Minds and he hopes it will lead to a foundation for free services for people who have been through major traumatic events, such as mass shootings or war.  It breaks my heart that he and the other survivors haven't had free counseling services available to them.  I don't understand why we don't take better care of each other.  I really don't.

Power to the People

I've been reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Given the current political climate, I've found the chapter called "Robber Barons and Rebels" particularly compelling.  Zinn describes the events of the second half of the 19th century, including the economic crises and the multitude of strikes and demonstrations by the nascent American labor movement. I find it very disturbing how many parallels there are between then and now, particularly the tight relationship between the extremely wealthy and government. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories and I try very hard not to be paranoid (which has not always been easy, trust me), but when I read about some of the Supreme Court's decisions from the 19th century, decisions that resulted in reversing or eliminating regulations on corporations, I feel that we have gone back in time. How is this different from our current Supreme Court? Maybe we're stuck in a perpetual tug of war between the very wealthy and the rest of us for control over the country. Can you say that we've made any progress at all when it was the Supreme Court of the late 19th century that decided that corporations were individuals, a decision reinforced by our current Court in recent rulings?

Whatever it is, it certainly isn't new and I'm not sure we've learned anything over the past 236 years. Honestly, I used to be a very positive person. I was optimistic and believed in the power of evidence to carry the day. But I just can't seem to sustain it anymore. There are so many people who refuse to be persuaded by facts and, I must admit, it makes me want to break things sometimes. I suppose I could blame FOX News, but isn't the real problem that there is an audience for FOX News? There will always be liars, but why are there so many people who want to believe these particular lies? And when I look at individuals I know who watch and believe FOX News, I'm deeply bothered. If they were all business owners, I would say that their primary priorities were de-regulation of industries and eliminating workers' rights. However, the people I'm thinking of are not all business owners. They work in a variety of jobs and they are not wealthy. But they don't seem able to see that the policies that are recommended by FOX News and the Republican Party are designed to benefit the wealthy and to harm the middle and lower classes, their own people. Would someone please explain this to me?

As someone who has worked her entire adult life in public education, I can't help but feel that this is the true failure of our schools -- our failure to instill in students a healthy respect for evidence and logic. I blame it on religion. 




  

Creativity and Schools

I recently attended a workshop on creativity. It was specifically designed for people who work in schools and the idea behind it was that teachers needed to be creative in order to provide instruction that is differentiated based on students' needs. There were also many elements included in the workshop that teachers could use to help their students develop their creativity. The nice thing about this workshop is that I didn't sit there thinking I was wasting my time and I didn't want to call out, "Bullshit!" at any point. This was a truly rare experience.


The longer I work in education, the more I want, and need, to yell, "Bullshit!" I am particularly inclined to feel this need when I think about what schools could do to help children discover their creativity versus what they actually are doing these days. The worst part of it is that the legislation under which we work (NCLB) and the more recent grant requirements (RttT) make it clear that the thing our governments (federal and state) want us to focus on the most is students' test scores.


Creativity is at the heart of things like innovation, art, entrepreneurship, research and development, and solving problems. Creativity is also difficult to quantify. Herein lies the irony of our current educational policies and "reform" efforts: we want better education for all students because we will need them to be entrepreneurs and inventors ("job creators" in election-season-speak) when they are adults; we want to measure this better education through test scores, like the PISA, in which we compare our students to students in other countries, with the goal that our students score at the top. I'm sorry to have to tell you all this, but you can't have both.


Yong Zhao recently wrote an article for Education Week in which he gives a very clear explanation of this problem and even provides data(!) which show that countries in which students perform very well on the PISA are usually those with the lowest levels of entrepreneurship. But we've known this for a while. Why haven't we stopped the big push for higher test scores?


Well, I think there are several reasons. First, I think many actual entrepreneurs have made quite a bit of money from our obsession with testing and from our politicians' insistence that our schools are terrible. The cynical side of me sees this as the real intention of the politicians who have made the most hay of our so-called failure. People like Joel Klein and  Michelle Rhee have made a lot of money. They are very friendly with some politicians who are quite vocal in their disapproval of our public schools and of teachers' unions. This brings me to the second reason we're still being pushed by test scores: to crush teachers' unions. Republicans (primarily, though not exclusively) have found that they have been very successful in discrediting teachers' unions when they have focused relentlessly on standardized test scores.  


I also think that there is a general insecurity that permeates the teaching profession which prevents teachers from arguing, publicly, with leaders of all kinds. And, there hasn't really been a venue for them because they have been completely excluded from the conversation. But why do they accept this exclusion? Why aren't they organizing national strikes and demonstrations to force their leaders to listen to what they have to say? I'm not sure why the unions and those politicians who can see the bigger educational picture haven't been more insistent on refocusing the conversation about public schools away from test scores. But, teachers -- why have you bought into this mindset? If we must think of our students as future employees (which I think is the wrong way to think about them), we should remember this: when we ask business leaders what qualities they look for in employees, they never say, "high scores on the PISA." They identify things like problem-solving ability, collaborative skills, creativity, ambition. We used to be good at turning out graduates from our public schools who had those traits. If we keep down this idiotic path, I'm afraid we'll end up with a bunch of job candidates who are looking for employers who phrase everything as a multiple-choice question.

The Greatest

Several months ago, I got Rhett Miller's The Interpreter: Live at Largo.  It's an album of him covering a bunch of songs that probably are particular favorites of his.  The recording is live, so you get a bit of concert banter introducing some of the songs.  I have no idea what Largo is/was, but based on the banter, it sounds like this sort of performance was typical: established musicians performing covers.


What I find interesting about it, apart from Rhett's gorgeous, lovely voice, is the songs that he chose.  I had no idea, until I listened to it, that he's a Bowie fan.  (Recently, he wrote a piece in Salon in which he explains to his children why Bowie's Hunky Dory is a great album: Trust me on this: David Bowie's "Hunky Dory")  The Bowie song he covers is "The Bewlay Brothers" and, having never heard it before, I assumed it was a Dan Bejar song.  Rhett also performs songs written by Tom Petty, Elliott Smith, Elvis Costello, The Pixies, The Ramones, Roddy Frame, The Beatles, Dylan, and Robyn Hitchcock.  


I will forever be grateful to Rhett Miller for this album because it introduced me to the song "California Stars."  This is a song that was on Mermaid Avenue, a collaboration (of sorts) among Wilco, Billy Bragg, and Woody Guthrie.  Apparently, Guthrie left behind many lyrics without music and Wilco and Bragg put them to music.  "California Stars" is simply beautiful and, even though I am a mild fan of Wilco and I loved Billy Bragg's Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, I probably wouldn't ever have heard it if it weren't for Rhett Miller.  Thank you, Rhett!  


I was surprised to hear him say, in his intro to "Waterloo Sunset," that it was "the greatest song ever written by a human being."  It is a great song, but I wouldn't call it the greatest song ever written.


This got me wondering what song I would call the greatest song.  This is really such an impossible and pointless exercise that I must try it.  Here is a list of contenders, in no particular order:

• "Every Line of a Long Moment"
• "God Only Knows"
• "Caribbean Wind"
• "Thunder Road"  (I do love a big gesture.)
• "The Whole of the Moon" 
• "Care of Cell 44"
• "A Fond Farewell"
• "Wild Horses"  (I prefer the version by The Flying Burrito Brothers.)
• "Walk Away Renee"
• "The Bleeding Heart Show"
• "Freeze the Saints"
• "Thousands Are Sailing"