Show Me How You Are Searching

Some months back on the PBS NewsHour, I watched students of all ages in a North Carolina school where everyone has a computer. Books in that district will soon be obsolete. The students were all sitting at their desks, eyes glued to their own little screens. Several days later, I heard on the radio that a new study shows that children, especially the young and disadvantaged, learn best by discussing and playing.

Now I see that the iPad will be arriving in the Tillamook School District where I live. I’m old. I started my career as an English teacher in 1965. I love books. But times are changing. Besides, textbooks are expensive, heavy, and environmentally unsound. Even worse, most textbooks, having been dumb-down and edited so as not to trouble anyone with a controversial thought, exude all the personality of Pablum.

When I started teaching in the sixties, I swore I would never become like those cranky old teachers, wringing their hands about the new generation and all their irreverent ideas. Technology is not the problem. I’m a writer and deeply attached to my computer. And yes, the iPads will offer unimaginable opportunities for students. The sky is no longer the limit.

On the other hand, surfing is not learning. Acquisition of massive amounts of information is not wisdom or insight. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” The iPads should definitely stimulate imagination. But Einstein also said that “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” The universe runs according to laws, even the quantum world where electrons behave differently, depending on how you look at them. How cool is that.

But while it’s been said that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” we might also say the same about limitless information. Access to all the information in the universe is nothing more than a whole lot of information if you don’t know how to use it. The scientific method is the same now as it was in the time of Aristotle—the ongoing use of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and verification. These terms are, of course, just fancy language for figuring out how to do or fix stuff whether you’re a farmer, politician, or NASA scientist. Having instant access to all the information in the universe is fun and may harness the attention of students. But despite the 24-7 access to limitless information that is already available to many of our young people, the fact remains that American students rank 29th in science, with one out of four students falling at the very bottom of the rankings. What else do young people need to know in order to solve all the problems we’re dumping in their laps?

Today’s hospitals are all hooked up so that their staffs have great swaths of information at their fingertips. Yet, a recent study of three sophisticated hospitals showed that one third of all patients suffered some adverse complication during their hospitalization. Also, every week in America, forty wrong-side surgeries are performed, as in amputating the left leg when it was the right leg scheduled for surgery.

All our Washington politicians have one or more degrees from our finest institutions of higher learning and large staffs to gather massive amounts of information. Yet many of these politicians appear to lack the character and basic skills required to solve our nation’s growing problems. In fact, much of what the politicians have done has made these problems worse. What didn't they learn in school?

While budget cuts have become routine for Tillamook schools, Education Secretary Arne Duncan just spent $4.35 billion of our taxpayer money on his education reform program called Race to the Top. The idea of the program was that states were to compete for the money by coming up with innovative programs. Except the money went to the eleven states and the District of Columbia who are developing data systems, massive collections of data on individual students from test scores to their interaction with child services. The winning proposals uttered hardly a word about more effective curriculum development.

“Show me how you are searching,” wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein, “and I will show you what you are searching for.”

Technology is a marvel of the human mind. Ray Kurzweil predicts in The Transcendent Man that by 2045, computers and man will have merged. Isaac Asimov predicted the same thing in his fabulous short story "The Last Question," which I first read in 1975. In 2045, I'll be 103. Or not. It's a strange feeling to see the world changing before my eyes, almost by the day. What concerns me is not the future, but what I have experienced in the past that has brought us to this point where we are now shrinking our children's experience within this vast universe to fit inside a tiny screen.

Shouldn’t we at least be asking ourselves if staring into little screens might actually be narrowing our vision as a people. In 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act so we could prepare children to beat the Soviets in the space race and the arms race. Since then, the arts have been systematically eliminated from curriculum and the humanities so denigrated that today in many schools, 30,000 years of what it means to be human have been reduced to an occasional elective. 

Bridgeport Parents Say No to Icebergs

Bridgeport, Connecticut parents complaining about their school superintendent Paul Valles have it right. U. S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan does not.

Mr. Valles, formerly CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and Superintendent of the Recovery School District in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, was hired about two years to revamp Bridgeport schools. But apparently annual salary of $234,000 isn't sufficient, as Mr. Valles has also negotiated an $18 million contract to bring his famed "Valles Turnaround Model" to Illinois schools. Bridgeport parents don't think much of the model which is based on a standardized curriculum, aggressive testing, and the move to reorganize schools under the leadership of charter management companies. And there's evidence to show they're right.

Remember when Secretary Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing ever to happen to education in New Orleans"? This, he said, allowed the old system to be washed away to make room for the "perfect" system. Enter Paul Valles as superintendent. Mr. Valles does what so many school reformers, including Bill Gates, like to do. They go into a district, spend a lot of money, get no results, then just leave and call it a success.

So what happened in the New Orleans Recovery (so-called) School District. Well, reports show that 79% of Mr. Valles charter schools received either a D or an F on Louisiana's school report card. And the average score on the ACT is 16.8, among the lowest in the country. This average score rose by less than half a percentage point under the Valles Turnaround Model. All this, of course, happened at a cost of millions.

Yet, when Connecticut parents see their schools headed down this dead-end street, Secretary Duncan calls their complaints "beyond ludicrous"and an example of too many schools who are clinging to "archaic ideas." Both Secretary Duncan and Mr. Valles served as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. In 2012, only 21 percent of eighth graders tested at grade level or above with only 20 percent at gradge level or above in math. 

In his criticism of Connecticut parents, Secretary Duncan said they were "just another painfully obvious, crystal-clear example of people caught in an old paradigm. This is the tip of the iceberg."
Reformers like Mr. Valles and Secretary Duncan are the iceberg and the voices of denial driving the American public education system full steam ahead into disaster. 

Has the President Thought Out His High-Tech Promise?

In last night's State of the Union Address,  President Obama proposed a program for encouraging schools to prepare students for high-tech jobs. This brought to mind a friend who is a school librarian. She spent the last 15 years building up her library to include a balance of books, computers, and a variety of resources based on the needs of the school’s students and teachers. Recently, her administrators instructed her to get rid of 5,000 books. Then without consulting her, they turned the library into a media center with a coffee bar. My friend says the place now has the look and sound of an arcade. I’m not sure how this will prepare young people for high-tech jobs...unless in our new world it’s enough to be wired from caffeine.

This is probably not what the President has in mind. But if we look at education reform going back to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, we see a history of short-lived reforms that were based on academic fads and political expediency rather than on sound classroom methodologies and the welfare of children. For example, that National Defense Education Act of 1958 was a knee-jerk reaction by Congress to the Soviet's launching of Sputnik. Without any proof, our legislators concluded that the Soviets were first into space because American children were behind in math and science. So they passed the NDEA of 1958 to promote the study of science, math, and engineering. This had the effect of denigrating the arts and humanities and turning those of us in these fields into second-class citizens. This is what began the systematic elimination of these subjects from our school. Today, in many schools, 30,000 years of what what it means to be human have been reduced to occasional electives. 

So we did beat the Soviets in the space and arms races to become the world's sole military and economic superpower. But what was the trade-off? When I take a look at our nation's leaders, I see men and women with degrees from our nation's most prestigious universities. Yet they seem to lack the character, skills, and compassion required to solve our country's problems so that all of our citizens have the equal opportunity promised by our founding documents. We the People do not seem to understand the powers of citizenship well enough to demand better schools for our children and decent health care for all.

George Santayana warned us that those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it. I invite you to take a few minutes to read up on the National Defense Education Act on my Web site, The Gulliver Initiative and then follow the links at the bottom of the page to discover more about what has turned our education system into a national disgrace. I believe that unless We the People begin to demand better from our local school boards and administrators, our we are never going to learn what we need to know to demand better solutions from our leaders.

The President and His Priorities

As President Obama beings his new term, he speaks of America's limitless possibilities. America’s possibilities would be limitless if all our children were getting the education they need and deserve. Since the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the arts and humanities have been eliminated from many schools—and with them, the spirit of creativity and humanity required to solve the nation’s problems and carry us into the future. Math and science alone are not the gateway to innovation. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” 

In his new Organizing for Action campaign, the President encourages us all to become involved locally and nationally in issues related to immigration, gun violence, and budget concerns—all vital concerns. However, this campaign offers no encouragement to take action to improve the American education system.

When will we address the fact that for decades schools have been sending an increasing number of young people into the world with little more than minimum-wage skills? And when will we ask ourselves why America’s leaders have degrees from the nation’s top universities, yet lack the character and skills required to solve the nation’s problems? In fact, it seems that our leaders not only fail to solve our problems, but often make them worse with their stalling and ideological bickering. What are we teaching our children?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls his plan for improving our schools Race to the Top. Race to the Top of what? As America was busy becoming the world's economic and military superpower, our education system deteriorated into a moral and intellectual disgrace. Restoring the arts and humanities to their rightful place alongside math and science in our schools would be a good thing. But nothing will change until the lessons of humanity become more important than the acquisition of money, position, and power. 

Makeshift Memorials

Last night on the TV news, a story about Newtown, Connecticut showed a huge warehouse filled with toys, games, stuffed animals, and dolls sent to Newtown from all across America to honor the memory of children and teachers gunned down and held the troubled town. In the warehouse, Newtown residents are now sorting out the mounds of stuff and trying to figure out how to distribute or dispense with the items. I couldn't help wondering how much money had been spent on these toys. I estimated that there were probably at least three thousand items. At $10.000 each, the collection would total $30,000, not counting postage to send them from across the country. Even if I'm off by half, $15,000 is also lot of money. My thought was that this money could have bought a lot of books for children whose homes and schools were destroyed by hurricane Sandy. Also the toys could have brought joy to many poor children over the holiday. Or homeless shelters could have fed a lot of hungry people. Even if the games and plush toys are donated to good causes, the cost to Newtown of doing this will not be insignificant. I've noticed in previous tragedies that makeshift memorials are piled high with stuffed animals and other such things. Perhaps, we should rethink the idea of the makeshift memorials—maybe send or even create a card offering condolences to the bereaved and make a small donation of goods or money that will help alleviate the grief of the world in more practical ways.

Arms or Arts?

December 23, 2012

This morning, I heard more discussions on TV about putting armed guards in schools than I’ve ever heard about eliminating the arts and humanities from our classrooms. Since the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the arts and humanities have been budgeted away so that today in many schools, more than 30,000 years of what it means to be human have been reduced to an occasional elective.

Several days ago, a gun enthusiast on TV advocated arming teachers. A skeptic said that in recent public shootings, the shooter wore bullet proof gear, so did this mean that the teachers would have to do the same and if so, what about students? As a former English teacher, I thought it’s way easier to ban books than assault weapons. The American Library Association's list of 100 Banned and Challenged books for 2000-2009 includes The Color Purple; Brave New World; To Kill a Mocking Bird; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Bless Me, Ultima; Slaughterhouse-Five; Of Mice and Men; and The Catcher in the Rye. . . .

Michelle Rhee: Education Reformer or Corporate Steamroller?