Where has the time gone? It’s almost as if some sneaky shyster stole eighteen hours from every twenty-four. And most of you approaching three score know what I’m talking about.
I’ve suddenly reached the age that when I look in the mirror, I see my Dad. And it is now easy for me to understand my grandparents’ wonder at the drastic changes that took place during their lifespan.
My paternal grandmother who came to Texas in a covered wagon saw not only the first automobile, but also the first airplane and then the first moon landing. That had to be one heck of a cultural shock for her.
And now, as many old codgers, I find myself in the same confusing dilemma. I remember the old crystal radios, and today—golly, we have the internet and twit or tweeter or twickel—whatever those things are.
But, I don’t believe anything has changed so dramatically as public schools. I spent forty-one years in education. I enjoyed it. From time to time over the last five or six years, I’d even toyed with the idea of doing some substitute teaching, but then a very good friend told me, “Kent, you wouldn’t survive. You and me,” he said. “Could never fit into it today.”
And I guess maybe he’s right.
Last year, the coach at Texas Tech was canned because he allegedly stuck a player in a dark room. Can you believe it? I couldn’t help laughing—not at the consequences, but at the idea a dark room was some kind of punishment.
I must have spent a third of my grade school days in the book room. Now, I’m not going to say I sought punishment just to go there, but being a book room, there was all kinds of books in the book room. Duh! (this was well before the days of sleaze)
One of my favorites was the pen and paper sketchbook with dialogue of the birth of Texas. I just about memorized that booklet. I still have one. For someone like me, the book room was a treasure trove of reading, whether it was old library books or literature books. I remember one set of ancient encyclopedias called ‘The Book of Knowledge’. There were about twenty volumes, and each had not only several stories, but also eight or ten of Aesop’s Fables.
Punishment? Not hardly. I was Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. Remember that?
Until you’ve had the palm of your hand torn up by a ruler or an apple switch wrapped around your legs, you don’t know what punishment is. You hear talk about the sting of a willow switch, but I kid you not, apple switches put the puny willow to shame.
Something is out of kilter today. Schools punish kids for being kids. A kindergarten boy gives a classmate a kiss on the cheek, and he is suspended. I’m surprised that some of those idiots who call themselves administrators haven’t tried to file sexual harassment charges in such situations.
Oops! I apologize. In Canton, Ohio, a six-year-old boy was taking a bath, naked naturally, when he heard the school bus approaching. He ran outside to stop it. Yes, he was still naked. And the school, it all its smug idiocy, suspended him for sexual harassment.
Such stupidity isn’t confined to Ohio. At Denair Middle School in California, a young boy rode his bike to school. For two months, he flew the American flag on the bike. Students complained, and the boy was ordered to remove it because it was racist.
Racist, mind you. Racist! Only in California. (if enough of us wish for it, maybe it will fall into the ocean)
He did as he was told, but when word spread, and it did, over two hundred American veterans on their Harleys escorted him to school, each one waving a flag.
The school backed down.
And then elsewhere in California, during art class in one middle school, the teacher asked the students to draw a picture of whatever they chose. One young girl drew an American flag with the words ‘God Bless America’ written between the red stripes.
Her teacher said it was offensive, and in the next breath, praises another girl for her drawing of Obama.
The teacher refused to explain why she considered the drawing of the American flag offensive. In all fairness to the administration, after several months and numerous complaints, moved the teacher to elementary.
Smart move, huh?
Now she can mess with the little elementary kids’ minds.
Someone like that has no place in education.
Ask any educator, current or retired, and he can name half a dozen people who don’t need to be in the business. And I wager in every case, administration is well aware of the problem. They do nothing for they want no trouble.
Today, it is extremely difficult to fail a student. The most painless solution, the one that keeps the parents off the school’s back, off the principal’s back as well as the teacher’s, is to pass them. Let someone else worry about them.
Is it any wonder that colleges must offer more and more remediation classes for incoming freshmen?
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Leave Education Alone
Leave Education Alone
I will bring in jobs; I will lower taxes; and I will reform education.”
You know what those are, the meaningless words of garrulous politicians spouting
promises like Moby Dick spouted water.
The most frequent promise is to reform education.
Well, excuse me for saying, but that has been tried time and again. Obviously the reforms do not work because there’s a new reform every four years. The first time I heard it was from Price Daniels, and every governor, senator, and representative candidate since them has said the same thing.
About thirty years back, the legislature started tying teacher raises to various tasks such as test scores, teacher evaluation—a jump through the hoop sort of thing. Of they do is botch things up.
One of the current whims is merit pay based upon student test scores, which is simply another futile attempt to change education by throwing a ton of taxpayer money at a problem.
With forty-one years behind me, I can tell you that money is not the solution.
Another movement is to pay additional money to teachers who go to low-achieving districts. On paper, it sounds logical. In practice, it is not only a waste of money, but also a garish display of the proponents’ ignorance.
Why?
I retired from what I consider one of the best school districts in the state—and I might add, with some of the lowest salaries in Southeast Texas when you compare it to districts of it’s size or larger.
Yet, we always had teachers from higher paying and lower achieving districts trying to find a position within the district. Some tried for years before they made it.
I know for I hired some from those districts. You tell me, why would they be eager to take a cut in pay to come to our district?
Even the idea of paying teachers extra if students score better is like trying to catch water with your fingers.
I used to joke with some coaching friends that I’d hate for my job to depend on 17 and 18 year olds. You never know how they will perform from one week to the next.
Sure, kids are hard to figure, to motivate. Like the old saw, raising a teenager is like trying to nail jelly to a tree.
But seriously, how do you hold a kid’s feet to the fire when he knows mom and dad will sue the district for him? How do you motivate a student when he knows regardless of how poor his work may be, he’ll still get a fifty or higher and probably pass to the next grade just to preserve his precious self-esteem? How do you get extra effort from a kid who sees other students treated differently because they are athletes?
So what happens? Reformers ignore the real problems, serious problems that would make a can of worms look like a simple five-piece puzzle for a three-year-old.
Now if you say ‘it isn’t the students’ fault, then I’ll say you’re right.’ On the other hand, you can’t blame a top-notch teacher for not wishing to undertake such a staggering job when the odds are against him.
States have thrown measuring devices at teachers for decades, and none of them work. They can’t because the basis of measurement is as intangible as a puff of smoke, a student’s effort or lack of.
The big problem in measuring teacher performance is that the reformers go to the wrong ones for input. You don’t ask school board members, senators, state education CEOs, college professors, or local political representatives. Most of them are like those ubiquitous education instructors I had back in the fifties, all theory, and little substance.
I conducted my first student teaching class as the professors taught, and the kids ran all over me. My cooperating teacher, a short, bowling ball of a lady, came in and promised to mash each unruly student under her thumb if they didn’t behave.
They behaved, and I taught. Poorly at first, but over the years, my classes were disciplined with only a few failures because parents and I made the kids study and pass.
When the smoke clears, all that is really left to help education are the parents and community following the discipline of:
1. Parents insist kids do homework
2. Parents stop making excuses for kids
3. Parents stop living their own youth through their children
4. Communities show the same pride in academics as athletics.
Practice those four disciplines, and I promise you, the kids will benefit.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
I will bring in jobs; I will lower taxes; and I will reform education.”
You know what those are, the meaningless words of garrulous politicians spouting
promises like Moby Dick spouted water.
The most frequent promise is to reform education.
Well, excuse me for saying, but that has been tried time and again. Obviously the reforms do not work because there’s a new reform every four years. The first time I heard it was from Price Daniels, and every governor, senator, and representative candidate since them has said the same thing.
About thirty years back, the legislature started tying teacher raises to various tasks such as test scores, teacher evaluation—a jump through the hoop sort of thing. Of they do is botch things up.
One of the current whims is merit pay based upon student test scores, which is simply another futile attempt to change education by throwing a ton of taxpayer money at a problem.
With forty-one years behind me, I can tell you that money is not the solution.
Another movement is to pay additional money to teachers who go to low-achieving districts. On paper, it sounds logical. In practice, it is not only a waste of money, but also a garish display of the proponents’ ignorance.
Why?
I retired from what I consider one of the best school districts in the state—and I might add, with some of the lowest salaries in Southeast Texas when you compare it to districts of it’s size or larger.
Yet, we always had teachers from higher paying and lower achieving districts trying to find a position within the district. Some tried for years before they made it.
I know for I hired some from those districts. You tell me, why would they be eager to take a cut in pay to come to our district?
Even the idea of paying teachers extra if students score better is like trying to catch water with your fingers.
I used to joke with some coaching friends that I’d hate for my job to depend on 17 and 18 year olds. You never know how they will perform from one week to the next.
Sure, kids are hard to figure, to motivate. Like the old saw, raising a teenager is like trying to nail jelly to a tree.
But seriously, how do you hold a kid’s feet to the fire when he knows mom and dad will sue the district for him? How do you motivate a student when he knows regardless of how poor his work may be, he’ll still get a fifty or higher and probably pass to the next grade just to preserve his precious self-esteem? How do you get extra effort from a kid who sees other students treated differently because they are athletes?
So what happens? Reformers ignore the real problems, serious problems that would make a can of worms look like a simple five-piece puzzle for a three-year-old.
Now if you say ‘it isn’t the students’ fault, then I’ll say you’re right.’ On the other hand, you can’t blame a top-notch teacher for not wishing to undertake such a staggering job when the odds are against him.
States have thrown measuring devices at teachers for decades, and none of them work. They can’t because the basis of measurement is as intangible as a puff of smoke, a student’s effort or lack of.
The big problem in measuring teacher performance is that the reformers go to the wrong ones for input. You don’t ask school board members, senators, state education CEOs, college professors, or local political representatives. Most of them are like those ubiquitous education instructors I had back in the fifties, all theory, and little substance.
I conducted my first student teaching class as the professors taught, and the kids ran all over me. My cooperating teacher, a short, bowling ball of a lady, came in and promised to mash each unruly student under her thumb if they didn’t behave.
They behaved, and I taught. Poorly at first, but over the years, my classes were disciplined with only a few failures because parents and I made the kids study and pass.
When the smoke clears, all that is really left to help education are the parents and community following the discipline of:
1. Parents insist kids do homework
2. Parents stop making excuses for kids
3. Parents stop living their own youth through their children
4. Communities show the same pride in academics as athletics.
Practice those four disciplines, and I promise you, the kids will benefit.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
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