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31 December, 2008

British schools too much for British teachers

Negligible disciplinary options means high stress

Teachers are calling in sick at the rate of 15,000 a day. Almost three million working days were lost last year, up from 2.5million in 1999. Some 311,000 teachers took at least one day off.

Tories called the official figures 'very worrying', linking them with mounting bureaucracy and disruptive classroom behaviour.

The Government's school workforce statistics, which cover full and part-time teachers and classroom assistants, show the average number of sick days has risen from 5.1 a head in 1999 to 5.4 in 2007. The overall number of days lost was 2.9million. This equates to almost 15,000 teachers off sick on each school day. The total of 311,770 who took sickness absence is well over half the number working in English schools.

The rising levels of sick leave mean more pupils have to be taught by unfamiliar supply teachers who may not be specialists in the subjects they are teaching.

Tory children's spokesman Michael Gove said the cost of teacher absence could run into hundreds of millions. Schools have to pay œ103 to œ210 a day for supply teachers.

Teaching unions said stress was 'endemic' to teaching in Britain. NUT acting general secretary Christine Blower said: 'Given the enormous pressures teachers are under, it is remarkable they have so little sick leave. 'The vast majority of teachers, sometimes unwisely, go into school, even though they may be ill, because of their commitment to the children. 'Unfortunately, too much stress is endemic to the job and it is the responsibility of not only the Government but the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats to explore ways of reducing the excessive numbers of initiatives faced weekly by schools.'

Despite record education spending under Labour, teaching vacancies have risen by a quarter in the past year - with four in ten new teachers quitting within a year. Critics say they are weighed down with too many initiatives, too much form-filling and too much bad behaviour.

Mr Gove said: 'It's very worrying that the number of sick days has risen so dramatically. 'The Government needs to investigate the reasons so we can make sure there is as much stability as possible in every child's education.'

According to the General Teaching Council for England, there are 465,672 registered teachers currently working in England's schools. The figure does not include classroom assistants. The highest sickness rate was in London, where 50,840 full and part-time teachers took leave. The lowest rate was in the North East of England, with 13,360 teachers taking sickness absence.

Mark Wallace, from the TaxPayers' Alliance, said last night: 'Taxpayers and pupils are the real victims of this epidemic. Teachers clearly need firmer rules and better management to both reduce stress and stop people getting away with taking sickies.'

But the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: 'Teacher sickness levels remain low and stable and well within industry norms. 'Of course, teaching is an incredibly rewarding but also very challenging role and we have worked hard to reduce the pressures on teachers. 'We have employed record numbers of support staff, given teachers a half-day a week outside the classroom to plan and prepare lessons, given teachers the full support of the law in dealing with unruly pupils and removed admin tasks from the list of activities which they can be asked to do.'

A spokesman for the largest teaching union, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: 'Teachers are highly dedicated to their jobs and to the children they teach. 'We would question the release of these statistics if their intended purpose is to seek to undermine or call into question the hard work of teachers, who on a daily basis raise attainment and help children reach their full potential.'

Source




Fake teacher? No problem in the Australian State of Victoria

Your legion of highly-paid bureaucrats will protect you (NOT). And when you do get found out only a slap on the wrist awaits you

THE state education watchdog has been rapped over the knuckles for failing to uncover a fake teacher working at a Melbourne primary school. The Victorian Institute of Teaching registered Renai Brochard, despite conflicting birth dates and signatures on her paperwork. Brochard, 41, was given a suspended jail term for stealing the identity of South Australian teacher Ginetta Rossi, her husband's former wife. She used the name to gain registration in Victoria and taught for several months last year at Melbourne Montessori School's Caulfield campus.

Brochard was exposed only after Ms Rossi tried to renew her teaching status with SA education authorities. It is believed Brochard is now working in a childcare job in Adelaide.

A recent institute of teaching disciplinary hearing heard Brochard was paid an annual salary of $58,828 at Melbourne Montessori. She misspelt Ms Rossi's first name on some registration documents and had whited out her name and replaced it with Ms Rossi's on her birth certificate, the hearing was told.

The Montessori principal approved Brochard's birth and marriage certificates, although not authorised to do so, the institute panel found. In its decision, the panel, headed by Susan Halliday, said thorough scrutiny and cross-referencing of all paperwork by the institute would have revealed the discrepancies. The panel said the institute had tightened checking procedures, but it recommended staff receive more training. The fraud was the first case of its kind to go before an institute of teaching hearing.

Brochard was convicted at Moorabbin Magistrates' Court on April 17 on charges of deception and making a false document. She was given a three-month jail sentence, suspended for 12 months.

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30 December, 2008

British schools reject assistance from parents

New theory-based and union-supported guidance discourages parents from going on school trips. For some schools it may mean no trips at all. But having parents present might dilute that wonderful CONTROL that Leftists get off on

Imagine the scenario. You're a mother who has volunteered to accompany your seven-year-old son's class on a trip to the Science Museum in west London and are in charge of a group of five boys, including your son. On the journey home, there's a problem. As you are waiting to board the Tube, the fire alarm sounds and there is an order to evacuate the station. What do you do? According to new government health and safety guidelines, there's a risk you'll snatch up your son and make a dash for the nearest emergency exit, neglecting the four other boys in the process. As a spokesman for the Department for Children, Families and Schools put it: "There is the potential for divided interest in the case of an emergency." By contrast, a teacher would try to look after the entire group.

Understandably, parents are outraged that they can no longer accompany their own children on school trips. "I loved taking my eldest daughter and her class on a school trip because it gave me a chance to see how the children interact together," says Tessa Park, a mother of two, who has accompanied class excursions to the London Aquarium in the past. Now, with parental involvement being scaled back, her volunteering days are in jeopardy. Just as ministers have published a manifesto calling for more "learning outside the classroom", Park has received a letter dissuading mothers and fathers from accompanying their own children on trips. "It's a very odd attitude," she says. "I'd like to see the evidence to support this claim that schoolchildren are less safe when they are looked after by a parent. Quite frankly, in the event of an accident I would feel safer if my children were in the hands of a mum who knows their names."

Park, whose children attend Bute House prep school in west London, is not alone in believing the government has taken a wrong turn. Another parent at the same school, who wished to remain anonymous, is even more vociferous. "Statistically, how many pupils have died on school trips because a parent has saved their child first?" she asks. "There is a greater chance of my child dying crossing Hammersmith Broadway. There are quite a few parents who think this is just the nanny state gone mad." She added: "Parents have been going on school trips since time immemorial. If you are a responsible parent, you will manage. This isn't white-water rafting down the Zambezi; it's a walk to a museum."

Bute House was one of several prep schools that attended a course on the issue run earlier this year by Roger Smith, a consultant who is a member of the government's outdoor education advisers panel. So far Smith has briefed about 600 private schools on the updated guidance. He says that while it is not yet statutory, it is already considered "best practice" not to include parents as supervisors on trips involving their children. "If a trip did go pear-shaped, a school would be asked why it had not complied with this advice," he says. Indeed, the consequences can be severe.

Fines and even manslaughter charges have been brought in the past against schools, councils and teachers who have failed to protect pupils on trips. In 2002 a teacher was jailed for manslaughter after an accident in Cumbria when a boy of 10 drowned in a river. In 2003 Leeds council was fined 30,000 pounds after admitting to flawed safety measures on a trip during which two teenage schoolgirls drowned. The turning point, however, was a tragedy more than a decade ago. In 1993 four sixth-formers died on a canoeing trip in Lyme Bay, in the West Country, in one of Britain's worst canoeing disasters. Peter Kite, the director of the outdoor centre responsible for the trip, was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for three years. After this, one teaching union, the NASUWT, told members to be wary of supervising trips for fear of being sued, and nationally the number of excursions fell drastically.

The union has now changed its stance, but insists that children be accompanied by teachers rather than parents. Longstanding guidelines suggest that one adult should be in charge of six seven-to-nine-year-olds on an outing; the ratio is one adult to three for children aged under five. Chris Keates, general secretary of the union, explains. "We have long had serious reservations about school trips. More and more schools were counting parents in the ratio of adults to children required for a trip, when they should really only be including trained staff. "While parents can be helpful, it can be hard for staff to get them to understand the safety aspects. Schools are taking a risk if they don't use qualified staff." Even on a trip to Kew gardens? To a museum? "On any outing," she says. Keates acknowledges that "some people might say that not counting parents as part of the adult-pupil ratio will jeopardise trips going ahead but we say that if you can't get enough qualified staff to accompany them, you shouldn't be going in the first place". [Translation: "We want more jobs for teachers"]

Several head teachers spoke out against the guidance last week. Dilys Hoffman, head of Beckford primary school, in north London, said: "I don't think it's okay for the government to be interfering with schools' practice. Sometimes it's quite a good thing for a parent to accompany their own child, especially if the child has special needs or behavioural issues. Children love having them there. "Provided parents are given guidance and have had police checks, I don't think it's a problem." Karen Coulthard, head of Berger primary school, in east London, agrees. "Today our nursery children are going to a pantomime and the ratio is 1:1, so we ask for one parent to accompany their child," she said. "It's very important to get the youngest children out and accessing the wealth of resources on our doorstep". For decades parents have helped schools to do just that.

Source




Australia: No standards for teachers?

A PRIMARY school teacher accused of swearing at his Year 5 students and allowing them to chase each other around the classroom with a baseball bat has been given the all-clear to continue working with children.

Victoria's top teaching watchdog has found the man, who is referred to only as RJS, may remain registered as a teacher despite being found guilty of incompetence for failing to adequately supervise students, maintain a safe environment or adequately protect students from harm.

It was alleged the male teacher told Victorian Year 5 students, aged about 11, "Don't f..king swear at me" and asked "Why the f..k are you behaving this way in my class and not other people's classes?" A disciplinary panel was also told he said to one class, "You are a pack of arseholes", The Australian reports.

The teacher, who has been working at a school in NSW, admitted during the Victorian Institute of Teaching hearing that the school was not aware of the disciplinary proceedings against him nor the fact that he had had his previous contract at a Victorian school terminated. The disciplinary panel heard the teacher had problems supervising and controlling students at a school that drew pupils from a disadvantaged and culturally diverse community, who had various behavioural problems.

It was alleged RJS started employment as a casual relief teacher before being hired as a PE and environmental studies teacher in May 2006. Soon afterwards, his colleagues complained about his lack of supervision of students. The panel heard this included incidents where the teacher permitted a Year 5 student to climb over a tennis court fence, failed to take action after a fight between two pupils, allowed students to wander off and did not stop Year 3 pupils pushing and shoving while in his class.

The panel was told the teacher allowed Year 5 students to engage in wrestling in class. He said he was showing his pupils the difference between fake television wrestling and real wrestling at the Commonwealth Games. The school's principal told the panel she had concerns about the teacher when she hired him.

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29 December, 2008

Obama Picks a Moderate on Education

The president will ultimately decide whether to take on the teachers' unions.

Barack Obama picked Arne Duncan only partly for his skills on the basketball court. As secretary of education, he will be running one of the administration's most important finesse games. The CEO of the Chicago public schools and the ultimate diplomat, Mr. Duncan rises to the rim at a moment when teachers unions are, for the first time, facing opposition within the Democratic Party from young idealists who favor education reform. They want to recapture what should always have been a natural issue for Democrats: helping underprivileged kids get out of failing public schools.

Considering the reviews from the right and the left, you might be confused about whether Mr. Duncan is a signal that Mr. Obama's administration is lining up behind the reformers or supporting the status quo. Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor (and _ber reformer) Michelle Rhee endorsed the pick, as did President Bush's Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings. But Mr. Duncan also has fans among traditional Democrats, whose main interest is keeping the teachers unions happy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi applauded the choice, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised that he would enjoy a speedy confirmation.

So what should we make of Mr. Duncan? One promising clue comes from a group called Democrats for Education Reform, part of the growing voice for reform in the party. DFER is known to cheer Democrats brave enough to support charter schools and other methods of extending options to parents. Joe Williams, the group's executive director, predicted that Mr. Duncan will help break the "ideological and political gridlock to promote new, innovative and experimental ideas."

In Chicago, Mr. Duncan is credited with laying out plans to close 100 underperforming public schools. Fans also note that he helped raise the cap on charter schools to 30 from 15. But his record is short of miraculous. Why have a cap on charter schools at all? And the teachers unions extracted plenty of concessions, including a ban on new charters operating multiple campuses.

Mr. Duncan is certainly no bomb thrower. His role instead will be to harness the entrepreneurial spirit of young idealists in the party, like DFER and the tens of thousands of young people who join Teach For America each year. This group, which continues to attract highly skilled young people, is fast creating the new Democratic elite in the education arena while challenging the education establishment.

At forums during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, several big-city mayors lined up with reform principles against union demands. Cory Booker of Newark, N.J., said that "As Democrats we have been wrong on education, and it's time to get it right." Washington, D.C.'s Adrian Fenty, a strong backer of Ms. Rhee's effort to negotiate tough terms with the unions, remarked that the politics of school reform are changing fast. At one DFER event last year, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. used the word "monopoly" -- a major affront to teachers unions -- to describe failing schools. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third ranking Democrat in the House, is another important convert to the idea of more parental choice in education.

It's all a bit delicate, which makes Mr. Duncan Mr. Obama's man for a good reason. He's known for a flexibility that allows him to float between the traditional Democratic strongholds and the new wave of reformers in the party. With proper implementation, Mr. Obama could accomplish on education reform what President Bill Clinton did for welfare reform -- taking a previously Republican issue and transforming it from within the left.

But unions aren't about to slink off into the sunset. If they're losing some of their clout at the national level, they maintain their grip locally. In many places, teachers angle to usurp the language of the reformers while pushing their own agenda. Thus "merit pay" has been twisted into a system that bears little resemblance to the original concept of paying teachers for teaching kids successfully. Instead, it has become pay-for-credential, offering salary bumps for continuing education and other qualifications, with no anchor to proven results in the classroom.

Mr. Duncan is a reformer at heart, if one who works collegially within the system. But in the end, much will depend on his boss. Whether Mr. Obama is an artful fence walker or a real agent of change -- on schools or anything else -- is a mystery the coming year may finally clear up.

Source




Peek inside Britain's schools and shudder

If you want to know how bad the future will be, take a look at our schools, and shudder. We know that they are nurseries of ignorance, which is why we have to import disciplined, hard-working, competent young Poles to do so much of the work in this country. We should also be concerned that they are places of fear and violence, where authority is nothing but a joke.

The police have admitted (under Freedom of Information laws) that they were called to violent incidents at least 7,000 times in English schools last year. Since FoI disclosures are about the only Government statistics we can trust, I think we should take this seriously, though - since not all police forces replied - the figure is probably much higher. There is no reason to think that things are much better in Scotland or Wales.

The Sixties revolution, which destroyed the authority of parents and teachers alike, will soon reach its long-cherished goal. Everything stuffy, traditional, repressive, old-fashioned and boring has been swept away in the world of the young. They are all free now. The trouble is that they do not know how to be free, because they have also been taught that morals are `judgmental', religion is `outdated' and that adults are just obsolete ex-teenagers groping their way to the grave, a nuisance to be ignored or violently shoved aside.

They have discovered that the law is not just feeble (though it is) but that it frequently punishes those who try to uphold what used to be the rules of civilisation. And that, while we now have armed policemen licensed to kill virtually at will, our authorities recoil in horror at the very idea of an adult smacking a child. Listen to this slightly edited account of a day in a supposedly reputable school in a prosperous and middle-class area of one of the Home Counties. It is written by a highly experienced teacher, returning to work after a few years away.

`The class turned up totally out of control... it was similar to controlling a riot ... it took about 15 minutes to sit them down and make them do some work. `A boy in the front row turned his back on me and decided that he would try to wind the class back up into a frenzy, by calling out, waving his arms and by completely disregarding my presence. 'I thought he was going to mount the desks in front of him and cause other pupils - or himself - some damage. I had no intention of smacking him, but to restrain him from his own actions I went to grab him.'

The result of this was that the teacher concerned was accused, by another pupil, of the heinous crime of `smacking'. Thanks to this, the person involved has given up teaching and is - quite reasonably - worried in case the Useless Police and the CPS are called in and mount one of the zealous life-ruining prosecutions of innocent teachers that they so much enjoy.

Now, listen carefully, to see if you can hear any Sixties liberals admitting that they were wrong to dismantle adult authority. And listen even more carefully to see if you can discover a `Conservative' politician with the courage to say that this must be put right, that marriage is miles better than non-marriage, that a man without a conscience is wilder than any beast, that fathers should be respected, that parents must be allowed to smack, that teachers should be able to cane.

All you will hear is silence, mingled with the sound of boots kicking a human head as if it were a football, the head of another poor fool who tried to stand up for what was right, and thought he could appeal to the better natures of people who have been brought up feral, and have no better natures.

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Australia: Reprieve for "old" maths in the State of NSW

The "old" syllabus is why NSW students learn more than kids in other States

The NSW Government will delay introduction of a long-awaited new syllabus for Higher School Certificate mathematics courses to avoid confusing schools with further changes when a national curriculum is introduced. The new courses were to be taught to year 11 students from 2010. It is about 30 years since the senior maths curriculum has been reviewed.

The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, has asked the Board of Studies to delay the new documents to avoid complicating the national curriculum agenda. "In light of the current work on the national curriculum, the minister has asked the Board of Studies to complete initial work on the senior maths syllabus but to delay implementation while monitoring the progress of the national curriculum," a spokeswoman said. "This is to avoid confusion for students, teachers and parents."

The NSW Board of Studies said it would meet on February 17 to discuss the status of the new HSC maths courses in the context of a national curriculum.

Representatives of the school-resources publishing industry contacted The Sun-Herald about the delay. A maths editor said book sellers who relied on income from the sale of syllabus documents were concerned.

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28 December, 2008

Teacher criticises British 'can't touch' culture after being throttled by pupil as colleagues looked on

A teacher who won 250,000 pounds compensation after a pupil tried to strangle him has criticised a 'can't touch' culture in schools after other staff initially refused to intervene. Colin Adams, 50, was attacked by a 12- year- old boy, who knocked him to the floor before punching and kicking him, and grabbing his neck. But despite other teachers yelling at the boy to stop, no one stepped in to help. Mr Adams's ordeal ended only after another teacher eventually came to his aid by forcing the boy's thumbs back to release his hold. Later, the unnamed teacher admitted to Mr Adams that he was afraid the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, would accuse him of assault.

It later emerged the boy had a history of violence, having previously attacked pupils and a security guard at a library opposite Kingsford Community School in East London. However, he was not properly disciplined over the assaults and staff were not warned about his past.

Mr Adams yesterday criticised Government-backed 'inclusion' policies, which he claimed had led to pupils with severe behavioural problems being taught in schools where staff are not trained to cope with them. His comments come only days after figures released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed police were called to schools 10,000 times last year to deal with violent incidents.

Mr Adams's attacker was expelled after the assault in 2004 and given a referral order by the courts, which involved him being supervised for six months. It is rumoured he was sent on a holiday as 'a reward' for completing it.

As a result of the attack, which lasted for several minutes, Mr Adams, of Ockendon, Essex, was forced to give up work after suffering severe stress and back problems. His distress was further compounded by a lengthy court battle to win compensation, charted by his wife Sharon, 47, in a diary she started after the assault. Four-and-a-half years later, he secured 250,000 in an out-of-court settlement from Newham Council.

Writing in her diary, Mrs Adams said the boy had been misbehaving in another teacher's class and Mr Adams, as head of department, had gone to his aid. He ordered the boy to leave but the pupil refused. Mr Adams then left the room and was attacked by the boy from behind. She wrote: 'He came around to find the boy strangling him. The teachers told the boy to let go, but he did not. 'Teachers are very wary of touching children these days as children all know their rights and they can take a teacher to court. 'It only came to an end when a male teacher grabbed hold of one of the boy's thumbs and caused him pain and made the boy let go. 'This teacher didn't want to admit what he'd done for fear of being accused of assault.

'The police informed the school they could have kicked the boy in his back to make him let go, but I am not sure there is any teacher anywhere who would be willing to do that for fear of repercussions.' Mr Adams, who has two grown-up children, added: 'The whole thing has left a bitter taste. We are trying our best to move forward but it's a slow process.'

A Newham Council spokesman said: 'Our staff have the right to work without fear of assault or harassment. 'In this particular case, an appropriate financial settlement was agreed following advice from our insurers, which was based on Mr Adams's loss of salary, future loss of earnings and damages for the injury he suffered.'

Source




University of Calgary Pro-Life Students Victorious - Administration Backs Down from Arrest Threats

University of Calgary officials have not followed through on their threats to arrest Campus Pro-Life students for erecting the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) display on campus grounds this week. s past Wednesday and Thursday pro-life students at the university had set up the GAP display, which includes graphic images of abortions and comparisons between abortion and past genocides. In the weeks leading up to the display, however, the university had threatened the students with arrest, suspension, expulsion, and other censures, if they did not agree either to turn the signs inwards, so that they could not be seen by passersby, or not to erect the display at all.

Leah Hallman, president of Campus Pro-Life, told LifeSiteNews.com that she sees the fact that the university backed away from its threats to arrest the students as only a partial victory. The university, she said, may still be planning on taking legal action against the students who were present at the GAP display site, who had their names recorded by campus security officers. "What the university administration will do is not clear, but I hope the university will continue to allow us to express our pro-life message and will rescind the order to turn the signs inward, especially as we are determined to display the GAP signs in the Spring semester, as we have in previous years," Hallman said. "The most important thing right now," Hallman said "is for people to write to the university to express their support for the right of freedom of expression at the U of C."

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," a statement on Campus Pro-Life's website begins, quoting the French philosopher Voltaire. "These words of Voltaire are being ignored by the University of Calgary and we, their own students and the victims of their oppression, wish to expose their censorship, intimidation, and bully-tactics. "We implore our fellow Canadians-who may disapprove of what we say but who will defend our right to say it-to support our rights to free speech, to communicate their disagreement to U of C, and to withdraw support from the university until U of C upholds academic freedom."

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27 December, 2008

Standards for teachers: How amazing

Any standards at all have to be welcomed these days. Similar standards for students are too much to expect, of course. Do I sense a double standard there? Do teachers recognize what is needed to gain respect but not convey that to those they teach? "Everything is relative" certainly seems to be often taught. Traditional Leftist double standards, it would seem. Story from Britain below

Teachers must behave as pillars of the community and be role models to their pupils, the industry’s professional body said yesterday. Those who drink heavily and disgrace themselves - even outside school hours – face disciplinary action for bringing the profession into disrepute, whether or not they have broken the law. Some teachers have had to undergo counselling or provide medical proof of abstinence from alcohol to remain on the teaching register, the General Teaching Council admitted. g council presented a draft of its new code of conduct for teachers, on which it is consulting. The wellbeing of children is the main thrust of the code, with an even higher billing than learning. Teachers could be disciplined if they fail to cooperate with social workers or do everything in their power to protect children, the draft code says. They should pick up on and address problems at the earliest possible stage. They must also report colleagues if they have concerns that their practice puts children at risk.

The draft code says that teachers have to demonstrate high standards of honesty and integrity, and uphold public trust and confidence in the teaching profession. This includes teachers “maintaining standards of behaviour both inside and outside school that are appropriate given their membership of an important and responsible profession”.

Keith Bartley, the chief executive of the General Teaching Council, admitted that expectations of teachers had increased significantly in the past few years. He said: “The new code will have to reflect the fact that teachers are working more closely with other professionals. Some of the cases that have had national prominence recently show that, if a teacher has concerns, they have a duty to raise and pass on those concerns.”

Whereas the previous code, drawn up in 2004, set out what teachers should not do, the 2008 draft describes in unambiguous terms how teachers are expected to behave. Sarah Stephens, director of policy at the teaching council, said: “It gives greater clarity about what it means to act as a role model, and about a teacher’s conduct outside the classroom.” Mr Bartley added that, at some of the organisation’s professional misconduct hearings, teachers had been required to agree to undergo therapy. He added that teachers could be found guilty of unacceptable conduct without breaking the law – for example by belonging to a party that held racist views. “We’re saying to teachers that, as individuals, they have to consider their place in society,” he said. “There’s a sense that this [code] has to reflect society’s expectations of the people to whom we commit our children.”

David James, the teaching council’s head of professional regulation, said: “We have the ability to apply conditions to a teacher’s registration. We can say to people, ‘You can remain a teacher but you must undertake retraining, or counselling, or provide evidence of abstinence from drinking’. That happens quite frequently.”

The draft code requires teachers to forge links with parents, and consider their views. It also says they must keep up to date with technology and social changes. The organisation is investigating what schools and local authorities are doing to tackle the problem of incompetent teachers. It will report the findings of its research next year.

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26 December, 2008

Laptops Do Not Increase Academic Achievement in Reading and Writing

With the Texas Legislature almost ready to begin its 81st Regular Session in January 2009, I am sure the technology lobbyists are out in full force. For years, they have been trying to pressure Legislators to pass legislation that would force taxpayers to fund laptops for every student in the Texas public schools. The question is:Do laptops on every student's desk raise academic achievement?

In January 2008 a report entitled Evaluation of the Texas Technology Immersion Pilot: Outcomes for the Third Year (2006-07) was released. Based upon four years of solid research, here is the answer to the academic achievement question: "There were no statistically significant effects of immersion on the TAKS reading and Writing."[TAKS -- Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills were the tests used to measure academic achievement for TIP.]It seems that laptops on every desk did not raise student academic achievement in the most important foundational skills a student will ever learn -- reading and writing.

With the downturn in the economy across our nation, it is more important than ever to make sure that our tax dollars are well spent.I hope that Texas Legislators will read the following information about the Texas Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP) and make responsible decisions based upon this scientific research.

BACKGROUND ON THE TEXAS TECHNOLOGY IMMERSION PILOT (TIP)

The Technology Immersion Pilot was created by the Texas Legislature in 2003.Senate Bill 396 called for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to establish a pilot project to "immerse" schools in wireless laptops. The mandate came without any funding; but through a competitive grant process, the TEA used more than $20 million in federal monies to fund the TIP project. Concurrently, a federal research study has been evaluating whether student achievement improves over time through this immersion in laptops.The Texas Center for Educational Research is a non-profit research organization in Austin that has been working with the TEA for four years (2004-2008) to produce research-based results.

*Since January 2008, two more reports (July 2008 and December 2008) have been produced that emphasize other aspects of laptop immersion; but neither focuses on the lack of academic achievement on TAKS reading and writing.(Please see links posted at the bottom of this article.)

My concern is that the capstone report (December 2008 -- Progress Report on the Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020) that has been produced for the 81st Legislature really seems to "dance around" the most important issue which is the academic achievement.Instead the report puts out information on issues of secondary importance (e.g., whether students and teachers like laptops, whether the immersion has been deep enough, whether students' computer skills have improved, whether discipline problems have decreased, whether teachers have received enough technology training, etc.).These may be interesting to study in and of themselves but do not really get to the heart of the matter which is whether laptops indeed improve students' reading and writing skills appreciably - enough to justify the huge expenditure to provide individual student laptops for all students in Texas.Legislators may be prone to read only the December 2008 TIP report and disregard the January 2008 TIP report that holds the real "meat" of the issue.

More here





25 December, 2008

The Dumbing Down of Academe

Just when you think the folks on the left can't get any goofier, they go and surpass themselves. If silliness were an Olympic event, these lunkheads could be counted on to bring home the gold. The fool's gold, that is.

Actually, they could probably excel in the sprints, seeing as how they're not weighed down with a whole lot of common sense. In case you haven't gotten the word, the religious left, as I like to think of them, seeing as how they live their lives by a certain dogma, have now determined that poor people are terribly under-represented on America's college campuses. It was, I suppose, only a matter of time. After all, if no institute of higher education can justify its existence unless its student population is composed of X-percent of women, Hispanics, blacks, gays and the physically handicapped, some Democrat was bound to notice that there still remained an untapped source of future votes; namely, poor, young whites.

Diversity in the student body is the catch phrase. But, as you may have noticed, there is no parallel diversity along the faculties. In the humanities departments of most American colleges, professors run the gamut from liberal to radical. Given a choice between Ahmadinejad and a Republican, a large majority would vote for the little schmuck in the windbreaker.

Frankly, I see no reason to give preferential treatment to students for no better reason than that their parents are poor. If a mix of humanity is what they're really seeking, I say they should throw open the doors to idiots. And, no, I'm not referring to those aforementioned professors in the liberal arts who get paid a lot of money for doing nothing more than foisting their half-baked politics on a bunch of highly impressionable 18-year-olds. No, I'm talking about the genuine article -- people with subterranean I.Q.s.

I mean, if diversity is of such monumental importance, why limit it to race, gender and national origin? Obviously, members of these groups have far more in common with each other than they have with the intellectually- challenged -- or whatever it is that the P.C. crowd is calling dumb people this week.

Honestly, I haven't a clue why college would be a more exalting experience just because the student in the next seat has different pigmentation or hails from a country where indoor plumbing is optional.

Admittedly, it's been many years since I was a collegian. Still, as I recall, the real value of the four years, aside from learning how to drink and how to talk to women without stuttering, was the enforced proximity to the minds and works of Socrates, Newton, Freud, Shakespeare, Plato, Milton, Michelangelo, Einstein, Da Vinci and Jefferson, and was neither enhanced nor diminished by the color or creed of the other students.

The truth of the matter was that my interest in my fellow scholars, and I don't think my attitude was at all atypical, was limited to wanting to date the more attractive coeds and wanting to eviscerate those brainiacs most likely to raise the class curve.

Inasmuch as smart, poor kids already receive academic scholarships, one can only assume that it's the stupid ones whom the social engineers are trying to cram through the ivied portals. But, inasmuch as once in, they're destined to flunk out, I have a better solution. I suggest we take our lead from "The Wizard of Oz." The Scarecrow, as you may recall, didn't waste four years boning up for final exams. The great and powerful Oz merely handed him a diploma, and just like that, Ray Bolger was squaring the hypotenuse and jabbering away like a young William F. Buckley, Jr.

Why not give diplomas to anybody who wants one? In a day and age when people are wasting their parents' hard-earned money majoring in things like Gay Studies, Sit Coms of the 60's, and Comic Books as Literature, why not do the decent thing and just hand out sheepskins to anyone who says, "Please"? A built-in bonus of my plan is that with all those goobers off the campuses, there would be additional parking spaces for the people studying to be doctors, mathematicians, and scientists. After all, when all is said and done, most college graduates aren't really smarter than other people. They just think they are.

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Police called to 10,000 violent cases in British schools annually

Police officers have had to deal with 10,000 violent incidents at schools in a year. Teachers were forced to call them in to deal with attacks on staff and pupils - some involving knives or other weapons. Figures from 25 out of 39 English forces showed that officers were called to deal with school violence more than 7,000 times in a year. Extending the numbers across all forces gives almost 10,000.

The extent of police involvement in school incidents emerged as increasing numbers of heads ask for officers to be permanently stationed on the premises. Official figures suggest at least 450 schools have an officer on site. But increased liaison with police has prompted warnings by children's groups that pupils are being criminalised for playground spats. In one case, an 11-year-old boy spent three hours in a cell after he brandished a plastic toy gun at a schoolmate.

The Tories asked forces how many times they had been called to school premises to deal with an attempted or actual violent crime in the year from September 2007. There were 7,311 incidents tackled by the forces that responded. The Metropolitan Police reported the most call-outs, with 2,698. This was followed by Thames Valley with 697 calls and Kent with 425.

Violent incidents mainly involve offences against the person by pupils, parents or intruders, including threats, physical attacks, sex crimes and robbery. The figures emerged in the wake of a series of school attacks. Shaquille Clarke-Adams, 14, was stabbed three times in the chest and stomach in front of pupils at Allerton Grange High in Leeds. Carrington Mgbeanulu, 15, was knifed just inches from his heart at the gates of Cardinal Wiseman School in Greenford, West London. Meanwhile prefect Darcey Menezes, 16, was stabbed five times in the back while trying to protect younger children from a gang that was terrorising them with a pitbull terrier at Salesian College in Battersea, South London. These incidents follow the killing of Luke Walmsley, 14, in 2003. He was knifed through the heart by Alan Pennell, 16, at Birkbeck School, North Somercotes, Lincolnshire, in front of pupils.

Official figures show that 344 secondary school pupils are suspended from school every day for assaulting other children. Despite this, just 1,350 pupils were expelled in the school year from September 2006 for assaults on students, while 980 were thrown out for attacking teachers. Tory children's spokesman Michael Gove said: 'The number of violent incidents in schools that lead to police being called is very worrying. There will always be the odd occasion when teachers need to call on the police for support but at the moment they do not have sufficient powers to nip discipline problems in the bud.'

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers says nearly a third of state school teachers are punched, kicked or bitten by a pupil and one in ten is injured by students. The Department for Children, Schools and Families said: 'The overwhelming majority of schools are safe and behaviour is very good. Head teachers have more powers than ever to deal with discipline problems.'

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24 December, 2008

Jobs for snobs won't make you happy

This post from Australia is a bit light-hearted but the author has a point

My friend Tom has a burning ambition to work on a road gang. Whenever he drives past roadworks, he slows down and beeps his horn at the blokes in hard-hats; waving, smiling, winding down his window to say hello. They don't often wave back. Tom's a solicitor at a big-city law firm. He has spent a decade studying, working overtime and establishing himself in a job he hates with a passion.

He's not alone. Marie's loathing of her insurance firm is so intense she's begun trying to bankrupt the place from the inside, fantasising about the day the liquidators move in. The only thing preventing Kate quitting as a emergency doctor is an occasional illicit blast of pharmaceuticals from the dispensary - and the fact she's eaten so many consolation Tim Tams she's worried her scrubs are the only clothes that still fit.

This is a strange little phenomenon that started in the first few years after we left school. The people who were apparently the brightest - the ones who got the highest marks - soon became the most likely to be hollow-eyed and unhappy. Most of them despised their colleagues only slightly less than they loathed their bosses. They'd lie at parties about what they did for a crust. Everyone had reverse ambition: grand dreams of work at the drive-thru.

These are white-collar people. They're not slitting throats in abbatoirs or mopping up spilt orange juice in shopping malls; they're working in industries of prestige, with opportunities for taxi-charge rorting and other fringe benefits.

Objectively, there's no good reason for them to do jobs they hate. Except for our oddly snobbish system of university admissions. Last week, thousands of NSW kids went through the agony of discovering their marks in the Higher School Certificate. To the students, the scores are desperately important. Those four little numbers will determine the future shape of their lives. And what a shame that is.

This is how it works. A clever kid works as hard as possible for the final two years at school. He'd quite like to be a PE teacher, or maybe a tour guide. He makes it through exams, avoids getting arrested at Schoolies, and learns his university admissions index ranking - let's say it's 97.35. Then he looks at the line-up of university courses he can scrape into - it might be podiatry at the University of New England, or actuarial studies at UNSW.

Tour-guiding and PE are forgotten. Mum and Dad say it'd be mad to waste his time on anything like that, when his marks are giving him the chance to get into such flash degrees. Everyone from teachers and classmates to Nanna's friends urge him to make the most of his potential by entering the highest-mark course he can possibly get into. They say it'd be a terrible thing to waste all those marks by going into a degree that requires a mark of only 70.5, or - horrors! - an apprenticeship. And so our brilliant school-leaver spends the rest of his days removing ingrown toenails or sitting behind a desk worrying about whether his managing partner likes him.

How did we get into this logical cul-de-sac? Instead of considering what will make our kids happy, our collective tendency is to think only about whether their marks are high enough for the most impressive-sounding courses. Off they go to law school or radiology lectures - even if they'd much rather own a tea-shop or wax eyebrows. Any top-scoring student who fails to enter a high-mark course is regarded as a bit thick - or at least ungrateful and in need of a good war. Wouldn't it be better to encourage kids - and educational institutions - to think more cleverly about how they guide students into careers?

A federal review of higher education last week recommended changing the university admission system so a high school mark is not the only criterion for determining entry. The review suggests including interviews and other tests for gauging what suits individual students That's a good start. The next step is a bit trickier - eliminating the ingrained snobbery that shoehorns kids into the wrong careers. Law and medicine might be potentially lucrative careers, but they're no social good if they make Junior miserable.

Tom claims he's seriously considering applying for work as a stop-go man on a road gang. He says he'd be sure to wave back at all the passing cars. I'd love to see it.

Source




9-year-old is called a drug dealer over cough drops

Case prompted when student shared Vitamin C candy with friend

A Florida elementary school accused a 9-year-old student of selling drugs for sharing cough drops with friends. Officials at Patterson Elementary School in Clay County decided, however, not to discipline Khalin Rivenbark, who met with the girl and her father Wednesday.

The accusation arose one day earlier when the child got into trouble after her father put some Halls Defense Vitamin C cough drops in her school bag when she was recovering from a cold, she told Jacksonville's WJXT-TV. She later shared some with friends.

"[A teacher] saw me with the cough drops out and I guess she saw me give it to one of my friends, and then like, 'Oh, I see this good business going on around you,'" Khalin told the station. "She said, 'You're selling drugs.' (I said) 'No, I'm not.'" The 9-year-old said one of her friends gave her $1 for the cough drop.

Her father, Andy Rivenbark, told the station, "It's absolutely crazy." The student said the cough drops were in her bag, and two friends asked for one, so she handed them out. One friend insisted on paying. "She felt guilty taking the cough drop or whatever, so she gave me a dollar. I didn't want to accept it, but she had me take it," Khalin told the Jacksonville TV station.

The student handbook for Clay County Schools says, "If a student must take a prescription or over-the-counter medication during school hours, it must be received and stored in the original container, and be labeled with the student's name, current date, prescription dosage, frequency of administration and physician's name." But WJXT reporter Diane Cho questioned whether the Halls cough drops qualify as a drug, since the ingredients were nearly the same as Lifesavers candy.

Andy Rivenbark said he didn't get a note or call from school administrators about the incident. "It's definitely detrimental to somebody who we teach the whole time growing up, 'don't use drugs because drugs are bad.' To accuse her, it's unnecessary to make a comment like that," Rivenbark said.

The report said the meeting included an admonition from school officials for the child not to bring cough drops again.

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23 December, 2008

Black college students get better grades with white roommate

That living with white work habits rather than more entertainment-oriented black habits might be beneficial for study is no surprise. As we read elsewhere, however, the whites concerned didn't like the experience

A new study of college freshman suggests that African Americans may obtain higher grades if they live with a white roommate. A detailed study of students at a large, predominantly-white university revealed that while living with a white roommate may be more challenging than living with someone of the same race, many Black students appear to benefit from the experience.

For African American students, this could translate into as much as 0.30-point increase in their GPA in their first quarter of college. White students, on the other hand, were affected more by the academic ability of their roommate than by their race. While the study results may seem one-sided, earlier studies by these researchers and others reinforces the value of students' experience with members of different races and ethnic groups.

Researchers from Ohio State University and Virginia Commonwealth University found that nearly one in every six interracial roommate relationships failed, meaning at least one roommate moved out, by the end of the first quarter. But African American students who were paired with a white roommate performed better academically than did those with a same-race roommate.

These African American students may be better adjusted to college because they live with someone who can help them learn about the challenges and norms of a different environment, said Natalie Shook, lead author of the study, who started the work as a graduate student at Ohio State. "It's already known that interracial roommate relationships are more difficult than same-race relationships. But despite the problems, we've shown that there are benefits in how well Black students perform academically," said Shook, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University.

She conducted the study with Russell Fazio, a professor of psychology at Ohio State, who has been studying interracial attitudes and relationships for the past 15 years. The pair published the results in the October 2008 issue of the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. The pair collected data on college freshman in more than 2,700 dorm rooms at a large, predominately white university. They studied how successful relationships were for students who specifically requested to live with someone, as well those who were randomly assigned to a roommate. Room assignments were studied alongside the students' SAT or ACT scores, autumn quarter GPA in the fall of 2001 and 2002, and their ethnic background to test for significant differences between students in all room types.

The results showed that randomly assigned roommates were more likely to move to another room, regardless of the students' race. Fifteen percent of randomly paired interracial relationships dissolved, compared to the 8.1 percent and 6.4 percent of randomly assigned same-race white rooms and same-race African American rooms, respectively. But the researchers point out that the number of interracial room dissolutions was much lower than they expected. "The university in the study was experiencing a housing crunch that year, so more students probably may not have been able to change rooms for the first quarter. Some of the previous work showed much higher rates than did our work here. But of the 85 percent of those that did try to work things out, we see real, tangible benefits," Fazio said.

The researchers found that African American students who scored higher on their ACT (24 and above) and SAT (1040 and above) were more likely to be successful in college if they were randomly paired with a white student. Black students who scored lower on their ACT and SAT did not see any improvement in their GPA if they roomed with a white student. The findings suggest that the interaction between a white and an African American student may help orient these minority students to a predominantly white university, Shook said. By living with their white counterparts, the African American students are finding someone with whom they can study and learn from in ways other African American students cannot offer. "Particularly for minority students, there is a lot of added stress to belong and succeed at a predominately white university. This intergroup contact and exposure to diversity may help minority students adjust in ways same-race relationships cannot," Shook said. "And if we can help them adjust more quickly to find their university identity, then hopefully that can also translate into more academic success."

However, white students' grades were virtually unaffected by the race of their roommate. White students earned higher GPAs when assigned to someone who was more successful academically. "It's a predominately white institution, so their roommate is not a means by which they can get integrated into the community. So the race of the roommate proves irrelevant and the day-to-day environment becomes more important. If their roommate is very competent and studious, or less competent, more of a partygoer, that has a larger impact on their success," Fazio said.

Even though the race of their roommate did not affect them academically, the researchers believe that living with an African American benefits whites in another way. Fazio said previous research suggests that many of the automatically activated stereotypes that whites may harbor about African Americans, consciously or subconsciously, dissolve when they interact extensively with someone of another race. This interaction not only helps white students get over their initial fears and prejudices, it also affects comfort level with other minorities in the future. "It is definitely not easy for students at first; it is more stressful and more difficult to live in an interracial situation than in same race situations. But if people stick with it, their racial attitudes improve and it definitely outweighs any initial difficulty. This is just one way we can overcome our misconceptions and biases and learn to appreciate our differences earlier on in life," Shook said.

Source




7 Canadian students suspended for refusing anti-Christian class

Officials are 'veering into creepy Orwellian political territory here'

Seven Christian students in Quebec have been handed suspensions in the last few days - and could face expulsions - for refusing to participate in a new mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture course that, according to a critic, is a "superficial mishmash of trendy theoretical platitudes" with the goal of convincing children that "all religions - including pagan animism and cults - are equally 'true.'"

Canada's National Post has reported on the developing confrontation between educators who have ordered students to take the course and students and their parents who object to what they see as a virtual indoctrination into a social and moral relativism. While seven students already have been targeted for punishment, hundreds more are demanding to be relieved of the obligation to attend the classes, and several parents have begun legal actions over the course.

Diane Gagne's 16-year-old son, Jonathan, is one of those hit with a suspension. He has refused to take part in the two-hour-per-week course because it teaches values that run counter to his religious beliefs. "He told me, 'Mom, I am still standing, and I'm going to keep standing and fight this to the end,'" said Diane Gagne. "We're prepared to go right to expulsion."

Lawyer Jean-Yves Cote is representing the family against the suspension imposed by the public high school in Granby, Quebec, as well as another family with a court challenge to the state demand. Under the course requirements, "it is the state deciding what religious content will be learned, at what age, and that is totally overriding the parents' authority and role," Jean Morse-Chevrier, of the Quebec Association of Catholic Parents, told the newspaper. In 2005, a change in the law eliminated a family's right to choose among "Catholic," "Protestant" or "moral" instruction in classrooms, a change that took effect last summer.

Quebec Education Department spokeswoman Stephanie Tremblay told the newspaper school boards have gotten more than 1,400 requests from parents for their children to be exempted from the instruction, which emphasizes feminism over Christianity, and suggests Raelians are centuries ahead of other beliefs. She also confirmed school boards have rejected every request for an exemption. She explained it is not "religious instruction." "It is religious culture," she stated. "We introduce young people to religious culture like we introduce them to musical culture."

Officials at Voice of the Martyrs, who work daily against persecution of Christians worldwide, noted on a blog posting the students are to be applauded for their opposition to state religious teaching. "We believe that the state has no right to mandate religious education, force students to learn the content of other religious and to deliberately seek to undermine the religious convictions of those who refuse to accept a relativistic view of truth. It is the right and responsibility of parents to train their own children according to their own religious beliefs, not those of the state," said the posting. "Religious courses, if offered, should be optional or alternatives provided. But the state must not mandate what religious content will or will not be taught to children, especially against the wishes of their parents."

In the National Post, columnist Barbara Kay took school officials to task for teaching what she described as "a chilling intrusion into what all democratically inspired charters of rights designate as a parental realm of authority." She continued, "ERC was adopted by virtual fiat, its mission to instill 'normative pluralism' in students. 'Normative pluralism' is gussied-up moral relativism, the ideology asserting there is no absolute right or wrong and that there are as many 'truths' as there are whims."

"The program is predicated on the worst worst possible educational model for young children: the philosopher Hegel's 'pedagogy of conflict.' As one of the founders of the ECR course put it, students 'must learn to shake up a too-solid identity' and experience 'divergence and dissonance'. "The curriculum is strewn with politically correct material that openly subverts Judeo-Christian values. In many of the manuals, ideology and religion are conflated. Social engineering is revealed as the heart of the ECR program; in the most recently published activity book, for example, Christianity is given 12 pages, feminism gets 27 pages...."

She continued, "Paganism and cults are offered equal status with Christianity. Witches 'are women like any other in daily life;' 'Technologically [the Raelians] are 25,000 years in advance of us.' And considering that of the 80,000 ethnic aboriginals in Quebec only 700 self-identify with aboriginal spirituality (the vast majority of ethnic aboriginals are Christian), aboriginal spirituality (falsely equated with environmentalism) is accorded hugely disproportionate space and reverence."

Cote said the issue could end up before the Supreme Court of Canada soon. He said his second case, in Drummondville, is to be heard before Superior Court in May, and will test if the course infringes guaranteed rights in Canada. Since the course is required for all students, not just public school students, 600 of the students at Montreal's Jesuit Loyola High asked for exemptions and all were rejected. Now the school has started its own court challenge. Principal Paul Donovan told the Post the mandates require relativism. "What it essentially says is that religion is just, 'You like tomato soup and I like pea soup, so don't be all offended because someone likes tomato soup. It's really just a matter of preference,'" he told the Post. "Religion could be Wiccan or Raelian or any of the new movements or atheism or agnosticism."

Sylvain Lamontagne told the Globe Campus education publication the course is religious fast food. "We can't do this to children. It will only confuse them," he said. "Religion isn't a Chinese buffet. You can't just pick one and then another however you want."

Kay cited the course's "gloss" of the Golden Rule: "Christianity's 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' Judaism's 'Love thy neighbour as thyself ' and Islam's 'None of you is really a believer if he does not wish for his brother what he wishes for himself.' All are posited in the ERC text as the same acknowledgement of the common humanity of all God's children," she wrote. "But in fact, there is a deep interpretive chasm between Christianity's 'others' and Judaism's 'neighbour' - both of which refer to all people - and Islam's 'brother,' which refers only to fellow Muslims. Here is 'divergence and dissonance' truly worthy of 'le questionnement.' But encouraging real critical thinking is precisely what the ERC course employs duplicity to avoid," she wrote. "Quebec is veering into creepy Orwellian political territory here," she said.

The government requirement for teaching a potpourri of religious concepts as equal is just the latest effort on the part of the Canadian government to put new restrictions on Christians. WND previously has reported on a number of Human Rights Commission cases in the nation that have targeted Christian pastors and others for "hate" crimes for stating their biblically-based opposition to the homosexual lifestyle. Last spring, Pastor Stephen Boisson was ordered by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal to stop expressing his biblical perspective of homosexuality and pay $5,000 for "damages for pain and suffering" as well as apologize to the activist who complained of being hurt.

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22 December, 2008

British faith school pupils 'outperforming others at every age'

Pupils in England's religious state schools scored significantly better examination results at seven, 11 and 16 than those in community schools, figures show. On average, 85 per cent of children at Anglican, Roman Catholic, Jewish and Muslim schools left primary school with a decent grasp of the basics - compared to 79 per cent elsewhere. Muslim schools performed best overall, although they constitute only a fraction of the country's 7,000 faith schools.

Critics claim that higher scores are achieved because faith schools use admissions policies to cream off middle-class pupils. Last year, the Catholic Church reported a surge in late baptisms as parents attempted to boost their children's chances of getting into the much sought-after schools. And a recent report by the Runnymede Trust - a multi-cultural think-tank - said they should be stripped of their power to select along religious lines to prevent distortion.

But faith leaders insist schools do well because of their religious ethos and a focus on traditional discipline and teaching methods. Oona Stannard, director of the Catholic Education Service, said: "Our success comes from fulfilling our mission, which is so much more than what Ofsted or the Government says a school must do. When I was a teacher, I remembered that I was not just seeing a child, but was seeing God in that child, and that creates expectations in teachers. "We are charged with developing the whole child."

Faith schools currently make up a third of all state-funded schools in England. Some 4,657 are Anglican, 2,053 are Roman Catholic and 82 belong to other Christian denominations. Another 36 schools are Jewish, eight Muslim, two Sikh and one is Hindu. Most use religion - often gauged by attendance at weekly worship or references from local faith leaders - as a tiebreaker when over-subscribed.

An analysis of GCSE results from 2007 reveals pupils in these schools make more progress at every stage of the education system. Some 51 per cent of pupils in Church of England schools and 52 per cent in Catholic schools gained five or more good GCSEs, including the subjects of English and maths. Scores increased to 63 per cent in Muslim schools but soared to 77 per cent in Jewish secondaries. By comparison, only 43 per cent of pupils made the grade in England's non-religious schools last year.

Faith schools also outperformed the rest based on the Government's favoured "value-added" measure, which compares performance at 16 to results when pupils started secondary school at 11. Scores are also weighted to take account of the number of pupils speaking English and second language and those on free meals - ensuring schools with large numbers of middle-class children do not gain unfair advantage. On this measure, Muslim pupils made the most progress, followed by those at Jewish schools, other Christian schools, Catholic schools and Anglican schools. Again they outstripped secular schools. It suggests that claims faith schools are dominated by children from rich backgrounds may be exaggerated.

Last month, a report by the schools adjudicator found that two-thirds of schools controlling their own entrance policies - most of which are faith schools - failed to follow the code on admissions. A large number were found to have asked for extra information from applicants, prompting critics to accuse them of seeking to discover parents' incomes and marital statuses in order to "cream off" middle-class pupils who tend to do better academically.

Source




Germany against Israel ban

Annette Schavan says Berlin's position against suggested embargo clear, adds maintaining scientific relations between counties can help create peaceful coexistence

German Education Minister Annette Schavan voiced her adamant objection to recent elements in the European academia calling to ban Israeli researchers for political reasons. Schavan, who will visit Israel later this week in order to mark a year of Israeli-German technological cooperation, told Yedioth Ahronoth that Germany's position on the matter is clear, and that Berlin only wishes to strengthen the ties between respective research teams.

Israel, she said, "is one of Germany's most valuable scientific partners. Maintaining scientific relations between Berlin and Jerusalem can help solve some of the biggest questions of our time, as well as find ways for forward peaceful coexistence. "The history of the relationship between Germany and Israel proves that science can help form a diplomacy of trust."

Schavan, who is a member of Germany's ruling party - the Christian Democratic Union, will stay in Israel for three days, during which she and Science, Culture and Sports Minister Raleb Majadele will also mark the 20th anniversary for the foundation of the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. Over the years, the foundation has funded 970 joint research projects preformed by Israeli and German research team. The foundation's capital is equally donated by the German and Israeli governments and currently stands at 21million euros (about $267.5 million).

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21 December, 2008

School Tax Credit Can Help Kids and the State

New Jersey is in deep financial trouble, and government estimates keep get ting worse. The most recent budget deficit prediction tripled the last one, concluding that the state might be $1.2 billion in the hole. The bad news doesn't end there. The economic slowdown is prompting many families who can no longer afford both taxes and private school tuition to move their children into public schools. Catholic elementary schools in the Diocese of Camden, for instance, have lost almost 1,000 students, about 10 percent of their enrollment from last year. And those declining enrollment figures came before the worst of the recession hit.

The accelerating closure of private schools in urban areas will only add to the pressure. Public schools will suddenly need to spend more -- even as tax revenues drop. With this kind of budget problem, lawmakers need to take a look at an important benefit of programs that make it easier for families to choose private schools: School choice means huge savings for state and local governments.

New Jersey spends more than $18,500 a year on every student when you count all local school taxes and expenses like pension and health benefits. That figure doesn't even include huge sums spent on construction. A 1 percent drop in private school enrollment will put New Jersey governments on the hook for about $55 million a year; a 10 percent swing will require $550 million more in school spend ing. In contrast, the national me dian private school tuition is just over $4,000 and a little more than $5,000 when it's adjusted for New Jersey's higher income levels.

There is a way to avoid getting slammed by huge new demands for public school spending while saving money and improving education: A broad-based, moderate-size education tax credit would help families stay in private schools and save their children from burdening taxpayers with the public schools' (much greater) price tag. The credit would also help others make the switch to the private sector, easing the burden on taxpayers even more.

Education tax credits reduce the amount a taxpayer owes the government for each dollar he spends on his child's education or on scholarships for children who need them. That money comes straight off a person's tax liability, so it's a dollar-for-dollar benefit: You can send it to the government or use it on the kind of education you want to support. Tax credits for donations to scholarship organizations help support school choice for lower-income families, while personal-use credits help middle-class families send their children to good schools.

Democratic leaders in the state Senate and Assembly have proposed a donation tax credit plan for New Jersey. Businesses would get tax credits for donations to scholarship organizations that provide school choice for lower-income families. An economic study supporting the Urban Enterprise Zone Jobs Scholarship Act concludes that this tax credit for children in eight underperforming districts would save $72 million over the length of the five-year pilot. A re cent fiscal analysis of Cato's model tax credit legislation shows that New Jersey could save $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years with that larger program based on the savings found for New York and Illinois.

Across the nation, many Democratic lawmakers have embraced education tax credits as a way to offset the persistent educational disadvantage facing low-income children. When Florida's donation tax credit program became law seven years ago, only one Democratic legislator voted for it. This year, a third of statehouse Democrats, half the black caucus and the entire Hispanic caucus voted to expand the program. Arizona, Rhode Island and Iowa all passed education tax credit initiatives in 2006, and Pennsylvania, under Democrat Gov. Ed Rendell, expanded its program. The Arizona and Iowa bills became law under Democratic governors, and the Rhode Island business tax credit was born in a Democrat-controlled Legislature.

The momentum is still building. A government fully controlled by Democrats in Iowa -- governor and both legislative houses -- expanded the tax credit dollar cap by 50 percent in 2007. Just this year, Georgia passed a $50 million program with no family income cap on student eligibility. A bipartisan group of New Jersey legislators, led by Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union), supports an education tax credit bill because it will improve education and save children from failing schools. Now they have billions more reasons to support it, and so do New Jersey's overburdened taxpayers.

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A Social-Work Housecleaning

Yesterday we noted the case of William Felkner, a student at Rhode Island College's School of Social work who is suing the school claiming that professors discriminated against him because he disagreed with their left-liberal political views. It turns out a similar lawsuit two years ago had impressive results. The Associated Press reported on the suit when it was filed, in November 2006:

A Missouri State University graduate has sued the school, claiming she was retaliated against because she refused to support gay adoption as part of a class project. Emily Brooker's federal lawsuit, filed on her behalf Monday by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, claims the retaliation against her Christian beliefs violated her First Amendment right to free speech. . . .

She said one of her professor's [sic], Frank G. Kauffman, accused her of the violation after he assigned a project that required the entire class to write and each sign a letter to the Missouri Legislature in support of gay adoption. Brooker said her Christian beliefs required her to refuse to sign the letter. . . .

Brooker said she was called before a college ethics committee on Dec. 16, where she was questioned for two hours by faculty members. She alleges they asked her questions such as "Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?" and "Do you think I am a sinner?" She said she was also asked if she could help gay and lesbian people in social work situations. Brooker said she was required to sign a contract with the department pledging to follow the National Association of Social Work's code of ethics, which does not refer to homosexuality. She alleges the contract requires her to change her religious beliefs to conform to social work standards to continue enrollment in the School of Social Work.

It took less than a week for Brooker to get satisfaction. In a press release dated Nov. 8, 2006, the university announced that it had agreed to strike the disciplinary action from Brooker's record, pay her $9,000, and reimburse her for tuition and living expenses for two years' graduate education.

It gets better. In addition to the terms of the settlement agreement, the press release announced that Kauffman had "voluntarily stepped down" as head of the social work program and "had begun weekly consultations" with a provost, "which will continue at least through the spring 2007 semester."

Further, the university's president, Michael Nietzel, pledged to "commission a comprehensive, professionally directed evaluation of the Missouri State Social Work Program" and "appoint an ad hoc committee to recommend ways in which the university can better publicize and more effectively implement its policies regarding freedom of speech and expression on campus." The report came out in March 2007. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education described it:

The report is scathing, citing ideological coercion on the part of the faculty against dissenting students and the chilling effect of such actions and policies on the school's intellectual atmosphere. . . .

MSU's report is encouraging-generally universities try to cover up and excuse their mistakes, and MSU has done neither. MSU should be applauded for expending the effort for some serious self-reflection and its students will no doubt benefit from the overdue recognition that MSU had been providing them with an atmosphere of ideological coercion.

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal noted that a group of state university heads are seeking a $45 billion bailout from Washington. We'd just as soon they not get it, but if they do, why not condition it on an MSU-like commitment to eradicate ideological coercion by the faculty?

Source (See the original for links)





20 December, 2008

Minnesota College Bans Bay Buchanan from Campus

Administrators at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota-the nation's largest Catholic women's college-unexpectedly blocked young conservatives on campus from hosting Bay Buchanan, a popular conservative commentator and U.S. Treasurer under President Reagan. The speech was scheduled for Wednesday, October 22, but was abruptly canceled after college officials deemed Ms. Buchanan's remarks on "Feminism and the 2008 Election" too politically charged, citing concerns about the school's tax status. "Because we are a 501(c)(3) organization, the College of St. Catherine has sought to avoid any appearance of partisanship during the 2008 political season," said College spokesman Julie Michener.

That Ms. Michener can say that with a straight face is remarkable, considering the actions of her school's program, Voter Education 2008. Program-sponsored seminars have highlighted student agitators protesting the GOP's convention and featured a representative from the Joint Religious Legislative Task Force, which pushes for universal healthcare and minimum wage increases.

St. Catherine's student handbook claims, "Students enjoy the collective assurance and protection of free inquiry and open exchange of facts, ideas and openness." Except, not really. St. Catherine is filtering out ideas it doesn't want its students to hear.

In the last year, school officials sponsored vocal Hillary Clinton supporter Maya Angelou, NPR's liberal correspondent Mara Liasson, and the anti-war radical Frank Kroncke. But Bay Buchanan? Well, she's partisan, according to St. Catherine's administration.

The whole notion that a college or university's tax status would be in jeopardy is also a canard, and St. Catherine's administrators know it. The IRS in its Revenue Ruling 2007-41 Publication allows colleges and universities to host candidates or supporters of candidates without being in violation of the law. The violation occurs when such institutions prohibit a balance of ideas between parties and candidates, which means that by freezing out Bay Buchanan under the ruse of non-partisanship (while entertaining explicitly leftist viewpoints), St. Catherine is more likely to be defying IRS guidelines.

Moreover, St. Catherine boasts membership with the Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities, in which other participating colleges have organized unequivocally political events. Macalester College, for instance, recently featured a rally with Michelle Obama that drew not only her husband's supporters but prominent liberal politicians as well, including St. Paul's Mayor and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. At St. Thomas College, Al Franken made a campaign stop in the school's auditorium.

Even if St. Catherine's officials are ignorant about IRS strictures (which is dubious) and the rallies taking place in their own backyard (doubly dubious), the fact that Barack Obama has spoken at more than 170 colleges and universities in his quest for the presidency and not a single school has had its tax exempt status threatened should have tipped them off that no legal ramifications would ensue by hosting Ms. Buchanan-who's neither a politician nor on John McCain's staff.

Students at St. Catherine requested to hear Bay Buchanan's perspective on American feminism, and Young America's Foundation along with the Minnesota Association of Scholars provided the funding to enable her appearance. St. Catherine merely had to provide a room for its students. Its failure to do so, aggravated by its flimsy excuse for the refusal, suggests a more sinister motive behind the cancellation of Ms. Buchanan's speech and an utter contempt for intellectual diversity.

Source




Princeton Pays $100 Million over misused legacy

You will remember that the Robertson family had charged that Princeton had repeatedly violated donor intent by misusing funds contributed to the university by their parents, Charles and Marie Robertson -- he a devoted Princeton alumnus, she an heiress to the A&P fortune. Princeton's response to the lawsuit, originally filed in 2002, had been, first, to dismiss its merit, and then to demean the plaintiffs and, finally, to launch a war of attrition designed to exhaust the family and deplete its resources. This attack launched, mind you, against the university's most generous donor family.

Here's the backstory on Wednesday's news. Princeton settled, we sense, for two reasons, one obvious, the other less so. Up against a hard trial date of January 21, Princeton attorneys plotted the arc of a trial under the format prescribed by the newly appointed judge. What quickly became apparent was that the trial would begin with a lengthy recitation of Princeton's (alleged) malefactions -- its misallocations of large chunks of overhead, its improper billing of professors and other personnel, the construction of a building (a building!) wrongly charged to the Robertsons. The opening weeks of what was expected to be a three-month trial would amount to a jaw-dropping tale of more than $200 million of Robertson Foundation funds misused by one Princeton administration after another. By the time Robertson attorneys had completed their presentation, Princeton might have looked like the L. Dennis Kozlowski of American universities. Remember, too, that this courtroom drama would have played out in Trenton, New Jersey, just a short commute from the media capital of the world, where the trial would have been catnip in equal measure to good-gray broadsheets and taunting tabloids. After the first few days of testimony, the Princeton development office would have had all the bounce and jingle of a Christmas party at Lehman Brothers.

Reason enough to settle, to be sure, but what sharpened the focus of the institutional mind, we surmise, was the beginning of an implausible cash squeeze. Princeton sits atop a huge endowment, reported earlier this year to have topped $15 billion. But a review of public filings for its most recent fiscal year suggests the problem. Here's how Princeton reported its asset allocation: Hedge funds - 26%; Domestic equity - 9%; Fixed income - 3%; Foreign equity - 16%; Private equity - 25%; Real assets - 19%; Cash - 1%.

That's a lot of illiquidity. Just take the hedge funds, the PE investments and "real assets" (by which they mean timberland, commercial buildings and such like). That's 70% of the portfolio subject to contractual lockups, market rigidities and other liquidity constraints. All of the university's cash needs must be met by the other 30%. (One of the reasons stocks sold off so sharply this fall is that, in large portfolios like Princeton's, stocks are one of the few assets that can be sold.) To get a sense of the dynamic, take a look at the Robertson Foundation, whose assets are managed in common with the university endowment. The Foundation's assets reached a high-water mark last year of $930 million. Our back-of-the-envelope calculation is that the fund had dropped to $585 million by the time the settlement deal was struck. Princeton's leadership may be venal, and has for years been arrogant in the extreme, but it's not stupid.

As for the Robertson family, after seven years of hard slog, they weren't feeling fresh as daisies, either. Imagine, if you will, the challenge of holding four branches of a family together when, month after month, the only things going out are six figures worth of expenses and the only things coming in are ad hominem mudballs tossed by one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. In our view, the lead plaintiff, William Robertson, should win the Kissinger Medal in Shuttle Diplomacy. He held the family to its honorable course from day one to day last.

Most remarkably of all, the family knew when to take yes for an answer, which is a path rarely seen clearly through the fog of battle. It was never part of the Robertsons' purpose to damage Princeton as an institution. The family's twin objectives were proximate and discrete and, in the settlement reached yesterday, they achieved them both. First, they reclaimed resources sufficient to carry out their parents' original intention. The new Robertson philanthropy will be a significant force in developing young Americans for government service in the international arena -- Foreign Service officers, development and trade officials, intelligence analysts, and so on. (And this just at a moment when the Obama administration has announced its intention to shift strategic emphasis to diplomatic initiatives.) And second, the Robertsons have set an instructive and hopeful example for donors and grantees everywhere. The next time a nonprofit executive is seized by larcenous impulse it may be necessary only to whisper in his ear the magic word, "Princeton."

Source





19 December, 2008

The 'Certified' Teacher Myth: It doesn't help classroom performance

I heartily agree with this. I got excellent results as a High School teacher without having had one minute of teacher training. Subject knowledge and a bit of self-confidence is all you need

Like all unions, teachers unions have a vested interest in restricting the labor supply to reduce job competition. Traditional state certification rules help to limit the supply of "certified" teachers. But a new study suggests that such requirements also hinder student learning.

Harvard researchers Paul Peterson and Daniel Nadler compared states that have genuine alternative certification with those that have it in name only. And they found that between 2003 and 2007 students in states with a real alternative pathway to teaching gained more on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal standardized test) than did students in other states.

"In states that had genuine alternative certification, test-score gains on the NAEP exceeded those in the other states by 4.8 points and 7.6 points in 4th- and 8th-grade math, respectively," report the authors in the current issue of Education Next. "In reading, the additional gains in the states with genuine alternative certification were 10.6 points and 3.9 points for the two grade levels respectively."

The study undermines the arguments from colleges of education and teachers unions, which say that traditional certification, which they control, is the only process that can produce quality teachers. The findings hold up even after controlling for race, ethnicity, free-lunch eligibility, class size and per-pupil state spending.

The study also found that loosening certification rules can help alleviate teacher shortages. Unions blame these shortages on low pay, though in Washington, D.C. now they are also refusing an offer of higher pay in return for giving up teacher tenure. Messrs. Peterson and Nadler show that broader recruitment paths can also address shortages, particularly among minority teachers who are in especially short supply.

This is important because there is broad agreement that minority students tend to benefit from having a minority instructor, who can also serve as a role model. And it turns out that black and Hispanic college graduates are much more likely to take advantage of alternative paths to certification.

"Minorities are represented in the teaching force to a greater extent in states with genuine alternative certification than in other states," write the authors, who conclude, "there is every reason to believe that alternative certification is key to recruiting more minorities into the teaching profession." In Mississippi, 60% of the more than 800 teachers who were alternatively certified in 2004-05 were minorities, even though the overall teaching force in the state is only 26% minority.

President-elect Barack Obama has expressed guarded support for education reforms like merit pay and charter schools. Yet he chose Linda Darling-Hammond to head the education policy team for his transition. Ms. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a union favorite and vocal supporter of traditional certification. She's also been a fierce critic of Teach for America and other successful alternative certification programs.

Unions claim that traditional certification serves the interests of students. But it's clear that students would be better served if the teaching profession were open to more college graduates. Teachers learn by teaching, not by mastering the required "education" courses associated with state certification.

Far from regulating teacher quality, forcing prospective teachers to take a specific set of education-related courses merely deters college graduates who might otherwise consider teaching. That outcome may serve the goals of labor unions, but it's hard to see how it helps the kids. If we want better teachers and more of them, relaxing certification standards would be a good place to start.

Source




Australia: Destructive Victorian government meddling in education

The never-ending Leftist attack on discipline

Angry state school principals have attacked a plan by the Brumby Government to curtail their power to suspend and expel unruly students. They say that a move to suspend students a maximum of three days in a row would seriously undermine state education and drive more middle-class families into private schools. "In the case of a serious assault or the selling of drugs to other students, three days is simply inadequate and sends a terrible message to other members of the school community," said a submission by a principals' group.

The Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals was responding to draft student behaviour guidelines released by the Education Department. As revealed by the Herald Sun last week, the proposals include plans to suspend students for a maximum three days instead of 10 now. The total days a student could be suspended in a year would be cut from 20 to 15. And principals would have less power to expel students, with education bureaucrats given the right to overturn decisions.

The VASSP's submission said that the draft guidelines were part of an unrelenting campaign to wind back the autonomy of Victorian principals. "The proposed guidelines completely undermine the role of the principal and school council president," it said. That a bureaucrat, often with no school-leadership experience, is considered better placed to make this judgment is an insult to dedicated school leaders, the submission said.

The submission included comments by several principals and assistant principals, such as: "This is unarguably the greatest threat to the good order of our schools that we have seen. "It is designed by 'do gooders' with no actual concept of what occurs within a school."

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike has said the Government wants a bigger focus on schools preventing bad behaviour before suspensions were required. Ms Pike is expected to release the revised guidelines early next year after considering submissions.

Source





18 December, 2008

Social work bigotry

A former student at the Rhode Island College School of Social Work is suing the school and several of his professors for discrimination, saying he was persecuted by the school's "liberal political machine" for being a conservative. William Felkner, 45, says the New England college and six professors wouldn't approve his final project on welfare reform because he was on the "wrong" side of political issues and countered the school's "progressive" liberal agenda.

Felkner said his problems with his professors began in his first semester, in the fall of 2004, when he objected in an e-mail to one of his professors that the school was showing and promoting Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" on campus. He said he objected because no opposing point of view was presented. He said Professor James Ryczek wrote to him on Oct. 15, 2004, saying he was proud of his bias and questioning Felkner's ability to "fit with the profession." "I think the biases and predilections I hold toward how I see the world and how it should be are why I am a social worker. In the words of a colleague, I revel in my biases," he wrote.

Felkner's complaint, filed two years ago, alleges that Ryczek discriminated against him for his conservative viewpoint and gave him bad grades because of it in several classes. It also alleges discrimination by other professors and administrators. Felkner said he received failing grades in Ryczek's class for holding viewpoints opposed to the progressive direction of the class.

Felkner says he was also discriminated against by Professor Roberta Pearlmutter, who he says refused to allow him to participate in a group project lobbying for a conservative issue because the assignment was to lobby for a liberal issue. He alleges that Perlmutter spent a 50-minute class "assailing" his views and allowed students to openly ridicule his conservative positions, and that she reduced his grade because he was not "progressive." The Rhode Island College School of Social Work did not respond to a request for comment.

Felkner, a self-proclaimed free-market conservative, told FOXNews.com that during his final year, he wanted to do a project on "work first" welfare, which requires that recipients get jobs before they can get benefits. He said the school advocated an "education first" system, in which recipients get job training and don't have to work for benefits. "Basically it was a system that resulted in 2 percent of [Rhode Island's] recipients being on welfare for over 10 years. It was just not working," Felkner said. While at the college he had an internship with the governor's office on public policy to work on welfare reform.

The social work organizing and policy degree program requires a student to complete a project that works for "progressive social change." He was scheduled to complete his project in January, but he said the defendants' actions kept him from finishing and graduating. "There were two years worth of discrimination really, there's no better way to put it, because I had different views than the school does," Felkner said. "It's kind of insane to think that someone studying how to help the poor can't research welfare reform."

Felkner also alleges in his complaint that the school's treatment of him restricted his ability to express his opinions and that his bad grades damaged his professional reputation and would make it difficult for him to get a job as a social worker.

Kim Strom-Gottfried, professor of social work at U.N.C. Chapel Hill, said that faculty members should not impose their politics on students. "My bottom line is I think clearly as faculty we have to appraise our students based on required competencies and demonstrations of that, whether critical thinking or whatever, but there shouldn't be a belief litmus test for joining the profession or for an assignment," Strom-Gottfried said. "The questions I have in cases such as his - why would someone choose to affiliate with a profession that's so at odds with his beliefs and his value-base? That's always a question for me," she said.

Bruce Thyer, professor of social work and former dean at the College of Social Work at Florida State University, has written about discrimination against conservatives and against evangelical Christians in social work. He said discrimination hurts the profession. "I have seen students actively discouraged from pursuing social work because of their politically conservative views. I've also seen it happen with students who have held strong religious views," he said. "I think that the profession is a great and noble discipline and there are occasional episodes like this that cast a black eye, and it's really unnecessary." Thyer said liberal and conservative social workers have the same goal - to help people - and that the school overstepped its bounds in Felkner's case. "I think it's an overzealous faculty wishing to impose their own political views upon those of their students, and that's unfortunate because there are many areas in which liberal and conservative thinkers within the discipline of social work have so much to agree upon," he said. "Nobody's advocating, certainly not Bill Felkner, that people not be helped."

The college filed a motion for summary judgment this summer, but it was recently denied by the court. Felkner said the school is now seeking a settlement. He said he would still like to receive his masters in social work, and he is still working on government policy on social welfare programs in Rhode Island through the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, which he founded after leaving the school. "You can say what you want about the war on poverty and how it's going, but I think that it hasn't gone well and I think there are better alternatives, and I think it was a shame I wasn't even allowed to research and pursue those interests," Felkner said. "It's indoctrination."

Source




Obama to name Arne Duncan as education secretary

Sounds hopeful -- insofar as there is any hope at all for public school education

Arne Duncan, who aggressively closed failing schools in Chicago but also opened dozens of new ones, is expected to be named today as President-elect Barack Obama's pick to head the U.S. Department of Education, a transition source said. The 6-foot-5-inch Harvard graduate played professional basketball in Australia and is one of the longest-serving big-city school chiefs in the country. His nomination to Obama's Cabinet is expected to be announced today at Dodge Renaissance School. Barbara Eason-Watkins, the chief education officer in CPS, is expected to replace Duncan as CEO of the nation's third-largest school district, a City Hall source told the Sun-Times. Duncan, 44, did not respond to phone calls Monday night.

As education secretary, Duncan will be implementing the controversial No Child Left Behind law, which both he and Obama have criticized. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate committee that must confirm the education nomination, said in a statement that Duncan was a consensus candidate. "Arne has been a pragmatic and effective leader of Chicago's schools," Kennedy said. "He's brought people together to address difficult challenges and expand opportunities so that every child can succeed."

Last Thursday, President Bush's own education secretary, Margaret Spellings, praised Duncan as ''a visionary leader'' and said he would be a "great choice" for her job. Duncan's father was a University of Chicago psychology professor; his mother ran an inner-city tutoring center where Duncan played every day. His mentor, John Rogers, founder of Ariel Capital Management and a friend and fund-raiser of Obama, lured him away from basketball to run the Ariel Foundation and start a small school. By 2001, Duncan was a quiet, relatively unknown senior manager in the Chicago Public School bureaucracy when Mayor Daley tapped him to replace headline machine Paul Vallas as CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Duncan went on to head one of Daley's boldest and most controversial initiatives: Renaissance 2010.

With the mayor's blessing, and over protests from union and parent groups, he has closed 61 CPS schools, mostly for poor performance or underenrollment, but also opened 75 new schools, including an all-girls public school, an all-boys public school, and a "virtual'' school. Although designers of a proposed "gay-friendly'' school withdrew their proposal last month, Duncan didn't shy from supporting the idea.

Some say Duncan had the inside track on the appointment, signaled by the Election Day basketball game he played with Obama. Duncan and Obama both have Hyde Park ties and attended Harvard. Duncan's wife is the athletic director at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where Obama's two daughters attend classes. Duncan and his wife have two young children, one of whom attends a neighborhood CPS school. Duncan had well-connected boosters. Rogers is co-chair of Obama's Presidential Inauguration Committee. Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who plays pickup ball with Obama and Duncan, also was a supporter. Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker is a Duncan fan. Pritzker served as Obama's presidential campaign finance director and is current co-chair of his transition team.

To Duncan's education supporters, his selection seemed natural. "Arne is open to new ideas and he respects data,'' said John Easton, co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago.

Under Duncan, elementary test scores have slowly climbed, but high school scores have been problematic. While other districts focused on high school graduation, Duncan pushed CPS to be the first big-city district to track the ultimate bottom line -- whether CPS freshmen were enrolling in and finishing college, said Melissa Roderick, another consortium co-director. The first round of answers, one U. of C. researcher conceded at the time, was "appalling.'' Only 8 percent of CPS freshmen had a four-year degree by their mid-20s, early research showed. "It was on the front page of the paper and [Duncan] said, 'We have to deal with it,' '' Roderick said. "That's a courage I hope he brings to the U.S. Department of Education.''

Quality and quantity of teacher applicants have clearly risen under Duncan. He also has embraced alternative certification programs such as Teach for America, criticized by Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, considered a contender for education secretary.

Duncan has shown an ability to work civilly with foes. Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart has blasted Duncan for displacing teachers with his Renaissance 2010 shakeup but supported him on a teacher pay-for-performance experiment.

Some say Duncan has done little to stop the test preparation mania that has swept the nation in the wake of No Child Left Behind. He closed some high schools despite warnings that sending their students elsewhere, across gang boundaries, would lead to violence -- and data later showed violence followed such closings. "There have been good things and bad things about what's been happening in Chicago schools,'' said Julie Woestehoff of Parents United for Responsible Education. "We all need to look very carefully at what those things are.''

Source

Update

A good comment from blogwonks

Incoming Education Secretary Pledges to Teach Kids to Talk Good

Not to nitpick, but Arne Duncan, who ran the Chicago school system, is a Harvard grad and will be Secretary of Education in Barack Obama’s administration, was reading from a prepared text that, if you’re a stickler on grammar, will give you the chills.

“It gave my sister and I the opportunity…”

This makes I want to home school my kids from here on in:





17 December, 2008

Parent fury at anti-Christmas talk in school

I note that a number of conservatives have been peeved by this but I see no problem. It is a good fundamentalist Christian teaching that Christmas is a commercialized pagan holiday. Does any serious Christian believe that Father Christmas, reindeer, Christmas trees and Frosty the snowman are in the Bible? JWs just put their money where their mouth is. The only anniversary that Christ commanded his followers to observe was Passover. Should a school censor the Bible?

A school has come under fire for allowing Jehovah's Witnesses to tell pupils why they choose not to celebrate Christmas. But today leaders at Kirkby's Westvale primary said the talk was just part of its commitment to promote tolerance among all faiths, which is clearly stated to parents in its official brochure. The row surrounds a 30-minute religious education lesson at the Melverley Road school.

On Wednesday, parents were invited in to discuss why they were Jehovah's Witnesses and what their faith entails. This included the fact the religion does not celebrate Christmas - believing it and Easter are based on, or largely influenced by, paganism.

The school hoped the visit would mean students would be more understanding as to why the Jehovah's Witnesses' children were "being excused from coming in for Christmas nativity". However, the fact parents at the 250-pupil school were not asked for formal consent prior to the talk has sparked anger. One man whose eight-year-old daughter attends the school said: "How can it be that pupils who are Jehovah's Witnesses can be excused from lessons, yet the first thing I knew about this talk is when my daughter came home? "We should have been consulted. I am livid and would not have allowed my child to take part. To say I'm furious with the school is an understatement."

But headteacher Gillian Holland said the talk was the latest in a number by visitors of different faiths as part of a government expectation that schools tackle community cohesion. The school brochure made it clear RE lessons would explore all faiths and parents could make use of its "open door" policy to raise concern. "We are a Christian school but have a duty to promote tolerance and understanding of other faiths. "We encourage parents of all faiths to come in all the time. "They are accompanied by teachers and teaching assistants and will just talk about their traditions and what it is based on. "When pupils see their children not coming in for Christmas nativity they have more of an understanding why."

Source




A College Returns to Teaching

Lindenwood University dean tells how the school escaped ruin, offering a model for success

The famed economist Thomas Sowell has observed that the chief problem with our education system is that it is dominated by the interests of the producers rather than the interests of the consumers. Keep that in mind as you read about the near-death and resuscitation of one university.

Lindenwood University, located near St. Louis, almost died in the late 1980s. Student enrollments had been falling and the endowment was nearly gone. It survived only because a new president was brought in and dramatically refocused the school so it would do a much better job of what colleges are supposed to do: teach the students. His "new" model made the faculty concentrate on teaching rather than research. Tenure was abolished. He also trimmed the curriculum and administration, allowing Lindenwood to keep tuition low.

Edward Morris, Dean of the School of Business and Entrepreneurship, tells the story in his book The Lindenwood Model. In doing so, he makes it clear that most universities and even many smaller colleges are today infected with the research virus, which is detrimental to good undergraduate teaching. Morris knows that professors are hired and promoted mainly on the basis of their published research work, not on their ability to teach undergraduates. The mania for research means that professors are expected to do little teaching, and what teaching they do won't be carefully evaluated.

Most professors, however, prefer spending their time on research, and that's easier to measure than teaching competence. Furthermore, faculty research can help enhance a school's reputation and perhaps raise its U.S. News ranking-the Holy Grail of most college presidents.

The president of Lindenwood at the time, Dennis Spellmann, saw that the school was dying under the standard university model. Students were not getting much educational value for their tuition dollars. He decided that the only course that would work was one that put their interests first. A key step in his revitalization plan was a requirement that professors teach five courses (fifteen class hours a week) per semester.

But doesn't doing research make professors better teachers? Spellmann didn't buy that idea and Morris spends quite a few pages in refuting it. The research that professors do rarely has much connection with the content of an undergraduate course; worse yet, they sometimes displace the content that ought to be in their courses with whatever their current research interests happens to be. So instead of learning the broad principles of an academic discipline, students often spend at least some of their class time immersed in minutiae that interest their professors.

Morris realizes that he's taking on a sacred cow here, but blurts out the truth that much academic research is "trivial, conducted with questionable methodology, and written in jargon that makes it nearly incomprehensible." His own finance dissertation was on a tiny point regarding the "efficient market hypothesis." He managed to prove something no one had ever doubted and since then his research has merely gathered dust on a library shelf.

(For an amusing look at some faculty research that would fall into Dave Barry's "I'm NOT making this up!" category, check out the IgNobel Prizes.)

Once the "teaching model" took effect at Lindenwood, enrollments did a U-turn and began steadily increasing. The flow of red ink stopped and the university was soon operating in the black, accumulating capital for improvements and expansion. It helps a great deal that the university spends little on athletics. Lindenwood is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, an association that allows schools to compete in many sports, but without going crazy in pursuit of athletic glory. (There are no athletic scholarships, for instance.) Nearly half of the school's students play on one or more of its 38 teams.

Tuition at Lindenwood for the 2007-08 academic year was $12,400. Compared with the average for private colleges and universities (over $21,000), it's clear that the lean, educationally-focused approach Spellmann brought to the school makes it an excellent value.

Here is an illuminating comparison. The University of Missouri at St. Louis and Lindenwood are comparable in size (around 4,000 students), but UMSL goes in for research, sports, various "community service" activities, and carries a much greater number of administrators. Tuition is about the same at the two institutions. Morris concludes:

Lindenwood is able to offer its students a private undergraduate education that is competitively priced with that of UMSL - even though the State of Missouri provides UMSL with a per student subsidy of approximately $6,000 per year and Lindenwood with none. The $6,000 differential may also be viewed, of course, as the amount Missouri taxpayers pay in order for UMSL to pursue its non-instructional ventures.

In the coming years, there will be other private colleges and universities facing the dire financial troubles that drove Lindenwood to undertake the momentous changes that not only saved it, but proved to be very popular with students. Reading Ed Morris's book could enable their presidents to make the right decisions.

It would be even better if the presidents of non-floundering schools would also follow the Lindenwood model, simply because doing so would be an excellent competitive move. Students and parents will increasingly be searching for affordable colleges that don't merely award credits and degrees, but actually educate. Colleges and universities that take Morris's "antidote for what ails undergraduate education" (the subtitle of the book) will become more and more attractive to those who demand more from college than just a fancy diploma.

Source





16 December, 2008

British Headteachers told to 'high-five' pupils to improve exam results

This is just more of the feelgood approach that has already failed

Trainee head teachers are being told to give pupils in tough areas high-fives in an effort to improve exam results. A Government-backed training scheme is urging would-be heads to give pupils the U.S-style welcome to help forge 'positive relationships'.

Sir Iain Hall, training director for the scheme called Future Leaders, is passing on the advice at intensive residential courses after visiting schools in the U.S. He is also recommending a technique which involves pupils gathering in a circle and applauding one of their number, with the head saying the pupils name and 'we appreciate you' and the children cheering that child.

But his suggestions brought claims that heads were being asked to 'ingratiate' themselves with pupils, undermining their authority. Under Sir Iain's approach, heads would greet children at classroom doors by giving them high-fives - slapping their palms with arms extended - or shaking their hands. 'When your children come into the classroom, how do you greet them?' he asked a meeting of prospective heads, the Times Educational Supplement reported.

'Whether it is a high-five, it is touching a child's hand, it is shaking their hands, we teach our Future Leaders to stand at the classroom door and greet every kid who comes through it. It's about establishing positive relationships all the time, shaking the hands of kids that go past, giving those high-fives.'

Sir Iain, a 'superhead' who was knighted in 2002 for services to education, revealed he had been inspired by visits to schools in tough parts of America. He was recommending the circle and applauding technique after seeing it at a New York school. 'It is getting that positive relationship where children can relax and think "somebody believes in me",' he said. Asked whether English pupils would respond to high-fives, he said: 'If I believe it will work with every student, then it will.'

But Anastasia de Waal, of the social policy think-tank Civitas, warned that high-fiving by senior staff could hamper attempts to impose discipline. 'We are struggling to assert authority in schools. 'I fear this is just going to look ridiculous and actually some pupils are going to be moderately insulted by it. 'I don't think they will see it as cool and in fact will see it as deeply uncool so it will backfire.'

She added: 'This is characteristic of much about secondary schools these days, that everything should be relevant to pupils and fun,' she added. 'But what makes things relevant is when children understand their work and can apply it to the real world.' She said some primary schools in Finland invited pupils to shake hands with teachers at the end of lessons. 'This is more about showing teachers respect,' she said.

'We are approaching this completely the wrong way round. We should be trying to generate respect for teachers rather than encouraging them to ingratiate themselves with pupils.'

The Future Leaders scheme aims to tackle a growing shortage of heads in inner-city areas. It is part-funded by the Government, through the National College of School Leadership and Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and the charity ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), which was set up by millionaire financier Arpad Busson, fiance of actress Uma Thurman.

Andrew Day, deputy head of Greenford High in Ealing, West London, has taken part in the Future Leaders training scheme and is an advocate for the high-fives approach, claiming that pupils can relate to it. 'It is what they do. It is all about how they perceive you. The moment you start working with them, they know you care,' he said.

High-fiving is thought to have originated in the U.S. in 1970s, probably during basketball or baseball games.

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The old, old story again -- this time from Australia

Fewer dumb girls but fewer very bright ones too (ENTER is the test for entering university in the State of Victoria)

Girls rule overall in the study stakes but boys are still the brains' trust. New VCE data backs up the trend of female students achieving a higher average ENTER, but more boys nail the perfect score at the elite end of the scale. More than double the number of boys (21) than girls (10) received the highest possible ENTER of 99.95 this year. Last year, 19 boys and 13 girls aced their final year of school with the perfect score. The average ENTER for girls in the class of 2008 is 65.51 and 62.63 for boys.

Females also topped males last year when comparing average scores; the 2007 female average was 64.06 and 61.42 for males. Boys outperformed girls at the top level in 2006, with 26 male students getting 99.95 compared with just nine females. For the past three years, more girls have passed VCE than boys. Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre Director Elaine Wenn said girls outperformed boys overall. "However, boys continue to outnumber girls by two to one at the highest level of 99.95," she said.

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15 December, 2008

Mediocre teachers + jargon = low standards

Huge numbers of British 11-year-olds can't read, write or do basic sums. The latest curriculum rehash will not help in the least

But what about the teachers? I feel like the child who had to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. What we got this week, from the Government's primary schools adviser, was a rehashed curriculum in fine new garb, and a rather verbose way of setting out what good teachers do already - but not a word about what really matters: the quality of the teachers.

Sir Jim Rose's report is a tragic missed opportunity. If this is the limit of ministers' ambition for primary schools then they might as well go home early, clutching those little prizes which schools award the slower pupils for "effort". There certainly won't be any progress. Sir Jim is in danger of giving bad and mediocre teachers even more jargon and curricular complexity to hide behind. The Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum is itself smothered in it. Sir Jim sums up his ideas: "The report explores a curriculum design based on a clear set of culturally derived aims and values, which promote challenging subject teaching alongside equally challenging cross-curricular studies." You what?

This sort of jargon filters down through teachers to the classroom, with lessons wrapped in equally incomprehensible verbiage. "Are we doing reading now?" I asked one primary school teacher recently. "Oh no", she replied, "this isn't reading - this is literacy." Er...

There is something wrong with the teaching profession. Not all of it, but some of it - and presumably the part that curriculum reviews are intended to reach. The teachers have turned insular and defensive; even their language has become alien. It's as if they inhabit a different world.

So spelling isn't spelling any more (there is but one mention of "spelling" in Sir Jim's 73-page report): it has become "decoding" and "encoding". Is it really necessary for an educational adviser to write out the following: "Children may know how to decode and encode print but must then apply that knowledge and skill to understanding the words on the page." You mean, children should be taught to read, sir? Good teachers - even barely competent teachers - do not need to be told that. Good teachers will already apply the best of the ideas in Sir Jim's report, while good schools will do some of what he recommends already, such as using specialised teachers in certain subjects. Good teachers do not hide behind jargon.

The problem is with the bad schools and the bad teachers, who rigorously apply the rules handed down by ministers and officials to groups of baffled children. Like the chilling Ofsted official who described Baby P as a collection of data last week, they can talk the strange talk, but they cannot walk the walk.

So children unable to write their alphabet sit in circles parroting the definitions of "phoneme" and "grapheme": "sound" and "letter" to you and me. "It's in the curriculum," shrugs a teacher. "Silly, isn't it?"

Incompetent teachers, or those lacking in confidence, and afraid of the authorities, stick rigidly to any script they are given, carefully ticking all the little boxes. And Sir Jim is about to hand them quite a script. Take the idea of a "theme" uniting all the primary subjects. This could be done well, so that a Second World War theme for the term incorporates European geography as well as a spot of French, and the mathematics of how many planes in a squadron returned if seven were shot down - that sort of thing. But it could be done badly, like the early-years teacher I saw writing down "a" for "aeroplane" in a child's first reading lesson - "because the theme this term is travel".

It's all very well trying to make the curriculum "relevant" but the fundamental purpose of education must be that the basic building blocks are taught well first. "Relevance" can crowd out education. Take mathematics: Sir Jim issues a familiar warning that children are not being taught how to apply their mathematics skills to the real world. Teachers have heard this complaint many times before. So keen are they to listen that many have overcorrected, asking a child, for instance, how he would hand out 12 chocolate bars among four children, but not teaching him that 12 divided by 4 is 3.

"What is that?" a six-year-old asked me the other day, pointing to a minus sign. He knew how to "count back two from five" (although he couldn't read the words; they had to be read to him) but he was unable to decipher 5 - 2 = 3. A seven-year-old state school child taking a maths exam for private school entry asked his mother of the multiplication questions: "Why were there kisses all over the paper?"

There will be many teachers who insist this does not matter; that children are picking up the concepts or themes, or developing understanding, or some such. But it does matter. So hard are educationists trying to keep the attention of every child with "varied and matched learning", to use some more jargon, that education has become frighteningly dumbed down. Middle-class flight from state schools is directly attributable to this happy-clappy, thematic, lowest-common-denominator, "entire planned learning experience" approach. Some kids enjoy learning times tables.

Listen to this terrifying sentence in the Rose report: "The teacher who once said: `If children leave my school and can't paint, that's a pity but if they leave and can't read, that's a disaster' was perhaps exaggerating to make a point." Exaggerating? It's appalling that the man reviewing the primary curriculum considers that an exaggeration.

Children are leaving primary schools unable to read and write and do basic sums - a fifth failed English this year, a fifth maths and almost four in ten failed in combined reading, writing and arithmetic - and they tip into the secondary system already five years behind their peers, too late for many ever to catch up. It is absolutely essential to get this right. Yet nowhere in Sir Jim's report (because it wasn't in his remit drawn up by the Schools Secretary Ed Balls) is there anything about improving the quality of teachers.

A McKinsey study last year, conducted by Tony Blair's former policy adviser Sir Michael Barber, examined school systems around the world to see what made the difference in the best. The absolutely key element, beyond new buildings and class sizes, the curriculum or the structure of the system, was the quality of teachers. Yet Britain is still stuck in a rule-bound, jobs-for-life education system that rewards laziness and mediocrity as highly as real talent and drive. The gulf between the public and private sectors gets wider and wider. Sir Jim is in danger of pulling up the drawbridge.

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As conventional U.S. higher education scene turns into a Leftist miasma, alternatives spring up for those who want knowledge instead of propaganda

As classical education declined and new approaches arose to replace it, the university core curriculum turned into a restaurant menu that gave 18-year-olds dozens of classes to choose from, the easiest and most therapeutic usually garnering the heaviest attendance. The result, as many critics have noted, is that most of today's students have no shared notion of education, whether fact-based, requisite knowledge or universal theoretical methodologies. They either do not know what the Parthenon is or, if they do, they do not understand how its role as the democratic civic treasury of the Athenians was any different from-much less any "better" than-what went on atop the monumental Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. Most likewise could not distinguish Corinthian from Doric columns on their venerable campuses, or a frieze from a pediment on their administration buildings.

For a brief four-year period, students inherit a now-foreign vocabulary of archaic terms, such as "provost," "summa cum laude," and "honorarium," which they employ but usually do not understand. While the public may not fully appreciate the role that classical education once played, it nonetheless understands that university graduates know ever less, even as the cost of their education rises ever more. Any common, shared notion of what it means to be either a Westerner or an American is increasingly rare.

The universities apparently believed that their traditional prestige, the financial resources of their alumni, and the fossilized cultural desideratum of "going to college" would allow them to postpone a reckoning. But by failing in their central mission to educate our youth, they have provoked the beginnings of an educational counterrevolution. Just as the arrogance and ideological biases of the mainstream media have made them slow to appreciate technological trends and the growing dissatisfaction of their audience, so, too, are universities beginning to fragment, their new multifaceted roles farmed out to others that can do them more cheaply and with less political sermonizing.

The most obvious challenge to university predominance is technological-in particular, Internet-based education offered by private-sector virtual campuses masquerading as traditional universities. As the American workforce increasingly needs retraining and as higher-paying jobs demand ever more specialized skills, students are beginning to pay for their education on a class-by-class basis through distance learning. Online classes, which do not require campus residence or commuting, also eliminate the overhead of highly paid, tenured faculty, campus infrastructure, and such costly elements of undergraduate education as on-campus lectures and extracurricular activities.

Unfortunately, private online schools also do away with the old notion of offering liberal arts classes to enrich citizenship and enhance technological specialization. Perhaps their unspoken premise is that if universities do not believe in the value of teaching Western civilization as part of a mandated general-education curriculum, then why not simply go to the heart of the matter and offer computer-programming skills or aeronautical-engineering know-how without the pretense of a broad education? And who is to say that paid-by-the-hour instructors at the online University of Phoenix are less responsible teachers than their traditional counterparts? After all, their market-driven employers must serve a paying constituency that, unlike traditional university students, often demands near-instant results for its fees.

At American Military University, it's worth noting in this light, online instructors receive compensation based on the number of students they teach, rather than the number of courses they offer. Cost-cutting measures are radical in the online education world. Bookstores and libraries become almost superfluous; instead, students simply pay fees for the use of Internet resources. The University of Phoenix actually negotiates deals with textbook publishers to make all of their books available online for a flat fee. The logic is to redefine education as an affordable product that finds its value in the marketplace among competing buyers and sellers.

It's hard to fault these companies; they are serving a need. It would be reassuring, certainly, to think that a psychology student at Smith or Occidental would receive a broader understanding of the discipline, its history, and its place within the liberal arts than would a counterpart graduating from the far cheaper online Argosy University. But it would be far from certain.

Traditional colleges and universities, seeking to compete, have started to enter the online education market. The present university system is partly subsidized by low-paid, part-time faculty without tenure who teach large classes and thereby support a smaller mandarin cohort of tenured professors with full benefits, fewer students, and little worry about the consequences of poor peer reviews or student evaluations. Indeed, since the 1970s, the percentage of tenured and tenure-track professors in the academy has declined dramatically, as the university seeks to exploit the many to pay for the chosen, though dwindling, few. Schools are now starting to complement these two tiers with a third-a new sort of distance-learning adjunct, paid even less, who offers classes via the Internet and may never venture onto campus at all, but whose courses carry the prestige of a well-known university brand. An informal survey suggests that distance learning now makes up as much as 20 percent of total offered classes at some schools.

One can also see a growing cultural reaction to the modern university in the spread of conservative Christian colleges. According to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, enrollment in such schools increased 70.6 percent between 1990 and 2004, versus 12.8 percent for public universities and 28 percent for all private universities. The national news media have split into genres predicated on political partisanship: network news, public radio, and large newspapers for liberals; and talk radio, cable news, and Internet sites for conservatives. So, too, have our mainstream universities, promising free thought but in reality indoctrinating their students, become increasingly distinct from religious colleges and universities that take pride in a more classical curriculum.

The religious schools are recognizing their market advantage. What was once the old Bible school has now often become the popular conservative antidote to the liberal university. Liberty University and Oral Roberts University have seen endowments and enrollments soar as they have broadened their mandates to encompass general cultural conservatism rather than solely religious orthodoxy. Liberty University is no longer Jerry Falwell's weird and tiny Liberty Baptist College of the 1970s but has swelled to more than 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students, with another 4,500 enrolled in online graduate programs alone. Thirty years ago, Fresno Pacific College was a small evangelical Mennonite campus; today, its successor, Fresno Pacific University, is a generic traditional campus that offers an alternative to the cumbersome bureaucracy and politically charged culture of nearby California State University, Fresno. The teacher-credential program at Fresno Pacific's education school, for example, has earned regional acknowledgment for being more rigorous, better organized, and freer from therapeutic and political biases than its much larger counterpart at CSU, Fresno.

The growth of classically minded religious colleges is not limited to the Protestant evangelical movement. Against-the-grain Catholic schools have flourished, too, offering an alternative not just to Berkeley, Wisconsin, and Amherst but also to increasingly liberal Notre Dame and Santa Clara, which have abandoned traditional Catholic themes and classical values. Thomas Aquinas College, founded in 1969, to take one example, has won recognition for its traditional curriculum. A few nonreligious schools, too, like Hillsdale College and St. John's College, concentrate solely on the classical curriculum, offering Great Books-based courses whose very success serves as an effective critique of higher education elsewhere.

It's no accident that millions of laypeople don't find endowed professors at elite schools interesting or useful. Many public universities have rejected merit pay for faculty on the grounds that academic or teaching excellence is impossible to quantify. More elite private universities have embraced a star system of compensation, but in the liberal arts, the criteria of evaluation usually hinge on esoteric and jargon-laden scholarly publications, not teaching excellence. So those who wish to discover history or literature-to learn about the Founding Fathers or military history, say-often look outside the university, to public intellectuals on television and noted best-selling authors like David McCullough or John Keegan.

Private companies have made considerable profits by responding to the public hunger for inspired teaching of traditional liberal arts. The Teaching Company markets prerecorded lectures with rich content in history, literature, and other subjects from proven classroom stars, many of whom have found far less success under normal academic evaluation. Rosetta Stone's software offers foreign-language instruction in dozens of languages, without the embedded cultural sermonizing that often characterizes foreign-language departments' curricula. In a series of CDs from a company called Knowledge Products, marketed as "Giants of Philosophy," the late Charlton Heston narrates excerpts from the seminal philosophers of the Western tradition. Consumers understand that they are buying the words of the philosophers themselves, read and explained by a skilled orator and actor, and skipping the postmodern jargon and leftist bias.

In the future, to learn professions, many students will enroll in specific classes to master accounting, programming, or spreadsheets, and not feel the need to study inductive reasoning or be equipped with the analogies and similes supplied by great literature and the study of history. If, later in life, graduates feel robbed of such a classical foundation, they can buy CDs and recorded lectures or take self-administered correspondence courses. Since universities are no longer places for disinterested investigation in the manner of Socratic inquiry, one can envision a future in which there will be liberal schools and conservative schools, and religious schools and antireligious schools. But the old, classical, unifying university will then have completed its transformation into a multiversity: knowledge, imbued with politics and ideology, will be fragmented, balkanized, and increasingly appropriated by for-profit companies.

Traditional colleges and universities aren't about to die, of course. But their attractions-and especially the enticements of the Ivy League schools, Stanford, Berkeley, and such private four-year colleges as Amherst and Oberlin-will largely derive from the status that they convey, the career advantages that accrue from their brand-name diplomas, and the unspoken allure of networking and associating with others of a similarly affluent and privileged class. They are becoming social entities, private clubs for young people, certification and proof of career seriousness, but hardly centers for excellence in undergraduate education in the classical sense. For all the tens of thousands of dollars invested in yearly tuition, there will be no guarantee, or indeed, even a general expectation, that students will encounter singular faculty or receive a superior liberal arts education-let alone that they will know much more about their exceptional civilization than what they could find on the Internet, at religious schools, or on CDs and DVDs.

Once academia lost the agreed-upon, universally held notion of what classical learning was and why it was important, a steady unraveling process removed not just the mission but the mystery-and indeed, the beauty-from the American university. How ironic that the struggling university, in its efforts to meet changing political, technological, and cultural tastes and fads, willingly forfeited the only commodity that made it irreplaceable and that it alone could do well. And how sad, since once the university broke apart the liberal arts, all the religious schools, self-help courses, and CDs couldn't quite put them together again.

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Some Australian students to be taught (optionally) that there's no God

This is fair enough but I hope that there is some place in the curriculum for kids to learn something about the immense impact Christianity has had on the development of our civilization. I am myself an atheist but I sent my son to a Catholic school because I felt his education would be incomplete without an exposure to Christian ideas

Victorian state primary school students will soon be able to take religious education classes which teach there is no evidence God exists. The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum for primary pupils that the state government accreditation body says it intends to approve, The Sunday Age newspaper reported. Accredited volunteers will be able to teach their philosophy in the class time allotted for religious instruction, the newspaper said.

As with lessons delivered by faith groups, parents will be able to request that their children do not participate. "Atheistical parents will be pleased to hear that humanistic courses of ethics will soon be available in some state schools," Victorian Humanist Society president Stephen Stuart said.

The society does not consider itself to be a religious organisation and believes ethics have "no necessary connection with religion". Humanists believe people are responsible for their own destiny and reject the notion of a supernatural force or God.

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14 December, 2008

Discrimination against blacks still there in American public Schools

Nothing dramatizes the two-tier public-education system quite like the announcement by the First Couple that their daughters, 10 and 7, will attend Sidwell Friends, perhaps the elitist of the elite private schools in Washington, tuition $30,000 a year. "Sidwell," the parents joke, "is where Episcopalians teach Jews how to be Quakers." The Obamas called Sidwell, as the locals refer to it, the "best fit" of security and comfort for their children. No doubt. Few begrudge the Parents in Chief seeking the best education money can buy. It's easier than choosing a puppy.

Unfortunately, most Americans don't have that kind of opportunity or that kind of money, particularly in Washington, where the public schools are, to put it kindly, lousy. These schools are distinguished for the lowest performance rates of any school district in the nation despite spending $13,000 per pupil, third highest in the country.

No congressman sends his children to public schools in the nation's capital. More than a quarter of the teachers in the public schools send their children to private school. The Obamas noted that their friends, many of whom will become colleagues on the White House staff, send their daughters to private schools. Joe Biden's grandchildren will go to school with the Obama girls. Chelsea Clinton went to Sidwell and then on to Stanford and Oxford. President Carter sent his daughter Amy to a public school for a while, but soon reconsidered and sent her to Sidwell and then to Brown. Private-school education doesn't determine acceptance to an elite college, but it makes it easier.

Though Washington has several good charter schools, which are funded with public money and run independently of the public-school bureaucracy, their capacity is limited. (The Obama girls would likely have made the cut.) My grandsons attend one, and there's a long waiting list. Charters are not burdened with platinum-plated union contracts and "teacher tenure" designed to protect the incompetents.

Reforms are vehemently opposed by the American Federation of Teachers, the big umbrella union with lots of clout. Beholden as he is to the unions, the president-elect is not likely to offend them. He has emphatically opposed vouchers because they "might benefit some kids at the top; what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." Unlike his own kids, who have already fled.

Few parents (and grandparents) I've talked to envy the Obamas for their presidential privileges -- the servants and limousines and the big Boeing 747 -- but they truly envy their ability to educate their children in a good school. Michelle Obama insists that her daughters will make their own beds and won't rely on the servants, and good for her. But neither will they get a glimpse of how most of the children in Washington, the majority of whom are black, suffer from an inferior education. That's a vividly drawn line dividing childhood friendships.

The public schools were segregated by race when I grew up in Washington. They're segregated just as rigidly today by economic class, as schools are in many cities, and the result is all but the same -- public schools for blacks, private schools for whites. I once took my son out of a public school because his American history teacher was absent more days than she was on the job; in one conversation, she couldn't identify the fourth president of the United States without consulting her lesson plan, and was not embarrassed for it. She was protected, as incompetent teachers are protected today, by union-backed tenure.

Michelle Rhee, the tough new chancellor of the Washington schools who gets more grief than thanks for trying to do something about the quality of education, offered teachers who agree to give up tenure considerably higher pay. Most declined. They know what we know -- that few could pass merit muster.

In the bad old days, Southerners often said they would be happy to send their children to school with the likes of the children of Ralph Bunche, the secretary-general of the United Nations and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, but not with the children the elite private schools wouldn't take. Such thinking was, of course, racist. Nobody would say such a thing today. But many poor black (and white) children get a public school education in the ghettos that wouldn't prepare them for Sidwell Friends even if their parents could afford it.

Administrative and economic racism, which President Bush called "the bigotry of low expectations," dooms these children, and perpetuates prejudice, as well. Racism, like that rose by any other name, still smells -- but it's not sweet.

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German Family Freed from Criminal Charges for Homeschooling

After living under a cloud of criminal charges since 2007, the Brause family in Germany has finally been cleared of criminal child neglect for having homeschooled their five children. On December 2nd, Johannes Hildebrandt of the International Human Rights Group (IHRG), who had assisted the family's legal battle, reported that the German court and the prosecutor are dropping charges against Mr. and Mrs. Brause. The Brouses had paid several fines and faced up to 2 years in prison as well as the potential loss of their children, who had been placed under the custody of the youth welfare office, or Jugendamt, since March 2007.

The children - Rosine, Jotham, Kurt-Simon, Lovis and Ernst - were allowed to stay at home during this time but were vulnerable to seizure by the government at any moment unless their parents submitted to the government's demands and enrolled them in public school. "We are pleased that the court and the prosecuting counsel asked whether the process can be ended," said Joel Thornton, President and General Counsel for the IHRG. The decision came after the court received a detailed psychiatric assessment proving that no psychological harm was done to the children from homeschooling. The two eldest children also proved their scholastic aptitude by successfully completing public school exams.

The Brause family may now choose whether to have a sentence of acquittal in a public meeting in court, or a document issued declaring the process closed and the charges dropped. The decision is being hailed as a major victory for families' right to choose education in Germany, where homeschooling has been illegal since the Third Reich. Chancellor Adolf Hitler banned private schooling in 1938 in order to indoctrinate Nazi ideology through public schools, and created the Jugendamt in 1939 to supervise German families.

Human rights groups have been strongly critical of Germany's totalitarian policies on education and the activities of the Jugendamt, which gained negative press when cracking down on another homeschooling family about the same time last year. After the Buskeros family consistently refused to return their 15-year-old daughter Melissa to public school, fifteen police officers forcibly seized the girl and placed her in a foster home in a location undisclosed to her parents, during which time she was allowed to see her family once a week.

Despite igniting outrage from Christians and human rights activists around the world, the German government continued to hold Melissa against her will, while falsely claiming to German media that the teen was happy in state custody. Practically the instant midnight struck on her 16th birthday, however - an age carrying greater independence under German law - Melissa left the foster home and arrived on her family's doorstep at 3 a.m., after almost three months away from home.

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Elite British universities discriminate against academic merit

More than half of leading universities discriminate in favour of students from deprived backgrounds, sparking a fresh row over "social engineering". An official report reveals the majority of institutions belonging to the elite Russell Group show favour to sixth-formers from poor-performing schools. One in five give priority to applicants' whose parents missed out on higher education. And 53 per cent of universities take students' "family problems" into account as an admissions tiebreaker.

According to the report, Nottingham - which traditionally attracts more applicants than any other university - said students' A-level grades "may be valued more highly" if applicants were refugees or came from the traveller community, poor homes or a family without a history of going to university.

Last night, it prompted claims that children were being "punished" for attending a good school. Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said: "This will inevitable lead to someone with great potential, who doesn't tick all these boxes, being deprived of his or her rightful place. Social engineering like this can only weaken the university system and leave a sour taste in the mouth of many parents who see their bright and hard-working children denied places on social grounds."

The disclosure was made in a Government-backed study published four years after a landmark commission on fair access to university. The 2004 report, led by Professor Steven Schwartz, the former vice-chancellor of Brunel University, said institutions had to take a "wider view" of an applicant's potential to close the gap between the number of students admitted from professional and unskilled homes.

In the latest study, the Supporting Professionalism in Admissions unit, based at Sheffield Hallam University, said many "positive changes" had been made by universities in light of the Schwartz Report. It surveyed almost three-quarters of universities and colleges. Four in 10 vice-chancellors and principals said "should choose students partly in order to achieve a social mix".

The report said the 20-strong Russell Group - which includes Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London, Nottingham and St Andrews - were most likely to use admissions procedures to achieve a mixed student body. More than half of all universities - 51 per cent - said it was fair to make lower-grade offers to sixth formers from poor-performing schools and deprived homes.

Among Russell Group members, 53 per cent considered whether students attended a "low-achieving school" or had family problems, 40 per cent marked-up students in local authority care, 40 per cent favoured candidates with disabilities and 20 per cent looked favourably on those without university-educated parents.

Earlier this year, an investigation by the Telegraph found the London School of Economics, Bristol, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh were among those allowing staff to admit students from poor-performing comprehensives with worse A-levels than those from top schools.

Dr Wendy Piatt, Russell Group director general, said: "A-level qualifications are a key source of information about academic ability but we do not just rely on exam grades. Russell Group universities take a range of factors and information into account to ensure that we can identify the candidates with the most potential to excel on our courses - whatever their social or educational background."

David Lammy, Higher Education Minister, said: "Creating a transparent and open admissions process is crucial to ensuring fair access and maintaining public confidence in our universities and colleges."

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Too many uni students cry poor

By Ross Gittins, a Left-leaning Australian economist

I like to think I care about the plight of the less fortunate. But if you feel sorry for everyone with a hard-luck story you debase the currency. So one of the groups I've never had much sympathy for is self-pitying university students. They're middle-class kids pretending to be poor and deserving, whereas they're actually setting themselves up for a life of well-above-average earnings. The few years of their life they spend having to scrimp and save won't do them any harm. It might teach them to have some concern for the genuinely needy.

Psychologists say we read less for enlightenment than to reinforce our existing opinions, and I found much to support my prejudices in last week's report on the private costs of tertiary education, prepared by the University of Canberra's National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling for AMP. Let's start with the much maligned Higher Education Contribution Scheme. When the Howard government was increasing HECS payments we got used to reading scandalised reports about how the cost of a medical degree for someone having to buy their way into uni had blown out to almost $200,000. As is the media's wont, this was an extreme example. Turns out that for students graduating last year, their average total fee was $20,500. That's less than you'd borrow to buy a car.

The report estimates that it takes the average single male or female seven or eight years to pay off the HECS debt. Does that sound a long time? It's certainly longer than you'd be given to pay off most commercial loans. But that's a sign of the generosity of the scheme. You don't have to start making repayments until your income hits $41,600 a year ($800 a week), at which point the repayments start at $32 a week. The report estimates that it may take a male sole parent with two children as long as 14 years to repay his debt, while a female sole parent in similar circumstances may never get her debt paid off.

Does that sound bad? It's actually good. The point of the scheme is that your repayments are geared to your income, so that if you don't earn much - or don't earn anything while you're off minding kids - the Government will wait as long as it takes for its money. And, unlike any commercial lender, it doesn't charge a real interest rate while it waits. To me, the fact that sole parents fallen on hard times may never be required to repay the charge for their education is a virtue, not a vice.

It's sometimes objected that lumbering our young graduates with all this debt must surely reduce their ability to afford a home of their own. But the report finds little evidence to support this fear - which is hardly surprising. Why? Because the greatest impediment to owning a home isn't having to repay a HECS debt, it's not having the high salary that goes with being a uni graduate. That, to me, is the point. When you become a university graduate you're translated to the ranks of the privileged in our community.

Professor Bruce Chapman of the Australian National University estimates that, on average, the lifetime earnings of graduates are about 70 per cent greater than for those who went only to year 12. That difference averages more than $1.5 million, even after you allow for the earnings students forgo when they study full-time. And we're supposed to feel sorry for kids who can't buy everything they want for a few years while they qualify to enter the winners' circle?

It's not just more income that being a graduate gets you, of course. Graduates tend to have jobs that are cleaner, safer, more secure and more intellectually satisfying. They're far less likely to be out of work during their lives. And they ought to have had their minds opened to wonders of the world. It's these private benefits to possessors of a tertiary education that justify the Government requiring them to contribute towards the cost of that education. But the report finds our uni fees are third highest among developed countries.

Even that's not quite as bad as it sounds. Our fees are about a third lower than students pay in Japan, about a quarter lower than in the United States and not much higher than in Canada. What's more, few countries allow their university fees to be paid on the generous terms we do. With us, you don't have to pay a cent until you've graduated and are earning a decent salary, nor do you ever pay a real interest rate. The scheme was designed that way to ensure the fees didn't deter kids from poor families from going to uni.

But just how deprived are uni students? Well, two-thirds of full-time uni students under 25 live at home, so they're probably not doing too badly. Some of these would be eligible for the Government's youth allowance but most wouldn't because their parents' incomes are too high. More than 60 per cent of full-time uni students of all ages have jobs. Forty per cent work up to 19 hours a week, 15 per cent work between 20 and 34 hours a week and 6 per cent work full-time.

Full-time students under 25 who live in group households have earnings averaging only about a third of the earnings of full-time workers under 25 living in group households - $270 a week versus $820 a week. But, on average, the students spend $540 a week each, which is only about 20 per cent less than the $690 a week the workers spend.

That tells us two things. First, the students can't be greatly deprived and, second, they must still be being propped up by their parents even though they've left home. Sounds to me, if anything, it's the students' parents we should feel sorry for. But I bet the kids don't see it that way.

Source





13 December, 2008

Nasty British teacher tells little kids that Father Christmas isn't real

A primary school teacher left a class of 25 pupils in tears when she told them Father Christmas does not exist.

The supply teacher blurted out: "it's your parents who leave out presents on Chrsitmas Day" when excited youngsters got rowdy as they talked about Christmas. The class of seven-year-olds at Blackshaw Lane Primary School, Royton, near Oldham, Greater Manchester burst into tears and told their parents when they got home. The parents then complained about the incident and were sent a letter by the school saying the teacher has been disciplined over the gaffe.

One father said: "My son came home and said that his substitute teacher had told the class that Santa doesn't exist and it's your mum and dad that put out presents for them. "Apparently, they were all talking about Christmas and being a bit rowdy. She just came straight out with it. "My lad was nearly in tears and so was everyone else in the class - especially as it was so close to Christmas. I thought it was wrong. "He was distraught about it. He's only seven-years-old and it's part of the magic of Christmas to him. "We told him that she did not believe in Father Christmas because of her religion and he's fine now. "I found it shocking. She has done it maliciously. "A lot of parents were disgusted and complained to the school. If she was a regular teacher then I think a lot more would have been done."

Angela McCormick, the headteacher, refused to comment on the incident. Oldham Council's service director for children, young people and families, Janet Doherty, said: "This is a matter for the individual school to resolve. "We have every confidence that the head will deal with it sensitively and appropriately."

Source




Australia: Poor teachers to blame for kids' bad marks says Education Minister

He's partly right. But how come teaching is no longer an attractive profession? Would largely non-existent discipline be something to do with it? And what does it say about the 4-year courses aspiring teachers have to do before getting a teaching job? Does the word "useless" spring to mind?

Education minister Rod Welford says Queensland's ailing school system is linked to the incapacity of our universities to attract quality teachers. Mr Welford has signalled trainee teacher standards need urgent attention. Mr Welford yesterday compared Queensland teaching qualifications with those of the world leader Finland, which demands teachers have a Masters of Education. "In Finland it's very high competition to get into teaching and here we don't attract, for some reason, our best and brightest," Mr Welford said.

His comments come a day after Premier Anna Bligh announced an independent review of the school system, triggered by Queensland's latest poor showing in international exams. The Courier-Mail can confirm the Minister this week wrote to Melbourne education consultant Professor Brian Caldwell, inviting him to present his 10-point plan to turn around the dimming prospects of the state's languishing students.

Professor Caldwell and Brisbane's Dr Jessica Harris, who co-wrote Why Not The Best Schools, after five years' research into what makes the world's top schools tick, will present their conclusions to the heads of the department. The book and its 10-year plan draws heavily from Finland.

Professor Caldwell and Dr Harris yesterday said the Finnish move to raise standards and prestige of teaching through a compulsory Masters of Education, was critical to their success. Dr Harris said only the top 10 per cent of applicants were accepted to teaching; the most sought-after course. Such a cut-off in Queensland would equate to an Overall Position (OP) score of 3 or 4, and is in sharp contrast to the generous standards of Queensland universities. Scores needed to enter a Bachelor of Education in this state over the past two years ranged from Overall Position 12 to 19.

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said such standards were far too low. He said OPs were generally nothing more than a measure of supply and demand in a particular year, and a method to fund university courses. "It doesn't solve the problem by changing them (entrance marks)," he said. "We've got to create a scenario that teachers with top OP scores compete for positions."

The union chief said he interpreted Mr Welford's comments about Queensland not attracting high-calibre teaching candidates as a discussion about raising the status of the profession.

The academic performances of Finland's schools are never published, with the state trusting school leaders to implement the curriculum effectively and provide equity of access to every child. Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said Mr Welford's move to blame teachers for the poor school results was typical of the Labor Government, which never accepted any responsibility for its actions or lack of action.

Source

This idolization of Finland has some merit but comparability between Finland and Australia is low. As just one example, the foreign-born population in Finland is just 2.5 percent, and most of those are people who fit into Finnish society with relative ease: Russians, Estonians and Swedes. Australia, by contrast, is one of the most multi-cultural and multi-racial countries on earth. So picking out the fact that Finnish teachers have Master's degrees as the crucial difference shows that we are listening to propaganda, not any serious attempt at analysis




University experience is all the better if you leave home

I generally agree with James Allan but I fail to see that he makes his case below. In my observation kids in residential colleges seem mainly characterized by very juvenile behaviour and heavy drinking. Developing a feeling of fellowship with others of a similar age is however an advantage -- though more of an emotional one than anything else

A little under four years ago, I arrived to take up a professorship at the University of Queensland. Before that, I worked in or visited universities in New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, the United States and Britain. The first thing that hit me - and it still staggers me - is the pervasive managerialism of Australian universities. I have never encountered anything like it, anywhere (though a few people with experience of the ex-Soviet bloc may have).

A close second was the wasteful and ridiculous obsession with applying for grants in the humanities and law. No one would judge a car company by how many government grants it got, but by the quality and sales of the cars it produced. (Maybe that's not the best example at the moment with this government.) In the university sector here though, success at getting grants (an input) is treated as a sign of excellence (an output) in its own right. That's moronic.

But from the point of view of students, perhaps the most striking difference I've noticed between Australian universities and those in the other countries in which I've worked, is the relative dearth of residence or college places in the older, and best, universities. My personal experience and professional observations make me think students are better off leaving home and going into residence when they start university. This is a highly chosen option, if not the norm, in my native Canada, as well as in the US and Britain. New Zealand's oldest university, and one of its two best, is situated in a small university town, and relies on the bulk of its students coming from all over the country, including almost a third who come down from Auckland.

Australian universities, and especially the older, elite ones, are overwhelmingly big-city commuter universities. They take a small percentage of students into residence, mainly from the country. On top of that, there is next to no tradition of large numbers of students travelling out of state to another university. If you are from Sydney you go to a Sydney university; if from Melbourne to one in Melbourne. University students stay at home. They commute to, and home from, the campus. The overall learning experience - in both a narrow academic sense and in a wider life-changing (including having fun) sense - is far inferior to going to a residence university. Given any two universities even remotely comparable in their academic excellence, if one is residence and the other commuter, students should do whatever they possibly can to attend the residence one.

What about the cost? Well, the differential costs argument really isn't all that powerful once you factor in the cost of running a car to go back and forth at the commuter university and then recall that adding, say, $20,000-odd to your final loan is not much at all in the greater scheme of getting a first-class all-round university experience you will always remember, and a big leg up in likely lifetime earnings. What's the difference, really, between a $300,000 mortgage on your first home and a $320,000 one?

I have two children, one 15 and one 13. The sad truth is should either ask my opinion, I would not advise attending an Australian university. I think both would be better off attending a Canadian or (one in particular) NZ university. You just cannot beat the life-changing experience of living away from home at a residence university. Whether anything can now be done about the lack of top residence universities in Australia is dubious. No doubt it is a failing that in large part is a function of historical contingency. But it's still a shame.

Source





12 December, 2008

Oh Come All Ye Tasteless

'Chav' is a derogatory British term most frequently used to describe white working class teenagers or young people who misbehave. The burberry cap on the figure below is a chav hallmark



A British school has asked kids to learn a "chav" nativity play - where Jesus turns water into lager instead of wine.

Mary and Joseph break into a garage instead of finding shelter in a stable. She is told she will get extra benefits for having Jesus - and the Wise Men are asked for gifts of Adidas and Burberry. When a character says Mary is a virgin, another replies: "Wossat then? A train?" The script was thought to have been found on the internet.

Michelle Taylor, 35, has a relative at Oakwood School for 11to-16 year olds with emotional and behavioural difficulties in Bexley, Kent. She said: "I couldn't believe it. You encourage children to speak properly, then they get this at school." Bexley Council said the script was used in a drama lesson for kids of 14, but the school would still stage a traditional nativity.

Source. Fuller details here




Obama's Good Students

Last week the excellent David Brooks, in one of his columns in the New York Times, exulted over the high quality of people President-elect Barack Obama was enlisting in his new cabinet and onto his staff. The chief evidence for these people being so impressive, it turns out, is they all went to what the world--"that ignorant ninny," as Henry James called it--thinks superior schools. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, the London School of Economics; like dead flies on flypaper, the names of the schools Obama's new appointees attended dotted Brooks's column. Here is the column's first paragraph:

Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).

This administration will be, as Brooks writes, "a valedictocracy." The assumption here is that having all these good students--many of them possibly "toll-frees," as high-school students who get 800s on their SATs used to be known in admissions offices--running the country is obviously a pretty good thing. Brooks's one jokey line in the column has it that "if a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we're screwed." Since my appreciation of David Brooks is considerable, and since I agree with him on so many things, why don't I agree with him here?

The reason is that, after teaching at a university for 30 years, I have come to distrust the type I think of as "the good student"--that is, the student who sails through school and is easily admitted into the top colleges and professional schools. The good student is the kid who works hard in high school, piles up lots of activities, and scores high on his SATs, and for his efforts gets into one of the 20 or so schools in the country that ring the gong of success. While there he gets a preponderance of A's. This allows him to move on to the next good, or even slightly better, graduate, business, or professional school, where he will get more A's still, and move onward and ever upward. His perfect r,sum, in hand, he runs only one risk--that of catching cold from the draft created by all the doors opening for him wherever he goes, as he piles up scads of money, honors, and finally ends up being offered a job at a high level of government. He has, in a sense Spike Lee never intended, done the right thing.

What's wrong with this? Am I describing anything worse than effort and virtue richly rewarded? I believe I am. My sense of the good student is that, while in class, he really has only one pertinent question, which is, What does this guy, his professor at the moment, want? Whatever it is--a good dose of liberalism, libertarianism, feminism, conservatism--he gives it to him, in exchange for another A to slip into his backpack alongside all the others on his long trudge to the Harvard, Yale, Stanford law or business schools, and thence into the empyrean.

Murray Kempton once wrote that intellectual contentment in America consists in not giving a damn about Harvard. Harvard--and Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and the -others--has over the past three or four decades made this contentment easy to achieve. All these schools have done so by becoming, at least in their humanities and social sciences sides, more and more mired in the mediocre. The reason for this is the politicization of the subjects that these academics, who have only the blurriest notion of how academic freedom is supposed to work, have allowed to take over the universities.

Harvard, I remember hearing some years ago, is looking for a strong feminist. One should have thought it would be the other way round: feminism trying to establish a beachhead at Harvard. Not so. Like Gadarene swine, the putatively best of American colleges have rushed to take on the worst of intellectual freight. Behind the much-vaunted notion of diversity in contemporary universities is the attempt to make sure that no corpus of bad ideas isn't amply represented. In this attempt, the top universities have succeeded admirably.

The problem set for the good student, then, is to negotiate his way through this bramble of bad ideas. My son, who went to Stanford, told me at the time that a not uncommon opening session in some of his classes was for a professor to announce that he was going to teach his course from the Marxist (or feminist or new historicist or Foucauldian) point of view, but he wanted the students to know that everyone in class was entirely free to disagree with him, and indeed he encouraged strong disagreement. My son was the boy who, from the back of the room, could be heard faintly muttering, "Yeah, sure, for a B-."

I did my teaching at Northwestern University, where most of the students had what I came to regard as "the habits of achievement." They did the reading, most of them could write a respectable paper, many of them talked decently in response to my questions. They made it difficult for me to give them less than a B for the course. But the only students who genuinely interested me went beyond being good students to become passionate ones. Their minds, I could tell, were engaged upon more than merely getting another high grade. The number of such students was remarkably small; if I had to pin it down, I should say they comprised well under 3 percent, and not all of them received A's from me.

Meanwhile our good student, resembling no one so much as that Italian character in Catch-22 who claimed to have flourished under the fascists, then flourished under the Communists, and was confident he would also flourish under the Americans, treks on his merry way. From Yale to Harvard Law School, or Harvard to Yale Law School, or to one of the highly regarded (and content empty) business schools, he goes, as the Victorians had it, from strength to strength.

In recent years I have come to think that some of the worst people in the United States have gone to the Harvard or Yale Law Schools: Mr. and Mrs. Eliot Spitzer, Mr. and Mrs. William Clinton, and countless -others. And why not, since these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead.

Universities are of course the last bastion of snobbery in America. The problem is that the snobbery works. Nor is this snobbery likely to be seriously eroded in our lifetime. No parent whose child has the choice of going to Princeton or Arizona State is likely to advise the kid to become a Sun Devil. Go to one of the supposedly better schools and your chances for success in the great world increase, flat-out, no doubt about it. To have been accepted at one of the top schools means that a child has done what he was told, followed instructions, kept his eye on the prize, played the game, and won. But does it mean much more?

Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan were two of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century. Truman didn't go to college at all, and Reagan, one strains to remember, went to Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois. Each was his own man, each, in his different way, without the least trace of conformity or hostage to received opinion or conventional wisdom. Schooling, even what passes for the best schooling, would, one feels, have made either man less himself and thereby probably worse.

The presence and continued flourishing of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and the rest do perform a genuine service. They allow America to believe it has a meritocracy, even though there is no genuine known merit about it. Perhaps one has to have taught at or otherwise had a closer look at these institutions to realize how thin they are. I myself feel their thinness so keenly that, on more than one occasion, I have, by way of informing one friend or acquaintance about another, said, "He went to Princeton and then to the Harvard Law School, but, really, he is much better than that."

Source




Britain: School results are a poor predictor of future success

John Lennon left school without any qualifications, Damien Hirst did marginally better and was awarded an E for his art A-Level whilst Bill Gates dropped out of college on his way to becoming the world's richest man. They are hardly shining examples of those who achieved all they did because of success in the classroom.

But according to intriguing new research, school tests are by no means a measure of true ability - nor can they be used as a tool to predict future success or abject failure. The study, by the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA), found that as many as 77 per cent of people believe that formal examinations fail to reflect their true intelligence.

Sour grapes? Perhaps, but there are those who have successfully bucked the trend. They include Gordon Ramsay, Ralph Lauren (who quit college to sell ties in a New York men's store) and degree-less business knights, Richard Branson, Philip Green and Alan Sugar. Then there's fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, Radio Four's interrogator-in-chief John Humphrys, the BBC's Terry Wogan, chat show legend Michael Parkinson and finally the X-Factor's Simon Cowell. Not one of them made it to university.

Not surprisingly then, just three out of 10 people associate exams with 'a sense of pride', according to the CIEA study which was based on the responses from 2,000 adults. The research also found that 62 per cent spoke of feeling 'butterflies in the stomach' moments before they were due to sit an exam. Other reactions included headaches, insomnia and vomiting.

Pupils in England currently sit an average of 70 formal examinations, whilst primary school children are now subjected to more tests than their international counterparts. Yet, 60 per cent of teachers who responded to a separate online poll for the CIEA said they did not think exams were necessarily the best indicators of a pupil's ability and were not reflective of their future success in a job.

'Exams don't suit everybody,' said Graham Herbert, deputy head of the CIEA, which aims to improve senior examiners, moderators and markers. 'They don't tell the full picture. Most adults agree that their performance in exams does not reflect their true abilities. 'That is not to say we should get rid of exams. What we need is a supplement to the exam system, a supplement that can be relied upon. And that supplement could be teacher assessment.' The CIEA is training qualified assessors through its Chartered Educational Assessor (CEA) initiative and aims to place 3,000 of them in schools across England by 2011. Already 33 are in place, with a further 70 in training.

Mr Herbert said the reliance on exams meant that many schools were now focusing on teaching for tests. 'If you say the purpose is to put a school in a rank order, then it becomes a high-stakes test,' he added. 'People get really nervous about it because their reputation is at risk, so they tend to teach to the test. 'That means that their learners jump through the hoops put there by the exam, rather than testing their ability and their knowledge.

'Take Richard Branson and Winston Churchill. They are two very famous, highly skilled individuals who were both poor exam performers. So exams don't necessarily on their own bring out the best in individuals. 'And they become stigmatised by that. A lot of adults feel that. From our survey, the majority, it seems.'

Source





11 December, 2008

Christmas Wins In North Carolina School

Nice try, bub/bubbette

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeerwas almost grounded at Murrayville Elementary School this week after a parent complained about the classic Christmas song's inclusion in her daughter's upcoming kindergarten concert. The objecting parent was upset about the words "Christmas" and "Santa" in the song, feeling that they carried religious overtones. That prompted the song to be pulled from the upcoming holiday concert, which in turn upset more parents.

But Rudolph will be shining bright next Tuesday after New Hanover County school administrators and lawyers determined the song was just, well, a secular song about a make-believe reindeer. "They've determined that it signifies just a day in time, Dec. 25, not the promotion of a religious symbol," said Ed Higgins, chairman of the county Board of Education. "So Rudolph is back in."

By all appearances, it looks like the school reacted - it is hard to say "overreacted," considering the hyper sensitive nature of schools and the Christian religion nowadays - then someone in the adult category said "what the hell is the matter with you people? Put the song back in. The children do not care, they just want to have fun doing a freaking Christmas play, not a holiday concert. Sheesh!" Then Ed Higgins made some shat up to placate the Christmas haters. However, the complaining parent does have a slight point

The mother, who is Jewish, said she was trying to have a Hanukkah song added to the musical lineup but had not received a return phone call about it from school officials by mid-afternoon Friday.

If it is a holiday concert, yeah, maybe it should be included.

The objecting parent said that she spoke to Duclos about keeping the program about education and having fun, without any religious references. She sees the beauty in the Christmas celebration, she said, but believes religious holidays have no place in a secular public school setting.

Despite having done it for decades and decades, heck, probably since the school was founded. BTW, I hope the parent is not pulling her child out of school for HER religious holidays. That is not meant as a knock at Judaism, I grew up around plenty of people of the Jewish faith, who would often have days off that I wasn't getting. I simply mean that if the parent doesn't want others to combine religion and school, then she shouldn't let her religious holidays interfere.

"I don't mind Christmas or anything Christmas-related at all, so long as you're not imposing it on my child," the objecting parent said Friday morning.

So, don't have your kid participate. But, sure looks like you do mind.

Source




Australian school in clear over teaching creation

A CHRISTIAN school that teaches a biblical view of creation in science classes has been cleared of breaching state curriculum requirements for the teaching of evolution. The NSW Board of Studies has found that Pacific Hills Christian School at Dural has met its requirements for teaching the science syllabus, including evolution, to years 7 to 10. The board said it had not substantiated a complaint about how science was taught at the school. Its investigation involved an assessment by the school's overseeing body, Christian Schools Australia, and its own inspection of curriculum and teaching materials.

The board's curriculum director was given access to the school's intranet to review the school's curriculum documents. The director also observed several science classes and class work on evolution. The board's science inspector reviewed the school's educational programs for science, including student work samples and assessment tasks. A board spokeswoman said the reports found the school was meeting its science curriculum requirements and this was endorsed by the board's registration committee.

An inquiry by Christian Schools Australia also cleared the school of failing its duty to teach evolution theory appropriately. The head of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, said: "It was a very thorough process in which the Board of Studies conducted its own inquiries and came to its own conclusions based on empirical evidence, and it is very pleasing that they confirmed the findings that our registration system made."

The original complaint was made by the former president of the Secondary Principals Council, Chris Bonnor. He raised his concerns after he viewed a sample of how science was taught at Pacific Hills on an SBS television program. He said he was not satisfied with the outcome of the board inquiry. "Notwithstanding the extent to which that lesson may or may not be typical of science teaching at the school, I remain concerned that the Board of Studies has not commented on the appropriateness of advice given to students by the teacher in that science lesson. I still want to know whether it is appropriate for a science teacher to exhort his or her students to consider what God's revelation through his scripture shows you, so that you can come to some clear understanding about your view of evolution."

The NSW Greens MP John Kaye said the board's ruling set a dangerous precedent that had "opened the floodgates to a religious invasion of the curriculum". The board had failed in its duty to protect the integrity of the science curriculum, he said. "Every fundamentalist private school in NSW will be emboldened by this decision."

In response, the board said its position on teaching evolution as evidence-based science had not changed and it was satisfied Pacific Hills had complied with its curriculum requirement. The board spokeswoman said: "Parents are entitled to choose schools for their children that support their own beliefs. However, it has been repeatedly made clear to faith-based and other schools that creationism is not part of the mandatory science curriculum, cannot take the place of any part of the mandatory science curriculum, and will not be assessed in the mandatory School Certificate science test."

Mr O'Doherty said Mr Bonnor had misquoted the Pacific Hills science teacher, and Dr Kaye's comments amounted to vilification.

Source




Australia: Private school enrolments rise despite tough times

Strong testimony to what parents think of government schools

DESPITE tough times, Queensland parents are digging deep to send their kids to private schools, with enrolments to rise by up to 4 per cent next year. The public sector is expected to experience only a half per cent rise.

Brisbane mother and doctor Jane Collins says she is fortunate to afford the near-$10,000 fee to send daughter Stephanie to Prep at Somerville House [a Brisbane Presbyterian girls' school] next year. "It's the cost of having the best possible education," she said. The single mother viewed the hefty fees as a critical investment, not a cost. She has set up a fund to bankroll Stephanie's schooling career, believing annual fees will hit $20,000 when the four-year-old reaches Year 12.

The latest estimates from Education Queensland revealed 38,600 youngsters will start Prep in 2009 at a state school. State primary and secondary enrolments will make up about 68 per cent of Queensland's student body, with 306,000 and 174,000 respectively.

A Brisbane academic said the continued growth of private schools was indicative of Queensland's population growth and healthy economy. "(A recession) hasn't hit yet," QUT lecturer and head of economics and finance Tim Robinson said. "In a year's time when the economy slows you may find the drift to private has slowed down." The Catholic sector expected enrolments to rise about 2.6 per cent next year, with the independent sector preparing for rises of up to 4 per cent.

Brisbane Catholic Education spokesman John Phelan said many parents in his sector made huge sacrifices to keep a child in a private school. "(A private education) is often the last thing to go ... it's one of those things parents struggle to keep affording," he said. Mr Phelan said the trend to go private had been gathering pace in Queensland for about 20 years. And while some of the most expensive schools had recently been asked by parents for financial concessions, it was still extremely rare.

Professor Robinson cited 2007 data showing Queensland's 90,000 newcomers were split evenly between international, interstate and newborns. He said southeast Queensland benefited from a particularly strong intake of educated and cashed-up international immigrants.

Source





10 December, 2008

America Needs "Change Parents Can Believe In"

Let's not kid ourselves. Barack Obama isn't the first (and he certainly won't be the last) Washington politician to send his children to exclusive private schools. In fact, Sidwell Friends - the elite private academy chosen by the Obamas for their two young daughters - was also selected by Bill and Hillary Clinton for their daughter, Chelsea, while they lived in the White House.

But you won't hear me - or any other true educational choice advocate - condemning either family for selecting the educational environment that best fits the needs of their children. That's their right as parents. In fact, in selecting this $29,000-a-year school, Michelle Obama specifically described it as "the best fit for what (our) daughters need now."

Meanwhile in South Carolina (which includes eight counties with a median household income below what the Obamas will pay per child in tuition costs this coming year) one of the state's top gubernatorial prospects, James E. Smith, also chooses to send his children to a prestigious private academy. Again, that's his choice - and based on South Carolina's worst-in-the-nation graduation rate, it's hard to fault him for it.

In Oregon, where the graduation rate is much higher, House Speaker Jeff Merkley and his wife recently attempted to enroll two of their children in a newly-formed charter school. In this case, it wasn't that their public schools were all that bad, they simply wanted something better. Yet when reporters first asked Speaker Merkley about his children's applications, he denied having ever submitted them. How come? Well, as it turned out, Merkley had voted against Oregon's charter school legislation just a few years earlier.

Likewise, South Carolina's Rep. Smith has been one of the most vocal opponents of parental choice in South Carolina - including choice for those eight counties with household incomes below what the Obamas will pay to send just one of their children to private school this coming year.

And then there's Obama himself, who is following in the footsteps of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and his Illinois colleague Jesse Jackson, Jr., in ardently opposing academic scholarships and tuition tax credits which in most cases add up to less than half what public schools are spending. "We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them," Obama says, a clever sound bite that ignores the billions in new taxpayer dollars we pour into public education year after year in an unsuccessful effort to do just that.

Sadly, politicians like Obama, the Clintons, Kennedy, Jackson, Smith and Merkley are hardly unique in availing themselves of the very choices they refuse to make more accessible to the vast majority of American parents. According to a 2007 report by the Heritage Foundation, 37 percent of U.S. Representatives and 45 percent of U.S. Senators enroll their children in private schools - a rate four times higher than that of the general population. Simply put, choice is a good thing - but only for those rich or powerful enough to enjoy it.

So what is Obama's solution for the rest of America's parents? For all his talk of "change we need," and "change we can believe in," Obama's plan is all too familiar - keep throwing more money into the same old failed bureaucracies while branding anyone who wants to empower parents as being "anti-public education."

Yet as our nation falls further behind its industrialized peers in standardized test scores, we desperately need an education system focused on achieving results, not accommodating a status quo that has proven utterly incapable at adapting to a changing world. More money and expensive new "accountability" measures have clearly failed to move us forward. We must now provide change that parents can believe in, a process which begins, ironically, with providing them the same choices currently enjoyed by their leaders.

Source




Britain: New ‘Report cards’ on schools to help parents to choose

Parents choosing a state school for their child are to get help in the form of a report card that will award schools a grade from A to F, based on factors such as pupil satisfaction and exam scores. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said that the report cards, modelled on a system used in New York, aimed to cut the “detective work” that parents have to do, by bringing together information on academic achievement as well as other criteria. These may include ratings of pupil and parental satisfaction, child well-being and a measure of how the school is doing in narrowing the achievement gap between children from rich and poor households.

Mr Balls said: “There is lots of useful information out there for parents on how schools are performing – like performance tables and Ofsted reports - but the volume of data can be confusing and difficult to navigate.”

Report cards will grade primary and secondary schools in England on an annual basis, although individual measures could be updated through the year. They will also provide “signposts” to other information, such as Ofsted reports. If successful, the cards are likely to prove a useful alternative to league tables based only on exam results, which have been criticised heavily for providing a crude and partial measure.

Teaching unions gave the report cards a cautious welcome. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said they represented an “interesting opportunity”, but that the measures used to compile the reports needed to be robust.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The balanced report card has the potential to reflect better the performance of the school than any single set of examination statistics, but it must replace league tables, not be in addition to them.”

Source




Carols canned as Australian Primary School opts for multicultural event

A primary school has dumped its traditional Christmas carols concert in favour of a musical event for multicultural families. Pinewood Primary School, in Mt Waverley, Victoria, has been accused of acting like the Grinch who stole Christmas, despite Premier John Brumby's warning that schools should not play down the Christmas spirit for the sake of political correctness.

Angry parents and Liberal MPs slammed the decision. Parents Victoria executive officer Gail McHardy said it appeared the school community was not consulted about the change. "I'd like to think that tradition is not thrown out the window like this. It's bah, humbug," she said.

Liberal education spokesman Martin Dixon said the majority of Australians, whether from Anglo-Saxon or ethnic backgrounds, celebrated the Christmas tradition. "And it's obviously been part of that school's tradition, and there's no need to change that," he said.

Principal Maurice Baker said it was decided to replace Thursday's carols event with an entertainer. "We thought we'd like to present this sort of thing to our parents, and we thought the only way we could do it was in place of our carols night this year," he said. "And we thought that was probably not a bad idea either because it gave people from other cultures the chance to celebrate with us." Asked if non-Christian students and parents usually attended the carols night, Mr Baker said: "They can, but they choose not to because it's not their religion."

Last month, Mr Brumby urged schools and kindergartens to let children enjoy Christmas no matter what their religion. "Christmas holds a significant place in Australian society and it is important schoolchildren . . . gain an understanding of its historical and cultural importance to our country," he said.

Mr Baker said Pinewood still celebrated Christmas in different ways and the carols might be back next year. "It's not as if the Grinch has come here and stolen Christmas," he said.

At Canterbury Primary School, students and teachers are getting into the yuletide spirit in a big way. Principal Anne Tonkin said students had taken part in various community Christmas functions, including carol singing and helping out with a Christmas stall. "It provides an opportunity for students to showcase their talents," she said. Canterbury parent Vicki Vrazas said her children looked forward to Christmas events. "They love it, it's part of tradition and respecting Christmas values," she said.

Source





9 December, 2008

UNC libraries ban Christmas trees

Chapel Hill library chief says staffers complained about the display

For as long as anyone can remember, Christmas trees adorned with lights and ornaments have greeted holiday season visitors to UNC Chapel Hill's two main libraries. Not this year. The trees, which have stood in the lobby areas of Wilson and Davis libraries each December, were kept in storage this year at the behest of Sarah Michalak, the associate provost for university libraries. Michalak's decision followed several years of queries and complaints from library employees and patrons bothered by the Christian display, Michalak said this week.

Michalak said that banishing the Christmas displays was not an easy decision but that she asked around to library colleagues at Duke, N.C. State and elsewhere and found no other one where Christmas trees were displayed.

Aside from the fact that a UNC Chapel Hill library is a public facility, Michalak said, libraries are places where information from all corners of the world and all belief systems is offered without judgment. Displaying one particular religion's symbols is antithetical to that philosophy, she said. "We strive in our collection to have a wide variety of ideas," she said. "It doesn't seem right to celebrate one particular set of customs."

Michalak, chief librarian for four years, said at least a dozen library employees have complained over the last few years about the display. She hasn't heard similar criticism from students, though they may have voiced concerns to other library staff.

Public libraries generally shy away from creating displays promoting any single religion, said Catherine Mau, deputy director of the Durham County library system, where poinsettias provided by a library booster group provide holiday cheer.

Source




Women Abroad and Men at Home -- a big puzzle with a simple answer

The simple answer is that study is more recreational for women than for men. That's why women so often take useless humanities courses. Men have less time to go swanning around the word because travel is not important for their career development. But that explanation is avoided below

Truett Cates was scanning a wall of study abroad brochures across from his desk. "Let me put on my bifocals here - just a quick impression - I see one brochure for Australia and New Zealand, which has one guy on the cover of it," said Cates, the director of study abroad and January term, and a professor of German, at Austin College. "Of course, if you're a guy who doesn't do languages, Australia and New Zealand are attractive and you can do guy things like kayaking and bungee jumping and so forth, pub crawling."

"Some of them do have groups of students which are like, five girls and one guy, or three girls - or I guess also pictures of girls that attract guys. Maybe that's part of it," Cates continued.

"What I've done is look at all the brochures that the providers, the third-party providers, put out, and in the brochures and the nice color photographs they use to sell their programs, it's almost all women and I ask them, `Why do they do that?' They say it's just a marketing decision; that's who our customers are."

It's truth in advertising. Take Austin, for example, which, at about 80 percent, sends one of the highest proportions of its students abroad. But even with that critical mass, out of 390 total in 2006-7, 248 were women and 142 were men (like at many liberal arts colleges, Austin's overall undergraduate population skews somewhat female, but not to the same degree).

In recent years, as study abroad has ballooned across the nation, fueled by growth in short-term programs and increasing diversity in participating students' majors and destinations, a 2-to-1 female-to-male ratio has stayed remarkably stagnant. In 2006-7, the most recent year for which data are available, 65.1 percent of Americans studying abroad were women, and 34.9 percent men. A decade earlier - when the total number of study abroad students was less than half its current total - the breakdown was 64.9 percent female, 35.1 percent male, according to Institute of International Education Open Doors statistics.

"I wouldn't put it up there among the top issues or problems in the field, but I think it's a puzzlement, to use an old term, and it's sort of a persistent consideration, a persistent sort of annoying feeling that there's something not right about it," said William Hoffa, an independent practitioner in study abroad, retired from Amherst College, who wrote a history of study abroad and is now editing a second volume.

"Initially the problem was perceived to be curricular, meaning the curriculum of study abroad was likely to be in the humanities, social sciences, with a strong language dimension. To the degree that women were more likely to study in those areas, and the curriculum of study abroad was in those areas, it meant men that were studying more in science and business and technologies didn't have the curriculum overseas," said Hoffa. He continued, however, that while there's likely still a bias toward the humanities and social sciences in study abroad, "The curriculum of study abroad is actually pretty much across the spectrum these days."

The most popular majors among study abroad participants are, according to IIE, the social sciences, then business and management, and humanities third. Participation among students in the physical and life sciences jumped 14.5 percent in 2006-7, in engineering by 13.1 percent. The overall gender breakdown, meanwhile, has basically stayed flat. "To some degree," said Hoffa, "it can't just be the curriculum."

Much more here




Traditional subjects go in British schools shake-up

Primary pupils switch to "theme-based" learning

Traditional subjects such as history, geography and religious studies will be removed from the primary school curriculum and merged into a "human, social and environmental" learning programme as part of a series of radical education reforms. Under the plans, information technology classes would be given as much prominence as literacy and numeracy, and foreign languages would be taught in tandem with English. The reforms are the most sweeping for 20 years and aim to slim down the curriculum so that younger children can be taught fewer subjects in greater depth.

Sir Jim Rose, author of the interim report to be published today by the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, said that the changes were aimed at producing a curriculum for the 21st century. His proposals are to undergo further consultation but are understood to have the backing of the Government. Sir Jim said that combining traditional subjects in themed "learning areas" and introducing more practical and applied teaching would help pupils to make use of their knowledge in real-life situations, such as in managing their own finances.

He said that traditional subjects needed to be taught in a different way to make lessons more relevant to children. "We are certainly not getting rid of subjects such as history and geography," he told The Times. "We are trying to give primary schools flexibility to do less, but to do it better. The history they will be doing will be more in-depth."

The six learning areas defined by Sir Jim are: understanding English, communication and languages; mathematical understanding; scientific and technological understanding; human, social and environmental understanding; understanding physical health and well-being; and understanding arts and design.

While some teachers will welcome the proposals as giving them more flexibility and a chance to move away from a system first imposed in 1904, others have said that abandoning traditional subjects could lead to a dilution of specialist knowledge.

History, geography and religious studies would come under the banner of human, social and environmental understanding. The advantage of not having them as distinct subjects would allow teachers to introduce them in other parts of the curriculum, Sir Jim said. "The starting point of a lesson could be a historical point of study, but it could lead to other elements too, such as geography or citizenship," he said. Similarly, an English lesson could include French through a comparison of English and French words with common roots.

Sir Jim is particularly keen that children learn more practical skills for everyday life. "In maths, we often teach children to do sums, but then when they are faced with a problem in real life they don't know what sum to do. We should teach knowledge and skills as thoroughly as we can, and then we get in lots of applications and uses," he said.

He will also recommend that children in the last two years of primary school - years five and six - should have more lessons from teachers with specialist subjects, who could be hired from neighbouring secondary schools or the private sector.

Although his review did not cover testing, he said that he hoped that the Government would continue to explore alternatives to the key stage 2 tests for 11-year-olds.

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8 December, 2008

High court hears sex-harassment lawsuit case

A Massachusetts girl's awful experience on a school bus is at the heart of a case argued in the Supreme Court Tuesday over limits on lawsuits about sex discrimination in education. The 5-year-old kindergarten student in Hyannis, Mass., told her parents that in 2000 a third-grade boy repeatedly made her lift her dress, pull down her underwear and spread her legs.

Local police and the school system investigated, but found insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges or definitively sort out the story, according to court records. The district refused to assign the boy to another bus or put a monitor on the bus, records show.

Upset with the school district's response, parents Lisa and Robert Fitzgerald sued the district in federal court under both Title IX, which bars sex discrimination at schools that receive federal money, and a provision of a Civil War era, anti-discrimination law that was designed to enforce the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The issue for the court is whether Title IX, enacted in 1972, rules out suits under the older provision.

A federal judge ruled that the Fitzgeralds could not sue under the older law because Congress had subsequently passed Title IX. The Fitzgeralds also lost on their Title IX claims. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.

The justices appeared skeptical of the idea that Congress, in legislation expanding protection from discrimination, would cut back on the ability to sue for violations of constitutional rights. But they also wondered whether the Fitzgeralds ultimately would win their lawsuit. "But in this case, as we get down to what this case is about, we have a determination by a court that the school district acted reasonably in relation to these complaints," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Justice John Paul Stevens said, "You may still lose the lawsuit even if you win here." Charles Rothfeld, representing the parents, agreed that the Fitzgeralds might lose, but said their constitutional claims should at least be heard in court.

Among the advantages of pursuing a lawsuit under both provisions is that the older one allows claims to be made against individuals, while Title IX is restricted to institutions. Plaintiffs also can be awarded punitive damages under the older law, but not under Title IX. A decision is expected by late spring. The case is Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee, 07-1125.

Source




Quiz for French state jobs is discriminatory says President Sarkozy

For would-be gendarmes, knowing one end of a truncheon from the other was never enough to get the job. To join the ranks of France's finest, one needed a solid grasp of the imperfect subjunctive. In a sign that French intellectual rigour is not what is was, however, the general knowledge test set for all members of the French civil service is to be made easier and given less weight in the application process. From next year secretaries will no longer be examined on their grasp of 17th-century literature, nor park wardens on the dates of the Jurassic Period.

President Sarkozy has decreed that the tests discriminated in favour of white young men with traditional French educations. "What is the point of a history examination for firemen or police constables with university degrees?" asked Andr‚ Santini, the Civil Service Minister, who signed a new charter against discrimination this week.

The competitive quiz has long been a rite of passage into the haven of a lifetime job in the police, government ministries, the post office and other branches of la fonction publique, which employs more than 20 per cent of all French workers. Last year 65,000 people, many with degrees, sat the test for a thousand posts as junior clerks. President Sarkozy's secretary failed to win an internal contest for a promotion because she did not know the author of La Princesse de Cleves, a 17th-century novel with a long disputed origin, the newspaper Le Figaro reported.

Mr Santini, a Paris politician, said that the general knowledge tests were "being used as a form of invisible discrimination". The new guidelines are part of a campaign by Mr Sarkozy to dismantle barriers that keep applicants from immigrant backgrounds and poor families out of the state apparatus. Mr Sarkozy has also ended the guaranteed access to plum state jobs for graduates of the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration.

Ivan Rioufol, the news editor at Le Figaro, said that a basic knowledge of history and culture was vital for civil servants. France was already illiterate enough, he wrote.

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7 December, 2008

How Obama can fix education

By Jeff Jacoby

IF MONEY were the key to great education, Sasha and Malia Obama might be getting ready to transfer next month to the Francis-Stevens Education Center, the Washington, D.C., public school assigned to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., which will be the girls' new address as of Jan. 20.

The District of Columbia, after all, boasts one of the most amply funded school systems in America. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the DC public schools spend about $13,700 per pupil. That is a level of funding more lavish than in 48 states and half again as generous as the national per-pupil expenditure of $9,150.

But bigger budgets, alas, don't guarantee educational excellence. Its abundant spending notwithstanding, DC's public school system ranks among the worst in the nation. "In reading and math, the District's public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children," The Washington Post reported last year. According to the authoritative National Assessment of Education Progress, only one in seven fourth-graders is ranked at grade-level ("proficient") or better in reading and math. Among eighth-graders, only one in eight is proficient in reading; only one in 12 can handle eighth-grade math.

So to no one's surprise, the Obama girls will not be attending public school in Washington. Barack and Michelle Obama have decided to enroll their daughters in Sidwell Friends, the same private school that Chelsea Clinton attended when she was First Daughter.

The president-elect has taken a bit of heat for rejecting public education for Sasha and Malia. Critics point out that Obama cast himself as a staunch supporter of public schools during the presidential campaign. "We need to fix and improve our public schools," he told the NAACP convention in July, "not throw our hands up and walk away from them." When Time magazine asked the candidates whether parents should be given vouchers to enable them to send their children to better schools, his reply was adamant: "No. I believe that public education in America should foster innovation and provide students with varied, high-quality learning opportunities."

Now in fairness to the Obamas, an ideological commitment to public schools hardly obliges them to send their kids to one - especially when the local school system is as wretched as Washington, D.C.'s. The Obamas' first and deepest responsibility is to their daughters; to have enrolled the girls in the District's failing public system just to make a political point would have been appallingly irresponsible.

But in fairness to the critics, why doesn't Obama want other parents - poorer parents - to be able to do better by their children too? Candidates have been promising to "fix and improve our public schools" for decades, and for decades the schools have remained stubbornly mediocre, hefty spending increases notwithstanding. More promises won't do anything for the parents whose kids are stuck in the public schools Sasha and Malia will be spared. Vouchers, on the other hand, would.

Not every school can be a Sidwell Friends, but every school ought to have something Sidwell Friends benefits from every day. Money isn't the root of Sidwell Friends' success. Neither is the size of its classes, or its well-appointed facilities, or its loyal alumni. Sidwell Friends thrives because it has competition - and DC's public schools stagnate because they don't. Public education is essentially a monopoly, and monopolies tend to be costly, unimaginative, and indifferent to their customers' needs. Private and parochial schools, by contrast, cannot succeed if they lose the goodwill and confidence of the parents who choose them to educate their children.

The DC school system spends $13,700 per student, and most of those students can't even read or do simple math. Imagine what would happen if that money were channeled to parents instead, through vouchers that would let them freely choose their kids' schools. Imagine the energy, innovation, and diversity such competition would beget. Imagine the accountability and excellence it would lead to. Imagine the improvement in the lives of Washington's children. Imagine - 54 years after Brown v. Board of Education - achieving educational equality at last.

Public education doesn't have to be a lethargic and mediocre monopoly. Let vouchers stimulate competition, and education would be revolutionized. If that isn't change worth believing in, Mr. Obama, what is?

Source




Letter to a Handcuffed Feminist

by Mike S. Adams

Dear Handcuffed feminist:

I want to thank you, first of all, for taking the time to attend my recent speech at Duquesne University. I don't know how you managed to handcuff yourself, gag yourself, and then place a sign across your lap saying, "Kick the feminist." I'm just glad no one in the audience accepted your invitation.

I was concerned that you would jump up and interrupt me at some point during the speech. I was surprised that you did not. I was even more surprised that, at the end of the speech, someone came up and handed me a note saying "This is from the handcuffed chick. She wanted me to give it to you."

Your note, indicating that you had to leave the speech early because you were working the late shift, was pleasant in tone. I hope you weren't offended that I did not use the e-mail address you supplied in order to e-mail you the next day per your request. There's just something about a handcuffed feminist that kind of scares me. So I decided to discard the message and go drink a few beers with a couple of chicks who came to my speech wearing black dresses (and no handcuffs).

I received your email message the day after my speech, which indicated that you agreed with the content of my speech and which offered your assistance should I ever be prevented from speaking on a college campus in the future. I noticed that you closed your note by stating that you hoped I did not mind your little protest outside the door of my speech.

I am writing to you today to let you know that I did mind your little protest outside the door of my speech. I really got nothing positive out of it. In fact, I was annoyed with it because it is part of a major problem on our college campus today; namely, the use of protest simply for the sake of protest.

It is my contention that the self-described college liberals of your generation are even more spoiled and less informed than the college liberals of the 1960s. Generally speaking, you (and your generation of liberals) are inclined to protest against things you don't understand - basing your protests on vague emotions rather than specific facts. You come to protests completely unprepared to offer any kind of solution to the problems - the same ones you fail to understand. And, finally, you are most concerned with drawing attention to yourselves at speeches - as opposed to actually drawing information from the speaker. Let me provide you with some examples I've observed at some of my speeches:

Protestors of my speech at The University of New Hampshire broke into glass cases and spray-painted swastikas on my picture. Then, when my speech was over, the protestors asked really pointed questions like "Do you want to bring back slavery?" and "Do you think it's OK to beat a gay person with a baseball bat?" Remarkably, after the liberals had vandalized my posters, one liberal asked if I could learn to be a little more civil in my discourse. He went through the line three times to ask me that same question.

Like I said, the protestors have no idea what they are protesting - the speech wasn't about legalizing slavery and the assault of gays. But the protestors do manage to draw a lot of attention. Indeed, UNH provided five armed police officers and a police escort (which I refused) to take me back to my hotel.

Protestors of my speech at Appalachian State University couldn't think of a single objection to the substance of my points so (in the middle of the Q & A) they ran out of the room after shutting off the lights in the auditorium. The audience just sat there in the dark wondering why the un-bathed protestors were angry.

We never figured out their objections to the substance of the speech but they did manage to draw attention to themselves. People just scratched their heads - sort of like they did when they saw you sitting in the handcuffs.

Protestors of my speech at The University of Oregon sat on a row and talked audibly throughout a substantial proportion of the speech. One of them, who was very obviously gay, sat knitting a sock and talking to the guy to his right. The guy was so stoned you could blindfold him with dental floss. They also laughed audibly at inappropriate times in order to distract me during the speech.

But during the Q & A I didn't get a single question from any one of them - nothing that could have helped me determine the basis of their protestations. They made no contribution to the debate. But they did draw a lot of attention to themselves. And a gay dude got himself one new sock. (Since he didn't knit two I assumed he wasn't a bi-soxual).

Protestors at my speech at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst seemed especially concerned about racism - or so I thought. During the Q & A there was a Planned Parenthood supporter arguing that the organization had no presence in the State of Mississippi. I argued that they did have a presence in all areas with high black populations. And I accused them of aiding and abetting the mass slaughter of black babies - with black abortion rates soaring high above white abortion rates nationwide.

Soon after I finished my defense of innocent black life protestors in the back of the room began screaming "Racist, sexist, anti-gay. Right wing bigots go away!" They did not seem to hear or understand the content of the speech. But they did draw attention to themselves and, eventually, they seized control of the microphone. I was escorted from the room by two undercover bodyguards as the event was ended prematurely.

A protestor at my speech at Agnes Scott College handed out literature for Amnesty International, seemingly unaware that the speech was on the rights of the unborn, not the rights of prisoners. But that didn't stop her from ruining the Q & A with completely inane and irrelevant questions like "Dr. Adams, do you love yourself?" That question would have been more relevant at one of the feminist masturbation workshops.

I finally confronted the protestor at Agnes Scott pointing out that she hadn't listened to or understood the speech. So she approached me after the speech asking for an apology for offending her. The speech, by the way, was about how feminists have started to use one imaginary constitutional right - the right to be un-offended - to keep people from trying to restrict another imaginary constitutional right - the right to murder innocent children. We never had an actual discussion about her problems with the content of my speech or any of her solutions. But she managed to get everyone in the room to focus their attention upon her. Like you, that was really her only objective.

I know that under the First Amendment you have a right to protest my speeches. But I would prefer it if you would not just protest for the sake of protesting without some sort of goal (other than just drawing attention to yourself). Even a dog can draw attention to himself by exercising his right to lick his genitals. But no one wants to watch him do it endlessly.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for attending my speech. But I would respectfully ask you to refrain from protesting another one of my speeches until you are more informed on the subject matter, more willing to offer constructive solutions, and less in need of drawing attention to yourself. In my next column, I'm going to respectfully ask you to quit voting.

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6 December, 2008

Poisonous Leftist bigotry in a Canadian university



Carleton University Students' Association's (CUSA) orientation will no longer raise funds for cystic fibrosis, after a vote 17 to 2 at the Nov. 24 CUSA council meeting. The proposal to abandon Shinerama was put forward after it was "recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men," according to the motion.

"We have a diverse community," CUSA vice-president (finance) Kweku Winful said. "We need something that is more representative of the greater student [body] than just one small group . . . we need to appeal to a larger demographic." According to Carlos Chacon, vice-president (internal), CUSA's orientation has raised over $1 million for the charity since the mid-90s.

The motion was proposed by Donnie Northrup, the science faculty representative. CUSA president Brittany Smyth said the idea of switching charities had been discussed with orientation volunteers last year. "There seemed to be a lot of support to try something new," she said.

Source

Reaction (1)

As a Carleton graduate, I was shocked to hear that the Student Association recently voted to stop a fund raising effort for Cystic Fibrosis on the grounds of "racism." This was not the work of one misguided idiot. The vote passed 17 to 2! Apparently they were under the mistaken impression that the disease affects only white people, and mostly males, so it isn't "inclusive" enough.

In fact, the disease is diagnosed in males and females equally and in Hispanics and African Americans, but not as often as in whites. When the association was vilified from coast-to-coast, they abruptly reversed themselves saying they had acted on "mistaken information" and the issue had been "blown out of proportion." Not because it was a profoundly inappropriate judgement in the first place. Imagine if we stopped fundraising for breast cancer because it affects mostly women, or Alzheimer's because it affects mostly the elderly, or Tay-Sachs because it strikes mostly Jews.

What is the principle here? That sick people with only "politically correct" diseases need apply. The Association members have disgraced themselves and embarrassed the university.

Source

Reaction (2)

When Christine Skobe heard about the recent motion to abandon Shinerama, she said she felt "complete disappointment." Skobe is a third-year film and law student who suffers from cystic fibrosis, the disease Shinerama helps support research for.

The motion, passed at the Nov. 24 Carleton University Students' Association (CUSA) council meeting, has created a splash with national media and caused dissention amongst the student body. "The executive clearly had no consultation with students because the Carleton community has always been in support of Shinerama," said Nick Bergamini, the journalism representative on CUSA council, and the only councillor to vote against the motion in the 17-2 vote. The other vote against the motion was made by a proxy for Sean Finnigan.

Kailey Gervais, Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) vice president (programming) and a CUSA councillor for Public Affairs and Management, has also expressed her opposition to the motion. "Every councilor that voted made a serious error," she said, because they had no time, once the motion was unveiled at the meeting, to consult with their constituents or do research. Gervais was not at the Nov. 24 council meeting, and said she apologizes to students for not being there. Her proxy, chosen by CUSA president Brittany Smyth, voted for the motion.

"The fact that the proposition contained false factual information about the [cystic fibrosis] population, shows both immaturity and a lack of research intelligence," said alumni Murray Gale.

Carleton's alumni expressed their collective disappointment in CUSA in an open letter written by Jane Gilbert, president of the Carleton University Alumni Association (CUAA). "The end result has caused significant pain to members of the broader Carleton family including more than 100,000 members of CUAA worldwide," CUAA president Jane Gilbert wrote.

Carleton University President Roseann Runte also addressed the issue in an email to all Carleton students sent out on Nov. 26. However, she did say she is "convinced that our students will do the right thing and take the appropriate course of action." CUSA has released a statement saying the motion will be revisited at an emergency council meeting Dec. 1.

Some students have been calling for the resignation of various CUSA councillors, including Smyth and CUSA science representative Donnie Northrup, who put forth the motion. "I think CUSA has taken a step in the right direction," said third-year journalism student Dean Tester about CUSA's decision to revisit the motion. He said he would like to hear a formal apology. Gervais echoed the sentiment, saying "We need a national apology because this has just gotten out of control."

The original sentiments of the motion, according to CUSA council members, was to open up the opportunity to support a charity of the students' choice. "That's great that they want to [get involved with more charities], but it amazes me that not one person there ever thought of doing two large fundraisers during the school year, one for [cystic fibrosis] and the other for whatever cause they want to engage in," said Gale. "I understand where the CUSA councillors are coming from," Skobe said. "[But] I'm also feeling like it's a slap in the face to cystic fibrosis research."

Source




Bye Bye to any discipline in British schools

British teacher suspended over push-ups -- at a sports college!

A BRITISH schoolteacher has been suspended after making his pupils do push-ups as a punishment for arriving late to class, Britain's main teaching union said today.

Ian Jennison, a representative for the National Union of Teachers, said the suspension could have a negative impact on how teachers dealt with their students in the future. "It's political correctness gone mad. The repercussions are quite far-reaching," Mr Jennison said. "If this man is sacked for this, teachers are not going to take kids on trips, if two kids are having a fight they won't intervene, because they will be too worried." Mr Jennison said different punishments for latecomers had been discussed by the whole class and that it was the pupils who had suggested push-ups.

The Derby Moor Community Sports College, where the unnamed teacher worked, said an investigation was underway and that its "priority is to ensure that students are happy to be in school".

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A DISMAL EDUCATION SCENE IN AUSTRALIA

They seem to have taken California seriously. Four current articles below

The red ink saga gets worse

Teachers told to leave wrong answers blank

TEACHERS at a Brisbane school were told to leave wrong answers by students blank, as marking it wrong would have hurt the child's confidence. The case at Algester State Primary School on the southside has emerged in the wake of the red pen controversy this week involving Queensland Health warning teachers to stop using red pens as the colour was too "aggressive".

One teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was shocked at the recent directive to leave answers blank. "They didn't want us to write anything," he told The Courier-Mail.

A spokeswoman for Education Minister Rod Welford said he was too busy to be interviewed and that he did not comment on "operational" issues anyway. "There's nothing for our minister to say," the spokeswoman said. A one-paragraph statement from Education Queensland issued later failed to discuss issues proposed.

It came after the red pen controversy played out in State Parliament again, with the Bligh Government turning the tables on the Opposition over the source of the red pen advice. It was contained in a Queensland Health kit given to 30 schools to provide a range of tips and hints on dealing with mental health issues in the classroom. The Liberal National Party had claimed the document was "kooky, loopy, loony, Left policy" but the Government yesterday revealed the kit was initially released nationally by the Howard government in 2000.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson lampooned the LNP claims, questioning who the "Marx and Engels of the Howard socialist government" were who devised the kit. "None other than comrade Dr Michael Wooldridge and comrade Dr David Kemp - a couple of loony lefties full of kooky, loony and loopy ideas if there ever were any," Mr Robertson said. [The Federal education bureaucracy is Leftist too. No doubt they slipped this one past the politicians]

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Education policy gets an F

EDUCATION systems with no red pens and no wrong answers feed the delusion that our students are doing well. State education gets an F for setting up children for failure. The Queensland Health document calling on teachers not to use a red pen when correcting students' work (it's seen as aggressive and damaging to self-esteem) is so bizarre, it has to be true.

In the Alice in Wonderland world of education - where teachers no longer teach, they become guides by the side, where classic literature is replaced by SMS messaging and graffiti and history is reduced to studying the local tip (it's the environment, stupid) - nothing surprises. Read state and territory curriculum documents from the past five to 10 years and the fact is that no one fails. Learning is developmental, so don't worry if children cannot read or write as, eventually, they will pick it up.

Ranking kids one against the other or giving a test marked out of 10, where 4 means fail, is wrong as each student is precious and unique and being competitive reinforces a capitalist, winner/loser mentality. Failure is redefined as "deferred success" and reports describe student achievement with comments like "consolidating", "not yet achieved" and "establishing". No wonder parents don't have a clue where their children rank in the class. It's also no wonder that so many thousands of primary school children enter secondary school with such poor literacy and numeracy skills and that universities now have remedial classes for first-year students, teaching essay writing and basic algebra.

Fast forward to Gen-Y and the results of this care, share, grow approach to assessment and correcting work are clear to see. Having never been told their work is substandard or that, compared with others, they may have failed, Gen-Y has an inbuilt sense of invincibility and success. Ask employers about working with Gen-Y and the consensus is that this is a generation that expects never to be corrected, that promotion is automatic and that near enough is good enough. After years of being told at school that everyone has a right to an opinion - after all, how we read the world is subjective and teachers are only facilitators - no wonder many young people are incapable of working out the difference between success and mediocrity.

There is an alternative. As every good parent and teacher knows, children need a disciplined approach to learning, and to be told when they have passed or failed. Boys, in particular, need clear and immediate feedback about what's expected and whether they have reached the required standard. Look at the stronger-performing education systems of Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, and it's obvious they rely on competitive assessment at key stages and students suffer the consequences of not doing well enough.

It's ironic that Australian students, who are in the "second 11" when it comes to international maths and science tests, on being interviewed express a high opinion of themselves and their ability to do well. Asian students, on the other hand, who consistently rank at the top of the table, say that they need to work harder as they feel there is always room for improvement. So much for the smart state.

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Australia: State Premier pisses into the wind

Show us respect, Premier John Brumby tells Melbourne's young. When their Leftist teachers are telling them that there is no such thing as right and wrong and that everything is relative, what chance that the kids will heed propaganda telling them to be do-gooders?

JOHN Brumby has declared war on the "me" generation of out-of-control young Victorians who lack respect and fuel crime. The Premier today will unveil a plan to restore respect throughout schools and the community. "I am concerned about an emerging culture of alcohol and a lack of respect," he told the Herald Sun.

Mr Brumby plans a multi-million-dollar campaign to steer young Victorians into volunteering for key fire, rescue, welfare and community groups. The school curriculum is expected to be changed to teach teenagers right from wrong.

The campaign, aimed at between 15 and 25, comes as crime figures show 33,911 charges were laid against people under under 18 in 2007-08, and one in five of all offences were committed by teens. "Like all parents, I am concerned when I see images of young people writing themselves off on Friday or Saturday nights, getting into fights, or just not treating themselves or other people with respect," Mr Brumby said. "I will be pushing a respect agenda very heavily next year - it's a top priority."

The Premier was speaking after the annual Schoolies Week of drugs, drunkenness and anti-social behaviour hit the nation's beachside resorts. His plan has won the backing of notorious party animal Corey Worthington - who reckons more needs to be done and has offered to advise Mr Brumby for free. Speaking through his manager yesterday, the Melbourne teenager said more amenities and activities were needed for under-18s who are banned from licensed venues. "They need to be entertained or have places to go so that they aren't on the streets where the violence occurs," Worthington said.

The wild child said he was happy to make himself available at no charge to meet the Premier to help develop suitable strategies. Organised street parties, concerts and relaxing laws so some licensed venues can be used for under-18s events were some of his suggestions. The teen became notorious in January after throwing a wild party at his Narre Warren house without his parent's permission.

Crime figures show that juveniles are vastly over-represented in public order offences, arson and car theft. Drunken violence on the streets among the young is changing the face of Melbourne's CBD. Violence and alcohol abuse is rife at elite schools and unruly teenage parties.

Mr Brumby's strategy will dominate the Government's social agenda next year. A round table of experts and parents will meet to carve out a way to teach the young right from wrong. Education ministers today are expected to declare a shared goal in Australia of better values among the young.

A centrepiece of Mr Brumby's agenda will be encouraging volunteering. He wants to lead the way by joining the Country Fire Authority as a volunteer to help protect his family farm. He said young people would be better off if they directed their energies towards volunteer organisations, sporting clubs and soup kitchens rather than trawling the streets. "Parents don't want to be lectured by Government, but I think some would like some advice on helping their kids become solid citizens," Mr Brumby said. "Schools do a great job but we can always look at whether we can do more to teach life skills to young people." He will work with Education Minister Bronwyn Pike to assess whether schools should be more involved in teaching young people to value themselves and others. "I can think of nothing better than joining up to these (volunteer) organisations for young people to learn about community respect and what it means to be part of a team," he said.

Mr Brumby said the respect agenda flowed on from the Government's crackdown on alcohol-related crime. He referred to the night when he went to the Melbourne Custody Centre with the Herald Sun to discover three young drunks being processed by police. "I was shocked when I went to the Melbourne Custody Centre to see the state some young people were in - and it struck me that nobody would get into such a state if they respected themselves and their community," he said.

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Islamic school bans national anthem

School reportedly bans the singing of Advance Australia Fair at assemblies.

A BRISBANE school has banned the national anthem at assemblies and sacked the teacher who asked for it to be played. Australian International Islamic College teacher Pravin Chand was sacked in November, four months after his proposal for students to sing Advance Australia Fair was ruled to be against the "Islamic view and ethos". A memo sent to teachers at the Durack school in July and obtained by The Courier-Mail, also said "the singing of the anthem will be put on hold".

The revelations follow an outcry on the Gold Coast this week at a plan by the same college to open another campus at Carrara. A vocal crowd draped in Australian flags accused the college of promoting segregation, anti-Australian values and even terrorism. Muslim leaders slammed the protests as "un-Australian" and claimed religion should not be used as a reason to protest against a school.

School chairman Imam Abdul Quddoos Azhari yesterday denied the anthem ban and said students sang it "at every function". But Mr Chand, whose version of events was backed by a second teacher, said he had not heard the anthem once this year. "No national anthem to me means no integration with Australian kids," Mr Chand said. "Western values (at the school) are a no-no. "It's like a paramilitary camp that place."

Mr Chand's employment was terminated by the college board last month on the grounds he was "not fitting into the school's ethos". Outgoing principal Azroul Liza Khalid, who started at the school in July, said she had not heard the anthem once at assembly, although it was played two or three other times. Ms Khalid said she was told by a board member not to play the anthem or any songs on Friday because it was a holy day. In July, school assembly day was moved from Monday to Friday.

A spokeswoman for Education Minister Rod Welford indicated it was unlikely a public school had banned the national anthem. "It's not compulsory for schools to play the national anthem," she said. "There's an expectation it would be played on formal occasions when the Australian flag is being raised."

A Catholic education spokesman said: "I'm absolutely confident that no Catholic school has ever banned the playing of the national anthem and never will."

School trustee Keysar Trad and Imam Quddoos said they had not heard of the ban and supported the playing of the anthem at future assemblies. The future of the proposed 60-student college at Carrara will be decided by Gold Coast City Council next year.

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5 December, 2008

EDUCATION PROBLEMS IN AUSTRALIA

Very similar to UK and US problems. Three current articles below

Academic bias in Australia

This has been going on for a long time. When I was a university student I was an outspoken conservative and was well aware that I was as a result looked at askance by the academics. So I ended up in 1967 with only a lower second class honours degree. Yet the thesis for that degree was eventually published as an academic journal article and I had over 200 journal articles published in a writing career of only 20 years -- something that would put me in the top 1% of academics. The degree I got therefore clearly was not an accurate testimony to my ability.

'Like the characters Winston Smith and Julia in George Orwell's classic anti-totalitarian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, students with non-Left views need to learn to outwardly conform to inwardly remain free." This is how a high school tutor, Mark Lopez, describes the plight of Australian students in his submission to the Senate inquiry into academic freedom, which is due to table its report today. In 18 years tutoring English and the humanities, Lopez has seen a "subtle, unstated pressure for students to ideologically conform if they want to succeed academically".

He said the "beliefs of the politically correct, which are seen by them as so noble and emancipating, especially when . touted by radical students in the 1960s" have become a "means for compromising the intellectual freedom of the young in the 21st century".

Many academics have derided the Senate inquiry, begun in June by the Victorian Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield, as a "witch-hunt", an exercise in "mud-slinging", the dying throes of the Howard regime and a "McCarthyist" attempt to curtail the freedom of academics. The National Tertiary Education Union was typical in its submission asserting that bias does not exist.

But the submissions - some anonymous - tell a different story and paint a chilling portrait of an often unconscious academic bias in schools and universities, and of students too intimidated to say or write what they think. Joshua Koonin, a third-year law student, told the inquiry: "I have .consistently felt intimidated that if I express views other than those [of my] tutors and lecturers . my marks will suffer." He told of readings on "the immorality of the United States . with no countervailing position" and a lecturer who said, "nobody in Australia supports John Howard and his crimes".

Professor Brian Martin, of the University of Wollongong and vice-president of Whistleblowers Australia, who researches the suppression of dissent and is hardly what you would describe as a conservative, was among the most powerful witnesses to the inquiry. He told a public hearing in Sydney in October that students have become "strategic" at working the biases of their teachers. "For someone like me, teaching social science, I actually would like the students to be speaking out much more, disagreeing with me . But they are afraid . They are trying to find out what the lecturers are looking for because then they will give it to them. These are strategic students . They want to get good marks, so they are trying to figure out what their lecturers want. That is a far bigger problem, in my mind, than the bias that may exist."

Together, the submissions form a story of an academic world plagued by what the James Cook University academic Merv Bendle described in a public hearing in Canberra as an "intellectual monoculture". "In another age this could be a fascist, far right intellectual monoculture and it would do just as much damage to our society as a left-wing or far left intellectual monoculture. It is not so much the politics of the thing; it is the fact that it is an intellectual monoculture, that it is one voice being heard over and over again unrelentingly."

The inquiry split early along party lines, with a minority report due to be released today by Coalition senators, who are expected to recommend reform of ideologically driven university education faculties, as well as a "charter of academic freedoms".

While the concerns of Young Liberals, who inspired the inquiry with their "Make Education Fair" campaign, are expected to be dismissed in today's Senate majority report as an "undergraduate exercise", the federal president, Noel McCoy, said yesterday the inquiry had established the existence of "a radical orthodoxy which pervades the development of university courses and school curriculums, stifles debate and prevents genuine balance or diversity of opinions". McCoy reserves special scorn for university education faculties, which he says are crucial to the "long march through the institutions", which the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci said was necessary for socialism to take hold.

The inquiry discussed the problem of education being used as a tool for social change rather than to impart skills. One result is that Monash University has just announced remedial English courses for students who arrive "functionally illiterate" after 12 years of school.

And committee member, Liberal Senator Brett Mason, complained about a Brisbane high school he visited in which Mao Zedong was displayed as a "freedom fighter" alongside George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi.

Gideon Rozner, president of the University of Melbourne's Liberal Club, told the inquiry about a course on "contemporary ideologies", comprising 12 lectures, 11 "dedicated to different variations of socialism". The solitary lecture about liberalism and conservatism had as its compulsory reading an article from the left-wing Monthly magazine titled "Young Liberals in the chocolate factory". "The entire liberal or conservative tradition [was] summed up by that article . When students enrol in a contemporary ideology subject and finish it not knowing any of the works of Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill or Milton Friedman or any of the great thinkers of our time, that is a significant quality issue."

A month after Rozner's testimony, on November 4, the inquiry committee received a letter from a "disappointed" University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, who defended the subject. But he said it was to be replaced next year with a "broader introduction to political ideas subject [with readings from such] liberal authors such as John Stuart Mill and Milton Friedman". Chalk up a victory to the Young Liberals, even if no one will ever admit it.

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Google generation doesn't need to know facts?

What an addle-headed and destructive Leftist moron! If kids don't have a solid base of knowledge to start with they cannot make good judgments about what is nonsense and what is not. You have got to have that basic grounding. And calling it "rote" or "memorizing" is just abuse

School children no longer need to memorise facts and figures because everything they need is just a mouse click away, an internet educator says. It would be better to teach children to think creatively so they could interpret and apply knowledge they gained online, said Don Tapscott, author of the bestselling book Wikinomics and a champion of the "net generation".

"Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the internet is," Mr Tapscott told Times Online. "Kids should learn about history to understand the world and why things are the way they are. But they don't need to know all the dates. It is enough that they know about the Battle of Hastings, without having to memorise that it was in 1066. They can look that up and position it in history with a click on Google," he said.

But Mr Tapscott said he was not rejecting education. The ability to learn new things was more important than ever "in a world where you have to process new information at lightning speed," he said. "Children are going to have to reinvent their knowledge base multiple times. So for them memorising facts and figures is a waste of time."

Mr Tapscott, who coined the term "the net generation", based his observations in his latest book, Grown Up Digital, on a study of nearly 8000 people in 12 countries born between 1978 and 1994. He said the prevailing education model was designed for the industrial age. "This might have been good for the mass production economy, but it doesn't deliver for the challenges of the digital economy, or for the `net gen' mind," he said.

He suggested the brains of young people worked differently from those of their parents and said "digital immersion", in which children may be texting while surfing the internet and listening to their MP3 player, could help them to develop critical thinking skills.

Brighton College headmaster Richard Cairns told Times Online that a core level of knowledge was essential: "It's important that children learn facts. If you have no store of knowledge in your head to draw from, you cannot easily engage in discussions or make informed decisions."

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Federal education boss has the right ideas but can she deliver?

It was telling that on the Monday morning after the weekend Council of Australian Governments meeting, ABC local radio in Sydney excitedly declared it day one in the education revolution. For ABC broadcaster Deborah Cameron, the revolution was about computers. Was this the Great Leap Forward? she asked rhetorically. Cameron should have googled, if only to remind herself that Mao Zedong's program led to the deaths of many millions of Chinese. Historical quibbles aside, for the next few minutes Cameron and NSW Education Minister Verity Firth applauded the coming revolution for delivering a laptop to every high school student in years nine to 12.

Completely off their inner-city Mao-focused radar is the real revolution cautiously started by Julia Gillard at the weekend. Far more important than the underfunded election gimmick of computers that still excites the ABC is Gillard's grassroots change to education. There was no coincidence to the visit to our shores in the lead-up to COAG by New York City education chancellor Joel Klein. In Sydney late last week, he told me, with a cheeky smile, that he enjoyed being described by 2GB radio broadcaster Alan Jones as Julia's pin-up boy. And it's not hard to understand why Gillard is enamoured with Klein, who has run the largest public school system in the US - more than 1400 schools - for the past six years.

His bold reforms have challenged the status quo, lifting the prospects of thousands of children. Based on accountability, transparency and leadership, Klein's system tests literacy and numeracy, and tracks the progress of students in every school and the outcomes delivered by every teacher. Critics who complain that Klein's reforms teach students to master mindless tests miss the point, he says. Every mark of progress students earn in the tests increases their probability of graduating. And lifting the outcomes of students stuck in the tail of educational disadvantage is Klein's driving focus. Importantly, parents can access all the information on the New York City education department's website. Schools are awarded a grade for student progress, from A to D or F forfail. The D and F schools face restructure or closure unless they improve. Principals and parents are surveyed regularly. That, too, is all public.

As Klein said, transparency means the public becomes your ally in reform, "so that parents can raise hell" about schools that are failing their children. Added to that powerful cocktail of transparency and accountability is competition from small, independent charter schools.

Parents with students at failing schools have the option to move their children to other schools. Underperforming schools stop taking students for granted. "We wanted to be the Silicon Valley for charter schools," Klein told The Australian, so he recruited the great charter school leaders to NYC. People such as Dacia Toll, who is the director and co-founder of the Amistad Academy, came to NYC to open schools that unapologetically use student performance as a factor in student, principal and teacher evaluation.

When Klein took up his post, disadvantaged students had little choice. There were 16 charter schools. There are now more than 100, all in high-poverty areas such as Harlem and central Brooklyn, educating the most disadvantaged black and Hispanic students in NYC.

Klein told me about meeting a child in kindergarten at Excellence Academy, a red-bricked charter school in an impoverished part of Brooklyn. The boy told Klein he was in a University of Pennsylvania program. "Hang on, you're in kindergarten," Klein said to the boy. "What do you mean?" "I'm on my way to college. It's never too young to think about that," replied the little boy.

Klein's key concern is the inequitable distribution of high-quality teachers. So he also encouraged quality school leadership by raising $US70million from the private sector to train what he calls "get-up-and-go, tackle the problem" leaders who, in turn, would attract motivated teachers to their cause. Leaders such as Marc Sternberg, who graduated near the top of his class at Princeton and went on to business and education degrees at Harvard. When, at 29, Sternberg returned to New York, Klein appointed him principal of a small school where every child is black or Latino.

Klein copped the usual criticism about appointing a young guy. Longevity is the key to being a good school principal, said the critics. When Sternberg joined Bronx Lab School in 2004, it had graduation rates of about 35 per cent. Now the graduation rate is 94 per cent. "That's the power of leadership," says Klein. He has also introduced a trial into 200 high-poverty schools of bonuses for teachers where student progress improves, and greater freedom for principals to achieve better outcomes.

At COAG on Saturday, Gillard dipped her toe in the water of a Klein-inspired education revolution by scoring agreement with the states to publish data about the relative performance of schools. The commonwealth can then identify struggling schools and inject further resources into them. "What Labor has never used before is full transparency," Gillard said. Klein said that "once this genie (of transparency) is out of the bottle, it's very hard to put it back in".

But if Gillard is serious about reforming education and confronting the tail of education underachievement, she will need to do more. The model of rewards and penalties that she has previously ruled out will, ultimately, need to be on the table. Handing out money to disadvantaged schools cannot be the end game if student outcomes do not improve. Closing down consistently failing schools, encouraging competition and providing incentives to schools that achieve have proven to be critical reforms in NYC.

Klein's bold agenda is to position education of the most disadvantaged as the civil rights issue of the 21st century. If Gillard can do the same, she will, in the process, position herself as a true leader and Kevin Rudd's natural successor. Sometimes the best reforms are done from within. For all the bluster about reforming education, none of the Coalition education ministers, including most recently Julie Bishop, could win over teachers unions to this cause. Gillard, from the Labor Party's Left faction, is uniquely placed to woo her power base to see the sense of reforms they have long opposed.

For now, unions are mouthing the same old nonsensical objections driven by their vested interests. And Gillard can expect much more feral and misguided criticism. But if, as Klein has done, she can build on the present moves towards transparency with tougher reforms in the future aimed at greater accountability, she will deliver a real education revolution. And she will have earned the thanks of those who count: parents and students, especially those most disadvantaged among us who deserve a quality education. Stirring the pot - and delivering real outcomes - is, as Klein would say, the power of leadership.

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4 December, 2008

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.

There is no doubt that many universities and colleges have become bloated with bureaucracy and other inessentials. Maybe Wal-Mart should start up some colleges. It might be another cost revolution

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families. “If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”

Although college enrollment has continued to rise in recent years, Mr. Callan said, it is not clear how long that can continue. “The middle class has been financing it through debt,” he said. “The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever if takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.” But low-income students, he said, will be less able to afford college. Already, he said, the strains are clear.

The report, “Measuring Up 2008,” is one of the few to compare net college costs — that is, a year’s tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid — against median family income. Those findings are stark. Last year, the net cost at a four-year public university amounted to 28 percent of the median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of the median family income.

The share of income required to pay for college, even with financial aid, has been growing especially fast for lower-income families, the report found. Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, long seen as a safety net, that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families’ median income last year, up from 40 percent in 1999-2000.

The likelihood of large tuition increases next year is especially worrying, Mr. Callan said. “Most governors’ budgets don’t come out until January, but what we’re seeing so far is Florida talking about a 15 percent increase, Washington State talking about a 20 percent increase, and California with a mixture of budget cuts and enrollment cuts,” he said.

In a separate report released this week by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the public universities acknowledged the looming crisis, but painted a different picture. That report emphasized that families have many higher-education choices, from community colleges, where tuition and fees averaged about $3,200, to private research universities, where they cost more than $33,000.

“We think public higher education is affordable right now, but we’re concerned that it won’t be, if the changes we’re seeing continue, and family income doesn’t go up,” said David Shulenburger, the group’s vice president for academic affairs and co-author of the report. “The public conversation is very often in terms of a $35,000 price tag, but what you get at major public research university is, for the most part, still affordable at 6,000 bucks a year.”

While tuition has risen at public universities, his report said, that has largely been to make up for declining state appropriations. The report offered its own cost projections, not including room and board. “Projecting out to 2036, tuition would go from 11 percent of the family budget to 24 percent of the family budget, and that’s pretty huge,” Mr. Shulenburger said. “We only looked at tuition and fees because those are the only things we can control.” Looking at total costs, as families must, he said, his group shared Mr. Callan’s concerns.

Mr. Shulenburger’s report suggested that public universities explore a variety of approaches to lower costs — distance learning, better use of senior year in high school, perhaps even shortening college from four years. “There’s an awful lot of experimentation going on right now, and that needs to go on,” he said. “If you teach a course by distance with 1,000 students, does that affect learning? Till we know the answer, it’s difficult to control costs in ways that don’t affect quality.”

Mr. Callan, for his part, urged a reversal in states’ approach to higher-education financing. “When the economy is good, and state universities are somewhat better funded, we raise tuition as little as possible,” he said. “When the economy is bad, we raise tuition and sock it to families, when people can least afford it. That’s exactly the opposite of what we need.”

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Australia: Muslims say protests over planned school are "hurtful"

Maybe they should stop preaching hate against Israel and the West, then. I think Mr Trad should send his complaint to the Ayalollahs of Iran or the Wahhabist mullahs of Saudi Arabia -- which is where the problem originates

PROTESTERS fighting to stop an Islamic school opening at Carrara on the Gold Coast have been accused of linking young students to terrorism. A board member of the planned school slammed the protesters as "un-Australian". "It's not only upsetting, it's deeply hurtful," school board trustee Keyser Trad said. "To make associations between primary school-aged children and terrorists is just hard to even comprehend. "I've never seen this kind of thing in Australia. It's causing a deep wound in our hearts."

Almost 200 protesters gathered outside the Gold Coast City Council chambers on Monday to demonstrate their objection to the planned Carrara school, with placards, Australian flags, chants and a sound system booming out Aussie rock anthems. Some of the protesters claim the school would foster segregation, or even potential terrorists, comments that angered Mr Trad and disappointed some local councillors.

Mr Trad, who also serves on the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said religion should not be a reason for protesting against the school. "The kids who would go to this school and their parents are normal, everyday people who just happen to be Muslim," he said.

The council's planning committee chairman, Cr Ted Shepherd, deplored aspects of Monday's protest. "I was a little bit disappointed with some of the behaviour," he said. "I don't think people should take to that tone of demonstration over what is really a town planning issue."

Some opponents of the school have expressed concerns over issues such as traffic and parking but Mr Trad said the school was following all council recommendations. "Everything that the council has asked, we have done it signed, sealed and delivered."

Today is the last day for residents to make submissions to the council about the proposal. If approved, the school is unlikely to open until at least the middle of next year.

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3 December, 2008

President-elect Obama offers poor no `change' on school choice

Barack Obama's historic election victory and eloquence will surely inspire American parents and students alike, but they are likely in for disappointment as well, especially those with limited means. On the issue of school choice, change has not come to America. A gap remains between what the president-elect says and what he does.

Obama's family could have sent him to regular government schools in Hawaii, but instead chose to enroll him at the elite Punahou School. Out of many college possibilities, he chose Columbia University. Out of many law schools, he selected Harvard. With a law degree from Harvard, he could have taught or practiced just about anywhere. He chose to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, another elite school, which was glad to have him.

As a family man, Barack Obama showed he learned the lesson of choice. He and Michelle could have sent their daughters Sasha and Malia to the regular government schools in the Chicago area. Instead, they chose to send them to the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,000 to more than $20,445 for high school.

Although that was well within the Obamas' pay grade, private school - even those that charge much less - is not affordable for many other parents. But Barack Obama opposes their right to choose the school they believe best suits their children.

Wisconsin has a voucher plan that lets parents of limited income do just that. Polly Williams, an African-American state legislator known as the "Rosa Parks of school choice," was its prime mover. The voucher plan has been upheld by the courts, but the president-elect opposes it. However, he did tell the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in February that he had something of an open mind, and that if vouchers were shown to be successful, he would favor "what works for kids."

The Wisconsin choice plan is indeed successful, and so are similar plans around the country, but Obama's mind has since closed up on choice.

In June he told Jake Tapper of ABC News that choice might benefit some kids at the top, but it leaves others at the bottom. There weren't enough openings for every child to go to a parochial or private school. Choice would also be "a huge drain of resources out of the public schools," Obama said, adding, "I think it would be overall bad for most kids."

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, Barack Obama has it backward. Those at the top don't need voucher programs. Those at the bottom do, and they have their eyes on the prize. The president-elect opposes their right to choose, and does so in the dog-eared rhetoric of teacher union bosses, which has proved to be bogus. Choice does not drain resources from public schools but instead improves their performance.

There is no educational, social, or legal argument against school choice. There are only political arguments, like those deployed by a president-elect who claims to represent change, but actually backs a government monopoly status quo that traps kids in failing, dangerous schools.

Barack Obama is not the first to showcase that contradiction. During their stay in Washington, the Clintons sent daughter Chelsea to the private Sidwell Friends School, which prompted Polly Williams to say, "Bill and Hillary Clinton shouldn't be the only people who live in public housing who can send their kid to private school." The Obamas also bypassed the D.C. public system and will be sending Sasha and Malia to Sidwell Friends as well.

So it will be interesting to see how the new president deals with the D.C. voucher plan. Like choice programs everywhere, it has proven popular with low-income families, predominately African-American, but has had to fight for its very existence.

An advocate in the White House would help. If he truly wants change, Barack Obama should support full parental choice in education for all Americans as a matter of basic civil rights.

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Government Education Is Broken? It Just Ain't So!

New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert is rightfully worried about American education. He's bothered that no one else seems worried. In his article "Clueless in America" (April 22), Herbert notes a lack of concern in coverage of the presidential campaign. He says, "[Education] is much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball." He's disturbed that "no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S."

Mr. Herbert's rant hits hard on the facts of educational failure: "An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That's more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters." More: "A recent survey of teenagers found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900." And so on.

He quotes Microsoft's Bill Gates saying, "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they [the high schools] are broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools-even when they're working as designed-cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

Finally, Herbert cites the Educational Testing Service's report, "America's Perfect Storm," which warns of a triad of "powerful forces" threatening our children's future: wide disparity of literacy and math skills, "seismic changes" in the economy, and sweeping demographic changes. He concludes that "we" are not equipping our children to meet these challenges and seems to imply that beating other countries on standardized tests will save us from this Malthusian triad.

Somehow, reading Herbert's article reminded me (Alan) of a story my father used to tell about the old trains on the New Haven line, on which he commuted into New York City each day. Occasionally, these rolling sardine cans would break down or lose power. All of a sudden, some red-faced passenger-an executive about to have a blood-pressure incident-would explode, "Somebody do something!!!" Like the pressured executive on the train, Herbert is right to be alarmed. But like the executive, his reaction is inappropriate for the crisis at hand. In fairness, it's not all Herbert's fault. He doesn't know how the machine actually works. His frustration stems from placing his faith in (and addressing his demands to) the wrong entity.

Herbert is working from two fallacies: that the government school system is a failure and that the government can fix it. You could almost miss the fallacies behind his powerful litany of failures. Everyone, especially the present audience, will nod his head to this litany and think of even more failures to add to the list. The problem is, it just ain't so! It's a fallacy to think government schools have failed. In fact, the problems Herbert lists are not a result of the school system's failure, but of its success. To understand this point, we must stop and consider the true purpose of government schooling. The following passage from John Taylor Gatto just scratches the surface. I hope you will read the rest of this article, "Against School" (Harper's, September 2003):

The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:

To make good people.

To make good citizens.

To make each person his or her personal best.

These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose.

Gatto then quotes H.L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury (April 1924) that "the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim . . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else."

What we observe as the failures of our system of compulsory schooling are actually the inevitable fruits of its true purpose: standardized citizenry. If we are to truly understand what has given rise to Bob Herbert's litany (which is actually modest compared with the full story), we must acknowledge that the government school system actually works too well. The lack of "will to engage" that Herbert laments is a product of this system, a system designed to "put down dissent and originality."

The second fallacy is almost as easily missed. Speaking of presidential candidates in terms of whiskey or bowling is merely a rhetorical device. But although drinking and bowling may be within the right and power of those aspiring to the highest office in the land, fixing education is not. It's quite simple: the federal government's powers are strictly outlined in the Constitution. All other powers "not enumerated" are forbidden. Education is not enumerated. Ergo, it's not the feds' job.

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby in his column of October 17, 2007, puts it succinctly: "[W]e should be concerned. Not just because the quality of government schooling is so often poor or its costs so high. . . . "In a society founded on political and economic liberty, government schools have no place. Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children's minds and character."

Once exposed, the two fallacies point to one historically stubborn dynamic: Government involvement in schooling is the real "perfect storm." Therefore, to hope that candidates will talk about fixing education-or to think that the federal government should have any say in how we as free people educate our children-is to give the fox the keys to the hen house for another four-year term.

Instead, let's be practical. As parents, let's do everything in our power to take back our children for their protection and prosperity, and for freedom itself. That will make us an example of freedom to our own children and to others. It will open children's lives to the creative thinking and wisdom that will enable them to rise above the challenges they will face. Gatto again: "Children need to know that the ultimate form of private property is full possession of one's own mind and volition." Withholding consent will also further indict the system.

Let's possess freedom and not wait for the ruling powers to hand it to us. Meanwhile, candidates and presidents may talk about education. Let them. But let's not give them our children.

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2 December, 2008

Skewering the Straw Man

Stanley Fish is a verbally clever man but he uses his abilities to obfuscate

In 1892, a Massachusetts court ruled that a policeman's speech rights had not been violated by a law forbidding certain political activities by officers. State Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "The petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman." That thought is germane to the controversy -- a hardy perennial -- about the rights and duties of college professors. Concerning which, Stanley Fish has written an often intelligent but ultimately sly and evasive book, "Save the World On Your Own Time."

A former dean, and currently law professor at Florida International University, Fish is an intellectual provocateur with a taste for safe targets. While arguing against an obviously indefensible facet of the politicization of higher education, he suggests that a much larger facet is either nonexistent or unimportant.

Some academics, he says, either do not know what their job is or prefer to do something else. He recommends a "narrow sense" of the academic vocation that precludes saving the world, a mission for which academics have no special qualifications. Universities talk about making students sensitive, compassionate, tolerant, democratic, etc., but those bland adjectives often are packed with political agendas. The "focused" academic vocation that Fish favors is spacious enough for actual academic skills involving "the transmission of knowledge and the conferring of analytical skills."

Fish's "deflationary" definition of the scholar's function denies radical professors the frisson of considering themselves "transformative" -- because "transgressive" -- "agents of change." But he insists that his definition would exclude no topic from the curriculum. Any topic, however pertinent to political controversies, can, he says, be "academicized." It can be detached "from the context of its real world urgency" and made the subject of inquiry concerning its history and philosophic implications.

Suggesting bravery on his part, Fish says his views are those of an excoriated academic minority. Actually, it is doubtful that a majority of professors claim a right and duty to explicitly indoctrinate students. But if they do, Fish should be neither surprised nor scandalized -- he is both -- that support for public universities has declined.

Fish's advocacy of a banal proscription -- of explicit political preaching in classrooms -- may have made him anathema to academia's infantile left. The shrewder left will, however, welcome his book because it denies or defends other politicizations of academia that are less blatant but more prevalent and consequential -- those concerning hiring and curricula.

Fish does not dispute the fact that large majorities of humanities and social science professors are on the left. But about the causes and consequences of this, he airily says: It is all "too complicated" to tell in his book, other than to say that the G.I. Bill began the inclusion of "hitherto underrepresented and therefore politically active" groups.

Then, promiscuously skewering straw men, he says, "these were not planned events" and universities do not "resolve" to hire liberals and there is no "vast left-wing conspiracy" and inquiring into a job applicant's politics is not "allowed" and "the fact of a predominantly liberal faculty says nothing necessarily about what the faculty teaches." Note Fish's obfuscating "necessarily."

The question is not whether the fact "necessarily" says something about teaching but whether the fact really does have pedagogic consequences. About the proliferation of race and gender courses, programs and even departments, Fish says there are two relevant questions: Are there programs "with those names that are more political than academic?" And do such programs "have to be more political than academic?" He says the answer to the first is "yes," to the second "no."

But again, note his slippery language: "have to be," which he uses like "necessarily." The political nature of such curricula is why they often are set apart from established, and more academically rigorous, departments of sociology, history, etc. This political nature may not "have to" influence -- may not "necessarily" influence -- teaching. But does it? Fish, who enjoys seeming to be naughty, tamely opts for dogmatic denial.

Genuflecting before today's academic altar, he asserts what no one denies: Race and gender are "worthy of serious study." He concedes that "many of these programs gained a place in the academy through political activism." But he says that does not mean that political activism "need be" prominent in the teaching. Gliding from "necessarily" to "have to be" to "need be," Fish, a timid iconoclast, spares academia's most sacred icons. People who tell you they are brave usually are not.

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Australia: University education still beyond the reach of many (?)

The great unmentionable is not mentioned below. As Charles Murray and others have shown long ago, poorer people tend to have lower IQs. So that alone will mean that fewer get to university -- and there's not much you can do about it. My parents were poor and I paid my own way through university, when there was a lot less help available than there is now. Why cannot the "deprived" soul mentioned below do the same? It's just spoilt people whining. There is absolutely no reason why the young woman cannot take a government HECS loan at least

Wealthy students remain about three times more likely to go to university than those from poorer backgrounds, despite more than 15 years of government policy to widen access to tertiary education. While the causes are complex, going back to poverty, family attitudes, aspiration and disadvantaged schooling, data shows that an expensive private school remains the best way to maximise the exam results needed to get into the top universities.

As thousands of school leavers sweat on their exam results, the federal Government is facing a huge challenge to boost the participation of the economically disadvantaged at a time when the Government's capacity to effect change has been hit by the financial crisis punching a hole in future tax revenues.

Adrienne Moore, 18, wants to study biology and genetics and is hopeful she has got into Deakin University in Geelong. But her mother, Christine Richardson, 49, worries how she is going to afford it. "I sit up in bed every night and have that knife turning, wondering how I am going to do it," Ms Richardson told The Weekend Australian. A mother of six who was plunged into bankruptcy and poverty by a marriage break-up and is now battling breast cancer, Ms Richardson has already had to say no to the university ambitions of her three elder children. One of those is now unemployed when a degree is likely to have kept him in work.

Ms Richardson, whose disability pension doesn't cover her rent, is relying on Learning-For-Life scholarships and student mentoring from the Smith Family to try to give Adrienne and her younger brother and sister the opportunities she couldn't give her elder children. "It (university) was just one of those things that couldn't be done. I just couldn't have done any more than I did to keep the family afloat, and I regret that to this day."

Living in Hoppers Crossing in Melbourne's lower-income outer west, Adrienne got through school without a computer and by borrowing books and scientific calculators from her teachers. Earlier this year she couldn't afford to go into Melbourne to attend special exam information sessions that her friends went to. "That was stressful ... but what can you do about it?" she said.

Despite the Dawkins reforms of 1989 creating a mass university system and the introduction of income contingent loans, students from the bottom 25per cent of postcodes ranked according to wealth and education make up only 15per cent of university admissions. In contrast, the wealthiest 25per cent claim a disproportionate 37per cent of places. While the numbers of low-socio-economic students getting into university grew to 43,383 last year from 36,150 10 years ago, there has been little progress in denting their chronic underrepresentation.

Promoting access is set to be central to recommendations from Canberra's Bradley review of higher education that will be released next month. Universities are likely to be given more incentives to widen access at a time when more and more vice-chancellors are also looking to base this access beyond narrow statewide exam results to take into account background and broader achievements.

"Through no one's fault, the universities are complicit with schools and the state Government in running secondary school education tests that necessarily disadvantage sections of the population," La Trobe University vice-chancellor Paul Johnson told The Weekend Australian. Macquarie University vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz has said: 'Unless we believe that students from low-income families lack the ability or the motivation for university-level study, the absence of talented students from our campuses represents not only a loss to them but also to society".

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1 December, 2008

Top British universities not impressed by students with soft A-levels

The stupid (but typical) epidemiological assumption below is that students who take soft subjects are just as bright as students taking harder subjects. But in fact, any reasonable system for selecting students on ability (even an IQ test or the American SAT) would result in students who had taken harder subjects being disproportionately selected

UNIVERSITIES are discriminating against pupils who take “soft” A-level subjects such as media studies and drama, without making the policy public, research has revealed. Top institutions, such as Oxford, Bristol and University College London, admit a far smaller proportion of applicants with qualifications in such subjects than the percentage who take them nationally. The proportion of successful candidates who have qualifications in traditional academic subjects, by contrast, is far higher than the national average. Publicly, universities claim that they give equal weight to each subject, unless specific A-levels are required by certain courses.

The research will be included in a report to be published tomorrow by the think tank Policy Exchange, which obtained data from universities under the Freedom of Information Act. Entitled The Hard Truth About Soft Subjects, the report argues that the policy affects state schools most because many have urged pupils to do softer subjects to boost A grades. Critics say universities should be open about which subjects are treated less favourably.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We need to know what the admissions criteria are two years in advance so youngsters know when they are choosing A-levels.” Anna Fazackerley, senior adviser on universities at Policy Exchange and the author of the report, said: “It is perfectly reasonable for universities to turn their noses up at certain subjects if they think the content isn’t up to scratch. What is not reasonable is that they should keep quiet about it.”

At University College London and Bristol University, biology, chemistry, physics, maths and further maths account for just under half of A-levels among entrants. Nationally, however, they constitute 24.1% of the exams sat. Just 0.8% of A-levels taken by students going to Nottingham and Warwick Universities are media, film or television studies - nationally the figure is 4%. At Oxford, more ancient Greek than media studies candidates were admitted this year.

John Denham, the universities secretary, said: “Universities are autonomous institutions responsible for their admissions policies. But each should be transparent about its policy.” Some universities, including Cambridge and the London School of Economics, publish “blacklists” of less academic subjects. All of the universities contacted by The Sunday Times this weekend denied any clandestine discrimination.

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Which History?

There seems to be the idea that all the affirmative-action history we're feeding kids (black studies, women's studies, black women's studies, etc.) is a supplement to learning the basics, which they'll somehow absorb no matter what. Instead, the ISI civic literacy test suggests that such instruction is actually crowding out the fundmentals of history and civics. Other than the Declaration's reference to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the two highest scores - i.e., the ones the largest number of people got right - relate to Susan B. Anthony and to MLK's "I have a dream" speech.

The 80 percent who got those right compares to fully one-third who didn't know that Germany and Japan were our enemies in WWII, half who didn't know the three branches of government, and nearly 80 percent who didn't know that "government of the people, by the people, for the people" came from the Gettysburg Address. And elected officials scorced even lower than the general public. OK, I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems to me that students shouldn't even hear the words "Susan B. Anthony" until after they've recited the Gettysburg Address from memory and after they've proven they know who was on the losing side of the greatest war in human history.

Oh, and the obligatory immigration point: How can anyone support admitting a million-plus newcomers from abroad each year who need to be Americanized when our schools our doing this badly in teaching about America?

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Australia: How to put smart people off teaching

Putting young, inexperienced teachers into sink schools is a sure way to cause them to think of another career. Some of them last only weeks in such a situation. You would think an education boss would know that but when you are a Leftist, you don't need facts. Sounding good is all that matters

Top teaching graduates will be offered extra money to fill difficult jobs and work at "challenging" state schools. State Education Minister Rod Welford will today unveil what he describes as an innovative plan to get elite teachers into tough classroom roles. Mr Welford told The Sunday Mail the graduates would be offered incentives in the form of scholarships to work in specialist subject areas, difficult schools or remote locations.

The minister said he was alarmed at the number of teachers quitting after just four or five years on the job. [So he wants them to quit even faster??] "Recruiting and retaining top teachers is the key to ensuring all Queensland students can access the best possible education, no matter where they live," Mr Welford said.

Mr Welford, who will quit politics after 20 years at the 2009 state election, said there was a shortage of teachers in manual arts and maths B and C. Bonded scholarships would be offered to high-calibre final year undergraduate students to teach in subjects where shortages had been identified. Queensland Health had introduced a similar program for doctors, a bonded medical scholarship to work in areas of "priority service" for six years after graduating from Griffith University.

Mr Welford said other positions that were difficult to fill included schools in areas of socio-economic disadvantage and in rural and remote locations. "Increasingly we need to recognise that to attract the right talent we need to have incentives and we need to apply our most talented people to the most challenging jobs," he said.

The minister said the State Government would also implement a sister program with universities to provide graduates with initial teaching experience in the location of their choice. "This would be followed by a placement in a difficult-to-staff location with a guaranteed return to their preferred location after an agreed time. "Boomerang transfers will also be offered, with staff supported to undertake short-term placements in challenging locations with a guaranteed return to their preferred location on completion."

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan supported the plan but said the teachers must be fully qualified before taking the demanding roles. "We accept that there is a need for a variety of ways in which we can attract teachers to the profession . . . the best way is to make sure they are getting the right salaries," Mr Ryan said. The Government plans to introduce the scheme for 2009.

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