Education as a field gets the rap for taking too long at things. Not being businessy enough. Accountability taken to silly extremes. Having pre-meetings to plan meetings. Then post-meetings to evaluate meetings.
Rigor is sacred.
Technology is everywhere. The calendar on my iPhone jerks me back to the drudgery just when I’ve floated into the bliss of its 3,000-plus songs.
And both business and education corrupt the language …
Left, Right
Arlington, Va.-based CampusReform.org’s schtick is that “America’s colleges and universities are dominated by liberals.” The latest bogeyman is Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If you thought of them as the premiere U.S. cold warrior, CampusReform.org notes MIT liberal student groups outnumber conservative groups by three to two. And the faculty and staff gave 98% of their political donations to Democratic candidates in the 2008 presidential election. The real news story is that 2% gave to the party that frequently wants to disinvest in education and abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
Department of Corporate Marketing
On April 14, 2011, the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership and Smith & Wesson Corp., invited two Massachusetts state leaders for a tour “the legendary 159-year old company in the global business of safety, security, protection and sport.”
On Feb. 15, 2011 Procter & Gamble Co., the massive conglomerate that makes Pampers, Tide detergent, Pringles, Crest toothpaste, Duracell batteries, Gillette shavers and who knows what else, began an unadorned effort to clean up at schools too. P&G announced that its Bounty brand surveyed 1,000 U.S. school teachers and found that 94% of teachers believe students learn better in clean classrooms. According to the survey, 51% of teachers report avoiding certain in-class projects or activities because they dread the clean-up afterwards.
At the “end of the day,” still “unpacking” things.
Speaking of Euphemisms
Many Boston Police cruisers sport decals on the backseat windows that say “Your anonymous tip helps put a suspect here.” It’s shaming a bit like the giant dice they used to make suspects were around their necks in medieval days and a bureaucratic way of saying, “Please snitch … please for the safety of the community.”
No, But I Can Type
I watched my honors-student daughter anguish through a history paper on the damn Loyalist Thomas Hutchinson. She had to pick a Colonial figure and found TH out of the blue. She learned a lot about conducting research but was thrown off by the technology. Hard to believe, in this day and age, the program the class was using to create videos could not be accessed on our Mac. The episode reminded me of an experience I had in 8th grade typing class (there was once such a thing)! The capstone was to type a major “term paper” … with footnotes and everything. In the parlance of today, I learned how to learn, as I researched FDR … a good subject compared with TH. And I too was thrown off by technology … in my case, typing. In the middle of the class, the sickening teacher sidled up and asked me, “Do you dance?” It was a delicate subject in those junior high school days. “No,” I said. “I can tell,” he said. “You have no rhythm.”
An Uncommon Core
Speaking of which, common core state standards are all the rage in education. But one might wonder if the core is a bit too common and how an un-common core emphasizing softer but no less necessary areas like emotional intelligence and character development might also fit in. And as Providence school reformer Dennis Littky asks: “Who wants a standardized kid, anyway?”
Projecting Power
Kevin Carey, until recently of the think tank Education Sector, is respected as an education thinker and the Chronicle of Higher Education is a respected education newspaper. But I am stymied by Carey’s confused lead in a March 2011 Chronicle article:
“Left unattended,” Carey wrote, “the Pell Grant program will cost $44-billion next year. You could buy seven aircraft carriers with that much cash.”
Shouldn’t readers be shocked to read with that what we’re spending on seven platforms to project military power we could be educating lower-income students?
