Man, what's up with @%#$! public schools?
Richmond City schools are in a quandary because they are teaching the ghost of students past, burdened with a business and political community similarly wedded to wishes of simpler, Leave it to Beaver times. Like most complex problems, the reality composed of many weak signals loses to the noisy simplistic explanation or fantasy. Our kids are no different physiologically than those of the 1950s--Nintendo, myspace and the like would have been a massive hit and distraction then as now if the tech were economically possible - those young minds are just sponges for stimulation, any stimulation that way, as are many of our multi-tasking inattentive adults in the working world. Wishing for old-style accountability in schools is a pipe dream because schools, just like business, are products of the culture in which they exist, just like the fish who knows no concept of water. You cannot revert education back to it's supposed heyday of ease and predictability without "carrying us back to old Virginny" in whole.
Now, let's talk about what our fishbowl really comprises, and let's get a serious discussion of what edu is and why it matters in a an age when silicon does better or faster much of what 80% of teaching imparts. Here's a reprise of this May '04 post wherein Ian Jukes offers a very interesting chronology of what's been tossed onto edu's plate in the last 100 years...
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Fouroboros, May 04, 2004
The Detroit News
Poll: Parent, teacher contact limitedSo, 6 of 10 parents don't communicate directly with the teacher at least once per week for grades 1-6. (Same for 3 & 4 presumably). By 9th grade, it's down to 2 in 10. Can you say Pareto's Law?
...The poll found a wide gap in how parents and teachers perceive school involvement. Parents say they want to be included, but don’t always have the chance. And teachers — uniformly, across all grades — said they want more direct interaction with parents.
Of parents with children in the first or second grade, 40 percent said they communicate directly with the teacher at least once per week. That number dropped to 38 percent for parents of fifth- and six- graders, and to 26 percent for parents of seventh- and eighth- graders. Just 20 percent of parents of ninth- and 10th-graders interact weekly with teachers. And by 11th and 12th grade, just 17 percent of parents said they communicate with teachers regularly.
I wonder how I would feel if I was forced to hire every applicant that approached me for a job? No critical evaluation allowed, no screening, no firing. Then, as the recipient of that bell-curved bundle of pathologies, bad habits, poor parenting, ethnic tension, sub-par nutrition and health, I was also required to attempt to ameliorate all those deficits while still trying to maintain a profit. ("Growth" seems a tad optimistic in this scenario.) In addition, once a month, my boardroom gets filled to overflowing with hordes of people--parents, workers, interested parties and social gadflies, government types, other business people--all come to tell me what I'm doing wrong. While noshing my hors d'oeurves and O.J., they scream at me: You're a leech. A cultural reprobate and a failure. Do it better for less money. Luckily, once all the free food is gone, they leave. But not before they toss me an additional list of things to tackle when I'm done handling the last 600 monthly lists they left me.
Why 600? 50 years X 12 months. Read on:
The Challenge of Change, [PDF] from Ian Jukes and Anita Dosaj, InfoSavvy Group
Our schools have tried to adapt to massive social change over the course of the past 50 years, and in doing so, they have become very confused. For hundreds of years all that our schools were responsible for was teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Then we began to add things to the list
1900
* reading
* writing
* arithmetic
1900-1910
* immunization
* nutrition
* health
1910-1920
* citizenship
1920-1940
* vocational arts
* practical arts
* physical education
* school lunch
1950‘s
* safety education
* driver’s education
* foreign language education
* sex education
1960‘s
* consumer education
* career education
* peace education
* traffic safety education
* leisure education
1970‘s
* special education mandated
* drug & alcohol abuse education
* electrical safety education
* parent education
* character education
* environmental education
* school breakfasts
1980‘s
* keyboarding
* computer education
* global education, ethnic education
* multicultural education
* non-sexist education
* ESL education
* full day kindergarten
* pre-school programs for at-risk students
* after school programs for children of working parents
* stranger danger education
* sexual abuse prevention education
* child abuse monitoring.....
1990‘s
* state standards
· career education
· HIV AIDS education
* bus safety education
* gang education
· death education
2000+ ?
Yet it’s the same school day and school year as 1950. When America had the longest school day and school year in the entire Industrial World – now in the new millennium, we have the shortest. We’ve not added a single minute to the school day or school year in decades. Consequently schools can’t do it. Schools were not designed to rear America’s children.
And yet, in even our best towns, we know that there are parents who are parenting by remote control. They drop them off for Pre-K or Kindergarten and expect to pick up 13 years later and find fully developed human beings. But they didn’t play a role in the process.
What’s the problem?
The system is trying to be all things to all people and it can’t work. It must be changed. And if you say to me "change to what?" we suggest that part of the conversation with the community is just that question:
What is the role of school in the new millennium?
Indeed. Please submit your answer in 25 words or less.
posted by fouro @ 12:05 PM
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Short answer to a long post: I hope that Richmond CIty public schools can become resources of pride and resiliency for neighborhoods.
Truancy: The root of all school safety problems!
“No child falls through the cracks. They are dropped through or shoved through by lazy, emotionally immature adults and unethical professionals”
After the Columbine shootings I made this statement during an interview on national television. The reporter asked if I really believed that statement and I replied, “absolutely!”
But you may ask what this statement has to do with the issue of truancy? Simple, truant children – who are routinely late or absent – come from dysfunctional homes. Those homes in my experience are lead by caregivers who are more concerned about there own pleasures and convenience than the welfare of their children. Some may say that this is an unkind assessment. My response to them is simple, visit these homes and you will see that this is not an aberration.
While some caregivers have a difficult time because of poverty, work schedules or transitioning to a single parent household; the majority simply refuse to exercise self control or basic order in their homes.
And this assessment is supported by various national studies. Research from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education have found that child neglect and family disorganization are major factors in truancy. The OJJDP also found that “Truancy has been clearly identified as one of the early warning signs of students headed for potential delinquent activity, social isolation, or educational failure via suspension, expulsion, or dropping out.”
More disturbing is a document that I have used for many years in criminal profiling, the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol (J-SOAP-II). In this well respected assessment tool, caregiver issues and truancy become connected as impetuses for teen sex offender development:
Inconstant and instable caregivers before the age of 10. Multiple changes in caregivers and living situations.
Chronic truancy, fighting with peers or teachers.
Dr Gerald Patterson sums up the issue this way, “Parenting plays a critical role in the development process of children. Early discipline failures are a primary casual factor in the development of conduct problems. Harsh discipline, low supervision, lack of parental involvement all add to the development of aggressive children”
Bullying, sexual harassment, negative behavior cliques and aggression towards staff are all done by children who come from dysfunctional homes. But beyond the home environment, schools have a big stake in controlling truancy. Not only is it a major part of NCLB compliance but it affects all school safety issues. The US DOE has tracked the following school issues that directly contribute to truancy.
· Lack of effective and consistently applied attendance policies.
· Poor record-keeping, making truancy difficult to spot.
· Teacher characteristics, such as lack of respect for students and neglect of diverse student needs.
· Unsafe environment, for example a school with ineffective discipline policies where bullying is tolerated. [5 percent of students in grades 9 through 12 skipped school because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.]
Truancy happens in rural, suburban and urban schools and all classes of families. School must take control of their truancy problems or they are bound to be overtaken by it.
A well managed school is a safe school!
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