Awake & Curious

This is going to be a pretty disjointed post. I am in a strange place, and it is the first week of school in New York City.
Forewarned as they say, you know the rest, so read on only if you are in the mood to cope with a lack of structure and more than a bit of chaotic rambling.

I have had 24 first weeks of school as a teacher and another 10 as a student (dropped out of High School in the 10th grade).
That is 34 first weeks in the NYC school system. Mind-boggling.
Ramble 1. I think George Carlin is brilliant and funny and pinned the tail on the donkey in this piece.
Chris Sessum mentioned it on his blog. It is profane, (much of Carlin is, and in my book anyone who is that sharp can curse till the cows waltz in the wheat fields) but dead on when it come to the failure of the American Education system. It is interesting to me how accurate his observations are about education, NCLB and our present psychotic fascination with testing.

Ramble # 2. I am also Simpson’s fan. No clip here, so I will try to set the scene: A group of T.V. executives in a “creative” meeting all sitting in front of their own T.V’s trying to come up with an “original” idea for a reality show starring Homer. They all kept feverishly surfing channels on their personal t.v.s, watching shows on other networks saying things like,
” Wait I think I am getting an idea”.

I think this is what the T.V. executives must really do to come up with the idea for these some of the shows . How else can you explain that as of last week I count 3 “new” shows on different networks where the premise of the show is to see whether some dolt can win big bucks by finishing the lyrics to Abba’s Dancing Queen?
Back to the Simpsons, they show the “creative genius” of T.V in formula: replicate a show that has a modicum of success again, and again, and again until all the life is beaten out of it, and T.V. veiwer suicide/murder rates skyrocket. Bottom line they never replicate the initial show, it is usually just a watered down imitation, lacking any substance or entertainment value.

An example of this is Oprah and daytime T.V. Think back when Oprah did a tabloid like shock show,( she did you know in her beginning she was not always discussing the philosophy of “giving” with Bill”the rock star” Clinton.)
In ancient times, before Google and YouTube around (1984) she did the kind of show that was closer to Jerry Springer Or Maury Povitch. Hell she is the mother of Springer and Povitch’s daily misery fests. And if you don’t remember, or believe me that Oprah the Good Witch once rode her broom in a more seedy neighborhood, well, as the popular rant on these shows say, , go ahead Oprah “take the test, take the test” you know their your children!

After Oprah’s show became popular the other T.V. executives had “a creative brainstorm” and daytime talk T.V. with a penchant for Freak show suffering was born. Oprah changed her show’s format. ( But Oprah is the mother of this mess no matter how many schools for girls she finances in Africa. )

This desperate insistence on replicating anything that has had slight success runs rampant in the American Education system as well as in T.V. land. We even have a term for it in education, “Best Practices”. “Best Practices” lets replicate their ” Best Practices”.

That is like saying lets replicate William Faulkner’s writing in Absalom Absalom, or ” The Sound and The Fury”.
Fool, you can’t replicate great writing, you can be inspired by great writing. If you try to repeat brilliant writing you will just write a bad book. There are hundreds of books written by the way trying to “replicate” Faulkner’s “best practice” in his writing and not one of them has.
Good if not great writers on their own terms, wearing their own pants and thinking their own thoughts like Cormac McCarthy have been inspired by Faulkner. (As an aside the Oprah The Good Witch “did” McCarthy and his latest book The End on her book club as the first book of last year, maybe their is hope for Springer and Povitch yet.)
You can’t replicate “brilliant teaching” probably for the same reason you can’t replicate T.V. or books. The players, setting, and time is different. I am no Oprah fan but even I know Jerry Springer is no Oprah, and no one will ever be Faulkner, ever!
Teaching is the same, when I see great teaching and I do in my little brick school house in New York City, believe it or not I do. I don’t copy it, I get excited by it . The thought to do exactly what they have done never occurs to me. Yet “Balanced Literacy, Reading First, and Every Day Math are built on this premise that you can “script” and replicate great/ good teaching and learning.
Ramble # 3: As my final ramble on testing I came across a peice written by a guy name Bruce A. Jilk. He plans schools all over the world.
He has some great things to say

“There is something that learning, because of it’s nature, is not the display of a packaged product. Learning is an inner process that is manifested as continual discovery”
Also this:”Nearly all children are born with creative potential. The drawings, singing, play, and place making of young children is in evidence everywhere. As they move through their years of “development” many seem to lose this creative propensity. We have all seen it when we visit schools. The delightful, spirited kindergarten classroom seems to diminish, year by year until you get to the more somber rooms of the 6th grade and beyond. What’s going on here?

For many reasons the teaching process in the US becomes more focused and controlled as students move ahead. This certainly is done for significant reasons. And with the fed’s passing laws that require testing this will become even more evident. The problem is that this also is limiting the creative channels of children. Typically we, planners and designers, respond to our clients by developing teaching environments that are supportive of this emphasis on focus and control. Recent security issues even push those concerns further. I believe this is what we are expected to do, but we can do so much more.”

To recap: I have spent too many years in school buildings, George Carlin is on to something , I watch the Simpsons, I don’t watch Oprah because I know where she comes from, Cormac McCarthy is a good writer, William Faulkner is a great writer (if you have time stop reading blogs and read them), you can’t replicate or package a creative process, ( and teaching/learning Bozos is a creative process) , You can be inspired by the creative, I am all the time and enough with spending billions of dollars on testing as you don’t fatten a cow by weighing it.

Welcome to the 2007-2008 school year.

Chow!

There is a saying that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. My grandmother, Nana Broderick, used to say it a different way usually to my father when he was trying to fix something, ” please don’t fix it if you are just going to break it “. If you look at American history there are plenty examples of “fixing things only to break them”. One is the failure of Public housing, another is a little piece of legislation called NCLB.

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, like to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, like to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Public Housing,

Chris Sessums posted this video from Youtube from an old Alan Watts talk.. Thoughtful and timely in these data-driven, bottom-line days. So much of teaching is a musical, intuitive, serendipitous affair. Not quantifiable at all. Yet we are always completely concerned with attainment and the bottom-line. Indeed a hoax. Good Stuff.