The Missing Intangibles

            Across the country, a new school year begins under a dark cloud of testing scandals, steep budget cuts and an unprecedented economic recession.  Parents and critics will bemoan the loss of teachers and non core academic programs such as Art and Music, and complain about the fear of punishment which was the impetus behind the testing scandals.  While it is too early to determine the impact these factors will have on the students what will immediately impact the students are the loss of teachers and support staff. 

            For those who perceive teachers and support staff as being solely responsible for providing academic instruction to students.  The intangibles a teacher, classroom assistant, and non-teaching assistants (NTA) provide help students cope with personal, social and non-academic challenges.  Intangibles such as greeting students in the morning and providing support and encouragement for academic, non-academic, and personal challenges are supports students need to thrive in school. 

As confidants and mentors too many students, the loss of teachers and support staff may cause some students to lose confidence in themselves or abilities.  As confidants and mentors, teachers and support staff provide advice that allows students’ to make informed decisions concerning which classes to take, decide to try out for a school sport, music or art group, or submit a project for state or national competition. 

The loss of teachers and support staff can affect students’ post-high school decisions.  With the economy in a deep recession, many high school students are fearful of taking on large college debt and are questioning if they will be able to obtain a job after graduating from high school.  Younger students seeing older siblings moving back home from college, unable to find a job and their parents struggling to keep their jobs.

As the new school year begins, and students do not see the familiar faces of teachers and support staff that provided the intangibles in the classrooms and hallways, they will notice the difference and wonder who will provide the intangibles.

The Unschooling Movement?

            Are you familiar with “Unschooling?” A recent article in CNN.com discussed this little known alternative educational philosophy where “the child is in control of his/her learning and they are free to decide what they want to study, when they want to study[i].”

            Unschooling began as a response by its founder, John Holt who authored the book “How Children Fail” in 1964.  Holt believed:

“that living is learning…children should follow their

innate curiosity and passions rather than being forced

to learn hordes of information they will never use[ii].”

Holt’s philosophy is largely based on the principals of John Dewey’s (1910) Education & Experience.  From Dewey, Holt believed that learning could occur within the confines of a non-traditional school structure with an observant teacher who guided students to naturally learn curricular concepts through their natural curiosity and exploration.  Holt divergence from Dewey occurs when Holt places primary responsibility on the child while Dewey believed the teacher and student equally share responsibility for learning.

            Currently there are 20 private schools called Sudbury that follow the unschooling philosophy.  The schools are democratically run with each student and adult receive 1 vote. Only students set the rules and the rules can only be changed by a majority vote of the student body.  Classes are offered, but not mandatory and “staff members” do not have to have a teaching background since their purpose is to guide students in their individual pursuits[iii].  Children as young as 6 years old attend the Sudbury schools where there is no age or grade segregation. However, the Sudbury schools boasts a 90% college acceptance rate, with alumni who are mathematicians, geologists, and doctors.

            Critics of unschooling argue that to place the responsibility for formal learning on children as young as 6 years old without structure and without a trained/certified adult is poor child development practice.  They further argue that while a child can learn naturally, they need a trained/certified adult to help them make them make the leap to higher functioning and reasoning. 

            Critics of unschooling also argue that students will have a difficult time adjusting from the unschooling environment to the traditional, structured academic environment of college and the structure of the real world.  In college, there is a prescribed curriculum, deadlines for assignments and exams, attendance and participation requirements, and graduation requirements.  In the real world there are expectations about punctuality, work deadlines and a rigid structure.

            Finally, a glaring omission concerning unschooling is the cultural capital its students bring prior to entering the Sudbury.  An underling theme from the examples cited in the article is that Sudbury students came from affluent backgrounds that afforded them greater cultural capital to handle such an open and unstructured program.  It would be interesting to learn how students with little cultural capital would do in the unschooling environment.  Would these students eventually find their way in an unstructured academic environment and thrive?

---

[i] www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/03/unschooling.subury.education/index

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.    

Paying Students Not to Skip School?

            Today (8/24/11) the City of Camden in New Jersey announced it will be paying about 70 high school students $100 each to attend the first three weeks of the school year.  The city will be paying the students from a grant that will expire on September 30^th.  The city is trying to bring attention to its new truancy program called I Can End Truancy as known as ICE-T.

            As expected, there were a number of critics who thought paying students was a ludicrous idea, especially as the city had to layoff almost half of its police and firefighter force.  The city justified this incentive by claiming it is trying to meet the required state minimum attendance rate.  According to the Mayor, Dana Reed, “we have talked about truancy for a long time, we wanted to come up with an innovative model[i].”

            Using money as an incentive to increase student participation in school is not an innovative concept.  There have been school districts that have paid students for earning good grades as well as parents who provide monetary and material incentives to their children to work hard to achieve academic excellence.  The Camden plan sends the wrong message to truant and non-truant students. 

            The Camden plan is not an incentive, but a bribe.  It rewards truant students who have shunned their education and removes the responsibility of the parent for allowing their teenager to skip school.  The plan is also a slap in the face of every student who is doing the right thing in school, every parent who take responsibility to make sure their child is going to school and giving their best effort in school, and lastly for every educator who works to keep students on track in their education.  If the city wanted to provide an incentive to truant students, the students who are attending and giving their best effort academically should be monetarily rewarded.

            The Camden plan is also a concession to the current economic factors that guide city services.  The city understands that school attendance equates to additional or lost state allocations.  In an effort to add, maintain or not lose state allocation to its school ditricts, the city has sent the message that it is interested in the bodies of truants and not the minds of the truants.  If this were not the case, academic incentives would have been included in the plan. 

Lastly, what happens at the end of 3 weeks when the grant money is spent?  Since the truant students were being paid to attend school, once they get paid and the incentive is no longer in place, what prevents them from being truant again?

            With the city’s financial problems, one would think the city would have considered charging $100 fines to parents of truant students instead of giving truant students $100.  Other penalties that could be considered are community service or suspension of privileges such as not being able to apply for a learners permit or work permit.  Instead of wasting $7000 on bribing truant students to attend the first 3 weeks of school, the money could be used in another capacity to achieve the desired goal.  The city of Camden needs to rethink its truancy plan.

---

[i] www.msnbc.com/id/44256731/ns/local_news-philadelphia_pa/#

Teaching Sex Education in New York City Schools

                Last week New York City Public Schools decided to mandate all middle and high school students be taught sex education.  The timing of the mandate coincided with Mayor Bloomberg’s three year  $130 million initiative to improve the lives of African-American and Latino teenagers.

               

               The decision to mandate sex education stems in part from the high rate of teenage pregnancy and HIV among African-Americans and Latinos teenagers who according to city statistics:

                                “…are far more likely than their white counterparts to have

                                unplanned pregnancies and contract sexually transmitted

                                diseases…when we look at the biggest disadvantages that

       kids in our city face, it is African-Americans and Latinos that

       are most affected by the consequences of early sexual

       behavior and unprotected sex[i].”

Students are already receiving HIV education as part of a state mandate and there were some schools prior to this recent mandate that taught sex education from the abstinence perspective without discussing the use of contraception as an alternative.  The new mandate will require schools to teach a semester of sex education in the 6^th or 7^th grade and in the 9^th or 10^th grade. 

Students will be taught from two suggested curriculum:  HealthSmart and Reducing the Risk which have been used in the past by some middle schools.  Schools would also have the opportunity to partner with state and city approved health and human service agencies for sex education training and instruction.  The semester long class will be a mixture of lecture, role playing exercises, and utilization of statistics to dispel false perceptions and opinions with researched-based data.  There will also be candid discussions about the risks of unprotected sex.  Parents will be able to opt their child out of the instructions on birth control[ii].

As one of the cities with the highest rates of HIV cases and teenage pregnancy among African-American and Latino men and women, New York City Public Schools is following in the footsteps of 20 other states and the District of Columbia who have mandated sex education as a tool to decrease the number of new HIV cases and teenage pregnancy.  According to a 2008 study by the CDC, the number of new HIV infections among African-American males ages 13-29 is growing[iii].  Additionally, among Western/developed countries, the US and Great Britain have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy[iv].

In order for future generations of African-American and Latinos to have a chance to succeed, using sex education to remove health and lifestyle barriers is a strategy with enormous potential.  While there are many critics against teaching sex education in schools from religious and parent groups, hopefully over time, public perception will change and understand the necessity of teaching sex education in schools.  The argument that teaching sex education in schools will cause young adults to become sexually active cannot be the primary reason for withholding potentially lifesaving information from young adults who are exposed to mixed or one-sided messages about sex.

---

[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/nyregion/in-new-york-city-a-new-mandate-on-sex-education.html?

[ii] ibid

[iii] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States

[iv] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenagae_pregnancy

Teaching the Contributions of Gay Americans

            Last month, the State of California passed a ground-breaking bill that required its public schools to teach students the contributions of gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans[1]. 

            According to governor, Jerry Brown, the intent of the bill is to

“ensure that the important contributions of Americans

                        from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in

                        our history books[2].”

The bill adds to the existing law that requires schools to teach about the contributions of African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Asian-Americans.  In addition to requiring schools to teach the contributions of gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, the bill also included the contributions of people with disabilities.

While this bill went virtually un-noticed nationally the implications of this bill could impact public education on a national level.  As word of this bill gains more notoriety, advocates of the lesbian, gay and transgender community (LGBT) may petition other states to pass similar laws.  If a significant number of larger states such as Texas, New York, and Florida pass similar bills, the landscape of education would change dramatically.  The ripple effects would go beyond public education.  The textbook industry and teacher pedagogy would change significantly.

Being a conservative organization, the textbook industry has used its political power to maintain a singular truncated version of contributors to history, math, and science.  The contribution of women and minorities in these fields has been used as supplemental information, devaluing their contributions.

Since the 1960s, the textbook industry has been able to fend off appeals to have textbooks become more inclusive and representative of a diverse society.  However, the California bill has mandated that by 2015, textbooks will be updated to reflect the contributions of LGBT and disabled Americans.  If the larger states follow California’s lead, the textbook industry would have to capitulate and offer textbooks that present the contributions of human beings regardless of race, gender, disability or sexual preference.

As the textbook industry is affected, so will be the teaching pedagogy.  Teachers will finally have acknowledge and teach from a multicultural point of view.  This means that school districts will have to provide professional development on the utilization of pedagogy from a multicultural lens, as well as cultural sensitivity training.  Teachers will have to have to instruct from a curriculum that encompasses a true “We the People” perspective.  Teaching from a multicultural lens allows students to see themselves as well as the others as contributors to society and not as second class citizens or leeches that drain society.

            Whatever your feeling are about LGBT people, their contributions to society should be not be absent from the contributions all human beings have made to society and their contributions should be taught in schools.

---

[1] www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/14/california.lgbt.education/index.html

[2] ibid

Starting the School Year With A Black Eye

            As the start of a new school year approaches, students and parents begin to experience a gambit of emotions from anxiety to elation, from resentment to anticipation, and from denial to acceptance.  At the high school level, these emotions are intensified for students and parents of incoming freshmen and rising seniors.

            Parents and students of incoming freshmen will have to worry about the transition from middle school, familiarizing themselves with the faculty and the academic work load, and fitting in and finding their place within the hierarchy of high school.  Parents and students of seniors will have to worry about college applications, getting faculty recommendations, taking the SAT/ACT, deciding who to ask or take to the prom, and enjoying the last year of protected young adulthood.

            Unfortunately, for one high school in Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania, controversy and unwanted national attention may over shadow the start of the school year.  Last year, a high school teacher wrote disparaging remarks on her blog about her students.  The teacher called some of her students’ as “frightfully dim,“ “whiny,” and “utterly loathsome[i] (these were the less derogatory comments).  The teacher was placed on suspension for her comments and during the summer and waited for the district to decide the consequences for her public disrespect of her students.

            Last week the district reinstated the teacher (who showed no remorse) and she was assigned back to the school and where the incident occurred.  The teacher was also given the same grade and class schedule as last year.  According to the teachers attorney: “there is nothing different than before[ii]”

            I am sure there are a number of school staff, parents and students who will disagree with the attorney’s statement.  Whether they agree or disagree with their colleagues comments, there will be some tension among staff.  Tension between those who support the rights of the teacher’s free speech and non-supporters who feel the teacher crossed the unspoken line of professional conduct where you do not publically denigrate your students.  More importantly, there will be parents who will not want their child to be assigned to the teacher’s class.  Those parents will vocalize their concern about their child being assigned to a class where the perception is the teacher does not like children.  There will also be some parents who will scrutinize everything the teacher does and challenge every grade and comment that is made against their child.

            Finally, there will be students who may use the situation to their advantage and threaten to complain to the principal, their parents, or the district about the teacher in order to get a good grade without actually earning it.  These students understand the teacher is powerless, has no credibility, and has lost the respect of her students.  These students will make it their mission to be disruptive.

The district did not discuss the rationale of its decision.  However, they must understand the results of their decision was a slap in the face to the students.  The decision sent the message that public disparagement of students by a teacher is acceptable.  This decision could destroy the delicate balance of the teacher student relationship and hinder learning.  If students are skeptical about their teachers intentions, they will not respond positively to what the teacher is trying to teach.  Districts are supposed to protect students from antagonistic staff members and prevent them from crossing the unspoken line of professionalism that all educators must follow.

---

[i] www.philly.com/philly/education/201107/28_Central_Bucks_East_Teacher_returning...

[ii] Ibid.

The Educational Hostage Crisis in Memphis

            Last week the Memphis City School Board in Memphis, Tennessee voted to delay the start of the school year until the city pays the $55 million dollars it owed the Memphis City School District.

            Since 2008, the city and the school board have been in legal dispute over money ($151million total).  The board claims the money is owed to them from educational funding cuts that were found to be illegal by the State Appellate Court and upheld by the State Supreme court.  Although the city lost and is under court order to pay, the city still has not paid the school board, which has led to the school board to take this extreme position[i].

            Each side claims that “the children will not be caught in the middle” of the dispute[ii].  However, both sides fail to realize that the children are already in the middle and have been for the past four years.  When the city cut its educational funding, the children suffered, and when the school board voted to delay the start of the school year, they are using the children as pawns to force the city to pay back the district.  The families of the children are also caught in the middle of the dispute.

            According to Wikipedia, Memphis is the seventh largest city with a high percentage of low income residents[iii].  If the district delays the start of the school year, families with elementary age children will be forced to find and pay for childcare with their limited income or they will be forced to take days off from work without pay. Having to pay for childcare or take off work without pay could decimate a fragile household budget and lead to the inability to pay major bills (including rent/mortgage), buy food, or pay for transportation to get to work via public transportation or by personal vehicle.  For families that cannot afford to pay or childcare, parent(s) could lose their job for taking too much time off to watch their child.

Families with middle and high school age youth may have to worry about their children being unsupervised without the structure of the school day.  Unsupervised youth could lead to an increase in teen pregnancy, crime and violence, and school apathy.  These youth would also be missing vital instructional time that would prepare them for the SAT/ACT and other post-secondary planning. 

The decision to delay the start of the school year due to a funding dispute is being quietly watched by districts and city officials across the country.  The final outcome of this bold strategy, could be used by districts in the future who will place children in the middle of a funding dispute by holding their education hostage.  There may some city officials who will give into districts demands and then take the lost funds from social service programs or increase property taxes which will hurt families. 

In this educational hostage crisis, children and families will still lose.  There is no way to avoid it.  Hopefully reasonable minds will prevail and end this hostage standoff.

---

[i] www.cnn.com/2011/us/7/20/tennessee.no school/index

[ii] ibid

[iii] www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_porrest_places_in_the_United_states