A binder meme ate my brain

I admit it. The whole "binders full of women" thing captures my imagination. Also gives me a chance to show off my awesome Photobucket skills. So I made these:

If you are living in a cave and haven't visited the home world of this meme yet, click here.

And then, of course, there's this on Amazon.

On language, education and BS

When I got my first job working for a big corporation in the '80s, after earning a Masters in English lit and another in journalism, I was horrified by the bizspeak gobbledegook I found there. It was the Age of the Mission Statement, with HR and PR departments churning out verbiage that meant nothing; that included way too much jargon and way too many words to convey ideas that weren't very interesting or compelling; or that was outright naked propaganda designed to placate restive workers who might suspect they were undervalued, underpaid and overworked. I couldn't believe any intelligent person would take that bullshit seriously.


Fast forward to today, when that kind of writing (and thinking) has crept out of the Big Biz world into so many other areas. Like, ironically - education. 


With that preface, I bring you a quote from a document describing a project under way at a public high school. 

Sol Lewitt Project for the Freshman Experience

The following project is designed for the Freshman Experience and specifically, connects to the key learning outcomes associated with the Freshman Experience.  The project is to be delivered at the beginning of the year to establish the essential nature of the five key learning outcomes.   

Project Rationale 

The Sol LeWitt project builds off of the Domino Activity which will be the main event of Freshman Orientation in Cohort A.  The LeWitt project places an emphasis on collaboration, problem solving, and communication, while other key learning outcomes such as critical reading and research are folded into the project as students progress through various prototyping stages.   The LeWitt project is also cross-curricular and in particular, fuses together Language Arts and Math.   

The LeWitt endeavor is inspired by the Design Thinking model.  Our understanding of Design Thinking is best captured by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO.  Brown provides the following definition for design thinking: 

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” 

Design thinking process is a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps or as we have started to normalize it at MHS as “loops.”  These loops are non-linear in nature, but still provide a course of action for students to follow.  The design process exists along a continuum, moving individuals, groups and or companies through three distinct phases: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions. Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas. Implementation is the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives. 

The LeWitt project is relevant because of the value placed on process.  Even though students will produce a replica of a LeWitt Wall Drawing, the experience is more about the process of mentoring learners through what is a challenging, complex, and rigorous task.  Without embracing the key learning outcomes, students will be challenged to successfully produce a wall drawing worthy of public exhibition.  

Translation: Students will work in teams to create murals in the style of artist Sol Lewitt. To do so, they must work together and follow instructions that include math.


Ironic that the description of a project designed in large part as a language arts exercise (and in fact taking the place of English classes for three weeks) uses incomprehensible jargon and language that obfuscates rather than elucidates. One hopes the kids aren't actually being taught to write like this. They're probably not. They're probably being told that this style of writing generally signals an author who is being intentionally obscure in order to inflate the importance of a project and to create the impression that a simple idea (possibly even a bad idea) is complex and profound. Let's hope.


Even though what the students are actually doing is creating artwork, it's not an art class. It's "cross-curricular," with the emphasis heavily on language arts and math - not coincidentally, the two subjects schools are most obsessed with these days because of mandated accountability measures linked to standardized testing in those areas. To the extent that the fact that this is an art project is acknowledged at all, the goal is not to learn about art, but something called  "design thinking." After all, art is about creativity. "Design thinking" is required for "business success." 


I suspect that this project is an effort to address the new national Common Core Standards that call for schools to focus language arts instruction more on cross-curricular informational text. Sadly, the Common Core reflects a departure from the view that the development of intellect is a worthwhile goal in and of itself, and that well-educated individuals are capable of applying what they have learned to a wide range of endeavors, opening many doors to them. The trend instead is toward the acquisition of a narrow set of periodically tested skills and information as stepping stones to "success," defined in the most mercenary possible terms. 

Here's an explanation of language arts in the Common Core:

Following on from the balance between literary and informational text in elementary grades, the Common Core pushes educators to shift that balance in middle and high school. By grade 8, middle school students should spend 55% of their time in school working with informational text. By the end of high school, students should spend 70% of their time working with informational text.Again, the aim of this emphasis on informational text is not really about technical manuals or even scientific journals. The aim is to build students’ background knowledge and vocabulary, so they are able to read and comprehend the rich variety of text that they will be confronted with in their future schooling, their careers, and their daily lives.It is critical to note that the 70% of students time in school working with informational text in high school includes the reading they are doing in history, science, the arts, and math, so English teachers should not despair. (Think about it…within a typical school day, students spend a significant amount of their time outside the English classroom.) Probably the best way to do this is to build school-level curriculum that reinforces big ideas across content areas.

In other words, teach less literature and more of the kinds of texts one needs in the business world. Literature nourishes the imagination and develops the intellect. Informational text gets you a job.


The circle is closed.

Get the F*%# Out

Have you seen Wake the Fuck Up, the very effective pro-Obama video with Samuel L. Jackson? (If not, scroll down and watch.) It's a parody of an earlier video in which Jackson reads the mock children's book, Go the Fuck to Sleep, which was all the rage last summer (also below). Both texts were written by Adam Mansbach.

Go the Fuck to Sleep irked the hell out of me. In it, a frustrated parent pleads with his kid to, of course, go the fuck to sleep. Here's my response (originally posted last summer):

The stars brightly shining are spread cross the sky,
But you are still up and about,
You're too chicken shit when your kid starts to cry,
Just man up and get the fuck out.

Here's the original Go the Fuck to Sleep:

↵ Use original player

Go the Fuck to Sleep - Read by Samuel L. Jackson

By TheCarmillaShow

YouTube

• 360p
• 240p FLV

← Replay

X

i

And here's Wake the Fuck Up:

↵ Use original player

Wake the F**K Up (NSFW)

By SchlepLabs

YouTube

• 1080p
• 720p
• 360p
• 240p FLV

← Replay

X

i

We'll never get there by running the other way

I need to come clean.

After several years of using my Facebook page, NJ Parents Against Gov Christie’s School Budget Cuts, to rail on a near-daily basis against public-education “reforminess” - a pet term that covers business-model education reform, privatization, high-stakes testing, etc. - two of my kids have just started at what can only be called an elite private high school after nine years of public school.

This wasn’t an easy decision, and its not my intention to get into a lengthy defense of that choice. Suffice it to say that I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to afford to make that choice, and I believe that public schools can and should become more like such private schools, instead of rushing in the opposite direction.

And that’s what I really want to talk about - the rush in the opposite direction.

I wish every public school parent in New Jersey - in America - could sit through the typical admissions presentation that prospective students and their families receive at top private schools. They would hear about the depth and richness of these schools’ offerings. They would hear that these schools seek to develop the whole person by emphasizing the arts and humanities alongside science, math and technology. About small class sizes that allow each student to receive individual attention. Advisors who work closely with every student, every day, to ensure his or her needs are being met. Libraries and computer labs available to facilitate homework and research. A faculty comprised of highly qualified teachers with advanced degrees in their subject areas. Emphasis on developing critical thinking skills. Development of writing and public speaking skills.

And over and over again, this selling point: NO STANDARDIZED TESTING.

So really, I have two points to make:

1. These are the kinds of schools to which most reformy politicians and edu-philanthropist-advocates send their own kids. Oh, and the president, too.

2. The educational practices and philosophies of most top private schools are the exact opposite of what most reformy politicians and edu-philanthropist-advocates are pushing for public schools: high-stakes standardized testing, larger class sizes, narrowed curriculum, de-emphasis of teacher experience and education, cutting back on arts and humanities, etc.

The experience of sitting through these presentations, and then reading scores of articles about the reforms being advocated by so many, Democrats and Republicans, reform advocates and billionaire philanthropists - by the likes of Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Chris Cerf, Jeb Bush, Michael Bloomberg, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and on and on - leaves me with no doubt that the reformy crowd wants one thing for their own children and something less for other people’s children.

I’ve come to the extremely cynical conclusion that most reformies don’t actually believe their reforms are the best way to educate kids. They just believe their reforms are good enough for those who can’t afford better.

No doubt, many will say our nation cannot afford to provide every public school student with the kind of education available in elite private schools. I’m no school finance expert, so I’m not in a position to say what it would actually take - but I’m damn certain that we’ll never get there by running as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

But don't take my word for it. Rutgers professor Bruce Baker is a school finance expert who writes the blog School Finance 101 and knows a lot more about it. So read this:

Borrowing wise words from those truly market-based, Private Independent schools…

and this piece, which affected my own thinking deeply:

Private Choices, Public Policy & Other People’s Children

Perfect together: Right-wing scare mongering and education reforminess

This morning I read something that made me realize it’s time to stop beating around the bush in the discussion of education reform.

The reason right-wing Republican politicians love the education reformies - Michelle Rhee and her lot - is that they don’t place uncomfortable demands on society to confront not just the existence of poverty, but even more importantly, the segregation of poverty. Charter schools in poor urban areas, vouchers, school turnaround, tenure reform - they are reforms that keep the poor people right where they are - just shuffle ‘em around a bit and shake up their schools, safely within the confines of their own poor, urban neighborhoods.

And that suits right-wing politicians very well, because they’re busy pandering to suburban voters who are terrified of the prospect that their insular, white enclaves might be invaded by the dreaded other. I’m talking about the kinds of suburbanites (by no means all) who see the Mt. Laurel affordable-housing decision as some kind of socialist plot to redistribute the wealth perpetrated by a liberal elite by means of activist judges who  are really puppets of the International Workers Party. Sadly, there are still far too many people in New Jersey who don’t want THOSE people anywhere near MY house, MY school, MY family.

Most politicians are too savvy to come right out and say so, of course. Except for this guy from (aptly enough) Nutley, as reported in Blue Jersey:

Steve Rogers, who ran unsuccessfully last year for Essex County Board of Freeholders on a "too much government" platform, is one of the candidates for commissioner in Nutley...
A mailer received by most residents of Nutley in Essex County states several of Rogers positions using a combination of scare tactics while emphasizing his long career as a police officer. (Translation : the boogie man is going to get you and I'm the white knight to save you.) Made to look like a newspaper under the title "The Nutley Review" a banner headline proclaims "Controlling Property Taxes is Priority #1 For Rogers". ...
Alongside a stock photo of a foreclosed home, "Rogers Vows To Fight New State Low Income Housing Law." And it's here that we see Rogers toss handfuls of misinformation to cast a troublesome light on "the other" in an attempt at a power grab.  The low income housing law being considered will make use of some otherwise vacant houses and make them available for low income families. ...
Five paragraphs in, and dead center in the article, Rogers makes the point that low income families "include ex-criminals, the homeless, persons with AIDS-HIV, and those over 18 no longer eligible for foster care."...
The blow up quote at the bottom of the Rogers mailer reads "Hard working residents, who have spent their lives working to win and maintain a home will see the value of their house drop through the  floor when convicted drug dealers, thieves, and violent offenders move in next door." 

Get the idea? The scary urban poor are coming to get you!

Of course, the truth is that building affordable housing is a great solution to a host of problems and, when done correctly, does not have an adverse impact on the existing neighborhood, as demonstrated in a recent study of Mt. Laurel itself:

But the assumptions and fears fueling critics’ resistance is groundless, according to Douglas Massey, a Princeton professor who led a study of Mount Laurel Township and Ethel Lawrence Homes. Twelve years after Ethel Lawrence opened, Mount Laurel Township has experienced no increase in crime or decline in property values. The study did find that many of the hopes new residents carried with them into Ethel Lawrence — for better schools, a sense of safety and community — have been fulfilled.

There is ample evidence to suggest that socioeconomic integration is a more successful method of education reform than anything the reformies are pushing. It’s just that, politically, it’s a much harder sell. Sadly, on the right, where pandering to tea-party paranoia has become standard procedure, the defend-in-place doctrine of education reforminess is the perfect solution. It lets right-wing politicians make noises like they care about kids, education, poverty, etc - without doing anything that might piss off their hardcore voter base. Everything they want to do -- charters, vouchers, high-stakes testing, tenure reform -- can be seen as part of a policy of containment, measures that do nothing to shift populations or change the underlying demographics. In other words, these measures keep poor black and Latino kids right where they are - Newark, Camden, Paterson - and way the hell away from the Republican voter base.

Christie likes to defend his reformy education policy by saying that “destiny should not be determined by zip code.” He and his buddies accuse opponents of reforminess of using poverty as an excuse for educational failure. But the Christie-Rhee brand of reform, which addresses only in-school factors and not the problems of the isolated, impoverished communities those schools serve, is like building a skyscraper on a foundation of sand. When the building falls, who in their right mind would hesitate to blame the sand?

35 Years Before The Big Bang Theory

UPDATE: A million thanks to my old friend Naomi, who brought to my attention that James Wolcott's original article on Star Trek fandom is in fact online right here. As I said to Naomi, Wolcott was an even bigger dick than I realized back then. His reductive condescension and dismissive misogyny is - well, icky.


_______________________


Originally written a few years ago:


I am more than a little verklempt. 

Today I was looking through a folder of my stuff that my parents had given me several years ago -- mostly report cards, high school papers, school play programs, you know the kind of stuff I mean. So I'm turning the pages, and suddenly, there in front of me is a little piece of my personal fandom history that I thought was gone forever. 

It's a letter to the editor of the Village Voice (at that time a widely read alternative New York weekly, for those who don't know) responding to an article about a Star Trek convention I'd attended -- one of the earliest. The letter was published February 23, 1976. I was barely 14, and amusingly enough I called James Wolcott, now culture critic for Vanity Fair and a writer for the New Yorker, a Klingon spy. He did not have kind words for Star Trek fans, and in all my youthful earnestness, I gave him what for. I wish I had a copy of his article, but I'm afraid that really is gone for good. 

Better yet, I even found a photo taken about a month later of me posing proudly in my room in front of the posters and photos I'd no doubt acquired at that same Star Trek convention. I look exactly like the kid who would have written the letter. 


Here's the text:

Dear Editor:
I was shocked by James Wolcott's article, "Big Brother is Trekking You," (Voice, February 2). I find it hard to believe that anyone can so thoroughly miss a point as he has.
Mr. Wolcott is correct in noting that kids (and adults) at Star Trek conventions are serious but he fails to realize why. Star Trek deals with many real problems, and says that we can handle them. This is a message which drives home to today's youth. While the rest of the world doesn't know if it will survive, these kids believe that we can overcome our problems and differences.
I also refuse to believe that the bases for Star Trek's popularity are "sex, cool, and technology." Do thousands of fans come to a convention only because they enjoy playing with gadgets? Are all those women fans because Captain Kirk turns them on? Do thousands of kids watch the show faithfully solely because they envy Mr. Spock's cool? I find it difficult to believe that all those people of all ages and all walks of life completely miss the messages of a show in which a monster who attacks men is really only protecting her children; in which the racial problems of a planet are overcome through rational thinking and many other such episodes. And why should the cooperation of two men such as Kirk and Spock be macho when they are in fact serving the interest of peace?
I have found that many critics of Star Trek, including Mr. Wolcott, look only at the fans instad of at the show itself. How can anyone understand Star Trek fandom without examining Star Trek? 
Mr. Wolcott must be a Klingon spy.

Education Reform and What I Learned at Taft High School

Here's what education reformers like:

- Tenure reform, which would end tenure to stop protecting “bad” teachers who supposedly are responsible for “failing” schools.

- School turnaround, where lots of teachers at “failing” schools get fired in order to stop the failing.

- Closure of “failing” schools. Self explanatory.

- Merit pay, where teachers get extra money to teach better, because presumably, without financial incentive, they’re not teaching as well as they could, resulting in - you guessed it - more “failing”.

- High stakes testing, based on which teachers are evaluated and “bad” teachers are identified. Again, this is supposed to cut down on the “failing.”

- Ending LIFO (Last In First Out), a system said to promote failing because it grants greater job protection to teachers with seniority, favoring “bad” older teachers over “good” younger ones. 

Get the common thread here? To get rid of the "failing problem," you have to tackle the “teacher problem.”

Here’s my response: Gerry Cohen.

In 1988, I was a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism when I received an assignment to do a story on education. So I called Gerry Cohen.

The father of one of my oldest, dearest friends, Gerry was an English teacher at William Howard Taft High School in the South Bronx. He’d taught there for...well, I have no idea how long. A really long time. I asked him if I could shadow him for a day. He said yes.

I’d known Gerry since I was five years old, when I became friends with his son. He was a warm, laid back guy who made every visitor in his home feel like family. He was what people in the heartland would have called a real New York character: a left-leaning, intellectual, vaguely bohemian Orthodox Jew with the accent of a cab driver and the laugh of a longshoreman. In the New York of my youth, he was just a dad, and just a teacher.

In 1988, I was a 26-year-old grad student who would never have confessed this truth: I was terrified about visiting Taft. A lot of things I did at the J School were kinda scary, but the prospect of spending a day in a South Bronx high school was near the top of the list.  My ideas about poor urban public schools were formed entirely by the media, and mostly involved violence, drugs and general mayhem. Having gone to a Jewish private school and an ivy league college, I was as sheltered as one could possibly be in urban America. I planned to stick very close to Gerry.

When I showed up at Taft that morning in 1988, Gerry greeted me with a huge smile and a warm welcome, and proceeded to overturn many of my misconceptions. Not that he was intentionally doing anything of the kind. He was just having a normal workday.

I have a few strong memories of that day. One is of sitting in the back of Gerry’s class while he led a discussion on Macbeth. It was a good discussion. Most of the kids weren’t participating, but those who were had clearly read the play and understood it about as well as you’d expect of a high school kid. Gerry was a skilled teacher who guided the conversation with practiced ease, explaining difficult passages, leading his students to make their own discoveries and offering his own insights. He was very much in control of his classroom without looking like he had to work at it. It seemed to me that the students liked him, though that might have been my own bias, because I couldn’t see how anyone wouldn’t like him.

I remember walking the hallways while students rushed to classes in between bells. There were no lockers - something to do with security, I was told. The place was pretty run-down - depressingly so. No fights broke out in my presence, and I didn’t feel particularly unsafe. Kids mostly ignored me. As I wandered among the students, it seemed that the only demographic not represented was American-born whites. I remember Gerry telling me that there were a dozen different languages spoken among Taft’s students. They’d had a recent influx of Guyanese immigrants. 

I also remember sitting in the back of the auditorium during a midyear graduation ceremony. It was a special program for girls who were graduating late because they’d had babies. There was a lot of pride in that room along with all the fussy babies, and a lot of huge smiles under the tasseled caps. The whole thing took me off guard - I knew teen pregnancy was common, but I was surprised to see it treated so openly.

The final thing I remember of that day was asking Gerry one last question: “Why do you do it?” And his exact answer: “If I don’t, who will?”

I left at the last bell. Gerry stayed late. The walk to the subway through those South Bronx streets was by far the scariest part of the day. There’s no sugar-coating it. That was a really bad neighborhood.

Here’s how Taft High School is described in Wikipedia: 

Demographic changes in the sixties, the exodus of the homogeneous population, and the advent of specialized magnet schools brought about shifts in enrollment at Taft HS. During the Abraham Beame (1974–77) and Edward Koch (1978–89) Administrations, there was no priority given to the needs of the shifting demographics in the school community. City-wide, crime rates were high and unfavorable publicity further accelerated the decline of the school. Entering the 1990s, as a non-selective high school, it was unable to compete with the newer schools housing magnet programs that attracted prime students from throughout the borough. Crime intimidated vibrant young professionals from teaching at the high school. The danger was highlighted in May 1997, when Jonathan Levin, an English teacher at the school and the son of former Time Warner chairman Gerald M. Levin, was murdered by a former student in his Manhattan apartment.

Due to the above-mentioned demographic changes, of the 629 students attending Taft in the 1990s, the majority were Hispanic and African-American. On any given day, attendance hovered around 86%. The impoverished community, lacking in political clout or a cohesive PTA, was provided 10 truancy officers, rather than improved education strategies. The last graduating class of Taft High School was in June 2008.

By today’s definition, there’s no question Taft would be seen as a failing school. 

And Gerry Cohen? He was NOT a failing teacher. He was a dedicated teacher and a wonderful man. His commitment to his ideals and to his profession brought him back to that school day after day, year after year, despite everything. It’s likely many of his students would have struggled on standardized tests. A lot. But NOT because of Gerry or the other teachers I met that day.

I know. It was one day at one school. It doesn’t prove anything. It’s hardly scientific. But my experience certainly convinced me of this: It’s total madness to say that the biggest problem at a school like Taft is the teachers. Worse, it’s clear that those who would say such a thing are motivated not by a desire to improve public schools, but by a desire to demean and disempower teachers.

Gerry Cohen passed away a couple of years ago - not long after Taft High School closed, though he’d retired many years earlier. I often think of Gerry when I read about education reformers who blame teachers for “failing” schools - the teachers who show up every day in neighborhoods that a lot of people wouldn’t even drive through without locking the car doors.  It’s somewhat reassuring to know that Gerry’s educational legacy will outlive theirs - because he was a teacher. A really good teacher in a “failing” school.

Note: After I finished writing this, I found this 2003 New York Times story about Taft. Looks like I wasn't alone in my impression of the place.