The Evolution of American Women's Studies
I read this, and I still can't wrap my head around what "women's studies" could be.
Finally, I can speak here from my own experience as one of the first generation of women who had the opportunity to actually major in women’s studies. I was constantly bombarded by questions such as: “What are you going to do with it?” I finally got fed up and published my answer in a prominent spot in Temple University’s alumni magazine: “To ask, What are you going to do with it? implies that education is a passive process. It implies that we learn and then we do. But in many ways the very nature of women’s studies, which grew out of and alongside the women’s liberation movement, is attractive because it is already active. Women’s studies grew out of the political realities of women’s lives…. I learned that theory and practice should go hand in hand. I learned that education should be about change and evolution, and not just about reiterating what is already known. I take that knowledge with me to each job I do, and do with it – whatever I can.”
Get it now? Me neither.
And then
One thing is clear, whatever we call it, women’s studies needs to be feminist in nature, and to make use of feminist pedagogy, or it risks losing what makes it unique. As someone posted on a women’s studies e-mail list: “We need to destabilize gender at the same time we insist that historically and politically a category or class of individuals called women have been systematically oppressed.” This is a tricky position to be in, for sure.
Well, I get that all right. Politically neutral, this field is not.
The "Laura" in the comments is me.
It's not hard to find stories about women who have been discriminated against in the past. Emmy Noether went through some crap before her work in physics and algebra was recognized. Marie Curie ruffled some feathers during her remarkable career, still being the first person ever to win two Nobel prizes: Physics in 1903, and Chemistry in 1911. Here's a blurb from my biography of Lise Meitner, for whom Meitnerium, element 109 on the Periodic Table was named:
The Chemistry Institute [at Friedrich Wilhelm University] was completely off-limits to women: Emil Fischer was afraid they would set fire to their hair, having once had a Russian student with an "exotic" hairstyle. (He must have believed his beard to be flame resistant.) As a compromise, Lise was allowed to work in a basement room formerly a carpenter's shop, where Otto [Hein, her chemist-collaborator] had set up for measuring radiation; she was not to set foot in any other part of the institute, not even the laboratory upstairs where Otto did his chemical experiments. Fischer relented only because the wood shop had a separate outside entrance; to use a toilet Lise walked to a restaurant down the street.
You don't have to embellish this stuff, and it isn't diminished if you acknowledge that times have changed. I have to say that when people point out that men's names are attached to most of the great theories and discoveries I silently roll my eyes. Find out why Beatrix Potter is known for Peter Rabbit rather than mycology.
But I can't get past the political ideology to figure out what women's studies people are really studying and learning. I can't say they don't have something of value there. I can't make heads nor tails of what they do have. In the comments, there's this:
I believe that all knowledge, as all teaching, is political in some way. We just don't like to admit this. It is easier to think that knowledge just "exists" outside of human perception and experience, which in many instances is simply not the case.
Knowledge can't possibly exist outside of human perception and experience. Facts can. Knowledge implies somebody or something knowing a fact. So when she says that all knowledge is political, I don't know what she means. Sloppy language? Eccentric, personal definitions of words that in common use have other definitions?
I guess I won't worry my pretty head about it any more, har har.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Went to an American Chemical Society meeting last night. The local group is totally academic, except for me. I don't know how it happened that the Memphis group got such a good mix of academia and industry.
The speaker is retired from University of Washington, Seattle. He was here with his wife, which is not unusual for speakers, and usually the spouses are very interested and engaged people. After the meeting, he and his wife, and Carmen who is the professor at the local school who sponsors the ACS group, and I had dinner. And we talked about all the usual things - jobs, families, places we've lived.
Carmen asked if I would speak to her students some time about life after college. I said I would. I've had a different career trajectory than I would have had I gone to school past getting my bachelor's. One of the kids I met yesterday is a senior, she's having cold feet about what will happen after graduation (tell F about it), and I gave her a 45-second overview of my career path. The speaker told her she needs to hear stories like that from all kinds of people. Actually, all of the kids do. I've long thought it is very strange how we do education, although I don't know if we could really do it differently. It's as if kids get on a train in preschool, and the track runs through kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, at least into college and hopefully up to getting that bachelor's degree, and then the track comes to an abrupt stop and the kids suddenly have to get off the train and find a direction and a motive force. Some know what they want to do, of course, and they get off that train and onto the next one. Some don't make it to the end of the line, and of those, some do OK without their B.S. and some don't. But we expect 17-year-olds to make decisions about how they're going to spend the rest of their lives - and how do they know? How do they know what they even want to do? They don't know what all there is, or what they themselves are really like yet. Easier and safer to just stay on the train.
Anyway, Carmen is going to contact me about this and I suppose we'll talk about what I'll talk to her students about. I can think of several possible topics. In fact, I could probably talk their ears off, as F knows very well.
And I told Carmen my idea about teaching control charting; how I would do it if I taught a science course. I would set up a titration station to measure the chlorine in tap water. It's an easy sodium thiosulfate titration with a starch-iodine endpoint. The chlorine will vary a bit from day to day, hopefully within some reasonable range. I would have someone in each chemistry lab measure whatever the chlorine content is that day. The students would all cycle through doing that. They would plot their results on an Excel spreadsheet set up with date on the X axis and ppm Cl2 on the Y axis, and with horizontal lines showing the average, plus and minus 1 standard deviation, and plus and minus 2 standard deviations. It's not hard to set the spreadsheet up to do that; in fact, since you need about 20 data points before you start getting any decent stats, I'd probably let the students see if they could set that up themselves for extra credit. Then you could talk about upper and lower warning limits and control limits, and revisit what you learned if you took statistics (I never did, sadly) about how in a normal distribution, 68% of the data points fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean and 95% within 2 standard deviations; and confidence limits; and how many significant figures you can reasonably report; and how you'd do an investigation of out-of-spec results. Could the sodium thiosulfate have gone bad - can you restandardize it? (You can.) Could the amount of water taken for titration have been measured improperly? Did the tap need to run longer before the sample was taken? Is the starch solution still good? And so forth. It would be a good exercise and give them a running start, and help them stand out among their entry-level coworkers. Or probably even their experienced coworkers.
The speaker is retired from University of Washington, Seattle. He was here with his wife, which is not unusual for speakers, and usually the spouses are very interested and engaged people. After the meeting, he and his wife, and Carmen who is the professor at the local school who sponsors the ACS group, and I had dinner. And we talked about all the usual things - jobs, families, places we've lived.
Carmen asked if I would speak to her students some time about life after college. I said I would. I've had a different career trajectory than I would have had I gone to school past getting my bachelor's. One of the kids I met yesterday is a senior, she's having cold feet about what will happen after graduation (tell F about it), and I gave her a 45-second overview of my career path. The speaker told her she needs to hear stories like that from all kinds of people. Actually, all of the kids do. I've long thought it is very strange how we do education, although I don't know if we could really do it differently. It's as if kids get on a train in preschool, and the track runs through kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, at least into college and hopefully up to getting that bachelor's degree, and then the track comes to an abrupt stop and the kids suddenly have to get off the train and find a direction and a motive force. Some know what they want to do, of course, and they get off that train and onto the next one. Some don't make it to the end of the line, and of those, some do OK without their B.S. and some don't. But we expect 17-year-olds to make decisions about how they're going to spend the rest of their lives - and how do they know? How do they know what they even want to do? They don't know what all there is, or what they themselves are really like yet. Easier and safer to just stay on the train.
Anyway, Carmen is going to contact me about this and I suppose we'll talk about what I'll talk to her students about. I can think of several possible topics. In fact, I could probably talk their ears off, as F knows very well.
And I told Carmen my idea about teaching control charting; how I would do it if I taught a science course. I would set up a titration station to measure the chlorine in tap water. It's an easy sodium thiosulfate titration with a starch-iodine endpoint. The chlorine will vary a bit from day to day, hopefully within some reasonable range. I would have someone in each chemistry lab measure whatever the chlorine content is that day. The students would all cycle through doing that. They would plot their results on an Excel spreadsheet set up with date on the X axis and ppm Cl2 on the Y axis, and with horizontal lines showing the average, plus and minus 1 standard deviation, and plus and minus 2 standard deviations. It's not hard to set the spreadsheet up to do that; in fact, since you need about 20 data points before you start getting any decent stats, I'd probably let the students see if they could set that up themselves for extra credit. Then you could talk about upper and lower warning limits and control limits, and revisit what you learned if you took statistics (I never did, sadly) about how in a normal distribution, 68% of the data points fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean and 95% within 2 standard deviations; and confidence limits; and how many significant figures you can reasonably report; and how you'd do an investigation of out-of-spec results. Could the sodium thiosulfate have gone bad - can you restandardize it? (You can.) Could the amount of water taken for titration have been measured improperly? Did the tap need to run longer before the sample was taken? Is the starch solution still good? And so forth. It would be a good exercise and give them a running start, and help them stand out among their entry-level coworkers. Or probably even their experienced coworkers.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
I have long seen, and continue to see, articles about self-esteem.
Here's one: Self-esteem not a good teaching tool
Turns out children are feeling pretty good about themselves lately. Maybe a little too good.
A recent study by researchers at San Diego State University found that high school seniors are bursting with more self-esteem than a generation or two ago. For example, in 1975, 49 percent of them believed they would be successful at their jobs.
Today 65 percent do.
Instilling that "world, here I come!" attitude is a great thing. Instilling baseless self-congratulation? Less so. Yet I have to admit that I have a hard time figuring out when to say, "What a wonderful letter you wrote for grandma!" and when to go, "Do you think you could possibly put one ounce of effort into your thank-you note?"
There have been various proponents of self-esteem over the years, ranging from Nathaniel Branden, onetime close friend and "intellectual heir" of Ayn Rand, to James Dobson, who wrote Hide or Seek in the early 1970's. Somewhere along the way, the idea of self-esteem became subsumed into the kinds of you're-so-wonderful-just-because-you're-you statements we associate with Mr. Rogers, and then, in that simplistic form, worked into education theory for kids through high school age - that is, if you believe articles like the above mentioned.
Count me as one of those people who think that self-esteem is very important. I think you can figure out what a person's self-image is by inviting them to complete this statement: "I am the kind of person who...." And I think it's important that the person's self-image, while moderately realistic, is generally positive. "I'm the kind of person who gets the job done." "I'm the kind of person who is compulsive about getting all my schoolwork finished and turned in on time." "I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm the kind of person who worries at my math homework until I understand it, no matter how long it takes." Why only moderately realistic? I don't think it hurts for people to stretch themselves. If a person of average intelligence thinks "I'm pretty smart", she will probably challenge herself by taking the more difficult courses in school. She may not make grades better than C, but she'll definitely get to the limit of her natural ability; she'll learn a lot of stuff, possibly surprise her teachers, and if nothing else, be an interesting and engaged person.
I have read and absorbed some of the caveats about the kind of general praising you're not supposed to do. So I've tried to be both accurate and specific about the positive feedback I've given my daughter. "I'm proud of your hard work and the way you stuck with that tedious project until you got it finished," for instance. (There are those who say I shouldn't have said "I'm proud" because I wasn't letting her have ownership; shoot me.) This is the answer to Ms. Skenazy's dilemma about the letter to Grandma, by the way, and one might incorporate one of the things I learned in management training: say "and" instead of "but". "I see that you've written a thank-you note to Grandma. She'll be happy to get that. It looks very nice. And maybe you could add a sentence about how you love the color and you can't wait to wear it to school." Now you haven't griped or carped and you've expressed to the kid exactly what you'd like to see (which you can't depend upon the kid reading your mind to figure out; "put more effort" is basically meaningless).
I'll add that there is a time and a place for unconditional love. Your kid does something immature or even dishonest, he comes to you about it dreading the consequences, and the first words out of your mouth are, "We'll get through this." Dr. Dobson said somewhere, possibly in Hide or Seek, that in his practice he saw parents who put a lot of pressure on their kids to excel academically and sometimes the kids just simply didn't have the raw brain power to do it. He imagined parents at the sidelines of a footrace, screaming "You can do it! You're just not trying hard enough! I think you want to embarrass us!" to their kid struggling behind all of his peers with leg braces from having polio. Dobson said that if he had a little boy or girl who couldn't excel in school, he'd help them find a field where they could excel. The movie "Dead Poets Society" has a protagonist who commits suicide because his father can't accept him unless he is fulfilling his father's own self-image of having a son who is like this and like that. Unconditional love means that you want the kid to be who he or she is, to be the best he can be, and you love him for who he is, not what he does for you. If the parents of my hypothetical C-student in the previous paragraph love her unconditionally, they'll appreciate and enjoy her can-do spirit and encourage her to continue to value learning over her grade-point average.
So self-esteem is important. I think people are sometimes prevented from doing stupid, dishonest, or immoral things because their self-respect is more important than whatever they would have gained. And I don't see how it could be wrong to bolster that kind of thing in a person, by pointing out positive character traits when possible.
I also think that one of the unwanted outcomes of the War on Poverty is that some people got the self-image that they couldn't make it on their own like other people; they had to be supported by the government. Then you had multiple generations born on welfare and that same pernicious self-image passed down. This is one of the reasons why welfare reform, undoubtedly frightening and painful as it has been for some people, was sorely needed. What would the pioneers have said? "I am the kind of person who finds a way to provide for myself and my family, no matter what. I can stand on my own two feet in any situation. We may not be rich but we'll get along." Except for people who are disabled to the point that they can't survive without help, it's un-American for adults to be allowed or even encouraged to think that in the field of making a living, putting a roof over their heads and food on the table and paying their bills, they just can't cut it. They've lost an important part of their heritage, IMO.
I also have to wonder about that 51% of kids in 1975 who didn't think they'd be successful on their jobs. What in the world is that about?
Here is a better article:
The most awful, stupid parenting advice
Maybe a good parenting question is: When to help and when to leave them alone? A better formulation would be: How do you know when the child/person should know what to do so you should leave him/her alone and how do you know when that person is in over his or her head?
It's a good, thoughtful, useful article that doesn't rehash the same stuff we've seen over and over. It's true that kids aren't born knowing everything about getting along in the world and acting like a civilized person. Some pick up things like social cues very easily and others need explicit explanations about how to act. Individual kids need different levels of parental guidance at different ages, too. Parenting books and articles are useful for getting ideas about how to handle things, and what might be going on in your kid's head, but you have to know your own child and run all that stuff past your common sense. (I am the kind of person who pays attention to my kid and thinks about the long-term consequences of the way I help her grow as a person.) Some people, like John Rosemond, think parents over-think. It's my view that parenting done right requires some thought.
And that really is the answer to the self-esteem thing. Think about your kid. Think about what's going on with him and what direction you'd like him to develop in, and how you can help him go there. Getting more patience, or being more persistent, or slowing down and being more thoughtful, or being more forceful with his peers, whatever it is. Nurture a positive, healthy, moderately realistic self-image by verbally holding up a mirror to reflect back to the kid those traits you want to encourage.
Disclaimer regarding parenting advice from me: Once again, the definition of "expert" is "parent of one child". It's possible that if I'd had two I wouldn't have dared open my mouth on the subject.
Here's one: Self-esteem not a good teaching tool
Turns out children are feeling pretty good about themselves lately. Maybe a little too good.
A recent study by researchers at San Diego State University found that high school seniors are bursting with more self-esteem than a generation or two ago. For example, in 1975, 49 percent of them believed they would be successful at their jobs.
Today 65 percent do.
Instilling that "world, here I come!" attitude is a great thing. Instilling baseless self-congratulation? Less so. Yet I have to admit that I have a hard time figuring out when to say, "What a wonderful letter you wrote for grandma!" and when to go, "Do you think you could possibly put one ounce of effort into your thank-you note?"
There have been various proponents of self-esteem over the years, ranging from Nathaniel Branden, onetime close friend and "intellectual heir" of Ayn Rand, to James Dobson, who wrote Hide or Seek in the early 1970's. Somewhere along the way, the idea of self-esteem became subsumed into the kinds of you're-so-wonderful-just-because-you're-you statements we associate with Mr. Rogers, and then, in that simplistic form, worked into education theory for kids through high school age - that is, if you believe articles like the above mentioned.
Count me as one of those people who think that self-esteem is very important. I think you can figure out what a person's self-image is by inviting them to complete this statement: "I am the kind of person who...." And I think it's important that the person's self-image, while moderately realistic, is generally positive. "I'm the kind of person who gets the job done." "I'm the kind of person who is compulsive about getting all my schoolwork finished and turned in on time." "I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm the kind of person who worries at my math homework until I understand it, no matter how long it takes." Why only moderately realistic? I don't think it hurts for people to stretch themselves. If a person of average intelligence thinks "I'm pretty smart", she will probably challenge herself by taking the more difficult courses in school. She may not make grades better than C, but she'll definitely get to the limit of her natural ability; she'll learn a lot of stuff, possibly surprise her teachers, and if nothing else, be an interesting and engaged person.
I have read and absorbed some of the caveats about the kind of general praising you're not supposed to do. So I've tried to be both accurate and specific about the positive feedback I've given my daughter. "I'm proud of your hard work and the way you stuck with that tedious project until you got it finished," for instance. (There are those who say I shouldn't have said "I'm proud" because I wasn't letting her have ownership; shoot me.) This is the answer to Ms. Skenazy's dilemma about the letter to Grandma, by the way, and one might incorporate one of the things I learned in management training: say "and" instead of "but". "I see that you've written a thank-you note to Grandma. She'll be happy to get that. It looks very nice. And maybe you could add a sentence about how you love the color and you can't wait to wear it to school." Now you haven't griped or carped and you've expressed to the kid exactly what you'd like to see (which you can't depend upon the kid reading your mind to figure out; "put more effort" is basically meaningless).
I'll add that there is a time and a place for unconditional love. Your kid does something immature or even dishonest, he comes to you about it dreading the consequences, and the first words out of your mouth are, "We'll get through this." Dr. Dobson said somewhere, possibly in Hide or Seek, that in his practice he saw parents who put a lot of pressure on their kids to excel academically and sometimes the kids just simply didn't have the raw brain power to do it. He imagined parents at the sidelines of a footrace, screaming "You can do it! You're just not trying hard enough! I think you want to embarrass us!" to their kid struggling behind all of his peers with leg braces from having polio. Dobson said that if he had a little boy or girl who couldn't excel in school, he'd help them find a field where they could excel. The movie "Dead Poets Society" has a protagonist who commits suicide because his father can't accept him unless he is fulfilling his father's own self-image of having a son who is like this and like that. Unconditional love means that you want the kid to be who he or she is, to be the best he can be, and you love him for who he is, not what he does for you. If the parents of my hypothetical C-student in the previous paragraph love her unconditionally, they'll appreciate and enjoy her can-do spirit and encourage her to continue to value learning over her grade-point average.
So self-esteem is important. I think people are sometimes prevented from doing stupid, dishonest, or immoral things because their self-respect is more important than whatever they would have gained. And I don't see how it could be wrong to bolster that kind of thing in a person, by pointing out positive character traits when possible.
I also think that one of the unwanted outcomes of the War on Poverty is that some people got the self-image that they couldn't make it on their own like other people; they had to be supported by the government. Then you had multiple generations born on welfare and that same pernicious self-image passed down. This is one of the reasons why welfare reform, undoubtedly frightening and painful as it has been for some people, was sorely needed. What would the pioneers have said? "I am the kind of person who finds a way to provide for myself and my family, no matter what. I can stand on my own two feet in any situation. We may not be rich but we'll get along." Except for people who are disabled to the point that they can't survive without help, it's un-American for adults to be allowed or even encouraged to think that in the field of making a living, putting a roof over their heads and food on the table and paying their bills, they just can't cut it. They've lost an important part of their heritage, IMO.
I also have to wonder about that 51% of kids in 1975 who didn't think they'd be successful on their jobs. What in the world is that about?
Here is a better article:
The most awful, stupid parenting advice
Maybe a good parenting question is: When to help and when to leave them alone? A better formulation would be: How do you know when the child/person should know what to do so you should leave him/her alone and how do you know when that person is in over his or her head?
It's a good, thoughtful, useful article that doesn't rehash the same stuff we've seen over and over. It's true that kids aren't born knowing everything about getting along in the world and acting like a civilized person. Some pick up things like social cues very easily and others need explicit explanations about how to act. Individual kids need different levels of parental guidance at different ages, too. Parenting books and articles are useful for getting ideas about how to handle things, and what might be going on in your kid's head, but you have to know your own child and run all that stuff past your common sense. (I am the kind of person who pays attention to my kid and thinks about the long-term consequences of the way I help her grow as a person.) Some people, like John Rosemond, think parents over-think. It's my view that parenting done right requires some thought.
And that really is the answer to the self-esteem thing. Think about your kid. Think about what's going on with him and what direction you'd like him to develop in, and how you can help him go there. Getting more patience, or being more persistent, or slowing down and being more thoughtful, or being more forceful with his peers, whatever it is. Nurture a positive, healthy, moderately realistic self-image by verbally holding up a mirror to reflect back to the kid those traits you want to encourage.
Disclaimer regarding parenting advice from me: Once again, the definition of "expert" is "parent of one child". It's possible that if I'd had two I wouldn't have dared open my mouth on the subject.
Monday, January 12, 2009
At some point a couple of years ago I listed some literature I remembered reading in high school. Apparently they are still torturing high schoolers with some of these things, because people stumble across my blog looking for information about these stories. The most frequently looked-for story is A.B. Guthrie's "Bargain". It's not available on the internet, probably because it's not in the public domain, but the book it was published in is out of print. Here it is: The Big It and other stories. I found it at the library.
A real quick synopsis - Mr. Baumer, a grocer on the American frontier, is fed up with having his whiskey stolen and being generally treated with disrespect by Slade, a freighter - that's the guy who drives a horsedrawn wagon to transport goods, including the supplies Baumer orders to stock in his store. The other freighters steal whiskey too but for some reason Slade - large, rough, violent, illiterate - is the focus of Baumer's anger. There are some confrontations, things escalate, and Slade assaults Baumer and breaks his hand. To the surprise of the narrator, a schoolboy employed by Baumer, Slade is subsequently engaged again to pick up supplies. He doesn't return, and is found dead on the roadway with the supplies still in the wagon. Upon unloading the supplies, the narrator finds that instead of whiskey, Baumer has ordered wood alcohol. Slade stole his drink as usual and it killed him. He couldn't read "Deadly Poison" on the barrel.
I remember the debate we had in our class as to whether Mr. Baumer committed murder. I contended that he did, because the action he took had the sole motive of bringing about Slade's death. He knew Slade would drink the "whiskey" and he knew it would kill him. Others said that Slade wasn't murdered because he knew the whiskey wasn't his and he'd been told not to steal it. No court could touch him, my classmates said. I'm not too sure about that, actually, but even if true, there's a difference between whether a person is guilty of a thing and whether that thing is demonstrably against the law. So this is one of those things where there's no one right answer (although your teacher may have strong feelings and may try to insist that there is) and it's a useful exercise in working out your moral compass.
Some elements of the story that I notice upon rereading:
The first thing we see Baumer saying to the narrator is this. "Better study, Al. Is good to know to read and write and figure." This possibly explains some of the contempt he has for Slade, a grown man who can't read, and foreshadows what happens to him. The very end of the story:
"Hurry now," Mr. Baumer said. "Is late." For a flash and no longer I saw through the mist in his eyes, saw, you might say, that hilly chin repeated there. "Then ve go home, Al. Is good to know how to read."
The description of Baumer contrasts mightily with that of Slade.
Here's Baumer:
I stood and studied him for a minute, seeing a small, stooped man with a little paunch bulging through his unbuttoned vest.... There was nothing in his looks to set itself in your mind unless maybe it was his chin, which was a small, pink hill in the gentle plain of his face. [Chin = stubbornness? Defiance?]
Slade:
Then I recognized the lean, raw shape of him and the muscles flowing down into the sloped shoulders, and in the settling darkness I filled the picture in - the dark skin and the flat cheeks and the peevish eyes and the mustache growing rank.
Also:
I had heard it said that Slade could make a horse scream with that whip.
Baumer thinks Slade hates him for being an immigrant, and indeed, Slade calls him "Dutchie" (a nickname for Germans). He despises Slade for betraying his trust in stealing from him, but as our narrator points out, the other freighters steal too. "A man makes mistakes," Baumer says twice about his poor judgment in trusting Slade. Maybe he's angry at Slade because he feels stupid about having trusted him? Baumer doesn't see his continuing provocation of Slade's wrath as a mistake, not at all, even though he points out a time or two that Slade is bigger than he is, and that physically he couldn't hope to best him.
After the confrontation:
He spent most of his time at the high desk, sending me or Ed out on the errands he used to run, like posting and getting the mail. Sometimes I wondered if that was because he was afraid of meeting Slade. He could just as well have gone himself. He wasted a lot of hours just looking at nothing, though I will have to say he worked hard at learning to write left-handed.
It's not clear what's happening here. Is Baumer afraid of Slade, as Al thinks? I'm not really feeling that. Is he nursing his grievance until he's angry enough to do something about it? Is he trying to think what to do? Does he already know what he's going to do, and is only waiting for the cold weather so that hypothermia will make Slade's death from methanol poisoning more certain? Is he wrestling with his conscience? I don't see any indication from Al's observation and reporting that Baumer's conscience bothers him at all about what he's doing.
So was he justified in taking Slade out that way? His right hand is permanently damaged, remember, and the law won't do anything about that. Should he have chalked up the whiskey loss to the cost of doing business, as he did with the other freighters, and stayed out of Slade's path? Could he have kept his self-respect if he had? Would he have done what he did if there was any real chance the law would have come down on him?
Readers, feel free to leave comments or questions, or just lurk if you want to.
A real quick synopsis - Mr. Baumer, a grocer on the American frontier, is fed up with having his whiskey stolen and being generally treated with disrespect by Slade, a freighter - that's the guy who drives a horsedrawn wagon to transport goods, including the supplies Baumer orders to stock in his store. The other freighters steal whiskey too but for some reason Slade - large, rough, violent, illiterate - is the focus of Baumer's anger. There are some confrontations, things escalate, and Slade assaults Baumer and breaks his hand. To the surprise of the narrator, a schoolboy employed by Baumer, Slade is subsequently engaged again to pick up supplies. He doesn't return, and is found dead on the roadway with the supplies still in the wagon. Upon unloading the supplies, the narrator finds that instead of whiskey, Baumer has ordered wood alcohol. Slade stole his drink as usual and it killed him. He couldn't read "Deadly Poison" on the barrel.
I remember the debate we had in our class as to whether Mr. Baumer committed murder. I contended that he did, because the action he took had the sole motive of bringing about Slade's death. He knew Slade would drink the "whiskey" and he knew it would kill him. Others said that Slade wasn't murdered because he knew the whiskey wasn't his and he'd been told not to steal it. No court could touch him, my classmates said. I'm not too sure about that, actually, but even if true, there's a difference between whether a person is guilty of a thing and whether that thing is demonstrably against the law. So this is one of those things where there's no one right answer (although your teacher may have strong feelings and may try to insist that there is) and it's a useful exercise in working out your moral compass.
Some elements of the story that I notice upon rereading:
The first thing we see Baumer saying to the narrator is this. "Better study, Al. Is good to know to read and write and figure." This possibly explains some of the contempt he has for Slade, a grown man who can't read, and foreshadows what happens to him. The very end of the story:
"Hurry now," Mr. Baumer said. "Is late." For a flash and no longer I saw through the mist in his eyes, saw, you might say, that hilly chin repeated there. "Then ve go home, Al. Is good to know how to read."
The description of Baumer contrasts mightily with that of Slade.
Here's Baumer:
I stood and studied him for a minute, seeing a small, stooped man with a little paunch bulging through his unbuttoned vest.... There was nothing in his looks to set itself in your mind unless maybe it was his chin, which was a small, pink hill in the gentle plain of his face. [Chin = stubbornness? Defiance?]
Slade:
Then I recognized the lean, raw shape of him and the muscles flowing down into the sloped shoulders, and in the settling darkness I filled the picture in - the dark skin and the flat cheeks and the peevish eyes and the mustache growing rank.
Also:
I had heard it said that Slade could make a horse scream with that whip.
Baumer thinks Slade hates him for being an immigrant, and indeed, Slade calls him "Dutchie" (a nickname for Germans). He despises Slade for betraying his trust in stealing from him, but as our narrator points out, the other freighters steal too. "A man makes mistakes," Baumer says twice about his poor judgment in trusting Slade. Maybe he's angry at Slade because he feels stupid about having trusted him? Baumer doesn't see his continuing provocation of Slade's wrath as a mistake, not at all, even though he points out a time or two that Slade is bigger than he is, and that physically he couldn't hope to best him.
After the confrontation:
He spent most of his time at the high desk, sending me or Ed out on the errands he used to run, like posting and getting the mail. Sometimes I wondered if that was because he was afraid of meeting Slade. He could just as well have gone himself. He wasted a lot of hours just looking at nothing, though I will have to say he worked hard at learning to write left-handed.
It's not clear what's happening here. Is Baumer afraid of Slade, as Al thinks? I'm not really feeling that. Is he nursing his grievance until he's angry enough to do something about it? Is he trying to think what to do? Does he already know what he's going to do, and is only waiting for the cold weather so that hypothermia will make Slade's death from methanol poisoning more certain? Is he wrestling with his conscience? I don't see any indication from Al's observation and reporting that Baumer's conscience bothers him at all about what he's doing.
So was he justified in taking Slade out that way? His right hand is permanently damaged, remember, and the law won't do anything about that. Should he have chalked up the whiskey loss to the cost of doing business, as he did with the other freighters, and stayed out of Slade's path? Could he have kept his self-respect if he had? Would he have done what he did if there was any real chance the law would have come down on him?
Readers, feel free to leave comments or questions, or just lurk if you want to.
Monday, March 17, 2008
F and her roommate are here for spring break. We went to the Bok Sanctuary yesterday and they've seen the pretty lake downtown with all the birds but apart from that we haven't done much yet. I don't know if they are all that interested in going to the beach but I will feel bad if we don't go.
We had an appointment for F this morning, with a neurologist, to continue to work with her migraines. We're increasing Nadolol, which I wanted to do, and he talked to her about timing with taking Zomig. And somehow we had a lengthy conversation about ... atoms. Atomic weight v. atomic number. Weight v. mass. Avogadro's number. He is reading a book about Rutherford and had forgotten his freshman chemistry so he was happy to have his questions answered. Really, I am such a nerd. I feel sorry for F, to have a nerd mother.
How did I get to be such a nerd? you ask. Well, when I was a girl my dad and I both enjoyed science fiction. (Still do.) The two of us had that in common, and since there was no bookstore in the town where I grew up he often took me to the bookstore in Tupelo and gave me some money so I could get the latest Bradbury or Asimov or Heinlein or whatever there was.
One day there wasn't anything on the science fiction rack that I didn't already have or that looked halfway decent. There was a rack of nonfiction next to it and I moved over to look at that. I found a book, a collection of articles by one of my fav writers - Asimov - about actual science and math. Possibly it was Science, Numbers, and I. In desperation I bought it and took it home.
And this opened up a whole new world for me. This stuff was real. Asimov produced several of these books and I bought them all, and read them until they were broken-spined. When I got into high school I enjoyed my chemistry and physics classes. Had a great teacher. But I already knew a lot of that stuff because of those books.
When F started high school chemistry, she sighed, "I don't get orbitals."
"What's not to get?" I said.
I pulled the book over and started reading. The first chapter was written very dryly and raced through important information way too quickly. But I remembered that I already knew about orbitals when I took chemistry in high school, so I don't know how her book would have compared to mine. I had to take a short trip down memory lane to remember how Asimov explained them, and when I did, I flipped the book around and found the periodic table and explained them to her using that. First, of course, we talked about what the atomic number is (it's the number of protons) and where you find that on the periodic table; and then we talked about charge, and started building the 1S orbital; and we talked about spin, and why hydrogen wants to lose an electron, thus forming a positive ion, while H2 is a very stable molecule; why helium doesn't need or want to bond with anything (it is a rock, it is an island) and so on from there. Orbitals make a lot more sense when you can correlate them to how they make the atoms act. So we marched through the first three or four rows of the periodic table and talked about where the electrons went and how those atoms interacted. I hope she understood it. She probably did, because she's pretty deft with her Lewis structures.
I have to say that it's a theme I've seen throughout F's schooling, in her math and science classes: they did not spend enough time on basic things. They rushed ahead to get all the stuff in. You don't have to memorize things like whether barium chloride is BaCl or BaCl2 if you can glance at a periodic table and see that barium is going to be an ion with a charge of +2. To be able to do that you have to stop, and explain, and think, and draw pictures for yourself, make guesses and check yourself, and all that takes time. I don't understand the rush-ahead thing when the kids get through with class and whole swaths of them don't retain anything. Plus, it's no fun and they don't get why anybody could think this stuff is cool.
We had an appointment for F this morning, with a neurologist, to continue to work with her migraines. We're increasing Nadolol, which I wanted to do, and he talked to her about timing with taking Zomig. And somehow we had a lengthy conversation about ... atoms. Atomic weight v. atomic number. Weight v. mass. Avogadro's number. He is reading a book about Rutherford and had forgotten his freshman chemistry so he was happy to have his questions answered. Really, I am such a nerd. I feel sorry for F, to have a nerd mother.
How did I get to be such a nerd? you ask. Well, when I was a girl my dad and I both enjoyed science fiction. (Still do.) The two of us had that in common, and since there was no bookstore in the town where I grew up he often took me to the bookstore in Tupelo and gave me some money so I could get the latest Bradbury or Asimov or Heinlein or whatever there was.
One day there wasn't anything on the science fiction rack that I didn't already have or that looked halfway decent. There was a rack of nonfiction next to it and I moved over to look at that. I found a book, a collection of articles by one of my fav writers - Asimov - about actual science and math. Possibly it was Science, Numbers, and I. In desperation I bought it and took it home.
And this opened up a whole new world for me. This stuff was real. Asimov produced several of these books and I bought them all, and read them until they were broken-spined. When I got into high school I enjoyed my chemistry and physics classes. Had a great teacher. But I already knew a lot of that stuff because of those books.
When F started high school chemistry, she sighed, "I don't get orbitals."
"What's not to get?" I said.
I pulled the book over and started reading. The first chapter was written very dryly and raced through important information way too quickly. But I remembered that I already knew about orbitals when I took chemistry in high school, so I don't know how her book would have compared to mine. I had to take a short trip down memory lane to remember how Asimov explained them, and when I did, I flipped the book around and found the periodic table and explained them to her using that. First, of course, we talked about what the atomic number is (it's the number of protons) and where you find that on the periodic table; and then we talked about charge, and started building the 1S orbital; and we talked about spin, and why hydrogen wants to lose an electron, thus forming a positive ion, while H2 is a very stable molecule; why helium doesn't need or want to bond with anything (it is a rock, it is an island) and so on from there. Orbitals make a lot more sense when you can correlate them to how they make the atoms act. So we marched through the first three or four rows of the periodic table and talked about where the electrons went and how those atoms interacted. I hope she understood it. She probably did, because she's pretty deft with her Lewis structures.
I have to say that it's a theme I've seen throughout F's schooling, in her math and science classes: they did not spend enough time on basic things. They rushed ahead to get all the stuff in. You don't have to memorize things like whether barium chloride is BaCl or BaCl2 if you can glance at a periodic table and see that barium is going to be an ion with a charge of +2. To be able to do that you have to stop, and explain, and think, and draw pictures for yourself, make guesses and check yourself, and all that takes time. I don't understand the rush-ahead thing when the kids get through with class and whole swaths of them don't retain anything. Plus, it's no fun and they don't get why anybody could think this stuff is cool.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Monica, the Creole Princess, wonders where I am.
Well, I'll tell you.
Wednesday evening we called F to tell her that her laptop had been repaired and returned to us, and that we thought we'd run it down to her on Saturday. Found her sniffling over her chemistry homework. She was trying to do hybrid orbitals and sigma and pi bonds, and it was just not happening.
I happened to have a copy of her textbook here, because we'd originally ordered it from the Amazon used marketplace, and they sent the teacher's edition; and we threw the box away before we realized it and we couldn't seem to get the address to return it, so we kept the damn thing and ordered a student edition for her straight from Amazon. I don't know what makes it a teacher's edition, because it didn't seem to have any extra info, but because I had it here we were able to get on the same page and start gutting this stuff out. I have a degree in chemistry, by the way, so even though I don't use hybrid orbitals on my job and haven't thought about them in a long time, they don't intimidate me. As we worked, her quiet sobbing diminished and she started feeling more hopeful. I didn't know whether this was because her teacher did a poor job of explaining this stuff or because I kind of know how her mind works. For instance, she appreciates a little whimsy, so when I directed her to draw a structure I had her write her C's and dashes, and then stick her H's on like legs on a millipede. But she kept saying that things were starting to make sense and began answering my questions, so I knew she was getting it. At about 11:30 my brain went "click" and I told her I had to stop. We were partway through the last problem on her homework.
"I suppose this is due tomorrow," I said.
No, it was due Friday but she wanted to get it out of the way. I suppose F is one of the about 0.005% of the population that absolutely does not procrastinate. It gives her hives to wait till the last minute on anything, and this has stood her in good stead many times. So we agreed that I would take a look Thursday evening when I was fresher.
Took a look Thursday evening, and indeed the rest of it fell into place. A few brief explanations to her on the phone, and by George, she got it. And by the way, she told us later that on Friday her classmates complained bitterly that none of them understood the homework, so perhaps it was the teacher's explanations that were lacking.
But I had to go to bed early Thursday, because ...
... I had to be at work by 7:00 Friday morning. I used to work 6:00 - 2:30 when F was in high school, but apparently I have aged somewhat and it's hard for me to get up in the morning. I did get to work by 7:00. There was this very important 8-hour thing we were supposed to do that we thought we'd start by 8:00. We didn't start by 8:00 ... we didn't start by 10:00 ... we started at 12:10 but we had to stop ... didn't start by 2:00 ... by 4:00 ... by 6:00. Stupid little miscellaneous mechanical failures and dumb stuff. Murphy's law, I reckon. At 10:15 the CEO looked at me and said, "Laura, go home."
And let me parenthetically say that I look like hell when I am tired. I used to work with a black woman, Libby, who hadn't been around white people much and who learned a lot from me because she asked a lot of questions. She thought it was funny that my face changes colors. I have a lot of Celt in me, apparently, and we Celts have thin skin and sometimes flush for no reason. Or sometimes I get pale and maybe a bit greenish when I am very tired. One day at work Libby got sick and I took her to the emergency room. I called her mom in Kentucky and then stayed with her until her mom could get there. It was late evening when she did. They'd got Libby more or less stabilized and discharged her by then. Libby's mom had eyes for no one but her, but a day or two later at work, she told me that her mom had expressed concern about me and wanted to know if I would be all right. "Oh, yes," Libby responded confidently, "she just look like that." I DIED laughing when she told me that, but it's true that I look really bad when I'm tired.
So the CEO told me to go home, and after arranging for lab coverage the rest of the night and in the morning, I did. I was supposed to be back at 6:00 AM on Saturday but they called just after midnight and said there were electrical problems and they were telling everyone but the electricians to just not come in.
We had thought that R would take the laptop down to F at school by himself on Saturday, and I would see her later, but since I didn't have to work I went along. He had to drive the whole 6 hours, though, because I was SHOT. We didn't do much, just took the kid to lunch and to Wal-Mart and so forth, but shortly after we got home I fell into bed.
Church this morning, and then a very enjoyable lunch at Molly's with a friend I used to work with.
I still "look like that" though. Dang.
And I will close with this very funny thing that F told me: At a recent honors forum, the speaker, who was head of the English department, gave a very long talk about Eminem. F cares about as much about Eminem as she does sea slugs, so it would have been boring anyway, but she said he read his presentation, he did not look at the students or talk to them, and it was very long. It went ON and ON and ON. "I wanted to gnaw my leg off," she said, "but I couldn't think how to go about it." Isn't that funny?
And there it is, Monnie. You may be sorry you asked.
***
Update: My boss just called a few minutes ago (about 9:15) ... wants lab coverage starting at 6:00 AM, very important. He said to call one of my peeps but I think I need to be there ... sigh. Here we go again.
Well, I'll tell you.
Wednesday evening we called F to tell her that her laptop had been repaired and returned to us, and that we thought we'd run it down to her on Saturday. Found her sniffling over her chemistry homework. She was trying to do hybrid orbitals and sigma and pi bonds, and it was just not happening.
I happened to have a copy of her textbook here, because we'd originally ordered it from the Amazon used marketplace, and they sent the teacher's edition; and we threw the box away before we realized it and we couldn't seem to get the address to return it, so we kept the damn thing and ordered a student edition for her straight from Amazon. I don't know what makes it a teacher's edition, because it didn't seem to have any extra info, but because I had it here we were able to get on the same page and start gutting this stuff out. I have a degree in chemistry, by the way, so even though I don't use hybrid orbitals on my job and haven't thought about them in a long time, they don't intimidate me. As we worked, her quiet sobbing diminished and she started feeling more hopeful. I didn't know whether this was because her teacher did a poor job of explaining this stuff or because I kind of know how her mind works. For instance, she appreciates a little whimsy, so when I directed her to draw a structure I had her write her C's and dashes, and then stick her H's on like legs on a millipede. But she kept saying that things were starting to make sense and began answering my questions, so I knew she was getting it. At about 11:30 my brain went "click" and I told her I had to stop. We were partway through the last problem on her homework.
"I suppose this is due tomorrow," I said.
No, it was due Friday but she wanted to get it out of the way. I suppose F is one of the about 0.005% of the population that absolutely does not procrastinate. It gives her hives to wait till the last minute on anything, and this has stood her in good stead many times. So we agreed that I would take a look Thursday evening when I was fresher.
Took a look Thursday evening, and indeed the rest of it fell into place. A few brief explanations to her on the phone, and by George, she got it. And by the way, she told us later that on Friday her classmates complained bitterly that none of them understood the homework, so perhaps it was the teacher's explanations that were lacking.
But I had to go to bed early Thursday, because ...
... I had to be at work by 7:00 Friday morning. I used to work 6:00 - 2:30 when F was in high school, but apparently I have aged somewhat and it's hard for me to get up in the morning. I did get to work by 7:00. There was this very important 8-hour thing we were supposed to do that we thought we'd start by 8:00. We didn't start by 8:00 ... we didn't start by 10:00 ... we started at 12:10 but we had to stop ... didn't start by 2:00 ... by 4:00 ... by 6:00. Stupid little miscellaneous mechanical failures and dumb stuff. Murphy's law, I reckon. At 10:15 the CEO looked at me and said, "Laura, go home."
And let me parenthetically say that I look like hell when I am tired. I used to work with a black woman, Libby, who hadn't been around white people much and who learned a lot from me because she asked a lot of questions. She thought it was funny that my face changes colors. I have a lot of Celt in me, apparently, and we Celts have thin skin and sometimes flush for no reason. Or sometimes I get pale and maybe a bit greenish when I am very tired. One day at work Libby got sick and I took her to the emergency room. I called her mom in Kentucky and then stayed with her until her mom could get there. It was late evening when she did. They'd got Libby more or less stabilized and discharged her by then. Libby's mom had eyes for no one but her, but a day or two later at work, she told me that her mom had expressed concern about me and wanted to know if I would be all right. "Oh, yes," Libby responded confidently, "she just look like that." I DIED laughing when she told me that, but it's true that I look really bad when I'm tired.
So the CEO told me to go home, and after arranging for lab coverage the rest of the night and in the morning, I did. I was supposed to be back at 6:00 AM on Saturday but they called just after midnight and said there were electrical problems and they were telling everyone but the electricians to just not come in.
We had thought that R would take the laptop down to F at school by himself on Saturday, and I would see her later, but since I didn't have to work I went along. He had to drive the whole 6 hours, though, because I was SHOT. We didn't do much, just took the kid to lunch and to Wal-Mart and so forth, but shortly after we got home I fell into bed.
Church this morning, and then a very enjoyable lunch at Molly's with a friend I used to work with.
I still "look like that" though. Dang.
And I will close with this very funny thing that F told me: At a recent honors forum, the speaker, who was head of the English department, gave a very long talk about Eminem. F cares about as much about Eminem as she does sea slugs, so it would have been boring anyway, but she said he read his presentation, he did not look at the students or talk to them, and it was very long. It went ON and ON and ON. "I wanted to gnaw my leg off," she said, "but I couldn't think how to go about it." Isn't that funny?
And there it is, Monnie. You may be sorry you asked.
***
Update: My boss just called a few minutes ago (about 9:15) ... wants lab coverage starting at 6:00 AM, very important. He said to call one of my peeps but I think I need to be there ... sigh. Here we go again.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Okay, this drives me nuts.
I read this:
Teacher beheaded by militants
SUSPECTED Islamic militants have beheaded a teacher in a lawless Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said today.
Said Badshah, 35, who ran a private school, failed to return home yesterday in Barwan village, near Wana, the main town in restive South Waziristan tribal agency, a local administration official said.
His headless body was found in a remote area this evening, the official said on condition of anonymity.
on the same day I read this:
Teens with disabilities enjoy last-ditch reprieve
"We're pushing for them to pass because it will make them feel better about themselves," said Vice Principal Cyndi Swindle, who oversees special education.
I'm not death on self-esteem like a lot of people are, but I still think this statement is pretty silly. But this is the part that irks me:
About a week after learning in January that he had again failed the math part of the exit exam, Juan Calderon did something he probably should have done months before. At the urging of his counselor, the 18-year-old signed up for a math class.
...
While some students with disabilities are still trying to pass the exit exam, others appear to have given up. Now that they know they don't have to pass the test to graduate, some seniors are making a habit of skipping class, said Schlim, the special ed teacher. She identified Kevin Muhammad as one of those students.
"It's a mixture of senior-itis and 'I don't need (to pass) this to graduate so I don't need to be here to learn this,' " she said. "Disappointing, but true."
Attendance records show Kevin was absent for six days, from the day Schwarzenegger signed off on the exemption until he had to take the test again. Schlim considers that no coincidence.
...
Larissa was glad to learn she can use a calculator on the exam this time, yet complained she didn't know how it would help her with fractions, word problems or algebra.
"It won't," Carter said. "If you don't know which buttons to push, it won't help."
Then he handed Larissa a calculator and chastised her for her last-minute approach to studying: "Why are you here at 4:15 the day before the test asking me how to use a calculator?"
So education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where a teacher in a girl's school was recently beheaded, is so precious that teachers risk their lives to offer it. And it's regarded so lightly by the kids in this story, and I suppose their parents, that the teachers beg and cajole and just can't get them to take it seriously. I can't box up educational opportunities that go to waste here in the U.S. and ship them off to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but when I read stories like these I sure wish I could.
I wonder sometimes what the goal of our public education system ought to be. The big picture is that every child should be educated to the limit of his or her ability and ambition. If we really did that, what would it look like? Would the kids in this story be cut loose at age 14 or so, more or less literate and able to add 2+3, to get jobs and make their way as best they can? Maybe two or three years of pushing brooms would motivate them to try to go back to school and take it more seriously. Or maybe they really can make it without more schooling - they must be able to, because they're mostly marking time until they can leave school as it is.
I read this:
Teacher beheaded by militants
SUSPECTED Islamic militants have beheaded a teacher in a lawless Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said today.
Said Badshah, 35, who ran a private school, failed to return home yesterday in Barwan village, near Wana, the main town in restive South Waziristan tribal agency, a local administration official said.
His headless body was found in a remote area this evening, the official said on condition of anonymity.
on the same day I read this:
Teens with disabilities enjoy last-ditch reprieve
"We're pushing for them to pass because it will make them feel better about themselves," said Vice Principal Cyndi Swindle, who oversees special education.
I'm not death on self-esteem like a lot of people are, but I still think this statement is pretty silly. But this is the part that irks me:
About a week after learning in January that he had again failed the math part of the exit exam, Juan Calderon did something he probably should have done months before. At the urging of his counselor, the 18-year-old signed up for a math class.
...
While some students with disabilities are still trying to pass the exit exam, others appear to have given up. Now that they know they don't have to pass the test to graduate, some seniors are making a habit of skipping class, said Schlim, the special ed teacher. She identified Kevin Muhammad as one of those students.
"It's a mixture of senior-itis and 'I don't need (to pass) this to graduate so I don't need to be here to learn this,' " she said. "Disappointing, but true."
Attendance records show Kevin was absent for six days, from the day Schwarzenegger signed off on the exemption until he had to take the test again. Schlim considers that no coincidence.
...
Larissa was glad to learn she can use a calculator on the exam this time, yet complained she didn't know how it would help her with fractions, word problems or algebra.
"It won't," Carter said. "If you don't know which buttons to push, it won't help."
Then he handed Larissa a calculator and chastised her for her last-minute approach to studying: "Why are you here at 4:15 the day before the test asking me how to use a calculator?"
So education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where a teacher in a girl's school was recently beheaded, is so precious that teachers risk their lives to offer it. And it's regarded so lightly by the kids in this story, and I suppose their parents, that the teachers beg and cajole and just can't get them to take it seriously. I can't box up educational opportunities that go to waste here in the U.S. and ship them off to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but when I read stories like these I sure wish I could.
I wonder sometimes what the goal of our public education system ought to be. The big picture is that every child should be educated to the limit of his or her ability and ambition. If we really did that, what would it look like? Would the kids in this story be cut loose at age 14 or so, more or less literate and able to add 2+3, to get jobs and make their way as best they can? Maybe two or three years of pushing brooms would motivate them to try to go back to school and take it more seriously. Or maybe they really can make it without more schooling - they must be able to, because they're mostly marking time until they can leave school as it is.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Apparently American schools aren't the only ones with issues.
I could have guessed that, of course, but some of the French issues are the sames as ours: how much centralization is appropriate, how much privatization, teacher qualifications, standardized curricula.
“We don’t want to end up with an American system," said Marie-Claude, a middle school history teacher in Paris’ 13th arrondissement. When pressed to elaborate, she explained: “It’s a system without public servants, without national diplomas or even national health care.” For her and many of her colleagues, changes in the education system are a first step down a slippery slope.
We do have public servants. What she means by public servants, of course, isn't what we mean.
As far as not having national diplomas, perhaps France would be better compared to one of our states. The states do have diplomas. Tennessee standardizes what that diploma means by administering "Gateway" tests in English, math, biology, and history. Without passing the Gateways, a student doesn't get the diploma. Before the Gateways were developed, there was a minimum score students had to attain on the TCAP. And there's a state-approved list of textbooks and certain classes the middle and high schools all must offer. But individual school systems set their own curricula. We didn't have a standardized curriculum in Memphis until several years ago a high school valedictorian wasn't able to graduate because he couldn't score high enough on the TCAP. After that there were standards for each class offered in the district. That's pretty ambitious for a system whose individual schools' average test scores run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. But our urban standards aren't applied to rural systems.
As to national health care, may it never happen here.
I could have guessed that, of course, but some of the French issues are the sames as ours: how much centralization is appropriate, how much privatization, teacher qualifications, standardized curricula.
“We don’t want to end up with an American system," said Marie-Claude, a middle school history teacher in Paris’ 13th arrondissement. When pressed to elaborate, she explained: “It’s a system without public servants, without national diplomas or even national health care.” For her and many of her colleagues, changes in the education system are a first step down a slippery slope.
We do have public servants. What she means by public servants, of course, isn't what we mean.
As far as not having national diplomas, perhaps France would be better compared to one of our states. The states do have diplomas. Tennessee standardizes what that diploma means by administering "Gateway" tests in English, math, biology, and history. Without passing the Gateways, a student doesn't get the diploma. Before the Gateways were developed, there was a minimum score students had to attain on the TCAP. And there's a state-approved list of textbooks and certain classes the middle and high schools all must offer. But individual school systems set their own curricula. We didn't have a standardized curriculum in Memphis until several years ago a high school valedictorian wasn't able to graduate because he couldn't score high enough on the TCAP. After that there were standards for each class offered in the district. That's pretty ambitious for a system whose individual schools' average test scores run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. But our urban standards aren't applied to rural systems.
As to national health care, may it never happen here.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Here is an article about changes in the way some schools are administering tests. The title of the article is "Legalized 'Cheating'". There are lots of different kinds of "cheating" described here, some of which I think are perfectly fine and an obvious improvement.
For instance:
Twas a situation every middle-schooler dreads. Bonnie Pitzer was cruising through a vocabulary test until she hit the word "desolated" -- and drew a blank. But instead of panicking, she quietly searched the Internet for the definition.
...
In Bonnie Pitzer's case, teacher Becky Keene says using the Internet helped the seventh-grader, but in the end, she aced the test because she demonstrated she could also use the word in a sentence. "I want the kids to be able to apply the meaning, not to be able to memorize it," says Ms. Keene.
I actually have no problem with this. I think I have a fairly broad vocabulary, but I look up words from time to time. Who doesn't? If the student can demonstrate that she can look up the meaning of a word on the internet, and then apply the word appropriately, I think that's about the best we can hope for. You can't expect to memorize every word there is.
It's the same with formulas and tables and other things that can easily be looked up. Why make a kid memorize these things, when they're probably going to forget them after the test? Isn't it better to have the kid show that he can get that information any time he needs it?
But I do have a problem with this:
At Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, Calif., seventh-graders are looking at each other's hand-held computers to get answers on their science drills.
It's OK in my book to look up a formula. How often in your life are you going to need the ideal gas law? (PV=nRT, for those of you who were going to look it up.) But the student still needs to be able to figure out how to plug values into that formula and get results. Some things you have to struggle with to learn. You have to pull it out of yourself. Somebody else can show you what they did but it's not the same at all.
And then this reminds me one of the things that I observed during my daughter's odyssey through middle and high school that I thought was a really Bad Thing.
The changes -- and the debate they're prompting -- are not unlike the upheaval caused when calculators became available in the early 1970s. Back then, teachers grappled with letting kids use the new machines or requiring long lines of division by hand. Though initially banned, calculators were eventually embraced in classrooms and, since 1994, have even been allowed in the SAT.
Calculators are one thing. Graphing calculators are something else again, and wisely, they are not allowed on the SAT. Early in the year that F took Algebra II, I picked her up from school one day and she started telling me how frustrated she was. She could not understand how to do her homework. She'd asked her teacher for help, and her friends, and she could not get it. She was just about to the point of tears telling me this.
I took her to Starbucks and got us drinks, and then I said, "Show me." F pulled out her book and her notebook and her TI graphing calculator and started trying to do the homework. I realized right away that her mental focus was splintered between trying to understand the math concepts, and trying to make her calculator work the problem. In the example problems, the book even approached the whole thing in terms of making the calculator do the work. (Do they get kickbacks from TI?) Some people can learn step-by-step instructions when they don't make any sense, but not my F; she has to understand what she's doing. (I think that's a good way to be.) I shoved her calculator aside and took a piece of paper and drew an X and a Y axis, and started working the examples that way. Here's the y-intercept. Here's the slope. Shazam. Now, here is what this graph is telling you about the relationship of these things in the problem. Well, the light bulb went on. She worked all of her homework problems, with increasing speed and confidence, drawing the graphs on a piece of paper like I did. We checked the answers to the odd-numbered problems in the back, and they were all correct. Once she was done, I pulled the calculator back over and said, "Now make the calculator do it." Now that she understood what it was the calculator was supposed to do, that was a piece of cake.
I think teaching kids math by way of those graphing calculators is a big mistake. Math teachers that I've spoken to don't agree. They say that they can introduce advanced ideas more quickly because the kids aren't spending time plotting points and drawing graphs. But for some kids (like mine) I think that's where the learning occurs. I think it's harmful to rush past that process. It splits off the kids who can get all that stuff intuitively, which probably describes the math teachers and is why they don't see the problem, and it makes all the other kids think that they just aren't good at math. Unless they have parents who can teach them at home.
It's just like people who started doing chromatography after the chromatographic software became available. I started doing gas chromatography back in the day when you had a strip chart that moved at a constant speed, and a little pen that drew the chromatograms on it as it went; you made an injection and wrote on the chart what you were injecting, and later drew your baselines and measured retention times and peak heights with a little six-inch plastic ruler. (We used millimeters, of course.) I'd never want to go back to that, but I think people who never did it that way tend to think there's something magical about the way the software identifies and measures those peaks and manipulates the data. I wonder if they really understand what's happening.
For instance:
Twas a situation every middle-schooler dreads. Bonnie Pitzer was cruising through a vocabulary test until she hit the word "desolated" -- and drew a blank. But instead of panicking, she quietly searched the Internet for the definition.
...
In Bonnie Pitzer's case, teacher Becky Keene says using the Internet helped the seventh-grader, but in the end, she aced the test because she demonstrated she could also use the word in a sentence. "I want the kids to be able to apply the meaning, not to be able to memorize it," says Ms. Keene.
I actually have no problem with this. I think I have a fairly broad vocabulary, but I look up words from time to time. Who doesn't? If the student can demonstrate that she can look up the meaning of a word on the internet, and then apply the word appropriately, I think that's about the best we can hope for. You can't expect to memorize every word there is.
It's the same with formulas and tables and other things that can easily be looked up. Why make a kid memorize these things, when they're probably going to forget them after the test? Isn't it better to have the kid show that he can get that information any time he needs it?
But I do have a problem with this:
At Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, Calif., seventh-graders are looking at each other's hand-held computers to get answers on their science drills.
It's OK in my book to look up a formula. How often in your life are you going to need the ideal gas law? (PV=nRT, for those of you who were going to look it up.) But the student still needs to be able to figure out how to plug values into that formula and get results. Some things you have to struggle with to learn. You have to pull it out of yourself. Somebody else can show you what they did but it's not the same at all.
And then this reminds me one of the things that I observed during my daughter's odyssey through middle and high school that I thought was a really Bad Thing.
The changes -- and the debate they're prompting -- are not unlike the upheaval caused when calculators became available in the early 1970s. Back then, teachers grappled with letting kids use the new machines or requiring long lines of division by hand. Though initially banned, calculators were eventually embraced in classrooms and, since 1994, have even been allowed in the SAT.
Calculators are one thing. Graphing calculators are something else again, and wisely, they are not allowed on the SAT. Early in the year that F took Algebra II, I picked her up from school one day and she started telling me how frustrated she was. She could not understand how to do her homework. She'd asked her teacher for help, and her friends, and she could not get it. She was just about to the point of tears telling me this.
I took her to Starbucks and got us drinks, and then I said, "Show me." F pulled out her book and her notebook and her TI graphing calculator and started trying to do the homework. I realized right away that her mental focus was splintered between trying to understand the math concepts, and trying to make her calculator work the problem. In the example problems, the book even approached the whole thing in terms of making the calculator do the work. (Do they get kickbacks from TI?) Some people can learn step-by-step instructions when they don't make any sense, but not my F; she has to understand what she's doing. (I think that's a good way to be.) I shoved her calculator aside and took a piece of paper and drew an X and a Y axis, and started working the examples that way. Here's the y-intercept. Here's the slope. Shazam. Now, here is what this graph is telling you about the relationship of these things in the problem. Well, the light bulb went on. She worked all of her homework problems, with increasing speed and confidence, drawing the graphs on a piece of paper like I did. We checked the answers to the odd-numbered problems in the back, and they were all correct. Once she was done, I pulled the calculator back over and said, "Now make the calculator do it." Now that she understood what it was the calculator was supposed to do, that was a piece of cake.
I think teaching kids math by way of those graphing calculators is a big mistake. Math teachers that I've spoken to don't agree. They say that they can introduce advanced ideas more quickly because the kids aren't spending time plotting points and drawing graphs. But for some kids (like mine) I think that's where the learning occurs. I think it's harmful to rush past that process. It splits off the kids who can get all that stuff intuitively, which probably describes the math teachers and is why they don't see the problem, and it makes all the other kids think that they just aren't good at math. Unless they have parents who can teach them at home.
It's just like people who started doing chromatography after the chromatographic software became available. I started doing gas chromatography back in the day when you had a strip chart that moved at a constant speed, and a little pen that drew the chromatograms on it as it went; you made an injection and wrote on the chart what you were injecting, and later drew your baselines and measured retention times and peak heights with a little six-inch plastic ruler. (We used millimeters, of course.) I'd never want to go back to that, but I think people who never did it that way tend to think there's something magical about the way the software identifies and measures those peaks and manipulates the data. I wonder if they really understand what's happening.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Study: Most College Students Lack Skills
A "study" showed that [m]ore than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
I took a fairly challenging class in microbiology at the local state U last year. There appeared on the message board a note to the teacher that I had to save a copy of.
Hello
my name is [blank] and I have been attending your classes. I had the second day that you had took role and financial aid said I only have nine hours and for them to fix it you have to send them a letter about me, that have been attending your class and putting me there for 2/2/05, since I have been going to your class. By you not taking role each day i come to class ,you don't of the days I have been coming to class.
The fact that this person graduated from high school, let alone gained admission to the university, indicates something very wrong with the system. I realize that some people think that correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation are only called for on papers that are being graded by an English teacher. But I think the problems evidenced in this note go beyond mere carelessness, and they are by no means unique among college students.
Her financial aid is most likely my tax dollars. Don't get me wrong - I am very willing to be taxed for the privilege of living in a city of educated people. But the fact that it is my taxes paying for her education gives me the right to critique what's happening here. Somebody dropped the ball with Miss X, probably a long time ago, and her attendence at college isn't doing her or anybody else any good. She could possibly benefit from some remedial classes but that micro class was not one. What happens is that the school accepts her, gets the financial aid, and lets her flunk out. What do they care? They get the money, so for her to fail at something she should never have attempted means nothing to them. This was also the case with other students in my class who didn't have literacy problems, but also didn't have the chemistry and biology background to understand the lectures. I know this because some of us formed a study group. There used to be prerequisites for the class, but for some reason they were dropped. Our median grades were in the 50's for all the tests. And the tests weren't unreasonable; all of my grades were in the 90's.
I think a big problem is the lottery-financed Hope scholarships. I doubt that Miss X qualified for one. But I do think that there is way too much emphasis put on getting kids into the colleges and universities, and not nearly enough put on making sure they have what it takes to be successful there. It's like money is the only obstacle between those kids and that degree. If that ever really becomes the case, then the B.S. or B.A. will be the new high school diploma.
I keep reading and hearing that Memphis has trouble attracting and keeping high- or even medium-tech industries because of the poor quality of the local labor pool. While I am skeptical of local stories bashing Memphis, because I suspect that you could hear similar stories at other cities, I have to say that job interviews I've been in on, and hirees I've worked with, tend to bear this out. Our new school superintendent is trying very hard to fix the schools, and I sure hope she has a lot of success, very soon.
A "study" showed that [m]ore than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
I took a fairly challenging class in microbiology at the local state U last year. There appeared on the message board a note to the teacher that I had to save a copy of.
Hello
my name is [blank] and I have been attending your classes. I had the second day that you had took role and financial aid said I only have nine hours and for them to fix it you have to send them a letter about me, that have been attending your class and putting me there for 2/2/05, since I have been going to your class. By you not taking role each day i come to class ,you don't of the days I have been coming to class.
The fact that this person graduated from high school, let alone gained admission to the university, indicates something very wrong with the system. I realize that some people think that correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation are only called for on papers that are being graded by an English teacher. But I think the problems evidenced in this note go beyond mere carelessness, and they are by no means unique among college students.
Her financial aid is most likely my tax dollars. Don't get me wrong - I am very willing to be taxed for the privilege of living in a city of educated people. But the fact that it is my taxes paying for her education gives me the right to critique what's happening here. Somebody dropped the ball with Miss X, probably a long time ago, and her attendence at college isn't doing her or anybody else any good. She could possibly benefit from some remedial classes but that micro class was not one. What happens is that the school accepts her, gets the financial aid, and lets her flunk out. What do they care? They get the money, so for her to fail at something she should never have attempted means nothing to them. This was also the case with other students in my class who didn't have literacy problems, but also didn't have the chemistry and biology background to understand the lectures. I know this because some of us formed a study group. There used to be prerequisites for the class, but for some reason they were dropped. Our median grades were in the 50's for all the tests. And the tests weren't unreasonable; all of my grades were in the 90's.
I think a big problem is the lottery-financed Hope scholarships. I doubt that Miss X qualified for one. But I do think that there is way too much emphasis put on getting kids into the colleges and universities, and not nearly enough put on making sure they have what it takes to be successful there. It's like money is the only obstacle between those kids and that degree. If that ever really becomes the case, then the B.S. or B.A. will be the new high school diploma.
I keep reading and hearing that Memphis has trouble attracting and keeping high- or even medium-tech industries because of the poor quality of the local labor pool. While I am skeptical of local stories bashing Memphis, because I suspect that you could hear similar stories at other cities, I have to say that job interviews I've been in on, and hirees I've worked with, tend to bear this out. Our new school superintendent is trying very hard to fix the schools, and I sure hope she has a lot of success, very soon.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
As kind of a follow-up to my post of yesterday, I want to talk about goals and what they should be.
Young people going off to college who are trying to decide what to major in, or who are trying to choose a career path, are frequently told, "Do what you love." Well that's fine, if "what you love" will pay the bills: if you are good enough at it, or it is in enough demand, for people to pay you to do it to the extent that you can support the lifestyle to which you would like to become accustomed.
But it doesn't always work that way. F loves to draw and do crafts. She's done some neat stuff, but it's not enough to support her and she's smart enough to know that.
Things that people major in that they "love" include English, esp. literature; history, art, religion, music, philosophy, psychology, and X studies (women's, or whatever), and I'm sure a lot of esoteric things I've never heard of. Now I'm not saying that people can't major in one of those things and do very well in their field. And I'm not saying that people can't major in one of those things and do very well in a different field. What I'm saying is that people major in one of those things and frequently end up teaching, which they may or may not have wanted to do, or working in a different field that they have no interest in and no career path in. The world, or at least this country, is full of twenty-somethings who majored in what they love, and are making $20K working at a bookstore and wondering when they will ever be able to afford a house or a car, or pay off the credit card debt they incurred in college when they were young and stupid. The answer is never, unless they pull up their socks and change course.
The advice that I gave F is this: Whatever you end up doing, it absolutely has to pay enough to put food on the table. Beyond that, it has to pay enough to support whatever lifestyle you will need to have to be happy. Some people are content to live their whole lives in a rented apartment and never have a car* but if that's not you, then you definitely need to take that into account. Or maybe you would like to spend your summers at archeological digs, to which as an amateur you would have to pay your own way - then pick something seasonal that pays a lot, like tax law.
Then, your choice has to be something reasonably honorable. I would not like to tell people you are an exotic dancer, for instance. It would be good if it's something that actually makes a positive difference in the world, although if it's legal and you pay your taxes that's probably really enough.
And finally, it must be something that you like and are suited to. Life is too short to spend 40+ hours a week bored and unhappy or overly stressed.
But - your job is not your true love. You should not look to your job to fulfill you as a person. That's where your love of art, literature, and music, your enjoyment of learning history, and so forth come in. They make you a cultured, interesting, happy, well-rounded person.
*I realize that in some places, like NYC, it may be possible to have a terrific quality of life in a rented apartment with no car, but not around here.
Young people going off to college who are trying to decide what to major in, or who are trying to choose a career path, are frequently told, "Do what you love." Well that's fine, if "what you love" will pay the bills: if you are good enough at it, or it is in enough demand, for people to pay you to do it to the extent that you can support the lifestyle to which you would like to become accustomed.
But it doesn't always work that way. F loves to draw and do crafts. She's done some neat stuff, but it's not enough to support her and she's smart enough to know that.
Things that people major in that they "love" include English, esp. literature; history, art, religion, music, philosophy, psychology, and X studies (women's, or whatever), and I'm sure a lot of esoteric things I've never heard of. Now I'm not saying that people can't major in one of those things and do very well in their field. And I'm not saying that people can't major in one of those things and do very well in a different field. What I'm saying is that people major in one of those things and frequently end up teaching, which they may or may not have wanted to do, or working in a different field that they have no interest in and no career path in. The world, or at least this country, is full of twenty-somethings who majored in what they love, and are making $20K working at a bookstore and wondering when they will ever be able to afford a house or a car, or pay off the credit card debt they incurred in college when they were young and stupid. The answer is never, unless they pull up their socks and change course.
The advice that I gave F is this: Whatever you end up doing, it absolutely has to pay enough to put food on the table. Beyond that, it has to pay enough to support whatever lifestyle you will need to have to be happy. Some people are content to live their whole lives in a rented apartment and never have a car* but if that's not you, then you definitely need to take that into account. Or maybe you would like to spend your summers at archeological digs, to which as an amateur you would have to pay your own way - then pick something seasonal that pays a lot, like tax law.
Then, your choice has to be something reasonably honorable. I would not like to tell people you are an exotic dancer, for instance. It would be good if it's something that actually makes a positive difference in the world, although if it's legal and you pay your taxes that's probably really enough.
And finally, it must be something that you like and are suited to. Life is too short to spend 40+ hours a week bored and unhappy or overly stressed.
But - your job is not your true love. You should not look to your job to fulfill you as a person. That's where your love of art, literature, and music, your enjoyment of learning history, and so forth come in. They make you a cultured, interesting, happy, well-rounded person.
*I realize that in some places, like NYC, it may be possible to have a terrific quality of life in a rented apartment with no car, but not around here.
Monday, November 07, 2005
How about some more controversy.
I find myself at odds with my fellow conservatives over a handful of issues. Public education is one. I keep reading comments on conservative blogs to the effect that everyone must pull their kids out of public school, now. And some hope for the day when there are no public schools, only private ones. News articles like this make this idea hard to argue against. Still, I just really differ about this issue.
Let me say first that I have no problem with people homeschooling or sending their kids to private school. F attended a parochial school for K-6. Our kid, our choice. I do think it's silly for people who want vouchers to point to the fact that politicians send their kids to private school and claim that they don't want others to have that choice. No one tried to stop us from sending F to private school. Yes, we had to pay tuition. She's our kid; who should have paid it?
The idea that we should have gotten our taxes rebated to the extent that they would have paid for her public school education is also silly. You don't pay taxes to educate your kids; you pay them so that you can live in a society in which people have at least a minimal education. Otherwise you're surrounded by an illiterate, unemployable permanent underclass. I can see people saying, "So how is that different from what we have now?" It's a lot different.
I remember listening to Ken Hamblin back when he was on the radio. This must have been years ago. A caller was complaining that black people are not given opportunities like white people are; no one helps them; no one gives them a hand up. They are excluded from the American dream. Here is a paraphrase of Ken's reply: "You're right. But I have an idea that is so radical, so far-reaching, that it will knock your socks off: Let's offer every child a free education in a public school." There was a moment of silence, then the caller started chuckling and said, "You got me. Tip of the hat to you, bro', " and then he hung up.
There are those who say that if all schools were private, and parents got vouchers, the parents would pick the best schools for their kids. I don't want to speak ill of parents; I am one. But some parents are completely out to lunch when it comes to making decisions about their kids' welfare. I'm not talking about parents making bad decisions about where their kids go to school, I'm talking about parents not giving a damn about their kids' welfare AT ALL. I remember reading a letter to the editor in the local newspaper that was written by a teacher. She noticed that one of her students had missed three days of school and she asked the office personnel to call his home and check on him. It turned out that his mother had sold all of his clothes to pay for drugs. All he had to wear was a bedsheet. Of course Social Services was called and the kid removed from the home. That public schoolteacher was the only person in that child's life who cared enough about him to come to his rescue. But according to some people, his mother was fully capable of deciding which school he should attend, or whether he should attend school at all. And even given this exact story, they still would shut down the schools although it would mean leaving this child in misery and sacrificing his chance at any kind of future. Situations like this one come up every day in schools across the country. And I keep coming back to the fact that these are American kids, who deserve the best we can do for them. They deserve their crack at the American dream every bit as much as F does, or any other child whose parents carefully plan their education and their future.
I know there are problems with the public schools. But we need to fix them. We certainly don't need to abandon them.
I find myself at odds with my fellow conservatives over a handful of issues. Public education is one. I keep reading comments on conservative blogs to the effect that everyone must pull their kids out of public school, now. And some hope for the day when there are no public schools, only private ones. News articles like this make this idea hard to argue against. Still, I just really differ about this issue.
Let me say first that I have no problem with people homeschooling or sending their kids to private school. F attended a parochial school for K-6. Our kid, our choice. I do think it's silly for people who want vouchers to point to the fact that politicians send their kids to private school and claim that they don't want others to have that choice. No one tried to stop us from sending F to private school. Yes, we had to pay tuition. She's our kid; who should have paid it?
The idea that we should have gotten our taxes rebated to the extent that they would have paid for her public school education is also silly. You don't pay taxes to educate your kids; you pay them so that you can live in a society in which people have at least a minimal education. Otherwise you're surrounded by an illiterate, unemployable permanent underclass. I can see people saying, "So how is that different from what we have now?" It's a lot different.
I remember listening to Ken Hamblin back when he was on the radio. This must have been years ago. A caller was complaining that black people are not given opportunities like white people are; no one helps them; no one gives them a hand up. They are excluded from the American dream. Here is a paraphrase of Ken's reply: "You're right. But I have an idea that is so radical, so far-reaching, that it will knock your socks off: Let's offer every child a free education in a public school." There was a moment of silence, then the caller started chuckling and said, "You got me. Tip of the hat to you, bro', " and then he hung up.
There are those who say that if all schools were private, and parents got vouchers, the parents would pick the best schools for their kids. I don't want to speak ill of parents; I am one. But some parents are completely out to lunch when it comes to making decisions about their kids' welfare. I'm not talking about parents making bad decisions about where their kids go to school, I'm talking about parents not giving a damn about their kids' welfare AT ALL. I remember reading a letter to the editor in the local newspaper that was written by a teacher. She noticed that one of her students had missed three days of school and she asked the office personnel to call his home and check on him. It turned out that his mother had sold all of his clothes to pay for drugs. All he had to wear was a bedsheet. Of course Social Services was called and the kid removed from the home. That public schoolteacher was the only person in that child's life who cared enough about him to come to his rescue. But according to some people, his mother was fully capable of deciding which school he should attend, or whether he should attend school at all. And even given this exact story, they still would shut down the schools although it would mean leaving this child in misery and sacrificing his chance at any kind of future. Situations like this one come up every day in schools across the country. And I keep coming back to the fact that these are American kids, who deserve the best we can do for them. They deserve their crack at the American dream every bit as much as F does, or any other child whose parents carefully plan their education and their future.
I know there are problems with the public schools. But we need to fix them. We certainly don't need to abandon them.
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