Commentaries from #UOO16Philly

This weekend I was honored to be asked by the organizers of United Opt Out National to moderate and participate on two panels at their Annual Conference in Philadelphia. It also gave me the chance to get a legit Philly Cheesesteak.

I will simply post my remarks below.

 

Panel #1: Global Privatization and “the Advancing Endgame Result!”

It is important for us to broaden our horizons to see more clearly how education and children are impacted via other GLOBAL policies

Today’s policy makers want to turn teachers into industrial employees, churning students out like Ford workers churned out Model T’s. Frederick Taylor and his early 20^th century theory of Scientific Management turned efficiency into the justification for such changes. Today’s policy makers have bought it hook, line, and sinker.

There is an international organization to foster this approach to parallel the global corporate economic movement. It is called G.E.R.M. (Global Education Reform Movement). Pasi Sahlberg, author of 2011’s Finnish Lessons, tells us:

30 years ago They already knew the next big “investment opportunity”: EDUCATION

G.E.R.M. emerged in the 1980s and has increasingly been adopted as educational reform orthodoxy throughout the world. It’s cancer has spread.

G.E.R.M. is often promoted through the interests of international development agencies and private enterprises through their interventions in national education reforms and policy formulation.

There are Five globally common features of education policies and reform principles created 25 years ago.

1. Standardization of education.
2. Focus on core subjects.
3. The search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals.
4. The use of corporate management models.
5. The adoption of test-based account- ability policies.

SOUND FAMLIAR?

The only nation not to sign this agreement? FINLAND!

Finland places at the top of all international education studies. Where are we?

 

Panel #2: Media and Messaging

Hi. I am Dave Greene, former treasurer of Save Our Schools.

I am a teacher, so I will speak as one. For 38 years I taught Social Studies and coached football in the Bronx, Greenburgh, and Scarsdale NY. Since retirement, I have worked with high schools to create and run experiential learning programs for their seniors, mentored new teachers, authored DOING THE RIGHT THING: A TEACHER SPEAKS, and have been actively working to support Public Schools any way I can.

Marshall McLuhan tells us that the medium IS the message and that every medium influences how any message is perceived. McLuhan wrote the following during the era of film, TV, Radio, and Print way before social media was a dream…. or nightmare ….depending on who uses it better.

“The world is now like a continually sounding tribal drum where everybody gets the message all of the time.”

“A princess gets married in England and boom, boom, boom go the drums. We all hear about it. An earthquake in North Africa, a Hollywood star gets drunk—away go the drums again.”

While we try to persuade the public differently, the drums constantly pound, much to our chagrin, as reformers have stolen our language of education and successfully use OUR vocabulary for THEIR own purposes.

For example:

REFORM:

Customarily, when Local educators and communities make changes in local education in order to improve student learning.

Reform Usage: Lobbyists support National or State Education policy to theoretically save American Education… but in reality these policies provides for profits for a few. BOOM!

 REVITALIZING SCHOOLS:

Customarily, when schools and their communities make improvements to their schools as they see fit to benefit their students

Reform Usage: Districts close public schools and reopen them as profitable charters. BOOM!

 ASSESSMENTS AND TESTS:

Customarily, teachers use “authentic assessments” to evaluate whether students know, understand, can do, and communicate what they learned while teachers provide immediate feedback with means to improve work.

Reform Usage: Administrators collect non authentic standardized test data and use it to evaluate teachers, close public schools, then open charters for profit. BOOM!

STANDARDS:

Customarily a level of quality or attainment in what students are expected to know and be able to do at specific stages of their K-12 education…often accompanied by educator written, flexible syllabi, and sample, not mandated, lessons.

Reform Usage: Flawed COMMON CORE curricula and prescribed lessons not written by teachers is forced on school districts to supplement standardized testing evaluations. BOOM!

 COLLEGE AND CAREER READY:

Customarily, when students have acquired the various hard and soft skills, and traits, not merely content knowledge, to be able to adjust to and succeed at life after High School

Reform Usage: As in NYS: Students must graduate with at least scores of 75 and 80 on HS Regents English and Algebra Exams PLUS scores on grades 3-8 tests that are the equivalent to an SAT score of 1630, 80 points higher than the College Board’s own college readiness score.

Any School that cannot produce enough of these students is a failing school and must be closed and replaced by a profitable charter. BOOM!

COMMON:

Customarily relating to a community.

Reform Usage: “Common” public schools characterized by a “lack of privilege or special status” in need of reform that must be closed and replaced by charters. BOOM!

CORE:

Customarily a basic, essential part…

For the purposes of describing it reformy use… the inedible central part of some fruits. I leave the conclusions to you. BOOM!

In this teacher’s humble opinion:

We must regain control of the narrative and OUR language.

We must be clearer in, not just our OBjections, but in our SUGGestions.

We know what works.

We know good teaching and teacher preparation.

We know what kinds of school environments work best for students and teachers.

We know our most powerful audiences – the people – and must be sure we speak to them, RATHER THAN PREACHING TO THE CHOIR, using clear, concise, and precise language.

In short, we must use every medium to inspire more parents, more teachers, and more students to rise up against the abuses of our education system by those claiming to reform it and create more positive public actions like OPT OUT and whatever else it takes.

Let’s keep banging our drums.

To help us understand more about this issue…

Here are our panelists:

Jonathan Pelto

Ruth Conniff

Fran Huckaby.

 

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Some Characteristics Of Fascism in the early to mid 20th Century: Hmmmmm?

If these ring any bells here in the early 21st century , it surely must be purely coincidence…or not!

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.”

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. “Controlled” Mass Media – In many cases the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.

5. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool.

6. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Leaders of fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

7. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

8. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

9. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism.

10. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

From: Facism Anyone?

By Laurence W. Britt, Free Inquiry Magazine, Vol 22 no 2, [15 July 2003]

WHAT MAKES A CHILD A CREATIVE ADULT?

Too many parents, teachers, and school administrators falsely think that by putting children in high achieving programs science programs, music lessons for hours per week for year after year, or preparing them for AP or SAT exams from the time they are 12 years old to get them into the most prestigious colleges, will create masters of creativity.

Adam Grant, in his article, How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off, points out the errors of that strategy while explaining a WISE way to allow creativity to rise up within a child. For example, he points out that if you,

“Consider the nation’s most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of science by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2000 precocious teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes.”

Originality does not come from practice, practice, and practice or following a long list of rules.

“What holds them back is that they don’t learn to be original…. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.” “They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights.”

What does lead to a more creative child and adult?

Grant tells us that two important factors are “developing one’s own ethical code” and “finding joy in work”. Children who grew up to be more creative adults were able to figure out their own values and discover their true interests.

Studies showed that children whose parents and teachers allowed them to respond to follow their intrinsic motivations, interests, and “enthusiasm in a skill” were most likely to develop into creators, not followers.

“What motivates people to practice a skill for thousands of hours? The most reliable answer is passion — discovered through natural curiosity or nurtured through early enjoyable experiences with an activity or many activities.”

 Bottom line? Grant tells parents, “If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.”

I would argue that school leaders must do the same.

Do enough high schools allow their students to create “individualized real-world experiences (WISE projects), exploring their passions outside the traditional classroom”? Do enough enable their seniors of all ability levels to design an individualized, passion-driven project such as internships, independent research, self-improvement, community service or cultural, artistic and performance-based activities so that students can discover in themselves and in one another skills, strengths and talents they had not realized were present?

That, by far is the WISE choice.