Category: Education

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I am a little annoyed after reading Chauncey Devega’s interview of Matthew Levendusky in Salon. They were discussing the importance of a Civic’s education in a democracy. But they weren’t really. They seem to want people to recite answers to random questions — like for example what is the 3rd Amendment to the Constitution?

How often in life will I have to answer that question. So far in my 66 years, no one has ever asked me yet nor have I been cognizant of needing this information. Maybe I unknowingly used the 3rd Amendment to live my life. Which is fine with me. There are more important things to remember say like the emergency number for the police is 911. 911 is important and I might use it, have used it. I am not saying the 3rd Amendment isn’t important. It is important but I may never use it or know that I am using it.

There is a serious misconception about the past. Like people used their civics and history education in making their civic decisions. My grandparents all came from modest circumstances. Working people. My Grandma Schnell never got past the 8th grade as she reminded us incessantly. That these people were debating the advantages and disadvantages of constitutional amendments before they voted seems like a bit of a stretch. They did however vote. What DeVega and Levendusky would like citizens to do and what they are actually doing are two different things.

A more realistic vision might acknowledge that people will do some research if it is required but will probably vote based on party preference and the endorsements of institutions or people who they agree with. They look at their pocketbooks, check with their family and friends, and maybe look at the television. To ask for a process of weighing the pros and cons of each and every candidate on the ballot is insanity. Have they ever seen a California ballot? We vote for the assistant to the assistant Dog Catcher here. I have absolutely no interest in researching everyone on that ballot and California is really good about giving you a lot of lead time to research. For me, it boils down to whether they are Democrats and are pro-choice. If they meet those two criterion, I am done researching.

The idea that better civics classes might make for better citizens made me shudder in horror. Civic’s education has always been bad. In my Catholic high school, it was taught by the lesser athletic coaches who couldn’t get the prime PE job which always went to our champion Football coach. They may have cared about history and civics but their hearts were definitely in their sports team and not the Dred Scott decision. My memory of these classes were of men talking each day about what you needed to memorize to pass the class. This meant that they were irredeemably boring. My most vivid memory of these classes was how difficult it was to stay awake in them. Often I would just surrender to the urge and nap.

And let me tell you I missed nothing. The answers to the test were also in the text book. If you read the text book, you could easily figure out what you needed to know for the test. So I just read the text book. That these two apparently intelligent men are advocating the need for people to learn the three branches of government in order to be responsible citizens is disheartening.

This, of course, is a broader problem with American Education. Memorizing facts passes for education in this country. It isn’t. It can be helpful and it can reduce the time a citizen takes to address a problem but it is unnecessary to know this information to act as a good citizen. Far more relevant, would be to give the students issues or problems and ask them how a citizen might act to resolve these issues. How do they use their vaguely understood freedom and rights to make civic life better and, if, in the course of their research, they learn about the three branches of government then good for them.

By the way, I still don’t know what the 3rd Amendment is. I thought about looking it up but then I thought, it is a bit of an effort, and I would really have to focus, and then I realized I have better things to do. So there.

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Oklahoma School Superintendent wants the truth of the Tulsa Race Riot to be taught but he also doesn’t want White kids to feel badly about it. Governor DeSantis in Florida feels the same way. What is the proper emotion for White kids to feel after learning about racism? It seems to me that is up to the individual child and is uncontrollable and not really the business of the educators. Some things will make you feel pride and other things might make you ashamed. There is no right way to feel about the past because people are still arguing about the past.

How do you take the White Racism out of the Tulsa Race Riot? White people targeted black people based on a run in between a Black man and a White woman. White people killed hundreds of Black people just because they were Black. White people either participated in the riot or did nothing to stop the riot. Should a White child feel badly about being White and the behavior of his race? Well, yes, if they are decent human beings. White people did a terrible thing to Black people. Thems the facts.

This idea that history has to show the American past in an admirable light seems incredibly wrong headed to begin with. First, history is about people. People are fallible. People sometimes do terrible things. The Civil War was one of the significant events in American history. In order to understand what happened and why this was so important in American history, difficult subjects have to be addressed. It doesn’t put everyone in a positive light. But I don’t think it will be any more traumatic than teaching first graders that one day an active shooter might appear in their classroom and how they should act when this occurs.

What doesn’t help is for educators to be even handed about a subject where being even handed is absurd which is what the Florida Department of Education tried to do. They were concerned that the slavery discussion was too one sided for the anti-slavery side. You heard it right. They wanted children to have a more positive view of the slave owners. This is dumbfounding. Why is that so important? Why can’t some White people be the villains in this particular story?

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A Florida school district is finding Shakespeare a little too racy so instead of reading the whole play of Romeo and Juliet they are reading sections of Romeo and Juliet. Don’t get me wrong if I was the average high schooler I would love reading only the selected bits of Shakespeare because he was a real pain in the ass to read.

On the other hand, it is about the stupidest things I have ever heard. It is a play about young heterosexual children in a passionate romance. It sounds like something that a average teenager might be thinking about. This is why, of course, Romeo and Juliet is one of the most commonly taught Shakespeare plays in high schools. So, of course, educators in Ron DeSantis’ Florida are cutting out the interesting bits so the youth of Florida are saved from becoming aware of teenage sex. I think we all know they are already aware and that they are spending a good amount of time talking about it.

Then there is assumption that teenagers are brainless twits and will be enticed into a passionate romance that ends in suicide. It could happen but I think the chances are pretty remote, so remote as to be unworthy of giving it a second thought. I remember in my school most of the kids felt Romeo and Juliet were pretty crazy and probably needed some good adult advice (so take that Nurse). It was certainly my big takeaway and I was 17. Kids are generally pretty rational. The runaways and the rebels get all the attention but most kids are smart enough to stay in school and with their parents. Even poor Romeo and Juliet bought into middle class mores because they got married before they had sex. So, what exactly is the point?

Protecting youth from reading Shakespeare? Is there any evidence to support this? I would like to see it. This isn’t about protecting children. It is about controlling what they read. Every time I hear a conservative who wants to protect children from certain books, I think of gun laws and their renewed interest in child labor and find it incredibly difficult to believe them.

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A Catholic School in Kansas expelled a student because the kid’s mother objected to the banning of gay books in the school. The Catholic Church thinks it can still boss people around and people will obey. That they don’t have the good sense to handle a dispute like this better is disappointing. They simply no longer have the same power to intimidate critics.

The Church, however, will still try. The Spanish Inquisition is in the Catholic Church’s DNA so when the opportunity to actually punish someone presented itself it was impossible to pass it up. The Church should have thrown the issue back to the mother. They could have said here is our teaching on homosexuality. If you feel strongly about it, you are free to take your spiritual business elsewhere. It would have put the decision back where it needed to be with the woman who disagreed with the church. Let her decide how much she can take.

Unfortunately leaders in the Gay Community might feel the need to react to the Church. The best thing they can do is a mild reprimand saying that the Catholic Church shouldn’t act that way and forget it. Because the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality never changes, it is well known. So when the school banned Gay literature from the library, it shouldn’t have been that surprising to the mother. I am more surprised that the library already had these pro-Gay books in them in the first place. Once the Church banned the books, the mother was at choice. Sucking it up so her child could stay in a Catholic school or making an issue of it. She choose correctly but, in doing so, she now has to face the consequences. The Catholic Church has the every right to say the Church isn’t changing their teachings and we need to part ways.

The Gay Community should focus their efforts on protecting the rights we presently have won in civil life and not get sidetracked by an internal church dispute. If Gay Catholics and their supporters want to continue the good fight, by all means, let them. But given that the Church has dug in their heels over birth control and abortion, I doubt very much that things will change. I am having a difficult time getting upset about this. As far as I am concerned and as long as they aren’t calling for my execution or incarceration, it is none of my business.

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Governor Santis is having some effect in his effort to rid history text books of anything that might upset a student. A new Florida textbook now includes a statement that some slaves learned marketable skills from their time on the plantation. Really. You don’t say. That is the first time I’ve ever known that plantation doubled as trade schools. But interesting nonetheless.

So what it sounds like to me that there was some kind of trade off occurred here. The slaves worked the plantation while learning marketable skills that would help them in the future. Is this giving any 21st child any idea of what happened on a plantation? It is a completely meaningless statement without context of the time, the skills they are talking about, and whether they were relevant to the individual’s future.

History books have to cover hundreds of years and numerous topics. The history taught in the grade schools are broad brushstrokes focusing on the most important information. The things you would want children to remember. I challenge Governor DeSantis to show any Civil War historian who would prioritize the job training at plantation trade schools.

I am sure the publisher told some poor text book authors to make slavery sound a little less horrible and, after several stiff drinks, and failing to come up with anything, decided this little ditty would work. It’s incredibly weak and patently dishonest. There is some outrage about this now, so maybe something will happen. I’m not very confident though, unfortunately, there are so many things to be outraged about and so little time to focus on all of them.

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A principal at a private school in Florida was fired because she allowed students to see Michelangelo’s David. Ironically, this school emphasized a classic education. To which I ask, what could be more classic than Michelangelo’s David? Michelangelo is one of the greatest artists, if not the greatest artist, of the Italian Renaissance. The statue is based in a Biblical story. People come from all over the world and stand in long lines just to see this statue. The problem, as far as I can tell, is David stands naked before the world and some children shouldn’t see naked people.

To be fair, the principal has some fault here. There was some kind of problem with notifying the parents that their children would be seeing the naked David. The parents failed to get the communication. This was handled poorly and, certainly if the communication had been better, any parent who found David’s nudity disagreeable could have opted out. But the reaction to the mistake is disproportionate to the damage done.

If the disagreement was that David’s brazen nudity was too much for young eyes, I could agree with the parents who didn’t want their children to see the image. Unfortunately, it was more than that. One parent used the word pornographic to describe David. David as pornography suggests that David’s value is of a prurient nature only. So this small minority of people, against the judgement of almost all of Western society, are redefining Renaissance Art as pornography.

So, like clockwork, another controversy engulfed, unsurprisingly, another Florida school. A parent objected to the showing of a film called Ruby Bridges which is about a six year old Black girl integrating the New Orleans public school system. The school pulled the film because, well, Florida. The complaining parent was concerned that 2nd graders might learn about racism and actually start hating Black people. Yeah. Right. On the other hand, the movie is a tad bit embarrassing to White children as it show White people as bigots who threaten a six year old. Not exactly the image of great grandmother you want to hand down. Ironically, almost all of these stories are rich with irony, protecting White children from the past is vital. We can’t have white children questioning the actions of their forefathers. Yet, little Ruby Bridges had to walk through a crowd of hostile White people screaming racists chants. Hmm, which is a more traumatic experience.

This is why I get nervous about the all powerful parent and curriculum. Parents have a right and should have some say in what their children learn but there has to be a limit to their guidance. This is particularly important when the parents represent a small minority within the community and what they want is out of step with the rest of civilized world. We can quibble about whether it is age appropriate but David is a masterpiece and Ruby Bridges was subjected to vicious racism when going to school. Few will debate these points so both have historical importance. When is it appropriate for the youth of America to learn more about them?

Then there is the grooming going on here. These parents want to control what their children learn about the world. In the process, other people’s children are just collateral damage in their struggle. They are, in fact, trying to groom all children into their narrow view of America and Western Culture. This means no nude art and a no problems America. They will nitpick every disagreeable comma until they drain history and art of what little life is left in these courses. They believe that if they maintain this control over what a child learns that child will adopt their world view and all will be right afterwards.

Perhaps but it also fails to address the possibility of what happens when the child eventually encounter different ideas. Creating the illusion of a perfect world and, then, being unable to provide one, doesn’t prepare a child for the world they live in. It doesn’t help the child sort out good information from bad information. It, in fact, hobbles the child, and future adult, with the notion of a black and white world. America is good. Nudity is bad. Education, for these groomers, is not about thinking but about the recitation of canned responses. They will give you the answers that you want. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. They will protect children from anything that might make them squeamish or excited or rebellious. We won’t have to worry about these children thinking outside the box because they will be so tightly jammed into a nice little box they will have trouble breathing much less thinking.

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Idaho Republicans oppose providing free tampons in high schools because this would be too woke. This is beyond meaningless. I understand we don’t have enough money. I understand I don’t want to pay for them. I understand it isn’t our responsibility. Now I may not agree with those positions but I do understand them. I also believe I could have an intelligent disagreement with anyone who takes those positions. I may not change their mind but I can talk about it. But too woke? There is absolutely no there there.

Sometimes a girl attending high school will need a tampon. The question is will the school provide one for her free of charge. Woke has absolutely nothing to do with it. Christian women need tampons. Conservative women need tampons. It is a universal need for most young women. When the government provides a high school education to girls, there is a pretty good chance that, at some point some girls will need one while at school. There are three possible positions — the school provides them free, the school provides them at a cost, or the school leave it up to the girl to provide her own. But the school will have to take some position on the matter because it happens.

So when you say too woke, you are saying nothing. What does too woke mean here? It is an evasion. It is meant to shut down arguments with people who are afraid of being called woke. And nobody likes to be called woke these days. Well, fuck it, so I am woke. Now tell me why you don’t want to give free tampons to high school students who need them?

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With a Conservative majority in the Supreme Court, an upcoming case regarding Affirmative Action is expected to effectively end this program. The complaint about Affirmative Action is that race shouldn’t be a criteria for admission into college. Merit should be the only criteria and merit is a cold clinical calculation. Merit is based on grades, test scores, and extra-curricular activities. There is no question who the deserving students are if merit is the measurement. Since race has nothing to do with merit, it shouldn’t be factored into any decision for admission into schools. These opponents would have you believe that we live in a fair world.

We don’t. For example: Judy has wealthy parents who can pay for her to attend an expensive private school with a low student to teacher ratio while Johnny lives with his poor mother and has to attend an urban public school with a high teacher to student ratio — do they receive the same education when they compete for admission at colleges years later. They studied the same subjects for the same twelve years. They took the same ACT/SAT tests. All of these are verifiable facts so then merit is the only fair way to make these decisions.

But this isn’t the case. Some wealthy parents are paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000 to give their children a leg up in their education. Of course the money advantage is greater than just better schools with better teachers. Wealthy parents can also afford tutors when their child needs extra help, several attempts at ACT/SAT until the child gets a better score, coaching on how to take ACT/SAT tests to insure better scores, their children’s extra curricular activities, and, most importantly, are comfortable paying the basic necessities of life for their children. The average American worker’s salary is $58, 260 so you can deduce from that not many parents can afford this particular advantage. Yet no one complains about this unfairness.

Well, you say, life is unfair. There is always going to be rich and poor. The rich will always have more money than the poor. There is nothing we can do about it.

Right. But then you are accepting wealth as an acceptable unfairness while railing against another unfairness — race. Having more money is no more merit than a person’s race. The wealthy child just was born into the right family. Doesn’t the extra money their parents spent on them diminish the achievements of those wealthy private school students? I mean, won’t they spend their whole lives wondering if they actually deserved their success or did their parents buy it for them? Poor things will never know the truth.

Merit is a meaningless concept when parents can spend $60,000 on their child’s education. Why bother spending that money if you can get the same education in an urban public school? That is a lot of money to spend for the same result. But, of course, wealthy parents spend this extra money because they know they are going to get a return on their investment. Their kids will get a much better education.

This better education gives them even more chances in life. Unsurprisingly many of the 70 schools on the list of the most expensive high schools are also known as feeder schools for Ivy League colleges. You know the Ivy League — the colleges of Presidents, Senators, Supreme Court Judges and CEO’s. These schools send between 10 % to 37% of their students to the Ivy League. Imagine that 70 feeder schools, almost all of them pricey private schools, supply the Ivy League with the students who then become the future leaders of the country. Well worth the $60,000 yearly price if you got it. There is nothing wrong with that. I get it, you want the best for your children.

On the other hand, it is more than a little disingenuous to complain about Affirmative Action when you have the money to get the best education while less financially endowed parents must live with public schools. Public schools, by the way, that wealthy people wouldn’t send their own children to. The present system of education is so unfair that nobody questions parents moving to richer school districts or sending their kids to private schools, yet little effort is made to improve the public school system. Which actually shows real interest in fairness.

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Governor DeSantis thinks that Florida teachers are in the business of sexual indoctrination. It isn’t happening but it’s scaring a lot of people needlessly which is precisely what DeSantis wants.

The most important thing to remember is that it isn’t happening. But instead of saying this over and over again, the people who oppose this law are saying “Don’t Say Gay.” But what is meant here is that a teacher might have to explain to a 2nd grader why Johnny has two mommies. What I fear some parents are thinking instead is why on earth do teachers need to say gay to 2nd graders. Let me repeat yet again, no one is explaining the joys of gay sex to 2nd Graders, or any sex, for that matter. It is a divisive political tool and nothing more. The law is not giving children any extra protection from being indoctrinated because no one is trying to indoctrinate them.

If there was indoctrination going on, and I can’t say this often enough — there isn’t, it would fail miserably. If your child identifies as a heterosexual, then no amount of indoctrination will change that. None. Zero. Nada. It will not happen.

The reason I know that is, as a gay man, I went through years of heterosexual indoctrination and still turned out gay. Even though the whole social structure I grew up in supports heterosexual relationships, even though the art I saw idealized heterosexual love, even though the religion I grew up only recognized heterosexual marriage, despite the fact the almost everyone I knew was heterosexual and I desperately wanted to heterosexual, I turned out gay.

There was also a strong social stigma against being gay. I grew up with a very real fear, unfounded thankfully, that every person I know and loved could turn against me if the learned I was gay. I could be fired from jobs for being gay. I could be arrested for being gay. Straight boys could get away with beating up a gays by saying the gay guy made a pass at him. Or the gay guy wouldn’t press charges because he somehow felt he deserved it. Still, despite all of the social support for heterosexuality and all the social pressure against being gay, I turned out gay.

You can’t make someone gay. Overbearing mothers don’t make you gay nor does distant fathers nor does playing with dolls or being a tomboy or any of a million different explanations. Right now, the only explanation, and I hate to quote Lady Gaga here, is that people are born that way and thus unable to change no matter how hard you try. This would also mean that heterosexuals are born that way as well. No amount of indoctrination is going to change someone’s sexual identity.

For DeSantis to claim that the Florida schools have been turned into sexual indoctrination centers is more than a little disingenuous. He is using gays, a group that doesn’t vote for him and is proportionately a small part of the Florida electorate, as a straw man. He wants to frighten parents into thinking that Florida teachers are trying to make their children gay or transgender.

I would ask him what the Florida teachers are actually doing to indoctrinate children.

Are they telling heterosexual children they are going to Hell just because they are heterosexual?

Are they forcing conversion therapy on heterosexual children? Which is, by the way, still legal in Florida and he supports. Parents can force their children to undergo this therapy against the wishes of the child. I am curious does this mean it would be OK for a parent to use conversion therapy on their heterosexual child to make them gay? If a parent can dictate their child’s preferred sexual identification, why not?

Are they forcing heterosexual children to take medication that makes them vomit when they see heterosexual pornography so that the child will learn to hate heterosexual sex? Or do they use electric shock therapy to stop children from being aroused by heterosexual sex?

Do they punish boys who like to play with trucks? What about girls who like to play with dolls?

If DeSantis really wanted to stop the indoctrination of children’s sexual identity, he might ponder making conversion therapy illegal and let the Florida teachers get back to their actual jobs of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.

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I never much liked school. For the longest time, I thought my parents hated me for sending me there every day.  I thought why on earth would anybody go to such a terrible boring place. I was an early advocate of do what you have a passion for, and, let me tell you, I had very little passion for school, so I put very little effort into it.  If I wasn’t interested in the subject I did the absolute maximum I needed to do to get a C.  Which was fine during the mid-1960’s, when I was growing up, C’s meant what C’s were supposed to mean, it meant you were average.  I was fine when they appeared on my report card, and, more importantly, so were my parents. 

My journey to being a C student really got going in the second grade.  This was when I took the Iowa Basics which, at that time, tested a child’s intelligence. The Iowa Basics were taken seriously.  You were given a questions book, an answer sheet, a strict time requirement a proctor to make sure you followed all the rules. The answer sheet was a page of unfilled ovals which students were to give their answers on by filling in the appropriate oval with a number 2 pencil. The proctor emphasized the importance of the number 2 pencil mark and also the need to stay within the boundaries of the oval.  If you failed these two simple instructions, your answers would be invalid, you would screw up the whole test and be considered a dim wit for the rest of your life and, since I went to Catholic schools, you would probably end up in Hell. 

Teachers could be blunt in my day.  If they thought you were stupid, they told you so. If you complained to your parents that your teacher called you stupid, your parents called you stupid too.  The teachers and the parents always agreed when the stupidity of the child was under discussion.  So, if the teacher thought you were going to Hell, it was her duty to let you know so that, perchance, you took her guidance seriously, you could at least make it to purgatory instead of rotting in Hell for eternity. The good old days. 

Anyway, I ran into a problem with my Iowa Basic test before I even had a chance to open the questions book. The answer sheet didn’t have enough ovals for my very long name – Thomas Bartholomew Fitzpatrick. Instead of notifying the test proctor of my dilemma, I fumbled around trying to figure out where I made my mistake. That this was the design of the test never occurred to me. So, while other kids were filling out the appropriate oval with their more manageably sized names, I was desperately trying to jam my full name onto the answer sheet.

Things came to a head when the proctor tried to start the test.  She asked if everyone had completed putting their name on the answer sheet and I had to admit I was struggling.  Of course, she became irritated with me for not bringing this to her attention earlier. I had ample time to complain and now I was going to delay the start of the test for everyone. How thoughtless of me. However, I am happy to report that she was equally stumped on how to proceed with getting my full name on the answer sheet.  She needed to call the principal who didn’t know what to do either but she had the good sense to realize that there was no good reason to hold up the test. She told the proctor to start the test and she would figure out what to do about the name later.   

So, there I was taking the test that would determine the course of my entire life. I was nervous wreck already. Full of questions and worries.  Why did my parents give me such ridiculously long name, didn’t they know about the ovals on the Iowa Basics?  Furthermore, because of my ridiculously long name, both the test proctor and the principal were angry with me.  The proctor particularly irritated because she looked foolish in front of the principal and took every opportunity to glare at me as if I was trying to subvert the Iowa Basic test she was proctoring thus dooming all these other children’s lives as they would be marked for life as dim wits along with me. And, finally, my fellow students, not knowing how long my name was so not understanding my dilemma, looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. How hard could it be to fill out an oval with a number 2 pencil.  To say I was nervous was an understatement, I was a wreck as I tried to pull myself together while under the watchful eye of every living soul in the room.  

The terrible pressure of that moment is the only explanation I have for my completely average score. Because, I am certain, if I hadn’t been so discombobulated by the stress of that day, I would have scored much higher. Instead, I scored smack dab in the middle. 50 percent of the American children scored above me, 49 percent scored below me. The good news, at least for me, my parents took the Iowa Basics seriously. If the Iowa Basics determined I was average, I was average. No reason to get their hopes up for Harvard and the Presidency for this child. From this point on, their only expectations of me from that point on was C student.

I can’t tell you how liberating it was to be a C student.  I was left alone to determine my fate. And, with such low expectations, all I had to do was find a job, pay my bills and not be a burden to society.  I am happy to say, with very little exertion on my part, I have met those expectations and had an awfully good time doing it. Just think, if in the second grade I had aced the Iowa Basics, I would still be battling the other smart kids so I could get my chance to maybe make it to the top of the heap, giving up nights of fun for working even harder so I could keep my hands on that greasy pole called success. I shudder at the thought that my parents could have chosen a less lengthy name.