An Interesting Article on Grading

University is not for everyone and that is okay; but, a society that demands everyone be university educated, in a sense, diminishes the value of such an education. Theoretical Physicists need advanced education; technical experts not necessarily. It is an uncomfortable topic when so much money and prestige is at stake--though, of course, if everyone has a degree, the prestige is not really there. Further, if the value of the degree is diminished, the corollary would be the value of the marks could also be diminished. Is an 'A' grade really an 'A' grade if everyone in the class gets an 'A'? It could indicate the marks are easily achieved and the material hardly difficult; it could mean there is no average person in the class; it could mean the marks are no longer worth what they once were. It is difficult to admit to any of these possibilities:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/education/26grades.html?_r=1&hpw

Educational Testing: 2 Articles Pro, 1 Video Con

Two articles on the value of testing within the school system. New York's new second in command is a former school Principal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/nyregion/14deputy.html?_r=1&hp

The second article is from the Guardian and discusses the impact of testing on school funding:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/14/primary-school-league-tables-close

Then, a video by Sir Ken Robinson, which I may have posted before but is worth sharing again, which discusses the benefits, or lack thereof, of testing in a changing technological world:



Just some ideas to consider....

Education, Seriously?

This is why education and intellectual thought is not taken seriously:



No different than sports stars or rock stars who don't write their own music, Ms Roberts was paid 1.6 million dollars for the above commercial. How can intellectual curiousity develop when we live in a world where a smile on a coffee ad is worth 1.6 million dollars and a personal support care worker hardly makes a living wage and she has been trained to do her job?

source for info.:http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/article/899828--how-julia-roberts-made-almost-2m-in-45-seconds?bn=1

NaNoWriMo: a novel writing month

The girls participate in the month-long "NaNoWriMo" novel writing event throughout November. They do not "do" English in a regular sense throughout November: no grammar, no analysis, no focused reading. They write for an hour everyday as a part of the "NaNoWriMo" contest; sometimes, they revise but the main aim is to be able to focus their minds on a single story or plot and develop it. Laura Miller has written an interesting blog on the uselessness of such an activity (http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/11/02/nanowrimo). Miller's main point is that the act of novel writing is defeated by the reality of the lack of readers. Everyone has something to say, few have a willingness to listen (or read). Of course, she is right. But, that does not mean the activity is pointless. My girlfriend is an adult literacy tutor; most of her clients have come through the education system, graduated, but still cannot read. Despite the fact their reading sessions are held in the library, very few of my friend's clients ever check out a book. I know of homeschoolers who argue systems of various sorts are prejudiced, discriminate against minorities, but, then, they, themselves, do not have books in their home or take their children to libraries. Many of these people have something important to say, sometimes people, like me, listen to them or read their blogs; more often than not, however, I don't. What Miller indicates is that of the many that try to communicate, only a few are read; ultimately, if one doesn't read well, one doesn't write well. I like the NaNoWriMo contest because it gives my daughters a chance to take their writing seriously; only one of them writes when she doesn't have to do it and the others need to feel a value to self-expression. The activity reveals the importance of being able to communicate well. It also validates their reading time; the girls read a lot, probably an average of four (4) hours a day--sometimes more, sometimes less. And, the interconnectedness of the two activities is displayed in this NaNoWriMo. And, that makes it worthwhile.

Cheating

Two articles on cheating in the graduate and post graduate arena:

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

and

http://www.independent.ie/education/cheating-students-allowed-to-graduate-2418541.html

And, an opinion piece from the Guardian in England that discusses how corporate America is removing education from the public sphere and making it a leader driven profession:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/15/education-schools

Maybe it is my bias, but I would think cheating and profit-driven education are linked. Ultimately, not education but success, in the profit orientation of the word, is currently governing the ways schools operate. It is sad.

A Tutor, A Mentor and A Failure

How to build my argument?

First an article from today's New York Times about a tutor/ mentorship program available to the wealthy, middle class unable to spend the time to insure their children complete their homework:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/nyregion/08homework.html?ref=education

It hardly bears worth mentioning, but why have children if one doesn't want to spend time with them?

However, the easiest way to insure a child's success in school is through parental support:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029121554.htm

Do tutors and mentors qualify?

But, then, there is the issue of quality. What happens when one's child finally gets to graduate school, passes all those exams, exceeds parental dreams? In Manitoba, it could all be for nought. The university there is currently allowing a student to graduate with his Phd despite failing the exams twice and arguing test anxiety after the second failure (to be clear, no mention was made of the student having this anxiety during previous graduate school level courses or undergraduate programs) of his or her exams:

http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/current.xml (if the link doesn't work, the interview is a podcast on CBC, date: November 9, 2010, The Current radio program)

Ultimately, if a child is taught and learns well, becomes an ethical human being, he or she must do it for themselves because, ultimately, it is only their look in the mirror that matters.

Education: U.S. at the U.N.

The American Secretary of Education speaks to UNESCO:



How many times does the man reference the word "education" ? Of all the places to mention, there is something horribly ironic discussing Haiti's educational needs the day its latest hurricane is expected to arrive....

Class and Education

Here is an article about the wealthiest students becoming interested in the areas of the Humanities such as Languages, History and Philosophy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/26/arts-degrees-wealthy-humanities-university

In particular, the article is interesting in light of Martha Nussbaum's book "Not for Profit" which has been mentioned in earlier posts (haven't had time to write the review but the book is really, really good). The Arts areas are becoming arenas for the rich and, if following Nussbaum's thinking, the privilege of Classical thought, the right to informed opinion and the ability to act on such views, is becoming their right as well.

Art, the study of Art, Dance, Drama and courses in the Humanities, such as History, English, Philosophy and Languages, encourage the recognition of the "Other" in society and a realization that all acts have consequences and must be considered in that light; these subjects enable critical and examined thought to develop. The past is not merely a litany of Historical facts but choices made in particular situations which involved specific moralities. Critical thought illustrates an elasticity of mind and a willingness to examine situations above the prevalent notions of cost analysis; it enables business men, for one, to anticipate the moral consequences of their choices as well as their profit, the long term repercussions of a dollar made fast rather than with a thoughtful approach.

The fact Art and its fellow Humanities are being removed from the classrooms of the average school indicate a privileging of Science and Math over the Humanities. Noam Chomsky has discussed the problems in Japanese culture that have arisen because the Japanese know and understand facts; they do not have imagination. Math is easy on one level because it is concrete; it is either right or wrong. Russian Math, currently becoming more predominant in some Universities (like U. of T.), is more imaginative and Logic based. The point is a straight forward student will be more obedient to the Math of the Japanese; the more imaginative student will explore the more elastic components of the Russian ideals. (I don't know enough of Japanese Culture to write it off. But, The Russians have also presented the world with Classical Ballet, great composers, great writers and a number of painters--a common reader should know their names (Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and the like).) And, one can't help but think of Kazuo Ishiguro who was raised in England and is a Japanese writer of the finest class ever. The point being, of course, Ishiguro's mind developed in a culture (England's) that used to celebrate the Humanities but is, currently, being overwhelmed by the needs of factual math.

The absence of a Classical background, according to Nussbaum, also leads to a less concerned voting class; voters act on selfish needs rather than the common good. It also prevents the formation of character and, particularly, the emotion of empathy. Humanist ideals encourage a more participatory electorate; a more concrete world, in a sense, is ensconced in what is rather than what can be. Further, if one looks into the future, an elite could develop because the majority of people will be ignorant, educated but prejudiced against the needs of the common good. In a way, the elite are being educated to lead the masses; a regular guy wants a decent job and his education is directing him away from a thoughtful consideration of the status quo. Chris Hedges' book, "Empire of Illusion" also corroborates this notion when one thinks of how education is evolving; people are distracted away from Classical, empathetic, considerate thought. It is a sad state of affairs and a quandary: for how does one remedy it when the consensus says there is no problem?

Technology and the Brain: In School

Just a collection of some articles about the use of technology in schools today:

The first is an interview with Don Tapscott and advocates greater technological usage in the classroom:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/08/11/f-school-tapscott.html


The second is about the Premier of Ontario changing his mind about cell-phones/ Blackberries in the classroom. Despite the advice of teachers and the fact cell/phones and Blackberries are not welcome in the Ontario Legislature, the Premier does not believe they are a distraction in classrooms:


http:articl//www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/dalton-mcguinty-ignites-debate-over-blackberrys-in-the-classroom/e1709339/


And, finally, an article by Oxford researchers that discuss the possible ways technology is changing the shape of the human brain and the worry this is causing. As an advocate of Classical Education and a strong believer in books rather than machines, this article has my complete endorsement. No to hammer the point home, I have read Marianne Wolfson's book "Proust and the Squid" and think the worrisome dependence of computers in the classroom of some concern.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/14/oxford-scientist-brain-change

Yes, I know this a computer blog, but, you should go read a book.

Liberal Thought

Currently, I am reading Martha Nussbaum"s "Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities." A book review will have to follow; however, in light of News International's sponsorship of schools (Academies) in the United States and England,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/12/rupert-murdoch-academy-schools

and the current investigation of the Koch brothers in the United States--I have to think Prof. Nussbaum may be on to something.

(Ps. The Koch brothers are as rich as Bill Gates, their father founded the John Birch Society and I, personally, am beginning to feel an almost a feudal sense of entitlement to the very rich developing in the world.)

Schedule, our regular attempt

Another homeschool Mom had a fantastic outline of her family's regular routine on her blog. Try as hard as we might, our schedule in no way resembles what ideally I would like. First, my daughters pretty much run the school and secondly, there are so many other things going on in this house, it is very hard to be constantly consistent. Our best attempt at a regular schedule is like this:

5-6am Mom up and on the computer to read the newspapers--call it guilt free wandering the net.

(okay, Mom still on the computer at 7:30)

7:30/ 8:00 Girls up, eating breakfast, dressing (including washing, tooth brushing and hair combing) , making beds.

9:00 Math: everyone does Math. It just worked out that I read somewhere it is best to do math in the morning and it was easiest to implement as part of the routine.

10:00 English: this includes grammar, composition and writing workshop. Emily and Emma have been known to use this time to work on their writing projects for NaNoWriMo and Elizabeth has been known to just read instead.

11:00 French: it has been a struggle to learn French. My French is not bad, as in not really good, but we are using a French copy of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and a dictionary. I dictate the French sentences, the girls copy and self-correct. It is taking forever but whenever we watch Harry Potter movies, they are in French.

11:30 Latin: I took Latin all through high school and we are using the same Cambridge course I used. The girls don't seem to mind it.

12:00 piano for whomever wants to do it while I make lunch. Sometimes Elizabeth or Emily will practice guitar.

1:00 piano practice for whoever's turn is next and Great Reading for the others. I know it is dictatorial to make sure the children read specific texts but, until Emily actually acts on her views of open revolt, it is the way it is.

2:00 Geography and Logic/ Rhetoric are taken concomitant with Great Reading and piano; books are switched around and music practice continues and, hopefully, everything gets done.

3:00 Generally, everybody is finished for the day except for Elizabeth. Her whole schedule shifts upwards when she is taking VLC courses. Needless to say, she sometimes skips stuff.

There is Art Wednesday night at a local studio; there is no school on Thursday as there are piano and guitar lessons during the day and ballet for Elizabeth and gymnastics for Emily and Emma at night; Friday, there is school during the day but Emily and Emma are at ballet during the evening and Saturday, there are gymnastics for Emily and Emma. Sunday, we do nothing and periodically, in the winter, we skip school to go skiing and, in the summer, we do school and also go to the beach. The classroom is in the basement; our library is there, too, and we have a lot of books. We do not watch t.v. during the week; if there is one rule in the house, that is it: NO T.V. during the week. The girls read a lot. I read a lot. Even my husband reads a lot--though, since he discovered the application of curiousity to google, he also googles a lot.

Our routine is in no way set in stone. The University of Toronto has been known to offer tutoring sessions in Math on a Sunday morning; there are places and to go and people to see when we want; we love going to the museum to just wander around; we love libraries and Chapters bookstores and second-hand bookstores; and sometimes, there are days when we do nothing and others when we do a heck of a lot but none of it applicable to school. Sometimes I feel more important writing what I think we do down than what we actually do--the girls all sew, knit, embroider, crochet, ride, volunteer--you don't learn all that stuff unless something else gives. So, in conclusion, the bit about Math is true and the "no t.v." rule is true and the reading is true--everything paid for is true and everything else is generally kinda-sorta practiced. Now, I feel better.

Classical Schooling et al

Here is a great essay by John Allemange of the Globe and Mail discussing the relevance of a good Classical education: (My link didn't work the first time around and I would ask readers to credit the Globe and Mail and Mr. Allemange for the essay as I am re-publishing without permission):

The great truth of democracy, at least when it's working well, isn't about the levels of turnout at the polling stations or the noise from the opposition benches when someone who calls himself the leader gets carried away with his own sense of power. What's much more fundamental to the 2,500-year-old experiment of people trying to rule themselves can be found in its basic sense of humanity – the ability, as University of Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in Not for Profit, “to see other people as human beings, not simply as objects.”

We don't do this instinctively – it takes training. Animals might be collective by nature, but they are hierarchical in their attitudes toward self-preservation and exceedingly narrow in their range of sympathetic feelings. Authoritarian cultures and regimes exploit this us-and-them survival impulse to their advantage, but a democracy glories in achieving the best version yet of the good life thanks to what are traditionally called liberal arts – the broad-based critical education that freed people from all-knowing authority and allowed them to see both themselves and others as fully human.

But the more this good life is repositioned and redefined as material goods, where objects have become more intrinsically human than people themselves, the faster the liberal arts have fallen out of favour – in the academy, the economy and society at large, where a doctor, an X-ray technician and a former engineering student are now charged with wanting to bomb us into oblivion.

Clearly jihadists are the sworn enemies of liberal democracy, but can there be a connection between the disappearance of the liberal arts and the rise of homegrown terrorism? Or put another way, can we deter violence by teaching young people to think more clearly and compassionately than they now do in a technology-obsessed society where democracy is too often defined by its unthinking excesses? Prof. Nussbaum believes so.

As the culture of homegrown terrorism was coming into being, she undertook a study of the Indian province of Gujarat, where religious violence and an ambitious modernization of the educational system starkly exist side by side. “Gujarat is a classic place,” she says, “where schools have cut out all trace of critical thinking and the humanities, and placed a relentless focus on the technical training of people going into engineering and computer science and so on. I do think that is conducive to a culture where you blindly follow authority and respond to peer pressure. Lacking the empathy developed by a more critical kind of education, these tendencies reign unopposed.”

Reuters

Indian men carry a charred body of a train passenger in Gujarat, Feb. 27, 2002. A train carrying Hindu activists was set on fire, sparking further violence.

In 2002, Hindu mobs in Gujarat killed 2,000 Muslims, a pogrom that Prof. Nussbaum traces to “technically trained people who do not know how to criticize authority, useful profit-makers with obtuse imaginations.” We're reminded of that willing deference to higher authority and that failure of imagination when someone among us is arrested and charged with, as the law politely says, conspiracy to facilitate an act of terrorism. It's a disturbing throwback to an animalistic kill-or-be-killed relationship when the calculating minds of homegrown plotters can so casually reduce us from compassionate humanity to objects of disaffection.

Because we remain human beings, despite the best efforts of our enemies to get past that fact, we can also visualize the pain and the suffering and the horror that are the essential parts of the bomber's objectifying obliteration. This intellectual leap, sadly, is the great strength of what Northrop Frye called the educated imagination. If we've learned to share the strong feelings of characters in War and Peace and Madame Bovary, how can we not also identify with the sufferings in our own time and place.

The bombs didn't go off, and yet this reaction is distressingly powerful, at least in those who still know how to feel. But here's the essential conundrum with so-called homegrown terrorists: How do they come to be missing this visceral empathy, and how can they so easily shrug off the fellow feelings of the democracy they were raised in? Is there a hole in their soul? Something about their upbringing, their formation, their training that has gone missing or was never there?

Khurram Sher hams it up during a 2008 auditon for Canadian Idol in Montreal.

Khurram Sher hams it up during a 2008 auditon for Canadian Idol in Montreal.

A young man who plays a brilliant game of ball hockey, does a jokey turn for Canadian Idol auditions and has achieved all that was needed to get through McGill University medical school doesn't sound like the classic outsider. To the contrary. Khurram Sher is undeniably one of us – whoever we are, to use democracy's necessary qualifier.

So if we have a problem with him, then we should have a problem with our society and its shifting values that make it harder to decide what's good and what's bad. Is there a dehumanizing strain infecting the Western value system? The late historian Tony Judt thought so. “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today,” he wrote in Ill Fares the Land. “For 30 years, we have made a virtue of the pursuit of material self-interest: Indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose.”

The supreme virtue of self distorts liberal values, which strive to incorporate other people and other ways of thinking into the ongoing argument. Any education or career directed toward material enrichment is necessarily going to give short shrift to the competing needs and views of others. A humanities education is famously success-averse in financial terms, and yet, Prof. Nussbaum says, “there are reasons to think it pushes people in the direction of more empathetic relations with others.”

Studies by University of Kansas psychology professor Daniel Batson suggest that those who are better able to take the perspective of other people are more likely to help them – essentially, that there's a connection between vivid, imaginative empathy and real-life moral behaviour. But achieving that high level of emotional engagement is key to motivating altruism, which becomes not a detached act of charity but a powerful human-to-human bond.

The liberal arts value emotional introspection alongside critical inquiry. Does that mean liberal-arts graduates are less likely to become cold-blooded homegrown terrorists than those who haven't read their Shakespeare? That seems a stretch, or as the scientists would say, we don't have research on that.

“Hot feelings are always going to wipe out critical thinking,” says Janice Stein, director of the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. “You can be a great critical thinker, but when you feel humiliated and marginalized, rightly or wrongly, the power of thought is overwhelmed.”

Teaching Empathy
The strange and interesting thing about many homegrown terrorists is that they themselves do not appear to have suffered intense humiliation and marginalization in their own lives. If anything, they have achieved the outward trappings of success.

But success is relative, as any good liberal-arts students knows. Status and money do not ensure happiness, according to psychologists who study the good life. We overestimate the happiness of big earners, without realizing that money brings pressures and conflicts that counteract the more basic and accessible pleasures of friends, family, conversation, creative idleness. Imagine being programmed for medical school from your earliest years, snaring a rare place at a good school with your A+ average, working desperately to keep up with your fellow overachievers, and then feeling empty at the end when the payoff isn't the paradise you expected. Could you talk yourself into resentment, or look for a higher purpose that would channel your feelings into someone's warped idea of a greater good?

“ We teach empathy – what would it be like if I were in this person's shoes?”— Cathy Risdon, McMaster University professor of family medicine

“Once you're in medicine,” says Cathy Risdon, a professor of family medicine at McMaster University, “what might have been fantasized about the power of belonging quickly dissipates, because it has the same mundane humane textures and politics and cruelties and generosities as any other field of play. I could easily imagine that the satisfaction of yearning to belong wouldn't turn out as one might expect it should. And then there are other groups you could turn to where that yearning might be satisfied more. The closeness and the secrecy and the centrality of purpose that go with people doing covert things might become very attractive.”

Dr. Risdon helps to design curriculum at McMaster, and part of her goal is to find ways to humanize highly technical and authority-driven medical training. “The foundation of all the incredible technical knowledge we expect of doctors is acquired through training that is all about generalization and abstraction – personal experience is regarded as highly dubious.” Her aim is to make young people who are focused on technical mastery see the particulars of the individual human being known as the patient, to turn the medical autocracy, if you like, into more of a democracy.

“We teach empathy – what would it be like if I were in this person's shoes? – as a way of working with the particulars of a human being. And I think the humanities are a way of doing that, since the narratives and stories that come from the humanities are always the particular. It does force students to think about how their own experience relates to the theme of a story, that medicine is not just about the universals. But developmentally people can have difficulty exercising that level of imagination, particularly in their 20s.”

A good liberal-arts education takes these emotionally underdeveloped twentysomethings and compels them to think as if they were a character in Pride and Prejudice or Huckleberry Finn or Crime and Punishment, to mix with those unlike themselves in Dante's Inferno, Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War and Montaigne's Essays, to challenge their theories with unsettling particulars instead of sheltering in an authoritative generalization. It doesn't necessarily come with virtuous ethical content, but it at least promotes a variety of approaches that steer impressionable minds away from the seductive haven of the single universal truth.

Jihad is one of those all-purpose, all-powerful truths, a know-it-all answer to an equivocating liberal world. And in a faith where no one can claim orthodoxy, radical Islam has an easier job of spoon-feeding the one true story to uncritical young people. Interestingly for humanities graduates, there is something highly McLuhanistic about the improbable success of jihadists in recruiting from the impressionable West.

“Marshall McLuhan described electronic communication as a kind of external nervous system,” says Feisal G. Mohamed, a Milton scholar at the University of Illinois. “The sense of connection is different from print, which created an imagined national community. Now, we're no longer nations of readers of print, but people connected by impulse from around the globe who seem to find reflected their sort of primordial instinct in co-religionists and people of the same culture. For this reason, the plugged-in generation seems more radical than their immigrant parents.”

Their schooling, then, has to contend with Internet preachers who challenge them to take on the marginalization of Muslims elsewhere, a role-playing game with potentially catastrophic consequences.

The humanities' limits
But if you're going to counteract the strange appeal of jihadists, can you really hope to succeed with something like Western philosophy, the product of the kind of Enlightenment secularism that true believers despise? Or if you just want to make more empathetic doctors, is it really necessary to look outside the field to find the required humanity?

Nav Persaud, a family-medicine resident and graduate of University of Toronto medical school who also studied philosophy and psychology at Oxford, is well placed to compare and contrast. “I think I'd worry far more about philosophy students than medical students,” he says. “I seem to recall rubbing shoulders with far more misanthropes in philosophy class than in medical school.”

Critical thinking was a key part of Dr. Persaud's medical education, along with training in ethical behaviour. Students are evaluated according to how well they interact with patients, he says, and if people find their doctors cold and aloof, that's because “you're trained in your professional life to focus on the facts necessary to make a professional decision. But in the end, the overall goal is to help people, to be mindful of what's best for them.”

Which, of course, makes it seem even more perplexing when someone like Dr. Sher is charged, or when 29-year-old British National Health Service doctor Bilal Abdullah was convicted in 2008 of trying to kill Londoners outside a West End nightclub before attempting a suicide attack on the Glasgow airport the next day.

“As a physician, I feel shame when another physician is charged,” Dr. Persaud says. “There's a big disconnect. It's definitely hard to reconcile with what a doctor does taking care of patients on a daily basis.”

Searching for a connection, he glimpses it not in medicine as such but in the glory perceived to be associated with the job. “Some people are attracted to the idea of becoming a doctor because it's a respected position in society. And maybe that need for recognition has a counterpart in the praise and notoriety you might get from a subset of people who support terror.”

There’s not much the liberal arts can do about the yearning for fame in the age of celebrity – pointing out its hollowness seems like a curiously antiquarian pursuit when even a graduate of McGill medical school currently awaiting trial on terrorism charges can be seen on YouTube singing an Avril Lavigne tune.

Edmonton-born Prof. Mohamed is convinced that there is a role for the humanities curriculum in banishing the kind of parochialism where radical Islam flourishes. But, to succeed in winning over those who resist the triumphalism of the West, he insists that the do-gooding humanities need to remake themselves.

“I think there has to be a re-enrichment of liberal education that's more alive to other traditions. You can't have a circling of the wagons around the Western tradition because you believe it has a monopoly on humane conduct. Because we know the humanist tradition is more conflicted than that. Milton, after all, was a famous champion of liberty, but he was also consistently anti-Catholic and fundamentally anti-democratic. It's not that terrorists are missing out on a traditional liberal education, that they need to learn their Plato or their Milton. The problem is that they don't know their own tradition and haven't studied the Islamic strain of humanism.”

That said, at a personal level, he notes that reading the novels of Philip Roth helped him better understand his identity as an Egyptian Canadian and enabled him to realize how the minority experience of feeling isolated was part of the mainstream North American story. “One of the virtues of humanities education,” he says, “is the way it reveals to us that we live in a world that is thick with culture and history.” Which is why the first-generation immigrant kids in the Canadian suburbs should be learning something good and useful about themselves from the profound otherness of the Jewish-American novel.

But that means there have to be students who will shortcut their economic advancement in order to hear the tale, and a broader society that will value this liberal use of the mind not as an intellectual distraction, but as the prime component of both peace and happiness. If all else fails, there's the scare story of the man who put too much faith in the promises of the job market. Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 terrorists, was a quick-witted engineering student who trained in Germany but was crushed when he couldn't find work after returning to Egypt. Think of him and his frustrations when the decision-makers promise to treat higher education as job training. And think what those students are missing whose intellectual explorations are cut off by too much practicality.

John Allemang is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.

*

School Structure Explored through Other People's Ideas

During World War Two, Walt Disney made American propaganda films that depicted the evil of Nazi indoctrination; it was done through the school system:



Here is a post justifying the free market economy and the right of libertarians to make choices about schools and the role of parent support, financially and otherwise, in education:



Then, here is a great speech by Noam Chomsky (because I love the guy) on the influence of school structure on freedom of thought:



Further criticism by Alvin and Heidi Toffler on how current school structures are not creating creative people and how the institutions themselves were originally modeled on factory ideals:



And, now two conclusions that reflect my worries. An ad from the New Brunswick board of Education:



Please note the ad. is long and well-put together and there is no voice over. Do you think they realized the importance of the old fashioned stand-by, reading, when they put this advertisement together and publicized it?

And, finally, a brief article from the Press Association about standardized testing in British Schools published in today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/9240241


I don't know what summary type conclusion to make except there is still value in reading, the current school model indoctrinates children in whatever labour model is popular, schools are intentionally non-creative places and, if you choose to put your children in school, the best way to insure a school works is active parental participation. It strikes me that there is criticism of schools from all sides, right, left and middle; the only thing everyone is sure of is that current structures are not working but no one has the ideal remedy.

My children read an average of 3-4 hours a day and we are currently not "schooling;" my point is the easiest way to begin to educate your children is turn off the t.v. and read to your kids or have them read to you. Even the illiterate can make up stories to go with pictures and that will help children learn to read and that act alone can insure academic success. But, it does have to be done every day. I don't know about all this technology in the school place. If children don't read, I cannot see how a computer reading for them helps them. Just my two cents.

Book Review: More money than Brains

Laura Penny, an academic from the East Coast has recently written this vitriolic rant about how stupid people are in charge of the world and eggheads, deemed lazy but intellectual, are somehow the repository of blame for all that is wrong with the world. I loved the ideas in the book; its style, not so much. However, Ms Penny makes valid criticisms when she discusses the current status of intellectualism in society. Market capitalization is constantly seen as a positive in the media despite the growing evidence capitalism is heading for a fall. Like Matthew Stewart, she constantly questions the validity of some business school programs when basically they amount to expensive networking opportunities. She wonders about the state of educational systems when numerous graduates of high school programs are almost inarticulate and illiterate. She questions the constant right wing criticism of government and the hypocrisy when government is necessary for companies that "are too big to fail."

If anything, Ms Penny can be seen as not harsh enough in her criticism of conservative ideologies that are currently dominating political rants. Ms Penny makes the point discussion really isn't happening when political ideologues insult one another rather than participate in a debate with each other. Further, she makes the most important point that silence is the dominant culture despite the idea that we live in a blogosphere of thousands of ideas; so many voices ultimately are saying the same thing and it is inane. There really are no valid opinions. No one has credentials anymore because the conservative way of thinking questions the validity of credentials. Worse yet, and this is not explored by Ms Penny, what happens when credentials are not credible? Case in point are current MBA programs, such as the one at Royal Roads University, whereupon a BA degree can be equated to life experience and a "graduand" permitted to work at post secondary level. The very notion diminishes the credibility of a BA and the MBA; although, in the working world, that MBA graduate may be entitled to a better salary based on questionable academics alone.

It is hard not to rant when thinking of Ms Penny's writing; her disdain for the lack of public discourse in so many areas is infectious. She is absolutely right that there is no respect for the thoughtful or considered opinion. The world, right now, is dominated by speedy satisfaction not level-headed thought. It is a book well worth reading although a headache may also result. The writing style is so loud and so vigorous, it can cloud the message; sadly, in some ways, Ms Penny almost echoes some of those she criticizes...a "Bill O'Reilly" of the page but, at least, she has content.

Plagiarism

Here is an article on the current state of plagiarism in American Universities:

www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?hp

It made me wonder about the authenticity of original thought and work; the student editor at the end of the article does argue most students who do plagiarize are lazy, they are not ignorant of their habits, and fully know they are stealing someone else's ideas. My bigger concern, which is saying something, is the method by which some universities and academics tend to excuse this behaviour as if it is some how acceptable and cannot be helped in a growing media and technologically savvy world. It is still stealing; downloading files be they music or movies, television or ebooks, that have not been bought and are not free, is robbing an original producer of authorship, creativity and productivity. I don't know how there can be moral justification for the behaviour.

The story of Helene Hegemanne is a good example. This author never excused her scrapbooking of experiences of the Berlin nightclub scene; she made a pastiche of a variety of other people's experiences and published them. She almost dared the publishing elite of Germany to say she was wrong and they cowed. So, in a way, her act of literary transgression was accepted and justified and no one was willing to say she was stealing--which, in fact, she was. Her act also highlights a growing trend of ignorance in the world; her work had to pass through a number of editors before someone clued in to the fact the work was an act plagiarism. And, I imagine by then it was too late and too much money invested. Either there is so much information available today, it cannot be sifted through and original thought found--which is debatable in light of the numerous programs designed to fight plagiarism, or people really don't read enough and skim through information lightly rather than actually reading and interpreting it. Thus, they get caught really not having read thoroughly.

Marianne Wolfe's book, "Proust and the Squid" comes to mind when one thinks about reading as an act in itself and the way in which the brain changes when reading is done successfully. Technology is generally helpful in the way a card catalogue used to be helpful in libraries; however, it cannot replace in-depth interpretation. It cannot replace the time needed to acquire knowledge through critical thought. What is most scary about this article is the way some academics in the American university system acknowledge this behaviour as acceptable. What kind of teachers are they if they find a student's lack of original thought credible? What does it say about their teaching methods and marking schemes if students are welcome to find and use someone else's original thought? This is an example of "dumbing" down academic expectations.

It is simply wrong to "cut'n'paste" an article from Wikipedia and take credit for it; the fact a student mentioned in the article didn't even bother to learn how to adjust the script for their paper illustrates the intellectual development of some students. Obviously, the person knew they had taken an article from someone else, why he wouldn't feel the responsibility to credit it is curious, almost daring. I would argue someone who needs to plagiarize knows they are not up to the task of independent thought; someone who needs to excuse plagiarism and justify its existence is not a good teacher. I would wonder about the credibility of their independent thought,too.

Socialization

Here is a copy of a Valedictorian Speech currently making the rounds on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=lf#!/note.php?note_id=10150228823270722&id=239764686682&ref=mf

I think it explains the problems of socialization among children and teens better than I ever could. Why is it people somehow think peer pressure is okay and a normal method of socialization but meeting and talking to people of various ages and interests not socialization? How do you debate the issue with parents who obviously support the former and condemn the latter?

Spelling

Actually said: "That 'Google's' quite something...if you know how to spell"...after putting in the word "sextent" instead of "sextant."

Books, books and more books

Here is a brief list of books my 11 year old daughter has read in the past seven months:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twilight, Eclipse and New Moon by Stephanie Meyers
Dante's Inferno (half of the book, but she's not finished, yet)
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (Prologue and The Wife of Bath's Tale)
Sir Gawain and The Green Knight Anonymous author
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Pamela by Samuel Richardson

This is an incomplete list; some of the books were required reading from the Great Reading lists in "The Well-Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Bauer and some are books Emily just happened to pick up to read. The point I want to make is my youngest daughter is capable of reading good quality fiction; although, she quite enjoyed Stephanie Meyers' books, she did not consider them good quality. I thought they were like candy for the brain but Emily is the one who read them repeatedly.

There is something terribly sad when one reads reviews of the new Ipad from Apple or of the Kobo reader; they are determined satisfactory based on a reader's ability to read a story quickly. For the time being, a good old fashioned book is still read faster than technology and still weighs less. But, to be honest, that is hardly indicative of a person's ability to grasp information, think on it and interpret it. Speed might be convenient but is hardly relevant when encountering a good tale; some stories need time to be told and swallowed and digested comfortably. Maybe there are pieces of information that can be skimmed and quickly inculcated but I doubt they are literary masterpieces. I don't know if literary masterpieces can be written on a computer and immediately published (and I am not being ironic). But judging the speed and quality of a lot of current books, I find a lot of writing superficial.

The one thing I have begun to notice, as both reader and writer, is the ignorance of an awful lot of writers. I wonder if the superficiality of the Ipad and the Kobo reader will increase this trend? My children read books; all of them have read or are reading the Bible and the Koran--not because I am big-time religious but because so much of world literature is dependent on a familiarity with such works. They are important pieces of writing that need to be thought about--similarly, important books by Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dante, the Morte D'Arthur and other books are important works to be thought about. I know of an English college professor (a graduate of an university) who had never heard of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina." Not everyone has to have read the book, but it is a demonstration of ignorance not to have heard of it. I keep wondering if the Ipad will lead to a mere familiarity with a Wikipedia definition rather than an actual encounter with the novel. I don't know but I do find the latest trends in some literature worrisome.

The Guardian makes a mockery of some of these concerns with their latest book lists, although some of them are quite relevant and others amusing:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/bestbooks

The Value of History

In today's Guardian (July 10, 2010), Niall Ferguson the well-known Conservative historian makes a case for his revitalization of history curricula in England. He wants greater use of television, role playing games and a cohesive narrative that explains Western cultural domination. The article can be read here:

//www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/09/television-war-games-niall-ferguson

(Sorry, I can never get my links to work.) Anyhow, Ferguson wants more visits to battle fields and less time at historical houses and museums. In one sense, he wants history to be more reactive and real to children; in another, he is making it a game with a capitalist bias and a positive slant towards American Culture, English Culture and all round imperial loyalties.

I have read Ferguson's books "Empire" and "Colussus" and for American readers, "Colussus" is Ferguson's attempt to narrate American history; his thoughts are clear, concise, his research exacting, the fact he omits to consider the value of the American Slave trade on a market economy important and demonstrative of his bias. (This was noted first by an Herman Melville biographer--important because Melville was a noted abolitionist).

Ferguson is a conservative which makes his decision to make the art of learning about history a game somewhat questionable--unless, of course, he is considered an author or rights holder of the game and entitled to royalties. History isn't a game and trying to encourage children to appreciate their past via a game actually diminishes historical value. In light of my earlier posting about the issues in the Texan school board, I would like to suggest this type of act is quite dangerous. For example, Thomas Jefferson is an extremely important character in American history. He wrote or drafted the American Declaration of Independence and believed strongly in the division between Church and State; he was also influenced by the changing role of science in the quest for the nature of truth; he was a direct descendant of Enlightenment thinkers; he was most likely a deist and not a practicing Christian; all of these thoughts are important to the nature of history and not easily explained in a game. In English History, Ferguson suggests children can be made aware of Winston Churchill's role in the Second World War and why he was a more important person after the start of the War than before through the interactions of character based play. Ferguson lives in a country where Churchill's political endeavours are still questioned and his impact still felt; to simplify his role to a game is an insult. Obviously, I am more aware of Jefferson than Churchill but I do think the argument still stands.

I don't know how to teach history best; my children learn it in conjunction with geography but we are Canadian and our whole history, native or otherwise, has been determined by a response to our geography and climate. In a sense, it is much easier to react to weather than to cultural enterprise. American history has evolved and is in constant tension with its religious past; the first groups of settlers in the Americas were Enlightenment thinkers and they argued for freedom of religion; the second group were Puritans escaping religious persecution and they wanted a Christian nation. Obviously, I am being simplistic but my points do highlight the need to approach history cautiously and with respect; a game perspective is not going to do it--even a Sims approach won't work.

There is a great Canadian writer, Eric Walters, who has written short novellas about incidences in Canadian history; the target audience is grade 5 but it is a great idea. Small events are discussed and real characters are mentioned but overall the idea is to explore more, that there is a story or history beyond the narrative. Perhaps, that is the greatest failing with Ferguson's idea; his project for the English history student is to summarize history as if it can be explained simply by market forces and military dominance. It doesn't work that way--there are clashes between different ways of thinking, needs that are required and motivations to be explored--all of which must be considered for a sense of history to develop. I don't know the best way for children to learn it though I would make the argument an historian making a game of it in England is demonstrating his desperation.

Sometimes I wonder if students are afraid of a challenge. Of course, the litany of a long list of dates to be memorized is hardly learning history; but, those dates do give a foundation on which to create connections. It would be great if every history teacher could explore their favourite topics to their heart's delight; but there are fundamentals that must be known and are requisite for each country; it is how one builds an identity. Maybe in Niall Ferguson's world that kind of nation building is detrimental to his world view; I beg to differ. I think a great amount of respect for difference can develop once one is secure in one's own identity; gosh, that almost sounds prescriptive for child rearing.

Teens

Something to think about....

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200703/trashing-teens

Stanley Fish on Teacher Evaluations and Texas

The A & M University, among others in Texas, wants to change the student-teacher relationship into one of customer-supplier. There would be evaluations that would be based on approval protocols and questionnaires filled in the by the students. The general idea would be that students know best how they need to learn and could demand teachers adjust their styles to their accommodation. Stanley Fish, a highly esteemed teacher, has written a two-part essay (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/deep-in-the-heart-of-texas/) on this idea for the New York Times. Obviously, he doesn't approve and methodically proves why such evaluations do not result in the better education of the student.

An important point which Professor Fish fails to consider is the current view of the Texas Board of Education on American History. The Board is revising American History and removing or reducing the status of important players and ideas, such as the role of Thomas Jefferson and the idea of the division between State and Church, from the school system. Thus, children in grades 1-12 are being taught a slanted and completely biased view of American History. Some thinkers would argue they are being taught incorrectly but the Texan School Board finds these changes more right than wrong. The Board is currently governed by an extremely right-wing group with a strong Christian agenda. The fact exists that Texan children are not being taught correctly, or with all the information required, to have an unbiased or thoroughly informed opinion of American History. Thus, students are graduating from a system in which they have not been properly educated. Thomas Jefferson is an important character in the history of the United States; he was a hypocrite and human but he strongly believed in the division between Church and State. Anyhow, in Professor Fish's essay, he fails to consider the impact of such ignorance on an University.

If students are taught to expect a customer-service approach to education, and they have been poorly educated from the time they began education, they are not educated. They are indoctrinated. Their expectations are biased from the beginning of their education and, if they only accept what they expect, they are not taught to think but to respond. Further, if a state-run school advocates this sort of approach, even if a private university does, the institutions are failing the students. Professor Fish argues these ways of thinking are becoming dominant modes of thought because it is thought Universities are over-run by faculty left-wingers and researchers inspired by science and not profit. Of course, he is right; Universities are research institutions after all. What is worrisome is how educational systems can continue to exist freely if this market approach continues to impinge further upon them.

Teachers, Parents and Education

Here is a story from the New York Magazine about how President Obama is taking on teachers' unions; it is as though they are the reason children in the U.S. are failing academically:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

The article gives a cogent grasp of political developments in the changes in educational practice. It is extremely political; but, then, for the amounts of money involved, that fact is hardly unexpected. There are a few thoughts missing from the criticism of teachers and the overall criticism of the American educational system. I think some of the thoughts may also apply to Canadian considerations.

First, the role of parenting tends to be overlooked in a critical approach to education. Teachers can assign homework, can ask students to read, can ask for projects to be accomplished according to a deadline; if parents do not cooperate with teachers, if they do not encourage students to fulfill these tasks, any condemnation of the teachers is futile. The reality is parents create most of the excuses children use to deter homework. No one wants to say little johnnie cannot read because he does not practice reading; he does practice hockey or basketball or whatever sport because sport is paid for directly, schooling is via taxes.

Secondly, children have lots of computer gadgets and they are a distraction; parents buy them and to think little johnnie cannot exist without a cell phone is to demean little johnnie and to excuse the parents' behaviour; if a child needs to be in constant contact with a parent while he or she is in school, the child is handicapped socially. The reality is most parents assign a cell phone to assist with their work schedules and not for their children's needs. It is a selfishness with which the school must accommodate.

Lastly, parents are often in opposition to teachers. They are viewed as the enemy because, like it or not, they are often the first to tell a parent little johnnie cannot read; no parent wants to hear about their child's lack of accomplishment. It is easier to say a teacher is a failure than to admit their child in one. And, to admit they participated in that failure.

As someone who has withdrawn their child from the school system, I am sometimes regarded as someone highly critical of teachers. I am not although I do not think they are perfect; however, I do believe a lot of parents criticize the system without considering their approach to it. In my experience, parents are more of a problem than any child; children are always great, parents not so much. And, an important caveat, most teachers are parents, too.

The Joy of Being Gifted

If it takes tutoring for a 3 year old to be listed as gifted, they aren't:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/nyregion/01gifted.html?hpw

A parent or teacher who can believe a child at the age of 3 can be intellectually determined is obviously lacking some intellectual content themselves. It is tragic to read what children must endure in order to assuage their parents' ego and insecurities about their own intellectual levels. It doesn't say much about the credibility of their own education if a parent can believe their child's intellectual capabilities can be bought. At some point a child should be able to read, write and do math; the expectation that a 3 year old should be fully capable or somehow on the road to such capabilities is a naive grasp of childhood development. It is very sad to think parents would invest money in a tutoring program rather than just spend some time with their offspring to see for themselves what incredible kids they have.

Unschooling: Education without a Building

This post has been motivated by the following article on Radical Unschooling:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/parenting/parents-defend-radical-unschooling-instilling-proper-values/story?id=10422823 ( I can't get the link to work)

These unschooling parents come across as nimrods when unschooling is actually a valid choice for some parents. Unlike the irresponsible attitude of these two who seem to equate neglect with choice, Unschooling is a highly workable way of educating one's children. However, it is hard, it is focused and it requires, at least, one, if not two, parents participating. Every moment in life is seen as an educational moment; children and parents constantly (!!!!) participate in a life-long, integrated learning experience driven primarily by the child's curiousity. It is not for everyone.

My husband and I got into a debate about this issue. My husband considers our family an Unschooling one primarily because the children are educated outside of an institutional school. He figures we, as parents, are in a dictatorship role that will be resolved when the children can think critically for themselves. After all, the girls have been mandated to go to piano lessons, ballet and swimming since before they were in school and throughout the period of their absence from school. They are required by us to read, write and do math.

My feelings are different. Our family has always been highly motivated intellectually. Both my husband and I have always read to the children--since, in fact, they were in utero. The point being the girls have been raised in an environment where education has been encouraged. It's that difference between encouragement and dictatorship with which I have a problem. My husband argues we choose the subjects; I counter with the fact the girls do the work as an act of responsibility. For example, after they have breakfast (which I believe is the most important meal of the day and there is no excuse for missing), the girls either do their work or don't do it but there is an expectation it will be done by day's end and it is. I certainly don't chase after them to do their school work and we have had evenings doing French together but, and to be fair to my husband, neither my husband nor I consider the work labour. Maybe that is the problem with how Unschoolers are viewed.

Unschooling is a labour of education and an intense form of parental love; it is a life style choice. Perhaps it is unfair to say not everyone wants to spend 24/7 with their children, but I do think that is the most uncomfortable issue with Unschooling. It is, in a way, non-stop parental involvement. This leads me to wonder why the family in the clip above would consider their lifestyle choice as acceptable or why ABC would consider it a form of education. Doing nothing is not a form of education, it is a form of neglect. A child being left to form their own thoughts without the benefit of guidance of any sort is not going to have an independent life; how are they prepared? Who is helping to prepare them to achieve independence? Are they even being introduced to the concept?

I think so many are critical of Unschoolers because they have this idea it is a do-nothing form of education when it is an intense form of parenting. The idea reminds me of people I know who attended a Waldorf school in the city; it was expensive and the building was beautiful and the family thought everything was peachy keen. Except, the Waldorf philosophy has a number of premises which include a family contract not to have a television, a single teacher for the 7 or 8 year program and the idea of consumerism as an anathema. Anyhow, the school in question was obviously not following the philosophy but my friends were the greater problem because they had not done their homework. I tend to think those who evaluate Unschoolers critically must do their homework, too. Otherwise they present a very biased interpretation of the method which is hardly fair nor reasonable.


p.s. My husband has read this post and thinks I obviously have issues with the word "dictator" and he thinks I am so idealizing the world in which we live, he wishes he did live there. He has no problem with a dictatorship which some can euphemize as guidance; there are always educational expectations and to not admit it is to fail one's child for their role in society. Kids have to read, write and do math.

More on Books

Found this article on the Toronto Star website:

ttp://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/article/797551--children-who-grow-up-with-books-fare-better

Children who grow up in a book filled world tend to do better. Miriam Wolf has written a brilliant book, "Proust and the Squid" and discusses how the actual act of reading changes the neurotransmitters in the brain. Reading is a learned trait. It is not an instinctive one; it must be taught and learned. Therefore, children who grow up being read to are going to do better; children who choose to read are actually improving their brain's development. Further, as The Star link indicates, children from lower income levels who read have a greater chance of improving their prospects. Reading educates.

Literacy and Numeracy

The International Association for the Advancement of Educational Achievement released the 2006 assessment of current world educational standards (http://www.iea.nl/pirls20060.html). The top performers are Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore; importantly, these nations link literacy with numeracy. For example, math problems are comprehensive:

Basil, who is older than Peter by one year minus one day, was born on January 1, 2002. What is the date of Peter's birthday?
a) January 2, 2003 b) January 2, 2001 c) December 31, 2000 d) December 31, 2002 e) December 31, 2003
(sample taken from Math Kangaroo, International Contest, Canada 2007)

Children need to read for math and understand the logic of the question. The answer to the above question, for example, is (d); Basil is older by 1 year: January 1, 2003; less a day: December 31, 2002. Peter's birthday is December 31, 2002.

While reading is improving in North America, for the sake of this particular blog, Canada and the United States are linked, there is concern about comprehension. The need to understand the logic of thought and mechanics of grammar are of concern to many. The New York Times recently had an article about such worries: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/education/25reading.html?hpw The article elaborates about the concern and briefly mentions the fact math marks have noticeably improved. However, knowing Russian and Singapore grades are dependent on literacy, the validity of those math marks could be open to question. Or, the current curriculum may not be up to international standards. Considering neither Canada or the United States made the top 10 of the International Educational Assessment, one might wonder.

Exams and Tutoring verses Wisdom

The New York Times has an article about the priorities of the Indian middle class during exam season:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/world/asia/24test.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

There is a lot of pressure on Indian teens to do well, get into a good college and establish themselves in a successful career. In India, the educational system is underfunded and there are not enough places in university for every child with the marks. Similar to the College board and the American SATS, marks are based on end of year exams and, really, class work is irrelevant. Students with the top exam marks attend the best colleges. The article discusses the importance of tutoring and parents interviewed discuss the anxiety their children feel; there is a mention of one teen suicide occurring due to the pressure. There is a bit of an odd note at the end of the article in which a student admits he no longer goes to school; he attends private tutoring sessions only.

Ireland's press has an article about private, computer tutoring:

http://www.independent.ie/education/features/how-students-are-clicking-with-their-cyberteachers-2108767.html

Students may communicate with teachers on-line or participate in an on-line, no participation class for tutoring in specific subjects. The article discusses how this is one method by which teachers may supplement their income and students their study habits. Both tutoring programs in India and Ireland charge a fee for their services; basically, if a standard education is not enough to attain college entrance, middle class people may purchase educational services to supplement their child's education. As someone who does not believe in the privatization of education, I wonder what this means for education in general.

Long time ago, Socrates advocated against the written word because he felt wisdom could only be attained through participation; it had to be drawn out of a discussion between participants. Basically, people (o.k. men) had to know enough in their minds to debate an issue; reading and writing were not enough. Knowledge, in a sense, had to be inherent. All this study in Ireland and India makes me wonder if the students actually "know" the subject; facts are very easy to recite but understanding is hard to prove without participation. Further, and more confusingly, what does the financial cost of tutoring enable: the marks for getting into a university or the knowledge about a particular subject?

Bullying, Again and Again and Again

Here are 3 articles connected to bullying drawn from a Canadian paper, a British paper and an American paper:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/what-to-do-when-your-kid-is-the-bully/article1500302/ (what to do when your child is the bully)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/14/university-heads-vice-chancellor-salaries (how the public is reacting to the extreme pay of university heads)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/business/14schools.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&hpw&adxnnlx=1268650816-Lw%20Q/Idh6WaDrjELC2J2CQ (how for profit schools are taking tax money and not producing results)

Perhaps, the writer of this blog is being naive but usually a person knows why they are a bully; it is a sign of anger evolved from frustration. Children are not born bullies; there is no bully gene. They are made into bullies and that is a reality few want to admit. In the Globe and Mail article, there are steps to nip bullying behaviour in the bud. There is no discussion as to why a 5 year old would be aware of power plays in the school yard; I am a nobody and I would argue a 5 year old who watches unsupervised television is picking up behavioural tips from TMZ ( or 90210 or the King of Queen's etc). The child is merely bringing acceptable behaviour into the school yard.

The second article is about the heads of universities in England making over 300 000 pounds a year; this, despite the fact society is currently economically under performing and most graduates of any university in the world are no longer as highly esteemed as they once were. Thus, in free market jargon, productivity is in no way related to compensation. The powerful are able to extract monies from the less powerful and, in a school yard, they would be seen as bullies. In this society, such management blokes are admired and so is their behaviour.

The third article articulates how for-profit private training colleges are using American tax dollars to train students for careers that either do not exist or are not financially beneficial. They are using people's dreams and their willingness to pay for new education against them; that, too, is bullying behaviour. It is reminiscent of the school yard bully paying kids with candy to be her friend and then turning on them when the moment is convenient.

It strikes this writer that it is simple to get rid of bullies just no one wants to do the hard work; it is not easy. It is hard to spend time with one's children, all the time; however, as a parent, it is the job. One cannot change how Universities and big companies are managed; however, what little purchase power one has should be used ethically. And, what time one has for intellectual pursuits should allow for the development of critical thinking. It shouldn't take a genius level IQ to note that there are a lot of cooking schools around; therefore, there are going to be a lot of cooks and no need to pay them well. The easiest way to stop a bully is to walk away, to no longer participate in his game and to be on one's own. Of course, the path will be lonely, but it will not be painful.

Another Article About Bullying

There are scientists in Canada who study the effects of bullying on the brain:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/beyond-the-blow-to-self-esteem-bullying-can-hurt-the-brain-too/article1497054/

Long term affects include, but are not limited to, physical changes in the brain and long term emotional scaring. Some children have been studied for 5 years; their ages developed from about 12 to 17.

If this article doesn't demonstrate what is wrong with a lot of systems in general, it is hard to see what will; researchers and parents knew these children were in bad situations and rather than remove them from the terror studied the affects on the kids' brains. It is absolutely horrific to know the youth of these people was sacrificed in the great name of science. Perhaps the information is helpful to some people, it is not like it is common sense: a child tormented is going to suffer some sort of consequence. But to know the torment continued in the quest for research is sickening.

Further, to realize an editor published this article without a moral context equally demonstrates a moral ambivalence that would allow such research to continue. Perhaps it is impossible to remove every child from every horrible situation, but to not to try and do so illustrates a condoning of said situation. I have mentioned Barbara Colorosa's book, "The Bully, the Victim and the Bystander" before but I cannot emphasize the importance of the message: if you watch it, you condone it. These scientists watched it, condoned it and used it for research despite the horror some of these children faced. Worse, they did this research in the aim of prevention of further bullying; do they not realize they are worse than the bullies?

No Child Left Behind...in Scotland???

Here's the link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/stricter-inspection-regime-leads-to-more-sacked-heads-1917442.html

The article in the Scottish Independent discusses how the heads, or principals, of Scottish schools are being dismissed for their schools' poor educational status. Similar to the American "No Child Left Behind" and the dismissing of entire school staffs in Rhode Island, the theory works on the premise parents can decide who may or may not lead a school. And, further, it implicates staff on the school's academic results, be they fair or terrible. While the writer of this blog is no fan of institutional schooling as it currently exists, I must defend teachers who attempt to do their job.

In all the arguments one hears about education and, unfortunately, everyone has an opinion, including me, no one quite takes the position that children watch too much television, are left to their own devices for too long, or are involved with too many activities. Ultimately, a child does poorly in school because the parent has failed in some degree. Of course, there are exceptions but when there are more students with needs and behavioural problems than there are regular students, it is not the school's fault. It is the school's fault if a child cannot read and is allowed to pass into a higher grade; it is the parents' fault if they request the passage despite their child's skill level. People have discussed how a child's self-esteem is affected by school failure; I would argue a child's ego is much more affected by the frustration of not having the skills requisite a specific grade.

There's also a paradox examined in the writings of Ivan Ilych; once an institution becomes too big, it begins to function for itself rather than for its original mandate. Thus, larger schools demand more types of education, specialized education; in a sense, students become more than just students but types of students: gifted, behavioural, learning disabled and so forth. Their labels justify the need for more schooling and a further increase in the size of the institution. The reality that a child cannot read becomes irrelevant because a child will be promoted to the next grade regardless of skill level; an educational assistant will be assigned to assist with learning disabilities or behavioural issues that really only arise because the child cannot read. In a sense, the more access to educational facilities, the less actual education occurs.

Dismissing the staffs of schools will not affect the outcomes; maybe, for awhile, schools will improve but the reality illustrates more schooling is not the solution. The argument could be made that the supervisors, the educational consultants and the assessors are examples of increased institutionalized education; they function, most of them think they have important jobs to do, to keep the institution in existence. After all, without their participation, school administrations could not exist and schools could not function. And, teachers could not do their jobs.

Mathematical Attitude

The girls do a Math club at the University; it is free, it is comprehensive and it prepares students for various math examinations or contests. My neighbour got the children involved. Before they were withdrawn from school, my two oldest children were quite active chess players and my neighbour, a math expert, thought they would benefit from the club. The experience has been interesting academically and of some benefit socially. I think the girls are relieved to know their parents aren't the only driven, ambitious people around; though, they do suspect not many Caucasian Canadians are as driven. In a sea of Chinese Canadians, East Indian Canadians, Eastern European Canadians, the girls were the only, for the sake of argument, British Canadians.

Most of the people we encounter at Math club tend to be immigrants. They seem to be the only people as attentive to their children's academics as we were when the girls were in school. Although, they are not as familiar or as confident in home schooling as we have to be; I mean we chose this option so we have to believe it will work. Most of the people I encountered today were involved with their first math contest; their children were being compelled to participate, basically, because parents don't make the sacrifice of changing a family home, losing connections and networks and coming to this new country in order to have their children fail. And, these children know their math and they know more than what is taught in school; their parents are engineers, statisticians, linguists and so forth who are absent Canadian experience but not a good education. Further, a lot of the Chinese Canadian children also attend Math school; the parents pay for additional tutoring in Math.

Talking to another parent, we all had to wait in a foyer, I discovered some people choose Math because there are all kinds of Math competitions with minimal cost; hockey is financially beyond them. They can't afford to be "true" Canadians until the second generation is established here. Although, it is sad to say, some perceive real Canadians as those who play hockey and fail at Math; one man was very happy to see me because he never sees Caucasians at these things and wondered why. I have no idea why more Caucasian Canadians don't participate. I don't care; a Chinese lady is going to email me the name of the Chinese Math school.

How to Write Well....

The girls have to copy the writings of essayists and historians I think are important; the girls' opinions are relevant, sometimes, but I want them to learn how to write well. They have to write well to be able to justify their thoughts and express their criticisms and understand how ideas must be supported to qualify as opinions. Thus, while their views are being developed I want the girls to understand how other people's opinions developed and were supported. It is hardly the most innovative way of writing; in fact, it was a method most popular during the Middle Ages but I have yet to find another of equal value.

The idea was clarified in a recent spat of articles about how to write well. Elmore Leonard, the latest writer to offer an opinion, published a book with what he considered points relevant to writers seeking to improve their craft. The Guardian, an English paper, sought varied opinions from other writers, including Margaret Atwood, the only Canadian on the list. Russell Smith, in the Canadian Globe and Mail, indicated the problem with most writers is their unwillingness to read; he noted there is a plethora of how to write books and an actual decrease in the number of people reading. Smith makes valid points only to be undermined by his own list of how-to-write-well tips.

I try to write well and I want the girls to write well; we do read a lot. I think a greater value can be found in the quality of a person's library than in the publication of their writing habits. We own all the standard classics, all of Shakespeare, most of the Greeks, some of the Russians, the Bible, the Koran and Darwin. My children have read the Victorian poets, the Romantics, and some Restoration plays--which they didn't like. Our library is dominated by the English because that is the language we speak; but, the children have read "1001 Arabian Nights" which I think is extremely important and they have encountered other works in translation which they didn't like as much. Rumi was a discovery for them. They have encountered essays by Thoreau and some other Americans; but their favourites, by far, are the short stories of any culture. Stephen Leacock is still the most popular Canadian writer.

Essayists are still being discovered; though, I find, while the girls like some modern writers, their staying power is in question. David Sedaris is a popular writer but, except for the funny gay relevations, he is not an important writer; Stuart McLean has more talent but, equally, will not stand the test of time. Ronald Wright is a great writer but I wonder if it is more his message than his skill; Barry Lopez is in a similar vein. I don't know what qualifies as an exceptional talent any more and I don't know how to write well; I do agree with Russell Smith that writers who teach how to write well are more likely to have been published and forgotten than to have had staying power. My girls are learning to write well by imitating writers who, unambiguously, are known to have written well; they are part of that fluid list called the Canon. I would argue that if you haven't read, at least, some of the books on that list, you cannot write well. There wouldn't be enough depth to your reading to enable such an ability.

University Grades

Sorry, this was too good to miss:

From the Irish Independent, on line:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/john-walshe-rising-degree-of-alarm-at-thirdlevel-grade-inflation-2085138.html

The first half of the article is confusing because, unless one is really familiar with the grading system of Irish universities, there seems to be a difference between students who achieve A marks and the 50% of those who achieve greater than A. In North America, the grades stop at A/ A+, not so in Ireland. However, the main thought in the article indicates that students are graduating with marks that are not indicative of their intellectual calibre. The latter half of the piece then has a number of University Leaders, former heads, defending the grades and students' abilities despite examples to the contrary. There is an interesting remark made by Google IT professionals about why they toss some resumes into the garbage.

If this was purely an Irish innovation, this notion of grade inflation, then it could be considered an anomaly in the educational experience. Except...found in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/us/02obama.html?hpw

President Barack Obama is continuing the Bush program of punishing schools that fail standardized tests; thus, grades of successful students will not be linked to intellectual development but to test scores. Arguably, the first step on the rung to increased grade inflation. Ireland, and England for that matter, have long been dependent on standardized tests: A levels and O levels. One could make the argument, that within the next few years, more American students will graduate from University with high grades and low skills just like the Irish. And, obviously, with the same prospects...

Reading

We read a lot. The family rule is no television during the week; thus, mother, father and children read. A lot. Most of the time, in fact. When I first found out I was pregnant on Elizabeth, I decided I would read Shakespeare to her--unlike mothers who knit or crochet for their babies, I read every play of Shakespeare's, aloud. Emily didn't get Shakespeare but, by the time I was pregnant on her, I knew variety was the spice of life; little Elizabeth and conceived Emily got every fairy tale I could find, all of Perrault's Fairy Tales and all of the Grimm Brothers. Emma's pregnancy was the poetry period and the girls encountered every classical poem in my collection; none of us could get into much of the modern stuff except for a cat poem set in Casa Loma and Ted Hughes. The children did go to school for a number of years and the school advocated reading a loud to one's children for a minimum of twenty minutes a night; my children still haven't gone to bed without someone reading a loud to them. With Elizabeth now 14, I wonder if I should stop. But we all seem to enjoy it, even my husband who is not always home to participate in the experience.

One Christmas, we spent the whole of Boxing Day reading one of the Harry Potter novels a loud. Every one took a turn reading for awhile and we finished the book in a day and a bit. When we read at night, we take turns making a selection; long or short, it doesn't matter, the novel or poem must be finished before the next person's choice is begun. Right now, we are reading Richardson's "Pamela." And, we are halfway through the book and it has become boring. Really boring. We have read long books before; all of the Brontes have been read, all of Jane Austen, all of J.K. Rowling and our most favourite book was Dumas' "Les Miserables." However, it is really killing us to read Richardson; I have mentioned the possibility of reading Fielding's "Shamela" afterwards, but we are really beginning to think 18th century novels may not be for us; they certainly are not for me. Elizabeth and Emily are going to try and read "Pamela" individually; Emma thinks it is a lost cause. Her turn is next and she wants an Alex Cross novel.

High brow authors seem so much more impressive than James Patterson, but we read without discrimination. I don't mind adding the fact the girls read Archie Comics and own every Calvin and Hobbes there is; we have well over 50 cookbooks and they have been read, sometimes while eating food drawn from those recipes. Elizabeth likes reading about vegetables and farming techniques; Emily is into plays, theatre productions and costumes; and Emma, well, Emma is reading Anthony Horowitz and James Patterson and other stuff I want to say is like brain candy and addictive but hardly intellectually stimulating. But the reality is we read without censorship and I must bite my tongue.

Dick Cavett and the Right Type of Interview

In the seventies, Dick Cavett used to host a three times a week, talk show; it was brilliant because he was an informed host and most of his topics were current events and not always discussions with the glitterati of Hollywood. Mr. Cavett speaks without mishap, his voice is always clear and he doesn't use "um" or "eh" in his conversation. The show was canceled and for a while ran on public television. The networks seemed to think his quality of show was too high brow for the general American audience. However, in this article, Mr. Cavett discusses Groucho Marx's view of Hollywood:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/whats-happened-to-cultural-discourse/

The idea is writers, poets and the like have something to say about the world, in general, and not just about themselves.

Discourse should motivate thought. Which, of course on this blog, leads to the quality of material children should use for developing their ability to think critically. Jessie Bauer and Susan Wise Bauer, mother-daughter authors of "The Well Trained Mind," believe in a scholastic approach to education; children should be early schooled in history and factual knowledge, the grammar period; develop connections between historical events and thoughts, the logic period; and then be able to make critical assessments of these connections, the rhetoric stage. It is an admirable guideline for teaching children at home. But what is the methodology in schools? Sometimes, like Dick Cavett, it seems if the material is difficult, the presumption will be students will not like it; it never seems to be they may rise to the challenge.

Educational Priorities

In Africa, there is a debate going on about the transparency of funding public schools. Between slipshod overviews and parental lack of involvement, the finances of schools in 7 countries are seen to be in a terrible state. The article found in the Guardian illustrates:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2010/feb/23/primary-education-africa

However, in the consideration of what is going on with the finances in different places, like Katrine, there is no mention of the quality of education in the 7 countries--just description of the financial mayhem. One wonders if children are being educated--money matters aside, a good teacher still determines a good education.

Then, of course, there is a financial quagmire of a different sort in New York:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/fashion/25Therapy.html?pagewanted=1&em

Occupational therapists are being hired to work with children who, ultimately, have spent too much time on the computer and not enough time with their crayons. These are not disabled or needy children, these are rich children whose parents feel their writing skills are not good enough for pre-school and are, thus, paying therapists large sums of money to bring the kids up to snuff. At 3.

Personally, I don't know which is worse: parents in Morocco who don't care about the schools' budgetary matters or parents in New York who care too much about their children's crayon talents.

Bullying and the Italians

But first a word from the Jungians.....
Kind of ironic the last blog was about bullying before Google lost its lawsuit in Italy over a case of video harassment.
The story as it appears in this evening's Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/770667--google-execs-convicted-in-italian-bullying-video-case?bn=1

This article and the event in Italy depict what is truly wrong with the character of individuals today. 10 people watched this teenage boy be assaulted by four other boys and did nothing; in a sense, they were an audience. Chris Hedges has written a great book called "Empire of Illusion." Its thematic concerns revolve around how exposure to constant violence and sex changes the character of individuals; for example, the film "The Hurt Locker" illustrates what happens to soldiers who become addicted to war. One could argue, in the case of Google and the Italian bullying episode, that the audience was completely lacking in empathy to the child being assaulted. The crowd did nothing to stop the incident and Google, by its own failure to recognize the assault, added another layer of tacit complicity. To be fair to Google, it would be very difficult to imagine how they could have prevented the further humiliation of the child but it is also curious why a machine, the size of Google with the mathematics involved in its mechanics, wouldn't already have some algorithm established to prevent such an event. Be that as it may, the reality is bullying of any nature grows in strength on the silent participation of the audience. If one cannot stop an event, one can, at the very least, walk away.

School Bullying

Here is an article from the Jakarta Post (that's right, the one in Indonesia):
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/21/when-a-bully-strikes.html.
Indonesians seem to have similar problems to kids in Vancouver (a 15 year old killed himself over bullying, see Vancouver Post, February 20, 2010) and, apparently, kids everywhere. Barbara Colorosa has written that there are 3 victims in an incidence of bullying: the bully, the victim and the observer. The observer, in a sense, gives tacit approval to the bully by not interfering to stop the bullying incident. My biggest problem with bullying, and neither I or my children have been directly bullied, is the shame of parents who do not try to stop or change the situation. If a child is in an intolerable situation and parents do nothing to change it, isn't that tacit approval? There are a myriad of excuses to prevent intervention; the most famous of which would be the interference to one's job, be it career or wages necessary to one's survival; the reality would still be the child stays in an intolerable situation because the parent condones it; they would do something if they didn't think money more important. In a sense, the parents' lack of pro-action continues the bullying. It's a harsh assessment. Further, a parent who thinks a child must endure a situation to toughen up, to be prepared to face the world, in a sense, is contributing to make the world a harsher place. Kind of pessimistic, isn't it?

School Schedules

In "the Rivers North of the Future," David Cayley quotes Ivan Illych on school schedules. He writes, "And, so it goes on to take the unbelievable form of four years elementary, four years middle school, four years upper, and four years college attendance" (Cayeley 144). Illych connected the school schedule to the ritual behavioural demands of Mass attendance; it makes a good argument when one understands the Church was the first to demand attendance to define a good Roman Catholic and, in a similar vein, attendance at school is supposed to make a good pupil. However, Illych goes on to say Mass attendance and confession no more makes a good Catholic than going to school everyday makes a child educated.

Another aspect of this ritual behaviour can also be found in Matthew Stewart's "The Myth of the MBA." He discusses the impact of Fredrick Winslow Taylor and the stop watch on the development of Masters programs in Business Administration early in the book and briefly mentions Morris L. Cooke (Stewart 38). Cooke is connected to the development of the Carnegie measurement of the college hour and the requisite hours needed to achieve an undergraduate degree. Sort of the same philosophy as the Church: so much time is required to define a person's ability or quality or what have you. But, the actual level of education is not defined. Stewart's book is brilliant for its dissection of the validity of MBA programs. He makes one wonder about the merit's of some aspects of this society in much the same way Illych does.