First, let me say this: two of the best teachers I had in high school were a husband and wife team of music teachers that ran the band. I think both of them were driven out of teaching. I had a couple other really good ones. Most of the teachers there were decent people but many of them were not well educated. It was a small school but I only remember one that was truly bad: ignorant and vindictive. Her husband taught there and he was OK --may even have been a counterweight to her on some occasions. The worst people in the system were the "administrators" --probably because they were inherently petty people, manipulators and politicians essentially, who found themselves with basically unaccountable power over children and teachers.chasfm11 wrote:VM177, I very much appreciate all of the quotes that you have provided. They give far more depth to the problem that I had imagined.
But the truth is that all of education isn't like this. For example, here is a program that is sponsored by many schools that does encourage creativity and creative thinking
http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
My wife and coached a team and find it to be a very rewarding experience. As an music teacher, I got never "got the memo" that kids weren't supposed to be creative and think creatively - which may well explain why I was laid off two years in a row for "budget cuts".
Being a fellow conspiracy theorist, I do think there is an element of "making an example" of some kids. I don't think that it is targeted at anyone in particular but takes the approach of seizing a moment and turning it into an "opportunity" I do understand Hanlon's razor but the incidents are too frequent and too widespread to be only random. Every one of them deals with an almost insignificant matter that no one would have noticed that is blown out of all proportion through "zero tolerance" and splashed all over the media. OK, I'll take my tin foil hat off now.
So where is the ACLU on this? I agree that this kid's rights were violated. It is an interesting paradox that a 16 year old boy is juvenile hall because he killed a police officer
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/22/st ... -shooting/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and this kid is arrested and put into jail because he drew a stick figure diagram. What is wrong with this picture?
I don’t intend to suggest that most of the people working in the system are aware of its history, design, or intended objectives –even the administrators for the most part . In fact, most people in this country don’t know even the “big” history. My son went to college with people who thought that in WW2 the Japanese and Germans were our allies against the Russians. Simply put I’d say that there are policy makers and policy implementers. Those who aren’t making policy are usually unaware of the larger issues that influenced its creation.
The public school system is sort of like a fleet of vessels headed in a certain direction. Things may work very differently on each individual vessel, some may have extraordinary captains, some incompetent ones, some crews may have high morale, others low, some may be plodding, others innovative and efficient. Some of them may even deviate from the general course, make detours, or take side trips, but ultimately they didn’t determine the course they’re on and they’re all going to end their journey in the same port. The quotes I provided earlier suggest where that port is supposed to be.
I’ll use my own industry for analogy. Of course this is a vast over-simplification and I concede so from the outset. It divides roughly into grunts (teachers), middle management (school level administrators), and policy makers (executive level management, regulators, politicians). I used to be purely a grunt and am still about half grunt. Now I’m somewhere in the middle, participating to some extent in policy making, and occasionally getting a glimpse of activity on Mount Olympus.
The grunts know how the physical system works, and they often know it better than most of the people at the levels above them. However, most of the grunts know little to nothing about economic and market aspects of the system, or how policy is formulated, even though it has some direct impact on the physical system they deal with. When you try to explain some of the market design and operation to them they stare at you with blank or incredulous faces. Many of those who have never been exposed to this part of the system simply don’t believe what you’re saying could possibly be true. At this level individual motive and self-interest is more uniform and greater understanding of the system is likely to breed opposition to policy.
At the middle level many more people know how the system works in a general way but many of them don’t understand how various policies are formulated. The further removed they are from the genesis of the policy the more likely they are to believe that even a misguided policy was well intended, whether or not that is the case. In any case, at this level, participants have some very plum positions to lose if they rock the boat, and there is a mixture of individual understanding, motive, and self-interest, so within the greater movement dictated by policy, varying interests combine and align in different and sometimes unpredictable ways. Even at this level there is the perception among some that the grunts are likely to be policy opponents so measures are taken to limit their input to policy decisions.
You don’t get to the next level by opposing policy or being a dissenter of any kind. You don’t get there by being objective, doing the right thing, and telling the truth. You can stay in the middle doing that, though you will probably be marginalized to some degree, but you’re not ever going to be allowed to make policy at the top. The screening process insures that at this level everyone is largely in agreement. The people at this level all believe that they are the brightest crayons in the box, what they want is best, and that anyone opposing what they want is an enemy. And for the most part, many of the policies advocated at this level are in diametrical opposition to what would be considered right by fully informed grunts. The middle level does a generally decent job of screening out such opposition and making sure that those at the top aren't exposed to it.
I’ve gotten to take a couple of brief glimpses at this level. One time, because I was in almost solitary opposition to a big policy, I along with one other person in opposition, was invited to participate in what I’ll call a “higher level” meeting, in order to maintain a pretense that all viewpoints were being considered (not that there weren’t others opposed, just that others so opposed were unable or unwilling to express their opposition for various reasons). They all knew each other (I didn’t know any of them and had only even see one of them previously). Even though all of them came from different organizations with supposed different interests they were all in happy agreement about everything. Us two dissenters were told straight off that we could not speak in opposition and would only be allowed to speak about how the policy we opposed could be advanced more expeditiously.
Part of it is the political correctness of not recognizing success. Rewards and acknowledgments cannot be given because those that don't receive them will suffer from low self-esteem. There is an element of efficiency because it is easier to get all 30 kids in the classroom doing the same things at the same times in the lower grades. There is also the aspect that it takes extra work to figure out how to reach "different" students. While some teachers worry about this and will invest extra thought into accomplishing it, others lack the training to recognize special learning needs and the energy to pursue them. Their response to special situations is often like those who don't speak another's foreign language and think that the solution is simply to say the same thing again but louder.