_ Meta Discussion _ Will Wikipedia Replace Your Kid's Teacher?
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:35am)
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
I think this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representational Government of Privateerism.
I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: WikiWatch
If Wikipedia replaced teachers you will end up with moronic pop culture drones that believe bullying is the only way to get what they want.
Posted by: Milton Roe
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 7th March 2011, 10:52pm)
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:35am)
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
I think that this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing absolutely everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representative Government of Privateerism.
I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.
Jon Awbrey
See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea that if you take kids away from their parents and homeschool-education soon enough, you can turn them into little ready-to-obey-orders-of-the-state brainwashed Hitler Youth. Again, this idea in turn came from late 18th and early 19th century Prussia, long before there was a Hitler Youth. In fact the Hitler Youth itself was just carrying on a fine Prussian tradition that was more than a century old, by then. And which, by that time, had been spread into the school systems of Amerika by people like Horace Mann, who transplanted it into Massachusetts just in the mid-19th century, after which it spread in the US like kudzu.
Wilhelm von Humboldt and his ilk, a couple of generations earlier in Europe, weren't educating Prussian youth in the early 1800's via compulsory state schools because they wanted to turn them into little philosophers. They were educating them, compulsorily, by the state, because Prussia had had its ass kicked by Napoleon and decided it was because the children who came from home-schooling weren't robotical enough to make moldable soldiers.
So when I see you taking about "drill-and-grill" techniques as being part of Bill/Melinda Gatesian "Corporate Totalitarian Agenda" it makes me laugh so hard it brings tears to my eyes. Drill and grill isn't the corporate totalitarian agenda. It's the ultimate statist brainwashing agenda, and for 150 to 200 years in first Europe and then the US, it's worked so well that you seem not to be aware of it. You think it's sort of the way of nature, with the new business model trying to undo the way things have always been.
Pardon, but thanks for the laugh, Jon.
Posted by: BananaShowerMonkey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 6:35am)
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
Herschel, stop scaring the s*** outta me!
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 3:54am)
Pardon, but thanks for the laugh, Jon.
There are days when your ignorance astounds me.
And then there are days when you are just plain full o' crap.
But it's early yet — I guess we'll see which one it'll be today.
Jon
Posted by: Peter Damian
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 1:00pm)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 3:54am)
Pardon, but thanks for the laugh, Jon.
There are days when your ignorance astounds me.
And then there are days when you are just plan full o' crap.
But it's early yet — I guess we'll see which one it'll be today.
Jon
Non sufficit ista narrare, nisi manifesta ratione probentur
Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 8:54am)
See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea ...
Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true? Where do other influence such as British/Greek/Roman models come in and compare?
(Or were they previously only ever aimed at elites and the rest of the population apprenticed to whatever trade or activity their parents were involved in?).
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Tue 8th March 2011, 9:43am)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 8:54am)
See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea …
Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true? Where do other influence such as British/Greek/Roman models come in and compare?
(Or were they previously only ever aimed at elites and the rest of the population apprenticed to whatever trade or activity their parents were involved in?).
There are a few papers http://www.umass.edu/pastchancellors/scott/papers/papers.html for those of you who want to get up to speed on these issues.
The “http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a924226838~frm=titlelink†paper was especially considered to be highly influential.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Tue 8th March 2011, 6:43am)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 8:54am)
See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea ...
Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true?
The fragment you quote is pretty factual and true. However...
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:54am)
Wilhelm von Humboldt and his ilk, a couple of generations earlier in Europe, weren't educating Prussian youth in the early 1800's via compulsory state schools because they wanted to turn them into little philosophers. They were educating them, compulsorily, by the state, because Prussia had had its ass kicked by Napoleon and decided it was because the children who came from home-schooling weren't robotical enough to make moldable soldiers.
Milt, this is one of the biggest howlers you have ever enunciated on this board. The fact of the matter is that Wilhelm von Humboldt and "his ilk" transformed education specifically to encourage independent thought; they taught kids to read and write classical Greek, to compose classical music, and to master geometry. This is hardly what you do if you want "robotic" kids. But that's not the only thing you have wrong here. The Prussian military theorists developed "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics#Origins," which was indeed a response to getting their asses kicked by Napoleon. But Auftragstaktik is based on giving independent combat units a great deal of independence and trusting them to improvise tactics in the context of an understanding of the larger mission. It requires well-educated and creative soldiers who have confidence in their own powers of judgement. There is no room there for robots.
Posted by: Kelly Martin
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 9:25am)
But Auftragstaktik is based on giving independent combat units a great deal of independence and trusting them to improvise tactics in the context of an understanding of the larger mission. It requires well-educated and creative soldiers who have confidence in their own powers of judgement. There is no room there for robots.
Indeed. One of the largest conflicts between the Wehrmacht and Hitler's special forces is that the special forces emphasized unthinking loyalty and obedience, while the Wehrmacht had long trained its officers and even NCOs for independent, on-the-spot decision making capability. Germans are not all of a piece, you know.
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.
Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve "robotic" results.
Posted by: Milton Roe
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 9th March 2011, 3:06pm)
The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.
Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve "robotic" results.
Back up. The Gates Foundation spent $3 billion in 2009, but most of it outside the US. Most of the education money was spent in the US, indeed-- about half a billion. But that was only 1/6th of it. The Foundation funds education in the US (a relatively small fraction of its funds), but not health in the US. It funds health care (emphasis on vaccines and prevention) in the third world, but not much there on education.
Most of the Foundation's money (out of the total) goes for health issues, not education. Gates' comment on education in Africa is that it's pointless to try to spend money on any kind of education for a child that has TB, HIV, or is protein and vitamin malnurished, and anemic due to malaria and a gut full of worms (causing iron deficiency). His hypothesis is that if you fix or prevent those problems, children will think better, no matter what education they get elsewhere. I think this quite a reasonable idea.
I think your criticisms of Gates' foundation are quite unreasonable.
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:06pm)
The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.
Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve “robotic†results.
People who have troubled themselves to click on any of the links in my http://wikipediareview.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey#Presentations_and_Publications, or follow any of the numerous references that I passed under their collective noses for the past five years, will know that I have been following and even contributing a little to the literature on IT in education and research since the early 1990s, at least.
There is nothing about the use of technology in education and research that says we have to treat human beings like machines. The sources of that inhumanity issue from the aims and the brains of some people, not from the nature of the machines we use.
What sorts of aims and brains?
Aye, there's the rub …
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
First of all, better late than never: Mod's note: I moved the predictable off-topic fracas to the usual location. There.
Now, regarding the use of computers: I ain't agin 'em. They can handily replace the movie projector, the overhead projector, the slide projector, and the pocket calculator, and they can supplement the trip to the school library. They cannot, however, replace the teacher, no matter how appealing that prospect may seem to the accountants.
Posted by: Zoloft
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 9th March 2011, 3:28pm)
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:06pm)
The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.
Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve “robotic†results.
People who have troubled themselves to click on any of the links in my http://wikipediareview.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey#Presentations_and_Publications, or follow any of the numerous references that I passed under their collective noses for the past five years, will know that I have been following and even contributing a little to the literature on IT in education and research since the early 1990s, at least.
There is nothing about the use of technology in education and research that says we have to treat human beings like machines. The sources of that inhumanity issue from the aims and the brains of some people, not from the nature of the machines we use.
What sorts of aims and brains?
Aye, there's the rub …
Jon Awbrey
Say, Jon. Pray give us a synopsis, yea, verily, even an abstract of your concrete views on this subject.
I know 'tis nobler to take up arms against a sea of troubles and all that.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 8:15pm)
Say, Jon. Pray give us a synopsis, yea, verily, even an abstract of your concrete views on this subject.
I know 'tis nobler to take up arms against a sea of troubles and all that.
I was getting around to that, but I'm just a little exhausted and not a little irritable as a result of all that dis♥ening business with the Shifty Media forum — just in case no one had noticed.
Jon
Posted by: Zoloft
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:26pm)
QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 8:15pm)
Say, Jon. Pray give us a synopsis, yea, verily, even an abstract of your concrete views on this subject.
I know 'tis nobler to take up arms against a sea of troubles and all that.
I was getting around to that, but I'm just a little exhausted and not a little irritable as a result of all that dis♥ening business with the Shifty Media forum — just in case no one had noticed.
Jon
Take your time. No one will die if you wait a week.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 9th March 2011, 8:15pm)
Now, regarding the use of computers: I ain't agin 'em. They can handily replace the movie projector, the overhead projector, the slide projector, and the pocket calculator, and they can supplement the trip to the school library. They cannot, however, replace the teacher, no matter how appealing that prospect may seem to the accountants.
'Nuff Said.
No, Really.
'Nuff Said.
Jon
Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy
One development seen recently in Korea were "robot teachers", cute little robots with built-in screen/display operated by human "teachers" who were in the Philippines via cable.
Why employ a teacher at expensive local rates and have to pay them enough to eat and give them somewhere to sleep when all you need to do is employ security officers at your school when kids are already conditioned to stare at TV/PCs for 8 hours a day.
It is an interest thought to consider how our brains are evolving around these unnatural objects and what happens when we are unplugged.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
The German model of what a research university should be was highly influential on graduate education in the United States, to which we may add the Land Grant model that acted as a moderating, application-oriented influence on both graduate and undergraduate education. But the model that U.S. primary and secondary education progressively followed throughout the last century would have to be the canon of Progressive Education that derived from the experimental school and the educational reforms of John Dewey.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
If you want a notion of what John Dewey was teaching teachers to teach their students about thinking from the earliest years of the last century, get yourself a copy of his How We Think and read that through a few times.
Like that wasn't enough work for one man, Dewey was also a pioneering activist in teaching teachers to think of themselves as professionals, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. Look into the http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/history/ if you want to see how the very idea of academic freedom fought for its place in American educational philosophy during the last century.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
Dewey was more or less the polar opposite of Humboldt, and engineered the overthrow of classical education in the US. Instead of public education being the students' gateway to the world of ideas, Dewey offered "pragmatism."
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Thu 10th March 2011, 10:03am)
Dewey was more or less the polar opposite of Humboldt, and engineered the overthrow of classical education in the US. Instead of public education being the students' gateway to the world of ideas, Dewey offered “pragmatismâ€.
No, No, No —
Seriously, you need to do a whole lot more reading on this.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Those few pointers to the past are the barest hints of a prologue that will have to be prolonged as we go. They frame the canvass of a work in progress that we imported into the 3rd Millennium to do our best brushwork and our grossest graffiti on. No matter how dim the picture looks in many spots, especially the corners that we find ourselves forced to focus on here, it is still the background of all we do and all we care about for the future of education.
So what the hell has been happening lately ???
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 10th March 2011, 10:26am)
So what the hell has been happening lately ???
It's hard to know where to start, but one “New and Improved†item on our education and research superstore shelves today has been described as “Academic Capitalismâ€.
There's a very good introduction to the issues surrounding Academic Capitalism in http://www2.oakland.edu/oujournal/files/5_Awbrey.pdf.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
A good place to learn about the philosophy of education that formed the main influence on educational practice in the United States for almost a century now would be John Dewey's Democracy and Education. Here are inks to an online copy at Columbia and one of the several entries at Amazon:
In this landmark work on public education, Dewey discusses methods of providing quality public education in a democratic society. First published close to 90 years ago, it sounded the call for a revolution in education, stressing growth, experience, and activity as factors that promote a democratic character in students.
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:35am)
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
I think that this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing absolutely everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representative Government of Privateerism.
I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.
Jon Awbrey
While you were sleeping …
Here's a couple of educational videos on the advance of Corporate Dictatorship for those of you who have been dozing all snug in your cribs the last 40 years or so.
That was then …
This is now …
Jon
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sat 12th March 2011, 1:48pm)
This is now …
Holy guacamole, Batman -- so much for opposition to "Big Government."
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Sat 12th March 2011, 5:24pm)
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sat 12th March 2011, 1:48pm)
This is now …
Holy guacamole, Batman — so much for opposition to “Big Governmentâ€.
Everyone believes in “Limited Governmentâ€, of course — they all just draw the lines in different places — but what Republicans have always meant by that was, “We don't want the People-Owned Pieces Of Government (POPOG) to put any checks on the Corporate-Owned Fraction Of Government (COFOG)â€. But once the COFOG becomes big enough, well, then it's perfectly okay to make it as big as big can be.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: lilburne
Schools, education, and teaching don't just happen. The kids don't arrive at the school gates, get plonked into an isolation tank, and become hooked up the learning drip feed thing. Rather they drag from lesson to lesson all the social baggage from outside of the learning institution.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(lilburne @ Mon 14th March 2011, 10:38am)
Schools, education, and teaching don't just happen. The kids don't arrive at the school gates, get plonked into an isolation tank, and become hooked up the learning drip feed thing. …
Give 'em time … they're workin' on it …
Jon
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Seriously, folks, I no longer recognize the country or the parallel universe that Milton is broadcasting from, but here in the United States of Alterica we are currently experiencing a Concerted Corporate Coup of unparalleled dementions — and by this “Concerted†I do not say the music is pretty — all of which has been keeping me way too busy with local polidicks to do my duty moderating this thread in accord with my usual standards of revelance.
But I'll be back …
I promise …
Jon
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
I thought it might be good to recall what we were talking about at the top of the topic —
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 1:35am)
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
The question is not about the potential of IT to educate, inform, and even inspire, or at least to catalyze, facilitate, and support the same. That ship sailed a long time ago, and those of us who were all aboard when it left the dock know that its potential has been actualized with all the wimper not a bang of previous generations of educational technology, from AV to TV.
The question is whether some Harvard dropout — and his crew of better lawyers than programmers — just because he made a bazillion bucks with his viral spreadsheet program, really knows more about education than all those saps who actually wasted their time going to school to learn what they're teaching about, and who just keep on doing the job, day in day out, year after year, taking all the crap that our Corporate Owned Government and Corporate Owned Media can dump on their heads while they're too busy grading papers to talk back.
That is the question.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
Believe it or not, there is also a question of whether you can fire lots of teachers and compensate by buying more laptops. That is actually what high school students are demonstrating against in Idaho. It was a budget-cutting plan dreamed up by the aptly-named Superintendent of Schools, a certain Mr. Luna.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Mon 14th March 2011, 8:49pm)
Believe it or not, there is also a question of whether you can fire lots of teachers and compensate by buying more laptops. That is actually what high school students are demonstrating against in Idaho. It was a budget-cutting plan dreamed up by the aptly-named Superintendent of Schools, a certain Mr. Luna.
Yes, of course, de-professionalizing yet another profession is a constant bugaboo, er, featuraboo that arises from the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, which is why we are discussing this crusty old theme on the current political scene, but I was getting tired and had to stop somewhere.
Jon
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
The moment one lends any credence to a "market-based" model of education, then it's feudalism, here we come. There is already a sort of caste system based on which communities can ante up the property taxes to get their schools the necessary supplies, and this will become worse under the "Race to the top" program. One of the smartest things that Louis XI, the "Spider King" did, was to launch programs to bring literacy to the peasantry. This horrified other kingdoms who saw it as an assault on the cherished precept of the feudal system that there should be a helpless and utterly disenfranchised laboring class. Compare the Confederate States of America, where it was a capital crime to teach a slave to read. They were clever enough to know that if you taught a slave to read, he might become Frederick Douglass.
Posted by: Kelly Martin
I recently got into an argument on Facebook over Governor Quinn's proposal to force some of Illinois' 800+ school districts to merge with one another, on the grounds that having so many districts must necessarily be inefficient.
The thing is, I like the small districts. It means that the feedback loop between the school board and the taxpayers is quite short. When your electorate is only a couple thousand voters, you can't afford to ignore even a relatively small group. I grew up in one of the largest school districts in the Midwest (MSD Washington Township, Indianapolis) and the school board might as well have been appointed by God; there was no way Joe Average Parent would have any way at all to get traction with (or even noticed by) them.
Of course there are many many ways in which the school board's hands are tied, but at least we've got the locality of control down right. In school districts, especially elementary districts, smaller is better.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Tue 15th March 2011, 8:55pm)
I recently got into an argument on Facebook over Governor Quinn's proposal to force some of Illinois' 800+ school districts to merge with one another, on the grounds that having so many districts must necessarily be inefficient.
The thing is, I like the small districts. It means that the feedback loop between the school board and the taxpayers is quite short. When your electorate is only a couple thousand voters, you can't afford to ignore even a relatively small group. I grew up in one of the largest school districts in the Midwest (MSD Washington Township, Indianapolis) and the school board might as well have been appointed by God; there was no way Joe Average Parent would have any way at all to get traction with (or even noticed by) them.
Of course there are many many ways in which the school board's hands are tied, but at least we've got the locality of control down right. In school districts, especially elementary districts, smaller is better.
My teaching experience in Illinois was limited to teaching undergraduates as a Graduate TA in math, but I know that a lot of my colleagues and students were always having to take some kind of standardized test on the Illinois Constitution — maybe as a qualification for teaching in the schools? — so I know that the idea of Statewide standards was not a novelty there. Indeed, I commuted from Normal — don't bother, I've heard them all — a town named after its normal school, that is, a school for teaching teachers the norms of how and what to teach.
I'd hardly dispute the importance of local control — Michigan is currently embroiled in hot dispute with a Power Mad Governerd Control Freak over that very issue. Nevertheless, local control is always conducted subject to the controlling influence of higher level aims, concerns, ends, goals, interests, objectives, and purposes, in short, what the Greeks called pragmata.
But the genius of representative people power — “No Taxation Without Red Herringsâ€, as Milton would have it — is the very idea that the controllers of the controllers are chosen from the station and status of the controllees.
And that's how the cyber circle goes unbroken …
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Programming Note …
Just a brief apology to all those readers from other places who came to this thread under the promptings of my advertisement that it afforded “a sometime pertinent, sometime impertinent, discussion of democracy and educationâ€. We'll be getting back to the more pertinent impertinences, you know, right after The Revolution.
Yours in faith,
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
We Da Ppl who do grok the differences between Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, and Jimbonian “democracies†— briefly put, systems founded on the principles of OPOV (one person one vote), OBOV (one buck one vote), and OSOV (one sock one vote) — know that the USA Community was originally constituted as a high-wire act of balancing and checking between OPOV and OBOV, a bit of derring do that is tricky enough to keep on the up and up, to say the least, no matter what strength of Social Safety Net was later stretched underneath.
But now a Third Rule has entered the fray, and if it was always difficult enough to keep OBOV from strangling OPOV in its sleep — and you know how much OPOV loves to sleep — the New Coalition between OBOV and OSOV is tolling what sounds like the death knell of OPOV once and for all.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Dudes, Dudettes, Dudebots —
This thread was started by HK, not me, but each time I read its Great Instauration at the top of the thread it appears to be about the potential exploitation of information technology by the usual exploiters to de-professionalize yet another profession. It is not in principle the old shell game of sifting the 3 P's of education — Parochial, Private, Public — and picking which P is best, if any. Nor does it have anything to do with defending that Great Bastille, er, Bastion of Freedom, the U.S. liberated http://news.maars.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Guantanamo.jpg.
I'm sorry that I haven't had time to do a better job of keeping it on topic, but I've been really busy with fast-breaking developments locally — and I don't mean the basketball game that just got pre-empted by the Dribbler In Chief — raising my e-voice against the ongoing Corporate Coup and Dissolution of Democracy by the Nerd Reich.
But I will get back to it, all in good time, as they say in the slammer …
I have to say, El Gatto has a knack for titles I can really appreciate — “Weapons Of Mass Instructionâ€â¢ — but it looks, on first skimming, like he's talking about those aspects of establishment schooling that always seemed to be the worst of all possible worlds, before Wikipediot Ways made them pale in comparison.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: lilburne
Anarchist critics back in the late 19th century, pointed out that people had to be schooled into the industrial or http://www.villagenet.co.uk/history/1830-swingriots.html workplace, either by being employed as child labour, or via the workhouse. Left to their own devices they tended to wander off or http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRluddites.htm the place up.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
More discussion on https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=196889953666988&id=1039153428 —
I don't like to quote other people from a cloistered discussion without their permission, but here's my portion of the conversation:
QUOTE
Yes, and Taylorism, the other Taylor, is much discussed all throughout the literature on institutional and organizational culture. This is all the stuff that all us old Flower Children were always railing against in the 60's and 70's. From the current vantage point, however, one can see that the countervailing influence of Progressive Education was ever-present and really dominant, though constantly at risk, of course, and even more at risk today.
QUOTE
Not sure homeschooling is the answer though. I see a lot of problems there.
QUOTE
Except for Descartes, and my own brief spell in parochial school, I don't know much about the Jesuit educational model. It seems that Descartes spent his whole life, and never quite succeeded, trying to escape the adverse side-effects of his early education. As do we all, I reckon.
QUOTE
But the very fact that the Jesuits returned when recalled speaks tomes about the defects of that model.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
The subject of America's Great Dumbing Down comes up often in Facebook discussions. Being one of the weary survivors who still remembers the Before-Time, I am frequently prompted to share my recollections of “How It Came To Thisâ€.
The Great Dumbing Down began in earnest when Ronald Reagan became Governor of California in 1967. During the preceding decade, marked perhaps in the Public Mind by the rubric of Sputnik in 1957, most observers had begun to realize that some amount of post-secondary education had become as essential to a person's economic functioning and well-informed citizenship as a high school education had been in previous decades.
Prompted by that realization, California put itself on the cutting edge of educational progress with its “Freshman Year Free†program, funding the first year of college for every qualified high school graduate. That was one of the first things Ronald Reagan killed when he became governor, and the regressive trend in access to higher education has continued ever since.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
Wikipedia is to Knowledge as Farmville is to Food
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
The political situation in the States has become so dire that a far, far greater evil than Wikimpedia now presses itself on even so apathetic a constitution as my normally apolitical state of yaller-dogmatic slumbers.
And yet there is a way that Wikimpedia's irregular puzzle piece fits within the bigger picture, and I think I can trace its outline a bit like this —
Wake Up⢠Ye Fools⢠The content of Wikipedia is wholly irrelevantâ¢
The pseudo-contents of Wikicivilization are empty distractions, on a par with the irreferent tokens that Farmvillers exchange, designed to divert the players from seeing the true purpose of the game.
As a matter of fact, Wikipedia has exactly the same purpose as Farmville —
It's all about socializing children and other unformed minds to a Corporate Owned Feudal Society.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Zoloft
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 24th March 2011, 6:42pm)
The political situation in the States has become so dire that a far, far greater evil than Wikimpedia now presses itself on even so apathetic a constitution as my normally apolitical state of yaller-dogmatic slumbers.
And yet there is a way that Wikimpedia's irregular puzzle piece fits within the bigger picture, and I think I can trace its outline a bit like this —
Wake Up⢠Ye Fools⢠The content of Wikipedia is wholly irrelevantâ¢
The pseudo-contents of Wikicivilization are empty distractions, on a par with the irreferent tokens that Farmvillers exchange, designed to divert the players from seeing the true purpose of the game.
As a matter of fact, Wikipedia has exactly the same purpose as Farmville —
It's all about socializing children and other unformed minds to a Corporate Owned Feudal Society.
Jon Awbrey
Yes. Destroy the middle class, allow most sources of information to be centrally controlled, and you have just the wealthy, controlling, and the poor, who give their labor for a pittance to the wealthy and buy the illusion of involvement, and are controlled.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Breaking events have led me to inquire further into the activities of the Koch Brotherhood and the right-wing corporate group-think-tank and all round cookie-cutter form-letter legislation factory that goes under the name of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Most of the action at present is on Facebook, so I'll be posting a lot of links to FB pages, but I'll make an effort follow them up with wider web sources, too.
I'll try to keep this thread focused on the education side of things, but what's goin' on is such a full-scale wide-spectrum assault on everything we once held dear in the US, and also the UK, that not everything can be disentangled quite so easily.
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
A bit in medias res, but here is one of the bleeding edges as I write:
QUOTE
ALEC : The Invisible Hand in Your Sockpuppet Government? More information about ALEC is coming out on these pages: â–º https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Bill-Cronon/163419837045434 â–º https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Professor-William-Cronon/112819782132021
You'll have to fill in the backstory yourself for now …
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Updates on the William Cronon story —
Paul Krugman • “http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28krugman.html†• 27 Mar 2011
AHA Today • http://blog.historians.org/news/1293/aha-council-deplores-recent-intimidation-efforts-aimed-at-cronon
Posted by: thekohser
Jon, this is no longer "Wikimedia Discussion", is it?
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(thekohser @ Sun 27th March 2011, 11:51pm)
Jon, this is no longer “Wikimedia Discussionâ€, is it?
Good grief, do I really have to explain that again?
Jon
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
Lawrence Davidson • “http://www.truth-out.org/taking-teachers68798†• Truthout (23 Mar 2011)
Consortium News Editor’s Note: The American Right has fully embraced Ronald Reagan’s mantra that “government is the problem†— and that dogma is being applied in a wide variety of ways, including a nationwide assault on the pay and job security of public school teachers.
Republican-controlled state legislatures and Republican governors are in the forefront of this campaign, advancing under the cover of parents’ concerns about their kids' schooling and behind the idea that standardized tests can be a cure-all. In this guest essay, Lawrence Davidson challenges the assumptions behind this effort …
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Sorry I don't have time to connect all the dots and coms for you right now — a whole lot of things are happening way too fast in the real world — but just by way of an exercise for the reader, you might try asking yourself what's the connection between ALEC and that other smart alec, Jeb Bush, mentioned in passing by HK at the head of this thread.
e-dios …
Jon
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
You can get anything you want at ALEC's Restaurant …
I'll post some links on ALEC here.
I'll try to keep this thread focused on education, but I'm rushed for time right now so I may be posting mass quantities of random surf that I'll have to sort out later.
The ALEC site itself has been off and on quite a bit lately. They are just now getting a lot more national attention and they may be oversighting and whitewashing a bunch of the more incriminating stuff. Moreover, I'm not sure I trust exposing my IP addresses overmuch to these folks. So I'll post a lot of Internet Archive links to their pages.
21 May 2009 • http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090521150133/http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Education&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=8&ContentID=9468
Current Page • http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Education&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=8&ContentID=9468
Jon
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Readin'™, Ritin'™, and Hangin' Chads™ …
Those who can, teach … Those who can't, legislate …
Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform
by Dr. Matthew Ladner, Andrew T. LeFevre, and Dan Lips
Press Release: State Education Ranking Shows Vermont #1, South Carolina Last
ALEC’s 16th edition of the Report Card on American Education contains a comprehensive overview of educational achievement levels (performance and gains for low-income students) for the 50 states and the District of Columbia (see full report for complete methodology). The Report Card details what education policies states currently have in place and provides a roadmap for legislators to follow to bring about educational excellence in their state.
With its foreword written by the former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, this completely revised Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform examines the reforms enacted under his tenure and how Florida has risen from consistently earning near-bottom scores to ranking third in the country.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Stan Karp • “http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/28-11â€
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Detroit Free Press • http://www.freep.com/article/20110331/NEWS15/103310502/0/NEWS05/Request-professors-e-mails-labor-strife-sparks-outrage-latest-think-tank
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
Duh Foocher Of Eddication
The Education Industry really needs to be completely privateered on a modren corporate business model. Teachers should be working out of stalls in the malls like optometrists and ear-piercers. Todays plugged-in students can easily learn everything they need to know about being e-gaged citizens and productive worker bees while slurping red-dyed Slurpeesâ„¢ in the inter-missions between hanging out (of their pants) at the Arcade and chirping with their Bird-Brain-Buds on Twitterâ„¢. Yeah, that's the Ticket, Masterâ„¢.
If these Corporate Education Privateers spent just half the money they spend trying to bust teachers' rights to collective bargaining on actually fixing the real problems — well, who am I kidding? — that would involve talking to teachers and other people who actually know anything about the realities.
— Jon Awbrey (22 Apr 2011 @ 12:40pm)
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Universal Free Public Education
The principle of Universal Free Public Education is fundamental to the proper functioning of our democracy, as the Founders of our Nation well understood. Provisions for charter schools have long been in place, and there is no problem with that in principle, but it becomes a problem when charter schools are used to undermine the right to Universal Free Public Education. Parochial, pay, and private schools do not operate on that principle and they should not be subsidized by public funds.
Posted by: Selina
QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Thu 10th March 2011, 8:32am)
It is an interest thought to consider how our brains are evolving around these unnatural objects and what happens when we are unplugged.
Well, speaking as one of the new generation n all that, I honestly think teachers and parents are pretty much the only chance for good rolemodels now.............
Most people growing up don't have contact with other adults who do genuinely good stuff in their day-to-day life, and people like police, emergency services, doctors, medical scientists/neurosurgeons, etc etc get barely any media coverage as individual people because, well, good people doing good things every day is not exciting and a novelty enough, so.... people with money and power are what get the attention, however they 'earned' (especially in the case of most celebrities) it.
A lot of fictional characters are better rolemodels than ones on television lol, I try to avoid watching it except for the occasional thing on http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer - and of course, no ads there, it's kind of surreal when friends make jokes/references based on advertisements, makes me feel kinda like I'm living in the set of 1984 but with companies running the world instead of governments.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Selina @ Thu 28th April 2011, 6:55am)
QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Thu 10th March 2011, 8:32am)
It is an interesting thought to consider how our brains are evolving around these unnatural objects and what happens when we are unplugged.
Well, speaking as one of the new generation n all that, I honestly think teachers and parents are pretty much the only chance for good rolemodels now …………
Most people growing up don't have contact with other adults who do genuinely good stuff in their day-to-day life, and people like police, emergency services, doctors, medical scientists/neurosurgeons, etc etc get barely any media coverage as individual people because, well, good people doing good things every day is not exciting and a novelty enough, so …… people with money and power are what get the attention, however they 'earned' (especially in the case of most celebrities) it.
A lot of fictional characters are better rolemodels than ones on television lol, I try to avoid watching it except for the occasional thing on http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer — and of course, no ads there, it's kind of surreal when friends make jokes/references based on advertisements, makes me feel kinda like I'm living in the set of 1984 but with companies running the world instead of governments.
So you noticed. Well, it's not happening by accident or evolution, at least not in the US, and, from what I've sampled on the Uncut pages for other countries, not there either. There is a concerted, organized, obscenely well-funded blitzkrieg in progress to replace our barely democratic governments with totalitarian corporate rule.
What I think from reading the comments is that many people get it, the same caring, hard-working, and wise people who have always gotten it. But let's face it — $$$ for the sake of making more $$$ speaks far louder in the U.S. today than all the caring, hard work, and wisdom put together. You are talking to people who just don't care, who simply laugh out their asses at the sorts of saps who would actually spend their evenings grading papers and preparing lesson plans instead of working their portfolios on e*trade™. Wake up and smell the TEA, you will have to strike early, strike often, and strike nationwide. You are going to have to throw a Corporate Armada full of money-grubbing privateers out of your schools while you still have a profession left to call your own. That's what I think.
Richard DeVos' family “made†their millions as founders of Amway (some have called Amway a Ponzi scheme, but we can just call it a “multi-tiered†scheme). His brother-in-law is Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater (now called Xe).
See related story â–º http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos-outlines-stealth-plot-against-Public-Education-
Education is not a privilege. Education is a duty and a right. At least, that's the way it must be in a democracy, if that democracy is to succeed, if that democracy is to remain a democracy. Those are the lessons that my teachers taught me in school so long ago. I cannot say why others have failed to learn those lessons, or maybe they just forgot them, but I know that I learned them and I know that I will not forgot them.
Thinking that education is a privilege for the privileged — I know where that sad idea came from — it came from the Old World that we fought to form this New Republic. I do not know what spells have raised that old ghost from the grave of history, but I think it's time to call it “Riddikulus!â€
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 31st May 2011, 6:18am)
Thinking that education is a privilege for the privileged — I know where that sad idea came from — it came from the Old World that we fought to form this New Republic. I do not know what spells have raised that old ghost from the grave of history, but I think it's time to call it “Riddikulus!â€
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 31st May 2011, 10:41am)
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 31st May 2011, 6:18am)
Thinking that education is a privilege for the privileged — I know where that sad idea came from — it came from the Old World that we fought to form this New Republic. I do not know what spells have raised that old ghost from the grave of history, but I think it's time to call it “Riddikulus!â€
Do I smell a caption contest?
Don't Boggart That Joint, My Friendâ¢
Jon
Posted by: lilburne
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 31st May 2011, 2:18pm)
I know where that sad idea came from — it came from the Old World that we fought to form this New Republic.
Sorry I can't stop to smell the ozone right now, but the politics of public education have become too much of hand-to-hand fight of late.
Here is a sample of the local context that forced me to repeat what few conventional bits of wisdom I have in my possession — the sorts of self-evident truths that used to be regarded as “no-brainers†back when “no-brainers†were things that any fool could see.
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 31st May 2011, 10:41am)
Do I smell a caption contest?
"So, Your Royal Highness-- the LaRouchies say you used to deal drugs." "Well, Mr. President, the same people have you pictured with a little Hitler mustache."
silence
"So, is it true about the drugs...?" "And I was about to ask if you had shaved."
Posted by: The Joy
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 31st May 2011, 9:18am)
If The People Rule, The People Must Be Wise
Education is not a privilege. Education is a duty and a right. At least, that's the way it must be in a democracy, if that democracy is to succeed, if that democracy is to remain a democracy. Those are the lessons that my teachers taught me in school so long ago. I cannot say why others have failed to learn those lessons, or maybe they just forgot them, but I know that I learned them and I know that I will not forgot them.
Thinking that education is a privilege for the privileged — I know where that sad idea came from — it came from the Old World that we fought to form this New Republic. I do not know what spells have raised that old ghost from the grave of history, but I think it's time to call it “Riddikulus!â€
Indeed.
I understand the need to cut budgets during a hard recession, but the politicians always cut what most would consider the heart of education. I remember reading in high school (before the current dark times) that the US government could save millions by cutting back on paper clips and staples. You would think that the little things like office supplies would go first. Yet, it's always "let's cut the Pre-K tesachers, the PE teachers, the art teachers, the teacher assistants, the school librarians, the administrators, etc." In a business, an honest businessman would cut everything he could before laying off people.
It gets even downright nasty when political ideology gets involved. "Let's cut science and math so those liberals who think we are descended from monkeys do not denigrate God and our right-wing sensibilities." "Let's cut sex education and cut it down to tell horny teenagers that abstinence-only is the only way!" "Let's cut out school nurses because they give kids medical information about sex!"*
Public schools in the US are primarily paid for with property taxes and that's not good for areas with low property values. The housing crisis has cut property tax revenue. The area where I live is always asking for bond issues to help fund the schools, but it is never enough. They are always asking for more and yet more cannot be given. I know some "States Rights" people will hang me for this, but I think US public education needs to be uniform (with some local and state leeway) on the federal level and not the state level. Federal, state, county/parish, and local taxes could boost up the schools. However, I think we need to reconsider how we fund schools so there is always some level of financial stability even during recessions. I wish I had the answer as to how. And is the money we give to the schools being used wisely? That's something that bugs me to no end on all government institutions (and businesses. Yes, I'm talking to you, US banks!).
*(Yes, VoC, I'm sure liberals want to cut things on ideological lines too, though I can't think of any at the moment. The examples I listed above have been thrown around by the local right-wingers in my area.)
Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky
QUOTE(The Joy @ Tue 31st May 2011, 2:05pm)
I understand the need to cut budgets during a hard recession, but the politicians always cut what most would consider the heart of education. I remember reading in high school (before the current dark times) that the US government could save millions by cutting back on paper clips and staples. You would think that the little things like office supplies would go first. Yet, it's always "let's cut the Pre-K tesachers, the PE teachers, the art teachers, the teacher assistants, the school librarians, the administrators, etc." In a business, an honest businessman would cut everything he could before laying off people.
The other option is to pass HR 1489, repudiate the gambling debts, and increase funding for education.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
What's really going on is merely a precursor to privatization.
Anyone with a working long-term memory knows where this agenda to “Starve Public Schools Out Of Existence†came from.
What's really going on is merely a precursor to privatization.
Back in the 90s, shortly after Michael Milken was released from Club Fed and given a job teaching business to students at UCLA, he remarked that the public schools had a large, unexploited capital base.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 31st May 2011, 8:44pm)
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 31st May 2011, 4:50pm)
What's really going on is merely a precursor to privatization.
Back in the 90s, shortly after Michael Milken was released from Club Fed and given a job teaching business to students at UCLA, he remarked that the public schools had a large, unexploited capital base.
Tallahassee • More students could learn from a laptop in their bedroom rather than a whiteboard in a brick-and-mortar classroom under a pair of proposals in the Florida Legislature that would dramatically expand virtual school.
Tallahassee • More students could learn from a laptop in their bedroom rather than a whiteboard in a brick-and-mortar classroom under a pair of proposals in the Florida Legislature that would dramatically expand virtual school.
So many jokes, so little time …
Jon
It's the same arguments against libraries. "Why do we need libraries anymore when we have the Internet, Google, and Wikipedia?" Seriously, there are http://blog.libraryjournal.com/annoyedlibrarian/2011/06/09/fighting-libraries-in-oakland/.
Education isn't just about information and facts. It's about learning skills, how to think, how to be a productive member of society. Skills can't be learned without human interaction. I can give a child a book, but what good does it do if he can't read it?
As you say, "So many jokes, so little time..." Thing is, no one's laughing.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(The Joy @ Tue 14th June 2011, 4:56pm)
As you say, “So many jokes, so little time …†Thing is, no one's laughing.
Well, some people are laughing all the way to the bank …
Incidentally, the following Facebook page is a good resource for learning how communities across the nation are dealing with the ongoing degradation of their public education systems.
• https://www.facebook.com/wearredforpubliced
Many people across the country are beginning to realize that there is a coordinated campaign by GOP-TEA-dominated State governments and corporate interests to turn back the clock on American education to something more like the systems of private privilege we once had the good sense to revolt against.
Jon
Posted by: Rhindle
Has anyone seen that movie Waiting for Superman? From what I hear it's glorifying corporate funded charter schools while making public schools look like a complete failure. Anyhow, if you check the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Waiting_for_%22Superman%22/Archive_1 of the movie article, I noticed that Jimbo really wanted the wiki article to improve to FA status by the time the film was released. He provided a few links but didn't want to "be bold" and do the work himself. The person talking to him was treating him like some dumb noob because it's kind of hard to get an unreleased film to featured status before it's released. I was so tempted to tell Jimbo you could always pay thekohser to get the article to featured status.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Rhindle @ Wed 15th June 2011, 7:30pm)
Has anyone seen that movie Waiting for Superman? From what I hear it's glorifying corporate funded charter schools while making public schools look like a complete failure. Anyhow, if you check the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Waiting_for_%22Superman%22/Archive_1 of the movie article, I noticed that Jimbo really wanted the wiki article to improve to FA status by the time the film was released. He provided a few links but didn't want to "be bold" and do the work himself. The person talking to him was treating him like some dumb noob because it's kind of hard to get an unreleased film to featured status before it's released. I was so tempted to tell Jimbo you could always pay thekohser to get the article to featured status.
That's what corporations do. They spend more money telling us how wonderful their products and services are than they ever spend making those products and services halfway decent. They operate on the principle that Lying Out Their Asses (LOTA) about their virtues is sufficient, not to mention being far less difficult and far more profitable than actually doing the work.
Tallahassee • More students could learn from a laptop in their bedroom rather than a whiteboard in a brick-and-mortar classroom under a pair of proposals in the Florida Legislature that would dramatically expand virtual school.
So many jokes, so little time …
Jon
It's the same arguments against libraries. "Why do we need libraries anymore when we have the Internet, Google, and Wikipedia?" Seriously, there are http://blog.libraryjournal.com/annoyedlibrarian/2011/06/09/fighting-libraries-in-oakland/.
Education isn't just about information and facts. It's about learning skills, how to think, how to be a productive member of society. Skills can't be learned without human interaction. I can give a child a book, but what good does it do if he can't read it?
As you say, "So many jokes, so little time..." Thing is, no one's laughing.
One in five Americans do not even have computers. They have to go to a drive, or, more likely, given that many of these people are low income, walk all the way to the library, or, if they are lucky, some other public location offering public computer access. Some of the lucky ones who live in places with decent public transit may even get to take a bus or subway! There, they have to sign up to use a computer, and, if there's a lot of low income people around, as is common in places where affordable housing can be found, they could spend awhile waiting.
Although, I wouldn't call "the Internet, Google, and Wikipedia" the top reasons why public computers are important to people. Believe you me, when a person only has 15 minutes, half an hour, or, if they are lucky, a whole hour to spend on a public computer, they prioritize. They take care of the most important business first. Things like job applications, college applications, business and legal stuff, public assistance applications, grant and scholarship applications, their bank account. Although, given the limited amount of time such people have on the computer, it might better for them just to go to the bank. After the important stuff, if they still have time, they are likely to check e-mail and keep in touch with friends who fail to keep in touch in an easier manner, like a telephone. Learning for the fun of it is pretty low on the list. That's what all the books are for. A public library only offers a few computers for its patrons, but plenty of books.
Now, this is really a shame, given how many perfectly good, working computers are thrown into the landfill, or, worse, shipped to China by bogus recyclers. (Note: A computer is considered working as long as the hardware is in decent shape; the operating system can be replaced.) Even most non-working computers could be salvaged for parts. It is senseless to throw it out just because one component has failed. If people instead gave their unwanted computers to the computerless people, or else to charities like Free Geek who could fix them up and do so, it would really help a lot of people and keep the computers out of the landfill awhile longer. http://www.osnews.com/story/23451/Smart_Reuse_with_Open_Source_Linux_Goes_Green
In the meantime, closing the libraries because of "the Internet, Google, and Wikipedia" is nuts, given how many people cannot access "the Internet, Google, and Wikipedia" WITHOUT the libraries, not to mention more important internet services.
Posted by: thekohser
QUOTE(Rhindle @ Wed 15th June 2011, 7:30pm)
I was so tempted to tell Jimbo you could always pay thekohser to get the article to featured status.
But you didn't pull the trigger, why? Fear of being banned for mentioning me?
Posted by: Rhindle
QUOTE(thekohser @ Sat 18th June 2011, 7:32pm)
QUOTE(Rhindle @ Wed 15th June 2011, 7:30pm)
I was so tempted to tell Jimbo you could always pay thekohser to get the article to featured status.
But you didn't pull the trigger, why? Fear of being banned for mentioning me?
Nah. If I had more time I might have done it after some more thought. I was looking up the wiki-article on a break at work and noticed Jimbo's interest. If I had it to do over again I wish I would have done it.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
ALEC's Restaurant
More information is coming to light about the move by ALEC, DeVos, Koch, the Mackinac Center, and related entities to co-opt our elected officials into serving their corporate ends, namely, to privatize not only public education, but all current public services, indeed, our very government itself.
The American Legislative Exchange Council is one of the groups most actively advocating privatization nationwide. It has 2500 legislative members, which is about a third of all state lawmakers around the country. One of its most valuable functions is crafting model legislation that lawmakers can then use to propose real bills in their own states. In the past few years, ALEC-inspired legislation has been popping up with increased frequency around the country.
The group just launched “Publicopolyâ€, a Monopoly-like board game as part of an “initiative to provide solutions for a more effective, efficient government, and a thriving economyâ€. Visitors to Publicopoly are able to learn about privatizing seven sectors: government operations, education, transportation and infrastructure, public safety, environment, health, and telecommunications.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/
When we began our blog, we were collecting information from many sources and trying to piece together the reasons for what was happening in our school system in Seattle in 2008 and 2009. We discovered that what was happening in Seattle was reflective of what was an attempt on a national level to transform public education. Only then did the actions of our superintendent in terms of school closures and program changes begin to make sense. We began to make the connections between Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, the Broad Foundation and charter schools and how that involved the Gates Foundation and ultimately the Race to the Top reform movement led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Our focus will still be to collect information regarding education and our goal will be to have an informed public on issues that affect us in Seattle in terms of education but it will now more consciously include looking at what is happening nationally and how that is affecting our public school system in Seattle.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
First They'll Take Detroit …
Rick Snyder to announce sweeping DPS reforms Monday (June 19, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110619/NEWS01/110619015/Rick-Snyder-announce-sweeping-DPS-reforms-Monday
Governor Rick Snyder to announce sweeping DPS reforms today (June 20, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110620/NEWS06/106200359/Gov-Rick-Snyder-announce-sweeping-DPS-reforms-today
Sweeping reform plan empowers principals, teachers in low-performing Michigan schools (June 20, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110620/NEWS01/110620027/Sweeping-reform-plan-empowers-principals-teachers-low-performing-Michigan-schools
How new Michigan school district for low-performing schools would work (June 20, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110620/NEWS01/110620033/How-new-Michigan-school-district-low-performing-schools-would-work
Snyder had idea for changing DPS even before he was governor (June 21, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/NEWS01/106210388/Snyder-had-idea-changing-DPS-even-before-he-governor
DPS's scholarship promise is short on details and resources (June 21, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/NEWS06/106210390/DPS-s-scholarship-promise-short-details-resources
New start for Detroit's worst schools (June 21, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/NEWS01/106210383/New-start-Detroit-s-worst-schools
Editorial • Stronger medicine for sick schools (June 21, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/OPINION01/106210320/Editorial-Stronger-medicine-sick-schools
Eastern Michigan faculty side with teachers' unions, refuse to work in Detroit schools (June 22, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/106220413/Eastern-Michigan-faculty-side-teachers-unions-refuse-work-Detroit-schools
Art dealer's trial to begin in DPS corruption case (June 22, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/106220383/Art-dealer-s-trial-begin-DPS-corruption-case
Roy Roberts to cut non-teaching jobs, cancel supplier contracts in effort to transform DPS (June 22, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/110622024/Roy-Roberts-cut-non-teaching-jobs-cancel-supplier-contracts-effort-transform-DPS
Eastern Michigan faculty side with teachers' unions, says they weren't consulted about plan (June 22, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/106220413/Eastern-Michigan-faculty-side-teachers-unions-says-they-weren-t-consulted-about-plan
DPS spent $1.6M on travel, gave raises to consultants (June 24, 2011) • http://www.freep.com/article/20110624/NEWS01/106240431/DPS-spent-1-6M-consultants-travel
Bob Sikes • “http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/the-atlanta-cheating-scandal-the-broad-foundation-nclb-and-the-peril-of-attaching-cash-to-student-test-scores/â€
Ann Kane and M. Catharine Evans • “http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/whos_responsible_for_the_government_schools_cheating_sandals.htmlâ€
Bob Sikes • “http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/detroit-charter-schools-not-getting-it-done-either/â€
Mark Gruenberg • “http://www.peoplesworld.org/probe-shows-union-busting-michelle-rhee-wrote-michigan-anti-teacher-law/â€
Internet Evolution There are so many ways in which the Web can contribute to educational initiatives and enhance the school experience. We've discussed many of them here at Internet Evolution.
On the other hand, even the most Pollyanna-ish advocate of the Internet's merits must surely agree that it can also make a contribution to the dumbing down of social discourse. Perhaps the most direct way this can come about is if Wikipedia, that fount of misinformation, nonsense, and dysfunctional behavior, is allowed to get anywhere near the education system.
Posted by: timbo
Well, I guess we know that Jon is a teacher.
What we don't know is why he hates Wikipedia so much.
t
Posted by: Milton Roe
QUOTE(timbo @ Wed 10th August 2011, 5:31pm)
Well, I guess we know that Jon is a teacher.
What we don't know is why he hates Wikipedia so much.
t
I've pretty much assumed he was Marian the Librarian from River City for a long time now. I don't think he coaches or is in charge of the glee club.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 10th August 2011, 9:49pm)
QUOTE(timbo @ Wed 10th August 2011, 5:31pm)
Well, I guess we know that Jon is a teacher.
What we don't know is why he hates Wikipedia so much.
t
I've pretty much assumed he was Marian the Librarian from River City for a long time now. I don't think he coaches or is in charge of the glee club.
He who teaches … is a teacher …
Broadway and Hollywood may demand happy endings for their musicals, but even Marian the Librarian knows that con men don't have hearts of gold in the real world, and you kiddies will still be waiting for your trombones When The Saints Go Marching In.
Jon
Posted by: The Joy
QUOTE(timbo @ Wed 10th August 2011, 8:31pm)
Well, I guess we know that Jon is a teacher.
What we don't know is why he hates Wikipedia so much.
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
QUOTE
At Education Nation’s The Learning Curve, the focus is on success. By showcasing smart solutions and celebrating leaders, our hope is to inspire new change-makers in education. Please join the conversation by sharing your thoughts as well.
Education Nation’s The Learning Curve has been made possible through the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
All statements and opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual contributors, and not of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or NBC News.
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
Comment 1
Yeah, the “Everything Must Be A Lucrative Market†(EMBALM) mentality has been working out so great for society, let's spread it to some areas where it can really screw up something important.
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
Comment 1
Yeah, the “Everything Must Be A Lucrative Market†(EMBALM) mentality has been working out so great for society, let's spread it to some areas where it can really screw up something important.
Jon
School vouchers are merely the GI bill applied to K12.
I dunno what your problem is. The government doesn't run its own hospitals, except for the VA. They give you a voucher on medicare so you can pick your own. Nor does the government doesn't run its own grocery stores: they give poor people EBT cards that work in any grocery store they choose. They are essentially food vouchers like the old food stamps.
The government doesn't provide housing for retirees. They send money and let retirees pick their own housing. That's a housing voucher.
Letting government actually run a program, vs. simply giving people targetted voucher money and letting them choose a provider, is a recipe for disaster. You should check out VA hospitals sometime.
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
Comment 2
Just by way of whistling “ipse dixitâ€, the most relentless and well-bankrolled promoters of charters and vouchers have themselves identified them as tools in their push to starve public schools out of existence. Here is just a sample of the sources that might be cited.
Richard DeVos Advocates “Stealth†Strategy Against Public Education
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
Comment 3
Readers who wish to find out what the teachers on the ground think about these issues will find many good resources on Facebook. One of the more active of these was the page titled “http://www.facebook.com/wearredforpublicedâ€, which mysteriously disappeared one day due to the unaccountable machinations of Faceborg Facebots and had to be restarted under the bit more clipped title, “http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wear-Red-for-Ed/221599601212557â€.
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
Patrick M. Byrne is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the legacy foundation of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose. He is also Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com.
(He is also friends with Judd "Wordbomb" Bagley.)
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Yes, I believe he even posted here a few times back in the day …
And now … I can't believe it's not a message from our sponsor …
Patrick M. Byrne is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the legacy foundation of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose. He is also Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com.
(He is also friends with Judd "Wordbomb" Bagley.)
Again, since the government handles most of its programs via some type of voucher or other, from college ed for veterans, to medicare, to EBT/food stamps, to paying for housing on social security, why is it that the gov must be directly involved in propagandizing young minds?
Somebody's terribly afraid that if families can take their voucher credit, pick up, and go to a better school next door, that teachers will actually be accountable for performance, and accountable to the students and their parents. Bad teachers and schools will find themselves with empty classrooms, just like any other service. Scary thought.
Yeah, let's continue to just have the government pay teachers directly, bypassing parents except as they can whine on the local school board, and let the individual students and parents have no choice, unless they want to pay extra. Or vote with their feet to get the hell out of a bad district. GREAT IDEA.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
There's a couple of Articles + Commentaries at http://www.policymic.com/ that bear on the current topic —
At one time the last thing you wanted was your parents to be informed of your dirty deeds. Now, your parents act like your lawyer and question everything. The article mentions that the average teacher career is 4.5 years. I already knew that half of teachers hired don't make it past their 3rd year.
At one time the last thing you wanted was your parents to be informed of your dirty deeds. Now, your parents act like your lawyer and question everything. The article mentions that the average teacher career is 4.5 years. I already knew that half of teachers hired don't make it past their 3rd year.
I don't know the stats, but I'm guessing that some of this is due to the involvement of Teach For America, a training program for developing an absentee managerial class to help demolish public schools.
Jon
Posted by: The Joy
It seems the Finnish model is becoming popular in the U.S.
Edward Williams • http://www.policymic.com/articles/3-ways-the-federal-government-must-guide-education
HJ Mai • http://www.policymic.com/articles/u-s-receives-an-f-with-no-child-left-behind
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 31st May 2011, 7:44pm)
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 31st May 2011, 4:50pm)
What's really going on is merely a precursor to privatization.
Back in the 90s, shortly after Michael Milken was released from Club Fed and given a job teaching business to students at UCLA, he remarked that the public schools had a large, unexploited capital base.
Hersh,
Do you have a source for this statement?
Thanks,
Jon
Posted by: gomi
This does not necessarily fully support Hersh's statement, but it is related to it:
That's true for most of the industrialized world. Gone is the day when men hung their own shingle in the pursuit of happiness. Now we all work for the man, in one way or the other.
We hear plenty about the billionaire boys club that has taken control over much of the education reform debate, the unholy triumvirate of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton Family Foundation. However, they are just the tip of the iceberg. The rogue’s gallery of Ed Deformers who are buying up charter schools, capitalizing on NCLB, bashing teachers, and generally destroying public education as we know it, includes numerous hedge fund managers, bankers, billionaires, millionaires, and even a few convicted felons, like junk bond peddler Michael Milken.
Posted by: Rhindle
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Rhindle @ Tue 13th March 2012, 8:02pm)
See also https://www.facebook.com/WearRed4PublicEd
Posted by: jsalsman
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 14th March 2012, 6:56am)
QUOTE(Rhindle @ Tue 13th March 2012, 8:02pm)
{{see above video}}
See also https://www.facebook.com/WearRed4PublicEd
Good video, but I don't think anyone is blaming Wikipedia for for-profit online education and charter schools eating into public education budgets. It's mostly the diminished tax base, due to people's lack of understanding that http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/02/28/the_laffer_curve_bend_at_84_.html, and corporate tax abuses which have made public funding of anything a farce.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/berg.htm regarding Art Okun's 36 year old mistake which caused this problem by forming the basis of supply side trickle-down economics (Chart 4 is particularly informative.) http://economics.mit.edu/files/753, from MIT.
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 6:35am)
Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?
Yep... but Wikipedia may be taken as a unregulated site &/or unreliable.
Posted by: Fusion
QUOTE(Mr.Treason II @ Wed 11th July 2012, 7:06am)
Wikipedia may be taken as a unregulated site &/or unreliable.
I think we here all know as much. What of others? Do they really realise?