[Emancipator]

Quote:

Increasingly teachers are speaking out against school reforms that they believe are demeaning their profession, and some are simply quitting because they have had enough.

Here is one resignation letter from a veteran teacher, Gerald J. Conti, a social studies teacher at Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y.:

Mr. Casey Barduhn, Superintendent
Westhill Central School District
400 Walberta Park Road
Syracuse, New York 13219

Dear Mr. Barduhn and Board of Education Members:

It is with the deepest regret that I must retire at the close of this school year, ending my more than twenty-seven years of service at Westhill on June 30, under the provisions of the 2012-15 contract. I assume that I will be eligible for any local or state incentives that may be offered prior to my date of actual retirement and I trust that I may return to the high school at some point as a substitute teacher.

As with Lincoln and Springfield, I have grown from a young to an old man here; my brother died while we were both employed here; my daughter was educated here, and I have been touched by and hope that I have touched hundreds of lives in my time here. I know that I have been fortunate to work with a small core of some of the finest students and educators on the planet.

I came to teaching forty years ago this month and have been lucky enough to work at a small liberal arts college, a major university and this superior secondary school. To me, history has been so very much more than a mere job, it has truly been my life, always driving my travel, guiding all of my reading and even dictating my television and movie viewing. Rarely have I engaged in any of these activities without an eye to my classroom and what I might employ in a lesson, a lecture or a presentation. With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.

A long train of failures has brought us to this unfortunate pass. In their pursuit of Federal tax dollars, our legislators have failed us by selling children out to private industries such as Pearson Education. The New York State United Teachers union has let down its membership by failing to mount a much more effective and vigorous campaign against this same costly and dangerous debacle. Finally, it is with sad reluctance that I say our own administration has been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns and needs of our staff and students by establishing testing and evaluation systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian. This situation has been exacerbated by other actions of the administration, in either refusing to call open forum meetings to discuss these pressing issues, or by so constraining the time limits of such meetings that little more than a conveying of information could take place. This lack of leadership at every level has only served to produce confusion, a loss of confidence and a dramatic and rapid decaying of morale. The repercussions of these ill-conceived policies will be telling and shall resound to the detriment of education for years to come. The analogy that this process is like building the airplane while we are flying would strike terror in the heart of anyone should it be applied to an actual airplane flight, a medical procedure, or even a home repair. Why should it be acceptable in our careers and in the education of our children?

My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom. Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR (through the submission of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching) that there is little time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly appropriate to this case.

After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists. I feel as though I have played some game halfway through its fourth quarter, a timeout has been called, my teammates’ hands have all been tied, the goal posts moved, all previously scored points and honors expunged and all of the rules altered.

For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean.



Sincerely and with regret,

Gerald J. Conti
Social Studies Department Leader
Cc: Doreen Bronchetti, Lee Roscoe
My little Zu.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answ...er-exists/

It is a shame that the modern school system has been hijacked by bureaucracy.

[renotime]

If I ever have a son and he comes to me one day and tells me he wants to drop out of high school, I might have to let him.

[megatron]

I also quit being a public high school teacher. The system is ridiculous and grows more so every month. They constantly add new paperwork (most of which is just useless, busywork) and new new regulations and teaching standards. All this stuff is just a huge pony show. It doesn't help the kids' education. It makes teacher's worklives neverending and depressing.

Public Education is a crock of shit in America today. The reason why we're like 35th in teaching math is because we've conistently lowered standards because we didn't want to insult the under-performing girls and minorities. Now, everyone is dumb as this in high school. Not just hoodrats. Congratulations: equality achieved.

The reason why crapholes like the former Soviet Union countries are way better in math is because they didn't dumb down their curriculum's to accomadate their (mostly uneducated and dumb Muslim) immigrant population. On a side note, most Muslims in America make sure their kids study hard, usually in STEM fields. Most Muslims in Russia come from the Stans (Kazakstan, Tajikistand, etc.). These cultures don't value formal education much.

If it wasn't for Russian, Jewish and Asian students, American scores would be even worse.

[vinman]

Have any of you guys ever heard of John Taylor Gatto? He sent his resignation letter to the Wall Street Journal. He was New York Teacher of The Year twice.


I may be a teacher, but I’m not an educator

By John Taylor Gatto

From The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 1991

I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think.

I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.

I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can,t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

An exaggeration? Hardly. Parents aren’t meant to participate in our form of schooling, rhetoric to the contrary. My orders as schoolteacher are to make children fit an animal training system, not to help each find his or her personal path.

The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the faith that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.

That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its “scientific” presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of biology.

It,s a religious idea and school is its church. New York City hires me to be a priest. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.

Socrates foresaw that if teaching became a formal profession something like this would happen. Professional interest is best served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating laity to priesthood. School has become too vital a jobs project, contract-giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “re-formed.” It has political allies to guard its marches.

That’s why reforms come and go-without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.

David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can,t tell which one learned first — the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I will label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too.

For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won,t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education.” After a few months she’ll be locked into her place forever.

In 26 years of teaching rich kids and poor, I almost never met a “learning disabled” child; hardly every met a “gifted and talented” one, either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by the human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.

That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation.

There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen–that probably guarantees it won’t.

How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum, or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn, or deliberate indifference to it.

I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work, I think.

[painter]

Wow, so brave, it only took 27 years and qualifying for retirement to take a stand against the hypocrisy and self interest of the education bureaucracy in America.

[TheRookie]

I agree with this commenter:

Quote:

RobBligh
4/6/2013 10:43 AM EDT
If we continue this politically popular “school reform” nonsense much longer, the only people who will be willing to take teaching jobs will be people who should not be allowed anywhere near children we hope to educate.

All the important fields are already being corrupted by the state. Only dumbasses who don't give a shit, or sociopaths, are going to be cops, teachers, soldiers, etc in the future. Already is happening in a lot of places.

[WanderingSoul]

During my entire education, from elementary school all of the way to finishing University, very few teachers made a real impact on my life. I can say one in elementary school, zero in high school, and only two in University. I would say the rest of my teachers didn't teach me shit, and were not that bright or good at their jobs. They were just glorified babysitters who were there to give us busy work, not actually teach us anything.

Part of this is to blame on the teachers, and a large part is to blame on the education system that is a complete joke.

Has any successful entrepreneur or business owner (my degree is in business) gone back to reference the overpriced text books that they "learned" from in University? Doubtful.

Reading is one of, if not the, best way to educate yourself. It's crazy that our entire education system is based upon reading boring academic text books with zero real world value. It's no wonder kids are so fucking stupid.

A $100 Amazon gift card has more real world value than the thousands of dollars I spent on overpriced text books while in University.

[tenderman100]

Public education was great when the most important skill it had to teach was basic literacy. Reading and writing.

Moreover, public education USED to be good because it was the only profession really smart women could get into. Become a lawyer? Doctor? Banker. Not gonna happen. But teacher? Wide open.

Now the smart women go into traditionally men's professions. It's largely the second rate female intellects that go into teaching. And, of course, these women are corrupted by the rampant leftism infecting our college and university "education" schools.

Then on top of that you have the unions, who are little more that vast political action committees.

So you have a three part recipe-- a vast army of stupid female teachers, leftist propaganda disguised as an approach to teaching, and corrupt unions -- combining for a stew of an institutional disaster.

In a way, the letters that these guys wrote blaming the bureaucratic imposition of standards fail, in fact, to see the real cause. The bureaucratic imposition of standards was designed to THWART the failure that is rampant DUE to the three part recipe I outlined. They have the causality backwards.

The only way to change the system, and change it rapidly, is through vouchers and school choice. Let the consumers choose.

[bacon]

The education system is clearly broken like most things gubmint touches and naturally their solution is that it just needs better funding and all the problems will go away.

D.C. is a great case study because it has some of the highest spending per student in the country at over 18k and has the worst graduation rate in the US

[WanderingSoul]

It also drives me crazy when people vote in more funding/taxes for education. When people disagree with them, or cut education funding, they go ape shit about not caring about the kids, and how education is the future, and how teachers are so hard working and the molders of our future generations, or whatever shit they spew out of their mouths.

I am all for education for kids, however, I am against more money for schools/teachers/etc. because it isn't helping their education. If they want to help their education, they need to use that money to reevaluate the curriculum and make some sweeping changes. I can't count the number of people who graduated from my high school who still write and spell like they are ESL students. Hell, some of them even graduated from University.

[Screwston]

I even thought putting more money into schools was retarded when I was in school haha. The people that want to learn and get good grades do it. There's no hope for anyone else unless their parents or whoever is raising them is pushing them to do good or a teacher does one on one and gets through to them (which is dumb and shouldn't be expected). High school is so easy if you do your homework and barely even study. Most kids don't want to do that and a billion dollars thrown at every school wont change that.

[blackglasses]

(04-07-2013 11:59 PM)bacon Wrote:  

The education system is clearly broken like most things gubmint touches and naturally their solution is that it just needs better funding and all the problems will go away.

D.C. is a great case study because it has some of the highest spending per student in the country at over 18k and has the worst graduation rate in the US

Dc also has a huge income discrepancy. Most of the people are either government workers with no kids or rich trust fund babies. The majority of those in the schools are poor minorities from single parent households. So besides the private schools in upper NW DC, there are just kids who really don't have a chance based on their environment. Besides that dc has no teachers unions and gets shitty young teachers. I personally have done work at dc schools and the kids don't have any positive influences at home that's what it comes down to.

[LowerCaseG]

Charter Schools...

[Divorco]

(04-07-2013 04:21 PM)megatron Wrote:  

we didn't want to insult the under-performing girls and minorities.

Most under-performing special education students are boys.

[tomtud]

(04-08-2013 01:05 AM)RioNomad Wrote:  

It also drives me crazy when people vote in more funding/taxes for education. When people disagree with them, or cut education funding, they go ape shit about not caring about the kids, and how education is the future, and how teachers are so hard working and the molders of our future generations, or whatever shit they spew out of their mouths.

I am all for education for kids, however, I am against more money for schools/teachers/etc. because it isn't helping their education. If they want to help their education, they need to use that money to reevaluate the curriculum and make some sweeping changes. I can't count the number of people who graduated from my high school who still write and spell like they are ESL students. Hell, some of them even graduated from University.

I will have to politely disagree with you here..... The whole educational system is in a mess.

[Architekt]

Me and some friends were talking about the benefits vs negatives of homeschooling today. While I would rather teach my kids myself, ensuring they actually develope some kind of intelligence and autonomy, rather than ignorance, and dependence on a failing system. The only issue I would have is the social implications that could potentially come with being homeschooled, rather than attending a school with peers.

[Divorco]

(04-08-2013 08:46 AM)Architekt Wrote:  

Me and some friends were talking about the benefits vs negatives of homeschooling today. While I would rather teach my kids myself, ensuring they actually develope some kind of intelligence and autonomy, rather than ignorance, and dependence on a failing system.

QFT

[Divorco]

(04-07-2013 03:50 PM)Emancipator Wrote:  

[quote]Quote:

STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.

David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can,t tell which one learned first — the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I will label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too.
...
I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; ... and I can,t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.

Teachers want autonomy. They want to gently nurture young minds without oversight and accountability. Maybe these teachers are good, but many teachers suck. These guys seem to be high-maintenance. They want to be top chefs in McDonalds.

They are denying reality. Students don't want to work hard and do their homework. Students indeed need to do what they are told and go to the next activity when the bell sounds. Then they will learn the valuable secrets of reading, writing, and math. Also, students who read at age four will always be smarter than ones who try to eat the book until age nine.

It sucks to stifle good, creative teachers and students. But many failing schools need more rigid quality control.

[megatron]

(04-08-2013 07:50 AM)Divorco Wrote:  

(04-07-2013 04:21 PM)megatron Wrote:  

we didn't want to insult the under-performing girls and minorities.

Most under-performing special education students are boys.

Yes, but I was talking about about regular Math education classrooms.

When I was 15, I came to my Soviet-Born Mom to help me with some math problems I was having trouble with. She started laughing. "We were doing this stuff when we were 10!"

Tell me why a poor country run by potato-heads had a much better public education system?

Besides, read Christina Hoff Summers and many others about how socialist/feminist controlled public education has sanitized and dumb downed education to better suit girls at the expense boys (less recess, less competition: "everyone's a winner!", etc). And when boys, who are naturally more energetic and creative than girls, have trouble sitting on their ass for 7 hours a day, they're put on ADD medication and sent to Special Ed.

[Samseau]

Most of school time is used forcing obedience upon the children. "DO YOUR WORKSHEET OR STAY AFTER!"

If people were serious about school reform:

- Same sex classrooms
- More power and control of curriculum to teachers
- Stop giving tons of federal cash for student loans (haahaha this will never happen)

[Aliblahba]

There's nothing wrong with the education system. Trust me. I spent 7 years in high school, I'm no dummy.

[TheBulldozer]

Here's a bit of a layman's guide to where American education stands now, how it got here, and where it's going:

Currently being implemented more or less in every state sans Alaska and Texas are a series of new standards called the Common Core State Standards(CCSS), in response to GWB's No Child Left Behind(NCLB). NCLB was widely criticized(and rightfully so) for calling for every child to be at "grade level" in both reading and math. While this sounds like nothing of note, it is indeed paradoxical because it calls for every child to be considered at least average in both reading and math according to whatever assessment each state deemed appropriate. This led to two problems, (i) States created assessments that could be graded with a great deal of flexibility and (ii) Schools figuring out all sorts of asinine ways to disqualify their weakest students from taking the state assessments, going even as far as encouraging students to drop out in some cases.

The crux of the CCSS, which are being implemented nationwide at this current moment and will be in full effect come 2015, is that there is a nationalized set of standards, meaning if a student moved from Montana to Michigan during the school year they'd essentially be learning the same material without much of a gap in skills. The standards also called for a more rigorous curriculum with an emphasis on informational text and college readiness reading, in response to our lagging test scores compared to other nations.

Now this all sounds logical, and well-founded but here come our big problems:

1. The head of the CCSS is David Coleman. Coleman is a classic SWPL assclown. The number of days Coleman spent teaching is exactly 0. He is a former McKinsey consultant who has a quick line of bullshit and a lot of broscience when it comes to his philosophy on educating children. One of his big tenets is that all children must be college ready upon graduation from high school. I went to a conference where Coleman spoke and called him out on this basic principle. I asked him about the fact that many students find their calling without college, cannot afford college, or are not ready for college at 18. His reply was toothless insomuch that he said that being college prepared was better than not being college prepared. To Coleman, being college prepared means a heavy dose of uninspiring, uninteresting texts. Being college prepared in his mind means rigorous test taking. How do I know this so matter of factly? Coleman was educated at Oxford and Yale in classical literature. Additionally, and most damning is that Coleman is the president of the College Board. The same College Board that is in charge of the SAT. So while Coleman decries our K-12 education, his other hand dips into higher education pocket. The more students taking the SAT, the more influence the College Board wields. His influence on the future of American education is incestuous and unethical. Don't worry about education noise makers such as Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, or Arne Duncan. Coleman is the guy worth watching if you care about American education.

2. Much of the philosophical groundwork of the CCSS is based off of the Finnish and South Korean models of education. First off, both societies treat teachers with a tremendous amount of respect. This exists at a societal level as teachers are handsomely paid and come from the top universities in the country. This is not congruent in the US. Based on my education, life experience, and location where I teach, I do feel like I am a positive influence in my classroom and am paid a fair amount, but this is simply not the case in other parts of the US. Without strong talent, students will be at a disadvantage. Additionally, Finland and Korea are a homogenous society, much smaller in population and land size, respectively. When putting a national policy in, these things must be accounted for. The skills a student will need in Montana are different than the skills a student will likely need in NYC. For this, a nationalized policy is a rather ridiculous idea. Lastly, there is a high correlation between standardized test scores and economic status. America does not necessarily have a test score problem, but rather a poverty problem.

3. The hysteria of high stakes testing creates an environment of black and white, or right and wrong. There is little room for exploration, fucking up, or whimsical learning for students. As a child, even in middle school, I remembered doing things. The power of learning from fucking up with a supportive teacher behind your back is a fundamental way in which we learn. Much of those opportunities have been erased by the high stakes testing hysteria.

As a teacher who is young enough to relate, social enough to communicate, well-traveled enough to encourage hands on learning, and nerdy enough to show the value of reading and writing, I do make the most of my opportunity to show my students something of value while still playing by the "rules." I implore some of you young guys to think about this profession seriously. You will hear lots of cynics complain about teaching, but you can still have your kicks with your students and add something of true value to their lives while traveling 13 weeks a year. What other traditional job allows you to "retire" every 10 months?

[RawGod]

Sounds like you're in way too deep and have lost perspective, MaleDefined. The problem with American (I read: Western) education is not that some guy named David Coleman is currently in charge or that this year's crop of acronyms is flawed. It's that the mass method of education is fundamentally a lowest-common-denominator approach intended to neuter and pacify. It's for the herd, and it largely succeeds in its intention, of creating loyal consumers, taxpayers and worker drones, undercutting the family and other non-state forms of identity.

Young human beings need to be valued and mentored on a one-to-one level to reach their potential. This is what the elite have always done. In modern schools, a mass of helpless, frustrated young flounder in their peer groups, managed according to the precepts of soulless Prussian technocrats. Even the best-hearted teachers can do nothing in the face of the system. I advise everyone not to support it in any way, including by taxes.

[TheBulldozer]

(04-08-2013 08:35 PM)RawGod Wrote:  

Sounds like you're in way too deep and have lost perspective, MaleDefined. The problem with American (I read: Western) education is not that some guy named David Coleman is currently in charge or that this year's crop of acronyms is flawed. It's that the mass method of education is fundamentally a lowest-common-denominator approach intended to neuter and pacify. It's for the herd, and it largely succeeds in its intention, of creating loyal consumers, taxpayers and worker drones, undercutting the family and other non-state forms of identity.

Young human beings need to be valued and mentored on a one-to-one level to reach their potential. This is what the elite have always done. In modern schools, a mass of helpless, frustrated young flounder in their peer groups, managed according to the precepts of soulless Prussian technocrats. Even the best-hearted teachers can do nothing in the face of the system. I advise everyone not to support it in any way, including by taxes.

I actually agree with the one on one wholeheartedly, but it's overly idealistic. Who takes responsibility for that? The parent? While we may be responsible and understanding enough to nurture a child, there are many who are not capable of that. A school is seen as a place of comfort for children who have issues at home.

I respectfully disagree that I am not in too deep. I see my job for what it is. For some children I make a difference, for others I do not. It's a job that I enjoy for a variety of reasons, and I understand the allegorical nature of school as an allegory for a nationalistic, neutered society.

The goal of that post was to clarify facts, and provide a bit of analysis from someone in the profession. It wasn't meant to be a diatribe on a philosophy of education.

[RawGod]

(04-08-2013 09:04 PM)MaleDefined Wrote:  

I actually agree with the one on one wholeheartedly, but it's overly idealistic. Who takes responsibility for that? The parent? While we may be responsible and understanding enough to nurture a child, there are many who are not capable of that. A school is seen as a place of comfort for children who have issues at home.

I respectfully disagree that I am not in too deep. I see my job for what it is. For some children I make a difference, for others I do not. It's a job that I enjoy for a variety of reasons, and I understand the allegorical nature of school as an allegory for a nationalistic, neutered society.

The goal of that post was to clarify facts, and provide a bit of analysis from someone in the profession. It wasn't meant to be a diatribe on a philosophy of education.

Fair enough, my post was a bit heavy-handed, but it's something I feel strongly about.

You say I'm idealistic, but if that's so, it's only in the sense that I believe in doing what's best for me and mine, and I don't care what happens to the the rest of the children. Therefore, I'm simply against paying taxes for the education of others, and against having my children's education dictated by the state. I don't care about reforming the system of the lumpenproletariat. Of course, that standard may well appear to be idealistic or unrealistic.