Contents (use key words or scroll to find these topics)
Introduction. 1 My Background in Education. 2 High Standards and Expectations are Critical 4 Aside on teaching in foreign languages. 4 Public Charter Schools. 5 Student Accountability. 7 Teachers. 8 References. 9 Supervision and Training of Teachers. 10 School Structure: return to K-8, 9-12. 11 Sex education and non-traditional gender identification and education. 11 Affirmative Action. 13 Critical Race Theory (CRT) 14 Schools (and streets) should be named after individuals. 15 Federal Department of Education. 16 Free College Education. 16 Teaching Multiplication Tables. 16 Teaching Geography. 17 My Most Influential Teacher and Teaching Philanthropy. 17 “Teaching to the Test”. 18 Woke Teaching. 19
For most of my life, I’ve thought
that education is the most important issue for our country. I’ve been dismayed that we don’t educate
better. When people tell me we have the
best university system in the world, I respond that a lot of the excellence in our
universities comes from foreign students; if the brain drain reverses, we could
enter into a downspin that would be hard to correct. We should improve our education, rather than
sit back and await the brain drain shift.
I’ve been surprised that our resilient
economy has maintained our advantage so far, despite our weak education.
Today, I am even more concerned
about miseducation than lack of education.
Both political parties are actively trying to miseducate us to drive us
apart in their search for unbridled power.
Party leaders are convinced that only they can save the United States,
so any action that increases their power is justified. (The end justifies the means.) I disagree, but that is a subject for
another day. This article is about K-16 education.
I fundamentally believe teaching is
multi-dimensional. One of the
multi-dimensional aspects is that students help educate each other and even
help educate the teacher, at least in helping the teacher develop better
teaching skills. When they do so, they
are learning extremely valuable communication skills.
I have been one of the staunchest
advocates of public schools I’ve known.
Having confidence that my children would be excellent students, it was
important to me that they participate in public schools to get a better social
education from the diversity in public schools and to contribute to the
education of others. A couple of
incidents in that regard:
1.
Given my support for public schools, I would
never have thought that one of my children might attend a private school. However, my wife (Tina) and I shockingly took
our son out of public schools for a year.
I made that decision because he was disruptive in the public school. For that reason, he wasn’t contributing as
well to the education of other students.
I hoped that the private school would not tolerate his behavior.
2. When
we were planning our move to Kansas City, our daughter confided to Tina that
she was concerned that I would place her in a failing inner city public
school. I had no intention of doing so,
but I was really proud of our daughter for having such insight into her Dad!
I attended elementary schools that
were overwhelmingly Caucasian, although I remember African American,
Chinese-American and Hispanic-American classmates. From K-5, I was at a local (walking distance)
K-8 school in a mostly middle-class neighborhood. For grades 6-8, I bussed (or walked a long
distance) to go to a school in an upper-class neighborhood to take part in a
program for gifted children.
There were 4 boys in the gifted
program. Two decided to attend Loomis, a
highly-respected boys private school. I
had no interest at all in attending such a school and chose (as did the fourth
boy) to attend Hartford Public High School (HPHS).
Unfortunately, I got a weak
academic education at Hartford High. So,
after three years, I dropped out of HS and entered college.
But those three years were some of
the happiest and most meaningfully educational years of my life. We talk a lot about integrated environments,
but many people hang out with friends who have similar backgrounds, even if
they are in an integrated environment. I
was unusual because I interacted regularly with a wide variety of students, not
just different ethnic groups but also different heritages. We had a wonderful mix of foreign-born
students who were my friends. I laugh
that I became proficient in swearing in at least 5 languages, as my
communication style mirrored the friends with whom I was talking.
During my freshman year in college,
I came home for our traditional high school Thanksgiving football game. As I entered the stadium, I heard two boys
talking behind me. The first commented
that HPHS was a minority school. That
didn’t surprise me, although I had never thought about that. The first boy continued to explain that it
was 45% White, 45% Black … (at which point my mind flashed, “that’s impossible;
there weren’t 10% Asians and American Indians).
Then he finished his sentence “and 10% Puerto Rican”. I was stunned, as I had thought Hispanics
were Caucasians.
My academic classes at Hartford
High were not well-integrated but my home room was
well-integrated, and I got involved with the basketball team as a manager. The basketball team was almost entirely
Black. I made strong friendships there. In other ways, I also mingled with a wide
variety of people. It was the most
energizing environment I have known.
When I was accepted at Yale, I
looked forward to a world-class university with students from all over the
world. I asked Yale to give me a
foreign-born roommate. That might not
seem so surprising in today’s world but, at that time, roommates were simply
assigned and there was no process to make such a request (they did honor my
request).
Unfortunately, Yale was very
disappointing to me in that regard. The
foreign-born students had mostly been educated in British or US schools and
seemed very “American” to me. I found
Yale to be tremendously lacking in the diversity I sought and enjoyed.
Also, the academic dialogue fell
short of my expectations. When I sought
to discuss curriculum with other freshman, the typical response seemed to be
“I’ll worry about that the week before final exams”.
Coming out of college, my goal was
to teach first grade, which I believe to be the most important grade, in inner
city public schools. While in high
school, I think I could have been an excellent inner-city grade-school teacher. But after 4 years at an ivy-covered college
campus, I felt out-of-touch. So, I chose
to start in high school and then work my way down.
I taught high school math for a
year at Jefferson HS in South-Central Los Angeles. Jefferson had one Asian student, one Chicano
student and the rest were African-Americans.
I could easily write a book about terrible educational practices I
observed at Jefferson High, but similar books have been written (“36 Children”
by Herbert Kohl; “Death at an Early Age” by Jonathan Kozol). I had read those books in college and thought
they were unusual experiences. Teaching
at Jeff, I learned that they were simply checklists for me. While Kohl and Kozol experienced some things
I did not experience, I could counter those with incidents they did not
experience.
The educational situation at Jeff
was so disheartening and unimaginable to people who did not grow up in the
inner city that I don’t speak about it.
Anyone who knows me would find that hard to believe. There’s something that Claude doesn’t talk
about?? But how often have you heard me talk
about my experience at Jeff? I think the
reason I don’t talk about it much is that I don’t think I can explain it in a
way that will enable a listener to really understand how bad inner-city
education is.
As noted above, Hartford High was
an inner-city school and it lost its accreditation shortly after my stay, but although
I think I got a poor academic education at HPHS, I think the education provided
by Hartford High was dramatically superior to Jefferson High. (Admittedly, I did not attend the classes of
most students.)
The next year, I was transferred to
Belvedere Junior HS (the backstory to being transferred is also damning
relative to Los Angeles City Unified School District) in East Los Angeles, a
mostly Chicano community. Belvedere had
a miraculous principal (Alex Aviles), polar different than Jefferson High! I’d follow him anywhere. My junior high school students could run
rings academically around my Jefferson High students, but once again, I mainly
learned how NOT to run a school system.
The school board forced Mr. Aviles to move up to the local high school
level, a stressful situation which may have contributed to his death in his
late 30s or 40s.
Thirty years later, living in
Kansas City, I attended an event honoring Tom Bloch, who had quit as CEO of H.
R. Bloch to teach at a local school. Tom
had written a book “Stand for the Best”, which I had read. His book and the discussion at that event
confirmed my fears that we had made negligible improvement in inner-city
education since I had been a teacher. I
was overwhelmed with grief and meandered through the private residence until I
found a bedroom where I could crash on the floor to regain control of
myself. Driving home, I had to pull off
the road because I was crying, hence unable to see the road.
My teaching experiences, as well as
my personal educational experiences and my experiences through others and
readings have all impacted my beliefs.
Some of my beliefs about education are dramatically different than my
instinctive beliefs. When reality forces
me to give up on an instinctive bias, I think my new line of thinking is very
likely to be correct as it took strongly convincing experience to overcome my
bias.
I stopped teaching because I think
each teacher should counsel whichever students with whom they can establish a
connection. I felt I was not competent
to do so because I did not have other world job experience. I needed such experience so I could better
understand and communicate the requirements to succeed. As it turns out, I did not return to teaching
in the public schools, but I’ve always identified as a “teacher” and my nature
as a “teacher” is evident to people who meet me.
If you don’t have high
expectations, you and your students will not reach their potential.
At Jeff, I noticed that most of the
adults didn’t really believe the students could succeed. Some of these were administrators and
“old-school” teachers, but even many of the “liberal” teachers felt a need to
dumb-down education because they did not think their students could
succeed. Some of these teachers would
vociferously defend civil rights and the concept of equality but,
subconsciously, they did not seem to believe in equal ability. (Please note that I am not making a character
judgment here. In a school where
education is weak, it is easy to suffer from drawing inferences.)
About a decade later, Jaime
Escalante taught at Garfield HS in East LA.
In 1982, 18 of his students passed the AP Calculus exam. Alas, everyone “knew” they must have been
cheating. Part of the sadness of that
situation is that it didn’t happen more often because of low expectations.
We talk about “systemic racism”. I think “systemic racism” exists, although I
think the systemic racism of our police is exaggerated. From my perspective the greatest systemic
racism is in our public school system, yet most civil rights activists and
politicians ignore this huge problem.
They support the status quo or seek reforms that are not constructive
academically.
For example, while I was at
Belvedere, Chicano political advocates campaigned strongly for bilingual
education. They had no teaching
experience but were absolutely certain in their beliefs. One result was that I taught next door to an
immigrant who had been an attorney in Cuba.
Although José was a wonderful person, he was not a competent
teacher. Several years later, data showed
that bilingual education was a failure.
The activists, to their credit, generally admitted they had been wrong
but took the position that they couldn’t have known in advance.
ESL classes (English as a Second
Language) and Bi-lingual Education may sound like the same thing. But the goal of ESL is to use the student’s
native language to transition the student to success in English. Bilingual education was an end in itself.
Compare the above to the teaching
of foreign languages to native English speakers. We seem to be moving more toward immersive
programs. While there is space for
bilingual foreign language education, it encourages translation, whereas
immersive programs encourage thinking in the new language, which is greatly
superior.
Please note that our language is
ambiguous and two programs with similar wording can have subtle, yet
significant differences. My comments
above about foreign language should not be taken strictly. If I were on a school board, the above
comments would not reflect a fixed position but rather are indicative of my
following basic beliefs and questions I would ask.
1.
We should be respectful and interested in other
people’s languages and cultures and prepared to learn from them.
2.
However, a key goal of education for immigrants
is to build their English language capability to enable them to maximize their
success.
3.
Immigrants should have respect for their new
country and strive to learn the new country’s language.
4.
Foreign language education is important and most
easily started at young ages. For most people, foreign-language speaking skills
are more important than foreign language reading and writing skills. Learning about culture is important and, if
students learn to think in the foreign language, we have done a great job!
How can you explain the atrocious
educational results in our inner-city schools?
There seem to be few choices:
1.
It is the systems’ fault, including but not
necessarily limited to the teachers’ unions
2.
It is their parents’ fault
3.
It is the students’ fault
4.
It is the teachers’ fault
5.
Combinations of the above (the best answer of
course)
Some of my ideas apply elsewhere as
well as in the inner city, but I’ll focus on the inner city.
Clearly there is no simple
all-encompassing “fix”. But the key
issue is to improve our educational system.
If we do that, parents will have more confidence in the system and will
learn how to support their children’s education better. The students will be better motivated and
interested and help each other learn.
Teachers will be inspired and be more confident of their students’
potential success, which will improve results.
The culture and spirit of any organization is contagious. The key to our success is to change the
culture and spirit of our schools.
We’ve known for more than 30 years
that public charter schools succeed where other public schools fail. There have been myriad studies showing how
much better students do in charter schools than in their previous schools,
including early studies cited by Thomas Sowell (my favorite economist). (Mr. Sowell was born poor in the South, grew
up in Harlem and amazingly overcame barriers to become a world-renowned
economist. His ability to see and
explain issues clearly is fantastic.)
I’ve even seen references to studies
which claim better results for students in the schools that the charter school
students deserted. What? Could both groups of students do better? Unfortunately, when I’ve searched for those
studies, I have not been able to find them on-line and when I’ve asked
journalists who cited them to point me in the right direction, I have not
gotten responses.
So, I can’t claim that the students
who do not leave for a charter school also do better because of the existence
of the public charter school, but I can imagine that might be the case because:
1.
They have smaller class size, as a result of
some students departing.
2.
The district and teachers might pick up good
educational ideas from public charter schools.
3.
The school district and teachers feel the
competition.
Why do public charter schools do
better?
a.
To
be clear, I am not saying that all public charter schools succeed.
However, unsuccessful charter schools close, whereas other unsuccessful
public schools get disproportionately higher investment. This is a significant factor in the success
of charter schools.
b.
Charter school principals have more
responsibility and authority to select staff and create curriculum that will
attract and retain parents and students. I used to say that in other
public schools, principals have neither the responsibility nor the authority to
do so. However, that may be changing a
bit. (See #2 above.)
c.
Is it because of funding? No!
Public charter schools get ½ to 2/3 as much funding per student as other
public schools*. Administrative expenses average 15% vs. 50%* for other
public schools. Teachers may not be
unionized, so probably are paid less, but probably get more job
satisfaction. (Do public charters
schools have a more difficult time recruiting teachers than other public schools? I don’t know, but I suspect not.)
One issue is that public charter
schools may have relaxed requirements about serving physically- or
mentally-challenged students. If
necessary to secure acceptance of public charter schools, I would accept applying
such rules to them as well. However, I
don’t have a problem with focusing support of some students in a subset of our
public school system. For example,
magnet schools are great. Here in Kansas
City, the private Horizon School does an outstanding job teaching students with
learning disabilities. Focused support
for learning disabled students could result in more specialized teachers
developing “best practices” and specialized support. We don’t have limitless resources, which is
another reason not to make all schools be all things to all students.
*This data was provided by Hillsdale College, which
has an outstanding Barney Charter
School Initiative that supports ~25 charter schools around the USA, mostly
minority-student dominant. Hillsdale also
noted that only one of its 20 charter schools at that time had a football team.
d.
Is it positive selection? Some charter schools have been selective, but
commonly now, a lottery system is used.
Despite the lottery system, there is likely to be a selection factor in
that parents who sign up for the lottery are likely to be more motivated and
supportive of education.
Some studies (Barbados and Colombia)
compared lottery winners and losers, suggesting that both sets of students had
similarly-motivated parents. The
students who won the lotteries were more likely to go to college and had higher
subsequent incomes.
If you believe that positive selection
is involved, how does that affect your attitude toward public charter
schools? If you believe that public
charter schools should be closed, how is it not systemic racism to deny inner
city parents access to a better education for their children?
e.
Charter schools promote personal responsibility,
discipline and consequences for behavior more effectively than other public
schools. Discipline has been
deteriorating in public schools for 60 years.
While I can agree that some practices were excessive in the past, what
has been the result of the permissive attitude?
How has it impacted disruptive students, well-behaved students and
teachers? How safe are our schools today?
The Barbados and Colombia studies
showed that public charter school lottery winners had fewer early pregnancies
and committed fewer crimes. Hurrah for the public charter schools!
f.
Public
charter schools generally require school uniforms. My bias used to be against school
uniforms. How could clothing make a
difference in education? That idea
offended me. But this is an area in
which I’ve changed my position and, having overcome my bias, I’m convinced that
my new position is correct. School
uniforms help in many ways.
i.
They
avoid clothing competition and shame based on clothing.
ii.
They
build a common identity, contributing to school loyalty, pride and recognizing
a common purpose.
iii.
They
dilute the impact of gangs.
iv.
They
contribute to a culture of personal responsibility and discipline.
v.
They
can also reduce strife between parent and child.
g.
Charter schools probably do a better job of stimulating
and leveraging parent involvement. As
noted above, they need to attract and retain both parents and students.
Public teachers’ unions fight public charter schools tooth-and-nail.
If you’ve paid attention to this dispute, it is clear that teachers’ unions
object to competition; exposure that the public school system is failing; and
desirable educational reform. Their arguments against public charter
schools hold no water.
We are on a steady slope of reduced
student accountability.
When I was in elementary school, I
think every elementary school in the city had at least a couple of 8th
graders who had been held back twice.
However, our country decided that holding students back harmed their
self-esteem. So, we began to “promote”
students regardless of performance.
When I was taking roll my first day
of teaching at Jefferson High School, I became more and more incredulous as I
proceeded. As a math guy, I was noticing
the age distribution of my 9th- grade students. As I proceeded, my amazement at the odd
distribution turned to a realization that LACUSD had a policy not to hold
students back. Not a single one of my
students had ever been held back!
That year, I taught an Algebra I
class. Few students were assigned to
Algebra I at Jeff and many considered it to be a punishment. I decided to pre-test my students to
understand my starting point. I tested
them in multiplication, division, fractions and decimals. It took me a long time to discover that two
of my “Algebra I” students had no concept of subtraction of single digit
numbers. No matter what terminology I
used, they had no concept of 9-4. I know
that’s hard to believe, even for me!
How did these students’ self-esteem
improve by being pushed through the grades so that it became harder and harder
for them to keep up? How did it impact
their classroom behavior? What was the
impact on other students and teachers?
How does this help us to attain our educational goals?
This gets back to having standards
and high expectations. We are too
willing to accept and excuse poor academic performance. We should show our commitment to the student
by keeping the student in-grade until performance reaches grade expectations
and should devote ourselves to finding ways to reach and teach each child.
One of my crazy ideas while
teaching was that I wanted to write a text to teach reading by using a lot of
word logic puzzles such as “This doctor has a son. But the son’s father is not a doctor. How can that be?” (The expected answer, of course, is that the
doctor is the son’s mother.)
I wanted to teach reading in that
fashion because some of my high school students did not seem to understand that
reading involves gaining knowledge from what you read. They seemed to see it simply as a task of
identifying each of a string of words without tying them together.
There is a strong movement against
“merit” in our society. The concept of
“merit” is castigated as a white-supremacist, capitalist, Christian-Judeo
concept. But encouraging people to
achieve merit has led to tremendous advances for our society.
Have you noticed how some people
who strongly advocate for diversity, equity and inclusivity, rail against
merit, capitalism and Christian-Judeo values?
Their belief in DEI seems limited to those who agree with them.
Doing away with grades and test
scores is detrimental. Despite being a
math guy, I’ve strongly felt for many decades that test scores are not a full
reflection of education. But doing away
with them is destructive in at least three ways:
a.
It makes it harder to evaluate a student’s
likely success. (It is relevant to an
admissions process.)
b.
It makes it harder to identify when and how to
help a student.
c.
It reduces student motivation to achieve.
Grade inflation is clearly a problem. According to the Yale Alumni Magazine (Jan/Feb 2024, p. 17), 79% of undergraduate grades in the 2022-2023 school year were A or A-. You can argue that, because of having more selective students, Yale should have a higher-than-normal percentage of high grades, but 79% is clearly excessive.
Such drift is part of a larger trend to replace personal responsibility with a docile population that does the government's bidding.
(Aside: When I was a young manager
in an actuarial department, I liked to look at the capabilities test results
for candidates to be the department assistant.
Specifically, I looked at their math problems. I did not care whether they got the math
problems correct or not because that wasn’t part of their job. Careless math problems were not a problem. Inability to understand arithmetic concepts was
the issue. Young actuarial students tend
to be cocky and can make an administrative assistant feel inferior. I was concerned that an assistant who did not
understood arithmetic concepts might be mocked.
My approach worked well until a day
came when we were no longer allowed to see such results because use of such
results could have been unfairly discriminatory.)
Teachers should be paid more. It is not in our interest that teachers must
hold multiple jobs during the school year to be able to feed their family.
However, we definitely need more
accountability for teachers. That
includes, but is not solely based, on student scores between the beginning and
the end of the year. As noted earlier, principals
should have the responsibility and authority to build a staff which will
attract and retain students. By the same
token, principals should have some ability to determine teachers’ pay.
If a principal decides to let a
teacher go, the teacher can find a job at another school (in the same district
or elsewhere). If the teacher is a good
teacher, (s)he should have references and other evidence of success and should
be able to convince another principal to hire her/him. Might a good teacher not be able to find an
acceptable position? I suppose so, but
that’s part of life. I don’t think we
should harm students to make teachers feel more secure.
Teachers’ pay should reflect their
value as teachers. It should not be a
direct function of their credentials or years of experience.
I think we’ve made progress in
terms of teachers’ unions becoming less protective of incapable teachers. Although I think it is becoming easier to
fire ineffective teachers, I suspect more such reform is needed.
We’ve also made it harder in our
society to get balanced references for people, including teachers. Unfortunately, if someone gives a negative
reference, they and their employer are exposed to a lawsuit. So, most employers forbid employees to respond
to requests for references and instead require that such requests be referred
to the Human Resources department which acknowledges solely the dates that the
former employee worked in the organization.
I had hopes in the 1990s that a
successful lawsuit might turn this around, but it didn’t. A school district was sued because a teacher
had been accused* of inappropriate behavior but that wasn’t mentioned when a
new school district asked for references.
At the new school district, the teacher molested a student, leading to
the suit.
*I don’t remember the details. For example, whether the teacher had been
found guilty. I recognize that the
teacher’s rights must also be recognized.
My point is that people should be
empowered to give their true assessment of an individual’s strengths and
weaknesses, from both a freedom of speech perspective and from a national
efficiency perspective. This is an
example of a “Tragedy of the Commons” in that all employers suffer from low
quality references but individually they have no financial interest in
permitting their employees to give accurate assessments.
I have developed several
work-arounds that have worked out well from me.
·
Particularly if I thought an employee was
considering a career change, I would write a memo to them on company stationery
expressing my appreciation for their contributions to the company. To make sure they did not miss my intent, I
would visit them the next day to comment that I thought that memo might prove
helpful to them in the future.
·
In terms of securing helpful reports from people
listed as references, I’ve had a couple of successful techniques. In general, I don’t bother checking
references unless I have decided that I am interested in hiring the individual.
When I’m deciding
among multiple candidates, the issue is not just which individual will do the
best job. Another key consideration is
which individual’s career will be most helped by taking this job.
So, when I call
references, I often lead by explaining that I’m convinced that this person
would do an excellent job. I’ll accept
input in that regard, but the key reason I’m calling is to understand why it
makes sense for the candidate to accept this job and what I can do to make the
job more meaningful to the candidate’s future.
As you can imagine, references are surprised by my intro and some
wonderful conversations ensue.
Three times when I’ve
been inclined to hire someone whose record included a serious incident (one
time a candidate had thrown a chair in the direction of someone) or who seemed
as though they might be difficult to work with, I’ve asked the candidate if I
could speak to a particular person who was a thorn in their side or present at
an incident. Candidates are surprised,
of course, but they’re not in a decision to refuse my request.
As surprised as the
candidates have been by my question, you can imagine that the “references” were
more surprised. Their first comment was
something like “Did John Doe list me as a reference??” I explain that he did not, but that I am
interested in hiring him for reasons that I can explain and that the candidate
agreed that I could call this person. I
figure that if I interview a reference who can present the downsides of hiring
the candidate, and I still want to hire the person, I’m doing so with my eyes
open.
In the case of the
individual who had thrown a chair, I already knew a person who had been
present. He confirmed that the incident
occurred and should not have occurred but said that the candidate had been
quite provoked by the other person and that the candidate had otherwise been an
exemplary employee. I ended up with an
extremely successful hire.
In the other cases, I
also made job offers. Neither of those
people accepted the job offer but at least in one case, I am fully confident
that she declined for reasons unrelated to my unusual request.
Back in the late
20th century, I fired an African employee. I did not fire many employees because I tried
to work with them to help them succeed in their assigned role or a new role
(perhaps elsewhere in the company). I
might encourage them to look for a new position. But this case required firing and was
well-documented.
After I fired him,
an attorney called the company alleging racial discrimination. Our attorneys wanted to pay off the former
employee and wanted me to sign a letter stating that his job performance had
been good. Although I fired the
employee, I respected him and told our attorneys that other people had probably
prodded him to do this and that he would “go away” if we did not cater to him.
They insisted on a
payoff and pressured me very hard repeatedly regarding such a letter, but I
held my ground that it would be unethical for me to write such a letter. They told me that I was going to be responsible for the company being sued
and that it would be bad for my career.
I held my ground; a potential risk to my career was not going to
persuade me to act unethically. No
lawsuit ensued.
Teachers should be
observed by their peers to help them improve their skills and develop “best
practices”.
Our school systems
seem to have a lot of “teacher in-service” days that remove the teacher from
the classroom. I wonder how effective
such teacher training is. (I’ve taught a
lot of continuing education classes, but despite getting high ratings from my
students, I question how effective my classes have been.)
I’d like to expose teachers to a
variety of job opportunities, so they can do a better job of advising students
and explaining the practical value of the education they are teaching.
One way to train teachers in such
fashion is to have teacher in-service days during which teachers experience
hands-on education in a particular area.
For example, Ohio State University has an Automotive Research department
which invites STEM teachers to a one-day seminar. That’s great!
It would be super to extend it beyond STEM teachers.
I’ve hired a couple of teachers to
be actuarial interns for the summer. We
should work in our communities to develop such programs so teachers can broaden
their knowledge of curricula that students would benefit from studying. Such programs would also help teachers earn
more income.
One of my goals (discussed further
below) is to collect stories of “my most influential teacher” from
(ex-)students and parents. I’d publish
these stories electronically so teachers could learn from each other and be
inspired by their predecessors.
I attended K-8, 9-12 schools, but
grew up thinking that it did not matter how the grades were sliced. As a “math guy”, I inherently felt that K-3,
4-6, 7-9, 10-12 vs. K-8, 9-12 or any other structure was irrelevant. I learned otherwise when I taught in a 7-9
junior high school.
For non-transient students, school
structure makes a BIG difference.
13-15-year-olds are experiencing major
changes in their bodies and are trying to find their way to sexual
maturity. These years are stressful by
their nature. It is helpful for young
people to have steady, predictable support from their home and school environments
to help them navigate these years.
Instead, we put them into a 3-year
holding pen that has little significance or meaning to them. They’ve built loyalty and identity in their
elementary school, where grades 7-8 could accord them respect and positions of
responsibility. Particularly in East LA,
where I taught junior high school, many would be responsible for younger
siblings. The junior high school faculty
and administrators don’t know them at all, and the students have to adapt to a
new environment and create new relationships in a setting which will last only
3 years and while so much else in their life is churning. A junior high school diploma is not
meaningful compared to a HS diploma and junior high school sports teams don’t
compare to the loyalties of high school.
It would be much better to leave
them in elementary school, where they can develop leadership skills and
responsibility, then give them a fourth meaningful year in high school.
When I taught junior high school, I
was stunned by these obvious truths. I
asked others why we had junior high schools.
The primary answer was that we wanted to keep the “bad” high school kids
away from the good junior-high school kids and the “bad” junior-high school
kids away from the elementary school kids.
Unfortunately, the reality was that
the “bad” high school kids would come to the junior high school campus to “shake”
down the kids for money and to sell drugs.
The junior high school kids were not protected by the good high school
kids because they were away, on a different campus.
Similarly, the “bad” junior high
school kids left that campus to prey on the elementary school kids who had been
abandoned by the good junior high school kids.
Because of my strong intrinsic bias
that school structure did not matter, I believe I have seen the light.
As I noted above, I consider
puberty to be a particularly difficult time of life. People have tremendous uncertainties
regarding their physical changes, the timing thereof and their eventual
gender-specific success. Kids of this
age fantasize of failure and not belonging.
But over the course of time, the vast majority of children who
questioned their ability to succeed in their gender have matured into adults
confident of their gender.
I think it is unwise to increase
young teens’ anxieties by suggesting to them that their birth gender is not the
best fit for them.
TVs and movies now seem to feel
obliged to have a transgender character and to show same-gender sexual
relationships in every series and movie, well beyond the proportion of such
people in society.
A very small percentage of children
are born with ambiguous genitalia. If
some of those children are not comfortable in their “assigned” gender, I would
support their and their parents’ desire for conversion therapies.
However, for the rest of us, the
concept of “assigned gender” is a misnomer.
Our birth gender is a fact, not an assignment. I would be very cautious of encouraging
gender disaffirmation treatment (currently mis-labeled as “gender affirmation”
treatment).
I acknowledge that, when children
question their gender, parents may not be supportive. As with most everything in life, there are
potential positives and potential negatives when schools inform parents that
their children are adopting a change in pronouns. In my opinion, parents should be
informed. The solution for parents who
might exacerbate a situation is to speak with them and encourage them to speak
with their religious and other advisors.
If they transgress the law, by beating their child, for example, they
should be help responsible. However, the
fact that some parents might respond poorly does not justify keeping such
information away from parents. Two
wrongs do not make a right.
If parents and their children agree
that gender change treatment is desirable, there should be a requirement that
they speak with two professionals and have a cooling off period. However, they should NOT be denied such
treatment.
Children who have had such
treatment should be allowed to use the corresponding bathroom. Otherwise, children should not be allowed to
simply choose to use bathrooms that are not for their birth gender.
I oppose broadly allowing male-born
individuals to compete in girls’ sports.
I might be receptive to exceptions based on length and degree of
treatment. It is understandable to me
that the ACLU would support trans’ “rights’ to compete in sports. The justification is that trans people have a
lot of burdens; if sports can be positive for them, hallelujah! Unfortunately, the ACLU instead uses a bunch
of baloney arguments (see my blog) such as that “everyone benefits when trans
athletes are allowed to compete”.
How does a non-trans girl benefit
if she loses a college scholarship opportunity to a trans athlete? How does she benefit if she over-trains to
try to compete and gets injured?
If trans-girl athletes should be
allowed to compete against birth-girls, why differentiate sports by gender at
all? If testosterone and other
differences between the genders doesn’t matter, then why shouldn’t all athletes
be placed in both-gender competitions?
Traditionally, we’ve considered
various books and movies to be appropriate for specific age ranges. Categorizing movies and allowing parents to
decide whether their children should be allowed to watch the movie has
generally been non-controversial.
Clearly, placing age-appropriate labels is not the same as banning them.
However, today, if parents want to
remove a book from an elementary school library, they are accused of banning
books. That is a fallacious argument
intended to infuriate others.
I’m not prepared to identify age
cutoffs, but explicit sexual acts do not seem to be appropriate in literature
or movies for young children. A book in
which a same-gender couple was raising a child would not be inappropriate, to
me, if it did not suggest a sexual relationship between the two, however
libraries should not overflow with such characters. They should be present in library books and
texts roughly in the same degree that they exist in the public.
On the other hand, teachers should
not be subjected to abuse by parents. As
I noted above, teachers should have peer review. Parents should also be allowed into the
classroom (on a limited basis and only as long as they behave themselves) and
should be able to review and opine on their children’s texts and books. A parent who objects should have recourse to
discuss their concerns with a teacher or administrator. If the parent is still dissatisfied and she can
secure the support of a specified percentage of parents, a more formal hearing
is appropriate. Perhaps those parents’
children can have an alternate curriculum.
While I think a significant percentage of parents should be given
respectful consideration even if less than half the parents, I’d be disinclined
to allow a minority of parents to veto a book or curriculum item.
Of course, situations can
vary. If a high percentage of Black
parents objected to a presentation of slavery, I’d be strongly inclined to
adjust the curriculum even if that was a minority of the total parental group. However, I’d like to hope (and in this
particular example, I strongly suspect it would happen) that they would get
support from parents of other races.
Sex education is important in
schools. Many parents are reluctant to
engage in sex education, thereby creating a void for the school system to
fill. I personally learned the “facts of
life” from another student, which was not ideal. I understand that a lot of young people are
learning about sexual intercourse over the internet and concluding that violence
is a natural aspect of sexual intercourse.
(That really freaks me out!) I
thought we were doing a reasonably good job of sex education and have practices
that have allowed parents to remove their children from such classes. Maybe the sex education classes don’t discuss
non-traditional gender roles.
These issues can almost always be
worked out if people discuss them in good faith.
Throughout my life, I have
generally believed in affirmative action, but not quotas.
I’ve been an environmentalist since
before I ever heard of the word. In
trying to understand my personal values, I’ve come to understand that
maximizing the “human minute” is one of my supreme goals. As a species, we are clearly renewable. But the “human minute” is not renewable. If we don’t maximize the contribution that an
individual is willing and capable of making, that human minute has been wasted
forever.
Our educational goal should be to
maximize the degree to which each student reaches his/her potential. Although I am a strong believer in merit and
grades, academic achievement would not be the sole criteria I would use.
A key consideration would be the
student’s potential. Students coming
from a weaker educational background won’t test as well. Those who have had to support their families
might have test scores that don’t reflect their potential. All of this should be considered. It is an art, not a science. And (poor) Caucasian children, as well as
African-American children should benefit from affirmative action.
I had a friend who was a very large
Chicano who some people would instinctively fear. We’d be in a large restaurant when he would
suddenly bellow “I think we should discriminate based on color.” You could hear the air getting sucked out of
the room. He would wait for effect and
then say “And that color is white.”
After another pause during which people would wonder if they had
misunderstood, he’d say “We should discriminate based on the quality of the
white matter in their brain.”
I think interviews were helpful in
understanding and evaluating candidates and should become more common.
In college, students should be
exposed to a wide variety of ideas, cultures, etc. So, diversity is a great goal, but it should
be diversity in how the students’ and faculties’ minds work; a diversity in how
they view the world. That is not
strictly related to things such as race.
Diversity in how the mind works is
related to personal experience. People
can see things differently because of age, gender, family status,
ethnicity/culture, physical characteristics (handicaps/weight), affluence,
upbringing, religion, etc. From my
perspective, the differences based on race should be subsumed into
ethnicity/culture. But that is not the
case; our human frailties have made race a factor in how people’s brain work.
However, as noted above, ethnicity
was not effective in bringing diverse thought processes to Yale while I was an
undergraduate.
Even when I was at Yale, diversity
of thought was nourished only to a certain level. Today, college campuses have become very
resistant to some thought, with a rampant “cancel” culture. A few years ago, Wesleyan University sought
to recruit more ex-military students and conservative faculty in a laudable
effort to boost diversity. Conservatives
are nearly non-existent among college faculty.
A good education is not consistent with one-sided indoctrination.
When I was at Yale in the late
1960s, a speaker who had won a Nobel prize in the hard sciences was invited to
speak. I think his name was Jensen. He was promoting his theory that
African-Americans have lower IQs than Caucasians.
That was an offensive theory to
me. On the other hand, I couldn’t
entirely rule out that the preferences in slave labor might not have led to such
a result. I strongly believed that, even
if that was true, it did not impact what our educational practices should be
because:
1)
There is overlap. Even if the average African-American had low
IQ, we needed to find the high-IQ African-Americans and give them their chance
to maximize their contributions.
2)
We still needed to maximize education for
everyone.
3)
Furthermore, educational potential is not fixed
by IQ. Motivation, hard work, attitude,
etc. can generate superior results even if IQ is not superior.
4)
IQ is not a perfect measurement anyway.
I was very interested in hearing
Jensen speak, so that I could find the weaknesses in his argument and undermine
his impact. Sadly, his invitation to
speak was retracted because his views were deemed unacceptable.
Like many things in life,
affirmative action has had good effects and bad effects. In combination with grade inflation and
reduced standards for graduation, it has allowed people of all races to
question the capability of minority college graduates. My best friend is an African-American who
owned his engineering company. He gave
job opportunities to qualified minorities.
However, potential clients were more comfortable assigning their
“minority” contracting allotments to females and Asians than to a disproportionately
African-American engineering firm.
My understanding is that
integration made Caucasian professionals available to African-Americans, the
result being that African-American professionals lost clients because other
African-Americans presumed that Caucasian professionals were superior.
I don’t know how I would have voted
on the Supreme Court ruling regarding affirmative action. I have not read the detailed opinions, nor
was I privy to the discussion. I can imagine
voting on either side.
The strongest advocates on either
side of this issue seem to be both wrong.
Critical Race Theory embraces some
of the following beliefs (although not all adherents embrace these ideas):
E Everything in USA history was predicated on keeping
African-Americans enslaved.
2) It is impossible for African-Americans to be
treated fairly in a capitalist society.
3) Racial prejudice is inherent and cannot be
expunged.
I fully support teaching the
“warts” of USA history, how we’ve overcome the warts to some degree and the
improvements that continue to be needed, but I don’t agree with the above three
precepts. Many people who oppose the
above aspects of Critical Race Theory share my support for teaching about our
failures. Granted, there are also people
who don’t want to teach our warts.
We should teach children to be
proud of our country’s accomplishments and advances and proud to live in a
country where they can contribute to further progress. We should inspire them to work toward that
progress and not to see themselves as victims who can’t control their future. We should encourage them to view such
disadvantages as motivation to succeed.
Above I mentioned my Chicano friend who argued that we should
discriminate based on the quality of white matter in the individual’s
brain. I observed to him that being a
Chicano motivated him to show Caucasians that Chicanos could match them or even
better them and to show younger Chicanos that Chicanos can succeed. I noted that I had never felt a corresponding
motivation to prove that French-Americans could succeed, nor to be a model for young
French-Americans.
Critical Race Theory tends to run
counter to those goals.
Adherents of CRT often blindly deny
that it is being taught in our schools.
They claim that it is college-level material and not part of K-12
curriculum. Notice that neither of those
claims refutes that it is being taught in K-12; the adherents simply hide
behind a claim that it is not part of the curriculum.
In a local school board election,
the pro-CRT slate all said that CRT was not part of the curriculum, and they
were not here (at a debate) to discuss what individual teachers might be
teaching. That seemed to be an admission
that it was actually being taught.
Some of the content of teacher
in-service day training classes clearly includes the objectionable views I
mentioned above.
Our schools should be named in
honor of people. Students, teachers and
parents should learn why that person has been honored by having her/his name
bestowed on a school.
We need to inspire our
population. Our prior heroes can do
that. Admittedly, no one has ever been
perfect, but the current effort to denigrate our heroes is damaging. Acknowledge their weaknesses but honor their
strengths. (See my blog regarding Robert
E. Lee.)
Streets should also be named after
people and street posts should have QR codes so people can learn about the
person for whom the street has been named.
Such naming is a low hanging fruit
way to educate and inspire our citizens.
We should leverage it!
Renaming schools and streets that honor people who had
weaknesses can be reasonable, but should not be mob-run efforts. Yale decided to rename “Calhoun College” to
be “Grace Hopper College”. When I first
heard about that, I feared an inappropriate “politically correct” action. However, outstanding thought and discussion
went into the decision. After reading
the report establishing a “name changes process” and the report specific to
this name change, I was completely comfortable with Yale’s decision.
I would not close the Federal
Department of Education, but I would re-orient it and downsize it. Education decisions are best made locally to
fit local needs and include parental involvement and possibly business
involvement.
However, data collection, analysis,
collection of best practices and other such activities are valuable at the
national level. A Federal department of
education can be a resource for local communities.
Free college education makes sense
as a college education is as necessary now as a high school education was in
the past.
However, if we were to provide free
college education, I’d like to make sure that:
1.
Students be required to do public service before
they could apply that free college education. (Some exceptions could apply.)
a.
I have
consistently found that young people who were in the military service or did
other work before entering college had a better understanding of why they were
in college and what they wanted to accomplish.
b.
Doing public service is a good way to develop
self-worth and appreciation of our country.
c.
While doing public service, people of various
economic classes frequently interact.
2.
Free
public education does not result in public universities dominating higher
education. The potential disadvantages
of indoctrination are too great.
When I taught in Los Angeles, neither my high school nor my junior
high school students knew the multiplication tables. The school system allowed them to use printed
multiplication tables, but the students would run their finger along a line in
the table and end up one row or column “off”, producing an incorrect answer.
I preferred that they learn basic multiplication facts via
principles or other ways.
Therefore, I did not allow my students to use the multiplication
tables. Instead, I put multiplication
facts up on the wall as follows:
1) All multiplication
facts (from 1 x 1 =1 through 12 x 12 = 144) were on the wall.
2) The fact cards were
done in a variety of colors. Facts that
would be close to each other on a multiplication table were different
colors. If the students remembered
seeing 7 x 9 in red, I did not want them to also remember 56 having been in
red. So, the colors were NOT randomly
picked.
3) Facts that would be
close to each other on a multiplication table were far apart. I did not want 7 x 7 = 49 to be close to 8 x
6 = 48. So, the placards were NOT
randomly placed. They were placed with
intentional disorder.
The students had a crutch but I hoped that the nuisance of
searching for the desired fact would encourage them to learn the facts by
principle or rote. If they were willing
to rely upon the fact cards, they might learn by visual memory, envisioning the
colorful fact card and/or envisioning the spot on the wall where that card
hung.
One Spring day, standardized testing was scheduled at Belvedere. So, I came to school early and covered each
multiplication fact with a piece of paper.
The students protested vociferously. I took a chance and claimed that they did not
need to see the cards because they already knew what was on the cards. I then pointed to a blank piece of paper that
had a card behind it and asked the students what the underlying fact was. A chorus of correct answers responded. We moved on from one card to another, testing
several cards, with correct choruses each time.
The students seemed quite surprised.
Note: I did not determine
how many students knew the answers.
I did not do any testing to see
if they remembered these facts subsequently.
I can't demonstrate improved math
skills. I do not have before- and after-
results.
This nice anecdote is not
conclusive.
I believe this idea has merit and is
worth testing. So, I’d like to fund the
cost of testing it further. Please
introduce me to anyone who might be interested.
Our teaching of geography is
weak. Students in other countries may be
more aware of where our states are than our students are aware of where their
country is.
I’d like to find a college student
(preferably intending to be a teacher) to work with me on this project. The student would find a voice-to-text
program.
·
People would leave messages about teachers who
have had a memorable impact on their family --- usually someone who taught the
writer or the writer’s children.
·
The student would edit them and send them back
to the individual who could modify the text if they wish. At the same time, we’d ask for permission to
publish.
·
A panel of judges would evaluate the stories
to select winners. Although the stories could be about teachers from anywhere,
the winning stories have to be about Kansas City-area teachers.
·
First prize: $25,000 endowment at the Greater
Kansas City Community Foundation (GKCCF) to fund an on-going philanthropy class
honoring that teacher. Each year, we
will teach a philanthropy class to a class at that teacher’s school. Each child will get a $25 Charity Giving
Card. The student would go on-line to
select which charity gets the $25.
·
Teachers can ask students to discuss why they
chose their recipients. The student who
persuades the most students to give to his/her charity could earn additional
Giving Cards for that charity.
·
Two runners-up prizes will fund a single
one-time class in honor of other teachers.
·
Prizes are financed through my DAF at GKCCF.
·
The person who recorded the winning entry and
the teacher (if living) could attend the class, with permission of the school.
·
An event might be held to honor the teacher,
inviting other fans of the teacher.
·
The submissions will be published on-line to
help train and inspire other teachers and to help earn more respect for the
teaching profession.
I have heard many teachers bemoan that
they “have to teach to the test”.
“Teaching to the test” does not entail simply taking a practice test to
acclimate students to the test process; it involves an on-going effort to gear
curriculum and pedagogy toward what is likely to be questioned on the exam.
In my opinion, such teachers reflect
good critical thinking in decrying teaching to the test. However, I maintain that such teachers should
resist the pressure/ temptation to teach to the test, in order to act with
integrity and to model integrity for students.
Some teachers may think it is
appropriate to “teach to the test”.
While I disagree with them, I don’t challenge their integrity if that is
their true opinion. My criticism relates
to teachers who opine that “teaching to the test” is wrong yet do so. For such teachers, the question is whether
they should do something they think is wrong.
What are the likely consequences of
refusing to teach to the test?
- Are students harmed? Not in the view of a teacher who thinks
that “teaching to the test” is wrong.
- Is the teacher likely to be
fired? I suspect (s)he will not be
fired if (s)he is recognized as an outstanding teacher.
- If (s)he is fired, the teachers’
union should rally to her/his defense.
- If (s)he loses her job, (s)he may
be able to find a teaching job elsewhere.
- Worst case situation: the teacher
needs to find a non-teaching job.
Do these potential consequences
justify abandoning one’s principles by “teaching to the test”? By “teaching to the test”, might the teacher
be placing his/her interests above the interests of students?
I recommend that teacher training
programs proactively discuss “teaching to the test”, encouraging each student
teacher to reach his/her own conclusions.
(Note: while I was a schoolteacher,
there was a teacher strike. In the
succeeding 50 years, I have remained comfortable that I acted ethically, while
upsetting both the administration and the union. First, I upset the administration by deciding
to go on strike. Then I upset the
strikers because I decided to go back in and help teach the students while an
agreed-upon mediator was preparing his report.
Then I upset the administration again when I rejoined the strike because
I felt the school board had not responded in good faith. I wasn’t received so warmly by the strikers.
(😊)
In my blog, I discussed how the Hamas demonstrators exposed the rot in our education system. Another example is Yale's renovated
Peabody Museum. As viewed by Edward Rothstein, the museum ignores many of the scientific advances of the Caucasians, describes others as appropriated from other cultures and castigates the immorality of the scientists and the immoral uses of their tools, while suggesting, by lack of commentary, that the other cultures are pure.
