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Comparing Reading Lists

Suppose this should focus upon when and how schools – so board members should be considering – open safely. Except I’ve no special insight other than noticing polls are pointing to a likelihood of 40% of parents planning to continue to home school. Interesting.

For some time though I’ve been thinking about the importance of literature and how our students have little to no exposure to it at school any longer. Why? Much of the blame goes to Common Core. CCSS (Common Core State Standards) programs prefer “Reading for information.” Really. Hello? If you can read at all, you can read ‘for information.’

So, the purpose it seems is to prevent our children from knowing and appreciating genuine and long ago history along with learning and recognizing thoughtful and powerful writing. Why? My best guess is – and my best guesses when it comes to CCSS are based on much research, its evident disastrous educational results, common sense too – that denying important knowledge and the very best authors, replacing them with more current topics not necessarily well written is but another opportunity to indoctrinate rather than educate.

One hundred plus years ago our seventh and eight graders were reading: Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling, Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfield, Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe, Stories of Heroic Deeds by James Johonnot, Stories from Dickents by Charles Dickents, Old Ballads in Prose by Eva March Tappan, Knickerbocker’s History of New York by Washington Irving, Grandmother’s Story of Bunker Hill and Other Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper, Stories of the Olden Time by James Johonnot, Adventures of a Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper, The Young Mountaineers by Mary Noailles Murfree and Harris’s Stories of Georgia by Joel Chandler Harris.

This is from a curriculum reading list writer Annie Holmquist discovers from an 1908 manual at the Minnesota Historical Society for an article she publishes on Intellectual Takeout (https://www.intellectualtakeout.org) within which Ms. Holmquist determines to compare with a more recent list of a highly rated school district.

The differences are astonishing.

(continued at forthcoming Part Two of this post).

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Less is More – It’s True

It is almost delightful, or perhaps refreshing to learn about a County Chairman in IL inviting superintendents and school board presidents of nine of the 16 districts within his County to discuss what they can do to lower their property tax levies. It’s a start. Despite home values falling due to the crash of the housing market a decade ago, this County’s taxes have steadily increased. This makes no sense, but oh so much doesn’t. What does make sense and is impressive is that this County Board determines to reduce its own budget by more than 10% for this tax year. Maybe school district officials can learn something. I wonder, but maybe.

Demographics show residents leaving this County – and taking their children with them – so there are fewer students to educate and fewer taxpayers to support schools. Still, apparently districts cannot or will not determine ways to reduce their expenses. All local governments have an obligation to taxpayers to restrict their budgets, school boards have a more significant obligation since they account for the largest percentage, always, of property tax bills.

No one wants to criticize public education (except sometimes I do) or the good work teachers try to do but schools must lower their taxes. Period. President Trump, at the time,  asks his cabinet members to each reduce their department budgets by five percent. Why can’t school districts do the same? Probably because they have never had to. They want something, the Board votes on it, they tax for it and they get it. Schools are a lot like spoiled children to my mind. What I am unable to understand is how educators/administrators who are entrusted with the education of our children are not able to budget better. Aren’t they intelligent enough, or don’t they want to?

Yes, salary increases, perks, benefits, retirement programs union member teachers negotiate for and receive are received by school administration and staff, too. So, rather than fight against some of these expenses, districts prompt their boards to agree. Then there are the costly extraneous programs from which students benefit hardly at all, but additional personnel and so costs are required. Textbooks – now nearly all are Common Core aligned while every knowledgeable parent and serious educator is working against this program – are immensely expensive, yet districts buy them. Or, I should say, taxpayers buy them and they don’t want them. Why can’t district financial officers, or Financial Assistant Superintendents – title equals higher salary – figure out how to reduce costs?

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The Great School Legend – Part Three

While it is an ideal for which we should all aim, the key is that it would and does need to involve families and communities as well as schools. I happen to believe that someone must first want an education and teachers cannot be expected to prepare young people for careers the young people care nothing for.

At the same time, when a teacher finds a poor child, perhaps from a broken home who displays a talent or curiosity that teacher should have every avenue open to him or her with which to help that individual child. And I would guess that it is exactly these types of students who go on to become the successes that the ‘legend’ refers to when it claims that it has transferred/taught so much to so many.

There weren’t too many, of course, and the “successes” wanted to be.

Gratefully, I’ve been taught that if I want to complain that’s fine, but I’d best have a better idea and it seems this colors my thinking while reading this, so that my reaction to the author is somewhat negative. Peter Schrag’s review (back cover) calls the book “brilliant” and perhaps it is considered so by readers within the academic field. If parents read it, those same parents likely have a high level of interest in education. If there were very many of them, some of the problems would surely be alleviated. I am somewhat confused by Greer’s semi fiction style, quotes ad nauseam, early 1900’s New York statistics and bad writing.

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The Great School Legend – Part Two

  

Irish and Italian groups did not do well and certainly the blacks did not. Greer points out that two of the reasons contributing to this are our fear of giving up our positions, and the poverty of these families being a detriment to or interference of our children’s ability to learn what the schools did offer.

He explains that rather than schools acting as an agent of social mobility (teaching poorer groups within our society the ways others live) through academic preparation so that they will be better able to obtain good jobs, schools acted more like agencies for keeping social status as they found it.

Basically the author is telling us that schools have never been the ideal they’ve been held out to be. We didn’t know what we were doing then and we don’t know now. Conversely, he points out throughout the book that what we did wrong was, in fact, done with a purpose. And that we should, at the point in 1972 as he writes the book begin taking “rhetoric” about our schools seriously, rather than continuing to look for legends.

It is unnerving to think that we have not been taking our rhetoric about schools and what they do, or don’t do for our children seriously. The Great School Legend. Then again, perhaps no one has been listening.

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The Great School Legend

 How About a Temporary Change Up?

Recently I come across a report written in 1983 about a book assigned in a class I take at Northwestern called Politics and Education. Correct; they shouldn’t be but are inseparable. The Great School Legend by Colin Greer (©1972) focuses not at all upon school boards, still, I want to share the report with the reader. informative, if not quite up to date. Well, in ways it is. Certainly worth looking back upon.

“Once upon a time there was a great nation which became great because of its public schools.” The author tells us in the first line of his Introduction that this is the American school legend. He goes on to explain that we all have faith in this legend.  That we believe the school system has been responsible for our great growth and democracy, and even that because we live in a democracy, our schools provide equal educational opportunities. Considering, however, that we’ve had no model from which to form our educational basis here, and that mostly those within academia study, write about and criticize (not often or not really) the merit (results) of the schooling offered to our young people, we are all still seeing our educational system by looking up to it. Students of the system have assumed our schools are democratic institutions and have then proceeded to discover how they got that way. They’ve missed the point entirely, claims Greer, that they are not, in fact, that way. Okay.

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Pronouncing Student Names Correctly

If you think you’ve heard it all, you might not have. There is now a program to help teachers to learn to correctly pronounce the names of their students. Seriously. Wait: Are teachers intelligent and well educated – or not? Learning to pronounce the names of the children in their class shouldn’t be all that difficult. Sure, there are unusual names – there always have been – but a class in effect, a program, for teachers to learn proper name pronunciation?

Apparently, when a teacher is unable or doesn’t bother to pronounce a name his or her student suffers. According to the equity and diversity coordinator for a Nevada school district, “To walk around in a space that is supposed to be designed for you to feel welcome and safe and to be who you are, and know that every day someone is mispronouncing your name, is emotionally exhausting.” While I wouldn’t disagree with the point that teachers should pronounce the names of their students accurately this seems a bit dramatic and having little to do, once again, with academic education.

To resolve the ‘problem’ some districts have made pronunciation a priority. A priority? Teachers are encouraged to spend more time (how about on teaching) learning names of students, oh, and staff. I mean really. There is even a west coast resource called My Name, My Identity. Interesting. Likely unnecessarily costly. Yet another way for school boards to spend district money not teaching. Makes me crazy.

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When Did Holidays Become an Academic Subject?

According to a publisher’s website at least one half of school districts countrywide are spending taxpayer money for a booklet/curriculum supplemental resource titled: Holidays Around the World. This 22 page, 1,679 word 8 – 9 age level booklet tells young readers how “Kids just like you around the world” celebrate holidays. Fascinating.

Each publication from this source is strongly Common Core related according to their site. Let’s see – the booklet holidays or whatever begins with Ramadan, then Hannuka – okay, now Christmas. “Many Christians go to church on Christmas Day or the night before. Since he also refers to gift opening either “the night before, or Christmas morning” is the writer unfamiliar with the term Christmas Eve? They sing songs – these would be hymns – and pray – to whom?- that others will be safe, healthy, and happy during the holiday season.” Just for the holiday season?

He then claims that Christian homes are decorated with, “red, green and white.” What? What about tinsel? Or gold, or colorful hand painted tree ornaments. Reindeer? Pine cones – well, guess some are painted white. I posit that perhaps his thinking is limited to evergreen trees and Santa Clause in his red suit with his white beard. Maybe he’s never seen a Nativity; most have Mary dressed in blue. Overall his views are limited and likely both naturally and intentionally so.

Then Kwanza, non religious and created in 1966 in Los Angeles;  which specifics don’t appear.

The Chinese New Year then Holi which is celebrated by Hindus, most of whom live in India, what they and the rest are ‘just like’ is that they are all children. Otherwise ‘they’ are all quite different. The booklet concludes with New Years. Oh, Easter isn’t mentioned. Told you the author’s worldview isn’t exactly worldwide. Or, he didn’t want to present two Christian holidays. I don’t know.

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Driver’s Education Should be Part of Education

It isn’t on the Agenda. More likely it’s on the expense list. Maybe we’re reviewing the Student Handbook – don’t ask. Somehow though I notice that our high school students nearing driving age must be earning a ‘D’ in order to be permitted to take Driver’s Ed. A ‘D,’  really?

You do realize I don’t take some of these things well. “Why,” I ask, I guess to anyone on the Board or from the Administration who might be able to answer, “Don’t’ we require a B- or C at least from our students before allowing them to take Driver’s Ed?” Crickets.

“Seriously, wouldn’t that make some sense? Wouldn’t that significantly encourage our young people to work harder at their classwork, to improve their grades since we know they all want to get their license to drive, if possible, on their sixteenth birthday?” This makes perfect sense to me. Apparently not to the Board or Administration. Or anyone willing to let me know.

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Contentious Board Meeting – Part One

If doublespeak, flippancy, frivolousness, dismissiveness, duplicity, and omnipotent expression don’t give you headaches, or if you are able to easily comprehend and properly sort these you should attend school board meetings whenever possible. No, all of these don’t appear at every meeting, though one or two frequently do, still indicating by your presence that you are concerned with what is happening within your district it might be worth being a bit bemused or a headache. That’s why they make aspirin.

Remember my first Board meeting; the one at which a young parent brought to our attention (or to those who were paying attention) the third grade textbook she felt was anti American? (My Luck). At next month’s meeting I bring it again, to the attention of my fellow members. No child in our, or any other district should be exposed to this book. Period.

I say why I think so: Pro union (that’s fine) but an entire chapter is a bit over the top; goods made in other countries are less expensive therefore we should buy what we need and want from them; importance and purposes of protests, with pictures; how difficult life here is for immigrants (as if life isn’t difficult for most people at one time or another); that people live differently in different places and that the reader can help the world; basics of geography and exploring different cultures and public service roles; and how expensive childcare is in our Country while other countries have free childcare, and “Don’t you think we should have free childcare here?” it asks the young readers. THIRD GRADE. Give me a break.

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Considering Cursive

Interestingly, surprisingly cursive is deleted from some school curriculum even before Common Core. Although, CC does not require it, obviously. Actually, CC has no authority to require anything, but back specifically to cursive which is still taught at some schools – to my mind it should be taught at every elementary school from third (it used to be second) grade through fifth or sixth. Why?

Let me count the ways/reasons: Handwriting flows, encouraging thoughts to reach from pen to paper without interruption. So superior to stopping at each printed letter and word. Writing in cursive creativity continues with far more ease. Ideal not only for students, but all who wish to thoughtfully and clearly communicate: For taking notes during future high school and college classes. We best remember what we write, so we best learn, too.

Once the up and down lines and repetitive oval practicing is accomplished, cursive is easier and faster. Some teachers claim it is too time consuming to teach. Seriously? Oh, it might be they don’t recall the idea of assigning the practice as homework. Even on the surface it’s a silly reason. Isn’t it their job to teach?

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