North of Everything

Through the Looking Glass and the Two Books to Lead You Back

2009-05-24T18:56:00.003-04:00

I have been to a place ostensibly devoted to learning where a person supposedly obsessed with literacy standards can scarcely pen a note himself and a self-proclaimed champion of technology throws a tantrum demonstrating what a Luddite he is. If only I was kidding. And we wonder why the kids sometimes mock us.

I've read two fantastic books on education lately. Either, by itself, is thought provoking and informative. Their ideas taken together, however, provide a potent blend of painful truths and escape routes from the lies we tell ourselves while short-changing students today.

The first is The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner. The second is Real Education by Charles Murray. Now, perhaps, just the name of this author or that is enough to make you turn away from the book. This, I suppose, in an effort to protect what you have already decided is your own set of truths. However, if you are so sure that you are right, these books can do you little harm. You may reason that if you are already right, then these books can do little for you. Fair enough.

But these two books are worth the time. They are not very long, they are not written in edu-speak, and I believe that more people in America would read them, simply read them, our entire education system might change. Everything from Special Ed to Gifted-Talented, Accelerated Reader tests to AP tests, standardized assessment to the Socratic method, Habits of Mind to Harkness tables, differentiation to homogeneity. It would all be re-evaluated. Not necessarily thrown out, but reassessed.

There are many lies we tell each other and ourselves. I know this because I have seen the horror on the faces of teachers, administrators, and parents when I make a simple statement. A statement Charles Murray discusses in his book. Brace yourself, here it comes- "Half of all students are below average."

There is a knee-jerk reaction to reject that statement but of course it has to be, by its very nature, a true statement. But we tell ourselves and those kids that they are all potential academic all-stars. It's a lie on which we base a huge chunk of our pedagogical philosophy. The lie drains resources from how they might be better applied. The lie stigmatizes the trades to the point that gifted would-be tradespeople are embarrassed to pursue learning them.

This is just one of the lies lying at the heart of what we're doing wrong. One of the most frustrating things within education is we will stumble upon a realization like this, all nod our heads in agreement, and then do nothing about it. We say that the problem is systemic and is beyond our ability to change it.
Instead, we wait for the next manufactured fad to come along, to treat a symptom or two, and we throw ourselves into that effort for a few years.
Now, we think technology will magically save us. Technology has to be integral to learning now and in the coming years, but we are buying tools as quickly as they can be produced and then learning what might be done with them. Instead, we might consider that we want to accomplish first and then buy the necessary tools. But faced with a problem we don’t fully understand, we again reach for the solution we’ve yet to fully understand. We are once again attempting to apply magic to our mystery illness.
Well, it’s a mystery no longer. Read these two books by Wagner and Murray. You and the teachers in your school will finally understand the problems. The solution isn’t in lengthening the day or year, which is just a larger dose of the same medicine. It isn’t in national standards, which is a single prescription for all types of maladies.
The solution comes first from reading the diagnoses contained in these two books and then using the ideas in concert to solve the systemic problems within American education.

Deeds of Men

2009-05-19T21:37:00.002-04:00

I'm currently working on my latest novel, working title is Deeds of Men. It's a dark supernatural thriller involving newspaper reporter Jack Killarney and university professor Vivian Donnehil chasing down a pattern of evil, all the while facing questions about the nature of myth, faith, insanity, love, and evil.

It's a thinking-thriller taking the reader on a ride with plenty of action, tension, and suspense while at the same time exploring the pyschological, theological, and philosophical bases of that which we all call evil.

Deeds of Men is coming along well and has been great fun to write thus far. At this point, Jack is in the city of Juba, following the latest lead...

~KS

Hypocrisy in Consolidation: Collectivism in Education

2008-12-12T12:28:00.003-05:00

It is odd that the same people who get so worked up about corporate mega-mergers and consolidation of the media are the exact same people who are pressing forward with a not-so-hidden agenda of consolidating American education.

Whether you live in a state considering the merger of local school districts into super-districts where there would be virtually no representation for small communities, or you live in a state which has done all the work and met all the goals only to face the as-yet unannounced but obvious push to create a single national set of education standards, all measured with a single national set of high-stakes examinations, you are in the midst of a movement to consolidate all education within the United States.

The proponents say it is overdue. For some, it is merely an effort, just as with most corporate mergers, to cut costs. When those who feel this way are honest about it, this is actually a respectable position, even though in most cases it is incorrect. The consolidations will in many cases cause increases in local tax burdens while at the same time degrade student learning.
For the past decade, educators have been trying to create smaller learning communities because they know smaller communities are superior to giant regional schools and districts, but now states are turning back the clock and progress at the expense of children.

For those pushing this consolidation, it is something akin to media consolidation. Not media consolidation among private enterprise. When Disney purchased control of a major news outlet, it was not to control the content of the news. It was purely a business decision. ABC World News has run stories its parent company probably wished had not run. No, instead consider the example of a banana-republic asserting control over all media nationwide, and consolidating the regulation of those media in an effort to ensure so-called fairness and consistency of quality and message.

Ayn Rand wrote of the “Fairness Doctrine for Education” pointing out in part that schools should be allowed to compete with their messages and curricula and performance, and that government money given to the schools, while a seemingly good idea, could be used as an immoral coercive lever. Prophetic. One might even substitute the word coercion with the word extortion, and yet supporters of such tactics feel they have the moral high ground. Educrats and some elected officials are in the process of wresting control from parents, local communities, and even states over what children are taught in schools in the name of the common good and in the name of equity. In truth, it is in the name of power. They are in the hunt to control what gets taught to America’s children.

It is arrogance and snobbery of the worst kind IF the people pushing the consolidation agenda are well-intentioned. It is dangerous and malicious if it is about controlling the message and the nature of American identity in the future.

It is a struggle for, and against, the consolidation of message. The scary thing is these movements in education pick up momentum beginning with a small clutch of people reading and citing each other’s books and articles, looking mostly to create the next big lucrative fad in education, not even really realizing how dangerous such a movement can be. Many of them do not even consider what it might mean, in their push for a national normalization of education, if the entire set of standards were someday rewritten by evangelicals or, at the other extreme, socialists.

One of the strengths of the current education system is its widespread and sometimes chaotic diversity of control. If anything, we should be curtailing the federal Department of Education, not empowering it and with it those latched onto the money-spinning educational teat.

Our national character is strengthened by our differences, and would be weakened by a great whitewashing of learning outcomes, especially if measured by high-stakes testing. The disparity in how we educate our children, state to state and district to district, acts as a giant circuit breaker to prevent a monolithic set of skills and concepts and biases, for truly, such a result would mean the undermining of America herself. In other words, if each district is under local control, and one district does a less-than-perfect job, only the students in that district are impacted. If there is no local control, and there are instead federal standards and assessments, and somehow the federal government is less than perfect (hard to imagine, I know), then every student in the nation is adversely impacted. This is even true at the state level, and many states have been nice enough to prove the point over the past ten years.

Maybe Mississippi has a longer way to go in proving itself on these tests than say New York, but that does not give the right to outsiders to tell Mississippi what their kids should be learning. But the establishment knows it has Mississippi in its clutches. They know that the state cannot walk away from the federal money. Mississippi in the extreme, and the other states to some degree save one, are being extorted, and the extortionists will acknowledge it gleefully. These people really believe that they are the great rescuers of the ignorant and their children, and although they would agree extortion is morally wrong, they think the imagined ends justify the means.

One might ask those perpetrators, “Who would get to decide what the standards will be?” They should also consider that eventually a monstrous influence might come to manipulate the standards a generation hence. Just as one example, it should be remembered that eugenics was once considered good science.

I am sure the proponents would claim nothing like that could happen again in this country, that the example is too much of a leap. That the averaging of state standards into a set of national standards could never produce such an outcome, but their own agenda is a path to exactly such a tragic immediate outcome to some Americans. A national curriculum or set of learning outcomes insisting on either evolution or intelligent design is going to be just as repugnant to one side as the other. To have a national curriculum that insists that the nation was designed by the founding fathers to be free of an official religion, or as a Christian country, will be anathema to millions either way. The examples are endless.

The proponents will claim they only want to build a standardized framework of learning outcomes to which local districts could add whatever they like. This is only the thin edge of the wedge and it is disingenuous. They intend to standardize that which they have decided is important and they will leave that which they deem unimportant to the states and districts.
Who will get to decide the curricula? Will there be a national referendum on each learning outcome? No. More likely, the extortive so-called experts will get together and impose what they believe our children must know, upon which they can build the next set of contracts and book deals.

The consolidation of education, whether in states creating mega-districts, or the push toward national standards and assessments outside of state control, is simply about money and power over the message. Although it is mendaciously said to be what is best for the students, it is the height of arrogance on the part of the people who feel they have the right to compel such a thing.

memes

2008-05-02T23:25:00.003-04:00

You know, there are so many things that the internet takes over and seems to cheapen.

One of the coolest concepts, one of the best venues for a little mental gymnastics, was the idea of memes.

Way over-simplifying this but memes were to cultural ideas what genes are to biology. Yuck, I hate how that came out, but it's specifically because of how tough the topics of memes or memetics could be that made them fun. It was a thought-forcer.

Whether it was technology or religion or folk songs or whatever else was being passed down, and if those ideas made the recipient more fit, then the idea survived...maybe.

But in recent internet lingo, "meme" is being used as a fancy word for spam.

Here's an internet meme:

1) What's your fav color?
2) What's the weirdest place you've ever read a book?
3) Pass this on to three friends.

If that were in an email, we'd groan. And I'd likely fill it out, because I find those things fun too. I don't mind that kind of spam to be honest, it helps people share and communicate. It gets me to tell people weird stuff about me that I'd never get a chance to, and I learn weird things about others. And let's face it, it's only the weird stuff that makes us worth knowing.

But it's too bad someone started calling them memes. I mean they may very well end up being memes, but only if they get transmitted generation to generation over the next century at least.

So I know this rant was out of left field, but I hope a few of the people who keep using the word "meme" take the time now to look it up and see how cool a word it was before its internet application.

Here's Daniel Dennett on memes. Check it out...