Why I am proud of my state representative

Mindy Greiling is brilliant.  She is my representative to the state legislature and lives just down the block from me.  Minnesota Monitor highlights her recent correspondence with the Star Tribune over a hit piece their resident right wingnut, Katherine Kersten, did against a local charter school.

In response to questions prompted by Katherine Kersen’s recent columns on Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), I decided to visit the school myself.

What I learned during a tour late last month is that none of Kersten’s concerns that the charter school is promoting religion in violation of a state law that prohibits public schools from doing so is valid.

What I did see was excellent teachers hard at work in the classroom focused on improving student achievement. I saw engaged students of different religious and cultural backgrounds learning reading, math, government and science. I spoke with parents, teachers and administrators who all stressed their high standards for TIZA students.

While an outsider, or someone like Kersten who is trying to validate a predetermined conclusion, might be tempted to brand Tarek ibn Ziyad as an “Islamic School” because it leases space from the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, the school, like other charter schools in Minnesota that lease space from churches, is a separate entity. It does comply with federal law that requires all schools to accommodate a student’s right to practice his or her religion. And unlike other charter schools that have faced financial and other administrative challenges, the school was recognized with a 2008 School Finance Award from the Minnesota Department of Education for its “sound fiscal health and financial management policies.”

Kersten’s reckless journalistic standards have diminished this paper’s credibility. Worse, they have threatened the safety of the children and staff at the school, which has been forced to take extra security measures in the wake of recent death threats. While I value a broad range of opinions from a variety of perspectives, I value the facts even more. Kersten’s gross distortion of the facts in this case should compel Star Tribune management to ask for her resignation.

Remedial science education for presidential candidates

Dumb, dumber, and dumberer.  Are they so desperate to offend nobody they pretend to not know what they don’t talking about?  Or is it worse - do they really NOT have a friggin’ clue?

I’ve been avoiding this because it pisses me off, so I’ll refer you to The Carpetbagger.

Perceptions of merit

This explains a lot.

Protection from reality

What are they afraid of?  Facts?  Reality?  Why is this so controversial?

Some version of the Comprehensive Family Life and Sexuality Education Act has been pushed at the Capitol over eight years, only to languish in committees or be stripped from omnibus bills under threat of a veto from Gov. Tim Pawlenty. The bill’s provisions are controversial among politicos but not the public at large, according to a University of Minnesota survey.

Selective respect for religious exception?

Interesting story comes out of DC:

A high school track star has been disqualified from a meet because officials said the custom-made outfit she wears to conform to her Muslim faith violated competition rules.

The disqualification has to be subject to question here.  She’s simply fashioned a covering to wear under her track clothes that adheres to conservative Muslim tradition.  It’s no big deal, and it hasn’t been an issue before this year - the year in which she stands to win trophies and be exposed to college recruiters.

She - and the DC schools - deserve better.

Zero tolerance for ambiguity

We need more principals like her:

Sister Kathy Avery won’t put up with swearing on the playground at her school, and she’s not above repeating the offending language to make sure everyone understands which words she won’t tolerate.

The principal of St. Clare of Montefalco Catholic School had students stay after a Mass last month and informed the fifth- through eighth-graders that she has a zero-tolerance policy for cursing.

Just in case anyone wasn’t sure what she was talking about, Avery read off a list of the very words and phrases that she was banning.

Academic freedom or academic standards?

I, like many others I suspect, had a bit of a chuckle at the news that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill’s job is in jeopardy.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer crackpot.

But reading a bit at Coyote Blog makes me rethink my schadenfreude - not enough to think Churchill deserves a university position, but still…

And it is hard for me to escape the sense that Mr. Churchill may lose his tenured position at a state-run institution over the content of his speech.  Yeah, I know, its nominally about his academic credentials.  But don’t you think everyone is winking at each other about this?  Yes, Mr. Churchill is an academic fraud, but he was a fraud when UC hired him and tenured him as well, and they should have known it.

…

I could go out tomorrow and find twenty tenured professors of ethnic/racial/gender studies in state universities whose academic credentials are at least as bad as Churchill’s and whom no one would dare fire.  This has nothing to do with Churchill’s academic work or its quality.  UC is getting exactly what it expected when it tenured him.  This is about an attempt to fire a tenured professor for the content of his speech, speech that has embarrassed and put pressure on the university, and I can’t support that.

OK, yeah, he’s right as far as it goes.  Most universities have their share of crackpots.  Heaven knows as a graduate student I suffered through more than my share of time spent evaluating work that was, to put it mildly, junk.  Churchill’s still an idiot, but it’s not his fault that there are so many villages in need of purging.

What an education is

What is the purpose of an education? On one hand it’s important to learn critical skills - reading, writing, math, etc. Memorization of facts and figures serves a purpose, but is there nothing more? To a large extent I’d argue a goal of education is to teach thinking - art and philosophy and process.

With that in mind, Ann Althouse recently came out with an atypically silly notion:

And why does reading even need to be a separate subject from history in school? Give them history texts and teach reading from them. Science books too. Leave the storybooks for pleasure reading outside of school. They will be easier reading, and with well-developed reading skills, kids should feel pleasure curling up with a novel at home. But even if they don’t, why should any kind of a premium be placed on an interest in reading novels? It’s not tied to economic success in life and needn’t be inculcated any more than an interest in watching movies or listening to popular music.

The problem she has is not recognizing reading as an end unto itself. Reading is indeed a tool used to help you get through science, math, history, and myriad other subjects. But it is also an end unto itself. Some reading is indeed for pleasure, but any literature student will tell you many of the classics are sufficiently painful…the real issue is that literature is what teaches thinking in a way nothing else can. I’ve taken advanced level classes on a variety of subjects across the spectrum and without a doubt the most difficult tests were music theory and literature. Any dummy can do rote memorization. Thinking and analyzing are hard to teach, and hard to do.  Literature is how you do this. Teach someone to think and the rest will fall into place.
Hat tip to Jeff Fecke who observes:

And this is something that is important for school to do, just as it’s important for school to teach art, and music. Because storytelling, and music, and pictures have been a part of humanity since we were human. I reject categorically Althouse’s insane argument that an appreciation for literature is “not tied to economic success in life” — I’m quite certain J.K. Rowling would find such a statement hilarious — but even accepting it arguendo, so what? We are more than our economic success in life. The greatest and most magical things I have experienced have had little to do with money. One of those has been reading A Wrinkle in Time to my daughter, an experience that cost me $2.00 at a used book store for a worn copy of the novel. I wouldn’t trade that experience for a million dollars. That Althouse finds such a notion trivial is evidence that she has no understanding or respect for what it is to be human.

Selective history

Interesting piece from the UK.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

Read the full article, as it’s not only Muslims who want selective history, and part of the problem is the lack of knowledge on some teachers’ part too.

The price of cultural illiteracy

Great piece at The Carpetbagger Report on cultural illiteracy which reflects rather poorly on the state of education:

When a person is unable to say whether a passage comes from the Bible or Shakespeare, it means he does not know the Bible very well. This is shame — but it’s also a shame that he doesn’t know Shakespeare.

Furthermore, I would argue that scientific illiteracy presents a much more dangerous threat. Unable to grasp even the basics of the scientific method, many people remain gullible and unable to make informed decisions about nutrition, health care, global climate change and many other issues. A person’s inability to recognize a biblical allusion in a work of literature is unfortunate, but it rarely affects public policy.

Censorship on campus

Great piece by John Leo on censorship of conservatives on university campuses.  Worth reading.

Error in the system

From Sean at Hiding in the Backwaters:

The annual Utah Education Dean’s colloquium met this week to discuss teacher shortages in Utah. One of the issues cited was state schools can’t produce teachers fast enough. Now why would that be? It wouldn’t be because teachers are paid crap and are overworked thanks to some of the largest class sizes in the nation would it?

[Betsy Escandon, a research analyst at the Utah Foundation, a nonprofit public policy research organization] also urged research probing how college students decide whether to major in education or pursue a teaching career.

“We need data on how those people make those decisions,” she said. “Increasing salary alone won’t do it.”

Is she serious? Many teachers have second jobs to pay the bills. My daughter recently spotted one of her jr. high teachers making coffee at Starbucks. The article also states one of the reasons for the high turnover of teachers are “personal issues,” among them the inability to afford housing.

And we need more research to figure out why students are not choosing education as a career? Maybe we need to figure out why people in charge of education policy are such idiots. Utah state income tax is used solely to fund public education. Raise the tax. Increase teacher salaries and reduce class size. It really is that simple. It may not solve all your problems, such as women leaving to raise families, but it will surely make a big dent.

Stricker, N. (December 12, 2006). Teacher demand up but salaries still low. Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved December 15, 2006 from www.sltrib.com.

That ain’t history

A description of what may well be the world’s worst American History text.

Depressing.

Majoring minors

Perhaps you've heard about a bill recently signed by Florida Governor Jeb Bush, requiring high school students to also declare majors.  Interesting.  Sean opines:

I read in USA Today yesterday that in Florida children must declare a “life major” before entering high school, thanks to a new law recently signed by Jeb Bush.¹ What a phenomenal load of crap. Kids don’t have enough life experience to be making decisions like that at such a young age. Most people don’t even know what they want to do when entering college. Some few know what they want to do from childhood, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Who knows what that is supposed to achieve. I’m sure it’s grounded in some lunatic notion about idle hands being the devil’s workshop and kids need to be responsible, contributing members of society or some such nonsense.

Curious.  Personally I don't think it's a useful idea. Yes in Europe and Japan and elsewhere even on high school levels there are different curriculum tracks and such, but does a 15 year old guy really know what he wants?  Well, he knows he wants to eat and get laid…sometimes the order there changes…  But for a career?

I'm not sure I understand what a declaired "major" is supposed to accomplish.  The problem is inadequate achievement, not a lack of focus other than how things other than education are allowed to screw up the curriculum. 

There's nothing wrong with having opportunities for a focus in science, vocational training, foreign langugage, music, or what have you in high school and I applaud the excellent programs that are to be found.  But NO child should be graduating with a high school diploma who is incapable of doing math, reading, or without a basic understanding of history, science, civics, etc.  The general deficiency in general education is the problem.  How is this going to help that?

Uneducated wingnuts

It’s easy to ignore Phyllis Schlafly, but her current column at Townhall is a doozy, even by her own considerable standards.

This year’s spectacular Rose Bowl game attracted a phenomenal 35.6 million viewers because it featured what we want: rugged men playing football and attractive women cheering them on. Americans of every class, men and women, remained glued to their television sets and nearly 95,000 spectators watched from the stands.

The runaway success of this game proved again that stereotypical roles for men and women do not bother Americans one bit. Political correctness lost out as all-male teams battled and women cheered.

It’s too bad that male sports are being eliminated on most college campuses. Except for Texas, USC, and a few other places, radical feminism rules in the athletic departments at the expense of popular male sports.

Yeah right.  So much for the NCAA basketball tournament, the NIT, the dime a dozen bowl games around new year’s day, etc. 

It seems the poor dear needs a reality check.  OK, I’ll grant you there have been some issues with Title IX and the elimination of men’s programs and scholarships because of a lack of sufficient numbers of interested women to make the numbers is stupid and an injustice.  But we got here in the first place precisely because for the most part women’s athletics weren’t given the attention and resources necessary to offer legitimate programs. 

While I appreciate the angst the rebalancing has caused, universities are schools first and foremost and in terms of their educational mission there can be little doubt Title IX was a net positive.

And does ANYONE really believe the nonathletic majority choose a university based on which sports are offered?  Sheesh!

The Carpetbagger Report

Hugo Schwyzer