At Liberty Forum I picked up a copy of John Taylor Gatto’s A Different Kind of Teacher. It’s a relatively short collection of essays concerning various subjects. The book starts out strong with essays about the current state of the classroom from an actual teacher.  As a teacher, let me tell you that, that’s refreshing.  The essays are arranged such that they continue on this tare for a while. I find myself agreeing with Mr. Gatto a lot on these points. Mr. Gatto includes a letter from a student detailing how he teaches. He discusses his form of education that required students to not show up to school as often, but instead perform community service and internships. He describes why schooling costs so much by following the money. He also does an excellent job detailing the difference between schooling and education:

Let’s get it clear in our minds that schooling is not education — you can easily compensate for lacking a schooling, but there is no way to make up for the damage that occurs without an education. Without that you are smaller than you would have been.
Plenty of brilliant and famous people have lacked schooling — George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Admiral Farragut, Thomas Edison, Margaret Meade, and many more — but all of them had a fine education.

Then things begin to slow down. With the essay, “Horatio Alger’s Country: The Mysterious Origins of American Adoption” Mr. Gatto takes the reader on a long and boring journey through the history of education in America. This section seems heavy handed and under-engaging, making the reader trudge through every page turn. He loses some of the charm, uniqueness and brevity of his earlier essays. Things pick up a bit with the essay “A Different Kind of Teacher” then they turn down a weird American Christian praising and money-hating path where Mr. Gatto extols the virtues of the idea of original sin, early American Christian congregations, bashes science (possibly a favorite pasttime of his) and explains how adding money to anything cheapens the act involved and degrades the service. Perhaps some examples are in order:

The trouble with science is that its truths are only partial. Galileo had the facts right about the dead matter of the solar system, but said nothing about the cosmology of the human spirit.

“There is joy for those who seek the common good.” Joy for those who seek the common good. And I remembered my mother’s beautiful Christmas trees that took days of hard effort to create, effort in the family’s common service. I remembered her collecting of kitchen grease and metal scrap for the war effort…

… I do have an interesting bit of recent evidence in support of Simmel’s theory. In 1971 the National Book Award for nonfiction went to a title called The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy by Richard M. Titmuss, et al., a book which undertook to explore whether valuable things given freely — like services rendered voluntarily — were more or less valuable than the same services as part of a commercial system.
The commodity the author took for his test was human blood…
The book’s conclusions aren’t the slightest bit ambiguous: where blood is sold the quality is terrible, prices sky-high, shortages common; and where blood is sold there is also frequently danger to the purchaser…

At this point, I was kind of surprised. How can someone so intelligent and so successful working in a very difficult system have ideas that are so incongruous with their actions? It seems to me that Mr. Gatto has done some great analysis of what is wrong with the system and given some solutions that can be implemented at the classroom level. At the same time, his essays in the latter half of this book point to the idea that he doesn’t support a market for something as valuable as education. He firmly clings to spirituality to support his reasoning and doesn’t understand much about the ideals of science and the impact they have on the world. He rails on machines and labor saving devices with an almost Luddite tendency.  I was my clothes in a bucket and I still think his reasoning is flawed.  Say what you want about Zerzan, but at least he does a better job backing up his arguments. Mr. Gatto seems to be ignorant as to how scientific progress occurs and the net impact it has on society. He also has a tendency to impress the importance of a faith that dictates that humans are so weighed down with sin from the moment of birth that they are “unfit to eat the crumbs” from under the table of god.  The final essays in this book reminded me of the kind of hand-waving arguments you get from people who aren’t grounded in reality.

So, to sum up.  The book had a good strong start and then got boring and finished by getting weird and foolish.  Mr. Gatto has good ideas to offer, but much research and critical thought needs to go into what he says before you can use the information.  The good thing is I’m sure Mr. Gatto wouldn’t want it any other way.  He’d probably demand that his students crtically analyze what he says rather than accept it all at face value.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

The Union Town Area School District in Pennsylvania is considering the use of tasers in the school district.

Homer [director of security] said the school has tried to be pro-active over the years in terms of security, and his job is to look within and outside of the school to stay ahead of trends in society, citing there was no school security 20 years ago but the ways of the world have made it commonplace.”We have to think of the future,” Homer said, adding that there had been recent incidents outside of the school where police would need Tasers, and it’s possible that similar incidents could make it into the schools.

One has to wonder about the possible reasons for an increase in violence, almost always in government schools. Could it be the terrible war on drugs and other victimless crimes? Could it be a culture of welfare and entitlements? Could it be wage and business regulations? What about inflation? All these things have contributed to breaking up the family unit, or to making the family poorer.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total documented prison population in the world. Ending the war on drugs and the welfare state would go surely reduce violence in the classroom by returning upbringing rights where they belong: to the parent; putting kids into the institutional environment will undoubtedly drive some of them crazy. And abolishing state schools citizen factories would allow parents to decide how best to educate their children. As usual, the government “solution” (Taser) to a government-created problem (government schooling), ends up being worse than the original “problem,” as determined by politicians (lack of sufficient education in society).

So will TPS (tases per student) be a new stat parents look at when choosing a school?

I think this is another ‘treating the symptom instead of the problem’ scenario.

http://www.freep.com/…

Dr. Connie Calloway, the new superintendent who has spent her first year digging through dirt and incompetence and traditions that don’t make sense, revealed some startling news two weeks ago during an interview:

She confirmed what critics have known for some time, that DPS is not graduating nearly two-thirds of its students.

She confirmed that 22 of the city’s 27 high schools did not make required annual yearly progress — required progress.

She confirmed that DPS has been rife with such incompetence that students did not receive textbooks at the start of the year for 19 years.

She confirmed that the FBI investigation into DPS is not over.

And she confirmed that the district’s budget is about the same as it was eight years ago, even though the number of employees and students has dropped by a third. In 2000, the district spent $1.2 billion to pay 21,203 employees to serve 154,648 students. Last school year, the district spent the same amount of money to pay 15,535 employees and serve 105,000 students. What is being done with the extra money?

After those revelations, parents did not march, teachers did not rally, and Detroit legislators did not hold news conferences to say enough is enough.

But when district officials announced that there might be teacher layoffs to offset a budget deficit that is $400 million counting this year and next, folks jumped up then. The teachers aren’t wrong to protest. The district has so much fat and gristle it can cut plenty before it gets to teachers, including administrators — especially administrators.

As if the teachers don’t deserve to be shit canned? The whole lot of them appears to be pretty useless to me. They make up a super majority of the employees which make up the school system and they have a powerful union. If these people gave a shit about education and the children they are supposed to be serving this situation would not have occured. No privately run school could have ever gotten into this shape.

http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/318885.html

A last-minute fight over relaxing public school teacher tenure provisions stalled enactment of the state’s budget late Tuesday, with lawmakers set to approve a $121.7 billion spending plan featuring more than $1 billion in increased taxes and fees.The budget will include $429 million in what Paterson considers “tax loophole closings,” which include requiring collection of sales taxes by Amazon and other Internet retailers now not charging the tax. It also envisions $265 million, as expected, from a $1.25-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax and $130 million in various fee increases. The tenure fight pitted the powerful teachers unions, which provide much funding and many foot soldiers for legislative campaigns, against school districts. Some districts were seeking the right to use student test scores as one measure in granting tenure.

The unions late Tuesday were successful in banning student performance in the classroom from the tenure process. School officials say the test scores could be an indication of a teacher’s ability to teach, while unions say the scores do little to judge a teacher’s creativity and could end up being used as a tool against teachers in lower-performing school districts.

The New York State United Teachers Association, which was unavailable to comment late Tuesday, is among the most potent unions in Albany, and its influence showed by being able to stop the final budget passage over the nonbudget issue.

1. The internet sales tax thing isn’t a loophole. Taxation is a positive action of theft and if it doesn’t cover X that’s not a hole, it’s the way it was created. Besides, the judicial branch has said that it’s fully in the rights of the individual to take advantage of every tax reduction legally possible. 2. Why do they tax cigarettes to fund things like children’s healthcare when they are aiming at getting people to stop smoking and getting more children covered? If everyone stops smoking are they going to claim that the former smokers hate children? At this point those who actually still buy cigs in NY on a regular basis does so on the black market. Raising the taxes will likely push more people to the black market than stop them from smoking. Thankfully not every government is so stupid as to prohibit them so the black market is a lot less risky and therefore safer. 3. It is truly sad that the teacher’s union can stop the entire budget in such a way. It’s even sadder that these people who supposedly are looking out for the children’s best interests are removing metrics to determine whether they are in fact sucessfully educating their students.

http://www.9news.com/…

Adams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker.

Eight-year-old Eathan Harris was originally suspended from Harris Park Elementary School for three days. Principal Chris Benisch reduced the suspension to one day after complaints from Harris’ parents.

Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”

Eathan’s father, John Harris, says the school overreacted for treating Eathan as if he was huffing, or inhaling, marker fumes.

“I think it’s outlandish,” John Harris said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Eathan shyly shook his head “no” when a reporter asked if he knew about “huffing.”

Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.

Right… because a kid who doesn’t even understand why he was punished will get the “clear message about substance abuse.” And it gets even better:

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to “become intoxicated.”

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.

Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.

“I don’t know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them,” Lavonas said. “But in regular use, it’s just not something that’s going to happen.”

“If you went to Costco and bought 50 bags of Sharpies and did something to them, maybe there’s a way to get creative and make it happen,” Lavonas said.

Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center’s medical opinion.

“Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, ‘Wow, that’s a very serious marker,’” Benisch said.

And I’m like: “Wow, principals make hundreds of fucking retarded decisions everyday based on their best but flawed judgment.”

My evidence?

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

“We’ve purged every permanent marker there is in this building,” he said.

http://wcbstv.com/…

CLINTON, Conn. (AP) – A 14-year-old student at Morgan School in Clinton is facing a weapons charge, accused of tinkering with a disposable camera to make it capable of zapping people with an electrical charge.

Police say the camera, modified according to instructions available on the Internet, had been converted into an improvised electronic demobilizing device similar to a Taser.

Police say the student never managed to use the device because a teacher intervened.

School Resource Officer Kyle Strunjo says the makeshift device is potentially capable of a 600-volt shock.

The 14-year-old student has been charged with possession of a dangerous weapon on school grounds, attempted assault and breach of peace.

I did that like 10-12 years ago. I had my entire class in a circle holding hands and would have the people at the end grab the wires I had ran from the capacitor. If people moved it minimized the surface area and hurt more so as they squirmed they’d yell louder. The teachers thought it was funny people would keep zapping themselves over and over. We even used it for one class to spot weld some coins together for some project. People need to lighten up.