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How is it that students are able to arrive at the 7th grade with a
3rd-4th grade reading level?<br>
<br>
That seems like a serious management problem to me. How is it that
students are able to advance<br>
in the system without being able to meet the standard? How is it that
the system tolerates<br>
such profound laziness of the students in not even learning how to
read? How does a student rise to the 7th <br>
grade without mastering the 4th grade material? Herein lies some
fundamental problem.<br>
<br>
I dont understand why there's any particular worry about meeting AYP.
Why not let the school fail<br>
and allow the secondary and tertiary remediations to take place? That
seems to be a fundamental not a<br>
punitive part of the program. Why not allow the restructuring to take
place, since the structure seems to be part<br>
of the problem?<br>
<br>
Synchronistically, this afternoon I was visiting with the head of a
medical school pathology department <br>
today regarding a pig-related project he is helping me with and he
mentioned the OECD testing results<br>
as published by the NYTimes. He was not surprised by the outcome but
was surprised at the large gap between<br>
the China performance and that of the second place country. I compared
the result to the picture of <br>
the finish of a horse race with only one horse visible in at the finish
line. He said that this result is the<br>
result of hard work. No argument from me on that point.<br>
<br>
Although we have several computers in our home, we don't find them to
be an exceptional<br>
aid to learning. In fact we consider the computer to be a distraction
from useful learning activities<br>
in much the same way that TV is a time waster. I don't find that
Newton, Thoreau, Franklin, <br>
Leibniz, Copernicus, Nightingale, Kapetyn, or Locke or any of their
contemporaries had access<br>
to the computer or the internet but somehow they managed. <br>
The absence of wired connections to their domiciles is no evidence<br>
that they had access to "wireless" in the conventional contemporary
sense.<br>
<br>
Poor nutrition could be a factor, but I am highly skeptical that
nutrition is that much of a factor among<br>
the relatively well-fed population of the United States. Perhaps in
some extreme areas of the world<br>
dietary deficiencies of essential minerals and fatty acids like
18:3n-3, DHA, etc might be significant factor.<br>
Doubtful in the USA. "Are the Cantonese smarter because they eat more
fish?"<br>
<br>
Lead poisoning has been blamed for learning disabilities and violent
behaviour. It might affect memory,<br>
because I can remember eating white and red and green paint chips off
of the front porch weatherboard as a small boy but<br>
I can't quite remember that faintly sweet taste of lead...<br>
<br>
Actually I think that the learning problem is with lead in the ass not
lead in the brain.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 12/10/2010 9:59 PM, Corey Mattson wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTinbJ=+ZnVPiOD5mBYUj=HssEQ55UgUUKG9LxCGA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Wayne, here is a partial list of the ways poverty affects education ---
Parents who have to work two jobs or second shift in order to make a
living don't have adequate time to help children with homework,
structure at home etc.; poor nutrition, especially in early years, can
affect health; people in poverty tend to move following jobs,
disrupting the continuity of a child's education; people in poverty do
have fewer resources, including access to computers; poorer families
tend to live in districts, and within school boundaries within
districts, that have fewer resources. .... and poverty does produce
despair, especially when opportunities are nil, all of which affects
motivation.
All of the above, and more, have an obvious effect on curriculum. I
worked in a junior high in St. Paul, MN. When students start in the
7th grade at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level (or lower), that fact
will affect the curriculum. Teachers need to start with where children
are at and not deliver a curriculum that will be of no use to them.
I'm curious, why do you think urban schools are not making AYP under
No Child Left Behind? It has nothing to do with the quality of schools
and teachers (a huge myth, I've noticed, here in rural Illinois). When
a school has 94% poverty, as mine did in St. Paul, and has to make AYP
(pass) in 9 socioeconomic subcategories or else fail (my middle-class
school in Bloomington, where I now teach, only has to make AYP in 2
subcategories - white and all school), it's quite obvious that the
school serving poor schools will fail. NCLB is actually proof positive
that poverty is the determining factor; it certainly isn't
discriminating between good and bad schools in urban areas.
On the issue of "goofy" programs, I didn't consider any from the high
school. I do think we have to be careful about calling programs goofy,
though, without further clarification. The bigger issue is that
programs, especially in the arts, are getting axed. And those such as
special education, ESL, and speech are important as well...
--- Corey
On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:23 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ewj@pigs.ag"><ewj@pigs.ag></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">If poverty is the problem with education, what is the mechanism by which it
operates?
Lack of Pencils? Paper? No lights at home for doing homework?
Please explain how poverty has diluted the curriculum.
Or are you saying that the problem is Despair?
On 12/10/2010 6:02 AM, Corey Mattson wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I've worked in public schools, both in middle school and elementary, and
have reached the following conclusions ---
First, the problem with education in the U.S. is poverty. Most of the
countries cited below by Mr. Johnson don't have the disparity in wealth seen
in the U.S. In fact, a good number are more socialistic, with higher pay and
benefits, and access to political power, distributed more equally among the
citizenry. The more capitalistic U.S. resembles a banana republic.
The funding of schools, based upon local taxes, produces huge disparities
in funding. Some schools are grossly overfunded, the rich ones primarily.
Urban schools are mostly underfunded. I've taught in both poor and
middle-class schools. The schools serving poor students actually deserve
much more funding than schools serving rich students, since poor students
have more needs. We've got it backwards here.
On teacher pay, the teachers that make a respectable wage are in pro-union
states. A vast number, many in the South, make paltry amounts of money. For
the most part, teachers are underpaid. It seems that many conservatives here
in the U.S. think that you are overpaid if you've managed to collectively
win a little more than what are poverty wages. Sending teachers into poverty
aggravates the root problem of our maladies --- too many people in poverty.
Lastly, I'm curious what U.S. educational programs are "goofy"? Special
Education? Reading programs? English as a Second Language? P.E.? Art? Music?
Just curious, because I support all of them. As for aides, teachers with
oversized classes are clamoring for them.....
--- Corey
On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 7:54 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ewj@pigs.ag">ewj@pigs.ag</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ewj@pigs.ag"><mailto:ewj@pigs.ag></a>> wrote:
"An evaluation of the 2003 results showed that the countries which
spent more on education did not necessarily do better than those
which spent less. Australia
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia></a>, Belgium
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium></a>, Canada
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada></a>, the Czech Republic
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic></a>, Finland
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland></a>, Japan
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan></a>, Korea
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea></a>, New Zealand
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand></a> and the Netherlands
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands></a> spent less but did
relatively well, whereas the United States spent much more but was
below the OECD average. The Czech Republic, in the top ten, spent
only one third as much per student as the United States did, for
example, but the USA came 24th out of 29 countries compared." -
Wikipaedia.
On 12/9/2010 9:19 PM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> Americans don't want mass transit. They dont want to be herded
around on buses and trains like cattle.
Americans are xenophobic. They want to ride in private horseless
carriages like princesses.
Amtrak is Fubar'ed by design because the government wants to
promote automobiles.
Just compensation for the property that would be defiled to build
high speed rail would outstrip
military funding, and that simply would not do.
*
The problem with Education in America seems to have little to do
with any lack of funding.
I was a teacher and an academic at one time in the US and so was
my sister, my mother and her brother and sister,
her father, her grandmother and my mother's grandmother's sisters
and brothers were
schoolteachers and academics. So was my wife a former academic
and a schoolteacher,
as was her father. So I can speak with some authority if not
with popular support.
The US seems to spend too much money on education not too little,
and a very large fraction of that is poorly spent. There are too
many aides and auxiliaries,
too many goofy programs, teachers are overpaid for the most part,
administrators are grossly overpaid, and
the cost of the buildings is extravagantly high.
Chomsky certainly is right about the outcome, though I really
doubt that one can find a valid correlation
with funding after it reaches some minimum level that the US
probably passed more than 100 years ago.
That old Rowan and Martin joke about distasteful American jokes
sweeping Warsaw
seems quite interesting. I would have pointed out that the US
Students are doing more poorly
than the ones from Poland. How many Americans does it take to
change a dim bulb?
On 12/9/2010 4:26 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> Noam Chomsky on the Economy, U.S. Midterm Elections, Climate
Change, Haiti, and More
[Noam Chomsky is a Professor Emeritus at MIT, where he taught
for over half a century. He is author of dozens of books. His
most recent is Hopes and Prospects.]
AMY GOODMAN:Noam, you’re continuing your prescription, your
advice that you would give to President Obama today.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the economy is a disaster. There is 10
percent official unemployment, probably twice that much actual
unemployment. Many people unemployed for years. This is a huge
human tragedy, but it’s also an economic tragedy. These are
unused resources, which could be producing to make the things
that this country needs. I mean, the United States is becoming a
kind of a third world country.
You take a—the other day, I took a train from Boston to New
York. That’s, you know, the star of the trains of Amtrak, train
system. I mean, it took about maybe 20 minutes less than the
train that my wife and I took 60 years ago from Boston to New
York. In any European country, any industrial country, it would
have taken half the time. Plenty of non-industrial countries.
Spain is not a super-rich country. It’s just introducing a
200-mile-an-hour new railway. And this is just one example.
The United States desperately needs many things: decent
infrastructure, a decent educational system, much more pay and
support for teachers, all kinds of things. And the policies that
are being carried out are designed to enrich primarily financial
institutions. And remember that many of the major corporations
like, say, GE and GM are also financial institutions. It’s a
large part of their activity. It’s very unclear that these
financial shenanigans do anything for the economy. There are
some economists finally, mainstream ones, finally beginning to
raise this question. They may harm it, in fact. But what they do
is enrich rich people, and that’s where policies are directed to.
An alternative would be to stimulate the economy. There is
no—demand is very low. Business—the corporations have money
coming out of their ears, their huge profits. But they don’t
want to spend it, don’t want to invest it. They’d rather profit
from it. Financial institutions don’t produce anything. They
just shift money around and make money from various deals. The
public is some consumer demand, but it’s very slight. We have to
remember that there was an $8 trillion housing bubble that
burst, destroying the assets for most people. They’re
desperately trying to keep a little to save themselves. The only
source of demand right now would be government spending. It
doesn’t even have to affect the deficit, can be carried out by
borrowing by the Fed, which sends interest right back to the
Treasury. If anyone cares about the deficit, which is actually a
minor issue, I think, that should be the major issue.
There should be massive infrastructure spending. There should be
spending on things—simple things like weatherization. I mean, we
should have a substantial program to reduce the very severe
threat of global warming. That’s unfortunately unlikely with the
new Republican legislators and with the effects of the massive
corporate propaganda to try to convince people that it’s a
liberal hoax. The latest polls show about maybe a third of
Americans think that—believe in anthropogenic global warming,
you know, human contribution to global warming. I mean, that’s
almost a death knell for the species. If the U.S. doesn’t do
anything, nobody else will. We now have chairs going into the—
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, what do you think of the U.N. climate change
summit that’s taking place in Cancún?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the Copenhagen summit was a disaster.
Nothing happened. This one, Cancún, has set its sights much
lower, in the hope of at least achieving something. But let’s
say they achieve all their goals, which is very unlikely. It’ll
still be a toothpick on a mountain. There are much more serious
problems behind it.
We’re now facing a situation where the House, relevant House
committees—science, technology, energy and so on—are being taken
over by climate change deniers. In fact, one of them recently
said, "We don’t have to worry about it, because God will take
care of it." Well, you know, this is—it’s unbelievable that this
is happening in the richest, most powerful country in the world.
That’s one major area where there should be substantial changes
and improvements. If not, there’s not going to be anything much
more to talk about in a generation or two.
Others include just reconstructing the economy here so that
people get back to work, that they can produce things that the
country needs, that they can live decent lives. All of that can
be done. The resources are there; the policies aren’t.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you know, when you look at the new
Congress—I’m reading from The New Yorker, "Darrell Issa, a
Republican representative from California, is one of the richest
men in Congress. He made his money selling car alarms, which is
interesting, because he has twice been accused of auto theft.
([Issa has] said that he had a 'colorful youth.') Now, with the
Republicans about to take control of the House, Issa is poised
to become [the chairman] of the Oversight Committee. The post
comes with wide-ranging subpoena powers, and Issa has already
indicated how he plans to wield them. He is not, he assured a
group of Pennsylvania Republicans over the summer, interested in
digging around for the sort of information that might embarrass
his fellow-zillionaires: [he said,] 'I won't use it to have
corporate America live in fear.’ Instead, he wants to go where
he sees the real malfeasance. He wants to investigate climate
scientists. At the top of his list are the long-suffering
researchers whose e-mails were hacked last year from the
computer system of Britain’s University of East Anglia. Though
their work has been the subject of three separate 'Climategate'
inquiries—all of which found that allegations of data
manipulation were unfounded—Issa isn’t satisfied. [He said
recently,] ’We’re going to want to have a do-over.’"
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. That’s part of the massive offensive,
basically a corporate offensive. And they haven’t been quiet
about it, like the Chamber of Commerce, biggest business lobby,
American Petroleum Institute and others have said quite publicly
that they’re carrying out a massive, what they call "educational
campaign" to convince the population that global warming isn’t
real. And it’s having an effect. You can see it even in the way
the media present it. So you read, say, a New York Times
discussion of climate change. They have to be objective, present
both sides, so one side is 98 percent of qualified scientists,
and the other side is Issa and Senator Inhofe and a couple of
climate change skeptics. There, notice, also missing is a third
side, namely, a very substantial number of leading scientists
who say that the consensus is nowhere near alarmist enough, that
in fact the situation is much worse. Well, you know, the United
States is now—it has been dragging its feet on this for a long
time, and it’s now much worse.
I mean, there was just recently—a couple days ago, there was a
report of an analysis of green technology production. It turns
out China is in the lead, Germany is next, Spain is high up
there. The United States is one of the lowest. In fact,
investment from the United States in green technology is higher
in China—I think twice as high in China—than in the United
States—than it is in the United States and Europe combined. I
mean, these are real social pathologies, exacerbated by the
latest election, but just one aspect of where policy is going
totally in the wrong direction, where there are significant
alternatives, and if they’re not pursued, there could be real
disaster, and maybe not too far off.
AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to switch gears for a minute, Noam
Chomsky, and talk about the elections in Haiti that just took
place.
NOAM CHOMSKY: "Elections," you should put in quotation marks. If
we had elections in the United States in which the Democratic
and Republican parties were barred and their political leaders
were exiled to South Africa and not allowed to return to the
United States, we wouldn’t consider them serious elections. But
that’s exactly what happened in Haiti. The major political party
is barred. As we know, the United States and France essentially
invaded Haiti in 2004, kidnapped the president, sent him off to
Central Africa. His party is now banned. Most analysts assume
that, as in the past, if it was allowed to run, it would
probably win the election. President—or former President
Aristide is, by all information available, the most popular
political figure in Haiti. Not only is he not allowed to run, by
essentially the U.S., but not allowed to return. They’ve been
trying to keep him out of the hemisphere. Can’t go back to
Haiti, but the U.S. has been trying to keep him out of the
hemisphere altogether. What’s taken place is a kind of a
charade. I mean, it’s not nothing. You know, Haitians are trying
to express themselves. We should respect that. But the major
choices that they might have are barred by foreign power, U.S.
power, and France, which is the second of the two historic
torturers of Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: Honduras. Actually, interestingly, in these cables
that have come out through the WikiLeaks release is a U.S.
diplomatic cable from 2008 that says exactly what the U.S.
government would not say publicly, that the coup against Manuel
Zelaya was outright illegal. Your response, Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that’s right. This is an analysis by the
embassy in Honduras, Tegucigalpa, saying that they’ve done a
careful analysis of the legal and constitutional backgrounds and
conclude—you can read their summary, which is a conclusion—that
there is no doubt that the coup was illegal and
unconstitutional. The government of Washington, as you point
out, wouldn’t say that. And in fact, after some dithering, Obama
finally essentially recognized the legitimacy of the coup. He
supported the election taking place under the coup regime, which
most of Latin America and Europe refused to recognize at all.
But the U.S. did it. In fact, the U.S. ambassador publicly
accused the Latin Americans who wouldn’t go along as being
seduced by magic realism, you know, García Márquez’s novels or
something, just a statement of contempt. They should go along
with us and support the military coup, which is illegal and
unconstitutional. And has many effects. One effect was that it
preserves for the United States a major air base, the Palmerola
Air Base, one of the last ones remaining in Latin America. We’ve
been kicked out of all the others.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I have two questions, and we only have two
minutes left. One is about North Korea. The WikiLeaks documents
show Chinese diplomats saying that Chinese officials
increasingly doubt the usefulness of neighboring North Korea and
would support reunification. The significance of this?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I’m very skeptical about that statement. There is
no indication that China would be willing to have U.S. troops on
its border, and that’s the very likely outcome of a reunified
Korea. They’ve been bitterly objecting to U.S. naval maneuvers
in the Yellow Sea, not far from their coast, what they call
their economic territorial waters, and expanding U.S. military
forces near their borders is the last thing they want. They may
feel—I don’t know—that North Korea simply is unviable, and it
will have to collapse, and that’s a terrible problem for them
from many points of view. That I don’t know. But I’m pretty
skeptical about that leak.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Noam, your latest book, Hopes and
Prospects, what gives you hope?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the "hopes" part of that book is mostly
about South America, where there really have been significant,
dramatic changes in the past decade. For the first time in 500
years, the South American countries have been moving towards
integration, which is a prerequisite for independence, and have
begun to face some of their really desperate internal problems.
A huge disparity between islands of extreme wealth and massive
poverty—a number of the countries, including the leading one,
Brazil, have chipped away at that.
AMY GOODMAN: We have ten seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY: And Bolivia has been quite dramatic with the
takeover by the indigenous population in a major democratic
election. These are important facts.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, thanks so much for being with us. Oh,
by the way, happy birthday, pre-birthday.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred
books, his latest called Hopes and Prospects.
Source:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_on_the_economy_us_midterm_elections_climate_change_haiti_and_more">http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_on_the_economy_us_midterm_elections_climate_change_haiti_and_more</a>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
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