Monday, September 17, 2012
Ding Ding
I just biked the west side greenway from lower Manhattan to 181st Street (my daily commute) near sunset. Having commuted the past three years away from the coastline, I had forgotten about the potential incompatibility between large numbers of people carrying out a certain tradition and high-speed bicycling. Today I am reminded, and struck by a seeming increase in devotion. Never before have I seen so much casting of bread upon the waters. Who knew there were so many landsmen on the Upper West Side, and so much sin to consider ...
Anyway, being in a state of breadlessness at the time, I could only join in metaphorically. I am not a religious person, because I find the overall concept (and many details) impossible to take seriously. However, I'm happy to take wisdom from where ever I can get it. The tradition of contemplating in a state of awe one's flaws and misdeeds, one's obligations to others and the world, and the possibility of improving the world and oneself even incrementally in the next year strikes me as a wise one. Shana Tova, y'all. Shofars are in somewhat short supply in our abode, so a bicycle bell will have to suffice.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Let's Put on a Show! And Have a Multiple-choice Test!
I've been away from blogging for awhile, and venting in other contexts, but due to popular demand (one guy asked me "hey, what happened to your blog?"), I'm back, at least for now ...
Lately I've been getting involved with some parent organizations concerned with the expansion of "high-stakes" testing in public schools. One of the themes in the discussions has been that the arts in schools are being diminished and frozen out because there are no standardized tests for them. The B-School mantra "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" has spawned a correlate: "If you can't measure it, it's not worth doing," and as a result public schools have all but eliminated art, music, and drama. Now, fresh from the Department of Be Careful What You Wish For, the forces of high-stakes testing have decided that they can measure art after all, and have begun agitating for the same sorts of tests we're seeing for math and English.
Noted education scholar/writer Diane Ravitch has a piece on her blog here taking another education writer named Sara Mead to task on this subject, but I think Ravitch doesn't go quite far enough. Accordingly, I wrote a polite letter to Mead offering constructive criticism, a copy of which is below.
Dr. Ms Mead,
Your defense of attempts at standardizing arts curricula and imposing standardized tests is astonishing in its ignorance of the purpose of the arts in schools and what it means to be "proficient" in the arts. Put simply, the purpose of doing art is doing art. It may have other cognitive, psychological benefits, which may in some way be measurable, but to emphasize those benefits and convert them into the main purpose for doing art is to strip art of its essence and turn it into yet one more bit of drudgery imposed on children who are already subject to far too much of that.
I don't know whether or not you are actually proficient in any sort of art or performance (apart from the obvious role as an impersonator of someone with serious views), but if you are, consider what that has brought you as a human being and ask yourself what you would lose if it were converted to yet another classroom chore. I say all this as someone who has spent most of his career measuring and monitoring performance, productivity, and outputs of public agencies, and who has also been a musician all his life. I have also been an active "consumer" of culture (high, low, and in-between) all my life. None of this [capacity to do and appreciate arts*] came about through rigid, test centered curricula, nor could it have. It came about through being immersed in culture (i.e. going to museums, galleries, performances, etc. and doing art and music for pleasure with family, classmates, and friends), and guided through this immersion by people who loved what they were experiencing.
*my original letter left out this clause, but I'm adding it here to make the point a little clearer.
Lately I've been getting involved with some parent organizations concerned with the expansion of "high-stakes" testing in public schools. One of the themes in the discussions has been that the arts in schools are being diminished and frozen out because there are no standardized tests for them. The B-School mantra "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" has spawned a correlate: "If you can't measure it, it's not worth doing," and as a result public schools have all but eliminated art, music, and drama. Now, fresh from the Department of Be Careful What You Wish For, the forces of high-stakes testing have decided that they can measure art after all, and have begun agitating for the same sorts of tests we're seeing for math and English.
Noted education scholar/writer Diane Ravitch has a piece on her blog here taking another education writer named Sara Mead to task on this subject, but I think Ravitch doesn't go quite far enough. Accordingly, I wrote a polite letter to Mead offering constructive criticism, a copy of which is below.
Dr. Ms Mead,
Your defense of attempts at standardizing arts curricula and imposing standardized tests is astonishing in its ignorance of the purpose of the arts in schools and what it means to be "proficient" in the arts. Put simply, the purpose of doing art is doing art. It may have other cognitive, psychological benefits, which may in some way be measurable, but to emphasize those benefits and convert them into the main purpose for doing art is to strip art of its essence and turn it into yet one more bit of drudgery imposed on children who are already subject to far too much of that.
I don't know whether or not you are actually proficient in any sort of art or performance (apart from the obvious role as an impersonator of someone with serious views), but if you are, consider what that has brought you as a human being and ask yourself what you would lose if it were converted to yet another classroom chore. I say all this as someone who has spent most of his career measuring and monitoring performance, productivity, and outputs of public agencies, and who has also been a musician all his life. I have also been an active "consumer" of culture (high, low, and in-between) all my life. None of this [capacity to do and appreciate arts*] came about through rigid, test centered curricula, nor could it have. It came about through being immersed in culture (i.e. going to museums, galleries, performances, etc. and doing art and music for pleasure with family, classmates, and friends), and guided through this immersion by people who loved what they were experiencing.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Meet the new Boss?
Today's news of the departure of Joel Klein from his position as New York City Schools Chancellor has sparked a lot of discussion, much of it expressing the sentiment "good riddance." News that the his replacement Cathleen Black is even more of a charter-school ideologue than Klein and even less of an educator is already stirring concern. As a new parent in the system, I don't really have enough direct experience to judge Klein, but I do find the subject quite interesting. Now that I have a substantial stake in Black's success, I plan on keeping a close eye on her.
Klein has been an odd mix of controversial and disliked among people with a lot of direct contact with the system (teachers, parents, students) and lionized by the movers and shakers around town. I think it's very tough to say what his net impact was.
His obsession with testing has demoralized teachers, student's and parents alike, and has proven to be a fraud both in concept and execution. School choice has created opportunities, and made many parents happy, but has also sucked energy and money away from the core mission of making plain old public schools better, and injected a very counterproductive level of complexity into the process of figuring out where to send your kid to school. His relationship with teachers is basically completely poisoned, and he is as hated among teachers and principals as any of his predecessors.
At the same time, though, I think the system is actually better (even if not measurably so) than it was before in some important ways. There's more middle class buy-in, a much stronger sense that this is our school system and we're going to do what it takes to make it work for our kids. It's in better physical shape than in many many years. The sense that public schools are dangerous places you wouldn't dare send your kids is pretty much gone. It may be very complicated to navigate the system, but there is a general sense that you'll be able to find a place for your kid. Despite the demoralizing nature of being forced to teach to the test, there seem to be a lot of dedicated, capable teachers and principals. This is all quite different from a decade ago.
Trying to figure out how much credit to give Klein for this reminds me of the debates over how much of a difference Giuliani really made in the resurgence of New York. To people who worked in government, Giuliani was an unqualified disaster -- incompetent, surrounded by sycophants, thieves, and psychos, the source of an endless stream of bad ideas that only failed to cripple New York because city workers did their best to ignore them. Yet people believed he turned the city around in the same way that so many people believe Klein did. This belief has a bit of the character of a self fulfilling prophecy.
People believe he's good and support him. This support leads to some good things happening (maybe even despite his incompetence and wrongheadedness). Maybe as a matter of cause, or maybe by coincidence, the middle class trickles back into the system from the burbs and the private schools, and we reach a tipping point. It's now OK to send your kid to the plain old public school, or there's a G&T program, or a "school of choice" that works for you. Then schools are more widely perceived as being good because they now have more good kids in them. After all, more than teachers, or facilities, or curricula, or even funding, what makes a school perform is having students who come from backgrounds that prepare them to perform.
So while some people express pessimism (or optimism) about the fate of the system because a particular leader is coming/going/staying, I tend to view the system as more dependent on grass roots. In the end, the schools have gotten "better" because we have decided to stick with them, in a way many or our parents didn't, in much the same way the City as a whole got better. Based on what I've read of Cathleen Black, I think it highly unlikely that she has any gifts that will make a real positive difference in managing the schools. It then becomes a matter of whether she can do no harm, and hold onto the middle class loyalty that has been building over the last decade or so.
Klein has been an odd mix of controversial and disliked among people with a lot of direct contact with the system (teachers, parents, students) and lionized by the movers and shakers around town. I think it's very tough to say what his net impact was.
His obsession with testing has demoralized teachers, student's and parents alike, and has proven to be a fraud both in concept and execution. School choice has created opportunities, and made many parents happy, but has also sucked energy and money away from the core mission of making plain old public schools better, and injected a very counterproductive level of complexity into the process of figuring out where to send your kid to school. His relationship with teachers is basically completely poisoned, and he is as hated among teachers and principals as any of his predecessors.
At the same time, though, I think the system is actually better (even if not measurably so) than it was before in some important ways. There's more middle class buy-in, a much stronger sense that this is our school system and we're going to do what it takes to make it work for our kids. It's in better physical shape than in many many years. The sense that public schools are dangerous places you wouldn't dare send your kids is pretty much gone. It may be very complicated to navigate the system, but there is a general sense that you'll be able to find a place for your kid. Despite the demoralizing nature of being forced to teach to the test, there seem to be a lot of dedicated, capable teachers and principals. This is all quite different from a decade ago.
Trying to figure out how much credit to give Klein for this reminds me of the debates over how much of a difference Giuliani really made in the resurgence of New York. To people who worked in government, Giuliani was an unqualified disaster -- incompetent, surrounded by sycophants, thieves, and psychos, the source of an endless stream of bad ideas that only failed to cripple New York because city workers did their best to ignore them. Yet people believed he turned the city around in the same way that so many people believe Klein did. This belief has a bit of the character of a self fulfilling prophecy.
People believe he's good and support him. This support leads to some good things happening (maybe even despite his incompetence and wrongheadedness). Maybe as a matter of cause, or maybe by coincidence, the middle class trickles back into the system from the burbs and the private schools, and we reach a tipping point. It's now OK to send your kid to the plain old public school, or there's a G&T program, or a "school of choice" that works for you. Then schools are more widely perceived as being good because they now have more good kids in them. After all, more than teachers, or facilities, or curricula, or even funding, what makes a school perform is having students who come from backgrounds that prepare them to perform.
So while some people express pessimism (or optimism) about the fate of the system because a particular leader is coming/going/staying, I tend to view the system as more dependent on grass roots. In the end, the schools have gotten "better" because we have decided to stick with them, in a way many or our parents didn't, in much the same way the City as a whole got better. Based on what I've read of Cathleen Black, I think it highly unlikely that she has any gifts that will make a real positive difference in managing the schools. It then becomes a matter of whether she can do no harm, and hold onto the middle class loyalty that has been building over the last decade or so.
Friday, October 29, 2010
It takes two to tangle up the schools
The current New York Review of Books has a polemic by Diane Ravitch that provides an interesting counterpoint to the "Waiting for Superman" craze. I have no great love for any particular variant of schools, but I find the arguments Ravitch makes here about the flaws of charter schools, the virtues of regular public schools, and the importance of investing in traditional public education pretty compelling.
Ravitch lays out convincing evidence and arguments against the trope of poverty not being the reason kids fail and money not being the reason schools fail. The single data point I can draw on (my son's local public school) seems to support Ravitch's contentions. It's a pretty good place. The parents are involved, the principal runs a tight ship, the teachers teach, and the kids learn. There are no major discipline problems, the building is in pretty good shape, and the parents raise a fair amount of money to support the school. The basic reason it's a good school is that it is in a school zone that (by luck) is coterminous with a stable middle class neighborhood (that is in the process of turning into an upper middle class neighborhood).
The only thing stopping this school from becoming every bit as impressive as a wealthy suburban school or a fancy Manhattan private school is lack of money. If the school had (I'm guessing), 30% more money, we'd have enriched curricula, activities, supplies, recess. Instead, we get the basics, reasonably capably presented, a bit of sadness about how spartan our kids' school experience is, and relentless parental fundraising.
I also agree with what Ravitch has to say about the demonization of teachers and their unions. I've been on both sides of the union/management divide (and oddly enough am currently in a management union that is a subsidiary of the teachers' union), and have no particular love of unions. They suck up a big piece of my paycheck in exchange for a pretty low rate of return in benefits and raises. But: 1) every contract has two sides; you can't blame unions for the terms of contracts that management signs. 2) Unions may sometimes impede firing, but they don't hire, grant tenure, or stop management from giving merit raises. 3) It's a myth that "union work rules" stifle public sector productivity; civil service rules and crappy management are much more to blame for the shoddiness of the public sector business culture.
This not to say the unions have no role in any of this, but see point 1). Politicians negotiate and sign public sector labor agreements and appoint the people who manage public sector agencies. If you want better public sector workers (including teachers), you need politicians who look out for something other than their own electoral and personal interests, actually know something about the operations they ostensibly manage, and stop accepting political support from unions (as well as other special interests, but that's another rant). In New York there are the added complications of the City's limited home rule and subordinate status to the State on labor and civil service matters. This creates opportunities for our corrupt state legislators to accept campaign donations from public sector unions in exchange for writing counterproductive employment terms and conditions into State laws. You can blame the unions for pushing these agendas, but as with politicians caving in to corporate special interests against the public interest, the bulk of the blame falls squarely on the politicians.
They way I see it, "saving our schools" is a matter of money, managerial/educational competence, and politics. To get this, we need an involved citizenry with a stake in the game. In New York City, we have had the twin problems of the middle and upper classes opting out in favor of private schools and the lower classes either being too dysfunctional to contribute, or opting out in favor of parochial or charter schools. If there's a silver lining, it's that private schools have become absurdly expensive, parochial schools are disappearing, and so many of us have dropped out of the classes that could afford these options in the past, that there is now a growing cohort of involved and informed parents militating for improvements in the core public schools system. Bloomberg and Klein have probably lost the confidence of this cohort because of the testing fiascoes, which leaves a huge opportunity for the next generation of politicians. I don't know who (if anybody) will fill that void, but I'm interested in seeing who does. And for now, sending my kid to a plain old public school.
Ravitch lays out convincing evidence and arguments against the trope of poverty not being the reason kids fail and money not being the reason schools fail. The single data point I can draw on (my son's local public school) seems to support Ravitch's contentions. It's a pretty good place. The parents are involved, the principal runs a tight ship, the teachers teach, and the kids learn. There are no major discipline problems, the building is in pretty good shape, and the parents raise a fair amount of money to support the school. The basic reason it's a good school is that it is in a school zone that (by luck) is coterminous with a stable middle class neighborhood (that is in the process of turning into an upper middle class neighborhood).
The only thing stopping this school from becoming every bit as impressive as a wealthy suburban school or a fancy Manhattan private school is lack of money. If the school had (I'm guessing), 30% more money, we'd have enriched curricula, activities, supplies, recess. Instead, we get the basics, reasonably capably presented, a bit of sadness about how spartan our kids' school experience is, and relentless parental fundraising.
I also agree with what Ravitch has to say about the demonization of teachers and their unions. I've been on both sides of the union/management divide (and oddly enough am currently in a management union that is a subsidiary of the teachers' union), and have no particular love of unions. They suck up a big piece of my paycheck in exchange for a pretty low rate of return in benefits and raises. But: 1) every contract has two sides; you can't blame unions for the terms of contracts that management signs. 2) Unions may sometimes impede firing, but they don't hire, grant tenure, or stop management from giving merit raises. 3) It's a myth that "union work rules" stifle public sector productivity; civil service rules and crappy management are much more to blame for the shoddiness of the public sector business culture.
This not to say the unions have no role in any of this, but see point 1). Politicians negotiate and sign public sector labor agreements and appoint the people who manage public sector agencies. If you want better public sector workers (including teachers), you need politicians who look out for something other than their own electoral and personal interests, actually know something about the operations they ostensibly manage, and stop accepting political support from unions (as well as other special interests, but that's another rant). In New York there are the added complications of the City's limited home rule and subordinate status to the State on labor and civil service matters. This creates opportunities for our corrupt state legislators to accept campaign donations from public sector unions in exchange for writing counterproductive employment terms and conditions into State laws. You can blame the unions for pushing these agendas, but as with politicians caving in to corporate special interests against the public interest, the bulk of the blame falls squarely on the politicians.
They way I see it, "saving our schools" is a matter of money, managerial/educational competence, and politics. To get this, we need an involved citizenry with a stake in the game. In New York City, we have had the twin problems of the middle and upper classes opting out in favor of private schools and the lower classes either being too dysfunctional to contribute, or opting out in favor of parochial or charter schools. If there's a silver lining, it's that private schools have become absurdly expensive, parochial schools are disappearing, and so many of us have dropped out of the classes that could afford these options in the past, that there is now a growing cohort of involved and informed parents militating for improvements in the core public schools system. Bloomberg and Klein have probably lost the confidence of this cohort because of the testing fiascoes, which leaves a huge opportunity for the next generation of politicians. I don't know who (if anybody) will fill that void, but I'm interested in seeing who does. And for now, sending my kid to a plain old public school.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Open letter to the President on enforcement of Marijuana laws
I just submitted the letter below to President Obama at the White House's website. I encourage others to do something similar
Dear President Obama,
Let me start this letter just by saying hello. You and I were contemporaries at Columbia (I'm '84), and I have discovered that we were once next door neighbors on West 109th St. Someday, perhaps we will swap stories about how we coped with the experience of cold-water slum living.
I'm disappointed to read that your administration intends to enforce marijuana prohibitions in California. Given your personal background as someone who experimented with drugs, and came through the experience unharmed, I can't help but think that you are doing this for cynical political reasons rather than because you truly believe there is a clear moral basis for imprisoning people for marijuana posession. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, and that you really believe in the merits of this course of action. In order to clear this up for me, I'd appreciate your answer to these questions:
When you were in college experimenting with marijuana and cocaine, do you think you should have been arrested?
If there were no statute of limitations, and you were still potentially in legal jeopardy for these actions, do you think you should be arrested now?
To be fair, I'll give you some relevant personal history and answer the same questions. I was a regular pot smoker roughly between the ages of 16 and 20. I also experimented occasionally with cocaine and psychedelics. I stopped on my own when I found I no longer enjoyed the effects. I suffered no ill effects from any of this. As to the questions, no I do not think that you or I should have been arrested for this, now or ever. Nor do I think anyone else should be.
....
FYI: The contact form at the white house seems buggy, and I'm not sure if this all got through, so I will probably re-submit. If anyone else submits something, watch out for this.
Dear President Obama,
Let me start this letter just by saying hello. You and I were contemporaries at Columbia (I'm '84), and I have discovered that we were once next door neighbors on West 109th St. Someday, perhaps we will swap stories about how we coped with the experience of cold-water slum living.
I'm disappointed to read that your administration intends to enforce marijuana prohibitions in California. Given your personal background as someone who experimented with drugs, and came through the experience unharmed, I can't help but think that you are doing this for cynical political reasons rather than because you truly believe there is a clear moral basis for imprisoning people for marijuana posession. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, and that you really believe in the merits of this course of action. In order to clear this up for me, I'd appreciate your answer to these questions:
When you were in college experimenting with marijuana and cocaine, do you think you should have been arrested?
If there were no statute of limitations, and you were still potentially in legal jeopardy for these actions, do you think you should be arrested now?
To be fair, I'll give you some relevant personal history and answer the same questions. I was a regular pot smoker roughly between the ages of 16 and 20. I also experimented occasionally with cocaine and psychedelics. I stopped on my own when I found I no longer enjoyed the effects. I suffered no ill effects from any of this. As to the questions, no I do not think that you or I should have been arrested for this, now or ever. Nor do I think anyone else should be.
....
FYI: The contact form at the white house seems buggy, and I'm not sure if this all got through, so I will probably re-submit. If anyone else submits something, watch out for this.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Origin of the species
The Setting: Downtown A train this morning
The Players: Myself, Charlotte (a friend/parent from the neighborhood), Charlotte's two daughters (aged 3 1/2 and 4 1/2), who are occasional playmates of my son (5).
Charlotte distributes pretzels to the cast. Daughter1 looks at the pretzel and asks if this is how small she was when she was in her mommy's stomach. A discussion ensues involving breaking the pretzel into ever smaller pieces and comparing the pieces to foetus/embryo/blastocyst/egg-sized daughters in mommy's tummy. Charlotte then asks me whether I have had similar conversations with my son. I say that I have. Indeed, he has gone so far as to ask not only where he came from, but where the first people came from. Charlotte laughs, and daughter 2 then asks where the first people came from. Charlotte, thinking she's got me on the ropes, suggests that I answer. So, to the curious, this is where the first people came from (with help from the class).
The first people were fish.
No they weren't!
Yes they were.
No they weren't! You're kidding aren't you?
No, really the first people were fish. Some of the fish got tired of being fish, so they crawled out of the water and became alligators.
No they didn't! Mommy, is he telling the truth?
Well, um, kind of
Yes, I'm telling the truth, the first people were fish who got tired of being fish, so they crawled out of the water and became alligators. But some of the alligators got tired of being alligators so they decided to become dinosaurs.
NO THEY DIDN'T!!
Yes, really they did. And then some of them got tired of being dinosaurs, so they became squirrels.
They did not!! Mom, did the dinosaurs become squirrels?
Um, well in a way ...
OK, so then the some of the squirrels got tired of being squirrels, so they decided to become monkeys, which are a lot like people.
They did not. Monkeys aren't like people.
Monkeys look kind of like people don't they?
Um ... yeah ...
Well, they have hands like people don't they? And two eyes in the fronts of their faces don't they?
Yeah. But they have feet for hands, and hands for feet, so they're not people.
I know. They also have tails. Some of the monkeys decided they didn't want tails anymore so they got rid of their tails and became chimpanzees.
NO THEY DIDN'T! Mom, did they really do that? Did the monkeys become chimpanzees?
Um, sort of ...
Chimpanzees look a lot like people, don't they?
Yeah, they do (at this point, the daughters have stopped objecting and are looking at me like this is starting to make some sense)
OK, the chimpanzees got tired of being chimpanzees, so they decided to become people, and that's where the first people came from.
Really? Did all of them do that?
No, not all of them. Some of the chimpanzees decided to become people, but some of them decided to still be chimpanzees. We call those Republicans.
Oh, here's my stop. Gotta go.
The Players: Myself, Charlotte (a friend/parent from the neighborhood), Charlotte's two daughters (aged 3 1/2 and 4 1/2), who are occasional playmates of my son (5).
Charlotte distributes pretzels to the cast. Daughter1 looks at the pretzel and asks if this is how small she was when she was in her mommy's stomach. A discussion ensues involving breaking the pretzel into ever smaller pieces and comparing the pieces to foetus/embryo/blastocyst/egg-sized daughters in mommy's tummy. Charlotte then asks me whether I have had similar conversations with my son. I say that I have. Indeed, he has gone so far as to ask not only where he came from, but where the first people came from. Charlotte laughs, and daughter 2 then asks where the first people came from. Charlotte, thinking she's got me on the ropes, suggests that I answer. So, to the curious, this is where the first people came from (with help from the class).
The first people were fish.
No they weren't!
Yes they were.
No they weren't! You're kidding aren't you?
No, really the first people were fish. Some of the fish got tired of being fish, so they crawled out of the water and became alligators.
No they didn't! Mommy, is he telling the truth?
Well, um, kind of
Yes, I'm telling the truth, the first people were fish who got tired of being fish, so they crawled out of the water and became alligators. But some of the alligators got tired of being alligators so they decided to become dinosaurs.
NO THEY DIDN'T!!
Yes, really they did. And then some of them got tired of being dinosaurs, so they became squirrels.
They did not!! Mom, did the dinosaurs become squirrels?
Um, well in a way ...
OK, so then the some of the squirrels got tired of being squirrels, so they decided to become monkeys, which are a lot like people.
They did not. Monkeys aren't like people.
Monkeys look kind of like people don't they?
Um ... yeah ...
Well, they have hands like people don't they? And two eyes in the fronts of their faces don't they?
Yeah. But they have feet for hands, and hands for feet, so they're not people.
I know. They also have tails. Some of the monkeys decided they didn't want tails anymore so they got rid of their tails and became chimpanzees.
NO THEY DIDN'T! Mom, did they really do that? Did the monkeys become chimpanzees?
Um, sort of ...
Chimpanzees look a lot like people, don't they?
Yeah, they do (at this point, the daughters have stopped objecting and are looking at me like this is starting to make some sense)
OK, the chimpanzees got tired of being chimpanzees, so they decided to become people, and that's where the first people came from.
Really? Did all of them do that?
No, not all of them. Some of the chimpanzees decided to become people, but some of them decided to still be chimpanzees. We call those Republicans.
Oh, here's my stop. Gotta go.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
This is Kindergarten. This is Big.
My son started kindergarten a month ago, which is big, much bigger than I ever could have imagined. I went to kindergarten, and I don't really recall it being particularly important or rigorous. In my day, there was a lot of smearing of colors and mushing of stuff. There were many, many choruses of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, a bit of duck duck goose, and if I recall correctly, passing mention of the alphabet. Times have changed, though. In New York City, kindergarten is the new first grade. Kids are now expected to learn to read, do homework, and say the Pledge of Allegiance. In the first month.
They are also expected to be good citizens of the educational community. I know this, because the New York City Department of Education just told me, via a fascinating document called "Citywide Standards of Intervention and Discipline Measures: The Discipline Code and Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities, K-12" that just arrived via my son's backpack. It is 28 pages of small-font, landscape-printed gobbledygook that is supposed to tell parents what kids are and are not supposed to do in school, and what will happen to them if they run afoul of the rules.
Or at least that is what I think it is. I have tried three times to get all the way through this thing, and I am so frustrated by its turgid, ungrammatical, passive-voiced bureaucratic incomprehensibility, that I cannot be sure. For, example the section entitled "Promoting Positive Student Behavior" begins with:
"Each School is expected to promote a positive school climate and culture that provides students with a supportive environment in which to grow both academically and socially." Okay, a little stilted, but I have no problem with the sentiment. Schools should be pleasant places that help children learn and grow up.
Next comes "Schools are expected to take a proactive role in nurturing students' pro-social behavior by providing them with a range of positive behavioral supports as well as meaningful opportunities of social emotional learning."
Huh?
I have spent the last 22 years working in government and higher education bureaucracies. Before that, I spent three years in the educational publishing business. That is not the worst sentence I have ever seen. For instance, it's nowhere near as bad as this one:
"Effective social emotional learning helps students develop fundamental skills for life effectiveness, including: recognizing and managing emotions; developing caring and concern for others; establishing positive relationships; making responsible decisions; and handling challenging situations constructively and ethically."
We're still on page two. There are five more pages to go before we get to the actual code of conduct that our kids are supposed to follow. Five more pages like this. Jargon, wordiness, too many ideas running together -- everything your freshman composition teacher told you not to do occurs in every sentence of every paragraph of this document.
I suppose I could google "pro-social behavior," swallow my distaste for "proactive," break that sentence up into more manageable chunks, and figure out what it's about. I could do that with the rest of the sentences in that paragraph. I could do that for the whole 28 pages of this thing, and after a couple of hours boil it down to the 10 things I need to know about discipline in kindergarten. After all, I do that sort of thing all the time with laws, regulations, directives, proposals, contracts, and all the other artifacts of my trade. But could an uneducated immigrant parent struggling to find his way and hoping that his child's first month in kindergarten will be the beginning of a better life?
Well, you say, what do you expect? The schools are run by a bunch of bureaucrats with no connection to kids or the classroom. They sling this kind of drivel around at each other all the time. What does it matter? But this isn't some intra-office policy exercise. This is a document that was printed up and distributed to every parent of every public school child in New York, sent home in the kids' backpacks so that the parents will read it and understand it. I know this because it says so right on page one: "All members of the school community -- students staff and parents -- must know and understand the standards of behavior which all students are expected to live up to and the consequences if these standards are not met."
This is also a classic CYA warning -- some day, we're gonna boot your kid out of school, and you'll have no excuse for not knowing that could happen because we told you so in black and white in your kid's backpack.
It should not be done this way. This stuff is important. Both the substance and the form. We should be told what is expected of us and our kids, and what can happen if we don't live up to the those expectations. But we should be told in a way that all of us can understand, in the language of the parents, not the administrators. The great irony of this is that the DOE has got thousands of people trained in exactly how to construct a clear readable document that can be easily understood by parents and children. They're called teachers, and every school is full of them.
For many years, I have followed the story of Mayor Bloomberg wrestling control of the schools away from the monstrosity that was the old board of education. I have paid particular attention to the dialectic between Chancellor Joel Klein and the teachers. Klein has been portrayed by some as a lone voice for integrity and merit, and by others (especially teachers) as someone who knows nothing about education. As someone who worked in the Bloomberg administration for eight years and saw first hand how much of a real reformer he is, I have tended to take Klein's side in this debate. Now I'm not so sure. Now, it's my kid, my kid's backpack, and my job to read what's in it.
This is kindergarten. This is big.
They are also expected to be good citizens of the educational community. I know this, because the New York City Department of Education just told me, via a fascinating document called "Citywide Standards of Intervention and Discipline Measures: The Discipline Code and Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities, K-12" that just arrived via my son's backpack. It is 28 pages of small-font, landscape-printed gobbledygook that is supposed to tell parents what kids are and are not supposed to do in school, and what will happen to them if they run afoul of the rules.
Or at least that is what I think it is. I have tried three times to get all the way through this thing, and I am so frustrated by its turgid, ungrammatical, passive-voiced bureaucratic incomprehensibility, that I cannot be sure. For, example the section entitled "Promoting Positive Student Behavior" begins with:
"Each School is expected to promote a positive school climate and culture that provides students with a supportive environment in which to grow both academically and socially." Okay, a little stilted, but I have no problem with the sentiment. Schools should be pleasant places that help children learn and grow up.
Next comes "Schools are expected to take a proactive role in nurturing students' pro-social behavior by providing them with a range of positive behavioral supports as well as meaningful opportunities of social emotional learning."
Huh?
I have spent the last 22 years working in government and higher education bureaucracies. Before that, I spent three years in the educational publishing business. That is not the worst sentence I have ever seen. For instance, it's nowhere near as bad as this one:
"Effective social emotional learning helps students develop fundamental skills for life effectiveness, including: recognizing and managing emotions; developing caring and concern for others; establishing positive relationships; making responsible decisions; and handling challenging situations constructively and ethically."
We're still on page two. There are five more pages to go before we get to the actual code of conduct that our kids are supposed to follow. Five more pages like this. Jargon, wordiness, too many ideas running together -- everything your freshman composition teacher told you not to do occurs in every sentence of every paragraph of this document.
I suppose I could google "pro-social behavior," swallow my distaste for "proactive," break that sentence up into more manageable chunks, and figure out what it's about. I could do that with the rest of the sentences in that paragraph. I could do that for the whole 28 pages of this thing, and after a couple of hours boil it down to the 10 things I need to know about discipline in kindergarten. After all, I do that sort of thing all the time with laws, regulations, directives, proposals, contracts, and all the other artifacts of my trade. But could an uneducated immigrant parent struggling to find his way and hoping that his child's first month in kindergarten will be the beginning of a better life?
Well, you say, what do you expect? The schools are run by a bunch of bureaucrats with no connection to kids or the classroom. They sling this kind of drivel around at each other all the time. What does it matter? But this isn't some intra-office policy exercise. This is a document that was printed up and distributed to every parent of every public school child in New York, sent home in the kids' backpacks so that the parents will read it and understand it. I know this because it says so right on page one: "All members of the school community -- students staff and parents -- must know and understand the standards of behavior which all students are expected to live up to and the consequences if these standards are not met."
This is also a classic CYA warning -- some day, we're gonna boot your kid out of school, and you'll have no excuse for not knowing that could happen because we told you so in black and white in your kid's backpack.
It should not be done this way. This stuff is important. Both the substance and the form. We should be told what is expected of us and our kids, and what can happen if we don't live up to the those expectations. But we should be told in a way that all of us can understand, in the language of the parents, not the administrators. The great irony of this is that the DOE has got thousands of people trained in exactly how to construct a clear readable document that can be easily understood by parents and children. They're called teachers, and every school is full of them.
For many years, I have followed the story of Mayor Bloomberg wrestling control of the schools away from the monstrosity that was the old board of education. I have paid particular attention to the dialectic between Chancellor Joel Klein and the teachers. Klein has been portrayed by some as a lone voice for integrity and merit, and by others (especially teachers) as someone who knows nothing about education. As someone who worked in the Bloomberg administration for eight years and saw first hand how much of a real reformer he is, I have tended to take Klein's side in this debate. Now I'm not so sure. Now, it's my kid, my kid's backpack, and my job to read what's in it.
This is kindergarten. This is big.
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