Education – Page 4 – education and deconstruction.com

All Day – BONUS POST

The Book is “All Day, A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island” by Liza Jessie Peterson, published in 2017. This is a personal account of a “starving artist” who became a jail-school teacher to support herself.

The author wrote that she initially did a stint at Rikers Island (the famous jail in New York City) as a substitute teacher in spring 2008 for three weeks. She was then hired full-time in the autumn to teach a pre-GED (the then-high-school equivalency exam) class of youths awaiting transfers or releases.

The author described in detail what went on in the classroom and how she was able to relate to, and inspire her students to try to turn their lives around. The teenage students had had troubled home lives and some had committed truly serious crimes.

In mid-autumn 2008, the teachers at the school got an ultimatum to teach the “rubric” curriculum. There were specific (unrealistic) time allotments for different activities during a period. The clueless educrats who were imposing the new, draconian, inscrutable system weren’t even American education consultants. The author wrote they were from Australia (!)

Further, the author was spot-on in her description of the changes to education in recent decades, “Just follow the dollars. There is a rush to incarcerate rather than educate. The pipeline is clear… overcrowded, under-resourced classrooms. Outdated textbooks. Overworked, underpaid teachers…”

Read the book to learn of the multiple frustrations, traumas and triumphs the author claimed to have lived, in a dark, stressful, depressing place.

ENDNOTE: Peterson ended up resigning in early February of 2009, to maintain her sanity, and to work at a job with at-risk youths. So it was not an entire “year” as in the book’s title. Also, her terminology was outdated for the time in which claimed she taught. She mentioned “correctional officers,” “Board of Education,” and “superintendent” whom she named as Cami Anderson. The reason for this was unclear, as the newer terms would have shown that she really had taught those kids like she said she did. It does matter for the fact that the book was supposedly nonfiction– her own personal account. She should have honestly told the reader it was someone else’s experience, as told to her. This way, she wouldn’t appear to be another Janet Cooke of Washington Post fame. Too bad, because the author’s descriptions rang true about life for the sector of society she had witnessed and was attempting to assist.

Iron and Silk

The Book of the Week is “Iron and Silk” by Mark Salzman, published in 1986. This short paperback reveals the culture of Changsha, capital of Hunan province in China, in the early 1980’s through the eyes of the then-22 year old American author.

Salzman traveled to the city of Changsha, population approximately one million, to teach English for two years, beginning in the summer of 1982. Living conditions were primitive, as were the educational resources for the author’s students (aspiring doctors) where he taught– Hunan Medical College.

The author’s boss, who roomed with her housekeeper, lived in a tiny, un-air-conditioned apartment with bare cement walls and floors, and one bare light bulb per room. She behaved like a mother-figure toward him, critiquing his behavior and clothing.

The school had only one copy machine and only one individual was empowered to use it; in his absence, documents were hand-written over again. The absence of telephones meant people visited each other personally anytime.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s adventures with Chinese bureaucracy, censorship, and how he sharpened his martial arts and calligraphy skills during his teaching stint.

Shrub

The Book of the Week is “Shrub, The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush” by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, published in 2000.

The contents of this slim volume were presumably published before election day, 2000. For, it seems that the authors were trying to deter readers from voting for (now former president) George W. Bush for president. The arguments were clear, concise and full of facts.

In a nutshell, as the governor of Texas in the late 1990’s, “From the record, it appears that he [Bush] doesn’t know much, doesn’t do much, and doesn’t care much about governing.” The authors recounted the allegedly positive actions taken on crime, education, the budget and some other issues by Bush’s predecessor, Ann Richards, and then explained how he reversed them.

Bush came from a privileged, wealthy, widely socially connected family, whose name (especially his daddy’s) he used to solicit other people’s money to make a large quantity for himself (and get elected to public office). Those other people didn’t mind that Bush’s 1980’s oil venture in which they invested, failed big-time, because they got huge tax write-offs, and gained patronage jobs and networking opportunities. Basically, it was redistribution of wealth among the wealthy.

Judging from Governor Bush’s record on the spike in cruel and unusual punishment in the criminal justice system, pollution free-for-all enjoyed by big corporations, and the gravy train resulting from privatization of welfare in Texas, the reader would think he had sociopathic tendencies. Unsurprisingly, the people who benefited from his policies were his major campaign donors.

In the 1980’s, H. Ross Perot was appointed as an education consultant to improve Texas public schools. He made a great positive impact on the system by acting on the common-sense theme that “Most experts agree the single most important step Texas took during the long process of reform was [drumroll, please] mandating smaller class sizes in the lower grades and emphasizing early education.” Bush claimed Perot’s results as his own. Not only that, his cronies favored charter schools, so he advocated for the maximum number Texas could open. The result was 151 of them in only six months in 1997. Their quality has been uneven at best, and there were a few that cheated numerous students out of an education because they faced mismanagement and financial ruin and closed.

The authors do give Bush credit for his effort to preserve education funding when his governorship was forced to impose budget cuts. However, the results of even additional funding for education can be worse than budget cuts to education when the money is spent on the wrong items– such as sweetheart no-bid contractors, profit-oriented consultants and the subsidizing of charter schools that close.

Read the book to learn the details of the damage done by “W” when he was governor of Texas, etc., etc., etc.

Brain Rules

[SIDENOTE: Strangely, anytime, but only when this blogger writes something controversial, or about Donald Trump, WordPress crashes. Just an observation.]

The Book of the Week is “Brain Rules” by John Medina, published in 2008.

The author wrote about various factors that affect brain function, and how the brain can function better with regard to exercise, evolutionary developments, memory, driving, sleep, stress, the senses and gender.

The author claimed that studies have shown that any amount of exercise is better for the brain and body as a whole than no exercise at all. Intelligence can be maximized in work and school environments when people have a knowledge-base plus creativity. Other research showed that a simple experience of magazine-reading changed the neurons in the brain of one identical twin but not the other twin who hadn’t done magazine-reading.

Medina related a few anecdotes from his personal life to illustrate his points. A memorable incident for him occurred when a dog came out of a lake and shook water all over him. During those ten seconds, a normal human brain would “…recruit[s] hundreds of different brain regions and coordinate[s] the electrical activity of millions of neurons.”

The author cited blind gender studies in which subjects were asked their opinions of a person’s behavior; subjects held negative opinions of the person they were told was female, and positive opinions when told the person was male.

Medina crowed about how awesome retention was when research subjects were subjected to multi-sensory presentations (such as academic lectures, as when visuals, written text and verbal communication were used) as opposed to any of these alone. He advocated minimizing the reading by subjects of large chunks of text because tests showed that it was not as effective at getting subjects to retain information as was multi-media.

It appeared that the author was promoting dumbed-down education in general; perhaps because it is in the best interest of any university professor to tow his employer’s line (and possibly the government’s) in order to continue to receive research grants and further his or her career.

Read the book to learn of more neurological studies and the author’s ideas (which he admits are fantasies) that might improve cognitive functioning at work or school.

Diary of a West Point Cadet

The Book of the Week is “Diary of a West Point Cadet” by Captain Preston Pysh, published in 2011. This slim volume tells of a West Point student’s experiences as a member of the Class of 2003.

Pysh (rhymes with “fish”) was originally from a small farm town in Pennsylvania. He was a growth-oriented, goal-oriented individual who survived the military-style draconian training meted out at the academy because he understood the lessons behind the rigor. The place had a demanding, exacting atmosphere– forcing the students to find creative solutions to problems in serving the upperclassmen. Only about one tenth of the students majored in electrical, mechanical or civil engineering. The author was passionate about aerospace engineering. The highlight of his college career was his senior project– an experimental device for NASA that he and his project-group members tested in a KC-135 aircraft.

Read the book to learn more about Pysh’s trials, tribulations and triumphs in navigating the high pressure, military-career oriented institution that is West Point.

Side Note: This book appears to have been written: a) with the aid of speech-recognition software (which has yet to be perfected) or b) simply never edited after the first draft, as it contained an annoying number of misspellings, skipped words and grammatical errors.

The Conscience of a Conservative

The Book of the Week is “The Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater, published in 1960. This slim volume lays out the political opinions of the late conservative Senator from Arizona.

Goldwater believed that Conservatives considered the spiritual as well as economic needs of their constituents; Liberals, only the economic needs. There was a conflict between freedom and order, but the Conservatives wanted to maximize freedom.

“Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.” He thought that government power grew with allowing people to live their lives as they saw fit.

Goldwater was a big advocate of limiting the power of the federal government not just because the people deserved the most freedom possible, but because their local governments knew better how to take care of them.

The Senator lamented that federal programs were being imposed on the states in the guise of States’ Rights. And the programs were conditional– the Fed was using both the carrot and the stick to achieve its aims while having the states do its bidding. Of course, there is nothing new under the sun. A recent example of this was the 2009 “Race to the Top” education dollars that rained down on the states that changed their policies to get with the program. It emphasized standardized testing, teacher evaluations, other easily manipulated statistical measures and common standards whose results were questionable with regard to actual education improvement.

The Senator took issue with a few other areas besides education that he thought the states, not the federal government, should control: welfare, public power, farming, public housing and urban renewal.

Goldwater also related his views on labor unions. He felt that membership should have been voluntary, and that their political activities should have been banned. For, only unions’ top leadership had a say in their affiliations and funding with member dues, and the workers were forced to comply. He thought that the purpose of the union should have been solely to give workers the ability of collective bargaining. He made many generalizations and did not differentiate between government unions and private-sector unions.

This blogger thinks that current unions in the private sector should be allowed to continue their activities, but they are unnecessary with the way things are in the United States today.

Economics 101 says that a nation requires a healthy, well-educated workforce. Unions in the private sector discourage upward mobility– why should workers want to acquire more training and edification in their careers if they’re making a decent living and their jobs are protected? Unions in low-skilled positions especially, foster complacency. This blogger thinks that private-sector unions foster a lazy, poorly educated nation of low-skilled employees who go to work to collect a paycheck.

Non-union employees need no protection in the private sector. Employee satisfaction gets the same score as customer service. Free-market competition usually keeps employers in line.

If employees walk off the job en masse, other employers will gladly accept employees and business lost by the wayward employer. Customers and employees can go over to Wendy’s if McDonald’s is unsatisfactory, or to Target if Walmart doesn’t deliver. Low pay and difficult working conditions should encourage fry cooks and greeters to go to school to get a better job.

In the early 20th century, there was a need to protect workers– who were easily subjected to exploitation because many workers were poorly skilled, poorly educated new immigrants. There was limited opportunity for education, and limited transportation options even if workers were willing to relocate to find a job. Today, workers have more resources than ever to find work or engage in professional improvement if they want to.

Unions are needed in civil service, and a few monopolistic industries (such as couriers, transportation, education and healthcare services), because they are exceptional. They are providing essential services (health, education and welfare), or else the work they provide is a matter of life and death. Government employees who are providing essential services deserve due process, in exchange for not striking.

Striking is illegal, and rightly so. There would be massive economic and/or societal disruption, and possible deaths, if they were to walk off the job en masse. Therefore, civil service unions are a necessary evil.

Read Goldwater’s book to learn more about his take on government, and American foreign policy. Here’s a hint: “… if all nuclear weapons suddenly ceased to exist, much of the world would immediately be laid open to conquest by the masses of Russian and Chinese manpower.”

Why Do Only White People…

The Book of the Week is ” ‘Why Do Only White People Get Abducted By Aliens?’ ” by Ilana Garon, published in 2013. This is the personal account of a New York City high school English teacher who began her career during the early years of the Bloomberg mayoral administration. Fresh out of college, but passionate and focused, she became a Teaching Fellow in a rigorous training summer-school program in the Bronx in 2003.

The author, like many, many other teachers before and since, suffered psychologically draining experiences at an overcrowded, inner-city school in her first year teaching. Garon’s day had fourteen periods, ending at 5:55pm. She became privy to numerous bad home situations, and was involved in her share of in-school incidents. Her school had a heavy police presence and metal detectors that were used to screen all the students every time they entered the campus. She wrote, “… am continuing to teach at a school where all I do is discipline….”

There were ethnic tensions among light-skinned, darker-skinned, and Spanish-speaking kids. When students engaged in fighting in the hallway, “…it sounds like a bomb… Everyone starts screaming, the crowd of about one hundred kids…” There were also gang fights. It wasn’t just the boys, either. “Rather than the boys, who would throw punches, the girls would hold each other in death grips, trying to slam each other into floors or walls and pull each other’s hair out.”

Someone asked the author why she didn’t assign a particular novel about African Americans to her class. She tried to explain that the reason she didn’t, wasn’t that the book would be too hard for them– it had nothing to do with the stereotype that people of their ethnicity can’t read as well as others; it was that the book would be too hard for most of the students, given their poor reading, writing and verbal skills, regardless of their ethnicity.

Despite many of the students’ abysmal literacy, Garon was under pressure by higher-ups to give the students a passing grade, whether or not they completed their coursework, or demonstrated that they learned anything. Unsurprisingly, by the spring of her first year, she had also been subjected to sexual harassment from faculty members, and the mentoring system had failed her. Her mentor, who doubled as the baseball coach, absented himself from mentoring her in the spring.

In her second year, the author was assigned to “team-teach” one of her classes– a Special Education inclusion class of 33 boys; in other words, a boatload of behavior problems. The other teacher on her team was a Filipino who spoke only Tagalog (no English), while the students spoke only English and Spanish.

Garon was threatened by a student for confiscating a note he was passing to another student in her classroom. She couldn’t let that go. She had to assert her authority over the students or else they’d walk all over her ever after. However, reporting the student was a legal can of worms. The bureaucracy required a court hearing by the Board of Education. She had to get on the stand and testify. The student had a lawyer present. It took five hours. It happened to be scheduled on the same day as parent-teacher conferences. So she missed most of them.

Garon discussed the case of a cute, smart African American boy in her class who was a year younger than his classmates. His situation had looked so promising when she first met him. His parents and teachers were encouraging and cared about his education. He was attending a good school. Garon thought his academic performance suffered between ninth and tenth grades due to peer pressure– the other kids would socially ostracize him for being “white” and nerdy if he got good grades.

The author teaches the kinds of kids she does, because she wants to make a difference in these deprived youngsters, compensate those who “… had been slighted in more ways than I could enumerate, while my peers and I had been given ever more incalculable advantages over them.” She feels that poverty is the main obstacle to their getting an education. This means home environment– their homes lack the same resources that other kids have; for starters– they lack parents who care about their education, who teach them behavior patterns that lead to success.

Read the book to learn of the slew of other issues Garon faces on a daily basis.

Without You, There Is No Us

The Book of the Week is “Without You, There Is No Us” by Suki Kim, published in 2014. This is the personal account of a Korean journalist who, in 2011, went to Pyongyang, North Korea to teach English to male college students.

In both of the Koreas, “… daughters-in-law worked year round, cooking. cleaning and washing, never mind being perpetually pressured to produce a male heir.” North Korean society is extremely group-oriented. People are never alone at their residences, taking meals and playing sports. All men except those in the upper class, are required to serve in the military for about ten years, and women for about seven years, starting at 17. North Koreans never take vacations; there are no holiday getaways.

The North is a military dictatorship in which anyone who utters anything negative about the Great Leader, will face serious consequences, and possible death. “All the students’ skits ended, regardless of plot, with a song of gratitude to either their leader or their party.” There is power in secrecy. The government is obsessed with spying on its own people– eliminating all of their secrets, thereby keeping them powerless.

The government is also obsessed with promoting the idea that North Koreans alone excel at all areas of life– a declaration based on nothing but empty boasting; the same kind of fascistic mentality put forth by Hitler, Mussolini and Mao Tse Tung. The irony is that “…their culture was saturated with messages about killing South Koreans and Americans and references to horrifically gruesome acts… yet they needed to learn English and feed their children with foreign money…”

In 2011, a new North Korean government program had just been initiated, that brought in foreigners to teach lessons in English to the kids of the elite (doctors, scientists and government party hacks), for no pay. Kim taught at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, although science was missing from the curriculum. The school had a buddy system, pairing up students. But they were switched each term so that no alliances became too loyal for too long. They were forced to perform various “patriotic” acts, such as manual labor, digging and hauling water to plant trees in October, cleaning bathrooms, and “guarding” shrine-like buildings in freezing cold weather (but they weren’t really guarding anything).

Read the book to learn more about the stress experienced by the author with her immersion in North Korean culture, and her shock at how extremely obedient and clueless her students were about everyday life in the rest of the world.

Genius on the Edge – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “Genius on the Edge” by Gerald Imber, MD, published in 2010. This long book describes the career of Dr. William Halsted.

Halsted was born in 1852 in New York City. There was still much ignorance about medicine in his generation. Fatal diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever and tuberculosis were rampant. He developed a passion for medicine at Yale University. The most prominent doctors of his age included Pasteur, Lister, Morse, Hunter, Wells, Koch, Morton, Young and Warren. They spurred progress in sanitation, anaesthesia, and the collection of new information and techniques for treating patients.

In the 1870’s, Columbia College, Physicians and Surgeons didn’t require undergraduate degrees for entry because it was seeking revenue from student tuition. The three-year program was all lectures– no labs, no interaction with patients. In the 1870’s, during Halsted’s internship at Bellevue Hospital, many personnel didn’t wash their hands before operating, and smoked.

In late 1884, Halsted started using cocaine as a local anaesthetic in dentistry. He displayed, “…hyperactivity, rambling speech, inattention, and suspended decision-making ability.” Medical students and their teachers started using cocaine as a pick-me-up. They became addicted. “The drug was readily available in Europe, through Merck, and there was no stigma associated with its purchase.” In late 1886, Halsted went to work at Johns Hopkins Pathological– the “Bell Labs” of medicine. He went to Baltimore because his addiction had wrecked his career in New York. He substituted morphine for cocaine.

It is unclear how much better Halsted could have performed were it not for his addiction. He did have a brilliant career, but there were bouts of irresponsibility, socially and teaching-wise. He missed classes, started surgery at 10am instead of 8 after a while, failed to show up for meetings, and retreated to his country home for almost half the year. One positive side effect of his addiction was that Halsted delegated complete patient care to residents when he had morphine withdrawal symptoms. So the residents got a golden opportunity they would not have had otherwise, to learn their craft.

Side Note (There’s nothing new under the sun.): “As a group, they [nurses] felt themselves underpaid and overworked.” The Training School taught them to cook and clean. They were required to wear brown Oxford shoes.

Halsted experimented on dogs on and off for a couple of years, between months-long stints in drug rehab. He began seeing human patients for surgery in early 1889. He pioneered the medical-school residency program. He instituted the training of surgeons to train other surgeons. Three other doctors at Johns Hopkins who wrought major change in medicine in the U.S. were William Osler, William Welch, and Howard Kelly. Halsted specialized in surgery for breast cancer and inguinal hernia.

Johns Hopkins wanted to remain on the cutting edge of medicine by opening a medical school but it needed money to do so. Female heirs of prominent, wealthy families raised the money and placed conditions on the school’s opening, requiring gender equality. After much controversy, it opened in the fall of 1893.

Read the book to learn how medicine in America changed through the years of the late 19th into the 20th century, and how, according to this book, Johns Hopkins led the way.

A Balcony in Nepal – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “A Balcony in Nepal” by Sally Wendkos Olds, art by Margaret Roche. This book is comprised of journal entries of a few trips to Nepal in the 1990’s and 2000 made by Olds and Roche. They met people in Kathmandu and the rural village of Badel, where they stayed.

At the airport, they were greeted by street urchins, eager to carry their luggage for tips. There were sacred cows lying in the middle of the road intersections, temples, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, young men offering hashish, Tibetan rugs, currency exchange and guide services. In Nepal, there is cronyism in employment, so the educated Nepalis with no connections are compelled to leave the country to seek a living elsewhere.

Teachers receive extremely low pay in Nepal because there is a casual attitude toward education. Families tend to be large, and older siblings must take care of the younger ones, and also work in the fields at the expense of school attendance. Thus, a low value is placed on literacy in the lower castes, such as Darje (untouchables), which includes blacksmiths, tailors, ferrymen, musicians and leatherworkers. The educated classes begin studying English in the fourth grade. They must buy their own books and writing instruments. The vast majority of teachers are men. They might skip school to work in the fields, too.

Medical care is handled in the rural villages by shamans (medicine men). A medical doctor is seven days’ walk and a two-day bike ride from Badel. When a villager’s ankle became swollen possibly from too much hiking, the village shaman told the patient his ankle hurt because he crossed the river without praying to the river god. So the shaman chanted over the ankle and told him to go pray by the river. The ankle got better in two days; perhaps via the placebo effect.

Wendkos and Olds engaged in some philanthropic activity by raising money to build a library in Badel. They attended the local political meeting at which a committee was formed for library-related planning. The attendees included all of Badel’s ethnic groups, Rai, Bhujil, Puri, Giri, Sherpa and Darje. Several years later, by 2000, the library had opened; however, it was being used to house a school rather than lend books.

Read this book to learn other aspects of Nepali culture, and the diarists’ thoughts and feelings on their experiences.