Education – Page 5 – education and deconstruction.com

As Bad As They Say?

The Book of the Week is “As Bad As They Say? Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx” by Janet Grossbach Mayer, published in 2011. This is the career memoir of a New York City teacher.

Grossbach started teaching in January 1960 to a class of fifty(!) middle schoolers, with no books. All by herself. The principal visited her the first week. Thereafter, neither he nor any other administrators visited again. In the almost sixty intervening years since then, not much has changed in terms of education quality (or lack thereof) for New York City public school students. As an aside, her older brother attended Queens College in New York City in the 1950’s, when there was free tuition.

“Whomever you blame, do not blame Bronx students, because, despite all the obstacles we have put in their way, these amazing young people are definitely not as bad as they say.”

In the mid-1980’s, the author worked at a horrible school in the Bronx. She lists only several of the countless flaws in the building’s infrastructure and culture; among them, the elevator was often out of order; the school nurse wasn’t licensed, and had to care for 1,600-1,800 kids and staff; the author stomped when she entered her classrooms (several different ones in the course of each day) in order to scare away the roaches, rats and mice; her classrooms was on the coal-heated side of the building, so it was always freezing and the other side was boiling; there were no student lockers in the entire school– just cubbies with no locks, so they went unused…

Sadly, politicians promote misguided education policies, like voting against financially aiding a majority of students in poverty-stricken school districts because it would be potential political suicide to take from the rich and give to the poor. The last chapter is a justified complaint-fest on the education policies of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg (doing damage from 2002 to 2013), with a little of former president George W. Bush’s scandalous “No Child Left Behind” bill thrown in. To sum up Bloomberg’s reign: “Having business leaders run the public schools can be compared to having surgeons working in operating rooms without having gone to medical school.” The author cited a study that said by their fourth year of teaching, 85% of Teach For America (neophyte teachers-in-training who completed a rushed summer course and were then allowed to teach) had left New York City.

After she retired, Mayer mentored students in Bloomberg’s “small schools.” In her first year, she found five nonfunctioning small high schools, whose personnel were all inexperienced. There were various situations of flagrant violations of the law, like special education classes whose teachers were unlicensed. The public address system was broken the whole school year. If there had been an emergency, people could have died. There were “…expensive new math books torn up and thrown all over the floor by students in classes with new teachers…” who could not control their classrooms. “The new principal, with no science background, had written a new science curriculum…” ordering the teaching of physics in ninth rather than twelfth grade to special education students. “The math teacher wasn’t licensed in special education, never mind physics.” There was no librarian to open the cartons of brand new books for the entire school year. Needless to say, there were numerous “…distraught teachers, administrators, parents and students.”

The above abominations were not isolated incidents. Third-world countries were getting smarter assistance with governance to improve education conditions than the New York City schools. Read the book to learn how the author coped.

The Strange Case of the Mad Professor

The Book of the Week is “The Strange Case of the Mad Professor” by Peter Kobel, published in 2013. This ebook recounts the sordid story of a petty, vengeful university professor who was passionate about his field of study, lemurs.

Professor John Buettner-Janusch (aka “B-J”), of German and Austrian descent, was born in 1924. He grew up in the United States, but went to jail for evading the draft during WWII. “His desire for attention was enormous, and he never seemed to care much whether that notice was admiration, disdain, or loathing.”

B-J eventually rose through the ranks of higher education while collecting a menagerie of lemurs that were subjected to primate research. People either loved him or hated him. He was like a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. It became apparent that he was also a sociopath.

Starting in the late 1970’s, he was charged with serious crimes. “…But much of B-J’s pretrial testimony formed a farrago of lies and half-truths, of the incredible or incomprehensible.”

Read the book to learn what became of this colorful character.

Outwitting History

The Book of the Week is “Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books” by Aaron Lansky, published in 2005. The author of this ebook, passionate about the Yiddish language and the culture and history behind it, made a career of preserving books in Yiddish by physically transporting them to an eventual library he and a few others started.

Lansky attended a Northeastern free-spirited college, Hampshire, where he was afforded the opportunity to become fluent in Yiddish. Teaching of the language between generations has been uneven because different factions of Jews have different opinions of it so that its popularity has risen and fallen through the centuries. Lansky felt a sense of immediacy about saving Yiddish literature because he was told that scholars “…estimated that there were seventy thousand Yiddish volumes extant and recoverable in North America” and he was finding out that books were being destroyed for diverse reasons in various ways.

Funding and fundraising have always been a challenge for the author through the decades. To pick up hundreds of Yiddish volumes at once, say, from the home of an intellectual Jew who had passed away, he needed to pay for: renting a truck, gas, insurance, travel expenses, storage, etc. Lecturing has also been a source of money for his endeavors.

Read the book to learn how the National Yiddish Book Center was formed, how he recruited other people to help him with collecting books, the social and cultural organizations to which he traveled to collect them, the food he was pressured to eat while meeting a lot of volunteers of the older generation who shared his love of, and desire to keep Yiddish alive, and how his organization is harnessing modern technology to attain its aims.

Not Quite Paradise

The Book of the Week is “Not Quite Paradise” by Adele Barker, published in 2010. This is a personal account of an author and university instructor who went to Sri Lanka to teach literature. After her teaching stint in 2001, she returned to observe and write about the conditions of devastation the people suffered in the December 2004 tsunami.

When she first started teaching at the International School at the University of Ceylon in Kandy in the Peradeniya countryside, Barker learned about all the days the university was closed due to holidays, “…election days, election violence days, the religious holidays of four different religions, and university-induced holidays.”

Barker’s American mindset caused her to be stressed by the rat and ant infestation in her rented house, the leaking roof and tropical diseases. “TV has not been possible since the day the monkeys ripped off the antenna from the roof.” She also held the belief that the hobbies she adopted (French language learning and ladies’ football [soccer]) were terribly (British) colonialist, and that bothered her.

The scene at the bank is this: “People conduct their transactions by simply pushing forward en masse to the tellers’ windows.” There is no respect for personal space as there is in the U.S. Someone explained to Barker that in previous years, people got fed up with waiting in line when they were told there was no more of the product– such as garlic– for which they had been waiting hours. Currently, they display orderly patience only in religious rituals.

Nevertheless, “The relief of not being battered by the ongoing emotional sagas of American teenage pop queens and the latest sex scandals that pass for news in the mainstream American press is enormous.”

The presence of four different religions in Sri Lanka has produced civil war on and off through centuries. The author characterizes the country thusly: “Singing geckoes and curries, children in their whites merged with soldiers in body bags and posters of kids in Tiger uniform with their throats slashed.” (As an aside, “Tiger” does not refer to a sports team, but rather, the Tamil Tigers, a mostly Hindu ethnic group.)

Barker writes that in recent decades, the Sri Lankan economy and education system have been adversely affected by various historical circumstances (which has given rise to cultural stereotypes), including but not limited to: colonialism, ethnic conflict and a major natural disaster (the tsunami), that simply perpetuate a vicious cycle.

In 1948, Ceylon (later to be renamed Sri Lanka) became independent from the British Raj. It was then that ethnic strife began. The author met someone who said, “We’re not Sri Lankan anymore. We’re Tamil or Sinhalese or Moor.”

Only two of the three then-national languages (Sinhalese, Tamil and English) continued to be taught in schools. When English was removed from the curriculum, students became less worldly, especially the less wealthy, less privileged ones whose families, unluckily were not listed in the metaphorical “Social Register” in Colombo (the capital of the country). In 1958, a law was passed to make Sinhalese the sole national language. This did not sit well with the Tamil Tigers.

Generations later, the lucky elites continued to obtain lucrative jobs with merely an eighth-grade education. The lower classes have received no guarantee of a bright future, even after completing four years of university education. Therefore, in the 1970’s and 1980’s the latter found Marxism and Trotskyism appealing.

Starting in 1971, the lower classes incited violence, burning tires, jeeps and human beings. Some even attended the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow. A political faction was founded (the JVP), which fought against the Sri Lankan army and common people. There have been student protests, riots and murder raids, with Buddhist monks in the mix, who are not always innocent.

The year 1983 saw a recurrence of the civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil Tiger rebels. The latter began a separatist movement in 1976, claiming that Sri Lanka is their homeland.

Through the decades, political elections have also prompted bloodshed. “The grenade explosions started days before an election.” Sadly, as in many countries of the world, Sri Lanka is a land of natural beauty, but the behavior of some of its citizens has been ugly.

Anyway, education-wise, high school students are required to take two sets of standardized tests, the “O Levels” and “A Levels” in six subjects. The former are taken in what would be equivalent to tenth grade in America, and the latter are college entrance exams. Failure of exams means a future consigned to a low-level job, like selling clothing or other items to tourists in the marketplace.

The Sri Lankan economy was fueled largely by tourism, which basically disappeared due to ethnic violence in the 1990’s, and 9/11. This gave rise to the cultural stereotype that the Sinhalese are indolent. They failed their exams and there are no jobs for them. They might or might not be lazy. They might simply be culturally disadvantaged underachievers.

Read the book to learn about elephants, details of the fighting, why so many Sri Lankans unnecessarily died in the tsunami, and what the author experienced on her return trip in 2005.

Havana Real

The Book of the Week is “Havana Real” by Yoani Sanchez, published in 2009 (according to the copyright). This ebook is a compilation of the blog posts of a journalist in Havana from 2007 through 2010. The author wrote of the oppression of Cubans by their government, their poor quality of life under Communism, and the abuse she suffered for expressing her anti-government opinions.

Yoani Sanchez is a member of what is called “Generation Y” in America– people born in the mid-1970’s and later. At that time, the trend in Cuba was to give babies “Y” names. Sanchez grew up in a Communist dictatorship whose economy was subsidized by the former Soviet Union. In her early teens, she was compelled to join a military youth group whose members were trained to use an AK-47 and shout nationalistic slogans.

After the USSR broke up in the 1990’s, the formerly Communist leaders stopped providing economic aid to Cuba. The Cuban economy tanked. The author described how Cubans in her generation could not afford to take advantage of the practice of building their own homes and after twenty years of payments, owning the property. Instead, Generation Y ran out of money and ended up with stalled construction sites. The Havana apartment building she lived in deteriorated because the landlord was unwilling to pay a high enough wage to attract maintenance workers. For a few years, the elevator was broken. Until it was finally replaced by a rickety Soviet model that still broke down, she and her husband and teenage son had to walk up fourteen flights of stairs.

In summer 2007, Fidel Castro was reported to be ill. Cubans felt a sense of relief at not having to listen to his speeches that interrupted their TV watching, if they were wealthy enough to have a TV. Nevertheless, Sanchez wrote, “We can spend an hour on line to pay the electricity bill or consume half a day to get a pair of shoes repaired… Not know exactly when we can take the bus, receive a service, or buy a ticket.”

This is to say nothing of the horrendous Cuban education system. People who did poorly in school become employed by the schools to educate the children, as graduates who got better grades enter higher-paying professions. Often, these sorry-excuses-for-teachers fill their students’ heads with misinformation. There are also a lot of “tele-classes”– videos instead of live teachers because education is extremely pitifully funded. These videos can be seen by all Cubans who have a TV at home, if they can endure the boring dictation.

Read the book to learn of: the black markets– some of which evaporated due to political change– that deal in the basic necessities of life such as soap, juice and toilet paper; what happened to people who became too entrepreneurial in their capitalistic practices; the reorganized education system that bodes a bleak future for Sanchez’ son; and how Cubans’ already low standard of living fell even further in various ways during the time the author was blogging.

Writing Places – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the book, “Writing Places” by William K. Zinsser, published in 2009. It is a career memoir. Zinsser details the twists and turns of his writing and teaching, starting with his adventures in journalism in the New York City of the mid- to late 1940’s through the late 1950’s.

The author says that the New York Herald Tribune served as a role model for his writing, instilling lifelong values in him. Two older editors in the newsroom “…went out of their way to help me [gain experience.]” Unfortunately, by the late 1950’s, for various reasons, the newspaper was unable to uphold the values it originally held as part of its corporate culture.

Zinsser fell into freelance writing for magazines such as Life and the Saturday Evening Post. His generation saw lots of human-interest stories in a slew of weekly publications. “It was also,” he writes of the early 1960’s, “the last historic moment when it was possible for a magazine writer in America to be a generalist.”

For, television gobbled up a large chunk of consumer advertising at the expense of publications. It also competed for readers’ leisure time. Excuse the cliche, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Television showed consumer products in live-action scenarios against which magazines could not compete. Zinsser’s work slowed to a trickle because there arose topical specialization in periodicals; contributors were required to be experts on, say, hunting or cats or wine or brides, etc.

Another trend of the 1960’s was the lax teaching of writing by American high schools. Teachers allowed students freedom of expression with little regard for grammar or syntax. Excuse the cliche, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Read the book to learn how Zinsser adapted to the changing times. One hint is that it involved the “…American National United Allied General Corporation.” So as not to have biased the reader, this blogger is providing the following info at the end of this post:

Zinsser admittedly is a WASP-y Northeastern elitist, whose father was a Yale graduate. He himself is a Princeton graduate. He also confesses that memoir writers tend to be “…masters of retroactive blame. The hard job is to get beyond the ancient grievances and arrive at a larger point– some moment of acceptance and healing.”

A Funny Thing Happened… – Bonus Post

The short ebook “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future” by Michael J. Fox, published in 2010 is an inspiring commencement speech. The author answers the question, “What constitutes an education?”

As a teenager, Fox himself sacrificed his formal education for his career. It was an alternate route that was not necessarily inferior to his staying in school. He had found his passion early in life and circumstances allowed him to pursue it. He does not necessarily recommend the method he fell into, but tells the reader to be on the lookout for and respect mentors, opportunities and lessons in life. Read the book to learn the details of the education Fox did receive.

Outliers

The Book of the Week is “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, published in 2008. This short, repetitive yet fascinating ebook is a hodgepodge of commentaries on human nature.

The author argues that extremely successful people in specific areas of expertise, such as professional sports, computer programming, music, science and lawyering “…are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies…” that give them a helping hand with regard to pursuing their passions. He also touches on a few peripheral topics, such as cultures of honor, plane crashes, rice paddies, education and slavery, all of which involve complex systems of teamwork and communication.

Outliers take advantage of the chances they get over the course of about a decade, or 10,000 hours, in which they hone their abilities in one area that, at the time, happens to become valued by society. An outlier is what some business commentators refer to as a “hedgehog” rather than a “fox.” The former becomes an expert in one or two areas– the outlier mystique; the latter gains some experience in many areas– useful in times of crisis, but never conducive to outlier status.

Gladwell names real-life examples of various celebrities, mostly Americans, explaining why their incredible achievements were attained with assistance from fate. He writes that stories about outliers are often exaggerated, failing to mention the set of lucky circumstances that led to success.

For example, the nurturing of talent of young Canadian ice hockey players is based on a biased selection process. Players are grouped in leagues by their playing abilities within age ranges determined by their birthdates. The ones who are older, even by a few months, have a statistically significant advantage in terms of size and strength. Thus, it so happens that a large percentage of players are born in January, February or March. These lucky ones are provided with a superior experience, whose success feeds on itself, called “accumulative advantage.”

The maximally successful achiever is one who is both book-smart and street-smart, as was J. Robert Oppenheimer, project manager of the atomic bomb. According to Gladwell, street-smart consists of attitudes and skills instilled by one’s family. If one happens to be born into a wealthy, nurturing family, one is much more likely to become an outlier.

Read the book to learn: 1) which countries’ students are best at math and why; 2) the reason there is an achievement gap between high-income and low-income American elementary schoolers; and 3) other interesting findings.

Open

The Book of the Week is “Open” by Andre Agassi published in 2009. This engaging ebook tells the life story (up until his mid-thirties) of a famous American tennis player.

The author’s traumatic childhood invites the reader’s sympathy and the entertaining writing keeps the reader enthralled. Although this is a first-person account and the book is all about him, he does not come off as narcissistic. He has bragging rights as a world-class tennis player, and has done some serious introspection– he shares with the reader his emotional states while recounting his life lessons.

Agassi’s childhood was tennis-obsessed, as his father ordained that he was going to grow up to be a professional tennis player. As a powerless child, he could not argue. Besides, he told himself that he loved his father, wanted his approval, didn’t want to make him mad. His father became even more tyrannical than usual when angry. So his tennis career became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fortunately, during his journey to the top, Agassi met friends, mentors, lovers and even opponents, who helped him to become a better athlete and a better person. When he got his first taste of celebrity, Agassi writes, “Wimbledon has legitimized me, broadened and deepened my appeal, at least according to the agents and managers and marketing experts with whom I now regularly meet.”

Grateful for his fame and fortune, the author decided to give back. He wanted to create “… something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me… but isn’t about me.” He co-founded a charter school called Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, located in Nevada.

Agassi proudly describes the school; a few aspects with which this blogger takes issue. He claims that pouring money into the school would make it a better school. He says Nevada is a state that spends less money per student on education than most other states. At least one study has shown that spending is not a factor in improving education quality.

Agassi also supplied the 26,000 square foot education complex with “everything the kids could want”– the very best entertainment and computer centers, athletic facilities, etc. On any given day, a famous politician, athlete or musician might drop by to teach the kids.

The author boasts, “Our educators are the best, plain and simple.” Yet, he goes on to write, because the school “… has a longer school day and a longer school year than other schools, our staff might earn less per hour than staffs elsewhere. But they have more resources at their fingertips and so they enjoy greater freedom to excel and make a difference in children’s lives.”

In other words, Agassi’s take on education is misguided in various ways. It seems he thinks kids will get a better education with quantity over quality when it comes to money and time. True, passionate teachers do not work solely for the money, but they value student enlightenment and recognition more than sparkling new classrooms. Admittedly, the author is a man of contradictions. Read the book to learn more about them.

I’d Like to Apologize

The Book of the Week is “I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had” by Tony Danza (yes, the famous actor), published in 2012. This ebook is a personal account of Danza’s bout with trying out the profession of teaching. He taught one tenth grade English class at an inner-city Philadelphia school that allowed his trial by fire to be recorded for a reality show on the Arts and Entertainment cable channel.

This was during the 2009-2010 academic year. Danza experienced the range of extreme emotions and encountered the range of difficult issues common to modern American teachers. He does a good job impressing upon the reader how hard it is to be a high school teacher. These days, teachers have numerous pressures thrust upon them. One quote sums up the current situation: “Teachers and administrators are always worried about being fired. One complaint from a child or parent can be the end of a career.”

Danza felt he had to make learning fun because students are growing up in a society immersed in entertainment. He felt he had to go easy on disciplining students. Many of the ones he taught live in single-parent households, are the victims of abuse, abandonment, poor parenting, etc. If he did not choose his battles wisely, they might fail to see the connection between education and success in life and quit school altogether.

In addition, if teachers take students to task for minor infractions, such as wearing hoodies, using electronic devices, and even cheating– rather than fighting– “The only recourse is to… involve the dean’s office… lose precious class time…” In other words, going through all the trouble to punish problem students cheats the other students out of an education.

He saw that the teaching profession has changed for the worse significantly since he was in grade school. He noted that some parents fail to take an interest in their kids’ education, or else blame the teacher when their kids fail to do schoolwork, or are a discipline problem. One of Danza’s lessons involved a discussion of celebrities– numerous Americans are poorly educated, but are rich and famous anyway; one reason many teenagers do not see the value of education.

At every opportunity, Danza tried to teach life lessons about morals, the golden rule and empathy. The kids were less than thrilled when the school principal decided to go with them on a class field trip. Danza told the class “Make the best of a baaaaad situation.”

Danza encountered some conflicts with the reality-show crew because he was truly dedicated to teaching his kids. The producer wanted to entertain the show’s viewers.

Read the book to learn more about the above and other issues, plus standardized testing, the fate of the reality show, and whether Danza decided to return to teach the following year.