The acerbic columnist Malcolm Berko recently ranted about health care and health insurance. He bemoaned the fact that we Americans are “becoming increasingly reluctant to take responsibility for our own actions.”
He pointed out that 74 per cent of health care costs are derived from four things: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity, all of which are highly preventable. Two things play into this in a big way: nutrition and exercise. My wife insures our healthy eating habits; I am on my own for the exercise.
I have learned some things about exercise over the years. First, regular exercise requires motivation. For many years, having to pass the military annual physical test motivated me. As I got older, I could not wait until 30 days before the test to get in shape. I had to stay in shape.
The bathroom mirror also motivated me. When my image reached the disgust level, it was back to the workout regime. Of course the results were motivational. I remember an ex Marine who ran five miles a day saying he “hated the process but loved the results.” The results are worth the effort.
Age 60 brought forced retirement from the Army National Guard and there went my best motivator. For the next six years I quit working out and joined the ranks of the obese, until an accident, which led to physical therapy, got me back on track. A desire to return to normal and the need to stay healthy, knowing that I have already consumed more than my fair share of medical costs, became the new motivator.
For me to stay with a workout regime, I have to make it as convenient as possible. That means rolling out of bed and going straight to my workout. To do this, I have had many types of home exercise equipment over the years.
The cheapest was a good pair of running shoes. There was a time when I ran six miles a day, six days a week. During this time, I could eat as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted and not gain weight. It came to an end when I damaged a knee. Jogging, though enjoyable, is hard on the joints, especially as you age.
Also, in Alaska running was pretty much a summertime workout; something else was required in the winter. For several years, I had a Concept Two rowing machine, which was supposed to be the closest thing available to competitive rowing. This provided a great workout in that it worked both upper and lower body and the respiratory system. Unfortunately, it took up a lot of space and had to be left behind when moving. For a while, I had a single station weight lifting machine that I liked. It was good for bulking up muscles. Somewhere in this mix there was also a Nordic Track cross-country ski simulator, a Power Rider and a snow shovel.
After coming to Arkansas, bicycling became my primary workout. It is hard to beat bicycling. It is very aerobic, doesn’t jar your skeleton like jogging does and is good ten months out of the year. The furthest I have ridden was 150 miles over two days, from Conway to Russellville and back, for a charity fundraiser. I also rode to Batesville once on a hot, summer day, and rode back the next day. This was my introduction to heat exhaustion.
Sadly, Jonesboro is not a bicycle friendly town and bicyclists take a risk on the public streets. However, there is an active bicycle club working on making it a friendlier place for riders. I also read where a bike trail will be added to the Crowley Ridge Historic Highway. It sounds like a great ride.
Now that I am back in a workout frame of mind, I have purchased a Bowflex home gym and am working on building a Bowflex body. I have also purchased one of those gadgets to turn my bicycle into a stationary, exercise bike for winter use.
Before obtaining this equipment, I had a gym membership for $17 a month, but I had to work out in the evenings and only got in two sessions a week. It costs me $20 a month to pay for the home gym, and now I get in five or six workouts a week. (The spirits of our overworked ancestors must think we’re insane spending money on machines dedicated to making us work.)
So, Mr. Berko, I do take some responsibility for my wellbeing. By so doing, I hope to avoid getting more involved in the high cost of health care than is absolutely necessary. Aside from that, I kind of like the idea of dying healthy rather than surrounded by doctors. I invite my readers to also get involved.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Schol Consolidation -- commentary
The school consolidation dragon is about to swallow up the Weiner School district. However, this victim is not going to be eaten without a scream or two. They discovered a legal loop hole that might allow them to keep their school in operation while saving the Delight School District from also being eaten by the dragon. The districts, though 200 miles apart, intend to consolidate, allowing each to keep their schools open. By consolidating, they will no longer be below the 350 student population which requires consolidation or closing. I hope they make this succeed.
To begin with, a school is the heart and soul of a small town. Over the years, I have not been a great sports fan, but when I started teaching school, I felt compelled to attend the athletic events my students participated in. To my surprise, I discovered a football or basketball game wasn’t so much about the game as it was about the fellowship of the town folk who had come out to cheer on the players.
The high school ball game is where the people of the town exchange gossip, visite with those they haven’t seen for awhile, exchange greetings and comments with their kid’s teachers, and keep up with what goes on at the school. And of course, it is nice if their side wins the game. To take this out of the community devastates it. How do you replace it?
In a small town, the teachers get to know their students’ families. This puts a teacher in a much better position to accurately empathize with her students. Also, a small community acts as a conscience for its citizens. I wanted so badly to steal a car when I was a teenager and go for a joy ride. However, I knew what it would do to the family reputation in our small town. The community served as a restraint, as a part of my conscience. When my son was in a small, neighborhood elementary school, he did all right. Things started going wrong when he had to go to the distant, larger junior high school. But when he then had to go to a huge, and even more distant high school, it was the end of his schooling. And, the anonymity of the situation allowed him to misbehave without our knowledge.
Theologically, I belong to that branch of Christianity that believes man has a fallen nature. Because of that, we must train children to be civil and moral. Unfortunately, not all children get trained adequately. If you have three hundred students, and 10 per cent of them didn’t get trained adequately, you have 30 problem kids. The teachers and administrators all know who those students are and they are able to keep track of them. When you have a school of 3,000 students, you now have 300 hundred such students. It is impossible to keep track of them and they spread their poison.
What is the justification for this seeming need to consolidate our schools? It seems to be that we can offer a much more diverse curriculum: more foreign languages, more music, more art, better laboratories, etc. There was a time when this argument had some legitimacy, but with modern technology and distance learning labs, even a small town like Weiner can provide anything their students desire. This is no longer a valid argument for creating larger schools. Isn’t it ironic that Arkansas insists on closing down smaller schools, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending millions to create and promote smaller schools?
I was listening to “Booknotes” on C-span recently and Brian Lamb was interviewing Dianne Ravitch, author and education historian. He asked her why she thought educators promoted these huge school campuses. She said it was a way to track students. Tracking students, that is grouping them by ability, became a big taboo in education in the 80s and 90s. It hasn’t produced better education for anyone, and by having a greater selection of electives, the kids will sort themselves out, thus skirting this issue.
In her book, “Left Back, A Century of Battles Over School Reform,” Ravitch says, “Large schools may have worked well enough when adult authority was intact and educators set the tone, but they became dysfunctional when adult authority dissipated in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” (You will hear more of this terrific book in future columns.)
Weiner and Delight will get the news sometime in March as to whether they are going to be allowed to do this most unusual and creative consolidation. I hope they do succeed. They may be skirting the spirit of the law, but they didn’t create the loop hole and they are justified in taking advantage of it.
To begin with, a school is the heart and soul of a small town. Over the years, I have not been a great sports fan, but when I started teaching school, I felt compelled to attend the athletic events my students participated in. To my surprise, I discovered a football or basketball game wasn’t so much about the game as it was about the fellowship of the town folk who had come out to cheer on the players.
The high school ball game is where the people of the town exchange gossip, visite with those they haven’t seen for awhile, exchange greetings and comments with their kid’s teachers, and keep up with what goes on at the school. And of course, it is nice if their side wins the game. To take this out of the community devastates it. How do you replace it?
In a small town, the teachers get to know their students’ families. This puts a teacher in a much better position to accurately empathize with her students. Also, a small community acts as a conscience for its citizens. I wanted so badly to steal a car when I was a teenager and go for a joy ride. However, I knew what it would do to the family reputation in our small town. The community served as a restraint, as a part of my conscience. When my son was in a small, neighborhood elementary school, he did all right. Things started going wrong when he had to go to the distant, larger junior high school. But when he then had to go to a huge, and even more distant high school, it was the end of his schooling. And, the anonymity of the situation allowed him to misbehave without our knowledge.
Theologically, I belong to that branch of Christianity that believes man has a fallen nature. Because of that, we must train children to be civil and moral. Unfortunately, not all children get trained adequately. If you have three hundred students, and 10 per cent of them didn’t get trained adequately, you have 30 problem kids. The teachers and administrators all know who those students are and they are able to keep track of them. When you have a school of 3,000 students, you now have 300 hundred such students. It is impossible to keep track of them and they spread their poison.
What is the justification for this seeming need to consolidate our schools? It seems to be that we can offer a much more diverse curriculum: more foreign languages, more music, more art, better laboratories, etc. There was a time when this argument had some legitimacy, but with modern technology and distance learning labs, even a small town like Weiner can provide anything their students desire. This is no longer a valid argument for creating larger schools. Isn’t it ironic that Arkansas insists on closing down smaller schools, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending millions to create and promote smaller schools?
I was listening to “Booknotes” on C-span recently and Brian Lamb was interviewing Dianne Ravitch, author and education historian. He asked her why she thought educators promoted these huge school campuses. She said it was a way to track students. Tracking students, that is grouping them by ability, became a big taboo in education in the 80s and 90s. It hasn’t produced better education for anyone, and by having a greater selection of electives, the kids will sort themselves out, thus skirting this issue.
In her book, “Left Back, A Century of Battles Over School Reform,” Ravitch says, “Large schools may have worked well enough when adult authority was intact and educators set the tone, but they became dysfunctional when adult authority dissipated in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” (You will hear more of this terrific book in future columns.)
Weiner and Delight will get the news sometime in March as to whether they are going to be allowed to do this most unusual and creative consolidation. I hope they do succeed. They may be skirting the spirit of the law, but they didn’t create the loop hole and they are justified in taking advantage of it.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Alaskan Earthquake -- commentary
The earthquake news coming out of Haiti stirs old memories. It was Good Friday 1964 at 5:36 p.m. My new wife and I were in our second floor, efficiency apartment in a two story, wood frame building at Fifth and G streets in Anchorage, Alaska. I was standing in the middle of the living room putting on my coat to go outside and Pearl was in the kitchen fixing dinner.
The building began to shake and I turned to Pearl, smiled and said, "Feel that? We're having a little earthquake," which was a common occurrence there.
Quickly, the quake turned violent and my thinking took a military twist, being as I was active duty Air Force. I next thought, "How did those Soviet bombers get through our Distant Early Warning system (DEW)?" The DEW line was a series of radar and missile sites built along Alaska’s coast line to guard against Soviet attacks during the cold war.
I grabbed Pearl and tried to hold her in the door way which is supposed to be the safest place in case a building collapses. However, the building was swaying back and forth so violently that I couldn't hold us there. The kitchen cupboards flew open and the contents were spilling out. Tupperware was melting on the hot stove. The curio cabinet had fallen face down, breaking its glass front and the contents.
We soon discovered that the "whole lot a shaken goin on" wasn't Jerry Lee Lewis but rather what would become known as The Great Alaskan Earthquake: the most powerful earthquake ever to be recorded on the North American continent, according to Wikipedia. The shaking went on for five minutes and registered 9.2 on the Richter scale.
When the shaking stopped, we ran down stairs to the street to see the shambles it had left. A block to the east was the year old, eight story J. C. Penny's building. The concrete slabs which formed the exterior had broken loose, smashing cars and leaving the skeleton of the building exposed.
We then walked a block north to Fourth Avenue, the street Bob Hope once described as the only bar in the world with intersections. It was lined with seedy dives that ran wide open 23 hours a day. They closed for cleaning between five and six a.m.
The fault line ran down the middle of this street and the businesses on the north side had disappeared. The marquee of Fourth Avenue Theater was now level with the sidewalk. This destruction of so many "dens of iniquity" did not go unnoticed by the town’s preachers that Easter Sunday. Of course, churches were packed out that Sunday. The “fox hole” Christians had joined the Christmas and Easter crowd for worship.
Since Pearl and I had planned to move that night, we got about our business. We had purchased an old seven by thirty foot trailer house and had parked it in one of the many tin slums around Anchorage occupied mostly by low level, underpaid enlisted military. First we went to a ham radio operator, who lived down the hall, and had him patch a “we’re okay” call through to our parents stateside. Then we put a trash can in the middle of the apartment and threw away most of what little we had. The rest we loaded into the car and moved into our tin shack.
My sister-in-law, a single school teacher, lived on the seventh floor of a fourteen story apartment building. She was in Barrow when the quake hit, but her severely damaged building was now uninhabitable and all the tenants had to move out.
She stayed with us for a few days when she got back in town, and since I was on military leave, I helped her move. The elevator could not be used, so we tied everything that was soft and unbreakable in sheets and dropped them out of the window. Everything else had to be carried down the seven flights of stairs, including a living room couch.
When that task was done, I went back to the base and received a reprimand for not having reported for duty immediately after the quake. I was assigned to a crew to clean out a warehouse that had collapsed on its contents of light bulbs.
Only 131 people were killed in the quake due to the small population of the state and the time of day. People were home from work and school, fortunately, as two very large Anchorage schools were destroyed.
Though many of my friends suffered big losses, I had nothing to lose. Instead, I carried away a lesson which was good to learn early in life: Don't get attached to your belongings. This is one of the few principles shared by both Buddhism and Christianity.
The building began to shake and I turned to Pearl, smiled and said, "Feel that? We're having a little earthquake," which was a common occurrence there.
Quickly, the quake turned violent and my thinking took a military twist, being as I was active duty Air Force. I next thought, "How did those Soviet bombers get through our Distant Early Warning system (DEW)?" The DEW line was a series of radar and missile sites built along Alaska’s coast line to guard against Soviet attacks during the cold war.
I grabbed Pearl and tried to hold her in the door way which is supposed to be the safest place in case a building collapses. However, the building was swaying back and forth so violently that I couldn't hold us there. The kitchen cupboards flew open and the contents were spilling out. Tupperware was melting on the hot stove. The curio cabinet had fallen face down, breaking its glass front and the contents.
We soon discovered that the "whole lot a shaken goin on" wasn't Jerry Lee Lewis but rather what would become known as The Great Alaskan Earthquake: the most powerful earthquake ever to be recorded on the North American continent, according to Wikipedia. The shaking went on for five minutes and registered 9.2 on the Richter scale.
When the shaking stopped, we ran down stairs to the street to see the shambles it had left. A block to the east was the year old, eight story J. C. Penny's building. The concrete slabs which formed the exterior had broken loose, smashing cars and leaving the skeleton of the building exposed.
We then walked a block north to Fourth Avenue, the street Bob Hope once described as the only bar in the world with intersections. It was lined with seedy dives that ran wide open 23 hours a day. They closed for cleaning between five and six a.m.
The fault line ran down the middle of this street and the businesses on the north side had disappeared. The marquee of Fourth Avenue Theater was now level with the sidewalk. This destruction of so many "dens of iniquity" did not go unnoticed by the town’s preachers that Easter Sunday. Of course, churches were packed out that Sunday. The “fox hole” Christians had joined the Christmas and Easter crowd for worship.
Since Pearl and I had planned to move that night, we got about our business. We had purchased an old seven by thirty foot trailer house and had parked it in one of the many tin slums around Anchorage occupied mostly by low level, underpaid enlisted military. First we went to a ham radio operator, who lived down the hall, and had him patch a “we’re okay” call through to our parents stateside. Then we put a trash can in the middle of the apartment and threw away most of what little we had. The rest we loaded into the car and moved into our tin shack.
My sister-in-law, a single school teacher, lived on the seventh floor of a fourteen story apartment building. She was in Barrow when the quake hit, but her severely damaged building was now uninhabitable and all the tenants had to move out.
She stayed with us for a few days when she got back in town, and since I was on military leave, I helped her move. The elevator could not be used, so we tied everything that was soft and unbreakable in sheets and dropped them out of the window. Everything else had to be carried down the seven flights of stairs, including a living room couch.
When that task was done, I went back to the base and received a reprimand for not having reported for duty immediately after the quake. I was assigned to a crew to clean out a warehouse that had collapsed on its contents of light bulbs.
Only 131 people were killed in the quake due to the small population of the state and the time of day. People were home from work and school, fortunately, as two very large Anchorage schools were destroyed.
Though many of my friends suffered big losses, I had nothing to lose. Instead, I carried away a lesson which was good to learn early in life: Don't get attached to your belongings. This is one of the few principles shared by both Buddhism and Christianity.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Cell Phone Libel -- commentary
A few columns back I questioned whether standard American English could survive the texting craze of our youthful generation. I suggested parents not give their kids free access to this technology until they had first mastered correct use of the language. Another crucial question might be whether the family finances can survive the craze.
Recently I got in on the tail end of a news cast about libel suits becoming common place against those texting, twittering, or using other forms of social networking. Johnny may not be able to write standard American English, but he is a publisher every time he puts something on the internet. Experienced publishers are trained to avoid libel suits because they are expensive, time consuming, and can bankrupt the entity being sued. But, what about Johnny?
So, let’s talk about what constitutes libel. It is when you print something about somebody that is not true and it damages them in some way, usually in regard to their reputation. The only defense you have against libel is truth. If you can’t prove that what you published about somebody is true and they sue you for libel, you will probably lose the suit. So, your teenager, when sending out a text message or a twitter, is a publisher, and if they besmirch a classmate in some way, they are open to a libel suit. Since they are a minor, you get in on the action.
What about all the garbage the tabloids print about celebrities? Public figures fall under what is called the doctrine of fair comment and criticism. Because they are public figures, you can pretty much print what you want about them if you believe it is true and do not print it with malicious intent. However, your teenager’s classmates are probably not public figures; they are private individuals. Anything your child publishes about them must be true or it is libelous, and you are susceptible to a law suit.
I heard a lawyer friend say recently that the internet, especially the social net working sites, has become a gold mine for attorneys. In the same discussion, the manager of the local office of a national firm said she is now required by the home office to do an internet search on any applicant to see if there is anything that might embarrass the company in the future if she hires the applicant.
Be aware that we live in a litigious society, and it doesn’t take much to trigger a suit. I was once chairman of the Alaska Libertarian Party, and we often auctioned off small airplanes for fund raisers. A fellow won one of our airplanes. He had used it for about a year when it developed an expensive engine problem. It was a used airplane and we were not a commercial business.
However, he decided that since we hadn’t printed “no warranty implied or intended” on any of the information concerning the auction or the airplane, it was warranted and sued us for $10,000 to pay the repair bill. He named a half dozen of us in the suit. He knew it was a nuisance suit and that it would cost us more than $10,000 to take it to court. In that he had prepaid legal service through his membership in the Teamster Union, it cost him nothing to bring the suit. We paid him the $10,000 and the suit went away.
So, what happens if your child texts or twitters that Jane Doe is pregnant, a common piece of gossip around schools, and Jane’s parents find a hungry lawyer to sue you? You are now in a position where you must defend yourself, which means hiring a lawyer. Suddenly it is not so much fun being a publisher. The typical student excuses of “I didn’t mean it,” or “everyone was saying it,” won’t carry in court.
When you put words out for the public to see, you are taking on a grave responsibility. That is why news organizations are careful to say things like “the alleged killer.” Once the person is charged, they are an alleged killer. If the paper says “the killer” and that person named in the article is acquitted, the paper is now guilty of libel and open to a libel suit.
When your student passes on gossip about another student in print and the offended student files a suit, you had better be able to prove in a court of law that the gossip your child sent in a text message is true. If you are not concerned about the corruption excessive texting is doing to our language, you might at least want to be concerned about what it could do to your family finances.
Recently I got in on the tail end of a news cast about libel suits becoming common place against those texting, twittering, or using other forms of social networking. Johnny may not be able to write standard American English, but he is a publisher every time he puts something on the internet. Experienced publishers are trained to avoid libel suits because they are expensive, time consuming, and can bankrupt the entity being sued. But, what about Johnny?
So, let’s talk about what constitutes libel. It is when you print something about somebody that is not true and it damages them in some way, usually in regard to their reputation. The only defense you have against libel is truth. If you can’t prove that what you published about somebody is true and they sue you for libel, you will probably lose the suit. So, your teenager, when sending out a text message or a twitter, is a publisher, and if they besmirch a classmate in some way, they are open to a libel suit. Since they are a minor, you get in on the action.
What about all the garbage the tabloids print about celebrities? Public figures fall under what is called the doctrine of fair comment and criticism. Because they are public figures, you can pretty much print what you want about them if you believe it is true and do not print it with malicious intent. However, your teenager’s classmates are probably not public figures; they are private individuals. Anything your child publishes about them must be true or it is libelous, and you are susceptible to a law suit.
I heard a lawyer friend say recently that the internet, especially the social net working sites, has become a gold mine for attorneys. In the same discussion, the manager of the local office of a national firm said she is now required by the home office to do an internet search on any applicant to see if there is anything that might embarrass the company in the future if she hires the applicant.
Be aware that we live in a litigious society, and it doesn’t take much to trigger a suit. I was once chairman of the Alaska Libertarian Party, and we often auctioned off small airplanes for fund raisers. A fellow won one of our airplanes. He had used it for about a year when it developed an expensive engine problem. It was a used airplane and we were not a commercial business.
However, he decided that since we hadn’t printed “no warranty implied or intended” on any of the information concerning the auction or the airplane, it was warranted and sued us for $10,000 to pay the repair bill. He named a half dozen of us in the suit. He knew it was a nuisance suit and that it would cost us more than $10,000 to take it to court. In that he had prepaid legal service through his membership in the Teamster Union, it cost him nothing to bring the suit. We paid him the $10,000 and the suit went away.
So, what happens if your child texts or twitters that Jane Doe is pregnant, a common piece of gossip around schools, and Jane’s parents find a hungry lawyer to sue you? You are now in a position where you must defend yourself, which means hiring a lawyer. Suddenly it is not so much fun being a publisher. The typical student excuses of “I didn’t mean it,” or “everyone was saying it,” won’t carry in court.
When you put words out for the public to see, you are taking on a grave responsibility. That is why news organizations are careful to say things like “the alleged killer.” Once the person is charged, they are an alleged killer. If the paper says “the killer” and that person named in the article is acquitted, the paper is now guilty of libel and open to a libel suit.
When your student passes on gossip about another student in print and the offended student files a suit, you had better be able to prove in a court of law that the gossip your child sent in a text message is true. If you are not concerned about the corruption excessive texting is doing to our language, you might at least want to be concerned about what it could do to your family finances.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Researched Based -- commentary
"Research based and data driven" -- these are the current buzz words among educators. Don't try to sell any programs to public schools unless you have research and data to back it up.
I must admit to being a bit skeptical about research since it has led to so many contradictory warnings over my lifetime. I'm the same with data. The troublesome part comes in how we choose to respond to the information.
Ako Kambon, featured speaker at the Arkansas School Board Association convention, presented a provocative piece of research from the University of Michigan.
The research tried to establish what in our culture has had the most influence over our children. They found five factors: home, school, church, peers and TV.
The study then listed the five influences in order of importance by decades. Kambon didn't list all the decades studied, but he listed the following with the areas of influence in their order of importance: 1950's -- home, school, church, peers, and TV; 1980's -- home, peers, TV, school, church; 1990's -- peers, TV, home/media, school (church had slipped to number 10), and by 2000, media had become number one along with its sub categories of videos (including TV and games), internet, computers, movies, and network TV.
So, there is the research, what are we going to do with it? Kambon, who is an educational consultant, told us what it all means: Students have a shorter attention span, they are accustomed to being entertained, they have a remote in their heads and will switch channels if the teacher doesn't keep their attention, they are accustomed to receiving information faster than we are accustomed to giving it and students are now visual learners. Kambon concludes, "The student we have in front of us now is a different student," and he insists we must adapt our teaching to address these realities.
I look at this research and reach a different conclusion. Listeners have always been able to receive information faster than instructors can deliver it, so good teachers already address this. Also, students have always had an internal remote. As a public school student more than 50 years ago, I could turn a teacher off in a moment, though I had never yet heard of a devise called a remote control. Good teachers already deal with this.
The short attention span has led to a style of teaching where the teacher uses mini-lessons and then puts the students to work with independent practice. A teacher may use several mini-lessons in a single period. But again, good teachers, at the public school level, have always done this.
The fact that the modern student is accustomed to being entertained and has become a visual learner is being addressed with technology in the classroom. Though I applaud this use of technology, I'm just old school enough to believe that students can be taught that life isn't all entertainment and that hard work counts when it comes to school. And, though they have become visual learners because so much information comes at them through various video devices, nothing will replace the printed page for true depth and understanding. A printed piece can be read, re-read, and thought about. Printed material can be easily browsed for critical passages, underlined, and notes made in the margins. We do students a disservice if we over indulge them in video learning with the excuse that research shows they are visual learners.
Yes, students are different, but only in superficial ways. If their attention spans have been shortened by the influence of media, then we can retrain them to have longer attention spans. So they are visual learners, the printed page is visual too, and kids can be taught to use it.
The school environment is not supposed to duplicate what the student already experiences. Let's not lose sight of the fact that we are training kids for life after school. We are training them for the work place where they will have to read boring manuals, regulations, and policies. In the work place, they will have to have attention spans longer than five minutes and they will have to behave in a civil manner. We don't do them any favors when we adapt to their superficial changes; rather, we must teach them to adapt to the expectations of their future workplaces.
The real important and real sad part of this research is the lost influence of the home and the church, and these two are related. Researchers would do well to find the causes for the loss of the influence of the home and come up with some cures. It is this lack of influence in the home that has led to so many of the discipline problems in our schools and to the decline of the influence of the church. If I were to venture a guess as to a source of that loss of influence it would be the abandoning of children to media. Too many parents fund their children's every media desire and whim and allow them to satiate their appetites unsupervised and uncontrolled. They have surrendered their influence to media: cell phones, Ipods, TV, video games, the internet, movies, and computers. But then, that's just a guess. To be confirmed it must be research based and data driven.
I must admit to being a bit skeptical about research since it has led to so many contradictory warnings over my lifetime. I'm the same with data. The troublesome part comes in how we choose to respond to the information.
Ako Kambon, featured speaker at the Arkansas School Board Association convention, presented a provocative piece of research from the University of Michigan.
The research tried to establish what in our culture has had the most influence over our children. They found five factors: home, school, church, peers and TV.
The study then listed the five influences in order of importance by decades. Kambon didn't list all the decades studied, but he listed the following with the areas of influence in their order of importance: 1950's -- home, school, church, peers, and TV; 1980's -- home, peers, TV, school, church; 1990's -- peers, TV, home/media, school (church had slipped to number 10), and by 2000, media had become number one along with its sub categories of videos (including TV and games), internet, computers, movies, and network TV.
So, there is the research, what are we going to do with it? Kambon, who is an educational consultant, told us what it all means: Students have a shorter attention span, they are accustomed to being entertained, they have a remote in their heads and will switch channels if the teacher doesn't keep their attention, they are accustomed to receiving information faster than we are accustomed to giving it and students are now visual learners. Kambon concludes, "The student we have in front of us now is a different student," and he insists we must adapt our teaching to address these realities.
I look at this research and reach a different conclusion. Listeners have always been able to receive information faster than instructors can deliver it, so good teachers already address this. Also, students have always had an internal remote. As a public school student more than 50 years ago, I could turn a teacher off in a moment, though I had never yet heard of a devise called a remote control. Good teachers already deal with this.
The short attention span has led to a style of teaching where the teacher uses mini-lessons and then puts the students to work with independent practice. A teacher may use several mini-lessons in a single period. But again, good teachers, at the public school level, have always done this.
The fact that the modern student is accustomed to being entertained and has become a visual learner is being addressed with technology in the classroom. Though I applaud this use of technology, I'm just old school enough to believe that students can be taught that life isn't all entertainment and that hard work counts when it comes to school. And, though they have become visual learners because so much information comes at them through various video devices, nothing will replace the printed page for true depth and understanding. A printed piece can be read, re-read, and thought about. Printed material can be easily browsed for critical passages, underlined, and notes made in the margins. We do students a disservice if we over indulge them in video learning with the excuse that research shows they are visual learners.
Yes, students are different, but only in superficial ways. If their attention spans have been shortened by the influence of media, then we can retrain them to have longer attention spans. So they are visual learners, the printed page is visual too, and kids can be taught to use it.
The school environment is not supposed to duplicate what the student already experiences. Let's not lose sight of the fact that we are training kids for life after school. We are training them for the work place where they will have to read boring manuals, regulations, and policies. In the work place, they will have to have attention spans longer than five minutes and they will have to behave in a civil manner. We don't do them any favors when we adapt to their superficial changes; rather, we must teach them to adapt to the expectations of their future workplaces.
The real important and real sad part of this research is the lost influence of the home and the church, and these two are related. Researchers would do well to find the causes for the loss of the influence of the home and come up with some cures. It is this lack of influence in the home that has led to so many of the discipline problems in our schools and to the decline of the influence of the church. If I were to venture a guess as to a source of that loss of influence it would be the abandoning of children to media. Too many parents fund their children's every media desire and whim and allow them to satiate their appetites unsupervised and uncontrolled. They have surrendered their influence to media: cell phones, Ipods, TV, video games, the internet, movies, and computers. But then, that's just a guess. To be confirmed it must be research based and data driven.
Military School -- commentary
The next two sentences should be read in a shouting voice. "Hup, two, three, four! Hup, two, three, four! Platoon halt! Report!"
"First platoon all present or accounted for, sir."
Is this the way the school day will begin for your child in the future? As I write this, five public schools in Chicago are now operated by the military and a sixth one will open in '09. When this happens, Chicago will be the only city in the United States to have at least one school operated by each branch of the military.
Students attend these academies by choice and according to a Nov. 2, Associate Press report, 7,500 students applied for the 500 freshman vacancies this school year. The students have to enroll in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. This means uniforms, inspections, drills and lessons in military history. These are college prep academies with an emphasis on leadership training, discipline and character-building.
The academies are built in the poorer parts of the city with large minority populations. Statistics show attendance rate at 94 per cent compared to 84 per cent for neighboring schools. One academy, created out of one of the lowest-performing schools in Chicago, saw graduation rates climb from 55 to 71 per cent in 2006. So far test results have been mixed.
However, when the Brits, who are having education woes similar to ours, sent some observers over here to look at possible solutions, they didn't come to observe our public military academies. They came to observe what some call "extreme education: 10 hour days, parental contracts and zero tolerance behavior policies in small, 200 pupil academies," according to The Guardian, a British newspaper.
The schools they visited are Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) schools. KIPP schools are small public charter schools being sponsored by the KIPP Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These schools, built in some of the most impoverished areas of our inner cities, boast of 100 per cent college acceptance, test scores to match private schools and students who play classical music like their uptown neighbors.
The KIPP school principal in Newark, America's second poorest city, told The Guardian, "We have established a school culture which is very distinct from the attitude they walk in the door with. It's a college-bound culture."
If you want your child to go to one of these schools you will have to enter into a three way contract between the principal, you, and your child, each of you agreeing to carry your weight. If your student doesn't have his/her homework in by 8 a.m., you will be called and a meeting set up. Miss the meeting and your child will be sent home and not allowed to return until you show up. Students are tested every six weeks and the school motto is "No Excuses."
Who goes to these schools? The Newark school is 85 per cent African American and 90 per cent of them get free school meals.
What do the critics of these two approaches have to say? Some say the military schools are just recruiting tools for the military and should not be allowed. I guess they figure it is better for kids to be poorly educated and spend a life in poverty than run the risk that a few of them might actually want a career in the military.
The small school movement has been accused of "undoing decades of progressive education," according to The Guardian. This puzzles me. From what I have been reading in the news for at least the last four decades, American education has been in trouble. How could a successful experiment set back progress when there seems to have been so little of it? Those who make such an argument must have some agenda other than just educating our youth.
It is my philosophy that persistent problems need radical solutions. These academies work for several reasons. They work because young people need structure, especially if internal discipline was not established in the home. They work because accountability is required from all participants, the parents, the students, and the teachers. They work because they are small. This is a topic I will address in another column, but I am a believer in small schools.
However, the most significant reason they work is because all the students are there by choice. The unmotivated and the disruptive students are not welcome. These schools demonstrate there are just as many bright kids in the poor areas as in the middle and upper class areas and they will learn if they can go to decent schools populated by others who also want to be there.
We will know in time whether either of these experiments will become widespread. The military approach can certainly provide some much needed discipline, but we are not a militaristic people. I doubt that it will succeed much beyond a few inner city neighborhoods. The KIPP program requires a tremendous amount of energy on the part of the faculty, the kind of energy that resides mostly in young idealists. For this reason, it too is a self limiting reform.
However, maybe we can learn from these experiments about the benefits that come with offering choice and with spending our energy on students who want to learn.
"First platoon all present or accounted for, sir."
Is this the way the school day will begin for your child in the future? As I write this, five public schools in Chicago are now operated by the military and a sixth one will open in '09. When this happens, Chicago will be the only city in the United States to have at least one school operated by each branch of the military.
Students attend these academies by choice and according to a Nov. 2, Associate Press report, 7,500 students applied for the 500 freshman vacancies this school year. The students have to enroll in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. This means uniforms, inspections, drills and lessons in military history. These are college prep academies with an emphasis on leadership training, discipline and character-building.
The academies are built in the poorer parts of the city with large minority populations. Statistics show attendance rate at 94 per cent compared to 84 per cent for neighboring schools. One academy, created out of one of the lowest-performing schools in Chicago, saw graduation rates climb from 55 to 71 per cent in 2006. So far test results have been mixed.
However, when the Brits, who are having education woes similar to ours, sent some observers over here to look at possible solutions, they didn't come to observe our public military academies. They came to observe what some call "extreme education: 10 hour days, parental contracts and zero tolerance behavior policies in small, 200 pupil academies," according to The Guardian, a British newspaper.
The schools they visited are Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) schools. KIPP schools are small public charter schools being sponsored by the KIPP Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These schools, built in some of the most impoverished areas of our inner cities, boast of 100 per cent college acceptance, test scores to match private schools and students who play classical music like their uptown neighbors.
The KIPP school principal in Newark, America's second poorest city, told The Guardian, "We have established a school culture which is very distinct from the attitude they walk in the door with. It's a college-bound culture."
If you want your child to go to one of these schools you will have to enter into a three way contract between the principal, you, and your child, each of you agreeing to carry your weight. If your student doesn't have his/her homework in by 8 a.m., you will be called and a meeting set up. Miss the meeting and your child will be sent home and not allowed to return until you show up. Students are tested every six weeks and the school motto is "No Excuses."
Who goes to these schools? The Newark school is 85 per cent African American and 90 per cent of them get free school meals.
What do the critics of these two approaches have to say? Some say the military schools are just recruiting tools for the military and should not be allowed. I guess they figure it is better for kids to be poorly educated and spend a life in poverty than run the risk that a few of them might actually want a career in the military.
The small school movement has been accused of "undoing decades of progressive education," according to The Guardian. This puzzles me. From what I have been reading in the news for at least the last four decades, American education has been in trouble. How could a successful experiment set back progress when there seems to have been so little of it? Those who make such an argument must have some agenda other than just educating our youth.
It is my philosophy that persistent problems need radical solutions. These academies work for several reasons. They work because young people need structure, especially if internal discipline was not established in the home. They work because accountability is required from all participants, the parents, the students, and the teachers. They work because they are small. This is a topic I will address in another column, but I am a believer in small schools.
However, the most significant reason they work is because all the students are there by choice. The unmotivated and the disruptive students are not welcome. These schools demonstrate there are just as many bright kids in the poor areas as in the middle and upper class areas and they will learn if they can go to decent schools populated by others who also want to be there.
We will know in time whether either of these experiments will become widespread. The military approach can certainly provide some much needed discipline, but we are not a militaristic people. I doubt that it will succeed much beyond a few inner city neighborhoods. The KIPP program requires a tremendous amount of energy on the part of the faculty, the kind of energy that resides mostly in young idealists. For this reason, it too is a self limiting reform.
However, maybe we can learn from these experiments about the benefits that come with offering choice and with spending our energy on students who want to learn.
Major Discipline Problem -- commentary
The most prevalent discipline problem in our public schools today may surprise those of you who are not teachers. You will not read about it in the news. The problems you read about in the news rarely happen, that is why they are in the news. The most prevalent discipline problem goes on in nearly every classroom every school day and gets discussed regularly and with great frustration in faculty gatherings across the nation. It is the ever growing number of students who simply refuse to do their work. This is having a very corrosive affect on our schools. A New York police officer turned school teacher quoted in Parade magazine said, "Educational standards have been lowered to accommodate those who don't want to learn and have no desire to succeed." My experience supports this observation.
What we are talking about here is motivation. Unfortunately, motivation cannot be created by legislation, though there are some things politicians can do that might help. And though teachers can and should inspire students, they can't connect with all of them all the time. Two good sources of motivation for learning are curiosity and anxiety.
The best source of motivation is curiosity. Over the years, I have changed careers several times. Each change has been followed by a steep climb in my learning curve. I was curious about everything related to the new job and was willing to learn a tremendous amount in a short time.
As I write this, I am doing so on a smart phone using Microsoft Word. After buying this high tech gadget, my learning curve about it took a steep climb. It was driven by curiosity and my sense of a need to know. Most of my intellectual growth, as I suspect is true of others, took place after high school and college. Why? Because, real life experiences piqued my curiosity.
We have so divorced education from real living that our kids see no connection between the two. They are curious alright but not about what the school has to offer.
We need to find a way to reconnect our schooling with what kids will experience when they leave our classrooms. About a year after my son dropped out of school, he decided to give it another try, so he enrolled in a school in Anchorage called Save. One of the school's policies was that all students had to be employed a half day each day. This had much more to do with his success than anything else he experienced in school. Something of this nature should be practiced in all our schools. It creates a tie between the classroom and reality.
Anxiety will also motivate. In fact, a certain amount of anxiety is necessary if any of us are going to get anything done. We could use our laws and our courts to create a little anxiety even as they have been used to diminish anxiety among students.
Many American students see no immediate consequences to mediocrity or even failure when it comes to academic performance, and long term consequences don't motivate very well if at all. Over the past 50 years, the long term consequences of academic mediocrity have become more severe while any short term consequences have evaporated. So now, many students don't see education as an opportunity but rather something to be endured in order to participate in the social aspects of school.
This is certainly nothing new. It was the same way when I was a kid. What has changed is the means by which schools can create anxiety -- there are fewer of them. We now have anxious teachers and complacent students. Along with this, there seems be a decline in the willingness or the ability of parents to create anxiety in the children.
Because of this lack of motivation on the part of way too many students, it is foolish to increase school funding unless it directly addresses motivation, something the teachers cannot do alone. Here are some suggestions for creating motivation:
1. Reform child labor laws so unmotivated students can be placed in the labor force.
2. Eliminate compulsory education laws so schools can dismiss unmotivated students. Of course they will be allowed to return when they are ready to learn.
3. Reform welfare laws so those who squander their educational opportunities have no safety net.
4. Make classroom participation a privilege. Provide isolated, programmed learning for those who have not yet earned the right to participate in the classroom. Computers make this very feasible.
I can feel the anxiety rising already.
Those that I call educationists, the ivory tower people who tell us how it should be done, place the responsibility for motivating students on teachers and some of it does belong there. The educationists will continue to develop methods and materials that will motivate as they try to compete with TV and video games, our main competitors for kids’ attention, but it can't be done.
We have tried for decades now to make education as exciting as the many things which compete for students' time and attention, and yet student motivation continues to drop,as do the curiosity and anxiety levels. Now, too many students are willing to embrace academic mediocrity and even failure, seemingly with impunity. Yes, we do have to deal with drugs, violence and unruly behavior in our schools, but the most prevalent discipline problem day in and day out is students who simply will not do the work required of them.
What we are talking about here is motivation. Unfortunately, motivation cannot be created by legislation, though there are some things politicians can do that might help. And though teachers can and should inspire students, they can't connect with all of them all the time. Two good sources of motivation for learning are curiosity and anxiety.
The best source of motivation is curiosity. Over the years, I have changed careers several times. Each change has been followed by a steep climb in my learning curve. I was curious about everything related to the new job and was willing to learn a tremendous amount in a short time.
As I write this, I am doing so on a smart phone using Microsoft Word. After buying this high tech gadget, my learning curve about it took a steep climb. It was driven by curiosity and my sense of a need to know. Most of my intellectual growth, as I suspect is true of others, took place after high school and college. Why? Because, real life experiences piqued my curiosity.
We have so divorced education from real living that our kids see no connection between the two. They are curious alright but not about what the school has to offer.
We need to find a way to reconnect our schooling with what kids will experience when they leave our classrooms. About a year after my son dropped out of school, he decided to give it another try, so he enrolled in a school in Anchorage called Save. One of the school's policies was that all students had to be employed a half day each day. This had much more to do with his success than anything else he experienced in school. Something of this nature should be practiced in all our schools. It creates a tie between the classroom and reality.
Anxiety will also motivate. In fact, a certain amount of anxiety is necessary if any of us are going to get anything done. We could use our laws and our courts to create a little anxiety even as they have been used to diminish anxiety among students.
Many American students see no immediate consequences to mediocrity or even failure when it comes to academic performance, and long term consequences don't motivate very well if at all. Over the past 50 years, the long term consequences of academic mediocrity have become more severe while any short term consequences have evaporated. So now, many students don't see education as an opportunity but rather something to be endured in order to participate in the social aspects of school.
This is certainly nothing new. It was the same way when I was a kid. What has changed is the means by which schools can create anxiety -- there are fewer of them. We now have anxious teachers and complacent students. Along with this, there seems be a decline in the willingness or the ability of parents to create anxiety in the children.
Because of this lack of motivation on the part of way too many students, it is foolish to increase school funding unless it directly addresses motivation, something the teachers cannot do alone. Here are some suggestions for creating motivation:
1. Reform child labor laws so unmotivated students can be placed in the labor force.
2. Eliminate compulsory education laws so schools can dismiss unmotivated students. Of course they will be allowed to return when they are ready to learn.
3. Reform welfare laws so those who squander their educational opportunities have no safety net.
4. Make classroom participation a privilege. Provide isolated, programmed learning for those who have not yet earned the right to participate in the classroom. Computers make this very feasible.
I can feel the anxiety rising already.
Those that I call educationists, the ivory tower people who tell us how it should be done, place the responsibility for motivating students on teachers and some of it does belong there. The educationists will continue to develop methods and materials that will motivate as they try to compete with TV and video games, our main competitors for kids’ attention, but it can't be done.
We have tried for decades now to make education as exciting as the many things which compete for students' time and attention, and yet student motivation continues to drop,as do the curiosity and anxiety levels. Now, too many students are willing to embrace academic mediocrity and even failure, seemingly with impunity. Yes, we do have to deal with drugs, violence and unruly behavior in our schools, but the most prevalent discipline problem day in and day out is students who simply will not do the work required of them.
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