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| Stage production of Dickens's Hard Times ( Scene: Thomas Gradgrind's 'School' ) |
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| Hillhouse High School |
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| Hamden High School |
Is Teaching an Art or a Science?
After the Gates-Rhee-Kline-Christie Quartet passes from the scene, and we are left with a nation of soulless children clacking their boots in unison to the zeig heil of Princeton's Standardized Pontifications, we may yearn for the gleeful chaos of joyful childhoods, sculpted by the Artists we used to address as "Teacher".
Rest in Discomfort, Lord Snow.
Paul D. Keane
M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.
*Jeremy Bentham ( King of the Utilitarians and the model for Dickens's educational tyrant, Thomas Gradgrind, in Hard Times ), had himself stuffed upon his death.
His mummy is wheeled out in a chair at the annual Board Meeting of the British Museum and the secretary records "Mr. Bentham is present."
A Fitting Fate for a Gradgrind
Univ. examines school options for faculty families
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| Wilbur Cross High School |
Staff Reporter
Yale Daily News
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Administrators are exploring ways to encourage faculty to send their children to public school — and the city’s recent efforts at education reform may help them make a stronger case for enrolling in New Haven public schools.
Deputy Provost for Faculty Development Frances Rosenbluth said she is now collecting information about how faculty members choose schools for their children, but she said her efforts are still in preliminary stages, and she does not yet have a concrete plan for making public school more attractive for faculty. Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93, associate vice president of Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs, is working with Rosenbluth on the project. Morand said that New Haven public schools’ bad reputation is discouraging faculty from sending their children to public schools. Adding that he thinks the school system’s bad reputation is now unjustified, Morand said Yale could do a better job of providing information about improved public school options in the city.
Oswald Schmitz
Laura Bontempo
“It’s everybody’s responsibility to get rid of those outdated stereotypes by distributing accurate information,” he said.
Claudia Merson, director of public school partnerships in the Office of New Haven and State Affairs, said new reforms will make public schools more attractive for Yale faculty, along with other parents in the New Haven community. The School Change Initiative, which went into effect this school year, takes a critical approach to evaluating teacher performance and allows the city to institute sweeping changes in underperforming schools while allowing top schools to continue with their current systems. The reforms are likely to result in higher test scores for New Haven students, Merson said, which parents often take into account when researching schools.
Six of eight faculty and spouses interviewed said New Haven Promise, which was announced Tuesday and guarantees funding to in-state public schools to New Haven Public School graduates who meet certain academic thresholds, would not have a significant effect about how they view the decision between private and public school.
“It’s so hard to think so far ahead,” said Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen ARC ’94, an associate professor in the School of Architecture, of the appeal the New Haven Promise held for her. “I think when parents make the decision [about which school their children will attend], it’s more about the here and now.”
Others said the New Haven Promise has less of an impact for Yale faculty because Yale already subsidizes their children’s college education.
The University provides up to $15,200 per academic year faculty and staff who have been employed by Yale for at least six years.
Public schools are advantageous for faculty because they do not pose the financial burden of private schools, Provost Peter Salovey said, and Yale faculty also benefit the community when they get involved in the public school system.
Yale currently provides a brief introduction to New Haven schools for Yale staff on the “Living in New Haven” page of the Office of New Haven and State Affairs website, and includes links to the school district’s websites.
Basmah Safdar, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine, said finding information about the private school admissions process was much easier than finding information about public schools. Still, Safdar said she would have benefited from receiving clearer information on schooling options from the University.
“Having an appointed person or even a website instead of just the generic information available on school websites would be really helpful,” she said.
Morand said people tend to take advice more seriously when it comes from a friend or colleague, instead of from admissions officers at schools or from school websites. He said department chairs, provosts, and other faculty should take a more active role in sharing information about private and public education in New Haven, adding that relaying this knowledge to incoming faculty is especially important.
But some faculty still believe that the area’s public schools do not measure up to some of the private schools. Three of five faculty and spouses interviewed who have children in private schools said that quality of education was the deciding factor.
Cindy Karlan, wife of economics professor Dean Karlan, said her son entered a public school in 2004 when her family moved to New Haven, but she was unhappy with the class sizes and the lack of programming for advanced students. She decided to send her son and her younger daughter to the Foote School, a private school in New Haven north of Science Hill, where a math specialist works with accelerated students. Though she is happy with her decision, she said, the cost of private school tuition has made her “soul-sick” at times.
“If we had kept them in public school, we would have been satisfied with the cost, but [we would have] wondered if we made the right decision because of the academics,” she said, “but now we are satisfied with the academics but wonder if we made the right decision because of the cost.”
Faculty whose children are in public schools said they believe in the importance of public education, and several said diversity of the student body was critical in their decision.
“We thought it would be great for our kids to interact with the whole cross section of people that New Haven has to offer,” said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Oswald Schmitz, whose children went to Conte-West Hills School. “They got to appreciate people from different walks of life.”
Danny Serna contributed reporting.
Comments
Half a century ago (that's 50, as in fifty) when I entered Hamden High, three of my teachers were Yale Law school wives or Yale wannabee wives, and many of my peers were Yale faculty kids.
Mrs. Philetus Havens Holt IV (my Western Civ. teacher and the wife of a Yale Law student) once told me "I think you are ready to read Look Homeward Angel " Those words, and the fact that she thought I was worthy of an adult conversation which surrounded them, CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER.
That's teaching. That's INSPIRATION. That's helping kids "CATCH FIRE", as Yeats described education.
Hamden and Mt. Carmel were Yale bedroom communities.
Had I attended Wilbur Cross or Hillhouse (my father's alma mater) I would have had the living daylights beat out of me for being an artsy-fartsy kid (aka a "sissy") even if I was 6' 2" and 195 lbs.
There was even that danger at Hamden High, but it could be avoided if you went to football games and screamed for the home team. I was "Mr. School Spirit" for my class, an easy cover for an intellectual. And, believe me, "intellectuals" needed a cover if they were male.
God forbid that a BOY be interested in IDEAS.
It was a sure road to humiliation and sissyfication, the male equivalent of society's fraternity initiation, only the "fraternity" was macho maleness and I was much too much a Holden Caulfield (minus the money) to be intetersted in being a stupid-Ward-Stradlater-male. So I simply avoided most males, as did Holden, BTW.
If you think I'm stereotyping, welcome to the world of the 1950's and The Catcher in the Rye. It hasn't sold 65 million copies because it deviates from the truth about the stupiditry of growing up a male in America.
When I was a kid, I mowed the lawn of the Director of Adoption for what was then called The Children's Center , located in Whitneyville. She, Mrs. Elizabteth Jacobs, had an M.A. in Social Work from the University of Chicago, rare then, for a woman. She once said these words to me and I had no idea what she was talking about: "OUR SOCIETY DOES GREAT DAMAGE TO MALES."
I understand now.
Think twice before sending a sensistive child to New Haven Schools.
"Hail Hamden High: We hold our banners proud and high..."
Paul D. Keane
Hamden High School
Class of 1963
Mr. School Spirit
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 11, 2010 at 8:32 a.m.
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PS: There was a "MRS. School Spirit '63" too: Michele McCarthy, one of the great hearts on this planet. Fifty years later we are still friends and see each other a few times a year.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 11, 2010 at 8:59 a.m
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@ anti-yale: Stereotypical. Also, who cares?
Posted by wtf on November 11, 2010 at 11:11 a.m
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I was at a master's tea given by the asst. superintendent of New Haven schools. Almost everybody in attendance - perhaps 50 students - worked closely with New Haven schools. When the superintendant asked us if we would be comfortable sending our own (fictional) children to the school we worked in, not a single person raised their hand. Not a single one--myself, usually a fierce advocate of public education and a graduate of public schools, included.
Posted by Yale12 on November 11, 2010 at 12:54 p.m.
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Also, PK, WTF.
Posted by Yale12 on November 11, 2010 at 2:31 p.m.
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...finishing my comment:
Also, PK, WTF. You're seriously about to discourage people from sending their children to New Haven public schools because you were bullied fifty years ago? Wow. The egotism is unbelievable.
Posted by Yale12 on November 11, 2010 at 3:07 p.m.
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Yale12:
Why did you focus on the NEGATIVE in my remarks? A Hamden High teacher (and Yale Law School wife) INSPIRED me and CHANGED my life. FOR ALL TIME.
That is monumental in Mercantilia, where money and its attainment seem to be the primary source of inspiration touted in the media day and night 24/7/365.
I have been involved daily in public education for the last 25 years. Male gender teasing and bullying hasn't changed much. My friends teaching in New Haven tell me the gender bullying remains unchanged there also, with the additional twist of "gangs" nowadays.
Only the "politically correct" language has changed.
I would be just as apprehensive about sending a SENSITIVE son to Hamden schools as New Haven schools, despite my jingoistic ( admittedly tongue-in-cheek) Hamden High school-spirit alumnus rhetoric in previous post
It is the informal initiations and hazings (AKA bullying) into American male culture which are STUPID, not the schools which host them.
Just look at your own Yale fraternity flap about sexist chanting a few weeks ago. Boors and bores dominate American male activities from the Ivy league to the major league.
Why couldn't a Yale - wife -teacher or Yale - husband - teacher INSPIRE kids in New Haven Schools?
I doubt they feel safe at Wilbur Cross or Hillhouse.
(Wilbur Coss has the distinction of being the only high school in the world where the body of a murdered prostitute was found in its dumpster circa the 1980's) .
Do you have the personnel statistics about Yale affiliated teachers in New Haven schools?
Start recruiting .
PK
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 11, 2010 at 5:54 p.m.
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PS to Yale12:
I WASN'T bullied 50 years ago. Read what I said. I barely escaped it by the same techniques Holden Caulfield mentions in The Catcher in the Rye.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 11, 2010 at 6:15 p.m.
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The PR campaign for New Haven public schools is just that. Look at the test scores. Look at the class sizes. Look at the safety issues in the halls--I believe Wilbur Cross still has metal detectors at the front door. Right?
It is a HUGE issue for Yale recruiting and retaining faculty, and now, belatedly, they try to address the issue. Otherwise, the faculty live in Woodbridge, Guilford and even further out. Places with half-decent schools. Emphasis on half. As opposed to New Haven, which rates not at all.
Folks who like cities and want to live in one, and not drive thirty minutes to work, and walk to downtown from their home-- wont come here. THe city is perhaps more liveable with restaurants and the arts etc, but thats great for hipsters, young marrieds without children and the wealthy. FOlks raising a family with kids??? THE big drawback is the complete and total lack of ANY city services for the outrageous and about to be higher taxes in the city.
Posted by townieexprof on November 11, 2010 at 7:21 p.m.
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PK: You clearly said, "Think twice before sending a sensistive child to New Haven Schools." The fact that you said that because you were almost bullied is even worse.
Why focus on the negative? Because frankly, I don't really care what kind of point you were trying to make about sensitive boys (and nor does anybody else, I can guarantee you). It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the article. What I do care about is the fact that you said, "Think twice before sending a sensitive child to New Haven Schools." From your second post, it's clear that you weren't actually singling out New Haven schools, you were just mentioning them to make your obnoxious, egotistical ranting seem slightly related to the article, but that wasn't clear from your first post, and the fact that you would discourage people from sending their children to an already-struggling school district simply in order to make a bitter point about American males is infuriating. I can usually deal with your asinine assumption that people actually want to read the unrelated nonsense you write on comment boards, but when it's done at the expense of New Haven schools, I really can't stand it.
Posted by Yale12 on November 11, 2010 at 7:57 p.m.
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Mr. Keane- It was with great pride and pleasure that I read your comment about my mother, Mrs. Philetus H. Holt (Carol). Unfortunately, she passed away several years ago but she would have been thrilled to know that she had such a positive impact on you. Thank you. Sincerely, Stephen Holt
Posted by StephenHolt on November 12, 2010 at 10:29 a.m.
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Dear Mr. Holt,
I also had a nice email from your sister. Truly, your Mother's words changed the very course of my life. I have thought of them often over the decades as my own life unfolds.
Something else she did as a teacher which was extraordinary: When Michele McCarthy and I decided to take a train trip to Manhattan as Juniors at Hamden High, your Mother offered to meet us at the U.N. and show us around !!
Is that dedication, or what.
I am sorry to hear that you Mother will not be able to read my words herself. The fact that both you and your sister saw this highly idiosyncratic tribute, amazes me.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
So in the trillions upon trillions of digits which were keyboarded on our planet last Thursday, your and your sister's eyes were drawn to mine?
It makes me wonder in awe at the mysterious forces which surround us.
Again, my thanks and greetings to you and your sister.
Sincerely,
Paul
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 13, 2010 at 5:32 p.m.
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Zelinsky: An empty Promise
By Nate Zelinsky
The Yale Daily News
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
On Tuesday, the City of New Haven and Yale announced New Haven Promise, a joint program to provide college scholarships to New Haven high school graduates. While this plan is well-intentioned, it will actually end up hurting the very high school students it seeks to help.
New Haven Promise is a poorly disguised Band-Aid which will only allow the larger problem to continue festering: New Haven’s high schools do a bad job of preparing students for college. The true beneficiaries of the “Promise” are the political interests who have refused to enact real school reform for their own political benefit, and who can now point to this program as a claim of their intention to reform.
It is an unfortunate reality that many high school students in New Haven are getting a bad education. This trend is not unique to our city, but is a national scandal. The blame for poor educational attainment lies squarely on the teachers and their unions.
Many public school teachers do not commit the necessary time and effort needed to do their job well. Instead of staying after school to tutor or help run an extracurricular, unionized teachers typically leave as soon as the final bell rings. One-on-one time, after school activities and caring mentors can make the difference for struggling students in New Haven and across the country. These efforts help keep teenagers off the streets in a supportive environment that they may not find at home.
In New Haven, Yale students have admirably (but haphazardly) tried to fill in the gaps left behind by teachers. While specific programs have been successful, these efforts fail to address the larger systemic problem: Our public schools lack the out of classroom experiences that prepare students for college and life beyond.
Moreover, because public school teachers achieve tenure after only a few years, administrators have extreme difficulty firing those who perform poorly. The American Federation of Teachers fiercely defends the tenure status quo, claiming teachers need the “job security,” which no comparable private sector employees enjoy. The result is a school system governed by apathy, in which the teachers go through the motions, viewing their job as secure regardless of their effort and involvement. Public school students consequently suffer in the classroom.
No doubt there are many teachers who care deeply about their students. But we cannot ignore the fact that there is a definite, established trend of poorly performing teachers who are a detriment to their students. These teachers continue to teach until retirement, doing a disservice to the students they claim to help.
New Haven Promise will send students to college unprepared, without the skills they actually need to succeed. Sure, we may send more local children to two- and four-year colleges, but will they actually learn? Will they really be better off at institutions of higher learning if they cannot consistently write a five-paragraph essay or solve a basic algebraic equation?
Instead of throwing money at the problem, New Haven needs to enact real school reform. School administrators must have the ability to fire teachers who view their job as ending with the final school bell. Tenure must be abolished and a system of accountability put into place. Good teachers should be rewarded and bad teachers should be fired. Sadly, this will not happen, because the mayor and Democratic machine in New Haven (and nationally) are wedded to union votes, chief among them the teachers.
Last year, the city announced a small step toward reform. Schools were supposed to be classified into three categories, each tier a different level of success. But this scheme has yet to bring out the radical change needed for children in New Haven.
New Haven Promise whitewashes the true problem in New Haven. We should not care about how many New Haven students we send to college, but rather how many we send to college prepared. The program allows the mayor to claim that he is attempting real reform, without having to actually make the difficult decisions needed to make public schools work for inner-city students.
Let’s not waste Yale’s money on political grandstanding by the mayor to dodge a bullet and pretend to be undertaking educational reform when he is placating the teachers’ union. Instead, let’s work together to actually (and courageously) address the problems in New Haven’s schools.
Nate Zelinsky is a sophomore in Davenport College.
Comments
Bashing teachers is such fun, isn't it.
Does the naive writer here have any idea what baggage a New Haven student carries from home and neighborhood when s/he steps over the threshold of a classroom: Poverty, drug-valorized culture, violence on the streets, single parent homes where the breadwinner is exhausted or constantly away at work; sexuality and conspicuous consumption and competition in all areas of life ritualized on the media and the Internet and bombarding students thousands of times a week.
In addition, hyperactivity is fueled by the non-nutritional foods pumped into our convenience-addicted-culture.
I've seen kids drink two Jolts and eat a large bag of Nachos for breakfast and then be expected to concentrate in class.
The culture is mad.
PK
PS: Full disclosure: I have taught in public schools for 25 years.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 10, 2010 at 5:51 a.m
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.
Public Education has been the sole domain of the Left for decades. They have been bathed in funding to enact all of their fantasies. The teachers unions are uniformly Democrats. Every Leftist ideology has received fertile soil in public education.
What is the result? Disaster. Complete failure.
Time to hit reset.
Posted by RexMottram08 on November 10, 2010 at 9:02 a.m.
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"Instead of staying after school to tutor or help run an extracurricular, unionized teachers typically leave as soon as the final bell rings. "
really? unionized teachers typically leave as soon as the final bell rings? What are you basing this off of? Where is your data? This is the most prejudiced, one-dimensional piece I have read in a long time. The author makes blanket assertions with no evidence to back them up. Has the author ever been inside a New Haven public school?
Posted by SY_2009 on November 10, 2010 at 10:53 a.m.
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This literally was 'kick' the teacher. If the author actually believes this, he should be ashamed.
Posted by y10br on November 10, 2010 at 11:35 a.m.
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Granted, there are plenty of terrible teachers in the city, the state, and the country, who don't devote enough time to their jobs, but if the author wants to play a game of "making empirical claims without statistics," then I would counter that the percentage of teachers that clock purely daytime hours without a further thought to their jobs and students is significantly lower than the percentage of their working peers in other fields. For all of the homework you had to do as a student, your teachers did more, and for all of the preparation you did for class, your teachers did more. Even the sub-standard ones. This isn't to mention the ongoing recertification and continuing education processes that teachers go through during breaks and summers, days without pay due to state budget cuts in many states, and so on, that counter all of the "teachers have it easy/work less than the rest of us" arguments. School reform is needed, yes--it is direly needed. I am in general agreement that the mayor of New Haven does most of what he does not in order to care for the population, but in order to make himself look good. You are right on those counts. You are wrong to blame the majority of teachers for the folly of a few.
Posted by Saybrook10 on November 10, 2010 at 11:49 a.m.
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A good teacher NEVER clocks off even when asleep at night : His/her mind is always assembling new configurations for lesson plans of everything s/he hears or sees. It is endless creativity; and it is invigorating.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 10, 2010 at 12:47 p.m.
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Homeschoolers and Private religious schools outperform public schools every time.
Posted by RexMottram08 on November 10, 2010 at 1:14 p.m.
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The blame for poor educational attainment lies squarely on the teachers and their unions. what about the families? and the services lacking in the community? Instead of staying after school to tutor or help run an extracurricular, unionized teachers typically leave as soon as the final bell rings like hell they do. also, how do you even know? in general, most are required to stay like an hour after... public school teachers achieve tenure after only a few years three-four is not "few" years, especially on the low salary that teachers make. The result is a school system governed by apathy, in which the teachers go through the motions, viewing their job as secure regardless of their effort and involvement. ... ad hominem. teachers who are a detriment to their students. These teachers continue to teach until retirement, doing a disservice to the students they claim to help a teacher>no teacher
older teachers tend to be better at managing classrooms and teaching than younger ones; tenure keeps them there.... is placating the teachers’ union how is he placating the teacher's union?
Posted by JM on November 10, 2010 at 1:28 p.m.
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As a former Yalie and current public school teacher, I am extremely disappointed by this article.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Posted by jfs81887 on November 10, 2010 at 1:44 p.m.
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Education starts at home.
The reason private, parochial, and charter schools outperform public schools is because parents who send their kids to these types of schools tend to care more than the average public school parent.
Posted by River Tam on November 10, 2010 at 3:08 p.m.
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I rarely agree with RiverTam, but this time I must admit he's right. I work extensively in New Haven public schools. Most teachers are amazingly dedicated and are nothing like this article characterized; the problem is in large part among parents. Most of the children in the kindergarten classroom I work in came into school not knowing the alphabet or how to write their name. No wonder they fall behind the students of parents who care enough to find their child a school that best fits them (and have the financial resources to do so).
The mischaracterizations in this article are absolutely disgusting. While I agree, in general, that NHPS is not adequately preparing students for college, it is not because of the teachers. Mr. Zelinsky, have you spent any time with these teachers you so quickly, and unfairly, demonize? I strongly, strongly doubt it. For every "unionized teacher" that doesn't do more than the bare minimum, I can find you two or three that do ten or fifteen times that while getting paid frighteningly small amounts.
Posted by Yale12 on November 10, 2010 at 4:31 p.m.
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The blame for poor educational attainment lies squarely on the teachers and their unions. what about the families? and the services lacking in the community? Instead of staying after school to tutor or help run an extracurricular, unionized teachers typically leave as soon as the final bell rings like hell they do. also, how do you even know? in general, most are required to stay like an hour after... public school teachers achieve tenure after only a few years three-four is not "few" years, especially on the low salary that teachers make. The result is a school system governed by apathy, in which the teachers go through the motions, viewing their job as secure regardless of their effort and involvement. ... ad hominem. teachers who are a detriment to their students. These teachers continue to teach until retirement, doing a disservice to the students they claim to help a teacher>no teacher
older teachers tend to be better at managing classrooms and teaching than younger ones; tenure keeps them there.... is placating the teachers’ union how is he placating the teacher's union?
Posted by JM on November 10, 2010 at 4:57 p.m.
So let's take the lowest-paid college-educated public servants in our society and bash the intestines out of them. Does it feel gooooood? Does it make you feel POWERFUL?
It just so happens that there is at least one state in the Union where teachers do not get tenure, at all, EVER.
And I have worked in that state for 25 years as a teacher, with collegues of high integrity and dedication.
The columnist and many of his posting-board respondents don't want dedicated teachers and inspired students; they want TEST RESULTS, because our society has sold its soul to the false god of QUANTIFIABLE NUMBERS, turning the art of teaching into just another business spread-sheet.
As William Butler Yeats said, "Education is about catching fire."
It is not about vomiting forth facts and formulas into the bedpans of fill-in-the-bullet digitized answer sheets.
Zeig Heil Michele Rhee and Bill Gates.
Theirs is a business-model-marriage, waiting to be consummated in Hades.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 10, 2010 at 5:54 p.m.
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The columnist and many of his posting-board respondents don't want dedicated teachers and inspired students; they want TEST RESULTS, because our society has sold its soul to the false god of QUANTIFIABLE NUMBERS, turning the art of teaching into just another business spread-sheet.
Test results may not tell the whole tale, but without them, how would you propose judging the ability of teachers to teach?
Posted by River Tam on November 10, 2010 at 6:45 p.m.
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I rarely agree with RiverTam, but this time I must admit he's right.
She. And thank you.
Posted by River Tam on November 10, 2010 at 6:45 p.m.
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RT:
Let's see. The fad of "standardized testing" became an EPIDEMIC gleefully spread by The College Board Testing Service INC. located in American Education's Vatican, Princeton, New Jersey, about ten years ago. For a hundred years before that, public schools managed to suiccessfully serve (that's SERVE, not SERVICE) colleges and universities, and society's job market itself.
The OBSESSION with KEYBOARDED-QUANTIFIABLE EVERYTHING which computers and the internet have spread like a plague has enabled us to SELL OUR CHILDREN"S SOULS by turning them into digitized production machines.
Your question itself betrays how mechanized, how dehumanized we have become. Why would we even think that an "art" could be "MEASURED"? Becausse it makes us feel secure to measure things.
And make no mistake about it: OUR CHILDREN KNOW WHEN THEY ARE BEING TREATED LIKE THINGS.
God save us from Joel Kline, Michele Rhee, Chris Christie, and Bill Gates.
Oh, I forget. They are God.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 10, 2010 at 7:15 p.m.
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PK -
And the decline of the public school preceded the rise of standardized testing "about ten years ago". Standardized testing and NCLB were reactions, not causes to an epidemic of poor public school performance, a problem that begins with the lack of parental involvement. It was the it issue of the 90s - "is our children learning?"
Your question itself betrays how mechanized, how dehumanized we have become. Why would we even think that an "art" could be "MEASURED"? Becausse it makes us feel secure to measure things.
There is such a thing as objectively "good teaching" and "bad teaching", as you yourself have stated. What metric do you use to make your own claims?
And make no mistake about it: OUR CHILDREN KNOW WHEN THEY ARE BEING TREATED LIKE THINGS.
I don't mind being treated like a "thing" as long as I learn how to read past the fourth grade level. Students in Hungary and China leave high school far more educated than students in America not because they have been coddled and told how "special" they are. Rather, they have not been taught by teachers who (like you) worship at the altar of feelings and therapy over facts and figures.
Schools are for learning, not for finding yourself. Teachers need to stop being parents - this requires work on the part of both parents and teachers. Parents need to do their jobs - teachers need to do theirs. In low income schools, parents don't parent and teachers try to parent in vain. In high income schools, parents do parent, but teachers still insist on trying to parent rather than teaching.
School is not therapy. It is not an exercise in humanization or enlightenment. It is a method of empowerment - a way to give students the preparation to live the Good Life - the life they want to live. We measure teachers and we measure schools because without this measurement we are left in trusting self-serving metrics from public schools more interested in protecting their own rear ends than the interests of students. There is no job where you can be gainfully employed and NOT subjected to performance metrics. It's the way the world works, and it's what we need to ensure that our children don't come out of school unable to read at the fifth grade level. I'd prefer a hyper-literate 18 year-old who hasn't been told how special he is to an illiterate 18 year-old who feels secure in his ignorance. One of these children will be in for a rude awakening. The other will be pleasantly surprised.
I'm glad it's not your call.
Posted by River Tam on November 10, 2010 at 9:31 p.m.
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RT:
I spent 17 years in four colleges as a student. I would be ashamed to apply a mercantile word like "metric' to the behavior,achievements, and dignity of human beings. ( Note:children are human beings. )Perhaps it is an old-fashioned idea but I believe that human beings are sacred. "Measuring" them is a crude violation of that sanctity. If you do not perceive that every day the competetive, mercantile culture we live in dehumanizes its children, then we really have very little to say to each other.
PK
PS
I'll be happy to buy you a ticket to DEATH OF A SALESMAN: It's at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center this season. "A man can't go out the way he came in. A man has got to add up to something." Willy Loman
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 10, 2010 at 9:57 p.m.
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Though I strongly disagree with the broad-brush approach that Nate takes to appraising teachers in this piece, I think that he very, very indirectly raises an important point that I have not heard or read in the discussion of the New Haven Promise. This program goes a long, long way toward making college a financially realistic option for the city's students but doesn't directly address the college-readiness of the students who will benefit from this Yale-New Haven-Community Foundation initiative.
Fair.
But let's appreciate the extent to which the Promise, by increasing the numbers of New Haven students who will advance to college, will no doubt increase all stakeholders' investment in improving students' college-readiness. As a first-year teacher far away from New Haven, in a struggling school district in an impoverished section of the United States where barely 15% of the adult population has a college degree and where no such tuition guarantee exists, I spend each day with eighth graders who do not see college as a realistic possibility. They demand less of themselves and of me, their teacher, than I want them to, because they don't see what this whole learning thing is aimed at. The urgency about education isn't there---and it can be excruciatingly difficult to build in---because so few of my students come in seeing themselves as true students. I would argue that this is much less a product of bad teaching than it is a result of the circumstances in which they have grown up and to which they return every night.
I can just about promise you, Nate, that this initiative will not so much whitewash problems in the district but, rather, will raise the stakes of what goes on inside the New Haven Public Schools and serve as a positive motivator for all those who work in the system.
Posted by Davenport2010 on November 10, 2010 at 11:04 p.m.
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PK:
Perhaps it is an old-fashioned idea but I believe that human beings are sacred. "Measuring" them is a crude violation of that sanctity.
Do we give students grades in their classes? Did you - as a teacher - grade them on an assignment? Did you ever say that a piece of art was "good" or "bad"? Has a student of yours ever ran track and been timed? Do you get your weight checked when you go to the doctors office? Do salesmen have their sales tracked? Of course. There are metrics in everything.
Of course, there is an implicit measurement in life. Willy Loman didn't add up to anything and it didn't matter whether or not he took the SATs or not. Standardized tests do not replace students' ability to freely live their lives. What it does, however, is attempt (however imperfectly) to hold accountable those charged with ensuring that these students do not become little Willy Lomans, frustrated by their lives and unable to make changes.
Posted by River Tam on November 11, 2010 at 9:10 a.m.
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This is an unbelievably shortsighted article. Even the LA Times, which raised uproar among teachers' unions for publishing analysis of students' test scores and rating teachers as "effective" or "ineffective," admitted that "The achievement gaps are three to four times larger than the estimated teacher effects for LAUSD." That is, that while teachers have an effect on their students, racial and socioeconomic effects are far, far stronger. To say that teachers share the strongest--and only--blame is a vicious lie.
Not only does Mr. Zelinsky make the outrageous claim that "The blame for poor educational attainment lies squarely on the teachers and their unions," he said it without a single modicum of evidence--besides his own unsupported beliefs that unionized teachers do not stay after school--to support it. This article should not have been published.
Posted by Yale12 on November 11, 2010 at 9:57 a.m.
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Zelinsky has no idea what he's talking about. Even if a "band aid solution," the Promise will help students who would otherwise not be helped and provide a tremendous amount of incentive for students to work hard throughout high school. School reform is a notoriously difficult thing to get right, and would this presumptuous Yalie rather students languish with no help until authorities get it right?
And where does this man get off saying the Promise will only send students to college to fail? The Promise will only apply to kids with at least a 3.0 average, and then only if they get into college at all. It's not throwing the unprepared into a ruthless environment. After all, I'm a successful Yalie from L.A. public schools. Should I be considered "unprepared" and incapable of writing a five paragraph essay just because I came from a rotten school?
Typical Yalie critiquing progressive measures by making generalizations about a population he knows nothing about. As a middle school me would've said, All up in the kool-aid and don't even know the flavor. Stick to stuff you know, hombre.
Posted by matilde11 on November 11, 2010 at 11:09 a.m.
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Also, it's not as if the New Haven Promise is the only school reform going on in New Haven. In fact, they've enacted a radical new plan of tiering schools, year-long turnarounds, rehiring staff at failing schools, etc. etc. But that's only something Zelinsky would have known about if he had done any research whatsoever, which he clearly did not.
Posted by Yale12 on November 11, 2010 at 12:47 p.m.
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"Willy Loman didn't add up to anything'
This statement is true, River Tam, ONLY if materialism is your value system, and apparently it is yours (and, tragically, Willy Loman's).
There are other value systems which people adopt to guide them in living their lives; aestheticism (my own); asceticism; hedonism, narcissism, machiavellianism, militarism, humanitarianism, nihilism, etc.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 11, 2010 at 6:48 p.m.
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This statement is true, River Tam, ONLY if materialism is your value system, and apparently it is yours (and, tragically, Willy Loman's).
Willy Loman cheated on his wife and lost the respect of his children. His personal failings were numerous. He did not merely fail materially, but also morally.
Posted by River Tam on November 11, 2010 at 11:43 p.m.
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"I was lonely Biff, I was terribly lonely. She's nothing to me." Willy Loman upon being discovered by his 16-year old son, in a compromising situation with a woman.
It is a culture which has sold itself to the God of Materialism which allows a man to utter these words about another huiman being ( aka "woman') and expect that those words will be understood: "She's NOTHING to me Biff'."
"A man can't go out the way he came in. A man has got to ADD UP TO SOMETHING."
Death of a Salesman is drenched in and dripping with the language of MATERIALISM. You seem so soaked by it yourself that you do not recognize it for what it is.
Thus goeth the culture.
We are lost. (And Arthur Miller knew it.)
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 6:08 a.m.
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"I was lonely Biff, I was terribly lonely. She's nothing to me." Willy Loman upon being discovered by his 16-year old son, in a compromising situation with a woman.
Lonely, not poor.
The tragedy that Miller highlights in Death of a Salesman is not that Willy Loman is obsessed with material success (that's merely portrayed as a flaw). Willy Loman is, more importantly, obsessed with having friends, which he considers the root of greatness (and riches - not exclusively riches). Willy Lomans sons do not respect him, because he's caught up in illusions of grandeur - of being and important person who knows the right people.
Key line:
Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the papers. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid!
It's not just about the money - it's about the fact that American society fetishizes greatness at the expense of goodness. Miller himself says that the fundamental struggle for Loman is the struggle for meaning - in a life that is not extraordinary, how can he be expected to be happy?
The Death of a Salesman is the anti-Dead Poets Society. Life shouldn't have to be extraordinary for us to be happy.
Posted by River Tam on November 12, 2010 at 8:12 a.m.
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Miller's great theme is the ANONYMITY OF MODERN MAN.. Dustin Hoffman's brilliant actor's choice in the 1987 video version of Death of a Salesman comes in the final scene. Willy is talking to the ghost/fantasy of his dead brother, the successful Africa and Alaska diamond mine and timber baron, Ben Loman.
He is debating the "ins and outs" of committing suicide. Willy tells Ben that Biff will finally see "who I am" because the funeral will be massive, with all the "old-timers" attending. Dustin Hoffman utters these lines: "It changes all the aspects. Because he thinks I'm nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral---Ben, that funweral will be massive! They'll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire --that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized ---I am known! Rhode island, New York New jersey, I am known ---" (Miller, p. 100)
Hoffman uses Willy's Brooklyn accent to make "I am known" sound like "I am knowen" which sounds very much like "I am no one."
It is Willy's life insurance MONEY that will enable Biff to get "AHEAD of Bernard [ his childhood friend and now a successful lawyer] again" when "the mail comes" bringing the insurance check.
It is Biff's winning life's COMPETITION, by getting MONEY, which convinces Willy's twisted mind to equate suicide with an act of sacrifice and love.
Yes Willy's credo is "Be liked and you will never want." ( p. 21) But the emphasis is on "want" which equates to money, which equates to being "known" (and ironically. with Dustin Hoffman's brilliant actor's choice of a Brooklyn pronunciation) being "no one" .
Salesman is about how competetion, and its surrogate "money," rots the human soul.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 7:32 p.m.
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"School is not therapy. It is not an exercise in humanization or enlightenment.'
May these words sear your soul if you become the parent of a child with "challenges".
Let's turn childhood into a workhouse, where getting ahead and being on top are lauded, and all those who remain behind and below our exalted "Numbers One, Two and Three" are scorned.
Let's squeeze every last drop of joy and fun and silliness out childhood so that we dour adults can be satisfied that our tax dollars are moving our children along on the assembly-line of life, to be defecated out into the world as competent competitors after being shaped and moulded by the Peristaltic Educational Testing Service at Princeton.
Ugh.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 13, 2010 at 2:48 p.m.
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PS: This entire posting series is really a debate about CP Snow's "Two Cultures". At the moment, Science is in the ascendancy, and the Gradgrinds (Dickens's "Hard Times") and their Utililitarian unctuosuness have entranced the public, and Ms. River Tam. After the Gates-Rhee-Kline-Christie Quartet passes from the scene, and we are left with a nation of soulless children clacking their boots in unison to the zeig heil of Princeton's Standardized pontifications, we may yearn for the gleeful chaos of joyful childhoods, sculpted by the artists we used to call teachers.
Rest in Discomfort, Lord Snow.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 14, 2010 at 12:40 a.m.
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Palitz: An irresponsible argument
Point-Counterpoint
The Yale Daily News
By Akimi Palitz
Friday, November 12, 2010
As an English teacher at Wilbur Cross High School and a 2010 graduate of the Yale Masters’ in Urban Education Studies program, I am deeply disturbed by Nate Zelinsky’s criticism of New Haven Promise and its associated sentiments (“An empty promise,” Nov. 10). The stereotypes and clichéd critiques of teachers that Zelinsky offers are unfounded. They do serious damage to the public education system by diminishing the respect given to teachers and discouraging smart, hardworking people, like Yale students, from entering the profession.
When I entered New Haven public schools as a student teacher last year, I am ashamed to admit that I expected to find the kind of teachers Zelinsky describes. What I have found is just the opposite.
I am lucky to work each day with such intelligent, dedicated and supportive colleagues. They take pride in their work, have high expectations for students and themselves, and put in many more hours than their salaries justify. I challenge Zelinsky to shadow any teacher at Wilbur Cross for one week or even one day, and stand by his statement that teachers “do not commit the necessary time and effort needed to do their job well.” I don’t know how early I would have to arrive to be the first teacher in the building — many teachers are there well before 7:00 a.m. And most teachers, including myself, work late into the evening on lesson plans and grades. Wilbur Cross teachers are constantly developing new ways to teach, challenge and inspire their students.
So if teachers aren’t the problem, it must be parents, right? This was my second shameful misconception. Urban parents typically don’t care about their kids’ educations, and do not provide the kind of support students need to be successful, right? This year I have made over 120 phone calls home to parents and have learned how wrong this stereotype is. My students’ parents care deeply about their children’s education. Many have come in to meet with me before work or on their lunch break in order to discuss a child’s progress. Others call or e-mail me to make sure that their children are on track. They are invested in their children’s success and are eager for help. However, my students’ parents do not have power — this city does not hear their voices.
Before I started teaching, I was much more sure of what needed to be done to “fix” urban schools. Now when friends and family ask me, “What’s the most needed reform in urban schools?” I stumble to answer. I cannot put my finger on “the problem” because there is no one singular problem responsible for the widespread low achievement in urban public schools. This problem is far more complex than most people realize, and it certainly won’t be remedied by bashing teachers.
Teaching is a craft that takes time to learn. Great teachers are not born, but developed over time. Programs like Teach for America, though well-meaning, ensure that our nation’s urban students will be taught by a rotating staff of idealistic but inexperienced teachers. Parents in suburban communities would never allow their children to be taught by untrained teachers.
Yale and New Haven need to work together to solve this. Working together does not end with Yale throwing money at a problem. Our public schools are not Yale’s charity case. Yale and New Haven need to genuinely collaborate to desegregate neighborhoods, desegregate schools, and take co-ownership over the economic and social problems the city faces.
So I ask you, Mr. Zelinsky, are you ready to start building a better New Haven?
Akimi Palitz is a 2010 graduate of Yale’s Masters’ in Urban Education Studies program and an English teacher at Wilbur Cross High School.
Comments
Teaching is a craft that takes time to learn. Great teachers are not born, but developed over time
In the 1950's Yale President A. Whitney Griswold ABOLISHED Yale's Graduate Department of Education saying "It is not necessary to teach teachers how to teach."
Good teachers are born, not made. Teaching is an ART, not a craft. Artists PAINT; they don't talk about painting.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 5:25 a.m.
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PS: The dichotomy is a savage, soulless one: Modernity wants a teacher to be an
INFORMATION DELIVERY SYSTEM.
A. Whitney Griswold recognizes that a teacher is an
INSPIRATION DELIVERY SYSTEM.
Paul D. Keane
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 6:20 a.m.
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Good teachers are born, not made. Teaching is an ART, not a craft. Artists PAINT; they don't talk about painting.
How then do we ensure that bad teachers don't teach? I'm open to ideas, unless you think that will somehow interrupt the art.
Posted by River Tam on November 12, 2010 at 8:02 a.m.
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Peer review; classroom observations and feedback; continuing education.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 12:30 p.m.
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PK- Would you say that good doctors are born, not made? Perhaps some people are born with natural talents that suit them to be good physicians, but they still have to go to medical school. Requiring ALL teachers, from pre-school through 12th grade, to have an advanced degree and complete something like an internship or residency would make them better prepared for their work, and weed out those who are resorting to the profession because they think it's easy/aren't smart enough to do anything else. Education is largely clinical, after all, dealing nearly entirely with the brain, and seeking to promote the cognitive and behavioral development of our children.
(P.S.- Your dichotomy is a false one. Plus, information=/=learning.)
Posted by penny_lane on November 12, 2010 at 1:14 p.m.
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Good pornstars are born, not made. Some think their craft is teachable, but trust me - I've studied the best. You can't teach that.
Posted by Goldie08 on November 12, 2010 at 2:32 p.m.
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Peer review; classroom observations
Peer review doesn't work because teachers cover for their colleagues. Peer review becomes a popularity contest. It's been tried, and it failed. Hurrah for union solidarity.
feedback; continuing education.
But I thought good teachers were born not made.
Posted by River Tam on November 12, 2010 at 2:41 p.m.
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Don''t ask me, ask the late Yale President, A. Whitney Griswold.
If the rest of academia had abolished their graduate departments of eduaction (as President Griswold did at Yale , saying, "It is not necessary to teach teachers how to teach".) we wouldn't have those Mickey Mouse M. Ed' degrees RexMottram'08 abhors.
In fact all teachers getting an advanced degree over the last 50 years would have had to get it in their discipline (since "Education" would have disappeared from the catalogue) and we wouldn't be in the pedagogical funk we are in now.
I predict that in fifty years teaching and school as we know it will cease being about 'inspiration", cease being an attempt to make minds "catch fire" (Yeats), and become, instead, an "INFORMATION DELIVERY MECHANISM."
You will win River Tam and Penny Lane and you will join Michele Rhee, Chris Christie, Bill Gates, Joel Kline and perhaps even Oprah on Charon's raft gliding across the River Styx with bodies of deceived children piled high waiting to be interred on the shores of Princeton's Educational Testing Service, Inc,
I'm glad I will be dead by then.
Welcome to your Competent, Competetive, Cold New World.
Heaven save our already isolated and solipsistic children.
Paul D. Keane
M.A.
M. Div.
M.Ed.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 4:41 p.m.
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In fact all teachers getting an advanced degree over the last 50 years would have had to get it in their discipline (since "Education" would have disappeared from the catalogue) and we wouldn't be in the pedagogical funk we are in now.
I completely agree that teachers should be experts in their fields, not in "education".
However, this doesn't solve the problem of teachers being born, not made.
Posted by River Tam on November 12, 2010 at 5:27 p.m.
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It's not a problem. It's an observation.
Good luck in Mercantilia.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 5:30 p.m.
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It's not a problem. It's an observation.
Wouldn't you agree that it is a problem if people who are not born teachers end up going into teaching.
Good luck in Mercantilia.
Thanks!
Posted by River Tam on November 12, 2010 at 5:36 p.m.
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We can't expect every teacher to be Mr. Keating (Dead Poet's Society) or Miss Dove (Good Morning, Miss Dove! )
Somone once pointed out that half of all practicing MD's graduated in the lower half of their class.
But don't make schools so mercantile---so spread-sheet-obsessive--- that the Mr. Keatings and Miss Doves are driven out.
Artists and Mercantiles don't mix.
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 12, 2010 at 6:27 p.m.
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There's something about sophomores telling us how to fix public education that's, well, sophomoric.
When I was at Yale, a couple of students wrote a guide called "Sex at Yale" that purported to tell us what sex at Yale was all about.
Uh huh.
Part of the process of growing up is about realizing that you were a complete flaming idiot back when. I imagine Mr. Zelinsky will have one or two of those moments. For his sake, I hope they come sooner rather than later.
Posted by Mikelawyr2 on November 13, 2010 at 10:21 a.m.
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Somone once pointed out that half of all practicing MD's graduated in the lower half of their class.
Oh my god, have you heard that half of Americans are below average? Doesn't that frighten you?
And your comments up to this point are strung with so many non-sequitors it's painful. Teachers are artists? Standardized tests are pushing good teachers away?
I mean these are normally the types of claims people justify, instead of expecting to stand on their own because you have a few M.xx at the bottom of your posts
Posted by Standards on November 14, 2010 at 11:25 a.m.
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Is Teaching an Art or a Science?
This entire posting series on "Education" (Yale Daily News articles and posts below them ) is really a debate about C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures". At the moment, Science is in the ascendancy, and the Gradgrinds (Dickens's "Hard Times" ) and their Utililitarian unctuosuness* have entranced the public.
After the Gates-Rhee-Kline-Christie Quartet passes from the scene, and we are left with a nation of soulless children clacking their boots in unison to the zeig heil of Princeton's Standardized pontifications, we may yearn for the gleeful chaos of joyful childhoods, sculpted by the artists we used to call teachers.
Rest in Discomfort, Lord Snow.
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*Jeremy Bentham, King of the Utilitarians and the model for Dickens's educational tyrant, Thomas Gradgrind, in "Hard Times", had himself stuffed after his death. His mummy is wheeled out in a chair at the annual Board Meeting of the British Museum and the secretary records "Mr. Bentham is present."
A Fitting Fate for a Gradgrind.
http://atlasobscura.com/place/jeremy-benthams-auto-icon
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 14, 2010 at 2:39 p.m.
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PS (to Standards) I'm going to say this once and only once: The reason I use the Mxx's on posts is because in the narrow world of Yale, such artifacts are presented like calling cards, to gain entrance to certain situations. I use the M. Div. for entry to the so-called Yale Daily News posting board and especially on posts about religion and ethics. I use the other non-Yale Mxx's when the posts call for secular credentials. I almost never use them otherwise, except to write recommendations, eulogies, and tributes.
Oh, and they do appear on my blog profile http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/ simply because I had no music groups, videos, or tv shows to declare. I'm boring.
If they irritate you, it is only because the artificial world of academia prizes such gewgaws. They are almost useless in the outside world.
PK MAMDIVMED
Posted by The Anti-Yale on November 14, 2010 at 3:03 p.m.
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