May 30, 2005
Gatto Chapter 14 - Absolute Absolution
Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. That is really all I can say after reading this chapter. In chapter 14 Gatto connects the history of Western spirituality and forced schooling in a way that I would not have believed possible 30 minutes ago.
I can't possibly do this chapter justice here. It's way too deep and the message is way too powerful. But since y'all are paying me try...
You are paying me, right?
Gatto makes this key point.
Starting with Everson vs. Board of Education in 1947, powerful business interests were at work in a concerted effort to drive spirituality out of the public schools.
Why? Consider these passages from the book.
The net effect of holding children in confinement for twelve years without honor paid to the spirit is a compelling demonstration that the State considers the Western spiritual tradition dangerous, subversive. And of course it is. School is about creating loyalty to certain goals and habits, a vision of life, support for a class structure, an intricate system of human relationships cleverly designed to manufacture the continuous low level of discontent upon which mass production and finance rely.
Once the mechanism is identified, its dynamics aren’t hard to understand. Spiritually contented people are dangerous for a variety of reasons. They don’t make reliable servants because they won’t jump at every command. They test what is requested against a code of moral principle. Those who are spiritually secure can’t easily be driven to sacrifice family relations. Corporate and financial capitalism are hardly possible on any massive scale once a population finds its spiritual center.
For a society like ours to work, we need to feel that something is fundamentally wrong when we can’t continually "do better"—expand our farms and businesses, win a raise, take exotic vacations. This is the way our loan/repayment cycle—the credit economy—is sustained. The human tendency to simply enjoy work and camaraderie among workers is turned into a race to outdo colleagues, to climb employment ladders. Ambition is a trigger of corporate life and at the same time an acid that dissolves communities. By spreading contentment on the cheap, spirituality was a danger to the new economy’s natural growth principle. So in a sense it was rational self-interest, not conspiracy, that drove enlightened men to agree in their sporting places, drawing rooms, and clubs that religious activity would have to be dampened down.
Simply put, spiritual, well adjusted people would never submit to their Utopian vision of the future.
Gatto also has a lot to say about the Western brand of spirituality as practiced in the US, and how it provides a model for the education of our children.
In Western spirituality, everyone counts. It offers a basic, matter-of-fact set of practical guidelines, street lamps for the village of your life. Nobody has to wander aimlessly in the universe of Western spirituality. What constitutes a meaningful life is clearly spelled out: self-knowledge, duty, responsibility, acceptance of aging and loss, preparation for death. In this neglected genius of the West, no teacher or guru does the work for you. You do it for yourself. It’s time to teach these things to our children once again.
Gatto delves further into the discipleship of Jesus Christ and how that provides a model for education, one that powerful interests have worked hard to erase. The discipleship model is based on four characteristics; A calling to follow, commitment, self-awareness and independence, and a master to follow.
It's easy to see that forced schooling is nothing like that, and in fact is purposely completely unlike that.
it's heady stuff, and there is more I want to say so I'm going to break this up and tackle the more spiritual side of the conversation next time.
Permalink | Comments (3)Gatto Chapter 13 - The Empty Child
In chapter 13, Gatto explores the influence on BF Skinner and Behavioralism in the school system. To refresh your memory, behavioralism is the theory that we are all born as blank slates, and what we become is merely the sum total of our experiences. The connection to the schools should be obvious. If we are all blank slates, it should be easy to manage how we turn out. It's that pursuit of utopia that has come up in several chapters.
Skinner, by the way, was a real winner.
...B.F. Skinner, that most famous of all behaviorists from Harvard. Skinner was then rearing his own infant daughter in a closed container with a window, much like keeping a baby in an aquarium, a device somewhat mis-described in the famous article "Baby in a Box," (Ladies Home Journal, September 28, 1945).
Skinner's influence went way beyond the schools. This concept that humans were blank slates to be programmed was the defining psychological mantra of the 20th century.
I suspect not many parents look at their offspring as empty vessels because contradictory evidence accumulates from birth, but the whole weight of our economy and its job prospects is built on the outlook that people are empty, or so plastic it’s the same thing.
Looking back at my college days - I'm starting to understand what I really studied in Organizational Leadership and Supervision. It was nothing more than applied behavioralism. My degree program may have been in the School of Technology, but when you really strip back the covers, I was a Psych major.
As behavioralism took over, it became obvious that we were all screwed up. Blank slates could not be allowed to develop in the wild. We needed trained professionals to make sure we turned out OK. The late 40's / early 50's was when schools started becoming more about mental health services and less about reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Reading the text "Proceedings of the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth," we learn that school has "responsibility to detect mental disabilities which have escaped parental or pre-school observation." Another huge duty it had was the need to "initiate all necessary health services through various agencies." Still another, to provide "counseling services for all individuals at all age levels.
In 1962, an NIMH-sponsored report, "The Role of Schools in Mental Health," stated unambiguously, "Education does not mean teaching people to know." (emphasis added) What then? "It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave," a clear echo of the Rockefeller Foundation’s "dream" from an earlier part of the century (See page 45). Schools were behavioral engineering plants; what remained was to convince kids and parents there was no place to hide.
Looking back on my time in school, it's easy to see this boulder rolling downhill. The end result is predictable and exactly what you would expect. Having let the psychologists take over the schools, the schools have become much concerned about kids feelings and self-esteem and for the most part, nobody cares if Johnny can read. What's important is that Johnny is ok with the fact that he can't read, and understands that it's not his fault.
It can never be his fault.
Permalink | Comments (2)Site Update
In case your browser cache is not functioning properly...
You should see that the sidebar has been moved to the right side, the background blue is gone and replaced with a thick blue border around the content areas, and the Google ads have been removed from the front page and replaced by my photostream from Flickr.
Google ads are still on all the archive pages. I think most of my click throughs come from archive pages anyway. If you feel compelled to click on a ad the next time you are in my archives, I won't mind.
Still working on getting the content DIV to load before the sidebar DIV. I'm waiting for help from my CSS consultant. If I load the content DIV first, I get this. If you're a CSS wiz and have a clue please share.
Update: Success! Gory details are in the comments if you care.
Permalink | Comments (3)May 29, 2005
Inside the mind of a PS teacher
Blame this on Daryl. I read this editorial this morning in the dead tree edition of The Free-Lance Star, - and managed to immediately block it from my short term and long term memory. But now that Daryl has dredged it up, I'm stuck with it and the only way I'll get closure is to respond with maximum snark.
IN CASE YOU didn't know, the first week in May was Teacher Appreciation Week.
Actually, I didn't know that. May is also National Masturbation Month. (link NSFW) Masturbation gets a whole month, and teachers only get a week. The government should do something about this.
In fact, there was a time in American history when teachers were among the most appreciated, respected, and revered people in communities throughout this great country of ours.
Name that time - with documented proof.
Long before thousands of untalented American young adults waited in line for days just so some British hack could tell them how horrible their voices were, most kids wanted to become teachers.
So if everybody wants to be a teacher how exactly do you expect to be highly paid? Apparently they don't teach the law of supply and demand at teacher's colleges. Notice the swipe at Simon from American Idol. The only thing he is guilty of is ignoring the kids feelings and telling them the truth. I take it these are not considered good traits
among teachers?
Long before college dropouts were running multi million-dollar computer conglomerates and record companies, most kids wanted to become teachers.
In the writer's fantasy world, there is apparently a central authority that decides your potential based at least partly on your education. The fact that this person is a teacher should scare the hell out you if your kids are in school.
Unfortunately, nowadays, it seems that, for whatever reason, public schoolteachers are tragically misrepresented as little more than glorified baby sitters, who have the unmitigated gall to whine about low pay despite the fact that they "get summers off" and have the daily privilege of dealing with the "angelic" students of the American public-school system.
Hey, you said it...
After much soul searching, I've come to the conclusion that the decline in teacher appreciation hasn't been caused so much by what's going on inside our schools, as it has by the petty, destructive, and ridiculous societal forces that lurk outside of them.
Because, you see, schools represent all that is good and pure in America. You just have to close your eyes and ignore the teacher-student sexcipades, gang banging in the hallway, drug dealing in the bathroom, crumbling infrastructure, and total lack of actual results.
Most Americans don't care about education unless it affects them directly.
Newsflash. Most humans, hell most living beings of any type, don't care about anything unless it affects them directly.
Unfortunately, in central Virginia, it appears that some of the biggest enemies of public education are the elderly, the media, and the working poor.
At least he didn't blame home educators pulling their kids out the system.
Whenever I talk to my retired or childless friends and acquaintances from Louisa, Orange, Madison, and Spotsylvania counties who complain incessantly about how "all these new schools and teacher raises are hikin' up our taxes,
The author is obviously not familiar with the fact that there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO CORRELATION between increased spending in the public schools and improved results.
These are the same people who can't seem to realize that competent, competitive students are usually the products of talented and passionate instructors.
Unfortunately for the author, those folks are rarely found working for the government.
Moreover, many of today's good young teachers who want to stay in public education, without facing the prospect of financial ruin, teach just long enough to be eligible for a graduate program at the nearest and cheapest college or university, attain their master's degree in educational leadership, and make the money as an administrator that they would never be able to make as a classroom teacher.
How is this the fault of the elderly, media, or working poor? It's his system, controlled by his union and his peers. If the system encourages talented teachers to get out early, maybe he should look inward and stop blaming everybody else.
Good education costs money, and high taxes are a small price to pay for an educated society where "no child is left behind."
I know about 1 million homeschoolers that have proved this statement false.
The media don't help the situation either. Every time I watch "MTV Cribs," a presidential press conference, or any one of the hideous "reality shows" that contaminate our airwaves, I realize just how far down education is on our list of national priorities.
And that media is serving a population that was educated by his public school system. Chicken, meet egg. Egg, meet chicken.
As I sit in front of the "boob tube" and watch the NBA playoffs, I can't help but be a little sickened by the fact that a college graduate can pass the Praxis, serve as a student teacher, and barely make $32,000 a year--while a semiliterate high-school senior could easily make $32,000 a night for throwing a round ball into a hoop.
That pesky law of supply and demand again. The world would be a better place if we just had a government agency to set pay levels for everybody...NOT!
An ever-increasing number of today's students (minorities and poor in particular) see high school as little more than a necessary evil to endure before they are allowed to chase their pipe dream of having a career in professional sports or entertainment.
Maybe because they know that the high school degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on?
I'm also more than a little bit unnerved by "fair and balanced" news channels that remain conspicuously silent about the fact that the current leader of the free world is a Yale graduate who has occasional difficulty with subject-verb agreement, and after five years in office still hasn't learned to pronounce the word "nuclear."
Because if Kerry had won he was going to double the pay of all the teachers, right? I'm disturbed that a public school teacher can't make a case for his own importance without taking a completely irrelevant shot at the President.
I'm always perplexed by parents who have raised students who have received scholarships and aid from reputable colleges, but refuse to let them attend because the schools are "just too far away." These parents seem content to let their kids languish in whatever ghetto or one-horse town they had the misfortune to be forced to live in.
The arrogance in this statement speaks for itself. This guy is asshole.
However, many of my fellow educators aren't totally blameless in this matter. In a particular school system where I taught some years ago, many students were counseled to view trade school as a primary postsecondary option rather than as a viable alternative to college. Ironically, almost all of the counselors and educators in this particular school had either already earned advanced degrees or were pursuing them.
The trade school graduate plumbers and electricians that are so beneath this clown all make way more money than he does. Do you think he appreciates the irony?
In reality though, teachers, for the most part, are not the problem with public education. I know this because my colleagues and I spend countless hours in staff-development workshops, where we learn to incorporate a variety of student needs and learning styles into our instruction.
Notice the total lack of interest in results. It's all about taking classes and advancing theoretical knowledge. They take lots of classes, so they can't be the problem. The idea that all those classes and theories ARE THE PROBLEM has never even occurred to him.
Attention, American citizens: Every time you fill out a job application, balance your checkbook, or simply read the song titles on the back of your favorite CD, you should get down on your knees and thank whatever God you believe in for the fact that he blessed you with teachers.
Attention nameless Spotsylvania County teacher.It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool; than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
The DuToit's Home Education Software is in Beta
Kim has the who/what/when/why and how much on the web based application that they have developed.
Permalink | Comments (0)Fredericksburg National Cemetary Luminaria
The National Cemetary in Fredericksburg holds the remains of about 13,000 casulties of the Civil War, 80% of which are unidentified. Each year, the local Scout Troops light each grave with a candle to honor the fallen. The Cub Scouts make the bags and lay them out, the Boy Scouts light 15,000 candles, and then keep them lit throughtout the evening.
The effect after dark is rather moving.
More pictures
May 26, 2005
Gatto Chapter 12 - Daughters of the Baron of Runnymeade
I found this chapter fascinating on several levels. I'm really just now starting to comprehend the corporate influences that led to forced schooling. It really wasn't a nefarious government plot. It was a nefarious, racist, elitist plot funded by corporate money and pushed through a sympathetic government that was too busy cashing the checks to actually care about what they were doing. Some things never change...
Gatto tells us that several factors cumulated in the popularization of forced schooling in the early 20th Century.
- Elite society feared the wave of immigrants landing on US shores.
- In response, the upper classes formed hundreds of ethnic membership societies, many of which survive today. The primary purpose was to isolate white Anglo-Saxon Protestants from the masses of Catholics and other evils immigrating to America.
- They also formed hundreds of private schools, including most of the big name schools still in existence today.
- Darwin released The Descent of Man, which provided scientific cover for the liberal elites racist tendencies.
The root idea in all of this was to provide two primary classes. The liberal elites would continue to rule and the rest of us would "Americanized" in government school where we would learn that we were not worthy of anything beyond working for the man.
Reading through the papers of the Rockefeller Foundation’s General Education Board—an endowment rivaled in school policy influence in the first half of the twentieth century only by Andrew Carnegie’s various philanthropies—seven curious elements force themselves on the careful reader:
1) There appears a clear intention to mold people through schooling. 2) There is a clear intention to eliminate tradition and scholarship. 3) The net effect of various projects is to create a strong class system verging on caste. 4) There is a clear intention to reduce mass critical intelligence while supporting infinite specialization. 5) There is clear intention to weaken parental influence. 6) There is clear intention to overthrow accepted custom. 7) There is striking congruency between the cumulative purposes of GEB projects and the utopian precepts of the oddball religious sect, once known as Perfectionism, a secular religion aimed at making the perfection of human nature, not salvation or happiness, the purpose of existence. The agenda of philanthropy, which had so much to do with the schools we got, turns out to contain an intensely political component.
The chapter also addresses a peculiarity of American society that I had noticed on my own.
Elite private boarding schools were an important cornerstone in the foundation of a permanent American upper class whose children were to be socialized for power. They were great schools for the Great Race, intended to forge a collective identity among children of privilege, training them to be bankers, financiers, partners in law firms, corporate directors, negotiators of international treaties and contracts, patrons of the arts, philanthropists, directors of welfare organizations, members of advisory panels, government elites, and business elites.
Michael Useem’s post-WWII study showed that just thirteen elite boarding schools educated 10 percent of all the directors of large American business corporations, and 15 percent of all the directors who held three or more directorships. These schools collectively graduated fewer than one thousand students a year. More spectacular pedagogy than that is hard to imagine.
I have often wondered why so many politicians and leaders come from Harvard, Yale and the like. Having met more than a few graduates of the elite universities, I am 110% certain that ability is not the answer. According to Gatto, that answer is breeding.
The liberal intelligesta of its day set up a system, financed by Carnegie, JP Morgan, and Rockefeller, to protect the business and political interests of America's upper class from the hordes of immigrants hitting the shores.
That system was forced schooling.
Permalink | Comments (9)Common Sense on Cyber Charters
Natalie has written a well thought out and reasoned post on the cyber schools are not homeschools debate. I would add that cyber schooling at home is a step in the right direction. The curriculum may still be watered down by committee, but at least the kid is out of the poisonous atmosphere frequently found in the hallways and lunchrooms of your local neighborhood school.
However, just to be clear...if the government is paying for your curriculum, you are not homeschooling. You are not free of the bonds of government compliance. And if you think you are, you are wrong.
Permalink | Comments (1)A preemptive clarification
Before somebody asks, this absolutely, positively, is not me. I've never even been to Montreal.
Permalink | Comments (0)Judges Gone Wild
The sound you just heard is that of our Founding Fathers spinning in their respective graves.
In MN, an appellate court ruled that the mere existence of encryption software on your computer is evidence of intent to commit a crime.
In IN, a judge forbid a divorced Wiccan couple from exposing their child to non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.
(via Outside the Beltway)
Ignorance of the law is no excuse
Richmond VA school board member Carol Wolf pulled her kid out of school 4 months ago and never notified the state. (In VA, we are required to notify the local school officials. Not ask permission, just notify).
Her excuse? Wolf said she had "no idea" that state law requires her to notify the district superintendent until the board's attorney brought it to her attention this month.
You'd think being on the school board, she would be extra sensitive to actually having a clue.
She is also applying for a religious exemption, which in VA is pretty damn hard to get. It's easy to homeschool in VA, but the religious exemption requires a high burden of proof. It's particularly difficult to claim a religious aversion to school attendance when your two oldest are graduates of the public/private school system.
Carol A.O. Wolf has lived in Richmond for 24 years. She has worked for nationally syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, as well as Richmond Newspapers and Style Weekly. In 1985, she decided to stay home with her children and serve as a volunteer in Richmond Public Schools, where all three of her children have attended. Her oldest graduated from Richmond Community High School, another graduated from Tandem Friends Schools, a Quaker School near Charlottesville, and her youngest attended Linwood Holton Elementary through fifth-grade and is now enrolled in a parochial school in the Richmond area.
If she has a bona fide moral or religious issue with school attendance, what the hell is she doing on the School Board? If not, why is she trying to homeschool under a religious exemption? Home education in VA is not that regulated. Write a letter telling them you are homeschooling, and provide CAT9 scores or a portfolio once per year to prove sufficient progress. That is pretty much it. There are some paperwork hoops if you don't have a college degree, but it really is not that big of a deal.
None of this should be taken as my support for the current home education laws in VA. I oppose mandatory attendance laws in all forms. But an elected school official has a certain responsibility to know school law. Also, an elected school official claiming a religious aversion to school attendance is just weird.
Permalink | Comments (1)Bird Flu - The Blog
This is speculative, for now anyway.
Update
In a very odd coincidence, I stumbled into a real Avian Flu blog today, with real news of real humans in China dying from Avian Flu.
Honestly, I'm not hung up on this. However, I don't trust govenment to be forthcoming about the risk until it's too late.
Permalink | Comments (1)May 25, 2005
Exactly
Calvin's Dad says it all in one easy sentence.
May 24, 2005
Get A Life
One day after a record-shattering weekend for Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, an advocacy group is asking Burger King to stop the tie-in of its Kids Meals with the film because it is rated PG-13.
Oh please. Don't these people have anything better to do? They should be working on their web site, which apparently can't take the heat of a USA Today link.
Dove Foundation, a non-sectarian family advocacy group, sent an overnight letter to Burger King last Thursday requesting the promotion be stopped. It also conducted a national phone survey of 889 adults and says 83% felt the promotion was not appropriate for kids.
I'd really like to see the details on that survey. I wonder if it was a random sample - or a sample of their membership? I wonder how they worded the question? I have a hard time believing even a majority of a random sample would answer no to something like Do you think it is OK for Burger King to promote the new Star Wars film in kids meals? To get 83% it was either a very skewed sample, or a very skewed question designed to elicit the response they wanted.
I'm tempted to go get a Burger King kids meal just to piss them off.
Permalink | Comments (2)May 23, 2005
24
Should have been 23-1/2. The Chinese Consulate storyline was lame and totally unnecessary. Anybody want to guess how they get him back into the storyline next year? Maybe he becomes a Jorge Bauer and saves Mexico?
Also - check this out. 24, the PS2 game. Apparently it is set in the mysterious 2 years between seasons 2 and 3 and the game will fill in the gaping plot holes that were never resolved. I just hope they let us shoot Kim Bauer, over and over again ;)
Permalink | Comments (3)May 22, 2005
I hate memes
I hate memes, but since Daryl tagged me...
The idea is to complete 5 of these phrases...
f I could be a scientist...If I could be a farmer...If I could be a musician...If I could be a doctor...If I could be a painter...If I could be a gardener...If I could be a missionary...If I could be a chef...If I could be an architect...If I could be a linguist...If I could be a psychologist...If I could be a librarian...If I could be an athlete...If I could be a lawyer...If I could be an inn-keeper...If I could be a professor...If I could be a writer...If I could be a llama-rider...If I could be a bonnie pirate...If I could be an astronaut...If I could be a world famous blogger...If I could be a justice on any one court in the world...If I could be married to any current famous political figure..
- If I could be an athlete...I'd be the starting catcher for the Boston Red Sox.
- If I could be a world famous blogger...I'd voluntarily demote myself. This end of the blogosphere is way more interesting.
- If I could be a musician...I'd release all my songs free on the Internet and make my living playing live.
- If I could be a librarian,,I'd kick the noisy disrespectful kids, (and their parents) out, and not allow them back in.
- If I could be a professor, I'd build a raft and escape with Mary Ann.
Ogre, Ryan, and Hart, you are it.
Permalink | Comments (0)Cyber Charters Are Still Not Homeschools
This published homeschool author doesn't understand why the home education vs public-school-at-home debate is important.
Sigh. So many need to be educated...
Permalink | Comments (0)May 20, 2005
Homeschooling is like growing your own food
This odd analogy is made here, where the author seems to believe that a market based education system dominated by K-12 Montessori schools would make home education unnecessary.
Show of hands from my readers...how many of you would jump at the chance to enroll your kid in a low cost Montessori school?
The author might want to actually talk to a few home educators before he counts us as enrollees in his new schools.
Permalink | Comments (5)May 19, 2005
Is this the dawn or dusk of geekdom?
This is the end of the Golden Era of Geek. No more "Star Trek." No more "Star Wars." No more "Lord of the Rings." No more "Matrix."
My God. I'm going to have to start dating.
Dating is probably out, I don't think the wife will allow it.
I think the point is geekdom has gone mainstream. Nobody makes fun of us (much) anymore. Fathers don't stress if their sons are better at computers than baseball. Some of us take great pride when our boys can fit Star Wars quotes into daily conversation, or discuss the history of middle-earth in detail.
Fear not though. A backlash is inevitable. We'll be unpopular again soon enough.
Permalink | Comments (0)ROTS Rocks
I'll be the first to admit that I'm a star Wars fan boy and thus predisposed to like the movie. That said, I disliked Episode I just like the rest of you, so I have some street cred left on the subject.
The movie is very good. I lot of fun to watch, especially when you consider I've know for about 20 years that Aniken becomes Vader.
You knew that, right?
It was fun. I'll avoid details so I don't ruin it for Alex, whose Sith Lord father is making him wait two weeks to see the movie.
BTW - 7 PM opening night and it wasn't even a sell out. Anyway, for a movie that is really more of an event, I sort of wanted to see it in a crowd of my fellow geeks.
Darth Vader's Final Blog Post
This is really quite brilliant.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 18, 2005
Do you have ROTS tickets yet?
Fess up, who already has tickets to Revenge of the Sith? I've got two (one adult / one child) for 7 PM on Thursday.
Permalink | Comments (6)May 17, 2005
Gatto Chapter 11 - The Crunch
In chapter 11, Gatto examines the role of racism is the early days of forced schooling.
In the thirty years between 1890 and 1920, the original idea of America as a cosmopolitan association of peoples, each with its own integrity, gave way to urgent calls for national unity. Even before WWI added its own shrill hysterics to the national project of regimentation, new social agencies were in full cry on every front, aggressively taking the battle of Americanization to millions of bewildered immigrants and their children.
That's right, I said racism. The intellectuals of pre WWI America were obsessed with the idea that the mass influx on Latinos and Southern Europeans might deplete the high quality breeding stock of white Anglo Saxons in the US. On one hand, I feel like I need a tin foil hat on to read this. On the other hand, it all rings true.
The eugenics movement begun by Galton in England was energetically spread to the United States by his followers. Besides destroying lesser breeds (as they were routinely called) by abortion, sterilization, adoption, celibacy, two-job family separations, low-wage rates to dull the zest for life, and, above all, schooling to dull the mind and debase the character, other methods were clinically discussed in journals, including a childlessness which could be induced through easy access to pornography.2 At the same time those deemed inferior were to be turned into eunuchs, Galtonians advocated the notion of breeding a super race.
It is important to note that the Fords and Carnegies that were funding all this really did believe it was for the best. They saw forced schooling as a way to scrub out the ethnic diversity of the immigrants and make them more like the white Northern European folks that ran the country.
Three great private fortunes were to dominate early twentieth-century public schooling—Carnegie’s, Rockefeller’s, and Ford’s—each with a stupendous megalomaniac in charge of the checkbook, each dedicating the power of great wealth not to conspicuous consumption but to radical experiments in the transformation of human nature. The hardest lesson to grasp is that they weren’t doing this for profit or fame—but from a sense of conviction reserved only for true believers.
On of the key strategies was the break of of the strong family unit. The proponents of forced schooling saw (correctly I might add) that forced schooling would fail if countered by a strong family unit. What better way to break up the family than put the kids in government care all day? This is also about the time that abortion came into vogue.
The planned parenthood movement, in our day swollen to billion dollar corporate status, was one side of a coin whose obverse was the prospering abortion, birth control, and adoption industries. In those crucial years, a sudden host of licensing acts closed down employment in a wide range of lucrative work—rationing the right to practice trades much as kings and queens of England had done. Work was distributed to favored groups and individuals who were willing to satisfy screening commissions that they met qualifications often unrelated to the actual work.
It's really a devious plan. Discourage breeding in the name of national unity, indoctrinate the kids, make jobs scare, and make it easy to end pregnancies or to place the kids into adoption where a nice Anglo Saxon family could give the kid a proper upbringing.
Did it work?
It prepares us to understand the future—that time in which we now live, our own age where "home cooking" means commercially homogenized food product microwaved, where an entire nation sits down each evening to commercial entertainment, hears the same processed news, wears the same clothing, takes direction from the same green road signs, thinks the same media-inculcated thoughts, and relegates its children and elders to the same scientific care of strangers in schools and "nursing homes."
What do you think?
I've never bought an American Idol album before...
But when Bo's album hits the street I will buy it. Acapella? Wow.
Permalink | Comments (1)The 50 worst hairstyles of all time
This is funny, but don't click if you are sensitve to language, or if you think The Donald's hair looks good.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 15, 2005
Gatto Chapter 10 - The Character of a Village
Chapter 10 is all about Gatto's childhood and how it impacted his teaching methodology and ultimately his repudiation of the teaching profession. I found it a nice little story, but it didn't really connect with me, probably because I grew up a military brat and can not relate at all to spending my first 18 years in one small town.
That said, he does return to a couple of broad themes that he has touched on earlier in the book. He discusses the importance of kids being part of the adult world, and not being shunted off in a room with kids their own age.
No kid in Mon City reached for the "Events and Activities" page of the papers because there wasn’t one, nor were there any special kid places that people of all ages didn’t frequent. When the men weren’t playing bocce at the Italian Club, kids were allowed, passing first through a barroom reeking of unpasteurized stale beer. No special life was arranged for kids. Yet there was always a full menu.
Why a child would want to associate exclusively with children in a narrow age or social class range defies understanding, that adults would impose such a fate on kids strikes me as an act of madness.
This is one thing I think my parents generation did better than we do. We didn't have playdates when I was kid. I got dragged along to whatever social events my parents were attending and it was just expected that I would find a way to entertain myself without getting into trouble. We probably have catered a little too much to our kids. When I say we, I speak of Michelle and I personally, as well as our entire generation.
Shouldn’t you ask why your boy or girl needs to know anything about Iraq or about computer language before they can tell you the name of every tree, plant, and bird outside your window? What will happen to them with their high standardized test scores when they discover they can’t fry an egg, sew a button, join things, build a house, sail a boat, ride a horse, gut a fish, pound a nail, or bring forth life and nurture it? Do you believe having those things done for you is the same? You fool, then. Why do you cooperate in the game of compulsion schooling when it makes children useless to themselves as adults, hardly able to tie their own shoes?
I can't do most of that list. My kids probably can, combined they certainly can do more of that list than I. They are home educated, I wasn't. Coincidence? Probably not ;) This speaks directly to the value of kids being out in the world, and not locked in a windowless room viewing filmstrips of the real world.
This is sort of a throw away line at the beginning of the chapter, but to me it is the foundation of everything I believe about home education.
The immense edifice of teacher instruction and schooling in general rests on the shaky hypothesis that expert intervention in childhood produces better people than might otherwise occur. I’ve come to doubt that.
It's also probably one of the few things ever on this site that all homeschoolers will agree with :)
The Ungraduation Store
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
DATE: 16 May, 2005
Fredericksburg, VA
THE UNGRADUATION STORE IS NOT OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Home Educator and long time blogger Chris O'Donnell has announced the non-opening of The Ungraduation Store at his well known website ODonnellWeb. This initiative is the antidote to those attempting to cash in on the latest educational craze, homeschooling. The Ungraduation Store will feature no products, and the website will never actually be created.
Founder Chris O'Donnell explained, "For years, home educators have worked in relative anonymity, quietly raising a generation of articulate, educated, and respectful kids who are doing just fine in the world. Recently though, the press and business world have noticed, and responded with an avalanche of homeschool related stories, and businesses targeting homeschoolers with everything from graduation gifts to curriculum designed by professional gambler William Bennett." Even the public schools are in the act, as expulsion is now being marketed as "an opportunity to homeschool." Chris asked, "What's next, the Homeschool Collection from Hallmark?"
The Ungraduation Store is not targeted to anybody, although we expect that the traditional stereotypes of homeschooling, the conservative Christian and the tree hugging hippie, will be quite excited by our non-offering. Christians will be able to safely ignore us without any pressure from encroaching secular society, and the hippies can feel good knowing that ignoring us does absolutely nothing to harm the environment or support the corporate infrastructure. Chris O'Donnell added,"It's a win-win for everybody."
HSLDA founder Mike Ferris commented that he always happy to see homeschoolers succeed, but due to the near certainty of litigation, he would have decline our application for membership.
Noted home education activist Daryl Cobranchi added "IAATM," which we later decoded into the phrase 'It's Always About The Money."
More information about The Ungraduation Store is not available. There is nobody to contact with questions. No animals were harmed in the writing of this press release. This press release is satire, however if you steal the idea and make money with an Ungraduation Store, we will cry prior art and sue you into oblivion.
What is graduation anyway?
I've been thinking about this a bit, spurred on by the annual rush of feel good graduation stories in the local paper.
What exactly is high school graduation for a homeschooler? The dictionary definition is either completion of a course of study, or the ceremony itself.
For real homeschoolers who aren't slaves to the government curriculum, when are you done? I suspect unschoolers will reject the notion entirely. For the rest of us, why bother drawing a line? Many homeschoolers will have mastered the standard high school curriculum by age 16. Do they graduate then? Or do they graduate at the age they would have if they were in school? They may have a year of college credit by age 17 or 18 - does high school graduation mean anything at that point?
High school graduation for the school kids really is nothing more than the release from mandatory attendance laws. Many of them are barely qualified to work the drive through at Taco Bell. Is this something to be celebrated?
For the motivated kids that did well academically, graduation was never really in doubt. Why the big celebration?
Is it all just a commercial conspiracy propagated by Hallmark and Jostens?
The phrase history of high school graduation brings up exactly 1 link at Google. That number will double when Google indexes this page tomorrow :)
I have a gut feeling that as I continue to read Gatto I'll be able to better answer this.
Permalink | Comments (1)Site Changes
In my ongoing effort to provide the best user experience possible for all 3 of my readers, I've canned the ODonnellWeb ad server that generated exactly $0.00 in revenue for me since I implemented it in October 2004. It has, I think, generated dollars for the sites I've advertised though. The ads are still there - but it is static html. This will eliminate the dB hangs that sometimes caused pages to load very slowly, or not at all.
The Google ads remain. They are making me about $10 per month, which more than pays the hosting fees for this site.
Permalink | Comments (3)May 12, 2005
Bird Flu?
When the most reasonable and level-headed blogger on your blogroll writes
I have been following the avian flu situation and am concerned. Many governments around the world are sitting on their hands, facing a plague of historical proportion while recently, the death of a single American woman in a coma consumed countless column-inches of newsprint and national energy.
You take notice.
Permalink | Comments (2)May 11, 2005
PETA Kills Animals
Between 1998 and 2003, PETA put to death over 10,000 dogs, cats, and other creatures that the group publicly calls "companion animals." Not counting those that PETA held only temporarily -- for spaying or neutering -- the group killed over 85 percent of the animals it took in during 2003.
PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year," said Center for Consumer Freedom research director David Martosko, "and much of it was from pet owners who thought their donations actually helped animals. Instead, PETA killed them -- while spending millions on programs equating meat eaters with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting kids into a radical animal-rights lifestyle, and even defending arsonists and other violent extremists.
They have a billboard in times square.
Permalink | Comments (2)Somebody should put this guy in a headlock
Jerry Conners is filing a complaint, and threatening to go to Federal Court, in an effort to force boys to physically attack his daughter.
OK, that's inflammatory, but it's not totally untrue.
Jerry is upset because some male wrestlers would rather take a forfeit than grapple with his daughter in school wrestling meets. If you are wondering where our spoiled, it's all about me kids come from, look no farther than parents like Jerry. He considers it appropriate to use the police power of government to force kids to wrestle his precious daughter. He claims the forfeits are discrimination and harm his daughter by denying her the chance to compete.
"My daughter's rights," he said, "are not going to be bargained away for any reason."
I'm going to have check the Constitution closely. Somehow, I missed that right to grapple with boys on a mat on the gymnasium floor. If I were an opposing coach, I'd instruct my kid to lay down and give her the pin. Two or three meets in a row where the boys do that should make the point nicely. What will Jerry do them? Sue to make the boys try harder?
This is what happens when we let the schools run our youth sports program. It becomes a right - just like another right that doesn't really exist - to right right to a taxpayer funded education. Of course, he doesn't seem at all concerned about the boy's rights to not compete against his daughter.
I wonder if boys that see nothing wrong with legal violence against girls end up more likely to commit illegal violence against women later in life?
I doubt that data exists,or if it does it's been buried.
May 10, 2005
Gatto Chapter 9:The Cult of Scientific Management
I'm not sure if I've really got my brain wrapped around this chapter yet. I may have to read again to really get it. Gatto squarely lays the blame for public education, and the state of our current society in general, at the feet of two people most of us know fairly well.
Frederick Taylor and Charles Darwin.
Taylor was, of course, the father of scientific management. Coincidently, I have a B.S. in Organizational Leadership and Supervision. This is a management degree from Purdue University that was (is?) heavily influenced and directed by Ford, Chrysler, and GM. It is one of the primary training grounds for entry level management who will start their career supervising 3rd shift in a transmission factory somewhere in Southern Ohio. (I never did any of it).
We spent a lot of time on Taylor. We did time studies, lots of them. I don't remember anything negative about Taylor in the program. Scientific Management was an unquestioned good thing.
In case you are wondering how this is connected to public education.
Taylorism, had four characteristics designed to make the worker "an interchangeable part of an interchangeable machine making interchangeable parts."
Since each quickly found its analogue in scientific schooling, let me show them to you:3 1) A mechanically controlled work pace; 2) The repetition of simple motions; 3) Tools and technique selected for the worker; 4) Only superficial attention is asked from the worker, just enough to keep up with the moving line. The connection of all to school procedure is apparent.
The Darwin connection is both simple, and complex. Prior to the Civil War, Americans by and far were individualists. Everybody was on their own, capable of whatever they could manage. Darwin, by advancing the idea that evolutionary nature had favored certain groups, gave cover to liberal elitists to advance forced schooling. They had scientific proof in Darwin that the bottom 90% of society were there because they were supposed to be there, and they had no chance of advancing. They needed to be taught to be happy with their station in life, and be grateful for the factory jobs the top 10% would graciously provide to them in a few years.
This is a gross simplification, but I hope the idea is getting through.
To realize the tremendous task Fabians originally assigned themselves (a significant part of which was given to schooling to perform), we need to reflect again on Darwin’s shattering books, The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), each arguing in its own way that far from being blank slates, children are written upon indelibly by their race of origin, some "favored" in Darwin’s language, some not.
Both books taken together issued a license for liberal upper classes to justify forced schooling. From an evolutionary perspective, schools are the indoctrination phase of a gigantic breeding experiment. Working-class fantasies of "self-improvement" were dismissed from the start as sentimentality that evolutionary theory had no place for.
Since it was inevitable that the lower class were staying put, it made perfect sense to the elitists to speed the process. After all, it was all in pursuit of some capitalist utopia, right?
Society evolves slowly toward "social efficiency" all by itself; society under stress, however, evolves much faster! Thus the deliberate creation of crisis is an important tool of evolutionary socialists. Does that help you understand the government school drama a little better, or the well-publicized doomsday scenarios of environmentalists?
There is a lot more in the chapter, a lot more. Reading Chapter 9 is without a doubt one of the most disturbing 30 minutes I have ever invested in a book. I'm going to be up all night as my mind wrestles with this.
Permalink | Comments (1)Bribing your way to a safe prom night
Suburban DC parents spent $30,000 on an extravagant prize filled after prom party in an attempt to keep the kiddies safe.
It apparently worked, and although the parents motives are certainly good, I can't help but wonder about the message this really sends.
We can't trust you to do the right thing, so here is a new Xbox, and a diamond necklace for your date. Please be good.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 09, 2005
Bigfoot on Video?
The video that A Current Affair broadcast is online. It's too blurry for me to make any judgment. A far as I can tell, it could be a guy in an ape suit, or it could be Bigfoot.
Permalink | Comments (1)May 08, 2005
Automated DVD Drive Through?
Does anybody think this is a winner of an idea? I don't get it, although I guess I'll have the opportunity to check it out up close, as the prototype store is across the street from my neighborhood.
Permalink | Comments (1)The Tragedy of the Waleship Essex
After being rammed by an 85 foot sperm whale in the Pacific, the crew of the Essex must abandoned ship and set out in three rickety whaling boats for the South American coast, which happens to be about 2000 miles away. Along the way most of them die as the survivors are pushed to the absolute limits of the both physical and psychological survival.
This is a brilliant book. Author Nathaniel Philbrick does an amazing job enveloping the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells that were the 19th century whaling industry. This is also a true story, put together from the memoirs of two of the survivors, and this real life maritime disaster was the inspiration for Moby Dick.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 07, 2005
Gatto Chapter 8 - A Coal-Fired Dream World
In this chapter, Gatto explores the specific reasons and events behind forced schooling, or the mass production of people. The great industrialists on the late 19th and early 20th century correctly foresaw that coal, and later oil, could bring about great changes to American society. Coal put the potential for great power in the hands of just about everybody. All those everybodys were potential competitors, and the industrialists feared that competition would lead to over production and lower prices.
The very ingenuity and self-reliance that built a strong and unique America came to be seen as its enemy. Competition was recognized as a corrosive agent no mass production economy could long tolerate without bringing ruinous financial panics in its wake, engendering bankruptcy and deflation.
In the place of the traditional American family farm, where self-reliance and industrious were the roots of all success, Carnegie and his ilk saw great factories and production lines worked by people of little social consequence and even less ambition. The typical farmer was not going to go quietly into the coal mines.
Schools build national wealth by tearing down personal sovereignty, morality, and family life.
We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes.
The traditional American education had to go, and school would be the replacement, financed in the early years primarily by men who got rich in the first wave of the coal powered economy.
Here is the crux of the difference between education and schooling— the former turns on independence, knowledge, ability, comprehension, and integrity; the latter upon obedience
Gatto also returns to the Civil War theme again.
After decades of surreptitious Northern provocation, the South fired on Fort Sumter. Hegel himself could not have planned history better. America was soon to find itself shoehorned into a monoculture. The Civil War demonstrated to industrialists and financiers how a standardized population trained to follow orders could be made to function as a reliable money tree; even more, how the common population could be stripped of its power to cause political trouble.
Although this all looks like a conspiracy, it really wasn't. In many ways, the direction of our economy sort of forced the issue. Mass production of obedient factory workers was required if the socialistic ideals of utopia were ever to be realized. Forced schooling was simply the most efficient way to produce those workers.
Gatto also answers the basic question, why wasn't this great change noticed at the time?
There are three indisputable triumphs of mass society we need to acknowledge to understand its strength: first, mass production offers relative physical comfort to almost all—even the poor have food, shelter, television as a story-teller to raise the illusion of community; second, as a byproduct of intense personal surveillance in mass society (to provide a steady stream of data to the producing and regulating classes) a large measure of personal security is available; third, mass society offers a predictable world, one with few surprises—anxieties of uncertainty are replaced in mass society with a rise in ennui and indifference.
In summary, the American working class was sedated by a constantly rising standard of living.
This brings up another question in my mind.
Is the current interest in school reform, and the growth in home education, in any way a manifestation of the realization, maybe even only at an unconscious level, that forced schooling can not properly prepare our youth for the world of tomorrow. Those factory jobs no longer exist in this country.
It's an interesting paradox. Now that we are finally being replaced by machines in many ways we are realizing that we have been training our young to be machines all along.
Permalink | Comments (1)May 06, 2005
Place the State
I scored 90% with an average error of 15 miles while completing the map in 292 seconds, on intermediate level.
There are a lot of fun looking geography games here. Be careful, you just might learn something...without a state certified geography teacher hanging over your shoulder.
Permalink | Comments (2)College is nothing like real life
The fact that this student figured it out while still in school probably bodes well for her future success.
Sure college can be a great community and social environment, but if you spend more hours at the bars then in class you probably aren't going to come out of here with much more then a beer belly. Paying this kind of tuition money to have friends and a social life is like joining an expensive country club without the free golf.Permalink | Comments (0)
May 04, 2005
Startle The Echos
I noticed an incoming link on Technorati from a site I didn't recognize.
Pop on over and say hello to a homeschooler who most definitely doesn't fit into the conservative right wing Christian stereotype.
Stop or I'll sue you
Daryl got a take that post down or we are going to sue you email from the fine folks at Learning By Grace Academies, who apparently don't understand the concept of the Internets, as they raised a fuss over a rather innocuous little post that had already slid off into archive oblivion.
1625 posts here and nobody has ever threatened to sue me. The best I can do is confused teenyboppers that think I'm the actor.
If you have a blog please help spread the story. Shining a bright light on this stuff is the best way to make it go away.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 03, 2005
Time Traveler Convention
If any time travelers (now or in the future) are reading this, your presence is requested at the first Time Traveler Convention, on the MIT campus on Sat, May 7th.
I guess this will probably also be the only Time Traveler Convention, since there is no reason to have another. You can attend this one as many times as you'd like!
Permalink | Comments (0)May 02, 2005
En Garde!
I'm really surprised more kids aren't into fencing. There are not many places where they are not only allowed, but actually encouraged, to whack each other with metal swords. In this case it was a foil, to be exact. The next class isn't until July, so I guess I'll be hauling him to open club practices every week so he can continue to learn.
Those kids were tired after fencing six matches tonight. It is a more physically demanding sport than first appearances would lead you to believe.
Permalink | Comments (1)
Now THIS is convergence
Doc Searls connects open source, Microsoft, home education, and Gatto.
I've done the same thing here, but I've done it over 2000 weblog posts and doubt any of you noticed :)
Doc puts it all together in a few paragraphs.
This is what I mean when I say Home Education is free as in speech, not as in beer.
Permalink | Comments (0)One place I don't want to see camera phone pictures from...
...is the delivery room while your wife is in labor. I don't care if you are a A list Internet celebrity, some things just don't belong on the Internets.
Yes, we all want to see cute baby pictures, but we can wait until the umbilical cord is cut and the baby is cleaned up a bit. Really, we can wait.
I know "don't look" is the answer. I'm not sure what I was expecting when Kottke linked to Matt moblogging the birth of his daughter but a picture of his wife titled "8 cm" wasn't it. It just seemed totally invasive on my part, even if they are choosing to make it public.
Either way, best wishes for a happy healthy little girl...
Permalink | Comments (0)May 01, 2005
The Flying Circus
With the girls at 4-H today, Breck and I were looking for something to do. We settled on The Flying Circus Air Show, opening it's 35th season today in Bealeton, VA - about 30 minutes from the house.
If you live in the DC area you have to check this out. It's an old time barn storming show, with biplanes aerobatics, wing walkers, and other flying demonstrations. It was a blast. It runs every Sunday through the fall.
They give biplanes rides too, although I didn't have the cash for that today. They did give one away to a kid, if they were handing out the tickets in numerical order, the person who came in immediately after me got the free ride for their kid. More pictures.
Permalink | Comments (0)H2G2 Reviewed
It was ok, but not great. It gets quite slow in the middle. Adams' genius was in lines like like The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. Movies need a story, and the story was never the point of the trilogy. The telling of the story was where the fun was.
I'm not sorry that we went, but I don't see myself buying the DVD when it comes out.
Permalink | Comments (1)