David Greene, experienced teacher and mentor, was out of the country for afew weeks. When he returned, he was excited to hear echoes of our struggle against high-stakes testing, privatization, the theft of public schools, and data piracy in the mainstream news. Is the silence over? Are we on the cusp of the change we have all been hoping for?
An informed public will not permit a corporate takeover of its schools. An informed public will not give away personal information about their children to data mining.
David Greene writes:
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
I’ve been sitting relatively silently for a few weeks for a couple of reasons. I was out of the country for three weeks. Upon return I began new job. I was growing frustrated with the barking and lack of movement. I have been completing a book soon to be pubished. Other voices were more important to be heard.
Over the past few days however a number of events stirred the silence within me. First, I read Joe Nocera’s October 14th NY Times column, “A World Without Privacy”.
That was followed by a one-two punch of articles in The Local Gannett paper, The Journal News. The first, on October 16th validated what I am currently reading in Diane Ravitch’s brilliant new book, Reign of Error. The second article that moved me entitled “Study faults N.Y.’s teacher evaluations“, was written by Gary Stern, a reporter who seems to be figuring out what is really happening in the privatization process of public schools.
The third followed a day later also in The Journal News by Gary Stern was entitled, “Local parents seek ouster of N.Y. education commissioner”.
Finally, the one that moved me to this keyboard was in the October 20th edition of The NY Times Magazine entitled, “No diagnosis left behind”.
The fact that these articles came out within a week shows me the turn around in mainstream media we have been searching for may be coming sooner than I had thought. It inspired me to speak out again, to end my “sound of silence”.
One of my favorite songs of all time is Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”. It is haunting and timeless. It speaks to the horrors in societies that are perpetuated when,
“ And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more. People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never share. And no one dared disturb the sound of silence.”
Nocera’s column tells us how close to Orwell’s 1984 we have become as he compares Dave Egger’s new novel, The Circle to Orwell’s prophecies. Orwell’s, Big Brother government’s Ministry of Truth uses the big lie, repetitious slogans (ominously similar to chapters in Mein Kampf): WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Egger’s private technology corporate world power (ALA Google, Facebook and Twitter) uses similar phrases: SHARING IS CARING. SECRETS ARE LIES. PRIVACY IS THEFT.
My God…. Is that not the strategy used by corporate education reformers and their governmental allies in stealing public education form the public and it’s employees?
“Fools,” said I, “you do not know. Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you.” But my words, like silent raindrops fell; and echoed in the wells of silence.”
Have the “Emperor With New Clothes” actions of NY Commissioner John King awakened us from our sounds of Silence?
Has Gary Stern and Lo-Hud inadvertently become a leader in this new voice calling for his resignation by finally voicing the concerns of thousands of parents, students, and teachers in this article that finally doesn’t attack those voices as King does.
Has their expose regarding the improper use of invalid testing to evaluate teachers finally allowed other mass media publications and networks to come out of their sounds of silence and become:
“The sign [that] flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming. And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls?”
Finally, the NY TIMES reports, in “No diagnosis left behind” that:
“High-stakes standardized testing, increased competition for slots in top colleges, a less-and-less accommodating economy for those who don’t get into colleges but can no longer depend on the existence of blue-collar jobs — all of these are expressed through policy changes and cultural expectations, but they may also manifest themselves in more troubling ways — in the rising number of kids whose behavior has become pathologized.”
And, The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, was the first federal effort to link school financing to standardized- test performance. But various states had been slowly rolling out similar policies for the last three decades.
North Carolina was one of the first to adopt such a program; California was one of the last.
The correlations between the implementation of these laws and the rates of A.D.H.D. diagnosis matched on a regional scale as well. When Hinshaw compared the rollout of these school policies with incidences of A.D.H.D., he found that when a state passed laws punishing or rewarding schools for their standardized-test scores, A.D.H.D. diagnoses in that state would increase not long afterward.
Nationwide, the rates of A.D.H.D. diagnosis increased by 22 percent in the first four years after No Child Left Behind was implemented.
To be clear: Those are correlations, not causal links. But A.D.H.D., education policies, disability protections and advertising freedoms all appear to wink suggestively at one another. From parents’ and teachers’ perspectives, the diagnosis is considered a success if the medication improves kids’ ability to perform on tests and calms them down enough so that they’re not a distraction to others. (In some school districts, an A.D.H.D. diagnosis also results in that child’s test score being removed
from the school’s official average.) Writ large, Hinshaw says, these incentives conspire to boost the diagnosis of the disorder, regardless of its biological prevalence.
Times have changed. The words are now on Facebook and Twitter and the Blogosphere. They are increasingly in the streets, in the “public forums”, and in legislative, not tenement, halls.
And needed to get out! Let’s all of us, let out our sound of silence and change what is happening to us and to our children.
“Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping, and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence.”
Yesterday on NPR they discussed the overuse of antibiotics. I learned long ago to never buy soap with triclosan in it.
People need to read more science and Discover magazine. There needs to be a better understanding of the biology involved in medicating a child.
I am not a fan of meds for kids (that’s my personal opinion– I am also not a fan of voice lessons for little girls until they are 16, because the voice needs time to develop, and I feel the same way about a child’s brain). I feel sad when I hear that a six year old is on meds because “he was suffering academically.” Really? He was? How do you know? Because of a standardized test?
I teach in NC. I grew up in NC. I will never be a fan of meds for ADHD. But, I am in the creative aspect of education. Sure a hyper kid can drive me up a wall, but I still think it is far more beautiful that they be themselves and learn how to function without mucking with their brain wiring so they can perform on a test or make a teacher’s life easier.
This week a friend had a “heart to heart” with me that my own child needed meds for ADHD. And so I have been holding firm this week to this! No! When it’s his brain (at 18) and if he wants meds then, fine. But until then, no. I am going to protect his developing brain.
And whatever happend to the adage “never let school cause you to miss out on your education.” I believe that. Performance in school is only part of the equation.
And like Gates’ ideas and our RttT stuff, we will just have to wait and see how that plays out.
I am not silent about that.
Good for you, Joanna. I, too, am against medicated kids unless all other avenues have been taken. I know of kids who were normal until vaccination, and then began having ADHD issues. I also think genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), undiagnosed Celiac disease, and lastly, our toxic environment, including mercury, are contributing factors to behavioral issues.
All of these factors need to be looked at and cured before drugging the kids up.
Just my two cents.
Also, many folks don’t realize that Ritalin is actually synthetic cocaine. Just thought I’d let folks know.
I do vaccinate. I would love to read more about that, though.
Here is a great resource on vaccine information:
National Vaccine Information Center:
http://www.nvic.org/
And here is a youtube on a young lady who was healthy before receiving a flu vaccine:
One of my favorite songs too. I forgot all the words. Thanks for reminding us.
That song tells a lot. I fear we have to do so much more. My new position in a University School of Ed. tells me. The folks here are caught up in the very same issues, do not like having a new top down evaluation system called EdTPA totally controlled by PEARSON for evaluating new student teachers, but just go along to get along.
Of course the idea of a solid summative evaluation of student teachers is a good one. But not this way!… but they just roll over… but that brings me to another set of Lyrics…
“Roll Over, Beethoven”???
Funny, I was listening to that same song a few weeks ago and thinking the same things. We really have, as a society, become so complacent. We spend so much time staring at screens (guilty as charged, as I write this comment on my iPad) that we don’t get out and talk to people. We don’t communicate on a human level anymore. When our local, state and national governments pass punitive, harmful, or ridiculous laws, do we stand up in public and rally against them? No, we go to our screens and complain in silence.
“And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon gods they made.”
“And no one dared disturb the sound of silence.”
I always loved that song but I am hearing it with new ears today.
To listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp91cqBhAE
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Thanx drext.
Reblogged this on nytechprepper and commented:
Important read.