Diana Senechal, author and high school teachers, has found what is needed in American education today: a renewed emphasis on the Inhumanities.
Senechal has identified a district in Wisconsin where this new initiative is taking place.
“Rhino Falls, Wisconsin—Citing a global trend toward ruthless school and workplace practices, Superintendent Mark Sequor called on for a steep increase in the inhumanities throughout the K–12 grades. “It’s time we not only caught up with Singapore and China, but showed them who’s who,” he told an assembly of 10,000. “Our kids think they have lots of meaningless tests? They should see the tests the kids in Korea take. Our kids think they have too much homework? Compared to other kids, they’re on permanent vacation.”
“To catch up with the rest of the world, says Sequor, the schools need an inhumanities emphasis even more than a STEM emphasis. “STEM might still give you a few stargazers,” he explained; “whereas a course in inhumanities will keep every child on task.”
“The inhumanities, Sequor continued, are at the heart of the Race to the Top competition, which awards funding to districts that race into flawed reforms without really thinking them through. “The whole point here is to get ahead, not to think,” he said, “and so, by embracing the inhumanities, we’re really going the extra mile—faster than anyone else, I’ll add.”
“Telos Elementary, a model school in Rhino City, allows visitors to witness its inhumanities curriculum in action. The day is filled with rapid and strictly timed activities, where students from kindergarten on up must turn and talk, repeat, rotate, move to the next station, repeat, summarize, and get in line. “We can’t let them get dreamy,” said Holly Vide, the school’s inhumanities coach. “We need to have everyone engaged. Also, in the workplace, they’ll be switched from task to task or even fired, so we need to prepare them for that reality.”
In later grades, the inhumanities are honed to a fine art.
“Once students enter high school, they are expected to do everything, he said. “Every high school student, in order to have a fighting chance in life, must have top grades, top test scores, leadership credentials, an array of extracurriculars, athletic prizes, community service hours, and at least ten things that go above and beyond what everyone else is doing. Can you be a person of integrity and character and do all of this?” he asked with a rhetorical flourish. “Of course not. That’s part of the point. Integrity and character are relics of medievalism. I think it was the medieval writer Flannery O’Connor who said something about how integrity lies in what one cannot do. We live in a ‘can-do’ era. A ‘can’t-do’ attitude is simply out of bounds.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While this might seem like a good idea I don’t think it goes far enough. Not only have our kids been dumbed down but they are also simply weak. Why are teachers not allowed to instill vigor and muscle into the class room? For example, any child who loses focus and offers up a smile needs to understand it’s time to “drop and give me twenty.”
Power points are well and good but we also need to return some discipline to the class room. Keep that paddle handy and I say hang a chin-up bar from every door! The students need to know at an early age that not only are their careers riding on this but their very well-being will be determined by how they perform and that it will require focus, discipline and rigor.
Any kid who comes to school needs to have game face from the word “go” and understand when we are in school we mean business and in business the business of business is meant to be mean. A certain toughness has to be enforced if we are to keep our place in the world market.This has to be understood in the early years, pre-K testing is essential here.
If it works for Melinda Gates’ kids at the Lakeside school, who are we to be critical, oh wait…..
Given the obesity problem with US youngsters the push-ups and chin-ups might not be such a bad idea.
Add a little live ammunition to those push ups just to make it more realistic-one shot above the head when they touch the floor, one shot below the torso (legs slightly apart to allow for the bullet to pass through) when they rise up.
Ha Duane…………..kind of reminds you of Louis Sachar’s HOLES!
Childism by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl agrees with the inhumanity analysis in this excerpt.
Jane Addams of Hull House was most aware that a prejudiced way of thinking had determined how the philanthropic child-savers of her era viewed children. Writing in 1899, Addams examined the philanthropists’ “industrial view”. This was the name she gave to the view that what is good for industry, and the adults running and profiting from industries, is good for everybody.
Childist philanthropists were wealthy and influential industrialists and bankers who established educational foundations in the family name. The Rockefeller Educational Trust, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation were dedicated to taking over the public school system literally, by financing it. They would create instead a system of schools that would turn out workers for their industries and commercial enterprises. To this end, they also took over teacher-training programs and schools were turned into huge factory-like institutions directing students toward their future occupations on the basis of their class, gender and race. Children were to fulfill adult needs and to fulfill particular low-level positions in adult enterprises, not to develop their potentialities and their characters. These role-reversal children were eliminated from opportunities, manipulated into preset roles in the workforce, and deprived of encouragement to independent thought. These schools practiced all types of Childism at once – eliminative, manipulative, and identity erasing, all under the rubric of “tracking”.
Americans must reject policies and programs that “rescue” children by segregating them into the current equivalents of the Jane Addams era child-savers’ categories. Good research exists showing the harmful effects of programs in which children are placed out or indentured into prison-like institutions, in which “education” means standardization and identity erasure.
Integrity and character is medieval? it holds us back!
What a concept. This man must have written the codes for behavior that guide our Congress and our business people…just do it… get the job done and damn the collateral damage.
Agggggh!