Nashville Prep boasts some of the highest test scores in Tennessee.
Its singular goal is college preparation.
Fortunately, we can see what the school considers good instruction by looking at a video that is posted on its website.
It is called “6 Minutes with Ms. McDonalds’ 5th Grade Social Studies Class.”
Watch it and decide for yourself. Are these students being prepared to be successful in college? Will they be the thinkers, scientists, inventors, and innovators of the 21st century?
You be the judge.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If they don’t get into college they can travel with the circus. Looks like anybody can “teach” when memorizing chants is the goal. Go reform. Go USA. Go Gates USDOE.
A little too Hitler Youth for me. But to be fair, it is just six minutes. I think all teachers understand that a small piece of the class isn’t necessarily representative of the whole thing. Anybody know how an entire class tends to run in this school?
I dunno, this has obviously been drilled into them. I’d guess this is more or less the format of the class.
The school clearly makes no secret about how classes are run, so parents of students here would seem to think that this kind of class is better for their children, all things considered, than the available alternatives.
Should parents not be allowed to choose a classroom that includes this as at least part of the day?
How do YOU know all parents are aware their kids are chanting nonsense in a militarized sweat shop? You don’t. You assume as usual. There are KIPP style schools in DC and NYC and the Kopp/Barths/Obama’s don’t send their kids there. Why?
How do we know parents are aware? Hmm, it’s on YouTube with over 4,000 views, so it can’t be that much of a secret, now can it?
Missed the point WT but that’s to be expected from a charter cheerleader. And are they aware that is not a high quality education where students think, ponder, reflect, create, design, collaborate, write, read, evaluate, critique? Would you send your kids there or is it good enough for those kids?
Linda,
If I had the right options, I doubt I would have sent my middle child to the same school as my youngest child. Students are different and might well benefit from different approaches to education. I understand that you don’t think any child should be sent to a school that has six minutes of this kind of activity in a class, but clearly the parents at this school think this is reasonable given the schooling options available.
It is a video that they posted on their website. Clearly they are making an effort to display it to all. Is your argument that they are keeping this a secret from the families that seek to enroll their students in the school?
Actually it’s even worse TE. They flaunt this spectacle and believe it represents teaching and learning. They don’t even know what they don’t know. Embarrassing and reprehensible.
Linda,
So you no longer think I have made an unjustifiable leap when I said that parents know that this practice occurs in the school?
WT, many of views are to watch the spectacle and be ashamed of where we are. You assume all viewers approve. Check the few comments. Most are disgusted. This teacher could simultaneously auction off a tractor while training interchangeable widgets for the global economy. Go reform. Go USA. Go Gates USDOE under Obama’s supervision.
This just in… Nashville Prep just deleted all the Comments from the video posted on YouTube (and the Nashville Prep YouTube channel)… and also disabled the Comments section so no one else can comment.
This included several months of comments—most of them negative… “This is disgusting” etc..
Here’s the video. Check out the new disabled COMMENTS section:
I have no problem where a parent wants to send his or her child, but I don’t think non-gold-standard pedagogy should be financed by the public nickel.
Saying that no “non-gold-standard pedagogy should be financed by the public nickel” invites the question of whose standard is gold. For an advocate of a Montessori education, almost no public school reaches the gold standard, for example. Almost no one that I know believes the way mathematics is taught in K-12 education is the gold standard, but equally there is little agreement on what is the gold standard.
There is not one gold standard, it’s true. But you will admit that some standards are less helpful than others. Or some could be downright damaging. I don’t know enough about this particular school to have any dog in the hunt, but just saying, well, what does anybody know about standards is kind of silly. We know that applying leeches is no longer the answer, for example. We know quite a bit about what works and what doesn’t.
Andrew,
I am not sure we can conclude that this school is using leeches from this sequence, but your point brings up the larger question about the individuality of the learner. Is there a best practice or are there best practices that depend on the individual student? Might the classroom practices shown in the video as part of what happens in this school be better for some students than the alternative schools that the family can access?
Appalling!
Those six minutes were painful for me to watch. Probably a fun way to review history facts, hopefully not the only way social studies gets taught. More disconcerting was how the children had to stand with their hands behind them and chant in unison, all dressed in the official school uniform. Too regimented for my blood. I can’t even imagine sending any of my own children there: my free-spirited one would have been kicked out on day one. Worse yet, I shudder to think what would have become of my rule-following youngest child.
Hands behind back…there’s all kinds of imagery there. None of it good.
Wow, I couldn’t get that video to run no matter how many times I reloaded! There was another Nashville Prep Social Studies Social Studies link on the site: Kids in uniform singing mnemonic songs in chorus. Is that the similar the one I didn’t see? Just rote memorization of details, no attempt at a broader context?
Wendy,
You couldn’t get it to run?
I’ll make it easy for you (and everyone else).
Just CLICK the “PLAY” arrow BELOW:
Obviously some people don’t like this type of classroom.
But even if these 6 minutes represent all the knowledge that the kids have learned 5th grade, the astonishing fact is that they still are better educated than 44% of American adults (the vast majority of whom attended public school):
newsweek.com/how-ignorant-are-americans-66053 “When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test . . . forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights.”
Better educated about what! About a kind of culture totally alien to American traditions and values, yet expressing the words of those values with utter meaninglessness. The more you rely on test scores to “measure” the education of anyone, least of all American adults, the more you undermine those very values.
So if I gave this class a DBQ, how well do you think they would do? Not too well since I all I saw was chanting and no evidence of primary or secondary sources.
What’s DBQ? A cross between Dairy Queen and Barbecue? Sorry, but I am AI, please help.
Duane,
It is a document based question, a standard type of question in AP history exams.
TE,
Thanks for the explanation!
Duane, a DBQ is where a student prepares an essay based on a group of primary documents (such as cartoons, newspaper articles, diary entries, letters, etc) from a given era on a given topic. The student must read these items and use the information to write an essay based on the overall theme. They must also bring prior knowledge of the topic into the essay.
(In NYS, sometimes the essay topics did not match the curriculum, such as when fifth graders had to write an essay on the women’s suffragette movement when that subject was not covered until sixth grade. However, social studies is no longer considered a priority in NYS so the fifth and eighth grade SS assessments have been eliminated.)
There is no “knowledge” displayed here, any more than your dog really understands the word “sit” just because he sits when you tell him to. It’s just prompt and response – something pigeons are capable of.
What was displayed wasn’t deep knowledge, sure, but the glaring problem is that most American adults couldn’t even chant mindlessly what the Bill of Rights is. These kids could at least answer a few simple questions on a civics survey, which most American adults can’t do.
So my point stands: these kids know more than the majority of American adults.
Then educate us all here WT on your definition of know.
Rote chanting of facts is a display of memorization. Do the students know what the words mean? This is not a lesson that displays understanding or knowledge, just chanting.
You have a real affection for rote memorization. Would you want your child taught in this fashion? Note, I didn’t say in this school. Just in this fashion.
Andrew,
I think students are different enough that what might be a great way to teach some students would be a terrible way to teach others.
In order to get close to the right education for my middle son, for example, we had to cobble together some classes in the assigned public high school, some classes from the local university, and a K12 virtual class to make the scheduling work and satisfy state mandated high school graduation requirements. That would have been a terrible high school experience for my youngest and oldest children, but by far the best we could construct for the middle one.
If your child learns by rote methods, then I would recommend you send him to a private school. I don’t think the state should be on the hook for alternative medicines and herbs, and most voters don’t either.
The fact is, rote memorization and test prep as the lion’s share of a child’s educational day is not teaching and learning. Decades of research show us this. I have no problems with charters existing, but they should not receive any public funding. Not if what that video portrays is the predominant method of teaching.
Andrew,
For my middle son it was exactly the mindless drilling and attempt to turn him into an inefficient version of Wolfram Alpha that caused us to get him out of public K-12 mathematics instruction as quickly as possible.
Please move past just YOUR three sons who we have heard about repeatedly.
Linda,
Rather than calling people names and making unsupported sweeping statements, I try to give examples that support my position. When multiple posters ask a question about what kind of school people would send their own children to attend, not only do I state a policy position that different students might benefit from different approaches to education but I illustrate it with a concrete example of the sort posters are asking for.
Dienne, Linda, dianeravitch and Andrew Gallagher: as always, your friendly neighborhood KrazyTA is here to lend a hand, grateful to include a dig at merit pay/pay for performance as well.
[start quote]
One of the longest lasting merit pay systems involved extra pay for better test scores in English (Wilms & Chapleau, 1999) and it lasted from 1862 to the mid-1890s:
As historical accounts show, English teachers and administrators became obsessed with the system’s financial rewards and punishments. It was dubbed the “cult of the [cash] register.” Schools’ curricula were narrowed to include just the easily measured basics. Drawing, science, singing, and even school gardening simply disappeared. Teaching became increasingly mechanical, as teachers found that drill and rote repetition produced the “best” results. One schools inspector wrote an account of children reading flawlessly for him while holding their books upside down. (para. 4)
[end quote]
(Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION, 2013, p. 60)
As “Moms” Mabley said so well years ago:
“They’re always talking about the good old days, the good old days. Well, I was there. Where was they?”
“Moms” — missin’ ya. Your wit and humor would provide some needed illumination in these dark times…
😎
“But even if these 6 minutes represent all the knowledge that the kids have learned 5th grade, the astonishing fact is that they still are better educated than 44% of American adults (the vast majority of whom attended public school)”
Straw man.
WT,
Rote recitation of words does not necessarily mean understanding of meaning. If I may give an example.
Way back when, 1963-4 to be precise, I was in fourth grade in a Catholic school. It was practice to get the server/altar boys, no girls allowed at the time although that has changed, from those who could memorize the responses in Latin.from the fifth grade class and it was supposed to be an honor to be chosen to be a server boy. Well that particular cohort was a little less than capable of memorizing the Latin so they went down a grade to find eight capable memorizers of which I was one. I memorized the Latin (perhaps a precursor to my learning Spanish, eh) but didn’t have a clue as to what I was saying. I could spout the sounds but not know what they meant.
So, I struggled to watch that video, way too rigid, way too authoritarian, way too dog training for me. If that is just six minutes, well perhaps that’s okay but it seems to me that this was a “culminating” event into which much instructional time went. A lot of “training” time very little instructional time.
Though I am not against memorization as one of many mechanisms for learning.
Whether or not they might “know more than most U.S. adults” is debatable. But the fact that this is preparing them for college is an outright lie. I teach at a college, I have studied at 4 colleges. I have never, ever seen, or even heard of, a college where students are asked to stand up and parrot back memorized facts. In college, we expect students to be able to:
1) read something independently and find and retain the most important parts
2) analyze what they read by looking for main points, arguments, and evidence used to support the main points
3) Read critically and decide what the author’s point of view is, whether they agree with the arguments in the text, and how information in the text might contradict information from other sources.
4) synthesize ideas from that reading with ideas from other readings and from what was discussed in class
5) apply that knowledge by creating a paper, doing a study, solving a problem, or creating some other product.
If they want to call this “education,” I would disagree but might accept that definitions of “education” might differ. But what saddens me is that students and families who are led to believe that this form of “education” will prepare them for college will have a rude awakening when their children try to function in a college classroom.
You are right. Standing up and repeating what the teacher says does not lead to the level of literacy necessary to be successful in college and no matter how much a child reads at school (or chants), if the child doesn’t love reading and doesn’t read outside of school, that child will not be ready for college.
This chanting also doesn’t guarantee memory retention of the facts spewed forth as a chorus of voices. The memory doesn’t work that way.
In fact, the main ingredient for success in college is a love of reading and a high level of literacy and this is not something you will find in areas where there are high levels of poverty and street gang violence.
The Common Core Machiavellian high stakes testing must be defeated and done away with and replaced with a high quality, early childhood literacy program starting as early as age three to foster a love of reading.
And keep the for-profit. fake education reformers away from children.
I bet if you polled this class in 25 years, at age 35ish, that 44% of them will not be able to define the Bill of Rights.
It is common for teachers or the media or the general public to act surprised and even shocked when former students don’t know this (Bill of Rights) or can’t explain that (Why summer is hot) or can’t calculate the other (% tip). My answer is, why should they? If they don’t use it, it is likely they will lose it. If it isn’t of personal interest (US history or astronomy) or they don’t need it for their job or current studies it would be more surprising to me if most people remembered ever fact and concept and event and skill they were ever taught.
We should recognize how several patterns converge, and thereby raise hideous and unanswered questions.
First, the method is – as somebody notes above – as traditional as Hitler and the Inquisition, and the probability is that those methods transcend any “content” they may pretend to deliver. Both the subject – freedom and constitutionalism – and the process are apparent in the six minutes, and the irony of their conflict totally obscure to teacher, students, and those promoting that method. That says more about Tennessee politics than any recent elections – and it delivers much the same message. Stay out of Tennessee.
Second, the teacher and students are all fat. That gives pounds of meaning to the message they’re chanting about, since it places the “weight” of “authority” on somebody else rather than the “responsibility” on the learner or even the teacher. Movement, whether chants or stands or turns or re-inforcing teacher signals, is all prescribed, and therefore students learn that authority is fixed, central, and best obeyed. And it’s really quite fascinating that they don’t look at their own belly or ass!
Third, it’s not at all clear what kind of “college” these kids prepare for. I do hope, for their own sake, they go to West Point or Annapolis, rather than Harvard or Stanford. The skills they’re learning – rapid recall and obedience – apply to living in Tennessee and not to Boston or the Bay Area. And I would be really curious about how many kids actually finish, even if they get in and start at academically challenging postsecondary institutions. This kind of instruction depends on a constant momentum, and, as soon as its victims shift to other methods they tend to get lost – quickly. Looks to me like a bunch of fat junkies in the making.
And apples don’t have levels…
Thank goodness no public school teachers are fat.
Could you display more hatred and disdain for our teachers WT? Keep posting, we are getting to know you better each time.
That is a singularly dimwitted response — did you really not get that I was ridiculing that guy’s fat jokes? Or are you fine with mocking fat people?
WT = why think?
Seriously?
So now we go from the straw man argument to criticizing imaginary teachers looks.
*sigh*
Your wrong there WT, I’m a public school teacher and I’m fat and ugly too-I don’t know how my bathroom mirror has survived all these years. Although I think it must be some kind of psychological problem stemming from the fact that I was a skin and bones runt of a boy (although quick and athletic) and it wasn’t from malnutrition.
Either that or it’s from all the beer I have drunk over the years (you know what they say: Don’t feed the bear beer!). You decide WT.
I enjoy humor too, but fat jokes?
I’m 285 pounds, and if you think fat is a joke you’re a blithering idiot!
I would refrain from posting about the health condition of the teacher and some of the students (some are not visibly overweight). Not sure how this enters into the conversation about best teaching practice.
“. . . those methods transcend any “content” they may pretend to deliver.”
Ah, yes, the “hidden curriculum” that is seldom recognized or discussed.
“Second, the teacher and students are all fat.”
Not true. Go back and look at the video again. I see short and tall, fat and thin students.
I wonder how much classroom time was spent on learning that chant? Very militaristic.
oops pressed the wrong post……
I wonder too. Are all of Mrs. McDonald’s Social Studies classes run in that manner? Fifteen years ago in Tennessee, another time and place in education, children, with the guidance of wonderful caring teachers and administrators learned about the Holocaust by collecting paper clips, inviting holocaust survivors to their school and town church, and creating a school museum in a boxcar once used by the Nazis to transport victims to their deaths. Students wrote,and read, and thought, and felt, and came away from the process better human beings. See the video, Paper Clips.
Education is going backwards.
I was reminded of my 9th grade gym teacher (50 years ago) who had us play Simon Says while he walked up and down the rows swinging a yardstick which he would use to smack those of us who obeyed a command not beginning with Simon Says. Fifty years later I am a great Simon Says player, but I still hate to exercise.
Congratulations on your Simon Says skills GST!
The Paperclips project! What a wonderful learning experience that was for all involved!
Simon Says thank you, NJ Teacher. And Bob, as I recall that paper clips project was in a small town Tennessee public school not far from where the Scopes trial took place. Sad to see what NCLB and RTTT and privatization have done to public education in the 21st Century.
Go to youtube and search whole brain teaching, power teaching, or chris biffle. This class is just a taste of the kind of canine obedience school techniques that are out there.
Do not forget Responsive Classroom.
Maybe these kids won’t be one of the 83% of public-school-educated American adults who are such ignoramuses about basic historical facts:
prnewswire.com/news-releases/83-percent-of-us-adults-fail-test-on-nations-founding-78325412.html
“Many more Americans remember that Michael Jackson sang “Beat It” than know that the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution.”
You realize charters are categorized as public schools (when it suits them).
Yeah but only if they can chant while standing in line wearing the same clothes and repeating and facing the trainer while hoping for a goldfish reward and maybe a bathroom break. Exactly what scholars do every day.
Sure they’ll know their historical facts. As long as someone else knows the chant to prompt them to recall.
WT: How do you know that 100% of that 83% were all educated in district public schools? You think that kids educated in private schools and religious schools have better knowledge of the Constitution than those in public schools? Are you counting charter schools as public schools? I don’t think there has been any such study. However, I would expect the graduates of elite, restrictive, very expensive private schools probably would have a better education with classroom sizes of 10 or 12 kids and all kinds of enrichment programs. Not to mention that elite private schools can eject any kid who is too disruptive or too belligerent. WT, you are just speculating and pulling figures out of the air.
Question, WT – do you really think these kids are being prepared for college? Did you go to college? How often did you have to stand and recite/sing facts in unison in response to your professor’s prompts? Did any of your professors ever snap if you weren’t responding quickly enough? Did you have to clasp your hands behind your back?
Read about the school’s founder here
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/07/12/ravi-guptas-no-excuses-charter-school-shakes-nashville
quote toward the end….”if you don’t shape up, you have to leave”
My goodness, the ego on that guy is dizzying!
Shhh! It’s WT.
Exactly, its not a public school in any real sense.
Seems like a great guy. And like I say, most American adults are appallingly ignorant of the most basic facts about civics (e.g., what the Bill of Rights is), so it’s not as if public schools are in any position to brag about their pedagogy.
Sources, please. I expect you have several peer-reviewed studies that corroborate this claim from researchers in varying institutions of education. Otherwise, you are just spewing talking points with zero credibility.
Right in this thread I have linked to two national polls showing that American adults are appallingly ignorant of the stuff that these kids have memorized. So it’s not very smart to pretend to be unaware of the evidence here.
You really think they’ll remember any of the material they’ve been programmed to chant? Give them a few years and they won’t have a clue. By any stretch of the imagination, what Ms. McDonald is doing cannot be called teaching.
Should the public schools who accept those who don’t “shape up” be recognized and compensated for serving as a safety net for the charter system?
Because that’s what they’re doing.
They should negotiate on that basis, you know, a factual basis.
How much more funding should they get per student, in the interest of equity? Or are we just going to pretend it isn’t happening?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if public schools had an actual advocate in government instead of a bunch of cowardly “agnostics” and “relinquishers”?
Maybe we could hire some, next election.
I agree. If public schools are going to end up taking all the students who, for one reason or another, can’t do this drill and can’t fit into this environment, they should at least get enough funding. The funding would be necessary to hire specialists, counselors and teachers who are trained to respond to students with ADHD, social and behavioral issues, second-language learners, etc. If public schools are bearing all the costs of educating the students who are not “easy,” they should get funding to cover those costs.
A really insightful piece, that puts the rigidity of the video in perspective. Thanks for the insight, but it’s particularly frightening for what it says about Duncan, Obama, and the leadership of the Democratic party. Some examples are more than enough to challenge “leadership” in this direction:
1. Educational methods are culturally tuned. That is, they work best when they best “fit” the expectations of students and parents. The authoritarianism of the video illustrates a “recent immigrant” culture, wherein the easiest, most direct, and most consistent way to learn to “follow the rules” of a dominant culture is by rote. What’s terrifying about this insight applied to Duncan and Obama is how well it reflects the politics of Chicago (for Duncan), and the difficulties of multicultural transitions (for Obama). We “expected” a graduate of Columbia and Harvard to reflect the values of Alinsky and progressive organizers, and not those of Hitler and Mussolini. We were wrong.
2. Examples are not always exemplars, and that’s a big idea not just a little pun. The video could well be of a unique class or even of a unique school tuned and targeted to a distinctive community. Ravi Gupta may well have crafted a very productive alternative school, which addresses a very specific population. Frankly, his history suggests another theme I find long ignored by Charter critics: the coincidence of Charter growth and parochial school decline. Nuns – who were often fat under those horrendous habits – frequently worked their students much like this teacher in Tennessee. It worked fine for fresh immigrants, who could outgrow the regimentation through public school or more diverse postsecondary models. But those transitions are sharply curtailed today, with the growth of Common Core standards and standardized teaching credentials and curriculum.
3. The remarkable contrast between Alinsky-ite organizing, attention to local conditions, and unique tuning of tactics, and the rigidity of this video’s classroom is not accidental. It highlights the greatest risk we have ever faced in American political transitions: the corporate power of Pearson and charter movement vs. the grassroots varieties of well intended and superficially informal teaching. What is most frightening is how both TeaParty and Progressives share an antipathy to the kind of federal mandates promoted by Duncan and Obama, yet that antipathy is hardly sympathetic: we agree on the problem but totally disagree on the solution. And our disagreements get so absorbing that both sides are distracted from real solutions. That leaves Obama, et.al., with a fragmented opposition and able to impose those nun-like rigidities in lieu of positive alternatives.
The future does not look good from such a vantage.
I should add, incidentally, that I personally went through parochial schools until, after a year with the Jesuits in suburban Chicago, my mother interviewed the counselor only to discover their most recent graduate to get into MIT actually transferred to St. Louis University since he wanted to major in philosophy. “Any counselor who sent somebody to MIT for philosophy is a blithering idiot!”, she said and shifted me to public school. (It was a little harsh, but it was, after all, 1958!)
And I also worked with Saul Alinsky’s widow for several years, teaching interdisciplinary freshman and sophomore teams of students and teachers in a program we thought innovative in the 1970’s. It was so innovative that the departmental hegemony abolished it, my boss went on to spend 20 years with ATT, and I started other local revolutions in health, education, and politics.
Beckmann,
In my humble opinion, immigrant children are as deserving of high quality curriculum as those of us who were born here.
That “shape up or leave” policy allows charter schools and selective public schools to do so well. Regular, non selective public schools especially in poor neighborhoods more and more cannot discipline their students in any way, which means that troublemakers can run the school. No wonder many parents choose to withdraw their kids from such schools and enroll them in charters which will get rid of the worst-behaved.
I wonder how the teacher in the video would be evaluated using the criteria from the Framework for Teaching?
Actually a lot of kids and their parents love this sort of crap. A lot of people love military life. Understand that most people aren’t creative or potential PhD liberal arts candidates.
However, if it has high scores it’s probably through typical charter school gaming of the system.
You’re right. Lots of folks, particularly low income disenfranchised disempowered people believe strongly in militarism and corporal punishment get-tough on em structuring. I think this sort of marketing is aimed directly at this streak in our culture. Trouble is, it’s not terribly efficacious for anything other than encouraging obedience.
The 1% may want militarism for the proletariat to prepare them to spill their blood in senseless wars that line their pockets. Does anybody remember Halliburton?
Did you notice the many students who were not clapping with the rest and instead were inanimately standing there placing their hands behind their backs as they stood? It seemed they did not subscribe to the B.S. Also there were many students whose clapping was completely off with the beat, yet we really didn’t hear them. Is it possible that some of this was a pre-recorded track that the students in the video just “joined?”
I’m all for review but six minutes of repeat, repeat, repeat at the fifth grade level is just way too much. There should be some higher level application in the questioning or the teacher will lose some of the students who are thinking and making connections. Granted, six minutes is not a whole class, but the entire introductory operation seems to exist to keep the students busy. This is clearly behavioral only. Where was the anticipatory set connection to what they will be learning today? Was that just rehearsal?
I could not wait until the video ended. I stayed for the 6 minutes and cannot fathom how the children in this classroom cope with the nonsense.
The teacher should be on an improvement plan with measurable steps toward nonrenewal.
It’s very disturbing to watch, and I’m certain Bill and Melinda would now allow their own children to attend Nashville Prep Charter School or to be the objects of these lessons.
The kids wear uniforms, and the teacher is dressed like a hippo from Disney’s Fantasia, and I’m discounting her weight. Perhaps she should be wearing a Carnival Barker’s getup, complete with whip and few hoops for the kids to jump through. Ridiculousness. Anyone who thinks this is good teaching doesn’t have a grasp on reality.
Can you imagine these kids when they are prompted to give answered they haven’t been taught to bark? Are these “skills” useful in any other setting or classroom?
I wonder if they put hynotropic drugs in their lunches to make them compliant.
If this is what the 1%ers want from teachers, they’re clearly insane – oh, but perhaps when the Walmart boss says….you’ve worked 28 hours, go home now or we have to pay you benefits, its good to have someone bark back a compliant “yes sir.”
“If this is what the 1%ers want from teachers….
Clarification – it’s what the 1%ers want from teachers *of other people’s children”.
There’s another video posted on the home page that features parents, students and faculty talking about the school. It describes gardening, chess club, small group instruction, computer coding instruction and a variety of other things (including but not limited to chanting). Folks might want to take a look at this.
http://nashvilleprep.org/
It probably does not make sense for any school to be judged solely on the basis of 6 minutes in one class. I think it’s good for schools to help families learn more about what’s going on. Having not visited the school, it’s not possible for me to make definitive judgements. But it sounds like a lot more is gong on than what is described in the video that was posted.
So who filmed and posted this video? I’m guessing the school did, right? So obviously it’s something they’re proud of and want displayed.
Dienne, one of the reasons we promote multiple measures is that they give a more complete view of a student’s or a school’s accomplishments. So far we’ve seen two videos. They give a broader and complete view of the school than any single one does.
I think it’s great that this school is posting information about itself via video on its website. I’ve seen others so the same. It’s a great way of conveying information.
The video was painful to watch and I could only take about 2 minutes. But it is impossible to judge a class or a school based on one 6 minute video. Maybe the teacher only uses this method of teaching once in a while, not every single day? Maybe it is just a culminating activity to emphasize what was learned by other methods? Who knows, lots of questions and no answers. So I will not judge the school or the teacher by this video. And I am no fan of charter schools.
Obviously the “educators” at NP consider these bogus lessons exemplary and want to share the “no excuses” practices with the world through YouTube.
I agree. As a teacher, I have excellent 6 minute segments and terrible ones. Reformsters and reformster-loving admins love to play “gotcha” games with their teachers, only coming into the rowdiest, lowest performing classes to judge your efficacy. So I think it only fair to practice what I preach and withhold judgment. Still, it’s not a method that I would use.
But Andrew, wouldn’t you want to post an example of your best work on YouTube? This is clearly an example of what makes this school proud.
Of course if I had a choice, I would want my best work to be viewed. But maybe this is what the admin wants the world to see, and not the teacher. I’m just trying to be fair because I see how seldom my colleagues are treated fairly by virtually anyone in my district. Ultimately the problem isn’t this individual teacher.
…which is all the more reason to take this as an example of what goes on on charter schools. If the admin sees this as good education practice, we have every right to judge this as an example of what they view as good education practice.
This kind of parroting is what many alternative education vendors complain goes on in public schools. I heard an ad on the radio for one of those after-school tutoring businesses where they used a rote approach as an example of how the “public schools” teach to demonstrate why kids “aren’t learning.” This video just demonstrates an attempt to make a “hip” version of the same approach. Public schools moved far beyond this approach decades ago.
We have every reason to believe this is what this charter school deems effective teaching practice. Why else would they post it?
I suspect that most charters are very similar to this one. My critique of charters has a bit less to do with what’s going on in the particular classrooms and more on the issue of their near total lack of accountability as well as their obvious motive of wage depression.
The next NP board meeting will be held on June 25. The local media needs to send an investigative reporter to the meeting.
http://nashvilleprep.org/leadership-and-teaching/
Board Meeting Schedule
All Nashville Prep Board Meetings are public and open to parents and community members. For more information about attending meetings, please email info@republiccharterschools.org.
Nashville Prep Board meetings will be held at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center (41 Peabody Street Nashville, TN 37210) from 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm.
There are strict federal rules related to how Title 1 funds may be used for food.
http://nashvilleprep.org/enrolled-families/
“We are pleased to inform you that Nashville Prep received $31,363 for our school-wide Title I allocation. This money will be spent on personnel and costs for parent meetings, such as facility rent fees and food.”
as some have said, 6 minutes doesn’t tell you much about an educational program… they are showcasing this so they think it is effective and admirable. they’ve obviously been working on this for a while. what i see in this is rote learning, something that is a necessary part of education. what is not shown is whether the students have a chance to explore some of the “facts” they are chanting about.
ironic the number of students of color in this video, chanting right through the lyrics about setting up equal rights at the time of our founding. does this teacher help them explore what went into the declaration and the constitution, or the reason(s) why some colonists wanted independence, or the concept that while colonists were subordinated to the crown, there were colonists subordinated to other colonists, and black people subordinated to all of them? can’t tell. i hope so.
i think this is a fun activity that could be used in moderation to learn by rote, but what they are learning is superficial and incomplete. that is exactly the kind of knowledge that you’d see on high-stakes tests. so if they are doing well on those tests, i’d say they are finding a way to impart rote, artificial, incomplete, and biased knowledge to their students.
The approach shown in Mrs. McDonald’s class must be part of their school culture because the other classroom videos with different teachers use the snap, clap, military drill style. Their teachers are young and most are Teach for America. There sponsors include Walmart and their focus is data. I guess that is fine if that is what you want for your child but if you take away these marketing strategies, what do you have left?
How can you learn about freedom when you really don’t experience it? How can you prepare for life when you are told what to do and how to do it? And praised for responding one way?
So here is my plug for Montessori. Everyone can learn something about teaching and learning and life from the Montessori method of education even if you don’t teach it. You know … children are people too. Why don’t we treat them with respect?
Montessori: Learning for Life http://youtu.be/rZLq5Uttq8M
No doubt there would be a number of folks who would criticize the practices in a Montessori school. I can easily imagine some of my neighbors being appalled at spending $1,000 on bells, for example.
There is quite a bit of scientific research showing how humans learn best and what kinds of learning result from what kinds of teaching. If you want your child to be curious, inquisitive, free-thinking, critical, skeptical, independent, etc., progressive/Montessori-type education will get the best results. If you want your kid to be highly controlled, rigid, obedient, compliant, unquestioning, incurious, etc., then drill-and-kill, chant and repeat type education is best.
Perhaps we should require all schools to be Montessori schools.
Gripetty Gripetty Gripe. At least you are fair and consistent in your negativity. 🙂
I am certainly not negative about Montessori education. In fact I am one of the few regular posters here who advocates for the sort of parental choice that will make Montessori education available to the relatively poor.
TE – if we wanted the best citizenry for a democratic/republican form of government, that’s pretty much exactly what we’d do. Problem is, we don’t really want democracy, at least not for “those” people.
My explanation for why all schools are not Montessori schools is somewhat simpler: local stakeholders have diverse opinions about what schools should be like and in an effort not to offend too many too badly the local politicians construct a compromise school. That compromise school is what is viewed as the public school approach to education.
It’s actually not true that local politicians are the primary barrier to public Montessori schools, of which there are several hundred in this country and thousands abroad. The real barrier are the rigid standards of the American Montessori Society and the increasing fragmentation of Montessori methods into different ages, disciplines, and materials partnerships. There’s a lot of Montessori in most effective classrooms, but much of it is unconscious and informal. [for about five years I worked with an advocacy foundation promoting public Montessori schools in Chicago, New York, Washington and Boston.]
I agree with Joe Beckmann about how Montessori is becoming more fragmented. In my opinion, AMS is very disconnected with the problems that Montessori teachers and schools (both private and public) are facing and that they are not responding to our needs.
No matter where you teach or method you use, we need to respect the unique child. We have made the child voiceless. Here is an excellent article by a non-Montessorian, Steve Nelson, “Educational Reform: A National Delusion”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/education-reform-a-nation_b_5511589.html
It doesn’t divert in the way you think though. Money follows the student. If the magnet is a part of the district and pulls x amount of kids from the neighborhood school, then the money stays within the district. Union teachers within that district will still have a job to teach those kids, wherever they go in the district. I think the benefits of magnets are a bit overstated, but at least the provide options without being a Trojan horse that weakens unions and makes public money less accountable.
Andrew,
I don’t think the district is the right unit of account. If resources leave my local school so that class size is a little larger, maintenance is delayed, curriculum is narrowed, does it matter if those resources are going to another school in my district or out of my district? The loss to the students in the neighborhood school is the same.
Given your last couple of responses, it seems to me that you are not so much objecting to resources being pulled out of local schools but rather objecting to where those resources are going. Is that a fair statement?
TE, you’re really undercutting your own argument here. If you believe that every child should have education that is of the quality of Montessori, then just say that. If you want alternatives, advocate for more magnet schools. Why must the road of progress always go through the private sector, where it’s far less accountable to the public? We’re on the same page if you’re arguing that education in this country should be more generously funded so that all kids everywhere have access to top flight educations. But something tells me that’s not what you’re really arguing.
I do advocate for magnet schools. When posters here give reasons to be opposed to charter schools they are also reasons to be opposed to magnet schools. If charter schools harm neighborhoods by pulling students out of neighborhood schools, so do magnet schools. If charter schools skim, do do magnet schools. It is difficult to defend magnet schools without defending charter schools as well.
Magnet schools are both wholly public and therefore accountable and involve no profit motive, and are held to the same standards as other public schools, unlike charters.
I am not sure what you mean by wholly public, so you might flesh that out a bit. As for no profit motive, more states could emulate New York which does not allow for profit charter schools.
As for standards, I think that the ability to choose a school can substitute for some regulations that are required when students are assigned to a school based on street address and the independence of school decisions means that less regulation is required to prevent the public school system from being used for political patronage. In addition there are some regulations that are designed to impose uniformity across buildings which I think have to go if the goal is to provide alternative approaches to education.
Charters are independently owned and run but receive public funding. Like Boeing, Halliburton, or Con Ed. Regardless of whether they are for profit or not. They have very little accountability to the public or the communities in which they reside.
Magnet schools are like any other public comprehensive school–they simply offer different kinds of curricula. They are answerable to taxpayers and the communities they reside in and must meet all standards the state sets out for any public school.
Magnets and charters vary. Some magnets are statewide and not run by local districts. Hundreds of magnets have standardized tests that screen out most students, including those with many forms of special needs. In most states, it’s illegal for charters to use admissions tests.
Magnet Schools have many of the same features that routinely lead folks who comment here to condemn charter schools:
1) Magnet schools all skim by requiring families to apply to the program. Some magnet schools only admit students who have sufficiently high scores on standardized exams
2) Because of point 1, magnet schools do not reflect the SES/race blend of the community (Stuyvesant High School in NYC, for example, admitted a total of 8 African American students to the incoming class)
3) Because of point 1, magnet schools do not have the same number of students with learning disabilities as traditional zoned public schools
4) Magnet schools do not necessarily report to any local school board
5) Magnet schools do not necessarily hire only credentialed teachers (In a discussion in another thread I noticed that the magnet high school for the arts program in North Carolina, for example, has faculty members that are highly accomplished practitioners, but in at least one case, have no postsecondary academic training at all)
6) Magnet schools divert funding from traditional public schools
7) Magnet schools (and programs) occupy space that might be occupied by traditional public schools and their students.
8) Magnet schools destroy neighborhood cohesion by pulling students from the same neighborhood to different schools.
I am sure I could come up with some others, but this is a start.
Magnets do NOT divert funding from traditional public schools. They are public schools. And at least by providing testing upfront for the select magnets, they don’t play games with kids by kicking the “bad seeds” out later on for noncompliance, like charters. The point is, magnets aren’t in competition with other schools within the district in the way you describe. Money doesn’t vanish into marketing or into hedge funders’ pockets. Resources within a district aren’t hoarded away especially for the magnets. Yes, magnets don’t reside within the neighborhood of the students necessarily, but you can’t have it all if you want choice.
Diane herself discusses the distinctions a couple years back: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/09/charter-schools-an-magnet-schools/
Andrew,
Of course magnet schools divert funding from traditional neighborhood schools. Every dollar spent at Thomas Jefferson High in Fairfax County might have gone to a neighborhood school instead of that qualified admission magnet school. Magnet schools cause money to disappear from traditional school budgets.
Andrew, magnets do draw $ from other schools in their district. In districts where they have admissions tests, they increase the % of students with special needs in neighborhood schools. Sometimes they spend extra $ beyond what neighborhood schools spent.
These are facts readily available all over the country.
Some of the public school teachers who resent what magnets have done in their communities are people who have helped start charters.
Moreover, one of the reasons that there is a voucher program in Milwaukee is that key African American parents, including a Democratic state legislator, were frustrated that many neighborhood kids could not get into inner city magnets because it was a higher priority for some of these schools to bring in suburban white kids.
It doesn’t divert in the way you think though. Money follows the student. If the magnet is a part of the district and pulls x amount of kids from the neighborhood school, then the money stays within the district. Union teachers within that district will still have a job to teach those kids, wherever they go in the district. I think the benefits of magnets are a bit overstated, but at least the provide options without being a Trojan horse that weakens unions and makes public money less accountable.
I answered a similar response in another location.
Discard the rhetoric of Magnet and charter, since many if not most public Montessori schools are neither – just regular neighborhood schools with unusually high levels of parent, family, and community participation. (http://www.public-montessori.org/public-montessori)
Joe,
If you start clicking on the links in the census project, you will find that a good number of the listed schools are public charter schools even when the word charter is not in the name of the school.
The link: http://public-montessori.org/schools-map/by-state#wa
My reservations about charters and magnets reflect the imprecise language of both terms. At least in Massachusetts there are two kinds of Charter schools, and several levels of “innovation schools,” many of which would overlap the terminology of other states, and many of which would not.
The first charters I know of were actually started by the American Federation of Teachers in Boston as a part of their contract negotiation. Furthermore, most charters around here are in old parochial schools, left vacant by declines among the nuns. So the charter-magnet-innovation language is, to me at least, a lot of mush. They are mostly a way to compensate for that catholic shift, and to publicly finance parental options. Many of which are…Montessorian, either formally (as the list implies) or less formally.
I am all in favor of more precise language in the discussion here.
I’m not arguing for precision, but rather for clarity. The distinctions between charter, local innovation, magnet, or other kinds of “model schools” only obscure the more critical things they may – or may not share – like parent involvement, choice (in school, class, subject, teacher, or peers), flexibility, adaptability, performance or project-base vs. test and data driven, etc., etc. Simply describe what goes on in the school, rather than what the school says it is.
That’s what’s wrong with the video with which this – all too – lengthy thread began. It showed a rigid, dogmatic, and ruthless paradigm of a school which, when seen from other perspectives, or at other times, or in other contexts, is remarkably student driven. As sensitive and humane as this blog is – and has demonstrated itself as for thousands of words – the case was framed on a slanted and oblique foundation.
You’re playing a shell game with the word “divert.” Wherever students go in a district, money is earmarked for each child. In the instance of charters, money doesn’t have that kind of traceability or transparency. It can go wherever the charter group decides it should go…ads, someone’s pocket for “management.” It certainly doesn’t have to go to teaching or physical plant.
My beef with charters is not that they “skim” off kids anymore than I have a problem with AP classes skimming off the best kids in my high school. Choice is not evil to me, and neither frankly is tracking. My problem is twofold–they’re unaccountable and they’re designed to depress wages. They do those things without otherwise improving outcomes for kids or families. That’s what makes them a net failure in my book.
Your high school is where?
I am using the word “divert” as I think a parent would think of it. If resources leave the school my child is assigned to attend, I would say the resources have been diverted from my school. Where those resources go does not matter.
Again it seems that you are more concerned about who gets the diverted funds, not so much that they are diverted from traditional zoned schools. Is that correct?
Missouri. Why is that relevant?
Urban, rural, suburban?
Urban. Get to your point.
Thanks Andrew.
Some charters are designed to empower classroom educators and to make it possible for teachers to set their own salary, working conditions and curriculum. This isn’t a dream – it’s happening in more than 50 schools around the country.
More info here:
http://www.educationevolving.org/
Charter legislation (which I helped write in many states) is designed to give people a chance to use the best ideas available to help students – and to encourage districts to listen to educators. In some places, both things have happened.
Some of us go way back to when some districts did that too – although there were many 40 years ago who opposed allowing teachers and parents, working together, to create new options, just as they do now.
“fifty schools around the country”
There are almost 100,000 public schools in the U.S., and they take every child without restriction. Those 50 schools you mention represent 0.05% of the total number of public schools serving every child who walks through their doors.
I want to know the process these 50 school you helped develop use to accept students.
Please provide a list with addresses and Internet links. Are these schools opaque with information or transparent?
Do these 50 schools take every child that applies or do they filter out kids with learning disabilities and those crippled by poverty? Do they expel children who are at risk and difficult to teach like so many of the Charter schools do, for instance the KIPP chain?
With highly motivated children who arrive at school with a love of reading and who are reading at or above grade level, just about any teaching method works. Kids even learn with boring teachers.
Thanks for your questions, Lloyd. You and others interested in these schools can check them out here:
http://www.educationevolving.org/teachers/inventory/table
Some are district schools, such as several Boston Pilot Schools (which were initially proposed by the Boston Teachers Union)
Some are charters.
Sorry if I was not clear, I did not help create most of these schools – a wide array of people created them. I helped with a few of them.
A national poll recently found the majority of public school teachers are very interested in the possibility of creating a school, open to all, that they helped design and that reflected the very best ideas they have. More info on the teacher powered schools website.
Thank you. I’ll see what I can discover from those links.
“Teacher power” is an interesting concept. I think it would be great if teachers in the U.S. had the same responsibility and power that teachers in Finland have, but I don’t think that’s going to happen if profit driven corporations are involved in the process and high stakes testing is the plan.
Why do we need these teacher power experiments in the U.S., when we have a successful model in Finland, but there’s one thing missing in Finland that the U.S. also doesn’t have and that’s early childhood education programs for every child starting as young as four—something France has. In France, decades of early childhood eduction programs that reach 100% children four years old have reduced poverty in half from 15% to less than 7%.
Finland doesn’t need early childhood education with a poverty rate that’s less than five percent, but the U.S. does with childhood poverty rates at 23 percent, the highest among developed countries.
Unless the U.S. deals with childhood poverty with the only method that’s been proven to work, then everything else is a waste of time. These teacher power experiments—that might just be another fake education reformer trick, who are only after money—and the Machiavellian Common Core program are both doomed to failure.
In fact, the evidence is already in from twenty years of Charter Schools in one state, and that experiment is a huge failure, but the profit driven fake education reformers are doing all they can to keep the fountain of wealth they have managed to steal from tax payers.
Here’s a question I doubt anyone will have the answer to but I’m sure there will be opinions: Why did Obama plan in 2009 to ask Congress for $75 billion to fund a ten year early childhood education program in 2015.
Isn’t that the same as putting the cart first in front of the horse.
This is how it should have gone—-the ten year early childhood education program should have been implemented in 2009 when the Democrats held both houses of Congress.
Then after a full ten years of an early childhood education program that reaches 100% of four year olds, then a Common Core program could have been offered to the states with a trial period of ten years.
Instead, Common Core was literally shoved down the throats of the states with an implementation timeline of a few years without the time necessary to overcome all the challenges.
Any new program must span more than one generation to work. Start at the beginning and then build from the bottom up. What the Obama administration did was tart building the roof without any foundation or walls beneath the roof.
I have never seen a charter school that gives teachers power and autonomy to plan and implement curricula and other matters. I’ll look into this document and see if any of the schools are near me.
50 schools out of all the charter schools is a tiny fraction. Most if them embrace teacher churn by inexperienced newbies as a feature, not a bug.
Guy Brandenburg Sent from my iPhone so full of hilarious errors… ;-€}}
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Guy, I’ve visited hundreds of charters across the country where teachers have a lot of autonomy. But my point is that there are some great district as well as charters that are providing teachers with key leadership roles – including in some cases the power to serve on the board of directors where decisions are made about salary & other working conditions.
Joe
Visited HUNDREDS of charter schools , and you know for a fact that none of them churn up and throw away teachers but rather empower them?
I don’t believe it, based on what I’ve seen.
Name several of these miracle teacher-empowering charter schools that you have visited here in DC where I’m from, please.
In the DC area, there are a group of schools started by educators and social justice advocates that are named for Maya Angelou. She did not just give her name, but year after year came to the first of these schools to talk with and encourage the students. I don’t know whether teachers are on the board, but would suggests learning about these schools: http://www.seeforever.org/the-schools/
The Education Evolving group has a list of a list of about 60 district and charter public schools that are being led in varying ways by educators. I’m not giving their url here but you can find it by googling “teacher led schools”
Another wonderful example of teacher empowerment are the Boston Pilot Schools, first proposed by the Boston Teachers Union. This is a network of options within the Boston Public School district, most originally proposed by teachers and parents.
Guy, the whole idea that teachers would have an input into an individual school was what piqued my interest in the Charter School concept.
However, like you, I realized that this was a pie in the sky ideal which was tossed out to entice but not meant sincerely. If anything, teachers have less of a say, especially in schools which have no tenure or other job security.
Joe – I, too, was involved with the start up of a charter school. At first it had some unique ideas, but over time it became like any other school in the city. As it expanded, it drew children from the nearby local school which eventually closed and was replaced by a magnet school. The closed school was the one which had an active PTA and also had the 3 year old classes and the innovative early childhood program I mentioned in another post. They were known for their Father’s Day breakfast which brought dads and grand dads to the school in droves. It was a sad day when the charter stole away it’s base.
Thus began my disillusionment with the idea of Charter Schools.
Stand… stay… stay… good dog!
It seems like a lot of class time to spend on rote memorization of facts. You can Google everything they’re reciting, and most of us don’t need to reference those facts daily, as we would with times tables or symbols on the Periodic Table in chemistry. I think class time would be better spent teaching students to look those facts up, and then analyze, synthesize, and apply the facts in some way. That’s what we expect students to be able to do in college.
Feels more like jail than school. i am horrified for these children, and I am horrified for the future of our society in allowing this to be called education. To me, it is absolutely abusive and controlling.
They might do well in the military, or working for a large corporation such as Wal-Mart. They will also probably be able to adapt well if they end up in prison — and SOMEONE needs to fill all those prison beds so that private prison contractors can keep their cushy contracts.
It all depends on what you are training the kids for, right?
Reminds me of the summer of 1965 when I was at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego (MCRD). The only thing different is they don’t yell “kill” at the end of each segment of the drill.
She’s a drill instructor. Where is her military uniform and U.S. Marine Corps drill instructor hat.
These kids will be obedient puppets ready for the military out of school and off to the next U.S. war where they will cheerfully die or be crippled for life for their country and the profits of the U.S. weapons industry.
I notice that she doesn’t take her eyes of the kids at any point. She’s watching carefully for anyone who isn’t with the plan while the camera is rolling. Her eyes are always facing the majority of the students–always watching and scanning.
I wonder what the percentage is of kids who are tossed out of this mindless, brainwashing boot camp. I think this film was staged and kids who were identified as the most compliant and obedient had their moment of fame and/or were threatened with severe punishment if they didn’t comply to perfection during the filming.
They will be great corporate workers. Corporations desire well-trained monkeys. These kids may never entrepreneurs, but they will have steady jobs in a cubicle.
I am a Professor in Teacher Education. If my students wrote a lesson plan focused solely on this kind of rote memorization, with group recitation as the “assessment,” I would not give them a passing grade.
Given, six minutes is not the whole lesson, but it does show what was taught and what this school defines as “proficient.” And perhaps there was another form of assessment that was more individualized.
I’m also not saying that none of my students should ever do this. But I require them to demonstrate in my classes that they can do more than just drill and kill.
It is painful to see a white teacher leading mostly African-American children in demeaning, hands-behind-the back training (this is not “education”). Let’s hope this drill only takes place for six minutes of the period, as it is somewhat acceptable for memorizing facts.
For those who support it, I would ask, “Would you place your own child (grandchild) in this school? If your answer is No, ask yourself why you would support it for other people’s children.
This is what I would like to know: Are the test scores legitimate or is the school drilling the children on the exact test items? If the latter, then the scores are not valid.
This video is creepy as hell.. and anyone who defends the teaching displayed within has lost his or her mind.
“Educational Reform: A National Delusion” by Steve Nelson
‘As I watch the education “debate” in America I wonder if we have simply lost our minds. In the cacophony of reform chatter — online programs, charter schools, vouchers, testing, more testing, accountability, Common Core, value-added assessments, blaming teachers, blaming tenure, blaming unions, blaming parents — one can barely hear the children crying out: “Pay attention to us!”‘
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/education-reform-a-nation_b_5511589.html
If he was really concerned, perhaps he would work in an urban public school instead of an elite private school.
And if you were really concerned, Joe, perhaps you would denounce the acceptance of foundation money to promote these crappy charter schools –which even you admit are merely “test prep” factories.
Charter vary widely some work very creatively with kids traditional schools push out. Though it is almost never mentioned here, traditional district schools receive millions a year from various foundations.
Are you an urban public school teacher and/or parent?
Oh wait, I see now that it was Joe Nashville who said “test prep.” Maybe you can’t even recognize lousy teaching when you see it.
An insult isn’t an answer. While you prefer to be anonymous, my name and record are clear.
Student, parent and professional groups associated with district public schools have given me a variety of awards for my work in urban public schools over the last 42 years
Doesn’t mean I agree with everything that happens in that video. Just means I do have some sense on what helps promote learning..and that there is not single best approach for all students in all subjects..
I love it Joe Nathan. I teach in an urban public school. Therefore, I am really concerned. Others such as Randi Weingaren and Cami Anderson who barely taught at all have no true concern. This is a great yardstick.
Joe has a long history of self-aggrandizement here, but those of us who are aware that he claims to be a progressive yet has accepted funds from the right-wing Walton and Bradley foundations, to promote charter schools, are not at all impressed.
Virtually every educator here who does not use their real name does this because, in our country today, teachers can and do get fired for speaking their minds. This is especially true for those of is who don’t belong to a union –although union protections of due process rights is no guarantee either.
Later this week I’m team-teaching a class on school choice at the Univ of Mn where participants are going to read and hear from a variety of perspectives. That will include reading some of Diane Ravitch writing and hearing from the Minnesota State Teacher of the Year, who is no fan of charters (and does work in an urban district option).
Local school districts take $ from “far right wing” companies every day. It’s called taxes. That’s apparently ok.
Wow. What poor reasoning skills you have, Joe, if you think there is an analogy with the taxes paid by right-wing billionaires with your taking money from those very companies which aim to privatize public education across this country.
If you really need to be taught how little corporations are required to pay in taxes, here’s an example from your favorite poverty-wage paying company:
“Walmart Gets $7.8 Billion ‘Bill’ for Its Taxpayer-Funded Breaks, Subsidies: New report reveals how tax system ‘provides special treatment to America’s biggest corporations and richest families leaving individual taxpayers and small businesses to pick up the tab.'”
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/15-8
There is no equivalence between taxes that are mandated and grants that are voluntary and thus implicitly or explicitly have strings attached.
Joe Nathan responded to the Nelson reference with ad hominem commentary. It is hypocritical to complain about being insulted.
This just in… Nashville Prep just deleted all the Comments from the video posted on YouTube (and the Nashville Prep YouTube channel)… and also disabled the Comments section so no one else can comment.
This included several months of comments—most of them negative… “This is disgusting” etc..
Again, here’s the video with the newly-disabled COMMENTS section
OMG ! Corporate reformers don’t make kids in charter schools engage in mindless chanting or repetition of the speaker..
If that Nashville Prep video wasn’t bad enough, check out the professonal development that Chicago Public Schools “corporate reform” management put their teachers through:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/28/a-video-that-shows-why-teachers-are-going-out-of-their-minds/?tid=pm_pop
Nashville Prep? More like Nashville Test Prep…
Looks like Old McDonald really has a farm.
I hope she gave each student a biscuit at the end of class.
Sorry. Not farm, I meant circus.
I thought they use carrots. Or is that just for teachers?
Hmmm, not all students are clapping, AND…OMG more than a few are not clapping on the beat or in unison. Remedial clapping lesson during recess required a.s.a.p.
Well, if we gave students proper pre-reading preparation, like rhythm, instead of insisting that they all have to read by age 5, maybe they could clap in time. . . . just in case, Sandra, I’m supporting you, not criticizing you!
Judith, just as not all children will read by age five, not all kids will have a sense of rhythm by that age.
Some skills cannot be rushed.
Only made it to 20 seconds…..seems like a parody from Jon Stewart or Saturday NIght Live.
Seems like they are memorizing rote facts.
They will be excellent at retaining facts.
I actually can see what the teacher is doing. Her method both engages the students’ attention and assists in learning basic rote facts.
If this is her only style of teaching then these kids are in trouble, but if it is a way she reinforces concepts, it’s just her preferred technique.
I used to create songs to help the students remember their facts.
Let’s not judge her entire teaching style based on a seven minute video.
Good points, Ellen. There is a rush to judgement by a lot of folks who post here. And a willingness to ignore another video in which families and students praise the school. I’m certainly not saying it’s perfect.
But there is clearly more to the school like gardening, chess, and the arts, than is reflected in that much criticized clip.
Well, as you know, students learn as much (or more) from the pedagogy being employed as from the lesson content. What does the filmed pedagogy teach?
1. follow orders
2. there is only one right answer
3. Your opinion doesn’t matter.
This approach is inappropriate for developing a mentally healthy, competent contributor to a democratic society. It is, however, excellent training for enduring the rigors of prison or the military (or, I suppose, living in an oppressive police state).
As teachers (real ones), one ought to consider the impact of our pedagogy on the outcome we seek. In her case, she seeks correct test scores. In my case, I sought an educated (drawn out) student who could use their past experience to synthesize solutions to new problems. I’m afraid her techniques would have been counterproductive for achieving my goals.
John, I’m sure you are an excellent teacher, but did you work in a high poverty, all minority inner city school?
I have, and it is not easy. My A game turned to mud. What worked in the suburbs did not work with these children. I struggled to find a voice that they would relate to. I didn’t use chanting, but I would have if that’s what it took to engage them.
Perhaps you had the Midas touch. I had to constantly reinvent myself to successfully find a way to reach them.
It is easy to condemn, a lot harder to walk in their shoes.
No Midas touch, here.
I have never taught in the ‘inner city’ (euphemism for segregated urban) school. I did, however, teach in a poor rural 100% white school (that’s where my fondly-remembered remedial math kids were).
I sought to teach close to where I lived, and I never lived in the ‘inner city’. The only time when I had to travel some distance was when I went to a State where I didn’t have certification. There, I taught the sons and daughters of the wealthy in classes of about 15 kids. I did, however, seek and obtain certification in that State, which gave me the flexibility to take a job only 10 minutes from my rented residence two years before I retired.
I didn’t shy away from the ‘inner city’ because of some queasiness at rubbing elbows with ‘them’. In fact, my ‘best bud’ in first grade was Roy, a Black kid. He’s the only one of the boys in the class I can name, today. In college, my love of jazz took me into dives in east Cleveland where I was the only white face (could give you so many stories about my friends in those days). I paid my tuition by working on a general labor crew at Republic Steel (the crew was 95% Black, the bosses were 100% white). Learned a LOT from those guys.
My rather extensive contact with ‘inner city’ people (other than teaching) has led me to the conclusion that they are pretty much like everybody else. Their experience, of course, was a bit different (and, thus, our conversations were so interesting), but they wanted the best for their children, which is a natural position for any vertebrate.
This was before the recent increase in ‘race awareness’. I would still do what I did in college, however I would hesitate to teach in a school with an overwhelming Black population unless it was a team-teaching situation with a Black partner. As I said, pedagogy often teaches more than the lesson content, and inner city kids don’t need to learn that ‘white folks’ are in charge. .
John, thank you for sharing your background. It sounds like you had a long and fulfilling career with a lot of different experiences.
Inner city equates to poverty. Buffalo is one of the poorest cities in the country. Some schools have 100% free or reduced lunch, in fact many schools simply have 98% free lunch. And while many parents want what is best for their children, there are numerous reasons why this does not translate to success, especially for the black male. Where else would a district celebrate for reaching a 58% graduation rate (vs 46% from the year before)?
There are two major problems in the BPS. The first is poor attendance rates. The second is taking school seriously. Even if the child is in class, they are not necessarily engaged in learning. And these distracted students often disrupt students who might be willing to get an education. (In addition, this statement does not include special ed or ELL.)
It doesn’t help that programs which seemed to be working have been discontinued over the years due to a lack of funding, despite an almost billion dollar a year budget.
Of course, the issues are too complex to go into greater detail. The upshot is that the problems cannot be easily resolved. Closing and re opening schools and getting rid of faculties or principals just rearranges the deck chairs of a sinking ship. I won’t say Titanic because I don’t think the BPS is doomed.
Ultimately, the climate of the city needs to change. And this dynamic is way beyond the purview of an individual teacher.
“They will be excellent at retaining facts.”
What a crock. Group chanting promotes obedience, not the learning, understanding and retention of facts. When kids are tested individually on this sort of thing, many have gaps and can only recite the full script in the group, and comprehension is not promoted. I saw all this demonstrated at the military style middle school I attended. They made us memorize a lot of US history facts, including the Gettysburg Address, and regularly chant as a group. There was a lot of music to go along with it all. The only part I liked was the music, but that didn’t help me learn, understand and retain information. (And out of school, the only thing my peers and I repeated was the music.)
Few of us could recite individually when put on the spot. When asked what the Gettysburg Address meant, I recall many students saying just that a long time ago (some said 87 years ago), a lot of guys died in a battle. To this day, the parts where I had gaps in my memorization of the Gettysburg Address remain. (In contrast, poems that I memorized because I wanted to learn them I can still recite in full.)
Fortunately, in high school and college, US history was taught to me in much more meaningful ways and that stuck. This is because I had adept teachers who knew how to bring to life such highly charged information to students, through a variety of teaching methods.
People’s brains are more like encyclopedias than dictionaries. They are likely to retain in long term memory general concepts that they comprehend, details that are relevant to that understanding and what is meaningful to them. This is how the hippocampus functions; it helps to set important information in the brain much like hairspray. That is why people don’t need to be drilled to be able to recall critical events in their lives that are highly charged emotionally, such as their wedding day. Competent teachers know and capitalize on this. Less skilled teachers resort to constant drilling.
CT – I know my math facts from being drilled. I remember the Greek alphabet from a song (useful when doing crossword puzzles). I must admit I don’t remember all the words to poems or songs from my youth. I have retained important dates such as 1776, 1803, 1848, 12/7/41, November 11th, etc.
I was in an unruly fifth grade class. The teacher took us to the gym and forced us to march as a group to punish us. We loved it, so it became a reward. She must have been on a drill team and she taught us different maneuvers. Why did we love it? It was a constant. It had form. It had rules. We could count on it. The rest of the day was chaos, but that half hour a day gave us a sense of sanity.
So I get it.
Sometimes it’s not what we’ve learned but the process. If this process provides stability, then let’s not discount it. A master teacher will build upon the rote. I’m not sure if Ms McDonald has those skills, but I’m not going to judge her on the basis of a six minute video.
Well, Ellen, you appear to agree with me concerning the importance of pedagogy. You evoke a valid consideration. No teacher can “connect” to every student. I (myself) was pretty iconoclastic as an elementary school student. I enjoy that quality in my friends, today. I also sought to infuse that ethic in those I taught (and, my area was science, so the instruction was very much to the point). On the other hand, there is a natural human need for structure. In fact, that tension between structure and iconoclasm is what we call ‘ART’. which is clearly of intrinsic interest to our species
Learning to march together in a group can be fun for a while, but it is an authoritarian model and, as a steady diet, it encourages a dangerous dependence
I agree, John. My motto: Everything in moderation.
Not only that, but WHY is James Madison the “Father of the Constitution,” instead of the author? What was the King of Britain (not England at that point) doing to get too much power? Why was the Bill of Rights added to the Constitution? These are all important things that are completely left out of this approach. I teach 8th grade U.S. History, and I want the students to know the facts, as well as HOW and WHY those facts came to be.
Ellen, I guess my question would be, then why is this video only being posted on YouTube? I agree that a variety of methods is a good idea, and chanting and singing are good techniques. But if this is not her only style of teaching, why is it the only one being promoted?
You all make good points.
Playing the devil’s advocate:
It is difficult to keep the attention of a class full of minority inner city children. If the chanting works to get and keep their attention, then it serves a purpose. It also serves as a type of security where an individual can get “lost in the crowd” and still be a part of the group.
However, whether this technique is education worthy depends upon what happens next. Can they remember the facts and manipulate them to develop higher level thinking skills? Can they synthesize the facts and answer an essay question requiring more than a rote statement of facts?
I’m not saying that chanting facts is the best way to teach, I’m saying it is one technique. It should be one of many to reach out to all the students in the class.
And Judith, perhaps this YouTube video is the best she’s got.
Ellen (and others) Here’s a link the video that’s on the school’s home page. It mentions (and shows) gardening and karate, and also mentions computer programming and chess as other things students do.
It’s much broader than the video that has produced so much comment.
Looks like the school is more complex that a single video can show.
It must be difficult to garden with your hands behind your back and while chanting.
Joe, please apply your research skills to defending traditional public schools, too. You only appear when your charters are under attack and you can always find an anti public school story to bolster your ego.
Here’s an example of praise for district schools in Boston from yesterday.
Joe Nathan
June 23, 2014 at 9:26 pm
First proposed by the Boston Teachers Union, the Boston Pilot Schools are a great example of district public schools developed as option by teachers throughout the city. Here’s a recent report about how it’s going: http://www.ccebos.org/BPS_Report_2014_6-2-14.pdf
Joe, please explain why replacing transparent, democratically run public schools with opaque charters that are often riddled with fraud is going to reduce poverty in the United States.
So far, in twenty years, there’s no evidence—NONE—that corporate, for profit Charters have done anything to reduce poverty through the mostly inferior education they offer children.
Two Stanford studies of Charters found that most are either the same or inferior to the public schools and only a small ratio show promise but in every case, the small number of more successful charters gets rid of the very kids who need the most help—at risk, minority children who live in poverty.
Lloyd, thanks for the question. It appears we share a deep commitment/passion to dramatic reductions in poverty. Over a 40+ year as an urban public school educator, parent, PTA president, advocate, & researcher, I’ve seen countless examples of young people from low income families who were encouraged, inspired, motivated by public school educators. I’d never say public schools can solve all the problems. But there are many youngsters from low income families, often deeply troubled families who’ve entered public schools, graduated and gone on to do well.
Like many others, I helped start and worked in some district options in the 1970’s. Some of them were and are hugely helpful. Others, not so much. I’d say the same about charters. At their best, public schools whether district or charter, have a huge positive impact on youngsters from low income families, helping them move out of poverty.
But those students from poverty who actually cooperated in the classroom were few compared to those who didn’t. In fact, I documented those conditions the one school year I kept a daily journal—the journal I used as my primary source for “Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose”.
I know all about how poverty affects the motivation of children to learn in school, because I was one of those kids as a child. I was born to poverty with two parents who dropped out of high school to survive during the Great Depression. As a young child, I suffered from severe, life threatening challenges to my health. I had severe dyslexia and after being tested at age seven, my mother was told I’d never learn to read or write. If I was one of today’s children, the results of my standardized tests might condemn a teacher to losing their job.
And yet here I am, writing this comment and publishing books more than sixty years later. In fact, my first historical fiction novel, “My Splendid Concubine” is currently ranked #2 in Historical Chinese Fiction on Amazon and is sandwiched between Lisa See @ #1, and Amy Tan @ #3. And I never attended a private sector, for profit charter school.
And that’s why this obsession with standardized testing and torturing/punishing teachers for something they have no control over is a crime that I think President Obama should be impeached for and Arne Duncan spend the rest of his life in prison—what I’m talking about is poverty. Teachers can do nothing about poverty. The children must do it for themselves and if they don’t have the support of their parents driving them and they aren’t self motivated, the odds of that happening are very low. For most of the thirty years I was a teacher, I often worked 60 to 100 hours a week. I made thousands of phone calls to parents with little to show for it from the students. Moving one kid who lived in poverty from failing my English class to passing took a HUGE effort on my part.
There is no need for private sector charter schools. What we NEED is high-quality, early childhood education programs that are kept out of the greedy hands of private sector, for profit corporations and kept in the public sector where transparency is guaranteed.
The only change needed—in addition to early childhood education that reaches 100% of three or four years olds—is to put the public school teachers in charge of curriculum, discipline and make sure the brick and mortar schools are healthy to work and learn in.
AND get administrators, elected school boards, politicians, CEOs, Eli Broad, hedge fund billionaires, the Walton family and Bill Gates out of public education and their corporations out of taking over public schools! In fact, Bill Gates should share the prison cell with Arne Duncan.
Lloyd, congratulations on your hard work and subsequent success. As they said at last night’s high school graduation- “You did it!”
Even though you are living proof it can be done, there are too many kids left in the mud. The current system, and especially CC and the attached assessments, are going to make it even harder to get out of the muck.
Hopefully, we can make our voices heard before it is too late.
I may have made it but I didn’t make it alone.
First, when I was seven, my mother played a vital role by teaching me to read at home after I was “tested” at school by the so-called “experts”, and the test results said I would never learn to read or write.
For children who are not as fortunate to have a parent willing to use tough love with corporal punishment—my mother would be crucified today and I would have stayed illiterate—to make her reluctant child learn to read, there has to be early childhood education programs, without the corporal punishment, that focus on literacy and a love of reading starting as early as three available for 100% of American children and mandatory for children who live in poverty. Possibly, kids that can’t be reached in that program could be sent away to juvenile boot camp schools with tough discipline and the only ticket to get back home is catch up in literacy then stay there.
Maybe if there had been early childhood education programs back then, my mother wouldn’t have had to result to the corporal punishment to force me to learn to read. I started to learn to read at age seven. An early childhood program could catch kids three for four years earlier.
Second, as an avid reader of science fiction and historical fiction, I barely graduated from high school and hated school becasue I didn’t fit in with the social crowd—my hate of going to school had nothing to do with the teachers or the schools. It had to do with cruel kids. Although today, with the obsessive test them to death mentality of the fake education reformers being led by Bill Gates and his partner, President Obama, I probably would have hated the schools, too. Everyone else in the fake education movement are just puppets of these two or maybe just Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Waltons.
In addition, I credit the U.S. Marines playing a vital role that led to college on the G.I. Bill. Again, the Marines applied tough love with corporal punishment—at least they did back then—and it paid off because that instilled the discipline this wild child needed to toughen it out in college and learn how to be a student. And I was a wild child until the Marines go hold of me. My parents couldn’t control me or my older brother and my brother was more wild than I was explaining why he stayed illiterate to the day he died at 64.
Lloyd, your story points out that there are many paths to the same goal. I was told my son would never learn to read or write. I tried numerous programs, such as Fast Forward and Irlen Glasses. The school provided a personal teacher aid while he was in elementary school, but it was his middle school reading teacher (as well as the speech teacher) who over a three year period successfully taught my dyslexic son to read. She was a gem. Yesterday, I ran into my son’s resource teacher and I mentioned Mrs Zelinski, who recently retired. He shared that she was the type of teacher that he strived to be. (Which shores up my argument that veteran teachers need to be in schools to mentor those who are beginning their careers – thus the need for tenure.) My son and I were just discussing how well he did in middle school, which he readily admitted was because of all the help he received. I can’t thank those teachers enough.
We won’t discuss the hell he found in high school, not because of the school, but because of his inability to cope. He definitely needed a different program, but I have no clue what it could have been. The district tried numerous formats, but even when they worked, the result was not a high school diploma. We were happy they had a special GED program with a teacher who talked him through the process so he could be successful in this manner.
Again, there needs to be multiple ways to get a high school diploma, not just the one size fits all of the CCSS.
Your mom’s technique would not have worked with my son, but it definitely worked with you.
You are right. One size does not fit everyone. What worked for me, will not work for everyone else who has challenges learning to read.
The Common Core Crap is incredibly wrong headed. I’m still having trouble defining my anger at the fake education reformers and any fool who supports them or who profits off children and taxpayers. It sometimes takes an iron clamp down on my emotions to keep from spewing Marine Corps worthy profanity in comments at some of the people who support the CCC agenda of the Obama White House.
Intellectually, I know that reaction would achieve nothing but …
Once someone has decided to be a fool who thinks that the public schools are broken—when they are not—and choice along with bubble tests will solve all that’s wrong with America, they have become the fool who will probably always be a fool.
The public schools are not broken, they are not riddled with lazy or incompetent teachers and what’s needed is to stop waging wars all over the globe and focus on rebuilding the infrastructure of this country along with properly funding the schools in addition to a high quality, early childhood literacy program that isn’t cast in stone and offers flexibility for children who are challenges with reading.
I don’t want to hear any fool say that would be to costly, because the workers who rebuilt the infrastructure and teach America’s children are going to put the money they earn back into the economy unlike the top 1% who hoard most of their wealth, which will eventually cause a economic blockage similar to a plugged up toilet that can’t be fixed.
I agree with you totally. Unfortunately we are preaching to each other. It’s the general public who needs to get a clue – they are currently being brainwashed (even intelligent people have drunk the kool aid).
We don’t need every adult in America to be aware of what’s going on, and I’m not so sure the segment of the public that counts the most is all that clueless. A recent Gallop survey reported that about half of adults hadn’t heard of Common Core yet.
But I think that most Americans who haven’t heard of Common Core probably don’t read much or listen to the news because they are too busy watching reality TV, playing video games, snorting drugs or swilling booze. And I’d be willing to bet that most of the people who haven’t heard of Common Core also don’t vote.
According to a Pew Research Center study, regular voters in the United States constitute roughly a third (35%) of the adult population.
And in the same Pew study, we discover that 46% of college graduates are regular voters but only 28% of H.S. grads or dropouts are. Earnings also play an important role in regular voter turn out. Forty-four percent of voters who earn $75,000+ annually turn out to vote compared to 26% for those who earn less than $20K.
Do you see what I see? We don’t need to reach a majority of American adults. We only have to reach the regular voters who are mostly better educated, earn more and probably read, because they are engaged and care.
In fact, Diane has reported on recent elections where pro-public education candidates have been winning. For instance, Ras Baraka won the mayor election in Newark against huge odds where the other candidate outspent Baraka five to one because the loser was backed by the fake education reformers who have money to burn but want more.
I think that most regular voters aren’t that stupid or foolish. Once they discover both sides of an issue, they will usually vote for people like Ras Baraka in Newark, and most of the people who are the easiest to fool, don’t vote and don’t care.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/newarkitecture/blog/2014/05/ras-barakas-election-newark-mayor-deals-major-blow-school-privatiz
Right, Lloyd. Val Flores was outspent nearly 7-1 in her race for the Colorado state board and she won 59-41.
Lloyd, I am basing my comment on my talks with people who are seemingly intelligent and who do vote. It’s wishful thinking that the general public sides with teachers. There are too many anti teacher people out there. (teachers bad, and they get the summers off). Our hope comes from the parents who recognize that something is wrong with the current system. Our danger is from children are in a better situation, such as private or elite charter schools or those who feel “I’ve got mine, too bad for you!” I’ve talked with those ilk as well.
On a more positive note, Amazon has recommended I purchase the book you wrote based on my reading selections. How ironic is that – the same day you make me aware of it, it pops up to my attention? I guess I’ll have to read it.
Let’s examine the odds of one person talking to someone who really knows what’s going on with the education issue, because they take the time to fact check and listen to both sides and then decide based on the validity of evidence both sides use to support their argument?
According to that Pew Research Center study I mentioned in a previous comment in this thread, regular voters in the United States constitute roughly a third (35%) of the adult population.
And in the same Pew study, we discovered that 46% of college graduates are regular voters but only 28% of H.S. grads or dropouts are. Earnings also play an important role in regular voter turnout. Forty-four percent of voters who earn $75,000+ annually turn out to vote compared to 26% for those who earn less than $20K.
Now, to crunch numbers: There are about 242 million adults in the United States and 35% of that is 84.6 million. Forty-six percent of those who vote regularly is 38.9 million. I haven’t been able to discover how many college graduates are avid readers but I do know that about half of colleges graduates continue to read books annually for enjoyment and enrichment and that about 20% of those who leave high school without going to college are annual book readers (I’ve researched and written on this topic @ http://lloydlofthouse.org/2012/04/26/authors-finding-readers-viewed-as-single-page/)
Taking those numbers into account, we have no choice but to assume that a very small segment of the population of regular voters actually will take the time to read for recreation and academic enrichment of some kind. If open minded, these would be the voters who would fact check claims made by both sides of an issue and be able to discuss it without the bias of a Harlan or TE. This is the block that will decide how to vote based on facts and not emotion.
There are 65 million avid readers in the U.S. and 60.9 million regular voters who may belong to this group—I don’t think it is a coincidence that these two numbers are closely aligned. Out of 242 million adults, what are the odds that one person would be talking to someone willing to take the time to fact check an issue we are also interested in?
I think that the success of the American democracy and public education is in the hands of those avid readers who area also regular voters. Once the resistance to the fake education reformers reaches those people with our side of the argument, the odds of beating back the Obama agenda for education in the U.S. goes up significantly because that segment of the population may represent the largest voting block in the country.
Given your interest in reducing poverty, you might find the following suggestions interesting. They were presented last week:
http://www.hamiltonproject.org/addressing_poverty/
Well, we really can’t be the judge of effective teaching from watch a 6 minute video. Learning takes place in students’ minds and is therefore invisible, any attempt to judge teacher effectiveness by observing individual lessons is either intellectually dishonest or dangerously ignorant. The fact that the schools’ results are excellent reveals rather more than a snap shot.
That said, this looks excellent and likely to result in learning (the long-term retention and transfer of knowledge and skills) because the children are showing evidence that they have retained something they have previously learned. This is is an essential step towards independence. If you don’t know something you can’t think about it. Try it. You can’t, can you? And the more we know the more sophisticated our thinking can be.
If this six minutes was all these children ever did I suspect we might have a problem but I’m willing to offer good odds that it isn’t. I suspect that these six minutes are a routine with which Miss McDonald begins her lessons before getting on to something else.
Typo in 1st line: watching. Sorry
David, thanks for using your name. Are you a teacher in the UK? Agreed that making sweeping judgements about a school based on one video (while ignoring another ) is unwise.
Hi – I am a UK teacher, yes.
Great, now we have trolls from the other side of the pond here, too. It was bound to happen, since Pearson hails from the UK and they are implementing many of the same corporate “reform” strategies over there now, too.
Folks, ignore this guy. We should expect nothing less from this teacher, author, seller that works at an academy in England, which is the British version of charter schools. He loves Doug Lemov’s drill sergeant military style approach to teaching. as in this quote from his blog, “Doug Lemov points out in Practice Perfect that practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.”
So, people should be practicing their weddings more? Nope. Charter school/academy teachers should be learning more about the brain.
Thanks for the research. It seems trolls have plenty of money to support their habit, so they show up everywhere (not just under bridges, there they belong).
Erm – what an odd ad hominem attack
1) disagreeing is now trolling?
2) I don’t work at an Academy
3) Obviously I can’t see much purpose in practising weddings but I am aware that some people do see merit in a rehearsal before they have their big day. Presumably you think this is silly?
I agree that learning about the brain is a pretty useful end. I suggest reading all you can about cognitive bias.
You didn’t notice how disgusted most people here are by that video?This is because, in the US, that method is implemented by mostly white teachers in highly segregated charter schools for poor children of color, which many of us find abhorrent. Trolls come to sow discord and that is exactly what you did.
Your own site says that you are from Clevedon, the Guardian indicated you work at Clevedon School and the school website says they became an academy in 2012. Maybe you work elsewhere now, but you support Doug Lemov’s drill sergeant methods and those practices are disgusting to me, especially since I have implemented so many other strategies that are engaging, effective and respectful of children, including low-income children of color.
I was talking about actual brain research, not that packaged Whole Brain Teaching nonsense. And wedding rehearsals are unnecessary for placing in long-term memory and/or recalling the actual wedding itself.
Another one for the ignore list, Linda!
Is it not the ultimate irony that they are chanting about FREEDOM??? It is so ironic that students must think out math facts and write “novels” about how they got their answer. In reality, going to higher math requires hard core memorization of basic math facts. Yet this has been “taboo”. And then we see this video in a social studies classroom where they are performing ritual movements, ritual chants, called on to answer with immediacy on the spot and to sing rote “history facts”. Just wondering how the English language learner fares in this “social studies” class? Just wondering how a student with motor issues fares when asked to stand, turn, clap… or a child with speech delays or in a wheel chair or with crutches??? What would happen if one student “deliciously” decided to exercise his/her FREEDOM OF SPEECH and suggest a debate as to the effectiveness “of this approach to supposed social studies”!!!!
It’s a charter school: you’d be hard-pressed to find children with significant needs in their classrooms. Public schools, however, take everyone.
Traditional Public schools take students from a well defined geographic area, reject students from outside that area.
I think I recall that NYC public schools contract out the education of some students. Is that correct?
I don’t know about NYC: I teach in Connecticut. Comparing the “selection” of students by geographic area to the selection of students based on academic ability is an apples-oranges argument.
No school can beat the selective admission magnet schools. Stuyvesant High School admitted a grand total of 8 African American students.
There you go, TE, citing facts. Of course Sty doesn’t take all kinds of kids. Can it be, a district public school that uses dreaded standardized tests to reject students? Yes, it Sty has company in other district schools all over the US.
Are you equating differentiated instruction with charter schools’ exclusion of children with disabilities? That’s quite a leap. A school district that provides educational alternatives cannot be compared to a school that turns away children so that they can flaunt their test scores and graduation rates.
If you want to say that qualified admission charter schools are not really public schools that seems reasonable. That was not clear in your original post.
So exclusion of student with disabilities is “differentiation of instruction.” Apparently it’s ok if a district with hundreds of thousands of students doe this but not a charter with 80 – 110 kids.
Let’s be clear that even the nation’s single largest district (NYC) doesn’t find space in its schools for all students with disabilities. The NY TImes recently wrote about a NY State Auditor report questioning millions of dollars spent at a private school with which NYC contracted:
“The audit, reported by The Daily News on Wednesday, followed a series of audits and New York Times articles about waste and fraud in the state’s program for preschool special education. At least one provider in that program is serving a prison term and officials of another provider have been indicted.”
I can’t speak about NYC schools because I know nothing about them. The districts where I live are small: many have regional high schools and pre-k to 8 schools. They are obligated to educate ALL children in their towns. If charter schools want to selectively choose their students, fine, but they cannot nor should not compare their students’ achievement to those of public schools. Again, apples and oranges.
Lehrer – I agree it’s stupid to compare district & charter test scores for many reasons. here is no such thing as a typical district or a typical charter. There approaches vary. It’s a bit like trying to compare gas mileage of a rented & leased car. Not a meaningful comparison.
Lehrer
If you’re new here, take my advice and ignore TE. His arguments are written on a Mobius strip. He thrives on irrational discussion and is the master of circular logic. If you choose to banter with him consider do so for the sport.
I tend to argue from evidence and am interested in logical consistency. Not all value either one.
Actually, I’ve been here a while, NY teacher. I just survived the most horrendous year of my 25+ year career thanks to CT’s insane teacher evaluation program and the CCSS. I am coming out of my coma. Truth be told, I enjoy reading TE’s views. I may not agree with him (at least I think he’s a he!), but his arguments help me think through my opinions on issues.
You’re a better man than me Lehrer. Enjoy your summer and stay positive. This won’t last much longer.
Thanks! Same to you!
Lehrer,
I had a horrible year too. I hope you didn’t quit. The goal is to make our lives miserable. They want to feed the Data Monster, run whole class checks, maintain logs and assorted other nonsense. Sometimes I feel they are speaking a foreign language. Have a restful summer and study the domains of the stupid rubric.
I did not quit, but was oh so tempted at times! It took me until spring to realize that the job was no longer possible to do. Then I felt liberated. If the job could not be done by one person, I could not stress about everything I was not doing. I stopped going into my classroom on weekends. I gave myself permission to score my second-graders’ work holistically and not by some rubric so complicated it would have tripled my correcting time. I left school at a reasonable time every day and did not stay late on days I lost planning time for useless meetings. We all survived somehow, and I began to enjoy being with my students again. Rest up this summer: we’ll need all our energy for next year!
I did the same. In late May, I started to leave at a decent hour and cut back stressing out over everything, This year was brutal, but my mental and emotional health comes first.
It’s kind of ironic that I spent more time in my classroom before “reform”. I was willing to go above and beyond because I was proud of my teaching and had a say in what I taught. It’s difficult to get excited about teaching from a manual.
I am (seriously) filing for conscientious objector status with NYSED.
Lehrer
You teach 2nd grade. And your a 25+ year veteran teacher with solid standing with parents. What’s the worry? Ignore ALL the BS and just teach. They wouldn’t dare fire you.
That’s what I keep hoping. The younger teachers are too afraid to say anything. I, however, am not!
Lehrer
You no longer have a say in what you teach? How can that be?
We’ve adopted reading, writing, and math programs. Years ago we taught with thematic units that we developed. There is little room today for creativity.
There you go discounting facts again, Joe. The district may be culpable for not providing regulatory oversight to private schools, but not because it “doesn’t find space in its schools for all students with disabilities.”
As the article explained, the reason why the children were placed in private schools was because “Court rulings over the past decade have given parents of special-needs children more power to seek private schooling at public expense.” And if it’s in the children’s IEPs, then teams of multidisciplinary professionals have agreed that private placement is in the best interests of the child.
Do you have a problem with 0-3 year olds with disabilities being placed in private programs, too, or would you rather see infants in K-8 schools? They typically are in private settings, as are many preschoolers with special needs across the country, because most school districts are not set up to serve those ages, since they don’t have either compulsory or permissive education programs for them. So, for decades, districts have been contracting out to where most children those ages are already being served, which is primarily in private child care centers, preschools and special ed programs.
NY and other parents seek outside placements because they are not satisfied with what the districts provide.
Again, districts serve K-12; they do not typically provide compulsory education for ages Birth – 5. So, if parents want their young children with special needs placed in inclusive settings, unless they are poverty level and qualify for compensatory programs like Head Start, that means sending their children to private schools. The federal government has never provided enough funds for special education in K12, let alone for opening new public schools just for ages 0-5.
The NY Times story deals with a k-12 school, not pre-school. For decades, some districts have been “encouraging” students that they don’t want to work with to attend “alternative” schools or private schools.
There’s a lot of talk on this discussion forum about lack of supervision of charters – and there are problems in some places.
But I’ve yet to read an acknowledgement here from charter critics that the situation criticized by the NY Times and the Auditor reflects a lack of supervision from traditional districts.
Cosmic Tinker
FYI:
In the Buffalo area we have PreK programs as part of the public school system. Parents apply and placement is by lottery. However, students with issues are guaranteed a spot. For example, my grandson was behind in his speech development, so my daughter applied to Erie County for speech services which he received last year (for free) at the age of three. He was then guaranteed a spot for PreK which will be held at a local day care center (not at a public school). She doesn’t have to pay for the school (although she does has to pay for any additional child care before and after the program).
NYS is calling for Universal PreK for all four year olds in the state.
Ironically this would mandate school for four year olds while Kindergarten is not mandated. So, to save money, school district could theoretically get rid of their five year old program, but have to guarantee a spot for all four year olds.
As an aside: I think it was Rochester, NY which had the first kindergarten program in the country.
In addition, Cosmic Tinker, the Buffalo Public Schools also has a three year old PreK program for some of the children and I even saw an early childhood intervention class for parents and toddlers at one inner city school.
The NY Times article says this,
“The audit, reported by The Daily News on Wednesday, followed a series of audits and New York Times articles about waste and fraud in the state’s program for preschool special education.”
The NY Times also said this: “The audit of the Churchill School, which serves about 400 kindergartners through 12th graders who have language disabilities, did not allege fraud. But in the three school years covered, from 2008 to 2011, the audit found expenses on the books that the comptroller said ultimately inflated the amount that taxpayers reimbursed the school.”
You are a selective reader, Joe. The preschool special education problem in NY is not new. It has been written about many times in the papers. And I myself wrote tonight, “The district may be culpable for not providing regulatory oversight to private schools…”
I read the whole article and I read what you wrote.
The district “may be culpable”??? How about – the district did not do a good job of supervising how enormous amounts of money were spent?
More selective reading. WAKE UP! I wrote, “The district may be culpable for not providing regulatory oversight to private schools, but not because it “doesn’t find space in its schools for all students with disabilities.” And then I explained about ECSE –which is what my speciality happens to be.
I’ve had enough of your holier than though nonsense today. I’m outta here.
Never claimed holiness – only a willingness to acknowledge problems with both district & charters. One of the things that is driving both educators and families is the kind of disdain and selective judgement that has been featured today in this discussion.
There are some great district schools but part of what makes them great is the willingness to acknowledge things that need to improve, as well as the things they are accomplishing. When an individual or an organization acknowledges that it has problems, it can begin working on them.
You don’t have to claim it Joe when it drips with every post. You who do not teach children every day but claim superiority. CT, skip him.
cx, thou
The article is concerning the entire preschool special education program and one K12 school. I think an entire program trumps one school. Anyways, that all occurred under the watch of non-educator Bloomberg and his appointed cronies, but there’s a new sheriff in town with a genuine educator as Chancellor. They support Universal PreK, so preschoolers with special needs will be impacted as well –if they get it funded.
This is the kind of problem denial that is leading families and educators to leave district public schools. The fact is that there is a steady increase all over the nation of families moving to charters…not because they are all great…because they are not. But because too many district educators deny real problems in those schools.
Great district schools and educators acknowledge problems as well as successes.
BS. Every year, Gallup poll reports that most parents continue to say that their own children’s schools are good. but other people’s schools are problematic. That’s primarily because politicians and monied interests have been telling them for the past 30 years that there is a crisis in education. Much of that goes back to one of your own billionaire right-wing backers, the Bradley Foundation:
Yes, Other Spaces, the Gallup/PDK Poll consistently shows that the majority of parents surveyed rate their own school higher than their rate public schools in general. The poll also shows about 2/3 (68%) of Americans like the charter public school idea.
http://pdkintl.org/programs-resources/poll/
National Center for Educational Statistics:
“From school year 1999–2000 to 2011–12, the number of students enrolled in public charter schools increased from 0.3 million to 2.1 million students. During this period, the percentage of public school students who attended charter schools increased from 0.7 to 4.2 percent. Between school years 2010–11 and 2011–12, the number of students enrolled in public charter schools increased from 1.8 million to 2.1 million.”
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp
Pay no attention to Joe. He aims to distract everyone from watching the video above, where Glen Ford described “The Corporate Assault on Public Education” and how Joe’s own right-wing Bradley Foundation backers paid a pretty penny to bankroll infiltrators in the Democratic party, such as Corey Booker, in order to influence black Americans to buy into their campaign for vouchers and charters.
They also bought off black clergy and other black leaders, to convince blacks that the (originally Republican) agenda promoting segregated and privatized schools is benign. And Barack Obama was a dream come true for them. See also “Glen Ford Speaks about the Black “Mis-Leadership” Class”:
The empowerment of citizens and of families is neither a Republican nor a Democratic idea – it’s an American idea.
As we approach July 4th, I’m heartened by the variety of people working to empower families – and educators.
It’s clear folks here often disagree – and yet we retain free speech another great freedom that is neither Republican nor democratic.
“Empowerment” is the hoax of the privatization movement. People are not empowered when they are stripped of their right to democratic representation on school boards. Instead of democratically elected school boards, parents at charter schools get appointed boards stacked with corporate representatives and friends and relatives of executives, not parents. Most charters have no PTAs or PTOs either, except when they are wanted for fund raising.
The business model is devoid of democracy. (When were you last given the right to vote on anything of major consequence at your jobs, people?) Don’t fall for this propaganda from privatizers. Privatization benefits no one more than the privatizers who get free tax money to pay non-educator executives six figure incomes for running unregulated schools, as well as tax breaks that will double their money in 7 years for investing in charters.
My school district has some exceptions, too, but that does not mean a comprehensive system is in place.
My district has long had federal and state programs for low income children at-risk children, a handful of classes for preschoolers with special needs and a lottery system for a few public schools that have PreK for parents who want to pay, and MY STATE HAS UNIVERSAL PREK!
UPK is an under-funded mandate here, so policies are not much different now from before we had UPK. We continue to have those same programs, and primarily low income children at-risk are served, but not nearly all families who need or want services. Most children, whether typically developing or atypical, are still being served in private programs that receive public funding.
First proposed by the Boston Teachers Union, the Boston Pilot Schools are a great example of district public schools developed as option by teachers throughout the city. Here’s a recent report about how it’s going: http://www.ccebos.org/BPS_Report_2014_6-2-14.pdf
Thanks Linda! The do not read or reply list of corporate “reform” trolls, privatizers and liars is ever increasing…
BTW, in my state, Universal PreK is for every child age 3 AND age 4.
I’m appalled. Think of the amount of class time required to get the kids chanting in unison like that rather than thinking and questioning stuff.
Checking the Nashville Prep website and it seems that the teacher, Miss McDonald, was previously a KIPP school chorus teacher (charter “public” schools, unlike many public public schools in Philadelphia, offer music), and her degree is in music education. That may explain the chanting and the lesson. She is identified on the website as an Assistant Principal for Culture and Arts and I could not find anyone identified as a 5th grade Social Studies teacher at the school.
That explains a lot. This is similar to how music was taught at the military style (public) middle school I attended ages ago, too. Music was primarily integrated into Social Studies. Music was not taught as a separate course with a variety of other kinds of music. Huge amounts of patriotic musical propaganda were included.
I should clarify that the music we focused on at my military style middle school was genuine music, often of or about the era we were studying, not like what’s in this video (I would not call these chants “music”) –songs like “The Minstrel Boy”, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Irving Berlin’s “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” (from Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty) a lot of George M Cohen etc. That’s why my peers and I were taken in more by the music we were taught than by all the group recitations required of us. (My experience predates Conjunction Junction etc.)
That kind of music is more likely to pull at the heart strings and inspire patriotism than chants about the very freedoms which students in no-excuses charters are denied, like freedom of speech, including “eye-talking.”
See, “A Day in the Life of a No Excuses Charter School Student”
http://www.teachingquality.org/content/guest-post-day-life-no-excuses-charter-school-student
Thanks for the information that ‘Give Me Your Tired’ was set to music by Irving Berlin. This was a concert-ending show stopper for my High School choirmaster. I was in the band, and since he did it ‘a cappella’, I had no chance to accompany, but it sent chills down my spine. I find myself hacking out a version on my piano, today (with reverence).
It seems very far from the Berlin style, way too symphonic. On the other hand, ‘All the Things You Are’ is (basically) and etude that Berlin predicted would amount to nothing because of its complexity. However, jazz musicians loved the complexity (and the chance to show off their virtuosity to the ‘straight’ musicians), and, so, it became a classic.
Berlin was a man (genius?) with many faces.
“However, jazz musicians loved the complexity (and the chance to show off their virtuosity to the ‘straight’ musicians), and, so, it became a classic.”
Well, it required the musician to have chops in all those keys so yeah, it became a fabulous study for the serious jazz musician. Ever meet a pianist who only plays in “C.?” Ask him or her to play “All the Things” and watch ’em cringe. :->
I agree with the characterization of Berlin as “genius.”
All the songs I mentioned and more we sang at my 8th grade graduation, with “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” as the culminating song. It really does give goose-bumps.
(Fortunately, our teachers were given laterality within their classrooms and many were more flexible behind closed doors. In common areas, like the auditorium and hallways, where we had to march in silence single file on a painted line and square our corners, they were all drill sergeants.)
I couldn’t find an example of this song sung by grade school kids, probably because the range and harmonies are so challenging. It was an ambitious venture for us, but we really loved the music. I’m sure we were not nearly as pleasing to the ears as this choir:
Sorry, I was trying to do like five things at once. I think I posted a rather inferior version. I like this one better:
One thing I noticed was the hands behind the back is a military move that means at ease. But in the classroom it seems militaristic. In addition, this is all the teacher shows of her class. Had the teacher prefaced the beginning of class with something to the effect of,”now that we have the facts we can begin to really begin to study the important issues and questions James Madison and Thomas Jefferson grappled with as they wrote our founding document.” But, she did no such thing which leads me to believe that what we saw was the beginning and the end which certainly is not the “critical thinking” which the CCS aims to foster.
Tennessee has just pulled out of the PARCC consortium. They will use the old TPAC next year. The administration at Nashville Prep can breath easy for another year. That’s no ordinary chanting, its TPAC chanting. PARCC chanting would have been so much harder.
TCAP is also administered by Pearson.
Yes, but TPAC is based on Tennessee state standards as per NCLB.
TPAC is not aligned with the CCSS. Only NY and KY have used CC aligned exams. Chants don’t work for CCSS exams, especially those administered via keyboard/computer.
Well I followed her to the computer station
With a No. 2 pencil in my hand
Yeah, I followed her to the computer station
With a No. 2 pencil in my hand
Whoa, it’s hard to tell, it’s hard to tell
When all your chanting’s in vain
Ha! Love your chant!
It’s my parody of an old Rolling Stones tune.
Robert Johnson.
Thanks, Flerp. The Rolling Stones deserve some credit for pointing out to Americans the richness of their musical heritage. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t understand the lesson they were given.
Go Google it and sing along. Its really a blues number. It will make you feel better.
“Love In Vain”
Well I followed her to the station
With a suitcase in my hand
Yeah, I followed her to the station
With a suitcase in my hand
Whoa, it’s hard to tell, it’s hard to tell
When all your love’s in vain
When the train come in the station
I looked her in the eye
Well the train come in the station
And I looked her in the eye
Whoa, I felt so sad so lonesome
That I could not help but cry
When the train left the station
It had two lights on behind
Yeah, when the train left the station
It had two lights on behind
Whoa, the blue light was my baby
And the red light was my mind
All my love was in vain
All my love’s in vain
Gotta say, I checked out both the Robert Johnson (composer) performance and the ‘Stones’, and it opened my eyes. Johnson, of course, was great, and one wonders what extravagant creations he might have produced had he lived to, say, the age of 60. On the other hand, the early Stones’ rendition revealed a stunning, emotional performance that I had not previously considered part of the Stones’ legacy. (I was a bit old for them, and was stuck in a jazz rut). Clearly, the Stones, with their remarkable performance, added tremendous value to the classic, much as Shakespeare added innovation and character to several older tales.
Thanks for pointing me to the YouTube stuff. You made my day!
It’s not just Kentucky and New York that have CC exams. Utah began with CC testing this year; its own testing done by AIR.
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including the Faustian myth that he sold his soul at a crossroads to achieve success. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.
Johnson’s records sold poorly during his lifetime. It was only after the reissue of his recordings in 1961 on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.”[1][2] Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986.[3] In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone′s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.[4]
Ah, yes! High and sweet.
History teacher here! SHE’S TEACHING THE WRONG INFORMATION!!!!!
1. This is a picky one, and a lot of people get it wrong: the Declaration of Independence was NOT signed on July 4, 1776. It was signed earlier by JUST John Hancock, the president of the Second Continental Congress, when it was voted on July 1. July 4 was the day that Congress accepted the Declaration.
2. The Constitution was NOT signed by the Second Continental Congress (that was the Declaration of Independence). There WAS no Continental Congress by this point, because the U.S. was a nation and no longer colonies. It was just called Congress.
3. Amendments can be added to ANY bill or law, so the definition of “a change to our Constitution” is faulty.
4. The freedom of petition is left out of the First Amendment chant or song or whatever it is.
5. The federal level of the Judicial is ALSO the Circuit Courts, not just the U.S. Supreme Court. And she didn’t cover the levels of state and local governments in the legislative and judicial branches.
That’s not even discussing the teaching. When she finished, then they are reading an AR book???? Is anything taught? Have the students READ these documents? Mine have–and written essays on what were causes of the American Revolution and comparing the Articles of Confederation (which is “fast forwarded” in her “lesson,”) and the Constitution. Now, mine are 8th graders, so it’s a little different, I guess.
Re: “levels of an apple…” What the heck?
Yeah, I thought that was a bizarre way to explain the levels of government. Which government is the “core?” The “peel?”
And Congress didn’t even write the Constitution. It was a specific group set up for the purpose of “reforming” the Articles of Confederation. She didn’t say that in the “lesson.” Just a clarification from my earlier post.
All great points, ToW! I guess that’s what happens at charters that don’t have to meet highly qualified teacher requirements and can employ an out-of-field person with a degree in music education to teach Social Studies. (Too bad she didn’t include any genuine music.) This is the McTeacher model of education. Bring in any young thing or “Assistant Principal for Culture and Arts” for drill and kill and perform chants on camera. How fitting that her name happens to be McDonald!
…where individuality, creative and critical thinking go to die from asphyxiation. Hadn’t seen the video until just now. Last night, my wife and I watched “The Book Thief,” set in Germany, in 1938. There was a poignant scene in which group chanting, including many young people, was followed by a book burning. We remarked to each other as to how chilling the groupthink was.
When I first saw the video connected to this blog entry, I knew it reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what.
This afternoon, I remembered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=618U-_8o31k
Kinda sad.
That video had me roaring.
“This isn’t brainwashing. God bless GE. God bless Citi Corp.” I think I heard them God Bless Bill Gates, too, but I’m not sure.
LOL
HA! Great Link!