NOTE TO READER: I AM SORRY TO SAY THAT SOMEONE–LIKELY, THE SCHOOL–HAS BLOCKED ACCESS TO THIS VIDEO. I VIEWED IT A FEW DAYS AGO, AND FRANKLY, WAS TAKEN ABACK BY SEEING THE STUDENTS’ ROBOTIC RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ABOUT U.S. HISTORY. EVERYONE MOVED, TURNED, REACTED, AND ANSWERED IN UNISON.
This is a fascinating video. It is “Six Minutes in Ms. McDonald’s Fifth Grade Social Studies Class.”
Ms. McDonald is a teacher in Nashville Prep, a high-scoring charter school in Nashville, Tennessee.
You may have read about it here. The founder, Ravi Gupta, has plans to expand and create a chain. He already has a school in Mississippi.
Were you ever in a social studies class like this one?
No discussion, no debate. Singing and responding in unison.
In the early nineteenth century, children learned geography by singing the names of the continents, the oceans, the highest mountains.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
sorry there is no access to this video
This is an indication that the corporate reformers and privatizers both monitor and actually fear this blog. The traffic that came to its YouTube location was part of what caused Ravi and the folks at RePublic schools to hide it from the public.
To Ravi Gupta… if you’ve got nothing to hide, you hide nothing. That video rightly made your school a laughingstock.
Here’s two more examples:
EXAMPLE 2:
When it hit on this board that UTLA was going to protest billionaire privatizer Eli Broad’s new museum opening this coming Sunday morning… a furious Broad pressured Mayor Garcetti to do what he could to prevent this. Garcetti, in turn, then leaned on UTLA to cancel the rally.
EXAMPLE 3:
When public school parent Adam Benitez’ blog—protesting the charter invasion of his child’s campus—started getting play here, the privatizers are now threatening to sue him if he doesn’t take down his blog.
http://cwcmarvista-co-location-stoner-lausd.blogspot.com/2015/09/icef-issues-cease-and-desist-letter.html
Adam Benitez needs some help and fast.
If you recall, Benites cited the effect of the Ravitch blog…
“The Ravitch Blog Bump”
Well, the new charter chain ICEF has sicced their
legal hounds on Adam. You recall that Adam
is merely a parent and private citizen fighting
the ICEF charter invasion of his child’s public
school campus. Adam is doing all this
with no help or affiliation with any other group…
not the teacher unions, not N.P.E., not
Parents Across America…
No one,.
He’s on his own, so ICEF is now trying to
sue Adam into submission and silence, starting
with the first step: a cease and desist letter—to
remove the entirety of his blog from the
Internet (!!!):
http://cwcmarvista-co-location-stoner-lausd.blogspot.com/2015/09/icef-issues-cease-and-desist-letter.html
The ICEF charter’s legal team is falsely claiming
that Adam–perhaps while acting in a parent volunteer
capacity at his kid’s public school Stoner Elementary—
deliberately locked (“padlocked”) the ICEF staff
on the campus on a Saturday.
They’re also claiming that …
Here’s Adam’s description of the charges:
ADAM BENITEZ:
1. “Padlocking gate” – ICEF counsel accuses me of locking their staff in campus on Saturday, August 8, 2015. They even claim there was a witness. Unfortunately for ICEF, I did not lock the gate and I have a witness who can verify that I did not lock the gate. –Nice try, but no cigar.
2. “Harassing students, teachers, staff and others” — ICEF is claiming documenting the co-location on this blog by taking photo and videos of people out in public that I am intimidating, harassing and bullying these people. Unfortunately for ICEF, new media journalism is not intimidation, harassment or bullying, it’s just reporting the news. –No soup for you!
3. “Blog entries” — ICEF had 2 specific complaints regarding 2 blog post. These 2 post have since been updated (here, and here) to remove privileged and potential defamatory information. — Thanks for the heads up! I will be a little more cautious in what I write in the future, but I am not going to stop the blog.
I have responded to ICEF and asked them to clarify their request since 1 and 2 don’t apply and 3 has been corrected.
I wonder what the next gambit will be.
————————
To me, this is just as much a freedom of speech issue,
as it is an anti-school-privatization issue.
Here’s Adam’s pithy response:
——————
ADAM BENITEZ:
Hello ICEF lawyers and administration.
Thank you for reading this blog. Your views
are increasing the revenue to this blog.***
YouTube is calling the video “Private” and it cannot be viewed.
Video seems to have been blocked.
The video is marked private. Obviously, they block access because it reveals too much that most Americans would hate. Another example of the corporate education deform movement and its love of everything opaque,autocratic and fraudulent from false promises to robbery.
Actually, this appeared on Yahoo’s newsfeed a few months back. It wasn’t private then but it generated attention. Most of it was unwanted attention.
The main theme is that it is militaristic and rote. Lots of order, lots of repeating phrases, and in some cases, students singled out openly and negatively. It would be an example of rote education like that of a prior century. There’s nothing revolutionary about it. It’s simply the robotic repetition of material.
If I taught like that in my school, parents would want me fired.
Perhaps it was NSFW.
Could not access.
Is this the same Ravi M. Gupta, also known as Radhika Ramana Dasa who was home schooled by his parents and went to college at age 13 graduating by 17 and graduation at 22 with a doctorate in Hindu Studies? If so, it says he taught for one year at University of Florida before he became an Assistant Professor of Religion at Centre College, Kentucky. In 2008, he became Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhika_Ramana_Dasa#Post_graduate_education_and_career
What does this guy know about educating children K to 12? Is he a religious nut?
Not the same guy. I had this Ravi Gupta at Centre. He’s awesome.
Then who is the autocratic corporate Charter Ravi Gupta—-does anyone know or did he just appear out of nowhere?
It just occurred to me—-why are we, the resistance, not starting our own non-profit chain of corporate Charters? After all, we have parents, teachers, children, teens all across America. We could grab the initiative and steal the movement away from the likes of Bill Gates and Eli Broad.
Because, Lloyd, it would drain monies from the local public school districts!
Based an attending a single public school in Staten Island where he didn’t do well, he determined that public schools were in a “crisis of mediocrity” according to this glowing, gushing piece:
“So instead, Gupta entered Yale Law School in 2005. He split his time between his studies and working on the Obama campaign, eventually serving as assistant to Chief Strategist David Axelrod during the general election. During the campaign, he once heard Obama mention Harlem Children’s Zone [HCZ], the famous New York school project—a new and exciting concept to Gupta who had never heard of charter schools. “I started reading about them,” he says. “I thought, ‘Whoa, there is a model out there that can do this, that can take kids from any walk of life and produce excellence.’ That school pierced through the crisis of mediocrity.”
It must be such a drag for members of the Obama Administration to have to visit our mediocre public schools when they’re campaigning. I really don’t know how they survived that.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/07/12/ravi-guptas-no-excuses-charter-school-shakes-nashville
David Axelrod, now at free market University of Chicago. For a laugh, watch a CBS interview with he and his fawning wife, both brought, almost to tears, over their self congratulations about all he did for the country. The 99% must not count as part of the country.
You can access the Nashville Prep website through this link. It is curious that so many of videos require one to sign in to view the video.
http://nashvilleprep.org/media
The following is from Susan Ohanian’s web site:
http://www.susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1545
“Christina Lea McDonald, featured in the film, is the Assistant Principal for Culture and Arts. Ms. McDonald recently worked as Executive Assistant for the co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools network and a chorus teacher at KIPP Infinity Charter School in New York City. Ms. McDonald taught in the Metropolitan Nashville Public School system after graduating with her B.A. in Music Education from Belmont University. Ms. McDonald recently completed her first album and performs as a singer/songwriter in NYC and Nashville.”
hence the “singing and responding in unison.” No mention of social studies.
No mention of teaching any kind of critical thinking skills and the ability to analyze and think about history, other countries, and our relationship to them and our place in the world.
I know that they are in fifth grade, but that’s not too soon to begin teaching critical thinking skills.
This type of teaching should be swept back into the dustbin of history. It totally ignores child development and how children learn and should be taught.
They seem to be trying to produce complacent little robots.
I can’t find any ‘sign-in’ at Nashville Prep other than a request to provide email addy at ‘RePublic Schools’. Did you do that, & then view he video? (BTW, the Susan Ohanian link also dead-ends you into a bunch of ‘private’ videos)
So, since we can’t view it, please give us the upshot of the video and your take on future franchising of this type of charter school by Mr. Gupta.
Joseph,read comments on this post.
I clicked on the video link, and I received a message saying the video was private. I would like to share it.
All of the video of classrooms is marked as private on the Nashville Prep website but all of the propaganda video is public.
The school apparently blocked access to the video of the children chanting answers to questions about U.S. history. Too bad. It is an amazing display of training for the right answer.
And some of the answers aren’t even entirely accurate. The whole thing is disgusting, and then to have partially wrong answers?
My favorite is the discussions of “getting our freedom and our rights.” With this video, I’d love to see where freedom and rights come in.
his example of rheephorm innovative disruption/creative disruption is being hidden from view.
Or is this like so much of what the trend-setters among the charters are about: public when they want taxpayer dollars, private when they don’t want public scrutiny and accountability?
I’m not holding my breath…
😡
You can just “vote with your feet” and go to the nearest public school if it doesn’t work out, I have been told.
That “back up” school will apparently be standing at the ready for any and all comers, unchanged, eternally, no matter how many “choice” schools surround it.
That’s what a back-up public system does, after all. That’s the only value of those public schools- to serve the “choice” system.
My original comment was truncated. In full—
I am awaiting an explanation from the shills and trolls that visit this blog to explain why this example of rheephorm innovative disruption/creative disruption is being hidden from view.
Or is this like so much of what the trend-setters among the charters are about: public when they want taxpayer dollars, private when they don’t want public scrutiny and accountability?
I’m not holding my breath…
😡
Here is a video about another charter school:
Cool, TE! Is there a public school? Was there a problem with instituting project based learning? From the video you showed us , it looks like a charter that is fulfilling the original mission of charters. I hope other schools are looking at what they are doing especially since, as their principal said, anyone can do project based learning.
is it possible to make a copy of a video and save it before it gets taken down?
I’m getting the private block also.
Can anyone find the video in a web cache?
Although the six minute video is described to be noxious, I cannot make a judgment on six minutes of video unless someone is being beaten, etc. When it is available, I’ll watch. But six minutes is not 56. There are some things that singing about to memorize makes a lot of sense, especially in special education classes. Now if they never get to discussion and critical thinking that is another matter and would take more than six minutes of video to show.
P. S.
For some of my students, memorizing the information described would have been the only information they would gain because of their disability or opposition to learning. I worked with a teacher on selected teachers to teach kids that by studying they could actually pass an ESL exam. We taught them memorization techniques, testing-taking skills, and efficient study techniques while teaching to the test. For the first time they began to gain enough confidence to become independent.
I understand what you are saying. If nothing else it was a poor choice as representative of teaching. As an isolated technique, perhaps used in reviewing for the multiple choice part of a test, it might be useful although It went much too far in the robotic direction for me. You’re right that teaching memorization techniques is a valuable study skill although there are some more enjoyable ways of doing it. Kids would beg to play Jeopardy as a review or even as an informal assessment.
Choral response (especially if done to a tune or even just a percussive beat) can be lots of fun in early-language-learning, & the memorization can be helpful in promoting conversational Q&A. This is my field, & speaking as one who teaches for- lang to 2.5-6 yo’s.
But– without having viewed the video– choral response as a way to memorize 5th-gr social studies facts is suspect. I’d hope in a 5th-gr classroom to encounter classroom discussions of facts read at home & reviewed prior to discussion.
The answers are not all even correct, so it’s more than just the drill that is the problem here.
When a video like this is blocked, it tells me all I need to know. What do you have to hide?
Video now says private.
Charter school funder, Subway’s Deluca, died today. Also today, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled public property can be used to create private assets, on the backs of children. But, only the children of the 99% get short-changed, for the enrichment of the oligarchs. It makes a cheer worthwhile, for less of Deluca’s “villainthropy”. What was or, was not known by Subway, about the chain’s long-term, recently convicted, spokesperson may eventually be explained.
Nashville Prep’s founder is Subway’s DeLuca? When O search on Nashville Prep’s founder, sll I find is Ravi Gupta. Please clarify.
No claim that DeLuca’s millions, supporting charter schools, reached west of the Mississippi, south of the Mason-Dixon,…..
The Dayton Daily News reported Michigan’s Betsy DeVos’ charter funding reached Ohio. How far the tentacles, of deform funders extend, is only exposed, when intrepid reporters or researchers, have access to media space for their work.
ALL the in-classroom videos on Nashville Prep’s YouTube Channel have now been blocked, even ones linked on their own website..! http://nashvilleprep.org/media
How ABSOLUTELY TELLING that the school video would suddenly be blocked! What pray tell is there to hide??? An abusive classroom environment lacking (in corporate words) rigor… with brainwashing style chanting and micro management of every component of classroom “learning”?
We don’t need to education…..We don’t need no thought control …opps sorry I guess we do need thought control.
Here is their promotional video…check out those kids walking in lines.
Public schools can do the exact same thing this corporate Charter does. All the public school needs is to change the laws that don’t let them do it.
Once those laws are gone public schools can also ramp up the autocratic discipline and throw out the children who are the most difficult to work with.
Imagine what a public school could do if it could hide what it’s happening in the classrooms and this money flowed into the public schools instead of a corporate Charter:
“The NGLC was created and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to promote innovative educational models. Our grant of $100,000 was awarded for the purposes of planning our joint high school for Nashville Prep and Liberty Collegiate. In addition to this grant, RePublic was awarded two different grants of $493,000 and $250,000 from generous local philanthropists over the past two weeks.”
http://nashvilleprep.org/blog/
Student attrition heightens tension between charter backers, MNPS
“Collectively, 1,759 students have left those schools since shortly after the beginning of the academic year, almost 33 percent of those schools’ student bodies.
“School board member Jill Speering said she sought out district attrition numbers this year after hearing complaints from principals who said they were getting back hard-to-teach students straight from charter schools in the weeks before the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program tests. The annual exams measure students’ achievement as well as their teachers’ and schools’ ability to advance
student performance.”
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/student-attrition-heightens-tension-between-charter-backers-mnps
“Nashville Prep is one of those total compliance chain gang schools where children are treated more like prisoners than pupils. Despite the propaganda spread by the school regarding its top testing status, state testing shows a more mixed picture (Blue is highest, red is lowest). Note the direction test results take over time.”
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/
Do you notice that no charter school students in these promotional videos ever smile?
This would not be the first time a video of charter school teachers and students barking at each other made its way to youtube, then got taken down or marked private after people at large got a gander at it and made comments.
Children barking like seals in their uniforms afraid to not track the teacher afraid to be themselves not allowed to have a throughout of their own…..is the charter way.
They call their students “scholars” which is ridiculous — should just call them inmates, as that is how they are treated. They are in lock down from early morning till late in the day, sometimes on Saturdays, and a longer school year. Heaven forbid their uniforms are out of sorts. What if a girl student has a terrible period? She should bleed through her uniform and not go to the toilet to take care of herself?
These scholars and their parents are being sold an empty bill of goods because education does not equal employment — not for the unwealthy.
I know plenty of current college graduates who can’t find jobs in their fields, working as proof readers, bartenders. waitresses, receptionists, etc. However, if you’re from a wealthy family, mommy and daddy KNOW SOMEONE who’ll hire you. That is how TFA works as well, taking care of “their own kind.”
I’ve taught social studies in Chicago for 14 years and singing and responding in unison ain’t how it’s done, folks, and neither is rogue memorization. History is all about understanding various perspectives, analyzing scores of primary sources, giving voice to the voiceless, and knowing there isn’t one truth or one side to any historical event. My colleagues and I challenge our kids to think for themselves and this thing in Nashville? Well, I just don’t believe that qualifies as teaching.
Yeah, I doubt those kids understand one thing about the American Revolution or the Constitution.
I keep getting a ” this video is private” message.
Debbie, the school blocked access to the videos. Apparently they don’t want to show what happens in its classes.