When I returned from the hospital, I had a large stack of mail.
Among my mail was a tiny illustrated book, the kind you usually buy for 8-year-olds, called “From Once There Was a School to A School Was Once There.” It was written by Michael Mugits and illustrated by Anna Liu-Gorman.
The book tells what happens to a beloved neighborhood school after cuts in the budget, increased enrollment in charter/private/parochial/home schools, a tax cap levy, mandated teacher evaluation by test scores, Race to the Top mandates, layoffs and school closures. This little book contains this sad and terrible story of what is deceptively called “school reform” in only 25 illustrated pages.
On the cover is Longshore Elementary School, surrounded by swings and a sliding board and trees. On the back cover is the same building, now called Senior Center of Longshore. The swings and slide are gone. So is the school.
It is a very touching, very moving book. It tells the story of the destructive policies that have destroyed schools in community after community. In the back is a helpful list of acronyms.
If you want anyone to quickly understand the war against public schools, send them this little book. It is $8.95.
Here is a quote, the one that ends the book:
“Years ago as a boy
I recall with great joy
Everything I had learned
And the future I had yearned.
All of the hopes and dreams,
teachers, classmates and teams.
I looked at the building and lawn.
The playground was long gone.
So were the echoes of laughter,
The big sign above the front door
read Senior Center of Longshore.
I muttered in despair…
A School Was Once There.”
You can get copies by contacting the author, Michael Mugits, at mmugits@hotmail.com.
He is a school district administrator in upstate New York. The illustrator is an art teacher and a Nationally Board Certified Teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you very much for this post.
I ordered it on Amazon…
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More recommended reading:
De-testing and De-grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization (Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education), ed. Joe Bower and P.L. Thomas
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Mr. shepherd, I am interested….what is the extent to which you are able and allowed to de-grade and de-test in your classroom? how much autonomy do you have?
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The book is a heartfelt response to the tragedy of the bureaucratic assault on education currently taking place in the United States. This assault is being engineered by a team of bureaucrats who want to micro-manage the classroom from afar.
Their modus operands was summed up in a book from 1963 entitled Triumph of the Therapeutic, by Philip Rieff. The thesis of the book is that the post-Freudians (Paul and Percival Goodman, Eric Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, etc.) misunderstood Freud in that they wanted to conform the world according to their own ideal designs, which Freud considered a manifestation of a neurosis.
The bureaucrats of education who are imposing top down control are trying to use social engineering to change the world in the way that they see fit. Such efforts have little or nothing to do with the better theories of education, such as local culture input to the content of the classroom, community support for the schools, teachers doing their own research in the classroom on what works best, to name a few. These bureaucrats want to control the classroom from afar as though they do not trust teachers to teach, so that writing lesson plans becomes a paint by numbers approach.
Today I sat through a Professional Development day for Baltimore City Schools, and spent most of the day reviewing the use of lessons out of Stanford University that try to get students to use primary documents to find evidence for arguments about the issues raised in the documents. Some of the lessons are okay, but many of them push a political agenda. One, for instance, in viewing the Lewis and Clark Expedition to survey the Louisiana Purchase, focuses on the question of whether the explorers were being nice or nasty to Native Americans. With so many fascinating things to study about the exploration, it seems to me, to focus on a political morals question really limits the scope of learning. Moreover, the lesson includes information about how the Native Americans furnished young women for the explorers to satisfy their carnal desires. Aside from the fact that such information is clearly inappropriate for all ninth grade students, in the inner city, said information would distract the students to such a degree to make them un-teachable, and no self respecting teacher would remotely consider bringing it up.
Ah well, there is some information to pick and choose from at these Professional Development sessions but, for the most part, experienced teachers sit through them lethargically, as they are run, for the most part, by people who gave up teaching by worming their way into bureaucracies with better pay and far less work.
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“Aside from the fact that such information is clearly inappropriate for all ninth grade students….”
Are you kidding me? That’s exactly the kind of thing high school kids need to be learning about the founding, exploration and conquering of America. Otherwise, they’ll feel like real idiots reading James Loewen’s LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME when they’re 35 years old.
Besides, I’m pretty sure that the “bureaucrats of education who are imposing top down control” aren’t the ones who want students knowing about the rape of the Indians. They’re more like the conquistadors.
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Call me old fashioned, but I think information about explorers having casual sex with Native Americans is inappropriate for 9th Grade students. Additionally, with years of experience teaching in the inner city, where students at that age are irrationally dealing with hormonal impulses, I can humbly suggest that such information in the lesson would send kids over the edge. To give an example, I was teaching about Lewis and Clarke and had sextant on the word board and explained its use in exploration at that time, and had to waste a few minutes of class time quelling the giggles and cat calling about the a certain three letters of the word. Imaging multiplying that reaction with the information we are discussing. Higher order thinking would go out the window and students would, unfortunately, focus on their lower impulses.
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Causal sex??? Try rape. And, yes, that is important for students to understand.
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BTW, rape is something inner city kids understand all too well.
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No, I am afraid you are incorrect in your appraisal of the historical events; Lewis and Clarke were hosted by Native Americans for their first winter of the exploration, and lived peacefully at their camp where their hosts were quite generous to them, including providing young women. Lewis and Clarke were not like the Spanish Conquistadors in their exploration in regard to aggressively violent behavior. I would agree with you that young students in the inner city are well acquainted with sex but, unfortunately, having been influenced by their cultural and musical surroundings, are far too keen to glorify cheap sex, especially young men, which is a gross injustice to the young women who are the object of their untoward affections. Trying to raise the level of discourse is often difficult because of this.
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Why do you continue to conflate sex and rape? Did the young women consent? I’m pretty sure they didn’t have the choice, which means they didn’t. Which means it was rape. Young women cannot be “provided” like commodities. Sorry, but it scares me that you are a teacher.
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I am not approving or passing judgement on what occured, or doing any thing other than relating on what is written in a lesson plan from Stanford University, If you would like to give your opinion about that lesson plan, I suggest that you look it up.
http://sheg.stanford.edu/us
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being afraid to discuss potentially controversial topics with students is actually a very political act. it is the job of a teacher to facilitate potentially uncomfortable discourse so that students can grow as individuals and realize new ways of seeing the world and their relationship to it. otherwise what is the point of studying history except to memorize a bunch of facts and dates and people and places which in and of itself is useless. raising the level of discourse may be difficult but that does not mean it should be avoided. From the outside looking in it seems to be a great learning opportunity for both teacher and student and a great way to connect student’s lived experience to the subject matter. I agree the top-down nature of maintaining control is odious but opposing that is different from opposing the content and political nature of the lesson. From what I’ve read, it’s not like your students don’t already know what sex is and what it entails so I really don’t understand what the big deal is about bringing their views out into the open in relation to the material and having a serious discussion. That’s what higher order thinking is all about….formulating arguments, engaging in respectful but passionate discourse, seriously considering and perhaps refining your original views in light of the views of your peers and your teacher. It doesn’t mean everyone agrees with each other. it doesn’t mean you’ll all come to some definite conclusion about whatever you’re talking about…but that’s not the point of the exercise. I understand this is all difficult in an inner-city context. But that doesn’t absolve a teacher of his or her responsibility to try to facilitate that discourse. And in terms of who needs to engage in that higher order thinking and serious discourse more, it is certainly inner city students as compared to students from affluent areas, although obviously both benefit.
Some wise quotes from a great educational theorist icon in America, John Dewey, I think apply here very well.
“Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.”
“In critical moments we all realize that the only discipline that stands by us, the only training that becomes intuition, is that got through life itself. That we learn from experience, and from books or the sayings of others only as they are related to experience, are not mere phrases.“
“The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass in to selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.“
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“With so many fascinating things to study about the exploration, it seems to me, to focus on a political morals question really limits the scope of learning.”
Since when are questions about politics and morals not fascinating. These questions are inherent in our history. They are perhaps the most important questions we can ask in regards to how we should go about building a more just and humane society. And they are certainly questions that teachers should be engaging their students, the future leaders and movers and shakers of this country, in discussing and answering with every opportunity possible. In fact, they broaden the scope of learning beyond mere rote memorization of so-called “correct” and “objective versions of history. I don’t understand what is your aversion to encouraging students to engage in political dialogue. This is the stuff I would have hungered for back when I was a high school student. Students love to think and engage in these types of discussions if they could just be given the opportunity to do so. But unfortunately in the current education culture in the U.S., political and moral questions and issues are rarely discussed, although certainly not for a lack of desire among the students. It is certainly more engaging and more interesting then learning a white-washed and objectified history of our country from a boring textbook and then being tested on how much I could memorize.
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I had no intention to make a blanket renunciation of questions of political morality. We discuss those type of questions all the time, such as what are the motives of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, including what is their place in the fight for democratic government and what similarity those disagreements bear to the current debates about the power of the Federal Government under President Obama. We had mock debates between Jefferson and Hamilton, and used primary documents to discern whether the motives of arguments were personal or political.
My problem the the political moral question on whether Lewis and Clark were nice or evil to Native Americans is that I beleive that this is the wrong context for that discussion. We have discussed and will disscus this issue in many other contexts, such as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the French and Indian War, the Trail of Tears, broken treaties and many other examples about the sad tragedy of the destruction of Native American society.
Making a simplistic question about the effect of Lewis and Clark on Native American relations is an incorrect place complete focus on this issue, and would not promote higher order thinking.
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fair enough…i saw a blanket renunciation where there was not one….I apologize
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Wow, sir. You seem to have conflated so many issues it is hard to know where to begin.
Sex, casual or otherwise, IS NOT THE SAME THING AS RAPE. In case you missed this tid bit somewhere along the line, the issue is consent.
Your characterizations of urban children and the situations they live in ( untoward affections, really?) are quite something to behold. The dominate culture knows best, right? So you are aware that it is the dominate culture and big business pushing the music and clothing and images on their community, right.
And as to what 9 the graders can/ should learn, discuss in class.
I am a biology teacher. We actually can and do say the word sex. We also use the prefixes homo and hertro. We talk about sexual and asexual reproduction.
No one giggles. Never a cat call.
They ask a lot of great questions.
Perhaps you are the uncomfortable individual ?
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although I do have to agree with this….tt is absurd to be afraid to talk about sex, especially in relation to the dominant culture and how it apparently is shaping your class. catcalling on sextant?? that seems like an important teachable moment. also this doesn’t just happen in urban settings…i mean the endless jokes about bangkok and giggles about a teacher’s mention of sex were all too prevalent in my high school
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The level of dialogue on this blog is very, very high. What a pleasure it is to read Diane’s posts and these thoughtful replies! And Reflective Thinking, your comments live up to the moniker you’ve given yourself! Kudos to you and to Mr. Crimmins!
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