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RIP: A Member of the Honor Roll Dies

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2016 //
7

Marge Borchert was a member of the Blog’s honor roll. She recently died, only months after her retirement as principal of Allendale Elementary School in upstate New York. This is the post where I named her to the honor roll. I did so because of a letter she wrote to the children in her school. Also, because she got a zero growth score after many of her students opted out. She wore her rating as a badge of honor. She loved the children in her school. She was kind. She was a good principal.

 

This is the letter:

 

Dear Boys & Girls,

 

I wanted to write you a letter telling you how very much I enjoyed and continue to enjoy all of the painted rocks that you made. They are a great addition to our beautiful garden. I loved looking at each and every one of them this summer. I stopped to admire them when I checked on the flowers that were planted by your parents. Quite honestly, they brought a smile to my face even on rainy days. The rocks are as unique and colorful as each one of you. Each rock is painted with your own unique story.

 

The butterfly bush that is growing outside of my office window is blooming, and it is the most beautiful shade of purple that I have ever seen. A ruby throated hummingbird has been visiting that bush every day since it bloomed. I am looking forward to seeing a butterfly visit. The baby sparrows in the birdhouse have learned to fly, and have moved away. The crow that was tormenting the baby rabbits seems to have learned not to poke its beak in their home. Several of us watched in astonishment as the mother rabbit chased after that crow, jumped in the air and batted at that crow with its front paw. This was the first time that I have ever seen such a sport! That mother rabbit had strong protective instincts– just like your moms. We can learn so much by observing nature. Who knew that there was so much to !earn by just taking some time to stop, look, and listen.

 

So…..by now all of you are wondering why I was inspired to write you such a long letter. It is simply for this reason. I want each and every one of you to know that you inspire me on a daily basis. Each and every one of you is unique and colorful in your own special way. Each of you has a special talent, and you are loved. I intend to hold on to these thoughts when I look at the New York State scores, and I encourage your parents to do the same. The scores are not a true picture of who you are in this world. You can and will bloom when you are ready. You will fly when you are ready. It is entirely up to you to decide what you will grow up to be in life. It all depends on you. Remember the mother rabbit who used her own unique talents and skills to “fear that nasty crow nevermore. ”

 

In my heart — you truly rock!!! I can’t wait to see you in September!!

 

Love Always,

 

Mrs. Borchert

 

P.S. These are the books that I read this summer:

The Diary of Anne Frank

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Recidicide by Kelly Gallagher

The Story Killers by Terrence 0. Moore

David & Goliath by Macolm Gledwell

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Children of the Core by Kris L. Nielsen

The Bible

 

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Categories Accountability, Childhood, Honor Roll, Principals, Testing

Peter Greene: Betsy DeVos and the Value of Child Labor

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2016 //
20

Betsy DeVos and the DeVos family give generously to many charities and think tanks, mostly skewed to libertarian, free-market, white Christian causes. One of their recipients is the Acton Institute. The Acton Institute has recently gained a lot of unwanted attention because of an article posted on its blog called “Bring Back Child Labor.” The post got so much attention that the author changed the title to “Work is a Gift Our Kids Can Handle.” In it, the author bemoans the fact that children don’t have the experience and the hardy character that is gained from working.

 

The author Joseph Sunde believes that what children are lacking today is the discipline of work. He quotes another author (Jeffrey Tucker) who recommends working in a fast-food restaurant, for example, as good character formation. Sunde asks:

 

In our policy and governing institutions, what if we put power back in the hands of parents and kids, dismantling the range of excessive legal restrictions, minimum wage fixings, and regulations that lead our children to work less and work later? (This could be something as simple as letting a 14-year-old work a few hours a week at a fast-food restaurant or grocery store.)

 

Now, I didn’t have time to do due diligence on the Acton Institute, but fortunately Peter Greene did.

 

He writes:

 

Acton is a member of the State Policy Network, the Heritage Foundation’s loose collection of right-wing and libertarian thinky tanks, but unlike some of their strictly political brethren, Acton is all about the religious aspects. While they don’t quite rise to the level of “greed is good,” they do rise to the level of “capitalism is God’s most blessed way of sorting out the world.” (My words, not theirs) The Institute puts out several print publications, including Religion & Liberty and the Journal of Markets & Morality….

 

Yes, coal mining and middle school football– pretty much the same thing, especially if your program involves playing games that last ten hours a day, seven days a week. Yes, Carnegie, Rockefeller and other Giants of Industry used to stand in front of their workers and declare, “I really value you as people,” and then finish with “So why would you want me to pay you more money?” Yes, we all remember those stories where Rockefeller and Trump and DeVos sent their children off at a young age to work in the mines because they wanted their children to be ennobled.

 

This is, simply speaking, nuts. This is one step short of saying, “Slaves were actually quite happy in their lives, with a noble purpose to fulfill.”

 

Sunde goes on to say that in modern times, the ennobling world of unskilled labor doesn’t require twelve hour workdays and unsafe conditions. And Tucker fills in the rest:

 

“If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs too, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all.”

 

Right. Rich folks are making their kids work for minimum wage at WalMart all the time, so they’ll be better people with strong work ethics.

 

Look, I am a big fan of work. My dream world is not one where everyone sits around on their ass and the money just rolls in by magic. I will even confess to a bias, a tendency to think less of people like Trump or DeVos who have never actually done any real work, but have gotten rich by playing games with other people’s money and the fruits of other people’s labor.

 

But this is some Grade A Bettercrat bullshit. The line of reasoning for DeVos and her friends is simple– some people in this world really are better than others, and those people should be in charge, should be making decisions without being hemmed in by government and certainly not by uppity Lessers who form unions and otherwise thwart the proper order of things. Capitalism is God’s way of showing us who the Betters are (they’re the ones with the money) and so any government mandates that force us to spend our money on Those People– well, that’s not just bad politics or bad economics, but it’s immoral. The state has no business thwarting God’s will. Not that the Betters will turn their backs on the Lessers– not at all. It is a Better’s job to help Lessers find their rightful place, so that they can be happy in the work that God has made them for, which is to serve the interests and needs of their Betters. Our modern society is contentious and unhappy because government, often in the hands of evil bolsheviks and their ilk, has upended God’s natural order of things, making everyone unhappy. If we could just get the Lesser children back in the mines and their parents working quietly for whatever their Betters think they should get, everything would be okay again. (That’s why we call it Right To Work– we are re-establishing Lessers’ right to work the way nature intended them to.) And if we can’t get them back in the mines as children, at least we can put them in schools where they learn hard work and discipline and compliance and, God help them, grit, because that’s what the children of Those People will need (and who knows– every once in a while, we may find one who is made of Better Stuff and deserves to be elevated by Betters’ largesse). The only Civil Right people need is the right to happily know their proper place. America would once again be great.

 

This is what we have headed for DC. Lord knows, it’s not a brand new philosophy, and it has been informing plenty of ed reform up till now. But now it’s likely to become a steamroller that pushes aside well-meaning reformsters (yes, I think there are such things) and crushes the notion of a one-tiered education serving all American students– as if they were not divided into Betters and Lessers.

 

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Childhood

Stuart Egan: Will North Carolina Drop Arts & P.E. in Elementary Schools?

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2016 //
17

As I have mentioned many times, the highly successful schools of Finland emphasize play, the arts, and creativity. They don’t begin teaching reading until children are in first or second grade. The Finns want school to be a stress free, joyful experience for children. And it works. The schools have been described by international organizations as the best in the world.

Stuart Egan, high school teacher in North Carolina, warns that the state is threatening to cut the arts and physical education from the elementary schools. This is crazy. Is the General Assembly’s goal to make school boring? To ruin young bodies by lack of movement?

He writes:

“A long long time ago
I can still remember how
That music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.”

Don McLean’s famous song “American Pie” has been the subject of tremendous amounts of explication. Websites devoted to explaining all of the lyrics and all of the rumored allusions can take a day or two to just peruse, but McLean himself has identified the “day the music died” as that day in Feb. of 1959 when a plane carrying Buddy Holly (“That’ll Be The Day”), Richie Valens (“La Bamba”), and J.P. Richardson (aka. The Big Bopper) crashed killing all three rock icons.

McLean’s song highlighted our culture’s need for music, expression, and how important it is to cultivate our sense of being by developing not just the logical left side of the brain, but the creative right side as well.

What followed in the next 15 years was possibly one of the most turbulent times in American history: the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, Women’s Rights, ongoing Cold War, etc. And the music and the rest of its artistic siblings helped us to capture, reflect, express, communicate, and heal from those scars received.

And now with the current political climate on this global terrain, we may need to rely on our artistic expressions to help cope and grow from what we will experience in the near future.

How ironic that in such turbulent times our own leaders are searching for ways to quash our children’s opportunities to develop the very creative and physical skills that study after study shows make us more complete, well-rounded, and prepared for life’s situations.

A Nov. 14th report on NC Policy Watch by Billy Ball (“New rules to lower class sizes force stark choices, threatening the arts, music and P.E”) states,

“North Carolina public school leaders say a legislative mandate to decrease class sizes in the early grades may have a devastating impact on school systems across the state, forcing districts to spend millions more hiring teachers or cut scores of positions for those teaching “specialty” subjects such as arts, music and physical education” (http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2016/11/14/new-rules-lower-class-sizes-force-stark-choices-threatening-tas-specialty-education-positions/).

First, I would make the argument that arts, music, and physical education are not “specialties” but “necessities.” In a nation that is spending more on health problems caused by obesity, the need to get kids moving and away from the television might be just as important as core subject material. Secondly, it shows a glaring contradiction to the religious platforms that many in our state government have been using to maintain office and their potential actions to eliminate part of children’s curriculum.

The predominant spiritual path in the United States, Judeo-Christianity, talks much of the need for music, dance, movement, song, and expression. I think of all of the hymns and musicals my own Southern Baptist church produced, most complete with choreography, which is odd considering that many joke about Baptists’ aversion to dancing.

Even the Bible commands “Sing to the LORD a new song; Sing to the LORD, all the earth” (Psalms 96:1), and “Praise Him with timbrel and dancing; Praise Him with stringed instruments and pipe” (Psalm 150:4).

Furthermore, the Bible often talks of the body as being a “temple of the Holy Spirit” and even commands Christians to stay physically fit. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Yet, some of our GOP stalwarts who are cheering about a budget surplus are planning to “ force districts into stark choices about how to allocate their resources.” Ball continues,

“In some districts, it may mean spending millions more in local dollars to hire additional teachers. Or in other districts, officials say, leaders may be forced to eliminate specialty education positions or draw cash from other pools, such as funding for teaching assistants.”

That’s egregious. That’s backwards. That’s forcing school districts to make decisions about whether to educate the whole child or part of the child in order to make student/teacher ratios look favorable.

That’s like going out of your way to get plastic surgery, liposuction, and body sculpting to create a new look while ignoring the actual health of your body. Without proper nutrition, sleep, exercise, mental health, and emotional support, we open doors to maladies.

When the Bible talks about a temple, it talks about the insides, not just the outsides.

Interestingly enough, many of the private schools and charter schools that receive public money through Opportunity Grants have plentiful art programs and physical education opportunities.

Wow.

What our history has shown us time and time again is that we needed music, dance, arts, and physical education to cope and grow as people and we needed them to become better students. To force the removal of these vital areas of learning would be making our students more one-dimensional. It would make them less prepared.

Don McLean released “American Pie” in 1971. It is widely considered one of the top ten songs of the entire twentieth century. Fifty-five years later, it still has relevance.

The last verse (or “outro”) is actually a tad bit haunting.

“I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.”

When we elect our public servants to serve, we give them the keys to the vehicle that drives our state, a purple colored divided state that has HB2, vouchers, redistricting, Voter ID laws, underfunded public schools, and poverty.

Now imagine that vehicle being a Chevy. We don’t need to go to a dry levee.

We need to keep the music and the other “necessities.”

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, Childhood, North Carolina, Play

Peter Greene: BIG NEWS! And, What Policymakers Can Learn from Little Children

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2016 //
5

Peter Greene went to visit his grandchild in Seattle. He learned some important lessons.

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-best-laid-plans-of-grown-ups.html?m=1

“It’s a well-flogged truism that children will throw away the toy and play with the box, that they will reject the finest plastic construction that the toy industry can muster in order to play with ordinary household objects. I suppose that somebody could have forced my grandson to drop the stick and play “properly” but why, unless they were intent on imposing adult will and plans on a child. “I planned on you playing on that jungle gym over there. Now put down that stick and go have fun, dammit, or else.”

“The bottom line is that children have instincts and interests and involvement of their own. Adults can go nuts trying to direct that, and they can twist children’s brains up by hammering them withy messages about what they are “supposed” to do.”

There are some lessons here for John King, state commissioners, and every school superintendent.

But will they listen?

That is not the end of the story!

Peter revealed a few days after this post that he and his wife got important news: she is pregnant and expecting twins! This led him into some speculation about the doors that confront you as you go through life. The ones you close, the ones you open, the ones you walk through.

And nobody can fully know who you are and nobody knows what doors you will stand in front of and nobody, really nobody at all, knows which doors will open for you or what will be on the other side, all of which means that anybody who says, “We’ve mapped a precise plan for you with the exact equipment you’ll need, no more, no less”– that person is selling something, and not a very good something at that.

In the meantime, I have just a few years to start thinking about education once again as a parent, considering not just the questions of how to provide education in my classroom or how to advocate for policies in my district and state and country, but also how will I help these particular tiny humans (both of them!) navigate through the world of education.

This is exciting as all get out, and my wife, who is also my best friend in the world, is a great person to enter into this adventure with. She can walk through doors like nobody’s business. Door opens; she says yes. Great lesson that. In the meantime, everyone is healthy and happy and ready to start shopping for second-hand baby stuff (if anyone has just been waiting to hire me as a consultant/speaker, now is probably a good time– also, consider giving my book as a Christmas gift to 100 people or so).

This is an adventure– the best kind of adventure. It has prompted me to think about education on the lower end of the age scale, and it has reminded me that the classroom ought to be an adventure (though not, as one twitter wit suggested, a game of Jumanji that we can’t win). It ought to be about preparing to walk through more doors, about being ready, about being willing and able and ready to grapple with the challenges and victories and defeats and about a million things more important than making sure that you generate the right sort of data on a bubble test.Let’s do this. I mean, let’s not go through the motions– let’s really do this.

So, let’s all thank Peter for his wisdom and for his sharp insights, and for the miracle of birth, and wish him and Mrs. Greene the very best as they set out on this new adventure: Twins!

Congratulations, Peter! And Mrs. Greene!

A new life beckons. Two of them, actually.

Categories Childhood

Joan Goodman: How No-Excuses Charters Turn “Joy” into Drudgery

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2016 //
25

Joan Goodman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied no-excuses charter schools, notes that no-excuses charters are sensitive to complaints that their heavy emphasis on discipline is joyless. Therefore, many of them have now inserted “joy” into their curriculum or made it a part of their mission statement. True, students must obey the rules to a T, and they must remain silent in the halls, but there will definitely be a time and a place for “joy.” It shall be so.

She writes:

Uncommon Schools promotes *joy* as one of its five values; Democracy Prep advertises a *joyous culture* with enthusiasm as one of its DREAM values; Mastery lists *joy and humor* among its nine core values; and Achievement First includes the child’s joy in its assessments of student progress. Success Academy says that, along with rigor, its schools stress *humor (joy)…making achieving exhilarating and fun!* Meanwhile, KIPP includes joy’s close cousin, *zest,* as one of the seven character strengths on its Character Growth Card. Chicago’s Noble Network has likewise embraced *zest.* According to Doug Lemov, a major source of CMO pedagogy, the Joy Factor, one of his 49 essential techniques, is *a key driver not just of a happy classroom but of a high-achieving classroom…. people work harder…when their work is punctuated regularly by moment of exultation and joy.*

When I first began visiting no excuses schools, I was struck by the striking juxtaposition of teachers presiding over silent class periods during which children diligently followed instructions, only to interrupt them periodically with the demand for reciprocal clapping, rhymed motivational cheers, and choral responses that seemed more appropriate to an athletic or marching event than an academic environment. The effort of schools to whoop up excitement appeared artificial and disingenuous given the often tedious tasks students were assigned, and the passive/receptive role they were, for the most part, expected to assume.

The intentional artifice is particularly clear in teacher training videos, when leaders like Lemov, or Doug McCurry of Achievement First, talk about how teachers must be skilled at quickly turning arousal on and quickly turning it off so that it serves its purpose – aiding their academic objectives. Stimulating this shallow *joy* is, then, just another control technique designed to foster high achievement. Joy has become a *character strength,* like grit, because of the results it produces, not for its own sake.

To elicit joy, the CMOs use emotional arousal techniques such as choral chanting, finger snapping, and gestural sequences. For instance, to lend *sparkle* to a lesson, Lemov advocates the Vegas Technique. This entails breaks from instruction, as brief as 30 seconds, for a ritualized routine loosely associated with the lesson. Students might, for example, do an action-verb shimmy, clap a routine to accompany a pronoun, or perform a vocabulary word charade. Achievement First’s McCurry advises teachers to plan *joyous interludes* by using four chants accompanied with gestures and 10 cheers per class. One chant, for example, is: *hey hey hey, I feel all-right,* followed with a stomp. The phrase is repeated with two stomps, then three stomps and finished off with: *I feel motivated to learn. And graduate college.*

Does it strike you that there is something unnatural about a program that tells you when to feel joy? It rings a bell for me, but I don’t want to be too harsh. It reminds me of a trip I made to China many years ago, about 1986. The government arranged the schedule, and the first stop was a women’s prison. Our group was treated to a performance by prisoners who sang and danced about how joyful they felt because they were being socially rehabilitated. It was joy on command. There was no real joy. It was a performance.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Education Industry, Privatization

KrazyTA on the Importance of Play

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
13

Our reader who calls himself KrazyTA posted this comment:

 

 

He writes:

 

TEN QUOTES ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY

 

 

“Play is the work of the child.” – Maria Montessori

 

“Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein

 

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” – Mr. Rogers

 

“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.” – Erik H. Erikson

 

“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.” – O. Fred Donaldson

 

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.” – Carl Jung

 

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw

 

“Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” – Plato

 

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers

 

 

 

Link: http://oneperfectdayblog.net/2013/02/21/quotes-about-the-importance-of-play/

😎

Categories Childhood, Play

Denis Ian: Competency Based Education and the End of Education

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2016 //
26

Denis Ian warns that “competency based education,” online teaching and assessment, spells the end of education and of childhood. It is not just a threat to public education. It is a mortal threat to education of any kind.

He posted this comment:

Competency based education isn’t a mirage anymore. It’s here.

Beyond the view of skirmishes now underway across an array of states, is an emerging reality that … in a very short while … this destroying reform will have razed an American institution to a mound of rubble.

And in its place … for as far as the eye can see … will stand drive-thru learning centers offering kiosk-educations from a B. F. Skinner touch-screen that will supply the finger-pointer with all they need to succeed in a life of rich monotony.

That’s what your now titling schools are going to look like. And that’s your child’s purgatory. Dante would have had devilish fun imagining the distinct horror levels of academic hell that await children in their most crucial years.
Kindergarten is now the Boot Camp Moment. Classroom drill instructors seem unbothered shoving 70 month-olds into a rush-hour of academic traffic … because some basement gnome alleges it’s the ideal moment to vaccinate them with “grit” and “rigor”. And these academic tykes are denied recess and songs and giggles … because those would be indicators of unseriousness. And education is, above all else, an extra-serious business. Even for cherubs still ill-at-ease knotting their own sneakers.

The elementary time seems destined to be called the Tablet Years. The Mario Bros. Educational Principles will rule the day as students win points and pile up Magical No. 2 Pencils as they are prompted from one level to the next. Competency-based-education will erase all of those annoying human variables and every learner who reaches Level Extreme will see their names glitter in on-screen pixie dust. And an 8 X 10 screen-shot of that conquering moment will become the new moving-up document.

Middle school will usher in The Skinner Stage … when on-screen accountability and specially-tapered curricula designs will suffocate all of those aggravating teenage twitches and quirks. School magistrates will homogenize this stage of maturity so that no nail stands up … and individuality is mocked as antithetical narcissism that is thoroughly unacceptable. Creativity will be dubbed a day-dreaming activity … time-consuming musing more symptomatic of a sloth than of genius.

High school will be The Divergent Time… when, at long last, the future of every young adult will become crystal clear. Youngsters will be endlessly nudged in this or that career pathway … justified by the overwhelming mounds of data that can be Hansel and Greteled all the way back to the days when joy was first run out of their very brand-new lives.

And at every level, parents will lose more and more control of their children. They will be less and less invited by school authorities to take part in the joy-remembering rites of passage we all associate with growing up. And that is all by design because the very last thing these new educational absolutists want is any mother or father acting as though they have any regency at all over their own child’s education.

Orwell yourself beyond the moment and come to terms with what awaits us all on the horizon of touch-screen scholarship. Huxley yourself into the world of tomorrow when your children will have been programmed and plugged into lifetime situations based not on their passions but on some algorithmic prescription burped out by some electronic-ouija-motherboard.

If you are doubting of this .. and too, too many are … examine what the last half-decade has wrought. In the blink of an eye, schools have been systematically transformed, childhood recalibrated, and parents richly tattooed as adversaries. Government now dictates to the schools, and politicians have morphed into carnival barkers for every profiteer determined to get their slice of the Big Education pie.

And all the while, half-a-generation has already endured this child-abusing gauntlet of educational malpractice as they are guinea-pigged into blazing trails in the brave new world of scholastic madness.

And that is the great tilt. What is it you are going to do about it?

And if you decide to do nothing … then stand ready to watch their lives topple into misery in a very grave new world.

Denis Ian

Categories Childhood, Competency Based Education, Technology

David Gamberg: A New American Vision of Learning through Play

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2016 //
17

I just donated to this gofundme campaign.

I hope you will too.

David Gamberg is the enlightened superintendent of schools in Southold and Greenport, on the North Fork of Long Island.

Here is his vision: Play. Children learn happily when they have time to play.

I have visited his schools.

I ate vegetables that the children raised.

I enjoyed the musical performance.

At the center of learning in his schools are physical activity, music, the arts, gardening, and much more. Southold has a superb robotics team.

It also has one of the highest opt out rates in the state.

Congratulations, Dr. Gamberg, for setting a wonderful example for educators everywhere!

Categories Childhood, Education Reform, Play

The Secret of Finland’s Amazing Success

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2016 //
43

A recent article in The Guardian in the U.K. revealed the secret of Europe’s most successful school system: Finland. It is a four-letter word: P-L-A-Y.

The author, Patrick Butler, visited the Franzenia daycare center and describes what he saw.

Central to early years education in Finland is a “late” start to schooling. At Franzenia, as in all Finnish daycare centres, the emphasis is not on maths, reading or writing (children receive no formal instruction in these until they are seven and in primary school) but creative play. This may surprise UK parents, assailed as they are by the notion of education as a competitive race. In Finland, they are more relaxed: “We believe children under seven are not ready to start school,” says Tiina Marjoniemi, the head of the centre. “They need time to play and be physically active. It’s a time for creativity.”

Indeed the main aim of early years education is not explicitly “education” in the formal sense but the promotion of the health and wellbeing of every child. Daycare is to help them develop good social habits: to learn how to make friends and respect others, for example, or to dress themselves competently. Official guidance also emphasises the importance in pre-school of the “joy of learning”, language enrichment and communication. There is an emphasis on physical activity (at least 90 minutes outdoor play a day). “Kindergarten in Finland doesn’t focus on preparing children for school academically,” writes the Finnish educational expert Pasi Sahlberg. “Instead the main goal is to make sure that the children are happy and responsible individuals.”

Play, nonetheless, is a serious business, at least for the teachers, because it gives children vital skills in how to learn. Franzenia has 44 staff working with children, of whom 16 are kindergarten teachers (who have each completed a three-year specialist degree), and 28 nursery nurses (who have a two-year vocational qualification). The staff-child ratio is 1:4 for under-threes and 1:7 for the older children. Great care is taken to plan not just what kind of play takes place – there is a mix of “free play” and teacher-directed play – but to assess how children play. The children’s development is constantly evaluated. “It’s not just random play, it’s learning through play,” says Marjoniemi.

He cites British researcher David Whitbread, who says:

Carefully organised play helps develop qualities such as attention span, perseverance, concentration and problem solving, which at the age of four are stronger predictors of academic success than the age at which a child learns to read, says Whitebread. There is evidence that high-quality early years play-based learning not only enriches educational development but boosts attainment in children from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not possess the cultural capital enjoyed by their wealthier peers. Says Whitebread: “The better the quality of pre-school, the better the outcomes, both emotionally and socially and in terms of academic achievement.”

Importantly, early years care in Finland is designed and funded to ensure high take-up: every child has a legal right to high-quality pre-school care. In Franzenia, as in all daycare centres, there are children from a mix of backgrounds. Fees, subsidised by the state, are capped at a maximum of €290 (£250) a month (free for those on low incomes) for five-day, 40 hours a week care. About 40% of 1-3-year-olds are in daycare and 75% of 3-5-year-olds. Optional pre-school at the age of six has a 98% take-up. Initially envisaged in the 70s as a way of getting mothers back into the workplace, daycare has also become, Marjoniemi says, about “lifelong learning and how we prepare young children”.

Finnish educator look at the big picture, not test scores.

Daycare is not the only factor underpinning academic success. Hard-wired into Finland’s educational mission is the idea that equality is vital to economic success and societal wellbeing, as well as the belief that a small nation, reliant on creativity, ingenuity and solidarity to compete in the global economy, cannot afford inequality or segregation in schooling or health. Behind its stellar education ranking is a comprehensive social security and public health system that ensures one of the lowest child poverty rates in Europe, and some of the highest levels of wellbeing. Gunilla Holm, professor of education at the University of Helsinki, says: “The goal is that we should all progress together.”

Finnish children do not face the competitive pressures of children in the UK and US. When test scores on PISA dipped, what do you think Finnish educators did?

As UK educational policy becomes more narrow and centrally prescribed, Finland devolves more power to teachers and pupils to design and direct learning. Teachers are well paid, well-trained (they must complete a five-year specialist degree), respected by parents and valued and trusted by politicians. There is no Ofsted-style inspection of schools and teachers, but a system of self-assessment. Educational policy and teaching is heavily research-based.

Worried that its sliding Pisa scores reflected a complacency in its schools, national curriculum changes were introduced this year: these now devote more time to art and crafts. Creativity is the watchword. Core competences include “learning-to learn”, multiliteracy, digital skills and entrepreneurship. At the heart of the new curriculum, the National Board of Education says unashamedly, is the “joy of learning.”

Categories Childhood, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Equity, International, Play, Testing

Jesse Turner: Who Decides? Who is a Sell-Out? Who is Pure?

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2016 //
14

http://childrenaremorethantestscores.blogspot.com/2016/09/who-decides.html?m=1

Jesse Turner is known as “the walking man.” He walked from Connecticut to D.C. inn 2010 to protest the overuse of mandated testing and its negative effects on children. He did it again in 2015.

His blog is called “children are more than test scores.”

This is his latest. It is called “Who Decides?”

It begins like this. Please open the link and see where he goes with it.

I hear some educational activists want to be the deciders?
Who is authentic?
Who is a sell out?
Who is weak?
Who is pure?
Who is a real activist?

Who decides?
Who decides if you are an education activist?
Who decides if you can join the rallies against NCLB, RTTT, or ESSA?
Who decides if you can make your own sign for the cause?
Who decides if you can march?

Who decides?
I know something about activists.
I have been an activist since I was eight years old.
My first march was August 28, 1963.
I was the tag along company for my grandfather who decided he needed to be part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
At eight years old I had no idea I was an activist, but activist I became.
The only thing about the March on Washington I really knew was,
No one from the union hall would go with him.
No one from our church would go with him.
No one from his VFW would go with him.
I knew my grandmother was afraid to go.
My mother was afraid to go.
I knew they both loved Dr. King.
But, they read the newspapers,
They watched the news, and everywhere Black people marched back in 60’s they were met with hatred and brutality.
My mother loved justice, but she was afraid.
For weeks my grandfather asked friends and everyone he knew to go to DC,
He said I’ll drive,
I’ll pay for the gas,
I’ll buy lunch,
But no one would go.
My grandmother and mother prayed no one would go.
Why, because they loved him, and were afraid something would happen, and he would be hurt.
Finally he stopped asking people.
My grandmother hoped he would decide not to go.
He was going?
He fought in World War I, lived through the great depression, believed every American deserved a good job, and everyone had the right to vote.
My grandmother and mother prayed he would change his mind.
God did not answer their prayers.
They were afraid for their stubborn old man with a love for justice.
God did answer his marching prayers.
On the day before the march he washed his car, changed the oil, checked the tires, and filled up the gas tank. Laid out his best Sunday suit. Asked my grandmother if she could pack some sandwiches and his thermos. He said please in his best please voice.
There was an argument, my grandmother tried to get him to change his mind. He would not.
She called my mother crying. My mother went over. She took me with her.
They came to accept he was going to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
They were afraid, but proud of their stubborn old man.
They made sandwiches, brought an extra thermos one for the drive down, and one for the drive back. In 1963 he was 68. They calculated the drive time down would take 4 to 5 hours and another 4 to 5 hours on the way back, and figured the march would last at least 6-8 hours.
He would need to leave at 4:30 AM. They figured he would get there around 9:00, stay until 4 or 5, and drive home. They determined he needed coffee for ride down and back. None of this change the fact that they were afraid for him. People today have no idea how brave those 250,000 marchers were in 63.
My mother had brought a bag with pajamas and my only suit to my grandmother’s house. She had decided if the old man is going to Washington he needs company for the ride. She told my grandmother it’s a long ride, he’ll be lonely, and he could get tired. He needs someone to keep him awake.
Little Jess is the perfect person for that. He can’t stop talking. Plus if we send him with the boy he’ll be extra careful not to get into any trouble. If trouble starts he’ll take the boy and run.
So I began marching in 63 at the age of 8.
No one asked my grandfather are you for freedom?
No one asked are you for jobs?
No one asked my grandfather why is a White man marching with Black people?
Why did you bring a little boy?

Who decides?

All of us do what we can. I write. Jesse walks. I couldn’t do what he does. I say it is time for him to join the honor roll of this blog for his persistence, his goodness, his love for children, and his physical stamina.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Honor Roll, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing
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