Regular readers of this blog have often encountered comments by Susan Schwartz. Susan was a celebrated teacher in District 2 in New York City. Now she is retired and has become a very successful photographer. She mentioned recently that her work had been accepted for an exhibit, and another reader asked whether Susan would be willing to share her work here.
I asked her and she responded with this sampling of her superb photographs.
Enjoy.
Ted Dintersmith was honored by the NEA for his advocacy on behalf of public education.
In this article, which appeared in Forbes, he urges support for a national commitment to investing in education and the future of our society.
He writes:
Education is the single most important issue determining our democracy’s future. If we continue to get it wrong, we’re headed for collapse. But if we bring the vision and courage to get it right, we will rescue the American Dream. Now more than ever, we desperately need a compelling blueprint, an Education Imperative.
Education sits in a context. Machine intelligence (computers, software, robotics, artificial intelligence) is advancing at a blistering pace, posing profound career and citizenship challenges for our population. Within a decade or two, machines will outperform humans on almost any physical or cognitive task, eliminating almost all routine white- and blue-collar jobs. To his immense credit, presidential candidate Andrew Yang is sounding alarm bells about this economic tsunami heading our way. And if economic upheaval isn’t enough, technology-driven social media and deep-fake videos are now weapons with the power to manipulate and disrupt civic engagement, to undermine democratic processes…
In the past, America was at its best when faced with an existential crisis. Hell, we saved the free world during World War II. We rebuilt Europe. We put a man on the moon. What better cause than fighting for our children’s futures by rallying around an aspirational view of what our schools could be, by stepping up to an Education Imperative.
Our Education Imperative should start with our babies and toddlers. There’s no better economic investment, nor higher moral imperative, than ensuring that our youngest children receive high-quality early-childhood care. Too many of America’s kids grow up in desperate circumstances. Every child, not just every rich child, deserves a decent start in life.
The vast majority of U.S. kids attend our public K12 schools, one of our country’s most vital resources. These schools need more financial support. We need to offset the outsized role of local property taxes in funding education, which results shortchanging the kids who need the most. If you’re looking for heroes in America, you’ll find them in our classrooms. Our teachers fight daily for their kids, even risking their lives to protect children from shooters armed with NRA-endorsed assault weapons. They deserve a fair salary, better professional development support, and trust.
You may not agree with all his prescriptions but in general he is on the right track.
Time for a massive investment in children and teachers and education.
Testing and choice have been a wasteful and harmful distraction.
Robin Lithgow spent many years in charge of arts education for the Los Angeles public schools. Having retired, she is now writing a book and blogging about the arts, especially theater and drama and their relation to cognition.
I think you will enjoy this delightful meditation about rhetoric, what it meant in Shakespeare’s day, and what it means today.
She begins:
This is fun!
In The Taming of the Shrew, before the shrew, Kate, matches wits with Petruchio in their hilarious first encounter, the illiterate servant Grumio warns her that Petruchio will “disfigure” her with his “rope-tricks.” He’s referring to Petruchio’s scathing facility with rhetoric (which Grumio hears as rope-tricks) and his ability to use rhetorical “figures” to counter and obliterate any argument she might throw at him.
When Shakespeare was a student, only a few generations after the printing press had been invented, rhetoric had been at the core of a child’s education for over two thousand years. Before literacy was prevalent, the ability to persuade though speech gave enormous power to the “rhetor,” the public speaker. The ability to make language punch and pop, to make the listener sit up and pay attention (or else!), was considered the most important skill of a person educated in the liberal arts. All through ancient times, the middle ages, and well into the Enlightenment, the “Trivium” (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) were the foundational subjects taught first to a child in elementary, or “trivial” school.
Shakespeare had to be able to recognize and practice in his speaking and in his writing at least 132 rhetorical figures, tropes, and devices. He had to be able to practice expressive, physical rhetoric (or rhetorical dance) every time he stood on his two feet and spoke to his teachers or his classmates. “Per Quam Figuram?” was the question asked repeatedly, all day, every day: “What figure are you using?”
Robin Lithgow was in charge of arts education for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She learned to deal with bureaucracy, frustration, and budget cuts, but she never lost her joy and passion for the arts and their power to change students’ lives.
Now in retirement, she has become a student of the history of the arts.she believes that the justification for the arts cannot be demonstrated with data. She is convinced that explorations into their history will awaken minds and draw them into sympathetic appreciation for the power of the arts.
Read this entry on “Good Behavior and Audacity” to understand where she is heading.
I am retired from the position of Director of the Arts Education Branch in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where for fourteen years I and dozens of amazing colleagues labored to bring the arts to the core of the academic day for every student at every grade level. Research supported our efforts; teachers and most administrators embraced the program enthusiastically; and the evidence poured in that students thrive in arts-rich schools….And yet, we were constantly amazed that we had to advocate, advocate, advocate, to fight each year for our modest funding and for our seat at the table with the decision makers at the head of the district.
Could it be that this was, at least in part, because of our lack of history? Education leaders keep asking us for our “data,” and the obsession for data certainly drives the political power battles in education across the country. We HAVE data, and tons of it, but it is “soft” data and cannot always be directly linked to the results being sought. Perhaps history could be more powerful than data.
So I launched my own research, and once I retired I was literally able to bask in it. Over the past six years I have written a book focusing on one brief period in history, that of the humanist education designed primarily by Desiderius Erasmus and enjoyed by the young William Shakespeare and tens of thousands of his peers in Elizabethan England.
The title of my book is Good Behavior and Audacity: Humanist Education, Playacting, and a Generation of Genius.
I recently watched the PBS special about the Jewish legacy on Broadway, and I enjoyed every minute.
It is online, and I share it now with you.
I hope it is still online.
I have always loved Broadway musicals, and many are reprised in this special.
But in addition to the entertainment and the rich cultural history, we see a very contemporary story of immigrants coming to America and becoming quintessentially American. We see Irving Berlin arriving as a five-year-old from Russia, having survived a pogrom, then becoming the composer of “God Bless America,” “Easter Parade,” and “White Christmas,” among the thousands of songs he wrote. We see stories in which composers used their music to teach lessons about racism, intolerance, and bigotry, like “South Pacific,” and the song “You Got to Be Taught to Hate.” Often they told the stories through the experiences of other groups, like “Porgy and Bess” and “West Side Story.”
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
I am sending a gift to PBS for remaining a beacon of light in these dark times.
Stuart Egan is an NBCT High School Teacher in North Carolina.
In this post, he notes that school boards and vigilantes often challenge Toni Morrison’s novels. Her writings are frequently banned. But he contends that the critics should read them and perhaps they will learn from them as he did.
Toni Morrison passed this past week. She was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and what she did (and still does) for this white, upper middle class male teacher is something that I will always value as a life-long student: she made me understand that I don’t understand.
And she made me uncomfortable in my own skin to the point it still forces me to take a hard objective look at myself, my actions, and how I treat others. She also makes me look at the past through different lenses, especially my upbringing in a small rural town in Georgia…
Great literature teaches us about ourselves, especially the parts of ourselves that we do not want to acknowledge but that control how we perceive others and how we treat others. And in a nation where many hold the Second Amendment and guns with as much fervor as it does the Bible (which by the way is one of the most challenged books in the country), should we not also look at the First Amendment and its protection of the freedom of speech as dearly?
The very man who is the president of the United States freely exercises his right for freedom of speech through his Twitter account. He exercises that right because he can.
Do I agree with him? Hardly ever. And that’s my right. But having read great works of literature challenges me and forces me to have difficult and uncomfortable, yet peaceful, confrontations with issues and society.
I do not believe that our current president is willing to be challenged and be uncomfortable. I think part of the reason is that he doesn’t read. And what I mean by that is that he does not allow himself to be challenged by the words, the actions, the viewpoints, and the events that have shaped this country. In fact, when he “writes” his books, he has someone do it for him…
Maybe the fact Toni Morrison is one of the most challenged and banned authors is a statement that our society is afraid to look at itself through the eyes of others who have lived lives along different paths. That fear leads to division and that division manifests itself in so many ways, including violence.
This country desperately needs to learn about itself and listen to those whose viewpoints and experiences and words can challenge us to be better than we were yesterday and better than we are today.
This country needs to a country of learners.
And Toni Morrison was and still is a great teacher.
Domingo Morel is a scholar of state takeovers. He wrote a book called Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy. He was also a member of the team from Johns Hopkins that studied the problems of the Providence schools. And, what’s more, he is a graduate of the Providence public schools.
In other words, he has solid credentials to speak about the future of the Providence public schools. The schools are already under mayoral control, so discount that magic bullet that reformers usually prefer.
He knows from his study of state takeovers that they do not address root causes of school dysfunction.
Consider this:
As a scholar of state takeovers of school districts, I have seen how communities desperate to improve their schools placed their hopes in state takeovers, only to be disappointed. While the long-term effects of takeovers on student achievement often fail to meet expectations, the effects on community engagement are devastating. In most takeovers, states remove local entities — school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and community organizations — from decision-making about their schools.
Those who have read the Johns Hopkins report are aware that the absence of community engagement is a major issue in the Providence Schools. Demographic differences are a major reason. Students of color represent more than 85% of the student population and English Language Learners represent nearly 30%, while more than 80% of the teachers are white. These differences are not trivial…
To help cultivate community engagement, the state could partner with a collective of community organizations, including Parents Leading for Educational Equity, ProvParents, the Equity Institute, the Latino Policy Institute, CYCLE and the Providence Student Union, which have come together over concerns with the Providence schools.
Finally, state officials should examine their role in contributing to the current conditions in Providence. State funding, particularly to support English Language Learners and facilities, has been inadequate. In addition, the absence of a pipeline for teachers of color is a state failure.
What a surprising set of recommendations: increase the pipeline of teachers of color. Build community engagement. Work with community organizations. Increase state funding.
He might also have added: Reduce class sizes. Provide wraparound services for students and adults. Open health clinics for families in the schools or communities. Improve and increase early childhood education. Beef up arts education and performance spaces in every school.
It takes a village, not a flock of hedge fund managers or a passel of fly-by billionaires hawking charter schools.
Steven Singer wrote this last year, but it remains pertinent and on the money. He says that there is a narrative spun by Disrupters that American schools are in “crisis” and are “failing.” He says this is baloney, or bologna, whichever spelling you prefer.
Singer says that American public schools are among the best in the world.
He writes:
Critics argue that our scores on international tests don’t justify such a claim. But they’re wrong before you even look at the numbers. They’re comparing apples to pears. You simply can’t compare the United States to countries that leave hundreds of thousands of rural and poor children without any education whatsoever. The Bates Motel may have the softest pillows in town, but it’s immediately disqualified because of the high chance of being murdered in the shower.
No school system of this size anywhere in the world exceeds the United States in providing free access to education for everyone. And that, alone, makes us one of the best.
It doesn’t mean our system is problem free. There are plenty of ways we could improve. We’re still incredibly segregated by race and class. Our funding formulas are often regressive and inadequate. Schools serving mostly poor students don’t have nearly the resources of those serving rich students. But at least at the very outset what we’re trying to do is better than what most of the world takes on. You can’t achieve equity if it isn’t even on the menu.
The important thing to know about the international test scores is that we were never #1. Never. When the first international test of mathematics was offered in the mid-1960s, we came in last.
What holds us back is our high rates of child poverty. If we reduced poverty, we would improve our schools because children would arrive in school ready to learn, and would not lose days of instruction due to illness and lack of medical attention.
The biggest problem in American education, aside from our national indifference to the well-being of students, is that we have a crazy federal law that makes test scores the goal of education. That’s backwards. Test scores are supposed to be a measure, not a goal.
We should aim to be more like Finland, which not only has high test scores without test prep, but has been rated the happiest country in the world. Less testing, more time for the arts and more attention to creativity and divergent thinking. Teachers with autonomy and a love of teaching. Students encouraged to do their best but not measured by standardized tests. You know where Finland got these ideas? They borrowed them from the U.S., and we forgot them and went for standardization. As Albert Einstein said many decades ago, standardization is for automobiles, not for people.
Peg Tyre is a veteran education journalist who is currently tracking the path of education reform in Japan. She reminds me of something that I learned when I visited schools in other countries. Education officials and teachers wonder how Americans are able to teach their students creativity, critical thinking, imagination. While we obsess over test scores, other nations are awed by our students’ inquisitiveness, their ability to speak out and ask questions instead of regurgitating facts.
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This is an ironic story. There is no one and no institution that has done more to set off an international test score competition than Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, which administers the periodic international tests called PISA, the Programme in International Student Assessment. Every nation wants to be first. Every nation waits anxiously to see whether its test scores in reading, mathematics, and science went up or down. In 2010, when the 2009 PISA scores were released, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama declared that the U.S. was facing another “Sputnik moment,” and it was time to crack down. Others wrung their hands and wondered how we could toughen up to compete with Shanghai.
The arts could become more important for young people than maths in the future, according to a leading education expert.
Researcher Andreas Schleicher, who leads the Programme for International Student Assessment at the intergovernmental economic organisation OECD, told a House of Commons inquiry that he believed young people could benefit more from the skills gained through creativity than test-based learning.
He was giving evidence to the Education Select Committee as part of an ongoing inquiry into the fourth industrial revolution – the influence of technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence on society.
Schleicher, who is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading educational thinkers, said: “I would say, in the fourth industrial revolution, arts may become more important than maths.”
“We talk about ‘soft skills’ often as social and emotional skills, and hard skills as about science and maths, but it might be the opposite,” he said, suggesting that science and maths may become ‘softer’ in future when the need for them decreases due to technology, and the ‘hard skills’ will be “your curiosity, your leadership, your persistence and your resilience”.
His comments come amid ongoing concerns about the narrowing of the education system in the UK to exclude creativity and prioritise academic subjects.
Campaigners argue that this is prohibiting many young people from pursuing creative careers. However, Schleicher said that too narrow a curriculum could also make young people less prepared for the demands of the future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 