Back to school time!
Butterflies in your stomach!
But you get to see your friends and your teachers!
And watch this to see why public school is great!
Let’s remember what matters most: Friendship. Kindness. Creativity. Joy. Compassion. Integrity. Good citizenship. Thinking. Learning. Goodness. Heart. Character.
In case you wondered, the video is from Ossining, New York.
Joan Kramer, a hero of public libraries, public education, and the common good, died a few days ago.
Joan was a hero to all who knew and loved her.
This is a tribute from some of her friends who knew her well.
Here she is testifying before the Los Angeles Unified School District board on behalf of libraries.
She had a fantastic blog, beautifully illustrated. I recommend that you read it.
You can see her beautiful spirit in her words. I especially loved her story about Allen Funt, the Candid Camera guy.
Farewell, Joan. We will miss you. Your followers will carry on and multiply, to spread your message about the values of literacy, knowledge, civilization, and the power of the public space.
Steven Singer finds that there is a missing ingredient in the present discourse about School Reform. Reformers think they have made great strides if they open more opportunities for choice. What reformers have not been willing to do is to guarantee that every child has the right to an excellent education.
We know what excellent education looks like. It is the education that the 1% demand for their own children. Small classes. Experienced teachers. Beautiful grounds. Ample supplies. A well-stocked library. A curriculum that takes every child as far as they can go. No obsession with test scores.
So why do reformers want other people’s children in overcrowded classes, staffed by inexperienced teachers, focused in tests. Learning to obey and conform?
Singer writes:
“Let’s get one thing straight: there are plenty of things wrong with America’s school system. But they almost all stem from one major error.
“We don’t guarantee every child an excellent education.
“Instead, we strive to guarantee every child THE CHANCE at an excellent education. In other words, we’ll provide a bunch of different options that parents and children can choose from – public schools, charter schools, cyber schools, voucher schools, etc.
“Some of these options will be great. Some will be terrible. It’s up to the consumer (i.e. parents and children) to decide which one to bet on.
“In many places this results in children bouncing from school-to-school. One school is woefully deficient, they enroll in another one. One school closes suddenly, they start over again at another.
“It’s terribly inefficient and does very little good for most children.
“But that’s because it’s not designed with them in mind. It does not put the child first. It puts the education provider first.
“It is a distinctly privatized system. As such, the most important element in this system is the corporation, business, administrator or entrepreneurial entity that provides an education.
“We guarantee the businessperson a potential client. We guarantee the investor a market. We guarantee the hedge fund manager a path to increased equity. We guarantee the entrepreneur a chance to exploit the system for a profit.
“What we do NOT guarantee is anything for the students. Caveat emptor – “Let the buyer beware.”
“Imagine if, instead, we started from this proposition: every child in America will be provided with an excellent education.
“Sound impossible? Maybe. But it’s certainly a better goal than the one we’re using.”
There is much more. Singer doesn’t have a cookie-cutter in mind.
The current absurd obsession with test scores is destroying schooling and childhood. Nowhere is the devastation more visible than in state and local policies turning kindergarten and nursery school into academically rigorous boot camps. Pre-K is supposed to get children ready for kindergarten. Kindergarten is a time to learn reading and writing and math. Kindergarten prepares the child for first grade. It is the first step towards “college and career readiness.”
But kindergarten has been warped beyond all recognition from what it is supposed to be. The founder of the kindergarten was Friedrich Froebel. His ideas were first brought to America by William Torrey Harris, the superintendent of schools in St. Louis (later the U.S. Commissioner of Education for 18 years under various presidents) and a devotee of Hegel.
To learn more about what kindergarten should be, go to the Froebel website.
Here is an excerpt from the opening page:
“The name Kindergarten signifies both a garden for children, a location where they can observe and interact with nature, and also a garden of children, where they themselves can grow and develop in freedom from arbitrary imperatives.
“In 1837, having developed and tested a radically new educational method and philosophy based on structured, activity based learning, Froebel moved to Bad Blankenburg and established his Play and Activity Institute which in 1840 he renamed Kindergarten.
“Kindergarten has three essential parts:
*creative play, which Froebel called gifts and occupations)
*singing and dancing for healthy activity
*observing and nurturing plants in a garden for stimulating awareness of the natural world
“Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.
“To Froebel belongs the credit for finding the true nature of play and regulating it to lead naturally into work. The same spontaneity and joy, the same freedom and serenity that characterise the plays of childhood are realised in all human activity. The gifts and occupations are the living connection which makes both play and work expressions of the same creative activity. ” W N Hailmann
“Friedrich Froebel introduced the concept of gardens for children, where they could participate in all aspects of growing, harvesting, and preparing nutritious, seasonal produce. As educational tools, these gardens provide real world applications of core mathematical concepts. The Edible Schoolyard educates children about the connections between food, health, and the environment through activities which are fully integrated into the curriculum.”
I urge you to read this poem.
I urge you to share it with your students if you are a teacher.
As machines and digital devices come to dominate our lives, let us not forget our humanity.
It is humanity that keeps us human, not a data point.
Jerry Taylor used to be paid to dispute people who said that the climate was changing. He was a skeptic. He did battle on television with those who believed in climate change. But he changed his mind.
When I read this interview with Jerry Taylor in The Intercept, I was very struck by the amazing similarity to my own change of view. I was once certain that common standards and tests were necessary to improve education and give everyone equal opportunity to succeed. I changed my mind as I watched the evidence unfold during the implementation of No Child Left Behind.
In this age, it is very difficult for people to admit they were wrong. But it happens.
I think we have to spend more time thinking about how to persuade people who don’t agree with us.
To change education policy to one that recognizes that each child is a unique human being, to change the goal of education to be the cultivation of each person as a citizen who can take charge of his or her own life, we must work to change hearts and minds of policymakers.
How do we change minds? I changed minds, and I can explain why. But I am still groping for answers when it comes to convincing others, especially when they don’t seem to care about evidence.
Michael Hynes is the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island in New York. He has a progressive vision of what schools should be, and he is implementing it in the schools of his district, with the support of the elected board.
Take a few minutes and watch his TED talk, where he explains how to transform our schools and make them schools of thoughtfulness, learning, and joy.
Happy Easter!
Here’s a smile for your holidays.
I think you should spend today reading something other than this blog.
If you are Christian, go to church or do whatever you usually do.
If you are Jewish or Muslim or atheist or anything else, read and enjoy the day.
I would say I’m going fishing, but where I live, it’s not the season. Also, I don’t like fishing.
Actually, we are cooking up a big Easter meal for Mary’s family.
So, scour the blog for things you missed. I will be doing clean-up all day.
Get outside and breathe the spring. Winter is over. Be happy.
Enjoy friends and family.
I will be back tomorrow with some fabulous posts!
One million people watched the birth of a baby to April the giraffe as her mate Oliver watched.
It was thrilling to see!
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the story for the full video.
Superintendent David Gamberg leads the schools of two adjoining school districts on Long Island, Greenport and Southold on Long Island. Gamberg has a holistic view of education. He believes in the full development of young children as happy, healthy, well-rounded people. He thinks that the arts are far more important than test scores. He wants the children to explore their talents. His schools have a garden, where the children raise vegetables and share them. Southold schools have an amazing array of musical activities, including an orchestra, a choir, and a jazz band. It also has an award-winning robotics team. And its rate of opting out from state tests is one of the highest in the state.
Superintendent Gamberg invited Mary and me to attend the major school production of the school year: “Les Miserables.”
We had seen it many years ago in both London and New York. It is a big, ambitious production, with a huge cast and demanding musical numbers. I couldn’t imagine how students could pull off this sprawling and complicated musical.
The event was held in the high school auditorium, which holds about 700 people. Lucky we had reserved seats because the house was packed, as were all the other performances. Parents, grandparents, siblings, and local community members from every walk of life.
The music was supplied by the school’s 16-piece orchestra, and it was fabulous. The show was spectacular.
We were blown away by the acting, the singing, and the staging. The student talent was amazing. Some of the kids had acted in school productions for four, five, or six years. There must have been fifty students in the cast, maybe more, and many more working behind the scenes. The story of Jean Val Jean and Inspector Javert was presented with zest, passion, and the energy of youth.
It was really, really funny to see these beautiful children standing on the barricades and singing about the revolution and waving a big red flag in a community that voted by a small margin for Trump.
We loved the show and so did the rest of the audience. The cast and orchestra received a standing ovation and cheers that rocked the room.
We looked at each other and said, “Now we know why we pay taxes, and it is money well spent.”
An event like this performance is what makes a public school a community school. You can bet that the next bond issue will easily pass. Not just because of this production, but because of the vision that produces an education that unifies the community and gives all children a chance to shine.
America has many thousands of communities like this one. The public schools are the cement of the community.
Betsy DeVos doesn’t understand that. She never will. Sad.
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