From: CMMEHuss Date sent: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 16:07:27 EST To: Bimboco@aol.com, education-consumers@tricon.net Subject: Re: $8 Billion for School Bonds Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) I spoke with a teacher from Mexico once. When a group of teachers from the US visited his school, they were horrified at the old building, no glass in the windows, no AC, no computers or other technology, etc. On a visit to their schools in the US, the Mexican teacher was horrified at how little the children knew compared to his students back in Mexico. MEH EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE From: DNS BNA Date sent: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 10:01:56 EST To: gkcunn01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu, education-consumers@tricon.net Subject: Re: Riggs critique of Doug Carnine and Direct Instruction Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) This quote from Ken Goodman, father of whole language, forwarded by George Cunningham, is a great example of totally unsupported claims being used to defend something. Ken better hope he never has to get on the stand and be cross-examined as an expert in litigation (assuming he could qualify). Any decent lawyer would rip him to shreds. << Whole language can be defined in a strong sense as the best practices of the best informed and most professional teachers. A key difference between whole language and antecedent movements is that it is a teacher led movement- highly professional teachers selecting for themselves the "best practices" consistent with their own professional knowledge and beliefs. >> First, who defines whole language this way? Second, where is the proof (studies, surveys, etc.) identifying the teachers using whole language as the "best informed and most professional"? Or are they such (in Ken's view) because they use WL. Anyway, who thinks teachers should be making decisions on teaching strategies regardless of the research -- which seems to be his point. I'll leave aside for now whether teachers could qualify as experts, based on training and experience, for making such judgments. This man should be ashamed to have such foolishness publicly associated with his name. BTW, George, feel free to forward my comments to Mr. Goodman if you have an e- mail address. Dave Shearon, Nashville, TN EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE To: CMMEHuss , Eduction-Consumers From: "James Kilpatrick" Subject: Re: $8 Billion for School Bonds Date sent: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 23:09:42 -0600 >I spoke with a teacher from Mexico once. When a group of teachers from the US >visited his school, they were horrified at the old building, no glass in the >windows, no AC, no computers or other technology, etc. On a visit to their >schools in the US, the Mexican teacher was horrified at how little the >children knew compared to his students back in Mexico. > >MEH >EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE My wife was a special education teacher in Guatemala and seconds these comments. She taught in a school with broken windows, no paint, broken desk, termites, 30 children in the class, small area for recess, very poor children and a black board. These children all knew how to read and do their math facts in second grade. The children only had a notebook and pencil and what she was able to put on the blackboard. She had worked in another school that had only benchs and a blackboard and no desks. So much for high-tech education. Jimmy Jimmy Kilpatrick Phone 713 520-9715 Coordinator of Community Programs Fax 713 520-7214 Advisor for Reading and Reading Disabilities University of Texas at Austin Home 281 265-2368 Charles A. Dana Center Mobile 281 536-4713 1723 Westheimer Road Houston,Texas 77098-1611 EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE From: "Bob & Barbara Tennison" To: "CMMEHuss" Subject: Rsponse: $8 Billion for School Bonds Date sent: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 14:43:38 -0800 Interesting point. Last year our school board invited some 5th grade students to the monthly meeting. One young man, a Mexican national, told the board that he couldn't understand why he wasn't being taught to read and write. He said and I quote: "In Mexico, you don't get out of the first grade until you can read and write, here (Cottage Grove) they don't even bother to teach you to read until your in at least the 5th grade and then they only teach you a little." He continued by telling the Board that schools in Mexico were hard, here he said, they are easy and no one seems to care very much if you learn or not. Out of the mouths of babes! Barbara -----Original Message----- From: CMMEHuss To: Bimboco@aol.com ; education-consumers@tricon.net Date: Saturday, January 10, 1998 1:24 PM Subject: Re: $8 Billion for School Bonds >I spoke with a teacher from Mexico once. When a group of teachers from the US >visited his school, they were horrified at the old building, no glass in the >windows, no AC, no computers or other technology, etc. On a visit to their >schools in the US, the Mexican teacher was horrified at how little the >children knew compared to his students back in Mexico. > >MEH >EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE > EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE From: brucec76@ix.netcom.com Date sent: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 18:07:51 -0800 To: sleeper@warwick.net Copies to: Jeanne Donovan , Education Consumers Clearinghouse Subject: Re: Turning the tables on STW Jeanne and Chris (The widest-awake Sleeper I ever knew), et al, These ladies must have been reading my mail. Following is a piece I sent to the Orange Co. (CA) Register late last week. It was inspired by someone who had posted a notice about the upcoming STW month. I sent it this same piece this morning on a sub-loop of mostly Mathematically Correct people. If you have already received it, feel free to dump it. BC ~~~~~~ Subject: School-to-Work Later this month the federal government is going to unleash a media blitz telling us that what is harmful to us is actually good for us. I'm speaking in reference to the upcoming official School-to-Work (STW) recognition month. For the last four or five years we have listened as the edutocracy has told us that back-to-basics and school choice will decimate public education. Neither will. But STW will. Just how will STW decimate education? Examples of some of the major ones follow a couple rhetorical questions. Last week Gov. Wilson unveiled a new plan to add hours of classroom instruction to the school year. If we are to have STW, why bother? STW is going to eliminate classroom hours for academic studies in wholesale quantities. In fact, why bother having rigorous new math and language standards? Why bother having standardized testing? Why bother spending money on new facilities and computers when students will be out in the workplace? Students will be taught the most minimal academic material, and in the most superficial way. No need to burden their little brains with knowledge and understanding. We will teach them self-esteem, teamwork and job skills instead. The latter are what the STW crowd tells us employers in the 21st Century will be looking for. Why aren't teachers outraged about STW? They will be reduced to mere collaborative learning facilitators, overseeing students required to do little substantive learning. They'll read the daily rah-rah slogan, and make sure the students recite positive affirmations hourly. Being a facilitator is a job just about anyone will be able to do, so wages will plummet unless supply is artificially limited. Hence, you've seen the recent push to try to convince the public that the only qualified teacher is one with a credential. (This is rubbish because the decline of public ed started when the use of "unqualified" teachers with emergency credentials was negligible.) The STW grand plan calls for career planning by the seventh grade. Some planners would like to push it as low as the fourth grade. Let me say it a different way. What we're talking about here is central planning for young careers. More appropriately, it is nothing more than career employment for the adult central planners. Now, besides ruining your kid's educational opportunities, these planners have decided that they are eminently qualified to determine Johnny and Jane's futures. They'd rather control your child's destiny than prepare Johnny and Jane to make independent decisions. These are the same people that see no correlation between the creation of the U.S. Dept. of Education, and the nose-dive of educational quality. Though unable to understand the past, they are fully confident that they understand the future. Having never worked in industry, they will magically decide what industry needs, and train accordingly. By claiming to know the unknowable, these magi will plan training for jobs that don't yet exist in industries not yet conceived. But not to worry. They've covered their bases for when they err. They've invented lifelong learning. When they've trained and certified Johnny for a job that's been obsolesced before he enters the labor market, they will just send him back for more career planning and training. Given the structural flaws of such romanticized -- though irrational -- thinking, the planners will have guaranteed lifetime employment, courtesy of the tax payers. Germany already has a similar system. Germany has 12% unemployment, while her people hold five and six job skill certificates. Somehow the workers' qualifications never seem to match the available job opportunities. German training programs are full-to- overflowing as the planners try to guess the new market needs, only to consistently miss. So you say that when we find out that it won't work, we can change it? Well, not exactly. Control over local school boards will be transferred to workforce development boards. These boards will be made up of unelected officials known as stakeholders, a euphemism for beneficiaries. These beneficiaries will decide what the taxpayers need to do for them. The taxpayers will have no voice. School boards will be relegated to little more than negotiating teacher contracts. All curriculum will be outside their reach. If districts do try to exit, punitive financial schemes have been erected to make leaving tantamount to bankrupting the district. Control would then revert to the state completely. The STW movement in education has picked up some strange bedfellows, big business and big labor. How did big business get seduced (suckered)? Here in California, STW is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, which represents big business. Why? There are a couple of reasons, neither of which are pretty from the taxpayers' perspective. One, the VP for Education in the California Chamber is an executive with a firm that markets student-centered training programs. Chambers across the country are embedded with similar self-interests. Take what the various chambers say about education and STW with great skepticism. Two, the Fortune 500 companies see it as an opportunity to off-load their training costs for entry-level personnel onto the taxpayers. The truth is, we shouldn't let Fortune 500 companies define the needs of tomorrow's labor force because they don't know. Entrepreneurial firms are where the new technologies are being developed, where most of the new jobs are being created, and where new job descriptions are being invented. Talk to small business owners and what you will hear is totally different from the Fortune 500 representatives. The needs of new companies, especially those in emerging markets, are consistent with a traditional, classical education and a free labor market. A third reason is that big business just doesn't like change. They develop expensive 5-, 10- and 20-year strategic plans, upon which the emerging entrepreneurial, technological markets wreak havoc. The biggies make capital commitments, only to see the market change out from under them. They don't like that. With STW, they will be able to shut off the labor supply required by start-ups, and thus sustain some control over the markets. How will this happen? Well, under STW, all students will have their transcripts and training certificates registered with a central state-run employment bureau. All employers will have to go through this state agency to hire new employees. Like a union hall, the state will send them the next in line whom they have decided meets the employer's requirements. Anything like a free labor market will be abandoned. Why have labor unions supported STW? One reason is that teachers now represent the largest demographic group in their membership. They need to protect this constituency. Ironically, by supporting STW, they're putting the teachers at risk. A second reason is the same as the second for big business. They want to off- load their apprenticeship costs onto the taxpayers. If the proponents of STW were intellectually honest, and were acting with integrity, they would come to the taxpayers and ask for funding for a totally separate vocational training system. But they know that won't fly. Consequently they have developed an elaborate plan to "transform" our educational system into a vocational one. Remember this when they tell you that STW represents world-class standards, and is what's best for your kids. Remember, too, their track record. Since President Carter opened the US Dept. of Education, this gang has spent $30 billion. Do they know what they're doing? Hardly. Public education is at its nadir, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Ask yourself if these are the credentials of the people you want deciding your child's future and controlling the direction of our economy. Ask yourself if letting them have their latest educational toy is worth surrendering your child's freedom to pursue his/her own way in this world, to have a chance to be all that he/she can be. Ask yourself who's really a threat to public education, the back-to-basics crowd or the STW social engineers. I hope you answer by telling them to stick a fork in STW, that we aren't buying anymore edu-scams. I hope you tell them that when we say education, we mean the pursuit of truth and knowledge -- not vocational training. I hope you tell them that they had their chance and blew it -- to the tune of $30 billion and millions of illiterate kids. If nothing else, I hope you question the STW propaganda coming in two weeks. Bruce Crawford EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE