Texas A&M commencement address

[Ricardus]

"please explain to me what you personally did to prevent the rise and installment of the organized education system, where "educators" are more concerned with their take-home than their students' take-away."

Nothing really, since I was not here in the 60s and 70s. However, it's probably also caused by all the so-called "professional" jocks who got paid those huge take-home salaries to play a game! If you don't see the incongruity of what I am trying to say here then you never will.
And the generation of money/revenue is so often brought up whenever criticism is made of a wrong-headed value system inherent in sports. We worship the almighty dollar - but in the end what price have we paid? No accountability at all, our athletes are gangstas, steroid injecting, win at all costs, money is God, slaves of a corporate system that does not give a fuck about these athletes and their short tenure! These guys are our children's heroes - WTF? Is that what we want?

Zanshin, I agree with much of what you say. Don't get me going because I see the result of "no student left behind" - they should have been because they can hardly read and write and count! If it were up to me I would shoot all those in charge of education theory and disband all the education czars and their bureaucracies out there including outlawing the education unions.

Having said that, ours is a culture of entertainment and amusement and not about academic achievement, aspiration to greatness, and goal assessment. Ours is a culture of pragmatic partial solutions, immediate results and instant gratification. We think throwing money at a broken educational system and using Social Science's quantifying analyses will solve all of our problems including the military ones. Hence our abject failure in addressing our problems here and abroad, even in the military (the A-stan).

[Purple]

Apologies to the few GOOD teachers out there that actually educate students and teach OBJECTIVE THOUGHT and ANALYSIS, but if anyone feels I've wronged you, please explain to me what you personally did to prevent the rise and installment of the organized education system, where "educators" are more concerned with their take-home than their students' take-away.

FWIW – I, personally, do not feel “wronged” and, as someone who has experience in both the public and private educational arenas here and in other countries, do not want to get into a lengthy e-debate of our educational system, something which is best discussed in a seminar setting, but would like to offer the following brief observations for consideration:

• the thoughts expressed may certainly apply to some, but it has been my experience that those sentiments and behaviors are neither the NORM nor the ACCEPTABLE to the majority of those who teach, advise, develop, and administer our schools/school systems;
• the strength of America’s educational system is its flexibility, the unqualified opportunities (not guarantees) provided by its myriad public, private, parochial, and distance learning (E-) schools for an education commensurate with one’s aptitude, desires, affordability, and willingness to accept the challenges required of such a system;
• funding disparity continues to have a HUGE impact on educational quality and equality, even within single districts and individual schools, as well as among families and communities;
• parents are often unable to perform the level of work being required of their children, even down to the mid-elementary school levels, and many schools offer free evening and weekend classes taught by their children's teachers for parents to be able to support their children’s academic endeavors;
• the MSM and body politic continue to have an impact on the perceptions of our educational system for their own self-interests…often using hyperbole,negativism, opinion offered as news and research, feigned concern, and impractically superficial solutions to further muddy and complicate a dynamically complex issue;
• the work day of educators does not end with the end of the school day or term as so many believe, and, as with most professions, requires a tremendous amount of personal time and expense for research, preparation, evaluation, and further training needs, desires, or requirements for attaining and retaining certification.
  

I suggest reading “Savage Inequalities: Children In America’s Schools” by Jonathan Kozol and hope we can meet one day to discuss the issue.

The Debate.jpg

Purple

[zanshin]

However, it's probably also caused by all the so-called "professional" jocks who got paid those huge take-home salaries to play a game! If you don't see the incongruity of what I am trying to say here then you never will.
And the generation of money/revenue is so often brought up whenever criticism is made of a wrong-headed value system inherent in sports. We worship the almighty dollar - but in the end what price have we paid? No accountability at all, our athletes are gangstas, steroid injecting, win at all costs, money is God, slaves of a corporate system that does not give a fuck about these athletes and their short tenure! These guys are our children's heroes - WTF? Is that what we want?

No one cares less about professional or collegiate sports than I do (except for momentary revelry when Kansas loses to Missouri, but that's about Civil War grudges and anti-snobbery, not inter-conference rivalry). But I don't believe society should be based on someone else telling others what they should do with their money. Trust me, as one who worked for years only mere blocks from the stadium I have to pay for and host of the miserable KC Chiefs, I was forced to participate in and endure countless sports-themed based activities with middle-class workers celebrating the accomplishments of millionaire athletes. I can't possibly fathom why people care... they support state-funded schools that give away most of their scholarship money to out-of-state kids who then go pro and never look back. The KC pro team athletes live in Miami and Texas and LA, and they take their earnings with them rather than spend it in state.

But just as I refuse to support government telling people they can't buy a 32-ox Coke because they might get fat, I do support the economic system that says if you can sell stupid people a rock in a box, that's okay, as long as you don't tell them it has magical healing powers.

I don't get it either, bro -- I broke my body for my country and then got educated (20 years to finish my B.S. degree), and yet I see people willing to spend thousands of dollars on sports regalia while neglecting savings and education. My own grandson stands to be a victim of the madness -- his dad is an "all sports-all the time" guy, and at seven they have him playing organized baseball, football, basketball and hockey. The kids are decked out in expensive uniforms and equipment, but don't know the fundamentals of hitting, catching, passing, etc. A group of kids can't just play ball and have fun any more -- they have to be part of a league and get dressed up in a sports costume like it's Halloween, and then go out and be praised for failing at the basics. Meanwhile, my little guy can't read very well, and has discipline problems because all he wants to do is play with a ball. His goal is to be an MU quarterback, but the other day I had to tell him he'll never get into college or even play High School ball if he's failing in schoolwork.

The answer -- just as it is in the military -- is personal discipline and responsibility. Unfortunately I have no faith in a pampered society returning to it, so the American Dream may be cyclical, as we fall prey to "developing" nations that are hungry enough to succeed. India was once a "super-power" in the time of Alexander, China has seen more than it's share of successful dynasties come and go, Persians had an empire, even the Romans and Britain walked large upon the earth once. What goes around comes around. You can't outlaw stupidity.

[AbnJack]

it's probably also caused by all the so-called "professional" jocks who got paid those huge take-home salaries to play a game! If you don't see the incongruity of what I am trying to say here then you never will.

I hear this a lot. Those guys learned their game in school, the first group to earn money off of them was the schools. No one way street there. What would happen if you removed all sports money from colleges? There are millions or billions made off of those guys before they ever legally make a dime for themselves. I am not defended them, I am observering the money earning aspect of it and how it relates back to the schools.

[zanshin]

Purple, with all due respect for your education system experience and knowledge, I must disagree. I interact with schoolteachers and administrators in my locale regularly. I have extremely close associates who left private industry to work in the education system. I have been an instructor at the university level (co-instructor and TA/grad asst) and private school level, and my (ex) father-in-law was dept. chair of Geology at a major Illinois university before he left to work in the oil industry for better pay. It is simple and potentially accurate to say that TV networks distort perceptions by only reporting singular incidents, but how many incidents are required to establish a problem?

IMO, a primary issue of educators is the comparison of public sector to private sector "work." I'm well aware that teachers and administrators have responsibilities after hours, and that they may anguish over students that they just can't seem to reach regardless of how hard they try, or about uncaring parents who threaten lawsuits over misguided perception of mistreatment of their little darlings.

The difference that educators don't seem to understand is that in the private sector, if your "project" fails after 9 months of work, you're likely to lose your job or even close an entire workplace, not get a new "project" 3 months later, or go to a 3-day offsite conference about how to restructure your workplace methodology. The technology proposed for a project must actually return a profit, not just function to momentarily engage people. Individually held viewpoints on the evils of economic and political affiliation don't become discussion topics at business meetings. Project team members aren't taken to rallies and protest demonstrations during business hours, and companies don't wait to be told by government regulation not to allow project managers having sexually explicit and otherwise inappropriate conversations with subordinates on Facebook and social networking sites. The ultimate objective is total success, and even a momentary failure or setback affects the organization as a whole. You don't get to ask the shareholders and stakeholders to accept failure or poor performance, and perhaps even provide more funding, just because you tried your best. It's a very different set of standards and rules, and unless you've been in the business world as well as the academic industry, you can't imagine the differences.

I willingly grant that I do not have your experience and knowledge of the total education system industry, but I assure you my opinions are based on personal observation and experience rather than just TV coverage and online discussions. Google information about the Kansas City school system... it is a nightmare of epic proportions, not simply a misguided perception based on sensational news reports and chat room conversations, and the issue affects even the surrounding suburban school districts as well.

[Purple]

Z,

I'm not saying there aren't "issues" and the St Louis schools are notorious for a plight similar to that of the Detroit schools. There are reasons for that, and a weak administrative body from top (civic leaders) to bottom (family support) only exacerbates the situation.

I settled where I live for my sons to attend a school system like I did growing up in NorCal where such lackadaisical performance is not tolerated and they had the opportunity to gain a solid educational foundation. When my middle son was being a bit of an @$$ at 16, I told him that I would quit my job and attend class with him because it was that important to me. He said I couldn't do that so I arranged a meeting with the principal (who I knew personally); she told him that I could do that if necessary and that she wished more parents were as supportive. That was the proverbial teen 'kiss of death' to have me at school and in class with his friends, so he decided to do what he needed to do and I had no more trouble with him at school.

When I was teaching in "The Grove" with the Dallas ISD, there was a top-notch chancellor who had things on track, but he left for the private sector and the district was plagued by a succession of low performing administrators and mediocre academic standards until the new chancellor came aboard. He evaluated the situation, gained the board's support, and one of his first initiatives was to reduce the HQs administrative staff head positions by some 40%, not renew the contracts of around 60% of the staff heads, allow students to change schools if their school was under-performing, and arrange the closing of a number of chronically under-performing schools. The staff whose contracts were not renewed can reapply for the few avaialble positions open after the reductions with the understanding that their previous performance may be a greater hinderance than an advantage. Teachers are looked at the same way, and performance is reviewed annually with contracts for one year pending satisfactorily meeting the standards of performance. I've seen teachers and administrators released mid-year or end-of-year for weak performance. It is not a "business as usual" environment and everyone knows it.

When I was hired to teach World History and World Geography in the Dallas ISD, it was at a chronically low-performing school in a high poverty, gang infested area of the district. The principal was new and replaced the staff and faculty with personnel she personally sought and hired. As a focused team, we fought the students, parents, and community, and used a cross-curricularly focused curriculum. We expelled students, teachers were fired when failing to perform satisfactorily, we demanded 'work' of our students and familial support. I had students come in a half hour before school started, kept them with me at lunch to complete work or be tutored, gave up my planning period 3 days a week to work with low-performing readers, and kept students after school. I gave students 1 copy of work to be done and maintained a master file - if a student lost a paper, they could make an 'exact' hand-copied copy from my master, do the work and turn it in for partial credit. I also went to the homes of my students a week before school began to introduce myself, meet the parent(s)/guardian(s), and see what their living/learning environment was. I had a student tell me I should be "capped" (he was arrested for the threat and sent to an alternative schooling program), we had parents picket the school, and there were several times we came to school to find somebody had shot holes in some of the windows during the night. We held classes for our parents on Tu and Th evenings, and on Sa afternoons, to try and teach them how to do what was being demanded of their students. We also raised our students test scores by an average of 19 points that year and moved from a low-performing to acceptable rating; that we could do so was suspicious to the district and led to an investigation to ensure we hadn't cheated - we didn't.

Another district just South of us was 'closed' by the Texas Ed Ageency for continued non-performance and the students bused to neighboring districts. The community is in the process of starting over and seeking to reestablish their home district...but with the right people and for the right reasons.

It's a complicated issue but - IMO - neither as dire on a national level as we are led to believe by the MSM and politicians seeking reelection nor unsolvable. However, I have found that it does vary greatly and is constantly in a state of flux.

Purple

[zanshin]

When I was hired to teach World History and World Geography in the Dallas ISD, it was at a chronically low-performing school in a high poverty, gang infested area of the district. The principal was new and replaced the staff and faculty with personnel she personally sought and hired. As a focused team, we fought the students, parents, and community...

Damn, bro -- I saw that movie, with the Green Beret teacher kicking gangbanger ass...

Props to you for your deep personal involvement in your students' lives, I would have expected no less from one of your ilk. Would that all worked so hard and with such dedication. We have suffered a parade of charlatans as school board heads... one videotaped carrying 4x8 sheets of plywood to the roof of the home he was building in FL while on extended administrative leave for a back injury; the next brought in from Little Rock, AR with expensed moving costs of $90,000 for just him to relocate to an apartment (no family came with him), and then later had to be informed he was violating his contract by living outside the district. Each successor batters him or herself against a partisan "elected" school board. the district has been de-certified by the State, the US Courts have been involved with suits against performance issues, Magnet schools have failed one after another, residents recently flocked to enroll their kids in adjoining suburban districts when a court decision allowed it and the city has to pick up the cost of educating them in other districts. Much of it stemmed from the busing decisions that began in the 70s.

It's a dirty job in many districts, and we need good people like you in the process, but many I meet are not of your caliber, and are milking the suburban school districts for extended benefits while offering worthless classes on Television Production to students who enroll to have fun rather than master the 3 Rs. I know it gets discouraging to the good ones... my daughter's roomate in college was an honors student turned Math teacher at a fairly plush suburban district (where she graduated HS) but because she cheered in college, she was forced to be the cheerleading sponsor/coach, and got so fed up with parents demanding she feature their child -- calling at home in the middle of the night -- that she quit after two years and took a job at triple the pay as a pharmaceutical sales rep.