AGING and OTHER SHIT

Age doesn’t impart wisdom it only conveys experience.  If you were a stupid young person you are probably a stupid old person, just with more experience.

There are a lot of correlations to this axiom.   Education does not infer intelligence; again, just more experience.       I once had a professor, a Doctor of Psychology, ask me if the moon is full in Maine was the moon also full in Florida.

Furthermore, higher education does not have to meet an accepted standard.   A Science degree from George Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian diploma mill, is not equivalent to a science degree issued by major, nonsectarian universities; and even high schools that teach religious adjusted curriculum as science are shortchanging their charges and propagating ignorance.

It is not unusual for people to be very good in one field and totally ignorant of everything outside of their specialty.   It doesn’t have to be Rain Man to warrant this conclusion: clue up Dr. Ben Carson.

Where am I going with this?   Hell, I don’t know.   It is six o-clock in the morning; it is still dark; the wife and the cats are asleep and I am not.   Somehow writing placates that person that keeps babbling in my head.

the Ol’Buzzard

 

EDUCATION PARADIME

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
the Ol'Buzzard

THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION - V

MY LAST WORD ON THIS SUBJECT (PERHAPS)

In prior post I have voiced my opinion on the negative results that politicians, school boards and watered down curriculum text have on our education system.   There is one other issue that has a pronounced effect on the outcome of a child’s education, and unfortunately it is a social effect that has no present solution. 

Let me reemphasize that teacher’s training and performance is not the problem.   Teachers presently meet demanding standards, constant evaluation and continuing education requirements that ensure their competency.  

However, having said this, all education content and societal beliefs of our teachers are not equal.   Teachers that matriculate through southern schools and southern colleges are extremely likely to carry religious beliefs into their classroom that conflict with hard factual information. 

Religion is, and always has been the enemy of enlightenment and free thinking.  

After retiring from teaching in Alaska, my wife and I moved to Kentucky, where we substituted in the local school system.   I took long term substitution positions in science, math and literature: generally the results of maternity leaves.  

When teaching science and biology I was told not to cover the family tree of man (Australopithecus to Homo sapiens – the timeline of mankind.)   I was told that that was one of a number competing theories and that it was best not to deal with it as it would cause parents to complain. 

 

Some of the teachers in the school kept Bibles on their desk; one of the teachers had a number of books entitled Chicken Soup for the Soul that she encouraged students to read; and at one high school assembly a Christian church group came in and gave a presentation on abstinence, complete with religious songs and Bible references. 

It was not an unusual thing in Kentucky for students to wear tea-shirts asking What Would Jesus Do.  

I also did a stent as president of Adult Literacy Council for the county.  One of the adult students was a Mexican named Jesus – the local community had refused to call him Jesus and so had nicknamed him Joe.  

I could go on and on listing the instances of religious compromise permeating the education system of that county; but, I must state that the school was a reflection of the norm of the community in general. 

The schools turned out students that were proficient in math, computer science and language arts.   The school also had an excellent shop program.  

The points of failure for most southern and many mid-western school systems is the blatant deficiency in science, civics and social studies, as well as the development of critical thinking skills.   This is the results of religious influences in the community that interject themselves into the school curriculum - often through the teachers. 

the Ol’Buzzard 

THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION IV

WHAT DO WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN?

When I taught high school history I always began each semester by telling the students to hold every statement in the history text in suspect, because every account and record has fallacies of bias.   All enduring history has been recorded by the winners of wars.   If you win the war you get to tell history from your perspective.  The books also contain cultural biases.   History that is recorded by different nations does not necessarily agree on events, as national historians tend to record history to reflect their nation’s best image. 

I asked students to use the text as a guide line (a time line) to consider events as a basis to begin exploration and discussion.    To understand events is far better than memorizing dates and heroes. 

Back in the eighties, when I began teaching, I did not occur to me to ask my students to question math and science.  To me those disciplines were factual and indisputable.  But today every discipline, every text book should be held to question.

No mater where you live in this country or where you child goes to school it is likely that the text books they use have been influenced by the Texas School Board. 

As a general rule, public school districts across the country are free to choose the text book series they wish to teach in their schools, and each district pays the cost of new text book series.  But Texas acquired its power over the text book companies by paying 100% of the cost of all school text books, providing the books are selected from series approved by the Texas State School Board. 

There are approximately five million students in Texas, so text book companies strive to get on the short approved list of the Texas State School Board.  

The Texas State School Board has fifteen members.  The board approves all textbooks, curriculum and supplemental material used in Texas public schools.

In the early 1960’s religious fundamentalist targeted the State School Board because they feared that their children were being indoctrinated in Godless secularism by the liberal leaning text books being used in schools.  There was never a large turnout for School Board elections and so over the next decade the Christian conservatives co-opted the fifteen seats, consolidating control over curriculum and text book purchases

The cost of producing a science text book can run as high as five million dollars, and the books have to be produced on speculation.   The Texas market is so large that text book companies feel they must conform to Texas standards.  The books approved by the Texas School Board are likely to be mass produced by the publishers, so other states buy them to take advantage of cost savings. 

One Texas school board member believed that public schools were the tool of the devil; another openly stated that “evolution is hooey.”  The board as a hole believed that evolution, global warming and the separation of church and state were false.  

As a results Texas religious conservative fundamentalist have heavily influenced history, social studies and science curriculums across the nation. 

Science books now skirt the theory of evolution and any science that might compete with biblical teachings. 

 History books do not highlight slavery and segregation – they mention the attack on the twin towers but do not cover the US attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In general History text have been watered down. 

Social Studies text justify McCarthy anti-communist witch hunt by the inclusion of the Venona papers.  The School Board demanded the includes the cattle industry boom of the nineteenth century; the problem of immigration; the philanthropy of industrialist; Phyllis Schlafly’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment; the Contract with America; the Heritage Foundation; the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association in social studies text.   

 

The list of concessions to the Texas State School Board could continue, but the fact remains that for the last fifty years the Christian conservative Texas School Board members have had a detrimental impact on the accuracy of the material we teach our children in school.     

Entering the second decade of the twenty-first century, the influence of small passionate minority’s in our schools curriculums is receding.  A concerted effort by liberals to replace the conservative, fundamentalist Christians on the Texas School Board has to some extent succeeded.   Book publishers are now moving to on-line publishing which drastically cuts the cost of production and decreases their vulnerability to manipulation by the Texas School Board.

The outcome quality of our education system is only as good as the accuracy of the information we are required to teach; and giving the classroom teacher the autonomy to encourage students to question, explore discuss and form their own opinions would be far more productive than teaching rote to prescribed text books.  

the Ol'Buzzard

THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION III

SCHOOL BOARDS   

We enter the conference room.   The school district superintendent and the school board president are casually seated at the end of the table.  The Superintendent is laughing at something the board president is saying.  As other board members come in and take their seats at the table the superintendent greets each by name and makes some small comment of familiarity.    I look at the Superintendent, a man with a Doctorate in Education and years experience in the classroom and as a school principal, playing the part of a snake-oil politician, obliviously grabbling in supplication to this group that will, in the future, be asked to renew his contract.  

I am sitting on the periphery of the table with two other principals.   We are there to report to the board a summary of the month’s accomplishments at our schools.     One of the school board members has a son at my school that was not eligible for a basketball trip because of his grades in language arts.  I already know that I will have to defend the teacher for maintaining her standards for achievement.  

The meeting starts and past minutes are read, old business is discussed – usually to do with money issues, or curriculum and testing issues which everyone on the board listens to intently and pretends to understand.  There is a small discussion that perhaps the teachers have too much free access to the copy machines and that they should be limited to a certain number of copies per week.  For new business it is suggested that an electronic key card could be employed to determine who uses the machine most, and controls the use.   The Superintendent immediately agrees.  

Next the principals are asked to report.   I give a watered down version of the testing preparations that the teachers and I have spent hours discussing and planning, and a brief description of a cooperative learning field trip that involves archeological research at a traditional Native fishing site on the river.    Everyone listens attentively; then I ask if there are any questions.  

Immediately my board member states that a number of parents have complained to her about a particular teacher who seems to have the goal of preventing students from engaging in extra-curricular activities.   I defend my teacher and her academic autonomy to set standards in her classroom.   The rest of the board enthusiastically joins in, unanimously convinced that students should be allowed to play basketball regardless of grades.   I stand by the policy of eligibility and come just short of telling the board member that her son is a pain in the ass in class and thinks that because his mother is a board member he doesn’t have to meet the requirements of the rest of the students.    I look over at the Superintendent and he is frowning.    The board is heated and I am aggravated but maintaining control; but refusing to capitulate.    The Superintendent steps in and says that perhaps the board should consider reviewing the standards that exist among all district schools for sports and other activity and set uniform standards.

A motion is made and passed and the principals are asked to provide an in-depth report of eligibility requirements at each of their schools for the next board meeting. 

Elected school boards are the other bane of education.   Like politicians, there is no competency test to qualify a person for the school board.  Members are mainly composed of activist mothers or fathers who readily inform you that they are qualified for the position because they are parents.   (In reality the only qualification for being a parent is the ability to fuck and conceive.)  Other members of the board will be business persons looking for local recognition, and special interest activist (usually religious) looking to insert their agenda into the school.  Occasionally there is a retired school teacher, but as a whole the board is woefully unqualified to set education policies and totally ignorant of the day to day problems involved in educating children in a classroom.

We don’t have civilian elected boards intricately controlling doctor’s protocols and emergency room or operating room procedure; nor do we have elected civilian boards manipulating law firms, psychiatric medicine, physics or chemistry labs, and other disciplines.   Yet, we feel perfectly justified in ‘electing’ non educators to regulate and control the education processes of our school districts.    

Congress mandates the curriculum through standards and testing requirements and school boards interfere with the way schools are run on a day to day basis with frivolous and uninformed edicts via their ability to hire and fire school administrators. 

We will never improve American schools unless we remove the control from politicians and local school boards and place education professionals in charge.

the Ol'Buzzard

THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION II

PART TWO

It always burns my ass when I hear politicians decry teachers - demanding more training and stricter regulation for the teaching profession.    It is ludicrous when you realize that teachers are required to have a specialized college education and pass a battery of test to receive certification; and they are constantly under the supervision of a principal and require continuing education and evaluation for recertification.   On the other hand, any fool can become a Congress or Senator person – there is no test for competency.    In Congress we have elected high school graduates, beauty queens, laborers of all stripes, preachers and even a blues singer.   It is not beyond the realm of possibility that some day we may have a Congressman Joe the Plumber.   And, adding insult to injury, these people legislate policies that define our educational system.   

When a Congress person is elected his (or her) immediate concern becomes re-election.  He will attend strategy meetings with his party, show up and vote party lines, get on as many committees as possible (you receive extra pay of each committee you are assigned) and always seek to keep a low profile – be one of the pack – not stand out – because if you make waves and take a public stand you may anger some constitutes.   

The majority of a Congressman’s time is spent meeting with special interest: businessmen and lobbyist that might be willing to help finance his run in the next election.    Months prior to the reelection he starts his appeal to the electorate via public forum: he believes in God, he is for the family, he is concerned about the economy, he is a red, white and blue American and he has a plan to overhaul our failing educational system through comprehensive testing and tougher teacher scrutiny.

He can’t take a public stand on gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights, gun regulations, universal health care or the separation of church and state, because these are too controversial.  But, he can safely stand for education improvement – comprehensive testing of kids and getting rid of bad teachers, which is obviously the problem. 

Returning to Alaska as a principal I found myself dealing with NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.    I had taken the position of principal of two elementary and one high school in two Native villages in the Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska.  When I arrived on site I found, that at the high school, the prior senior class of twelve had graduated only four students.   The Native children in this schools were not equipped to pass the culturally bias – one size fits all – test.   So actually, NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND had left eight children behind that year.  A few came back for another shot, but eventually dropped out.   After attending twelve years of school, eight students ended up without a high school diploma.   

Working with the teachers we revamped the curriculum – not to teach the test – but - to teach to the test.  That year we graduated eight of twelve, the second year we graduated eight of ten and the third year twelve of thirteen students.   I am still devastated that during my three year tenure I failed to graduate seven students – students that spent twelve years attending school but were unable to pass the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND prescribed test.  

There are those that would criticize me for revamping a curriculum to focus on testing, but my concern was for the students and not to justify some flawed political education policy.  

Very early in my teaching career I learned that Native children live in a different world.  Their parents speak ‘village English.’  They are raised in a hunting and gathering society.  They have their own history and their own values.   They stand with one foot in the present and one foot in the past.   They live, often, with disdain of white cultural norms.   

Our government, from the very beginning, has strived to change their culture by producing acceptable white clones of their children.  To a large extent, government has succeeded in decimating their culture, their language and their religions.  

It is not just the native culture that struggles to meet a legislated idea of conformity, but all minority cultures.    They must speak proper English, they must meet education standards, they must forsake their culture and adopt American cultural norms…and the list goes on.  

This one-size-fits-all shoe box has destroyed our educational system.   We do not strive to educate children to be productive members of society, but to pass some arbitrary test required by legislated standards enacted by politicians campaigning for reelection. 

Our society is diverse.  The differences in cultures, religion and language have made our country the great melting pot.   And, it is this diversity that must be considered when educating our children.  

Politicians only know ‘one-size-fits- all’ to produce ‘people-like-us.’

We need to get politics out of Education.   We need to place ‘certified educators’ in charge of education.   We need to do away with culturally restrictive standards and celebrate cultural diversity in our classrooms. 

The federal government’s job should be to generously fund state public education.    A State Board Of Education composed of one teacher from each school district and appointed by the district on a rotating basis, should oversee all schools and determine school efficiency in that state on a case by case basis.   The standard for graduation should be flexible and determined by a team of teachers and principals from that district.

Would this produce a standard of education?   No.  

Would some schools be more technical and advanced? Yes

Would some schools graduates students more prepared for secondary education? Yes.

Would more children be left behind?  No.

Would children receive a more thorough education?  Yes.

Teachers would be able to teach math, literature, science, social studies and integrate technology without the constant concern of meeting an arbitrary testing standard that could destroy a student’s future and cost them their jobs.    Students would emerge from twelve years of school with a more thorough education and better critical thinking skills. 

On the next blog I will take a shot at local school boards.

The Ol’Buzzard

  

THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION

PART ONE

                         

My second career was elementary and high school teaching and elementary and high school principal.   As such, ‘I have made my bones,’ and from intimate knowledge have earned the right to evaluate the system.

                                                                                            

Politicians drone on about the deplorable state of American education and people like President Bush 41 ask the question “Is our children learning?”  

The answer is NO! At least they are not graduating with knowledge and understanding of the world we live in and a factual chain of math and scientific cause and effect; and most of all they lack the ability to apply logic and reason.

There are numerous causes for the inability of our schools to effectively educate our children to a twenty-first century adequacy.   The major problem is that our system is the product of politicians and radical (mostly religious) groups with special agendas.

The ‘whipping boy’ for this failure is always the teachers. 

As an educator, no longer serving at the pleasure of an elected school board let me give a view from inside a system designed for failure.  

Let’s first look at teachers.   Most teachers are better educated than you local bank president.   All have Bachelor Degrees and many have Masters and Doctorates.   All have passed strenuous certification tests and are required to continue their education in order to recertify at specific intervals. 

Teaching was historically a female occupation, and as such was never looked on as a ‘legitimate’ profession.    That mind set has carried over to today where teaching is still not considered as professional, but instead viewed as advanced child care.    Teachers are not paid salaries accurately reflecting their level of education and are not given the respect received by other professions with lesser requirements and less responsibilities. 

Part of this image is the fault of teachers.  How often have I heard teachers state that they teach because they love children.   What bull shit!   You might love lions and tigers but that doesn’t qualify you as an animal trainer.   Teachers should demand professional respect.   They should state that they teach because they have developed a unique ability to impart information and because they have special training and background on certain subject matter.   They should support their unions that constantly try to elevate teaching to a respected profession. 

Teachers constantly have an uphill battle.   They preside over classrooms that are overcrowded; they deal with unnecessary discipline problems from unruly students - some that are potentially dangerous; they lack support from principals who serve at the pleasure of parent and special interest school boards; they are required to teach curriculum that is scattered and loosely connected.  

Most teachers are good teachers.  There are some special teachers that can go beyond and are able to encourage logic and critical thinking skills (this of course is not valued in the south.)  There are, in fact, very few ‘bad’ teachers.   Most ineffective teachers become dissatisfied with teaching and move on to other (and often more lucrative) fields.   There are, however, struggling teachers in impossible situations.     They are basically good teachers, who lack support from their administration, and eventually burn out.   Realizing the futility of their situation they develop a survival attitude.  They are products of a system that can not succeed.  

As a retired school principal I can tell you with authority that the teacher’s main goal is the success of their students.   Our teachers morn the fact that their students are matriculating with an incomplete education.  They hate the fact that they have to teach to testing standards.  They know that if given the authority and autonomy to set their curriculum to the special demographics of their students they would be able to effectively improve understanding and knowledge retention.   They are, however, hobbled by outside influences of non-educators and a bureaucracy and a public that is not teacher friendly.   

The teachers are not the problem with the education inadequacy – they are the solution. 

The Ol’Buzzard

                                                                                                  

CAN EMPATHY SAVE THE HUMAN RACE?

It seems I often borrow from the blog Squalto’s Rant – and it is true.

Today I have co-opted the following video that he posted.  

This is the type of video that if you begin watching you must watch to the end.   The premise of the video is that human beings are moving toward empathy for all life on the earth and concern for the earth’s ecology in general.    

This is a consummation much to be desired.   Jeremy Rifkin is representative of a far left liberal thinker with a great ability to connect with his audience.   He leaves you feeling that there is hope for human empathy because of the evolutionary development of the human brain which has been stimulated by the technical advancements is communication. 

Being a cynical old fart I tend to see the down side to this argument.  Human empathy hasn’t changed much since four million years ago when Australopithecus walked across the savanna in Africa, picked up a stick, went over a hill and beat the brains out of his neighbor and fucked his female.  

We live in a tribal society and we don’t much concern ourselves for the tribes over the hill.    We seek validation from our family, our church, or racial identity or our local or national identity.  We decide which cult gratifies us the most and that is where we place our allegiance, while decrying other cults that do not stroke our ego.  

Abraham Maslow was an American professor of Psychology who defined the human hierarchy of needs.   People develop from the most basic needs of fulfillment toward the highest level of Actualization.   People can not move into a higher level until they are secure in the levels below them. 

The steps defined are:

PSYCHOLOGICAL: Breathing, food, water, waste, sleep, warmth, freedom from fear and freedom from sickness.

SAFETY: Physical security, family security, psychological security and financial security.

LOVE AND BELONGING: Friendships, family, sexual intimacy, group identity.

SELF-ESTEEM: Self respect, Respect of others. 

SELF-ACTUALIZATION: Able to embrace facts and realities, spontaneous, creative, problem solving, caring for others, morality independent of authority and judge the world objectively.  

Many people throughout the world today (including in the United States) are stuck in the SAFETY level – concerned with basic survival. 

A good majority in this country are striving to BELONG – to seek gratification through a social network.

Very few of society are secured enough to be striving in the ESTEEM level.  

And, an even smaller percentage (which must includes Jeremy Rifkin, - the producer of the video) find themselves secure enough to have reached SELD ACTUALIZATION.  

Only the people in the SELF ACTUALIZATION level have the security and ability to be truly empathetic for the human race specifically and all other living things in general. 

Add to this the high percentage of blatant human ignorance:  The IQ is represented by a Bell Curve. 

The top of the curve is declared to be 100 , with  fifty percent of the people above the curve and fifty percent below the curve.  The up side of the Bell Curve represents from high average to superior  intellect – while the down side of the curve represents from average to below average intelligence. 

The 100 IQ point shifts according to demographics of population growth.  At the present time humans on the down side of the curve are breeding at a faster rate than those on the up side; which constantly skews the intelligence quota of the human race downward. 

SELF ACTUALIZATION is not in the reach of everyone.  Empathy is a pipe dream – though a beautiful one.  But the reality is that the human race is not programmed for the gentleness that empathy would require. 

I will watch the video again: maybe a few more times – for there is much presented that stimulates the thought processes.   But in the end we live in the real world where human egocentricity has not changed much in four million years. 

the Ol’Buzzard 

RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE

In case you haven't seen it.

Rube Goldberg machine world record.

I love this stuff
the Ol'Buzzard

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SCHOOL REFORM

A SOCIALIST SOLUTION

President Obama appeared on TV with his Secretary of Education who outlined his objectives to revitalize the educational systems so as to guarantee a more educated population of the future. 

Sorry, but it is a failure before it starts. 

My background is in education: I have taught elementary, middle school and highs school, and I have been both an elementary and a high school principal. 

Let me address this policy from my point of view.

The new Secretary of Education comes from a background of privileged schools.   These are schools that succeed and score high because the demographic is upper socio-economic, and most parents have a college background.    The schools that are failing do not have the same demographic, the same problems or require the same solutions; and I find the Secretary out of touch with these schools

The Secretary’s entire focus seems to be the same old trite mantra of blame the teachers: increase certification requirements, reward the good teachers and get rid of the bad teachers. 


There are very few bad teachers – but there are plenty of burned-out teachers.   Teachers that enter the field of education are definitely not motivated by income.   They tend to have an ability to teach, they pass strenuous requirements and they hope to find working with young people rewarding. 

The fallacy about bad teachers has been decried by politicians and echoed by unsupportive parents.   When I went to school, had the teacher or principal called my grandmother and said I was misbehaving in class I would have caught hell when I got home – the teacher would have been supported and not vilified.  This is not the case today. 

Teachers undergo the most strenuous oversight of any occupation.   They are required to continue college courses in order to recertify every five years, and at inservices throughout the year and in the summer teachers are brought up to speed on the latest teaching techniques and philosophies.   New teachers receive two formal evaluations each year and tenured teachers receive at least one formal evaluation each year.  Teachers who are having a problem are placed on improvement plans and assisted with improvement.  A good principal not only conducts formal evaluations but sits in on every class room at least a couple of times a month.  Teachers are always under supervision.   

There are occasionally superior teachers; but there are also many good – in the trenches – teachers that teach to the curriculum and do their best, under adverse conditions, to care and educate their young wards.  

More than likely your child’s teacher is better educated than your local bank president, and yet works for a salary more comparable to skilled labor.   The Secretary stated the need to drastically increase the salary of teachers in order to attract other highly qualified people who tend to go into more lucrative fields.   This is needed, but where does the money come from?    

 The Secretary also promoted performance pay – this is not only demoralizing to other teachers but also will tend to go to the teachers in the more productive (elite) schools that continue to excel in test scores. 

The fallacy is, that here again, we are setting up a one size fits all education outline which is contrived by elite educators and unqualified politicians and that is not suited to all public school demographics.

In the average public school, and particularly the schools in crisis, the major problem is that children come into the system unprepared to learn.  These children have poor social skills and are backed by parents unwilling to take responsibility for their child’s behavior.   These children know that bucking the teacher will result in little or no consequence; therefore, classroom behavior has become the major problem for every teacher.   Some of the children are in school to learn; but for many, disrupting the classroom is the goal that will result in peer approval.   Some of these children are actually dangerous.  There are few tools that teachers have to command discipline, and without a disciplined class room requisite learning is impossible. 

The failure to maintain discipline in the classroom is often the fault of the principal, and by extension the superintendent.   Without a strong principal to back the classroom teacher, a knowledgeable teacher can be barbarized by the students, humiliated by the parents and unable to impart the required subject matter. 

Here is the rub: the principal and superintendent hold political positions and are hired and fired at the whim of the school board; therefore, principals (and superintendents) tend to placate irate parents instead of backing the classroom teacher in a controversy.   

School boards are not made up of educators, but most often of parents who have an axe to grind or local politicians looking for an addition on their resumes.   These board members don’t have the education background or the in-class-room experience to understand the complexities of class room teaching.  My last school board was far more concerned (and militant) about why certain children were not eligible to play basketball, than supporting teachers and increasing learning.  The monthly school board meetings were always more like an inquisition than a cooperative learning exercise.

Now we come to testing:  I have taught school in the Eskimo and Indian villages of the Alaskan Bush.  In these villages grandparents speak the traditional language, parents and children speak a bastardized mixture of English and Native language – yet on the test they are expected to read and write and comprehend in highly stylized English.   A few can get past this hurtle, but many can’t.   So, instead of the children being evaluated by twelve years of education within a cultural perspective, we condemn many of these children to failure.   Is it fair to that Native children and children from other cultural perspectives to be denied a diploma, and thereby denied other opportunities for growth and development in adult life, because they can not meet some arbitrary standard devised by politicians and the educational elite?  

It is not rocket science:

We need 100% Federal financing of public schools.

If we took the money we spend on maintaining the largest and most expensive military in the world and divert it to educating our children the problem would be solved.  The main answer for increasing educational outcome for all of our children is a smaller student-to-teacher ratio.  More highly paid teachers in a classroom with a maximum of twelve children would insure the one-on-one time necessary to advance each student.  In low performing schools the student-to-teacher ratio should be smaller.

There is also the necessity to set a high standard of order and discipline in the classroom by removing disruptive student.  There should be highly structured alternative public schools available for the assignment of habitually disruptive students.  Difficult parents of disruptive students would always have the option of enrolling their child in a private school (at their own expense.)

Finally we need to do away with local school boards and have schools run by non-elected educators.   Superintendents and principals need to be judged on performance not popularity.   Expectations of Superintendents and principals need to be increased and teacher performance will follow. 

It is as simple as where we place our priorities: 

We spend more of our National Budget maintaining our massive military than every other country in the world spends on their military - combined.  Likewise, we spend far less on the education of our children than most other advanced countries.  True educational reform of public schools will be costly - a tweek here and a tweek there will not solve the problem.


Educational reform is a political talking point, but the will to actually tackle the problem does not exist.   

The rich and well to do of this country are not concerned about the standard of education of their children – they will have the best education money can buy.   These same people are not particularly concerned about the war fodder being matriculated through our public schools – though they speak to “the problem.”     We have in this country a disconnect between the have and have not’s.    And, as long as the focus of our government is to placate the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, serious educational reform of public schools will remain a political talking point and our education system will continue to decline. 

the Ol'Buzzard approves this post.  

Strategic Vision

Bigniew Brezinski is one of the most intelligent men alive today.  He is currently publishing his new book Strategic Vision.   He appeared on Morning Joe on MSMBC on the 24^th and 25^th of January to discuss his book which details the decline of America as the preeminent power in the world.  

There is nothing I could add to this post that would enhance this discussion.   It is a must see – and possibly the final word on the state of the nation.  

the Ol’Buzzard

Brezinski's interview on the 24th.

Brezniski's interview on the 25th.

(this begins with a clip from the State of the Union, but stay tuned.)

I AM NOT AMUSED

Excerpt from: TIMELINE, by Michael Crichton.

“Everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time.   Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet list and animated graphics, so executives aren’t board.   Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us.   Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear.   Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television.   Students must be amused – everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties.   This is the intellectual reality of western society at the end of the century… The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.   A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do.   A sense that we are not amused.”

Crichton not only writes a great story in TIMELINE, but between the lines are truisms that jump out at you if you read carefully.  

Look at today’s Republican Presidential caucuses – very few people are interested in the actual policies, and the future results these policies would have on the nation at large.   People hear only what they want to hear, and they will switch if their candidate is not amusing. 

Regardless of Democrat or Republican; any politician that dares deal with the dry, realistic, real politics of a party, without amusing, is dead in the water.  

Dead in the water: Along with that line of thought – by all means read Crichton’s EATERS OF THE DEAD (later repackaged as THE 13^th. WARRIOR.) 

the Ol'Buzzard

ALASKAN NATIVE CULTURE - ATHABASCAN

I wanted to continue my post on DEATH and how it is viewed differently by different cultures.   The only other cultures I have been submersed in, other than my own, are the Indian and Eskimo cultures of Alaska.

For eleven years my wife and I taught school in the remote interior villages.   Before I can discuss the way death is dealt with in these cultures I first have to give a little background on the cultures themselves.

All native cultures are not the same.   They have different languages, different traditions and different spiritual beliefs – and they do not like each other. The Athabascan (sometimes spelled Athapascan) Indians of the Interior were never subjugated by the “white man.”   In the traditional villages they are a proud and somewhat defiant people who do not take well to outsiders.   A village is a third world country that operates within its own set of cultural norms.   There is a high incident of drug and alcoholism - child and spousal abuse.   When my wife and I went into our first village, where we taught for seven years, we were made to feel as outsiders.   The villagers spoke of “white man” as the cause of all their problems and the root of all the shortcomings of the village.

It took about three years for the village to get comfortable with our presence and accept us as “their teachers,” though we were never fully accepted.

Truthfully, the villages have a good reason for their prejudice against “white man” and the government, which they identify as one and the same.   Until recently the government through the Department of Indian Affairs had a heavy hand when dealing with the villages; and as might be expected Christianity has done its share of exploitation.   In Sally Carrighar’s book Moonlight at Midday she describes how the Christian missionaries running the school in a costal Yup’ik Eskimo village railed against women being topless in their homes, which was the accepted custom.   Now, years later, the villages are permeated with a mixture of Christianity and shaman beliefs.

The Stick Dance to placate or communicate with the dead.

Jackson

In Alaskan Native history we find a perfect example of the evils of a consolidation of Church and State. At the turn of the century, Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian minister cum missionary working in Alaska, was placed in charge of Alaska Native education by the Federal Government. Jackson’s idea was to assimilate the Native cultures by creating white Christian clones of the Natives.   He divided up Alaska into school districts and assigned a district to each of the Protestant faiths requiring they set up missionary schools that would discourage Native traditions and teach white Christian values.   Later Jackson established a series of boarding schools and forced many Native children to leave the village and attend his schools.   At the schools, children from different villages and different Native cultures were mixed together, and speaking their Native languages was forbidden and resulted in corporal punishment.

Over the succeeding decades many Native students lost their language and cultural identity.   This condition continued until 1972 when Molly Hootch vs. the State of Alaska and the results of the 1976 Tobeluk Consent Decree declared Native children had the same right as white children to have public education available in their home villages.   Many parents and grandparents, who had children in school, were the product of these boarding school educations and harbored great resentment.

Though there are churches in all the villages, the people still cling to many traditional beliefs, and these beliefs can very greatly from village to village.   In our village children were told if they became lost Raven would guide them back to safety.   Men believed animals could understand human language; if a man showed up at his uncles house with a gun it was understood he wants to hunt: If he asks his uncle to go hunting the animals would hear and hide. Girls were told to bare their breast if they encounter a bear while berry picking and when the bear recognized they were female it would not feel threatened.   The potlatch was the center of traditional cultural participation.



Children learning Native Dance from their elders in preparation for Potlatch.



A potlatch is a ceremonial feed, complete with singing and dancing, that involves the whole village.   The potlatch is modified for different occasions including honoring a distinguished visitor, marriage, celebrating a particular village member or event, communicating with the dead and for, of course, funerals.

In my next post I will describe the death traditions in the interior Athabascan villages

HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE

Moving from Cosmology in my last blog to the self-exalted divinity of God’s human clones, we might wonder just what place mankind actually holds in the history of the earth.

When I taught school in Alaska, one of the Science projects (Science deserves to be capitalized) I used was to lay out a time line of the earth that began behind the school and ran 100 yards into the bush (spruce forest.)   A path would take observers to the beginning point farthest from the village, and travelers would work their way along the time line back into the village.

Also see:

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/prehistoric-time-line.html

As a math skill the students found 100 yards to be 3600 inches and divided that into 4.5 billion years (the age of the earth) to determine that each inch represented 1.25 million years.   Each group of students were given an era and they had to determine their position on the time line and decorate it with appropriate art work to demonstrate the evolution of the earth during their time period.    Of course a traveler would advance in time finally ending up in the village at present time.

The point I am trying to make with this blog entry is that Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) and her relatives first appeared about 4 million years ago, or 3.2 inches from the end of the timeline; and homo sapiens (modern man) appeared about 200,000 years ago: at .16 or 1/6th of an inch from the end of the 100 yard time line.   We have been here a minuscule amount of time.

Woman kind (for she came first) and her spawn have been on the earth almost an insignificant time when compared with the history of the earth – and because of our self destructive nature our kind will probably be a short lived species



I get a kick when I hear people talk about the end of the world, or Armageddon; for the earth is not going to end as imagined by human reality: we very likely will destroy ourselves and some of the other life forms, but the earth will heal itself and continue to evolve after we are gone.

Of course, at some point in the distant future our solar system will expire according to cosmic law.

But we the people, in our shallowness, create gods in our own likeness, image and liking; and believe that the earth and the heavens and the cosmos are here as a tribute to immortal us and some immortal supreme entity from which we are cloned.

What a self-deluded, self-important, trivial species we are.

The reality is that we are here with some limited reasoning faculty, for a brief time, due to a chance turn on the evolutionary time line; and as such, we should try to appreciate and live fully each day of our allotted time.





This leaky, tumbledown grass hut

left and opening for the moon

and I gazed at it.

All the while it was mirrored

In a deardrop fallen on my sleeve.

Saigyo

ZEN comes as a reminder that if we do not perceive the mystery and beauty of our present life, our present hour, we shall not perceive the worth of any life, of any hour.

-IS is HOLY-