Elvis Costello once said, "I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused." He had it exactly right. Even so, it's hard to find much amusement in Alberta politics these days, given that nothing seems to be moving in the right--oops, I mean correct--direction.
This weekend, which has about two hours left in it, saw the Progressive Conservative (yep...that's an oxymoron) Party of Alberta hold a convention in Red Deer. "For what?" you might ask. Basically, it was a big public check-up to determine whether Premier Ed Stelmach was still politically healthy enough to continue running the province. The rectal thermometer went in, did its thang, and came out with a reading of 77.4% approval, which means that a little more than 3 out of 4 party faithful can keep swallowing their own vomit enough to maintain support of Ed--which I am beginning to suspect is an acronym for Evil Dwarf. The Man Himself cockadoodledoo-ed his own praises, committed himself to more of whatever the hell it is that he does in Edmonton, but resolved to do it with even more energy, which means he's probably at WalMart right now shopping for AAA batteries.
The PC rank and file made a bunch of noises about how important it was for the party to retrench itself and take a clear stand against the up-and-coming Wild Rose Alliance...
And this is where my head exploded...
Seriously, we have been hosting this moronic game show for a number of decades now. We have seen the PCs in good times and bad--running astronomical deficits while searching for new & improved industries under Don "Played Without A Helmet" Getty and pinching the pennies under Ralph "Freeze In The Dark" Klein--but there has usually been some sort of game plan. I'm not saying that the plan was necessarily a good one, or that the game was anything more complicated than, say, Whack-A-Mole, but even Fat Ralph sat up from his beers enough to figure that getting the province out of the red was some kind of long-term strategy.
Tell me, what does Ed have in his head? Can anyone spot any kind of plan there?
I thought for a while that he was a coaster--you know, something that seems solid and dependable enough until you put any kind of weight on it, at which time it dissolves into a soggy mess of good intentions. No, I mean the other kind of coaster--like the retarded kid who squeals on the front handles of the bicycle while someone else does the hard pedaling. Sure, he's kind of dull and directionless, but at least he seems relatively safe.
Now, apparently, he's ready to fight the good fight against people like Danielle Smith, newly crowned head of the Wild Rose Alliance, who--are you ready for it?--thinks that this province isn't conservative enough. So, rather than caring enough about their responsibilities to define what judicious government spending might look like, for example, every politician in this benighted province wants to race to the right wing, frothingly eager to compete with everyone else to see how little they can spend on frivolous stuff like social programs.
I'm going to admit that I am a naive little dreamer. I had this weird idea that, after the sorts of mind-bogglingly stupid decisions made by provincial governments over the past several years, we might actually explore the possibilities provided by that part of the political spectrum that isn't quite so...uh...gotta check my thesaurus here...stupid. I entertained this bizarre notion that Albertans might actually want to have enough hospital beds and nurses, enough schools with enough qualified teachers, enough paved roads and enough road crews to actually clean them off when the snow falls. God knows we have experienced what it's like to have cuts, but it seems that we haven't done that enough, at least as far as the Progressive Conservatives are concerned.
So let's all get ready for even more of the same, because it doesn't look like we have the imagination, integrity, or intelligence to step outside the right-wing box. There are options, people! We can have democracy back! Yes, we can!
Now where have I heard that one before...?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
One Year
It is a little odd to realize that it was exactly one year ago today--Hallowe'en night--that I posted my first blog on this neat little network. In that time I have had some rather unsettling and exciting experiences, including at least one epiphany, and have taken myself (and a few of you) into several lines of thought that I, at least, found entertaining...and even a little bit enlightening on occasion. I even managed to post from a hotel in Florida. Now that's dedication.
Thanks for the comments and the criticism; it's all very much appreciated, believe me.
I hope to add a few more creative excursions along the way, if things develop as planned.
It should become clearer as we go on...
In the mean time, this feels a little like New Year's Day, so I'll commit myself to a public resolution.
Ahem.
I am determined to spend a whole lot less time on bureaucracy and a whole lot more on the real world...which includes me, I've come to realize.
Consider this the diametrical opposite of a suicide note.
And that's where I'll leave it, cryptic and weirder than ever.
Thanks for the comments and the criticism; it's all very much appreciated, believe me.
I hope to add a few more creative excursions along the way, if things develop as planned.
It should become clearer as we go on...
In the mean time, this feels a little like New Year's Day, so I'll commit myself to a public resolution.
Ahem.
I am determined to spend a whole lot less time on bureaucracy and a whole lot more on the real world...which includes me, I've come to realize.
Consider this the diametrical opposite of a suicide note.
And that's where I'll leave it, cryptic and weirder than ever.
Friday, October 30, 2009
How Incompetent Is The Alberta Government?
This is such a slamdunk it's almost not worth posting it but I will anyway because I do so enjoy giving myself paper cuts and spraying them with lemon juice.
Anyone who lives in the city of Calgary already knows this, so join in with me on the count of three.
One...two...three...
"What the HELL is the Alberta government THINKING?"
Of course, as one of my colleagues observed earlier today, "Why do you expect them to think? They haven't demonstrated that capability recently."
For those of you who don't live in this backward province, I'll provide the information with as few editorial comments as possible:
1. H1N1 is coming, sort of like Christmas, which means it's already here but is just not as overt as it will be in the very near future.
2. It is pretty obvious that a vaccination against this nasty flu is a good idea.
3. There are no privately available doses of the H1N1 vaccine.
4. The Alberta provincial government is in charge of health care.
5. Calgary has been allocated four public health clinics to inoculate a population of more than one million.
6. Winnipeg, a city of around 650,000 people, has been given twelve clinics.
7. ....
8. Huff.
9. Puff.
10. Blow your head off.
See? I just knew I couldn't do it. It's too mind-bogglingly dumb. It's like Premier Ed Stelmach, a man who is out of his league when he's by himself in a field of canola, is actually trying to demonstrate exactly how incompetent his government is. Seriously, a five-year-old with ADHD could figure this out and run the whole program with better success than the pack of nitwits in Edmonton have done to this point.
Who gave them the idea that four clinics--capable of vaccinating about eight thousand people a day in total--was an appropriate number to open for Calgary? Do the math, bonebrains. That's 125 days before everyone gets a shot. Let's be optimistic and call it 100 days. That's still a few days into February at this rate, by which time H1N1 will most likely be a fait accompli. That's one round of applause for the province.
Another D'oh! moment came with their announcement that the vaccine would be made available to absolutely everyone. What a democratic bunch of fellas, eh? In the true spirit of fair play and equal opportunity, the Stelmach SuperBoard decided to open the gates and let everyone have a crack at the shots at the same time. No thought was given to the oh-so-faint possibility that everyone would try to show up at the same time. No suggestion was evident that the high-risk population--people like pregnant women and the elderly, for example--might benefit from receiving the shots before the general population. Only after a loud and prolonged outcry from the public did Calgary receive a fifth clinic at the University Oval, this one reserved for exactly these sorts of high-risk patients.
The police department has been begging for vaccinations for its officers--who might be considered front-line public service workers--but has not even received the courtesy of a returned phone call since midway through the month. As for teachers, don't even get me started. I had to bring my own hand sanitizer into those parent-teacher interviews. The CBE could well stand for Creating Big Epidemics by the time this thing is over but you wouldn't know it's even an issue from the way the Powers That Be don't appear to give a rat's ass. One of my students asked why there weren't vaccinations available at every high school in the city. Why indeed? We are a cauldron of bacteria and viruses on a good day, so it seems likely that the tipping point on any pandemic is likely to happen in places like our schools. Why not use them against the bug?
Answer: the province is too damnably stupid.
I'm sorry, but it must be that way. They have mismanaged every single aspect of this thing so far and we haven't even really got into the serious health emergencies yet. If and when H1N1 starts whacking people down in a big way, I have absolutely zero confidence in the government's ability to take care of any of us. They couldn't handle a bake sale, based on their performance to date.
The front-line health care workers, on the other hand, are an exceptional bunch of people who are being given an impossible job to do but are gamely trying to do it anyway. "Here," the province has said. "Take this grand piano. Now suck it up your nose." I talked with a nurse last night at parent-teacher interviews and she sighed about what her duties have been over the past few days. Think about trying to run crowd control on about two thousand people a day who are being asked to wait for up to six hours in a line-up outside in minus-something weather while kids are crying and dickheads are trying to cut into the queue and there's no place to sit and the idiot behind you is sneezing without covering his mouth. By the time these people get inside, they're ready to go off like Mount St. Helen's. Kudos to the nurses who are infinitely more patient than their patients and keep their smiles and needles steady. These people are heroes.
But the government that hires them has a lot to answer for. Their response to the H1N1 situation would be embarrassing and shocking in a Third World country. In a province that purports to be part of the developed world, it's utterly beyond comprehension. Someone should be jailed for this, let alone fired.
Anyone who lives in the city of Calgary already knows this, so join in with me on the count of three.
One...two...three...
"What the HELL is the Alberta government THINKING?"
Of course, as one of my colleagues observed earlier today, "Why do you expect them to think? They haven't demonstrated that capability recently."
For those of you who don't live in this backward province, I'll provide the information with as few editorial comments as possible:
1. H1N1 is coming, sort of like Christmas, which means it's already here but is just not as overt as it will be in the very near future.
2. It is pretty obvious that a vaccination against this nasty flu is a good idea.
3. There are no privately available doses of the H1N1 vaccine.
4. The Alberta provincial government is in charge of health care.
5. Calgary has been allocated four public health clinics to inoculate a population of more than one million.
6. Winnipeg, a city of around 650,000 people, has been given twelve clinics.
7. ....
8. Huff.
9. Puff.
10. Blow your head off.
See? I just knew I couldn't do it. It's too mind-bogglingly dumb. It's like Premier Ed Stelmach, a man who is out of his league when he's by himself in a field of canola, is actually trying to demonstrate exactly how incompetent his government is. Seriously, a five-year-old with ADHD could figure this out and run the whole program with better success than the pack of nitwits in Edmonton have done to this point.
Who gave them the idea that four clinics--capable of vaccinating about eight thousand people a day in total--was an appropriate number to open for Calgary? Do the math, bonebrains. That's 125 days before everyone gets a shot. Let's be optimistic and call it 100 days. That's still a few days into February at this rate, by which time H1N1 will most likely be a fait accompli. That's one round of applause for the province.
Another D'oh! moment came with their announcement that the vaccine would be made available to absolutely everyone. What a democratic bunch of fellas, eh? In the true spirit of fair play and equal opportunity, the Stelmach SuperBoard decided to open the gates and let everyone have a crack at the shots at the same time. No thought was given to the oh-so-faint possibility that everyone would try to show up at the same time. No suggestion was evident that the high-risk population--people like pregnant women and the elderly, for example--might benefit from receiving the shots before the general population. Only after a loud and prolonged outcry from the public did Calgary receive a fifth clinic at the University Oval, this one reserved for exactly these sorts of high-risk patients.
The police department has been begging for vaccinations for its officers--who might be considered front-line public service workers--but has not even received the courtesy of a returned phone call since midway through the month. As for teachers, don't even get me started. I had to bring my own hand sanitizer into those parent-teacher interviews. The CBE could well stand for Creating Big Epidemics by the time this thing is over but you wouldn't know it's even an issue from the way the Powers That Be don't appear to give a rat's ass. One of my students asked why there weren't vaccinations available at every high school in the city. Why indeed? We are a cauldron of bacteria and viruses on a good day, so it seems likely that the tipping point on any pandemic is likely to happen in places like our schools. Why not use them against the bug?
Answer: the province is too damnably stupid.
I'm sorry, but it must be that way. They have mismanaged every single aspect of this thing so far and we haven't even really got into the serious health emergencies yet. If and when H1N1 starts whacking people down in a big way, I have absolutely zero confidence in the government's ability to take care of any of us. They couldn't handle a bake sale, based on their performance to date.
The front-line health care workers, on the other hand, are an exceptional bunch of people who are being given an impossible job to do but are gamely trying to do it anyway. "Here," the province has said. "Take this grand piano. Now suck it up your nose." I talked with a nurse last night at parent-teacher interviews and she sighed about what her duties have been over the past few days. Think about trying to run crowd control on about two thousand people a day who are being asked to wait for up to six hours in a line-up outside in minus-something weather while kids are crying and dickheads are trying to cut into the queue and there's no place to sit and the idiot behind you is sneezing without covering his mouth. By the time these people get inside, they're ready to go off like Mount St. Helen's. Kudos to the nurses who are infinitely more patient than their patients and keep their smiles and needles steady. These people are heroes.
But the government that hires them has a lot to answer for. Their response to the H1N1 situation would be embarrassing and shocking in a Third World country. In a province that purports to be part of the developed world, it's utterly beyond comprehension. Someone should be jailed for this, let alone fired.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Mandatory Volunteering & Other Oxymorons
I needed another chance to grind my teeth together today, so thank goodness we had that really REALLY useful hour to talk about how important it is to volunteer...mostly because the school has a policy that says you can't walk across the stage if you haven't put in at least five hours of volunteering your time and energy towards something worthwhile.
Think about how ridiculous that is. I'm going to force you to do something that only means anything if it's done from the heart. What possible lesson are we learning here, campers? Could it be hypocrisy? Could we be developing a course in insincerity?
Sorry, but I don't see any purpose in mandating this, particularly not if it is tied to a graduation requirement. What do we get out of this? As five or six hundred graduates cross the stage, I suppose we can smile smugly and congratulate ourselves that this translates to at least 2500 hours of community involvement from our superb crop of young people. My suspicion is that it's all tied to the (relatively) recent board policy of developing meaningful relationships with kids and promoting values of citizenship among our students.
Ironically, today I was waiting for the announcement to call my homeroom down to the gym to hear this motivational speaker and it never came because apparently I was supposed to know intuitively that we were all to go there without invitation. To fill the time, I had a bunch of one-on-one interviews with my kids to clarify how they were doing in school, what their plans were for after graduation, and whether they were going to travel or work or go directly to college or university. Along the way I discovered that every single one of the kids is already heavily invested in volunteering--in fact, just about every one of them could fill in well over a hundred hours of volunteering without anyone breathing down their neck threatening to withhold the convocation ceremony from them.
I asked a few of them what they thought of the school policy and got a resigned, rather cynical shrug. "What do you expect?" one of them asked rhetorically. "It's school."
The way she said it spoke volumes about how tiresome the kids find the whole process.
Me too.
Think about how ridiculous that is. I'm going to force you to do something that only means anything if it's done from the heart. What possible lesson are we learning here, campers? Could it be hypocrisy? Could we be developing a course in insincerity?
Sorry, but I don't see any purpose in mandating this, particularly not if it is tied to a graduation requirement. What do we get out of this? As five or six hundred graduates cross the stage, I suppose we can smile smugly and congratulate ourselves that this translates to at least 2500 hours of community involvement from our superb crop of young people. My suspicion is that it's all tied to the (relatively) recent board policy of developing meaningful relationships with kids and promoting values of citizenship among our students.
Ironically, today I was waiting for the announcement to call my homeroom down to the gym to hear this motivational speaker and it never came because apparently I was supposed to know intuitively that we were all to go there without invitation. To fill the time, I had a bunch of one-on-one interviews with my kids to clarify how they were doing in school, what their plans were for after graduation, and whether they were going to travel or work or go directly to college or university. Along the way I discovered that every single one of the kids is already heavily invested in volunteering--in fact, just about every one of them could fill in well over a hundred hours of volunteering without anyone breathing down their neck threatening to withhold the convocation ceremony from them.
I asked a few of them what they thought of the school policy and got a resigned, rather cynical shrug. "What do you expect?" one of them asked rhetorically. "It's school."
The way she said it spoke volumes about how tiresome the kids find the whole process.
Me too.
I'm Totally Not Responsible For This Post
As the sign says, all I'm doing is re-printing an excellent article that appeared in The Little Education Report.
Enjoy...
http://www.thelittleeducationreport.com/Educatorrace.html
Educator: 'Race to the Top's' 10 false assumptions
By Marion Brady
"Race to the Top? National standards for math, science, and other school subjects? The high-powered push to put them in place makes it clear that the politicians, business leaders, and wealthy philanthropists who’ve run America’s education show for the last two decades are as clueless about educating as they’ve always been. If they weren’t, they’d know that adopting national standards will be counterproductive, and that the "Race to the Top" will fail for the same reason "No Child Left Behind" failed—because it’s based on false assumptions.
False Assumption 1: America’s teachers deserve most of the blame for decades of flat school performance. Other factors affecting learning—language problems, hunger, stress, mass media exposure, transience, cultural differences, a sense of hopelessness, and so on and on—are minor and can be overcome by well-qualified teachers. To teacher protests that they’re scapegoats taking the blame for broader social ills, the proper response is, "No excuses!" While it’s true teachers can’t choose their students, textbooks, working conditions, curricula, tests, or the bureaucracies that circumscribe and limit their autonomy, they should be held fully accountable for poor student test scores.
False Assumption 2: Professional educators are responsible for bringing education to crisis, so they can’t be trusted. School systems should instead be headed by business CEOs, mayors, ex-military officers, and others accustomed to running a "tight ship." Their managerial expertise more than compensates for how little they know about educating.
False Assumption 3: "Rigor"—doing longer and harder what we’ve always done—will cure education’s ills. If the young can’t clear arbitrary statistical bars put in place by politicians, it makes good sense to raise those bars. Because learning is neither natural nor a source of joy, externally imposed discipline and "tough love" are necessary.
False Assumption 4: Teaching is just a matter of distributing information. Indeed, the process is so simple that recent college graduates, fresh from "covering" that information, should be encouraged to join "Teach For America" for a couple of years before moving on to more intellectually demanding professions. Experienced teachers may argue that, as Socrates demonstrated, nothing is more intellectually demanding than figuring out what’s going on in another person’s head, then getting that person herself or himself to examine and change it, but they’re just blowing smoke.
False Assumption 5: Notwithstanding the failure of vast experiments such as those conducted in eastern Europe under Communism, and the evidence from ordinary experience, history proves that top-down reforms such as No Child Left Behind work well. Centralized control doesn’t stifle creativity, imply teacher incompetence, limit strategy options, discourage innovation, or block the flow of information and insight to policymakers from those actually doing the work.
False Assumption 6: Standardized tests are free of cultural, social class, language, experiential, and other biases, so test-taker ability to infer, hypothesize, generalize, relate, synthesize, and engage in all other "higher order" thought processes can be precisely measured and meaningful numbers attached. It’s also a fact that test-prep programs don’t unfairly advantage those who can afford them, that strategies to improve the reliability of guessing correct answers can’t be taught, and that test results can’t be manipulated to support political or ideological agendas. For these reasons, test scores are reliable, and should be the primary drivers of education policy.
False Assumption 7: Notwithstanding the evidence from research and decades of failed efforts, forcing merit pay schemes on teachers will revitalize America’s schools. This is because the desire to compete is the most powerful of all human drives (more powerful even than the satisfactions of doing work one loves). The effectiveness of, say, band directors and biology teachers, or of history teachers and math teachers, can be easily measured and dollar amounts attached to their relative skill. Merit pay also has no adverse effect on collegiality, teacher-team dynamics, morale, or school politics.
False Assumption 8: Required courses, course distribution requirements, Carnegie Units, and other bureaucratic demands and devices that standardize the curriculum and limit teacher and learner options are products of America’s best thinkers about what the young need to know. Those requirements should, then, override individual learner interests, talents, abilities, and all other factors affecting freedom of choice.
False Assumption 9: Notwithstanding charter schools’ present high rates of teacher turnover, their growing standardization by profit-seeking corporations, or their failure to demonstrate that they can do things all public schools couldn’t do if freed from bureaucratic constraints, charters attract the most highly qualified and experienced teachers and are hotbeds of innovation.
False Assumption 10: The familiar, traditional "core curriculum" in near-universal use in America’s classrooms since 1893 is the best-possible tool for preparing the young for an unknown, unpredictable, increasingly complex and dangerous future."
Human history," said H.G. Wells, "is a race between education and catastrophe."
If amateurs continue to control American education policy, put your money on catastrophe. It’s a sure thing.
Enjoy...
http://www.thelittleeducationreport.com/Educatorrace.html
Educator: 'Race to the Top's' 10 false assumptions
By Marion Brady
"Race to the Top? National standards for math, science, and other school subjects? The high-powered push to put them in place makes it clear that the politicians, business leaders, and wealthy philanthropists who’ve run America’s education show for the last two decades are as clueless about educating as they’ve always been. If they weren’t, they’d know that adopting national standards will be counterproductive, and that the "Race to the Top" will fail for the same reason "No Child Left Behind" failed—because it’s based on false assumptions.
False Assumption 1: America’s teachers deserve most of the blame for decades of flat school performance. Other factors affecting learning—language problems, hunger, stress, mass media exposure, transience, cultural differences, a sense of hopelessness, and so on and on—are minor and can be overcome by well-qualified teachers. To teacher protests that they’re scapegoats taking the blame for broader social ills, the proper response is, "No excuses!" While it’s true teachers can’t choose their students, textbooks, working conditions, curricula, tests, or the bureaucracies that circumscribe and limit their autonomy, they should be held fully accountable for poor student test scores.
False Assumption 2: Professional educators are responsible for bringing education to crisis, so they can’t be trusted. School systems should instead be headed by business CEOs, mayors, ex-military officers, and others accustomed to running a "tight ship." Their managerial expertise more than compensates for how little they know about educating.
False Assumption 3: "Rigor"—doing longer and harder what we’ve always done—will cure education’s ills. If the young can’t clear arbitrary statistical bars put in place by politicians, it makes good sense to raise those bars. Because learning is neither natural nor a source of joy, externally imposed discipline and "tough love" are necessary.
False Assumption 4: Teaching is just a matter of distributing information. Indeed, the process is so simple that recent college graduates, fresh from "covering" that information, should be encouraged to join "Teach For America" for a couple of years before moving on to more intellectually demanding professions. Experienced teachers may argue that, as Socrates demonstrated, nothing is more intellectually demanding than figuring out what’s going on in another person’s head, then getting that person herself or himself to examine and change it, but they’re just blowing smoke.
False Assumption 5: Notwithstanding the failure of vast experiments such as those conducted in eastern Europe under Communism, and the evidence from ordinary experience, history proves that top-down reforms such as No Child Left Behind work well. Centralized control doesn’t stifle creativity, imply teacher incompetence, limit strategy options, discourage innovation, or block the flow of information and insight to policymakers from those actually doing the work.
False Assumption 6: Standardized tests are free of cultural, social class, language, experiential, and other biases, so test-taker ability to infer, hypothesize, generalize, relate, synthesize, and engage in all other "higher order" thought processes can be precisely measured and meaningful numbers attached. It’s also a fact that test-prep programs don’t unfairly advantage those who can afford them, that strategies to improve the reliability of guessing correct answers can’t be taught, and that test results can’t be manipulated to support political or ideological agendas. For these reasons, test scores are reliable, and should be the primary drivers of education policy.
False Assumption 7: Notwithstanding the evidence from research and decades of failed efforts, forcing merit pay schemes on teachers will revitalize America’s schools. This is because the desire to compete is the most powerful of all human drives (more powerful even than the satisfactions of doing work one loves). The effectiveness of, say, band directors and biology teachers, or of history teachers and math teachers, can be easily measured and dollar amounts attached to their relative skill. Merit pay also has no adverse effect on collegiality, teacher-team dynamics, morale, or school politics.
False Assumption 8: Required courses, course distribution requirements, Carnegie Units, and other bureaucratic demands and devices that standardize the curriculum and limit teacher and learner options are products of America’s best thinkers about what the young need to know. Those requirements should, then, override individual learner interests, talents, abilities, and all other factors affecting freedom of choice.
False Assumption 9: Notwithstanding charter schools’ present high rates of teacher turnover, their growing standardization by profit-seeking corporations, or their failure to demonstrate that they can do things all public schools couldn’t do if freed from bureaucratic constraints, charters attract the most highly qualified and experienced teachers and are hotbeds of innovation.
False Assumption 10: The familiar, traditional "core curriculum" in near-universal use in America’s classrooms since 1893 is the best-possible tool for preparing the young for an unknown, unpredictable, increasingly complex and dangerous future."
Human history," said H.G. Wells, "is a race between education and catastrophe."
If amateurs continue to control American education policy, put your money on catastrophe. It’s a sure thing.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Bravery
I have a student who has been raised in a fundamentalist church. Because she has for her entire life been given the 411 about what is and is not allowed, what is and is not good behavior, what is and is not sinful, immoral and fattening, she should, you would think, be pretty strait-laced about her beliefs. It's not like blind people understand colors, right? How could she possibly question what has been absolute for her from day one?
Okay, rather than run on about philosophical issues, I just want to give credit to this young lady because she is doing what is probably the hardest thing to do in the world: letting go of one's upbringing. This isn't to say that we should all applaud kids who run away from home or flip the bird at mom and dad's rules--that's just defiance. What I'm talking about is a very real, very serious interrogation of her own beliefs with the goal of deciding for herself what her values and ideas are going to be for the rest of her life. She is questioning her own authority with as much integrity as she can.
And it's not fun for her. She isn't doing this because she thinks it's a big giggle to dismiss her family's beliefs. She isn't enjoying the prospect of her community giving her the collective cold shoulder because they disapprove of her decision. She certainly isn't having a good time with her family's tears and anger and various forms of emotional blackmail.
But she knows that she has to live with herself, so this is important to her. It's all about integrity. She knows it would be easier to pretend to follow the leader, to nod when people ask you to and ask how high when people say jump, but that wouldn't silence the constant questions she's been asking and it wouldn't make her feel very good about the sort of person she is if she lives that way.
So I have to acknowledge this as the bravest person I have met in a very long time, someone I hope will come out at the other end of this experience as intact as possible, although the fracturing is sure to happen.
I will keep you posted.
Okay, rather than run on about philosophical issues, I just want to give credit to this young lady because she is doing what is probably the hardest thing to do in the world: letting go of one's upbringing. This isn't to say that we should all applaud kids who run away from home or flip the bird at mom and dad's rules--that's just defiance. What I'm talking about is a very real, very serious interrogation of her own beliefs with the goal of deciding for herself what her values and ideas are going to be for the rest of her life. She is questioning her own authority with as much integrity as she can.
And it's not fun for her. She isn't doing this because she thinks it's a big giggle to dismiss her family's beliefs. She isn't enjoying the prospect of her community giving her the collective cold shoulder because they disapprove of her decision. She certainly isn't having a good time with her family's tears and anger and various forms of emotional blackmail.
But she knows that she has to live with herself, so this is important to her. It's all about integrity. She knows it would be easier to pretend to follow the leader, to nod when people ask you to and ask how high when people say jump, but that wouldn't silence the constant questions she's been asking and it wouldn't make her feel very good about the sort of person she is if she lives that way.
So I have to acknowledge this as the bravest person I have met in a very long time, someone I hope will come out at the other end of this experience as intact as possible, although the fracturing is sure to happen.
I will keep you posted.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
IPPs Again
Right now I'm a little bit choked about the fact that my school is scheduled to have what is known in the business as an "organizational day" and the sole purpose of this is to put together Individual Program Plans (IPPs) for the coded kids we have in our classes.
Yay.
Not to be obvious but I really REALLY loathe these things. I know they're supposed to be for kids who have certain difficulties in the normal classroom setting, carefully composed to help them manage their challenges and get past whatever obstacles are between them and success, but...but...
But they really aren't.
What they have become for my school board--and, as far as I know, for the entire province of Alberta--is a relatively efficient way to bring a bunch of extra cash into the school with practically no accountability about how that money is spent. It sure isn't being used to provide the challenged students with resources to get past or work with their challenges. The bureaucrats talk a big talk about how important it is to ensure that students with certain coded learning difficulties be accommodated with this measure or that measure, all for the purpose of providing democratically accessible education for all, but at the end of the day the kids are still falling through the cracks at roughly the same rate as they always have. Nothing seems to make a difference and the IPPs are doing zip to make the system any more touchy-feely.
Let me use an example.
A student--I'll call him John, because I'm so creative today--demonstrates precocious behavior in the early grades of his elementary education, proving that he can read before he enters Grade 1 and can handle multiplication and division before Grade 2. A savvy teacher spots this and finds a way to get John an appointment with an educational psychologist, who diagnoses giftedness--an operational IQ of 130 or higher--and recommends that he be coded 80 in the Calgary Board's system. This coding means that John can be placed in a Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) setting from Grade 4 until the end of his high school career, if he (well, his parents, really) so chooses. You may expect that John will be surrounded by well-trained teachers who understand the spectrum of giftedness and are ready, willing and able to provide the best opportunities for him to exercise his potential with enriched, expanded, and extended learning situations. You may expect that the province of Alberta will invest a few thousand dollars into ensuring that John is as excited and challenged and motivated as possible. You may expect that the code 80 is an asset--one that John and his parents are eager to work with to maximize the benefits of his education.
You would be disappointed.
Certainly at the elementary and junior high levels, GATE settings are a very good idea for some gifted kids (there's no way to lump them all into one convenient package), but by the time the kid is in high school, if he's still in GATE it had better not be because he needs the support; it had better be because he likes the people he's in school with. But by the time high school rolls around, the code 80 isn't worth a squirtful of piss except that it brings in about three thousand dollars to the school that is lucky enough to have John or Jack or Jill as a gifted student among its population.
Speaking for my school, I know for an absolute guaranteed fact that exactly zero dollars are spent on giving gifted students any particular benefit from their code 80 status. The school gets a free pass on the several thousands of dollars that drift in; they can spend it on whatever they want to, but it certainly does not trickle down to John.
The only requirement for all this cash? The school must pretend that the students are being catered to in a particular way. Forms must be filled out. Plans and strategies and objectives and materials must be put together for each kid...which is why they call them Individual Program Plans...and teachers are given the job of filling out these things in a way that at least looks a little bit credible from a distance.
And that's what we'll be doing this Friday.
Yay.
Not to be obvious but I really REALLY loathe these things. I know they're supposed to be for kids who have certain difficulties in the normal classroom setting, carefully composed to help them manage their challenges and get past whatever obstacles are between them and success, but...but...
But they really aren't.
What they have become for my school board--and, as far as I know, for the entire province of Alberta--is a relatively efficient way to bring a bunch of extra cash into the school with practically no accountability about how that money is spent. It sure isn't being used to provide the challenged students with resources to get past or work with their challenges. The bureaucrats talk a big talk about how important it is to ensure that students with certain coded learning difficulties be accommodated with this measure or that measure, all for the purpose of providing democratically accessible education for all, but at the end of the day the kids are still falling through the cracks at roughly the same rate as they always have. Nothing seems to make a difference and the IPPs are doing zip to make the system any more touchy-feely.
Let me use an example.
A student--I'll call him John, because I'm so creative today--demonstrates precocious behavior in the early grades of his elementary education, proving that he can read before he enters Grade 1 and can handle multiplication and division before Grade 2. A savvy teacher spots this and finds a way to get John an appointment with an educational psychologist, who diagnoses giftedness--an operational IQ of 130 or higher--and recommends that he be coded 80 in the Calgary Board's system. This coding means that John can be placed in a Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) setting from Grade 4 until the end of his high school career, if he (well, his parents, really) so chooses. You may expect that John will be surrounded by well-trained teachers who understand the spectrum of giftedness and are ready, willing and able to provide the best opportunities for him to exercise his potential with enriched, expanded, and extended learning situations. You may expect that the province of Alberta will invest a few thousand dollars into ensuring that John is as excited and challenged and motivated as possible. You may expect that the code 80 is an asset--one that John and his parents are eager to work with to maximize the benefits of his education.
You would be disappointed.
Certainly at the elementary and junior high levels, GATE settings are a very good idea for some gifted kids (there's no way to lump them all into one convenient package), but by the time the kid is in high school, if he's still in GATE it had better not be because he needs the support; it had better be because he likes the people he's in school with. But by the time high school rolls around, the code 80 isn't worth a squirtful of piss except that it brings in about three thousand dollars to the school that is lucky enough to have John or Jack or Jill as a gifted student among its population.
Speaking for my school, I know for an absolute guaranteed fact that exactly zero dollars are spent on giving gifted students any particular benefit from their code 80 status. The school gets a free pass on the several thousands of dollars that drift in; they can spend it on whatever they want to, but it certainly does not trickle down to John.
The only requirement for all this cash? The school must pretend that the students are being catered to in a particular way. Forms must be filled out. Plans and strategies and objectives and materials must be put together for each kid...which is why they call them Individual Program Plans...and teachers are given the job of filling out these things in a way that at least looks a little bit credible from a distance.
And that's what we'll be doing this Friday.
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