The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. Dissecting Leftism is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other sites viewable in China: Political Correctness Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Greenie Watch, Australian Politics, Socialized Medicine and Gun Watch. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing). The archive for this mirror site is here or here.
****************************************************************************************
30 November, 2006
AUSTRALIA'S EDUCATION WARS CONTINUE
Australian education has been substantially destroyed by Leftist State governments and the Feds are trying to undo at least some of the damage. Five current articles below:
Moral compass returning in postmodern schools
Kevin Donnelly believes the Left is losing the argument about school values
Education has traditionally been an electoral plus for the ALP, but not any more. As a recent Newspoll survey reveals, the Coalition Government has orchestrated an eight percentage point turnaround and is running neck and neck with Labor in terms of positive voter perception. Jenny Macklin, the federal Opposition education spokeswoman, argues the Howard Government's improvement is the result of cheap populism. She is wrong. As outlined in my book Why Our Schools are Failing, Australian parents are worried about significant issues such as falling standards, schools not being held accountable, the curriculum being awash with political correctness and, with government schools in particular, education failing to inculcate proper values.
That the Left has been wrong-footed in the education debate is clear to see. Remember the electoral impact of Mark Latham's hit list of non-government schools? More recently, take the Prime Minister's decision to finance religious counsellors in schools. When announced, the decision met with the usual mock outrage associated with the cultural Left. Andrew Gohl, president of the South Australian branch of the Australian Education Union, says: "It is totally inappropriate for the federal Government to try to impose ideology in public schools."
The Independent Education Union of Australia, an organisation not normally associated with the Left, reveals it has also been captured by the PC brigade when it suggests the federal Government is being divisive. "Australia is a multicultural, plural society; the strength of its values lies in the richness of its diversity," it says. "But John Howard and his Government consistently undermine this diversity with policies and commentary that divide the community and engender distrust." Even Bob Carr, a former politician usually guaranteed to be balanced and perceptive in his public comments, cannot resist hyperbole when he argues: "What if a poorly attended parent meeting chose a jihadist imam from a small Muslim prayer hall?"
Reality check: far from pushing a so-called conservative agenda, the Government is providing a resource that individual schools, government and non-government, can choose to take up or not. Quite rightly, while counsellors will not be restricted to any one religion or denomination, there will also be restrictions on who can be employed. That the AEU argues against the Government's initiative by describing it as ideological is also a bit rich. Consider how the union's curriculum policies have forced a politically correct, cultural-left agenda on schools, redefining the three Rs as the republic, refugees and reconciliation.
An uncritical promotion of multiculturalism and diversity, advocated by the IEU, also ignores that the overwhelming majority of Australians describe themselves as Christian and that our history, political and legal institutions have arisen out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Instead of condemning the initiative to give students a clear and unambiguous moral compass to decide right from wrong and to identify a proper balance between rights and responsibilities, opponents of the scheme should be applauding it. For far too long, education has failed in its duty to address such issues. Beginning with the progressive education movement of the 1960s and '70s, the belief is that children should be left to their own devices and that adults should not impose a strong moral framework.
The self-esteem movement of the '80s and '90s, when education was reduced to therapy on the basis that nobody failed, compounded the problem as lessons focused on what was immediately entertaining and relevant to the world of the student. Classic myths, fables and legends such as The Arabian Nights, Aesop's Fables, The Iliad and The Odyssey gave way to popular magazines and social-realism stories about youth suicide and dysfunctional families. History as a subject disappeared, replaced by the study of the local community or figures such as Diana, princess of Wales.
Evident by debates about the nihilistic impact of theory, represented by postmodernism, the most recent example of our failure to give students a viable moral code is the belief that there is no right or wrong, as all values are relative and truth is simply a socio-cultural construct. As noted by John Paul II in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason): "A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based on the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth."
Historically, the education debate has focused on issues such as more money, smaller classes and more teachers, as shown by debates in these pages during the past 12 months. Equally important is the cultural significance of education, something the Prime Minister clearly understands.
Source
War over school history
The Queensland Government is preparing for a stand-up brawl with Canberra over attempts to impose history as a compulsory subject for high school students. Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford will defy federal Education Minister Julie Bishop and refuse to mandate history as a compulsory, stand-alone subject for Years 9 and 10. "I am happy to mandate some essential knowledge of key components of Australian history into a subject," Mr Welford said. "But it simply does not make sense to mandate history as a stand-alone subject."
History is taught in Queensland public schools as part of Studies of Societies and Environment and is optional from Year 9. Canberra is also facing a showdown with South Australia, where history is available until Year 11 as part of SOSE. Western Australia, where history is called "Time, Continuity and Change" and mingled in a Society and Environment course, is believed to be considering Ms Bishop's proposal. NSW and Victoria offer history as a stand-alone subject. Other territories and states have not made their position clear.
Ms Bishop has refused to rule out withholding money from the next $40 billion education funding round from those states that resist her push for a stand-alone compulsory history subject. "In the last funding round the Government provided $33 billion to the states and territories to run their schools and I believe that the Australian taxpayers would expect us to make the states and territories accountable for that investment," she said last month. Yesterday Ms Bishop's office said: "The Minister hopes the state will agree with the proposal voluntarily."
The warning follows news that a report commissioned by federal and state education ministers found that more than three-quarters of Australian teenagers did not know the significance of Australia Day. Ms Bishop's push for compulsory history in schools has the strong backing of Prime Minister John Howard. On Australia Day, Mr Howard foreshadowed his desire to see history established as a compulsory subject on Australia Day. He has specifically attacked Mr Welford's proposal for blending history with other curriculums. "Too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of themes and issues," Mr Howard said.
Mr Welford last night vowed to strongly support Queensland public schools which want to establish a separate history curriculum. But he believes the practicalities of many smaller Queensland high schools require history be incorporated into other areas such as social studies or environmental education. He warned Ms Bishop that Queensland would not be swayed by Canberra's "rigid inflexibility" on the issue
Source
Teachers get a blast
Underperforming Australian teachers received a broadside yesterday from Prime Minister John Howard and Education Minister Julie Bishop. As the Federal Government presses on with plans to create a more centralised national curriculum, public school teachers are becoming fair game to a Government convinced they're on the nose in the electorate. In Parliament, Mr Howard used a Dorothy Dixer on claims that some Victorian teachers plan to join tomorrow's ACTU National Day of Action to launch a blistering attack on the profession.
"It is no secret to any member in this House that many Australian parents are voting with their feet against the government education system around the country," he said. "And they are not doing it because of funding. "It's this kind of behaviour by teachers that gives government schools a bad name." Instead of attending a "Jimmy Barnes concert" at the Melbourne Cricket Ground teachers should be in their classrooms, Mr Howard said. "As somebody who is rather proudly the product of a government education system, let me say that I worry about this kind of behaviour undermining the quality of government education in Victoria and around Australia," he said.
Ms Bishop told a gathering of National History Challenge finalists in Canberra that the teaching of Australian history had been denigrated in many of our schools. "And I believe that is a shame," she said. She found some comfort in the fact that finalists in the competition had produced sophisticated and intelligent work. But she reiterated her determination to make history a compulsory stand-alone subject for Years 9 to 10.
Source
Teach the facts first: Without the basics, school history is just propaganda
An editorial from "The Australian" below
WHEN NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said on Monday Australia Day commemorated the founding of our federation, instead of the arrival of the First Fleet, she did more than look like a dill. She demonstrated how she was betrayed by the people who designed the curriculum she was taught at school. As a woman in her early 40s, Ms Tebbutt went to school in an era when history, the study of the past on its own terms, not as a version of the present in fancy dress, was being trashed. Instead of the foundations of history - the facts and dates of events, who did what and why, and what were the consequences - history began to be a collection of stories based on the belief that whatever past winners said was invariably unfair to everybody else. The result is that the woman charged with running the largest school system in the country cannot distinguish between the founding of settler society in Australia and the creation of our commonwealth. But it is a fair bet that while she may not have any idea of the detail of how or why Australia came to be one of the most successful and enduring democracies, Ms Tebbutt was told at school how the settlers, or the founding fathers, probably both, dispossessed the indigenous Australians.
And just as Ms Tebbutt was betrayed then, so are children today. For a generation, our state education systems have emphasised ideology over information in history and literature, assuming the task of the teacher is to create a questioning culture among students, but one where fashion and feelings stand in the way of fact. We have now reached a point where it appears important for students to understand what people felt, rather than to know the facts that shaped their circumstances. As The Australian reports this morning, a simulation exercise used in a Sydney school presented conflict in the Middle East from a militant Palestinian perspective. As a way of inciting ill-informed anger among young people against one side in an immensely complex conflict, this is a winner. But as an exercise in education, it is hard to imagine anything worse. Before students can argue about the Middle East they need to learn the 20th-century history of the region. They need to be aware the British ran much of the region between the wars. They need to know the basic facts and dates of the way the Israelis fought for independence, the way the surrounding states sought to destroy Israel and the way ordinary Palestinians are now caught between Islamic terrorists and the Israeli forces. And they need to grasp that the Palestinian cause is now divided between people who want to make the best deal they can with Israel and fanatics who believe they are divinely directed to kill Jews.
In this, as in every other area of study, it is the job of schools to teach the facts and interpretive skills students need to make up their own minds. It is not their job to indoctrinate young people in some sort of party line that suits the political style of the teacher union leaders, who still see the world through the prism of the counter-culture of the 1960s, which blamed the West for all that was wrong in the world. We are now at a stage where children are being taught an interpretation of the past as if it were fact - the very thing the education apparatchiks always argue they oppose. To portray the European settlers of Australia, or the Israelis for that matter, as invaders, as if the evidence was irrefutable, ensures school students will argue before they have all the evidence.
Source
Hard-Left education chief self-destructs
West Australian Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich, close to tears yesterday as she battled an implication of lying from her former top bureaucrat, will today try to save her job before a state parliamentary inquiry. This follows damning evidence given to an upper house committee by former education director-general Paul Albert, who contradicted claims she made in parliament denying any knowledge of a Corruption and Crime Commission investigation into teacher sexual abuse of students.
Ms Ravlich, who has admitted seeking the help of disgraced former Labor premier Brian Burke to counter considerable media, community and teacher opposition to the controversial Outcomes Based Education (OBE), yesterday launched a scathing attack on her former top bureaucrat, claiming that Mr Albert had deliberately withheld information from her. Ms Ravlich has been clinging to her job after a series of blunders and scandals that have rocked the Carpenter Government, including the spectacular demise of police minister John D'Orazio and small business minister Norm Marlborough, who were both ensnared in CCC investigations.
Mr D'Orazio was kicked out of the Labor Party over an inappropriate and secretly taped meeting with a panel beater to discuss the minister's traffic infringements. Mr Marlborough may face criminal charges over evidence he gave to the CCC about his contact with Mr Burke, who was jailed twice in the 1990s and has since become a lobbyist.
Yesterday, Ms Ravlich flatly denied Mr Albert's evidence on Monday that he told her about the CCC investigation on three separate occasions. At times looking close to tears, Ms Ravlich said she had no recollection of the discussions outlined by Mr Albert, apart from a "passing" reference on one occasion. She described his actions as incomprehensible.
The discrepancy renewed the pressure on Premier Alan Carpenter, who yesterday came under fire in parliament as the Opposition demanded to know whom he believed: Ms Ravlich, or Mr Albert, whom the Premier appointed as director-general in 2001 when he was education minister. Giving very careful responses, Mr Carpenter suggested it was not unreasonable for people to have different recollections about passing comments, but he refused to answer questions on Ms Ravlich's immediate future.
The CCC spent almost a year investigating the Education Department's handling of allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers against children before releasing a damning report last month that accused the department of being more concerned with protecting staff than students. Mr Albert said that while he did not go into any detail with Ms Ravlich, he had raised the issue in general terms at meetings in May, July and August. He said that on one occasion in July he recalled telling the minister a draft report had been received from the CCC and it looked bad. Mr Albert was forced to resign over the issue last month.
Ms Ravlich said she was never told the CCC was looking into alleged sexual misconduct by teachers and that Mr Albert's failure to inform her was "totally unacceptable". "I met with the director-general every fortnight, on occasion on a weekly basis, and we would go through a whole range of issues. I would have called Mr Albert virtually on a daily basis," she said. "To be dropping breadcrumbs over the place for a minister to pick up and to, by way of passing, put forward any information in that manner, it's totally unacceptable."
Liberal leader Paul Omodei said the Premier had no option but to immediately remove Ms Ravlich from the education portfolio.
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
29 November, 2006
Alabama: School funding by the numbers
It is difficult to read a newspaper, listen to the radio, or watch TV news without hearing somebody tell us that our schools are badly under-funded. For the moment, the State will be satisfied with a $160 million tax increase, but indications are that they will soon pursue a $1.4 billion tax increase in order to "make schools adequate." School systems around the state are also seeking local tax increases to bolster their budgets.
We are told that schools need the money because buildings are in disrepair, students don't have textbooks, teachers are underpaid, and some schools have to request donations so that students will have toilet paper to use. Their focus is on educating kids, they claim, and that's where most of the money is spent, but they need more to do a decent job.
Critics claim that much of the money is being mishandled. Reducing waste and streamlining the bureaucracy, they insist, will allow schools to spend more money on actually educating students, and hopefully enable them to do a better job of actually teaching children how to read and write. Maybe public schools can even pull the average ACT scores of graduating seniors above 19.1, they hope.
Let's begin by crunching the numbers for the public schools, as provided by the State Board of Education. The Montgomery County school system spends an average of $5,398 per student each year, while the State education system spends an average of $5,657 per student. If we add the proposed $1.4 billion (or 30%) funding increase, that would increase county and state spending to $7,040 and $7,378 per pupil, respectively.
In order to compare public schools with private schools, I selected three private schools from the yellow pages and started asking questions. Specifically, I was curious as to how much it costs parents to put their kids in private schools, and how well those schools educate their students.
School Per Pupil
State Public Schools $5,657 ($7,378 after $1.4 billion increase)
Mgm County Schools $5,398 ($7,040 after $1.4 billion increase)
St. Bede $3,850
Mgm Academy $6,597
Trinity Presbyterian $5,299
As you can see from this chart, two of the three private schools spent less per pupil than did the public schools, and all spent less then what the per pupil spending would be after the proposed $1.4 billion tax increase. All of the private schools obtained better SAT scores than did the public schools, but tuition ranged from $1,500 less than that enjoyed by the taxpayer-funded schools to $1,200 more. Once the proposed $1.4 billion increase is added in, the private schools will cost between $3,190 and $443 less per pupil than will taxpayer funded public schools. By examining this data, a few things become crystal clear.
1) If most private schools can get better results than public schools for less money per student, then the amount of funding for public education isn't the problem.
2) A significant portion of the funding for public schools must be wasted or spent on items that do not help the schools achieve their overall goal: teaching children.
3) A dramatic increase in school funding will not help the students to learn more or to achieve higher scores. Only a fundamental change in how public schools are run and how public school teachers teach will accomplish that.
Over the past five years, per-pupil spending in Montgomery County schools has increased by 22%, while student performance has either dropped or remained the same. Parents of private school students have the option of removing their children to another school, and thus removing that money from the disappointing or overpriced school. Taxpaying citizens should have the same rights, to remove both student and funding from an education system that has failed them.
As education officials and politicians, led by Governor Seigelman, demand more tax dollars for public schools, taxpayers should be able to demand that the money is spent responsibly, on the actual process of educating students. By examining the performance of private schools, it is evident that children can be educated with less money than the public school system is currently spending, and we should demand that student performance rise with the funding level.
Don't force us to pay more taxes for an education system that doesn't educate our children. Until public schools start doing what their lesser-funded private brethren have shown themselves fully capable of doing, taxpayers should refuse even the barest suggestion of a tax increase.
Source
Australia: Students dumbed down and left out
No wonder our school students are culturally illiterate. If NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt can't tell the difference between Australia Day - which marks the arrival of the First Fleet on January 26, 1788 - and Federation, which marks the federation of Australia as a nation on January 1, 1901, then it is hardly surprising three-quarters of Australian teenagers don't understand the significance of Australia Day, the responsibilities of the governor-general or the symbolism of the Union Jack in our flag.
Ms Tebbutt's embarrassing gaffe aside, the results of the civics and citizenship test, reported in The Australian yesterday, reveal extensive gaps in the knowledge of national history in our schoolchildren. Worse, the news is simply the most recent in a long line of incidents and stories demonstrating the parlous state of our education system. While state and territory education ministers describe their schools as "world's best" and argue that standards are on the rise, the opposite is the case.
Why has this been allowed to happen? The first thing to realise is that those responsible for our education system argue that there is no crisis. At two forums organised this year by the Australian Curriculum Studies Association, concerns about falling standards and the politically correct nature of the curriculum were dismissed as a conservative backlash and a media beat-up.
Alan Reid, an Adelaide-based academic in favour of the much-condemned outcomes-based education model, argues: "We have a conservative backlash in the media which is really pushing us back to fixed syllabuses and a more didactic curriculum which conservative government forces are helping to promote."
At the second ACSA invitational conference, held in August and made up of the usual suspects, one of the educrats reportedly said: "It is all about politics and the influence of parents, lobby groups and media hype that sells papers."
Not only do state and territory curriculum bureaucrats argue there is no problem, the overwhelming majority also believe that process is more important than content and that teaching subjects such as history andliterature is secondary to developing generic competencies and skills, such as being futures oriented and valuing diversity.
While evidence of content-free education could be found at this year's history summit, where the argument was put that "you learn from doing history, not by being taught it" and the intention was to design a curriculum in terms of open-ended questions, it's important to understand that the curriculum has been under attack for years.
In 1975, the Whitlam government's Commonwealth Schools Commission sought to radically change the way teachers taught by arguing: "There is no reason to assume that the traditional subject fields, or high culture, are the only avenues through which thought might be developed or basic skills learned."
In opposition to the belief, as argued by US academic Jerome Bruner, that students must be taught the "structure of the discipline", the schools commission argued: "The skills of assembling evidence in logical argument may be developed through any content about which people care enough, or might be brought to care enough, to exert themselves to use them."
Never mind that skills and competencies do not arise intuitively or by accident and that they are best taught within the context of established disciplines such as English and mathematics. It is also true that not all content has the same value or complexity: Henry Lawson's The Drover's Wife is different from a mobile phone text message.
Since the early 1970s, the new age approach to teaching also has become embedded in teacher training. Georgina Tsolidis, an academic at Monash University, describes the role of teachers: "We were to go into classrooms to teach students, not subjects. We were to instil in our students feelings of self-worth premised on the value of what these students already knew and the value of what they wanted to learn, rather than the intrinsic worth of what we wanted to teach."
The most recent manifestation of education lite - in which, as argued in Shelley Gare's recent book The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense, "two generations of experimented-upon young Australians have emerged unable to read, write and think" - is Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education and the vague, generalised way the curriculum is written.
Instead of being given a clear, concise road map of what is to be taught, teachers are told that students, in the words of the West Australian curriculum, must be able to "describe and explain lasting and changing aspects of Australian society and environments", "construct a sequence of some major periods and events" and "categorise different types of historical change".
Memorising important facts, dates, events and the names of significant figures is also attacked as "drill and kill" and the argument is put that the curriculum must be open-ended, as teachers must be free to teach what their students are most interested in.
The flaws in such an approach are manifest. Not only are students disempowered as a result of leaving school culturally illiterate, thus disenfranchised in terms of the public debate, but the common ground on which democracy depends is left untilled.
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
28 November, 2006
Business to save British schools?
Business executives should be drafted into schools to help to raise standards, the new chief inspector of England's schools said yesterday as figures revealed that more than half of secondary schools were under-performing. Christine Gilbert, the head of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), blamed poor leadership and management in schools for persistent poor standards. "We should certainly look at drawing in heads from business and industry," she said. "If you have teaching experience, it may get you to first base quicker, but I do think that schools could benefit from the leadership expertise of people from outside, particularly those who have taken early retirement in their 50s. They could come in as consultants or heads."
Ms Gilbert's comments came after the publication of Ofsted's annual report, which showed that 51 per cent of England's secondary schools were failing to provide a good education for their pupils. With one in eight secondaries and one in 12 schools overall judged inadequate, she said that the proportion of failing schools in England was too high. "The report card for English education has been increasingly encouraging over the past ten years, but it is still not good enough," she said. Of the 6,129 schools inspected last year, twice the proportion of secondaries (13 per cent) were judged inadequate, compared with primaries (7 per cent).
The key to raising standards was good school leadership and early intervention with primary school children, Ms Gilbert, a former history teacher, said. She acknowledged that academies were one possible response to raising standards, but said that only three of the nine inspected were judged effective. There were 46 academies operating and the Government hoped to have 200 by 2010.
Progress had been made, but inexperienced staff and problems recruiting and retaining teachers remained a significant problem. Secondaries without sixth forms suffered the greatest difficulties in raising the achievement among pupils, with more than half (52 per cent) failing to make good progress. At the same time, poor behaviour was disrupting one third of classes in secondaries, the inspectors said.
Those schools that had focused on the underlying causes of poor discipline, such as poor reading and writing skills and emotional problems, found that behaviour often improved.
More than half (58 per cent) of primaries were judged good or outstanding, but inspectors expressed serious concerns about primary teachers' "weak subject knowledge" in science, history, geography, music, art and design and technology.
Ms Gilbert's idea of appointing head teachers from outside the sector drew a mixed reaction. Liz Sidwell, chief executive of the Haberdashers' Aske's federation of schools in South London, said: "As long as the chief executive of a school has people on the management team who understand the curriculum and standards, it could work. The business skills you need to run a school are not the skills that teachers necessarily have."
John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, agreed that outsiders may make good heads, but added: "You could not recruit straight from business. School leadership is very different from business leadership and business leaders would be the first to spot that." Dr Dunford was very critial of the inspectors' report overall and accused them of setting schools up for failure. "Reports such as these will cause a crisis of confidence among the leaders of the profession unless we start to accentuate the positive aspects of schools' performance," he said. "Of the schools cited as `inadequate', many have good value-added scores for very weak intakes."
Source
Australian students ignorant of Australian history
More than three-quarters of Australian teenagers do not know that Australia Day commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet and the beginning of British settlement. A report commissioned by Federal, state and territory education ministers shows an overwhelming majority of schoolchildren are also ignorant of the reason for Anzac Day, or for the inclusion of the Union Jack on the Australian flag. About 77 per cent of Year 10 students and 93 per cent of Year 6 students across the nation cannot nominate the official responsibilities of the governor-general, and the great majority do not know the Queen is Australia's head of state.
The report, which is yet to be released but has been obtained by The Australian, reveals surprisingly high levels of ignorance about basic historical facts and Australia's system of government, and questions the effectiveness of the teaching of civics and citizenship. "The widespread ignorance of key information about national events and nationally representative symbols, which, it had generally been assumed, had been taught to death in Australian schools, was a surprise," the report says. "More targeted teaching is required if students are to learn about these things. Formal, consistent instruction has not been the experience of Australian students in civics and citizenship." The report says only high-performing students "demonstrated any precision in describing the symbolism of the Union Jack in the Australian flag".
Regarding the students' lack of understanding of the role of the governor-general, the report says: "One can only infer that students are not being taught about the role of the governor-general. "Many of the Year 10 students clearly did not have the knowledge outlined... as being designated for Year 6," the report says. "This was especially the case in relation to information about the constitutional structure of Australian democracy in Year 10."
The report was prepared for the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs by the Australian Council for Educational Research. It tested about 10,000 Year 10 students and 10,000 Year 6 students in every state and territory.
Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said the ignorance of Australian students about their own country revealed in the report underlined the need for the Federal Government's push for Australian history to be taught as a compulsory, stand-alone subject in years 9 and 10. "It is disappointing that so few Australian students know the basic facts about our national events and icons such as Anzac Day and the Australian Flag," she said. "I am concerned that only a small minority of Year 10 students know the reason for the national public holiday on Australia Day. "Young Australians have the right to vote at 18 years of age and should have knowledge about our nation's history and traditions."
The Howard Government introduced a Discovering Democracy program in 1997, producing and placing curriculum materials on civics and citizenship in all primary and secondary schools in 1998. The program aimed to promote students' participation in democratic processes "by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, values and dispositions of active and informed citizenship". According to the Federal Education Department, "it entails knowledge and understanding of Australia's democratic heritage and traditions, its political and legal institutions and the shared values of freedom, tolerance, respect, responsibility and inclusion". In August, education ministers approved national Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship, setting out common knowledge all students should possess in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, ahead of national assessment tests from 2008.
The report says half of Year 6 students achieved a proficient standard in the test, while 39 per cent of Year 10 students reached the proficient standard. It says the level of ignorance will restrict students' involvement in democratic processes. "Ignorance of such fundamental information indicates a lack of knowledge of the history of our democratic tradition, and this ignorance will permeate and restrict the capacity of students to make sense of many other aspects of Australian democratic forms and processes," it says. "Without the basic understandings, they will be unable to engage in a meaningful way in many other levels of action or discourse."
The report identifies two main concepts with which students struggle the most: "iconic knowledge" of Australia's heritage and the idea of the common good. Students had difficulty grasping the idea of a common good or strategies that refer to how individuals can influence systems for the benefit of society. "It is unclear whether students do not have such a concept at all, don't believe in the common good or do not see how individuals can act for the common good," the report says.
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
27 November, 2006
Black students at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis want more spent on them than on all other groups combined
Black students who have accused IUPUI of discrimination rejected the university's efforts to address their concerns, including a pledge to form a new black student affairs office. The student leaders have scheduled a forum Sunday to discuss the issue and whether they will sue the university, which they had vowed to do if administrators did no meet their demands.
The university hoped to meet with students about the requests and possible solutions, school spokesman Rich Schneider said. "We're just waiting for more information from the students about what they would like to see done differently," he said.
The IUPUI Black Student Union marched last week in protest of what they say is the school's false sense of commitment to diversity. They allege, among other things, that school officials declined to set aside money for a black student group's trip while approving money for other student clubs. The group had said it would file a lawsuit Monday unless officials agreed to provide a new black cultural center, more black faculty and $78,000 for black student groups - about $10,000 more than IUPUI student government's budget for all campus clubs. The group also requested sensitivity training for administrators and an undergraduate degree program in African-American studies.
IUPUI officials have made racial diversity a top goal, aiming to boost the school's minority student enrollment from 15 percent to about 18 percent. Officials also want to boost minority graduation rates at the 30,000-student campus.
Source
"DUMBED DOWN" BRITISH HIGH SCHOOLS
Odd that such exams were not too hard for British kids in the past!
An exam modelled on the old O-level is too difficult to be offered in state schools, a report has revealed. Watchdogs concluded that International GCSEs in key subjects are "more demanding" than the standard exam, effectively ruling out their introduction in state secondaries. Hundreds of private schools have already adopted IGCSEs in some subjects, mainly maths and science, because they consider them to be better preparation for A-levels.
Now a report from the Government's exams watchdog has confirmed that popular IGCSE syllabuses contain tougher questions and challenge pupils on topics that GCSE pupils only encounter at AS-level. But it means that, without substantial changes, they cannot be added to the list of qualifications approved for use in state schools since they are not directly comparable to GCSEs. The exams may need to be dumbed down if they are to fit strict official criteria laid down for teenagers' studies.
Opposition politicians warned of a widening gulf between the state and independent sectors as fee-paying schools increasingly turn to tougher qualifications. Ministers admitted yesterday there were "significant obstacles" to the introduction of IGCSEs in secondary schools. But they agreed to launch a public consultation on whether they should "explore further" with exam boards "how to overcome these obstacles".
IGCSEs were developed primarily for schools overseas but are attracting increasing interest from British private schools dissatisfied with the standard GCSE. They are similar to the old O-level - scrapped in 1987 - as pupils are tested in a series of final exams at the end of a two-year course. There is a coursework option but most schools do not use it. Teachers also consider questions to be more "traditional" and open-ended.
The report from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority exposes the apparently low demands placed on GCSE candidates in crucial subjects compared with counterparts abroad who are following IGCSE syllabuses. It reveals that English GCSEs have too many "formulaic questions" while pupils taking double science GCSE are even awarded marks for giving the wrong answers. They can be given credit if an answer is written in "appropriately scientic" language - even if "the science is incorrect".
But there were sharp variations across the two exam boards offering IGCSEs. IGCSEs set by Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) is taken in 200 independent schools, in at least one subject, while Edexcel's are used in 170. But only CIE's papers were found to be more demanding than standard GCSEs. And out of four subjects studied, CIE papers in just two - maths and science - were judged to be tougher. The report said: "The content of the CIE IGCSE coordinated syllabus is broad and deep compared with the other syllabuses reviewed. A number of the areas included are currently part of AS syllabuses. "CIE IGCSE was judged to be more demanding for the higher tier candidates and very demanding for foundation tier candidates." In contrast, standard GCSEs were "less demanding than they should be" for brighter candidates
Meanwhile a CIE maths paper was "by a long way" more difficult than others reviewed by a panel of assessors. Candidates were only allowed scientific calculators and no formula sheets. There were also "extensive structured questions" which "require organisation and a systematic approach from candidates". The report concluded there were "major differences" between GCSEs and IGCSEs across all four subjects studied - maths, science, English and French. "In almost every case, these differences meant that the IGCSE examinations did not meet the GCSE subject criteria in significant ways" it said.
Nick Gibb, Tory schools spokesman, said: "If the Government and the QCA refuse to allow state schools the same options as independent schools, an even greater divide between the two sectors will emerge as schools in the private sector increasingly adopt what the QCA has termed the 'demanding' IGCSE exam."
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
26 November, 2006
RESISTANCE TO LEGALLY MANDATED EQUAL TREATMENT AT U MICHIGAN
A University of Michigan student has kindly forwarded the following message from university president Mary Sue Coleman and university provost Teresa Sullivan. It shows that the Left only advocate equality when it suits them
Diversity Blueprints: Your ideas wanted
We know we have a great deal of work to do at the University of Michigan to live up to our ideals of a broadly diverse learning community. This would be true regardless of whether Proposal 2 were approved by Michigan voters. But the passage of the amendment makes this work more urgent, particularly with respect to race, ethnicity, gender and national origin.
Our University thrives on finding solutions to vexing societal issues. This is an historic moment, and an opportunity to apply our collective creative, energetic thinking to discover the most effective ways to support diversity. We will succeed only if we have thoughtful input from everyone in our community.
Today we are announcing the creation of a university-wide task force that will encourage innovative thinking among all segments of the University community and identify the best ideas developed through this process. The task force, called "Diversity Blueprints," will be co-chaired by Teresa Sullivan, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and Lester P. Monts, senior vice provost and special counsel to the president, and will include students, staff, faculty, alumni and administrators.
The group will begin its work immediately. Its first task will be to engage the U-M community in developing fresh, innovative approaches to sustain and enhance diversity. Through e-mail, a website, brainstorming sessions and other means we will encourage alumni, faculty, staff, students, and others to consider the question, "How can we maintain and enhance diversity at U-M in the years ahead?" Areas for specific input include recruiting, precollege/K-12 outreach, admissions, financial aid, mentoring/student success, climate, curriculum/classroom discussions, diversity research and assessment, and external funding opportunities.
The ideas submitted may range from general insights to detailed plans. In the true spirit of brainstorming, all ideas will be considered regardless of how ambitious or unconventional they may seem. We will commit significant resources to some of the best and most promising recommendations that the Diversity Blueprints task force brings forward. You may share your ideas by writing to Diversity.Blueprints@umich.edu. More details will be coming soon about members of the task force and other ways you can get involved in this work, such as by attending a campus forum.
Many individuals in our community also have questions about how Proposal 2 affects specific aspects of our work. We have created a central e-mail address, Diversity.Questions@umich.edu, that will assist you in getting answers to your questions. Questions submitted to this address will go to the Office of Institutional Equity and will be routed to the appropriate areas for response.
We are asking the Diversity Blueprints task force, and our entire community, to leave no stone unturned as we explore ways to encourage diversity within the boundaries of the law. We look forward to your ideas and your energy. Together, we must continue to make this world-class university one that reflects the richness of the world.
Source
Prestigious British private schools exported
In what is believed to be the first venture of its kind, Brighton College, a leading independent school, is planning to export British public school education to Russia. Boarding schools in England have attracted interest from growing numbers of wealthy Russians in the past decade who are keen to give their children a high-quality education in a secure, friendly environment. Brighton College is seeking to build on these links by building its own public school, 50 miles south of Moscow.
Several elite schools, such as Dulwich College, Harrow and Shrewsbury, have set up in the Far East to feed a growing appetite for British public school education, but none has so far attempted such an undertaking on Russian soil. Four hundred boys and girls will be offered Mandarin, polo and cricket, and taught a European-style curriculum, in English, in the grounds of a school near Borovsk, south of Moscow. Estimated to cost 18 million pounds, it could open as early as 2009. The school is the brainchild of Mikhail Orloff, a Russian businessman and the grandson of King Farouk, and it hopes to blend the best of English education with Russia's culture and history. It would operate mostly as a weekly boarding school.
Richard Cairns, the headmaster of Brighton College, said that Russian parents were attracted to the school because they would no longer have to send their children abroad for a top-class education. "Parents have been sending their children to Europe, but they don't like it because when they come over, they stay," he said. "They believe that Russia is losing her children. But this way, they hope to keep the same value system and the children."
The cleverest pupils would be able to spend their last couple of years studying A levels at Brighton College, which also has partnerships with schools in China and Australia. Mr Orloff approached the college after it became the first private school in England to make Mandarin compulsory for all new pupils. Brighton College is developing a three-year plan with Lord Skidelsky, an economist of Russian origin and chairman of its board of governors, to raise the money. Richard Niblett, the director of music, is overseeing the project. He has been living in Moscow since September to undertake feasibility studies and raise to funds for the school. "The concept is to draw on the best of both education systems - the logic of science and maths, which the Russians excel at, and the house-style system and arts of British public schools," he said. "Teaching in Russia is quite dogmatic, whereas we tend to help them think outside the box more."
There would certainly seem to be a market for it. According to the Independent Schools Council, which includes 1,288 of the Britain's 2,500 private schools, 343 Russian students were attending its schools in 2005-6. These parents were paying more than 5.5 million pounds for one year's school fees. Brighton College charges about 16,000 a year for weekly boarders, but their Russian affiliate would charge just 10,350 a year.
While Russia already has a handful of good Western-style private day schools, such as the Anglo-American School, the English International School and the British International School, they are not linked to any leading independent schools in Britain. The advantage of its model, Brighton College argues, is not only that it will follow a tried and tested method of schooling, which has worked well for centuries in Britain, but will also take children out of the pollution of Moscow during the week
Source
AUSTRALIA: CURE FOR CHEATING
When two students walked into their lecturer's study to mount a challenge about the mark one of them had received in a multiple choice exam, the academic smiled. The first student had scored 90 per cent; the second 10 per cent. All three people knew the real reason for the gripe was that the second student had copied the first. So why the discrepancies in the marks? Unruffled, the academic compared the disgruntled student's answers to the master copy, demonstrating that the fail mark was justified.
They had just been foiled by a well-worn sting within the biochemistry department at the University of Sydney. Frustrated by suspicions that students were cheating, the department creates four variations to each multiple choice exam it prepares. If students copy the letters circled by their neighbours, they will arrive at different results. The more they copy, the worse they will do.
"What our solution enables us to do is say natural justice has occurred," said Associate Professor Gareth Denyer, a senior lecturer. "This student has ended up with an incredibly low mark as a result of their cheating . There's a wonderfully sweet feeling . It's evil of me, I know. But they're trying to get one over you and you end up getting one over them."
The department has been improving the system over seven years, but despite its success being published within the university and externally, other academics have resisted adopting it. Some regard it as a form of entrapment. Others have their own systems. But Professor Denyer believes that many do not want to know if their students are cheating. "There's a very strong head-in-the-sand culture," he said.
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
25 November, 2006
STILL SOME "FREE SCHOOLS"
I once taught in such a school. Half the kids learnt zilch
One recent day at the Brooklyn Free School, the "schedule" included the following: chess, debate, filming horror movies, and making caves for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not that the students had to go to any of these sessions. At this school, students don't get grades, don't have homework, don't take tests, don't even have to go to class. Unless they want to. "You can do basically anything at any time, and it's just a lot more fun because sometimes when you need a break at regular schools you can't get it," said Sophia Bennett Holmes, 12, an aspiring singer-actress-fashion designer. "But here if you just need to sit down and read and have time to play, then you can do that."
"Free schools," which had their heyday decades ago, operate on the belief that children are naturally curious and learn best when they want to, not when forced to. Today, the approach is getting another look from some parents and students tired of standardized testing, excessive homework, and overly rigid curriculums in regular schools. "Every kid here is definitely motivated to learn something, there's no doubt in my mind," said Alan Berger, a former public school assistant principal who founded the Brooklyn school, which launched in fall 2004. "Our belief is that if we let them pursue their passions and desires, they'll be able to get into it deeper. They'll be able to learn more how to learn."
Hundreds of free schools opened in the U.S. and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s. Most shut down, but some, such as the Albany Free School and Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, have persisted. Overall, it's unknown how many free schools operate today. The ones still in operation often use a "democratic" model, giving students a say in running the institution. At the Brooklyn Free School, much of that decision-making occurs in a mandatory (yes, as in required) weekly gathering called the Democratic Meeting. Here, students air grievances, pose challenges, propose rules and set policy. Even the youngest kids have a vote equal to staffers. One agreed-upon rule? No sword-fighting allowed inside.
The school - granted a provisional charter in 2004 by the state to run as a private educational institution - occupies two floors of a Free Methodist church. Students are required to show up for a minimum of 5 1/2 hours a day, partly so that the school can meet legal definitions, but what they do with their time is up to them. The student population - 42 students, ages 5 to 17 - is diverse racially, economically and in terms of ability, and the students are not separated by age.
On any given day, a student may be playing chess, reading a book, practicing yoga or helping mummify a chicken. The day after the Nov. 7 U.S. congressional elections, one group listened to President George W. Bush's press conference on a radio, while the sound of the younger students' feet rattled the ceiling.
Source
FAILING BRITISH SCHOOLS
One in eight secondary schools was judged "inadequate" in the past year, while more than a third were no better than satisfactory, Government inspectors said today. Chief Inspector of Schools Christine Gilbert condemned the high failure rate and said it was "unacceptable" that the gap between the best and worst state schools was so wide. She demanded urgent action to raise standards, warning: ""The report card for English education has been increasingly encouraging over the past 10 years, but it is still not good enough."
In her first annual report since becoming Chief Inspector, Ms Gilbert said a good education can "liberate and empower" children. "The story is not always positive, however," she added. "That is why I am so concerned at the gap between the best provision and that which makes an inadequate contribution to improving the life chances of children and young people. "Too many schools are inadequate - about one in 12 of those inspected, and in secondary schools this proportion rises to just over one in eight."
Ms Gilbert said many secondary schools, which are often far larger than primaries, faced a "substantial" range of issues which held them back. "However, more needs to be done, and swiftly, to reduce the number of secondary schools found to be inadequate," she said. Ofsted's annual report was based on evidence from inspections of 6,000 state schools during the 2005-06 academic year. The watchdog found:
11 per cent of all state schools were outstanding, about half were good, 34 per cent satisfactory and 8 per cent inadequate; 13 per cent of secondary schools were inadequate, and 7% of primaries; School attendance was not good enough in one in 10 schools, with particular problems in London and the North of England. In nearly one in three secondary schools, behaviour is "no better than satisfactory overall, and in these schools there are also instances of disruptive or distracting behaviour from some pupils".
The findings follow the first year of a new inspection system, in which Ofsted conducted "shorter and sharper" inspections, giving schools only a few days' notice before visiting. The new criteria for schools were also tougher than before, which explained in part why so many schools were judged to be poor. Ms Gilbert said: "The new inspection arrangements have raised the bar, but without putting it out of reach. "The performance of schools, and the public's expectations of them, have both risen, and it is right that inspection should reflect that."
Schools Minister Jim Knight said it would not be fair to make comparisons with previous years. "Direct comparisons between school judgments in this year's report and previous ones would be misleading," he said. "This report reflects the first year of the toughest inspection regime we have yet introduced. "Schools that may have been judged as good in previous years might only be judged as satisfactory now. "However, we make no apology for raising the bar - expectations are higher than ever and judgments need to be tougher than ever. "No school should be inadequate and there should be no hiding places for under-performance or coasting. "That is why the Education and Inspections Act is introducing tough new powers to turn around schools, closing or replacing them if they do not make adequate progress within 12 months."
Shadow education secretary David Willetts said: "It is still not good enough that four out of 10 schools are regarded by Ofsted as merely satisfactory or downright inadequate. "There is one success story - special schools. "But the Government is putting more effort into closing good special schools than closing inadequate secondary schools. "We need a moratorium on special school closures. "The wide gap between the best and worst-performing schools is also very worrying. "The best way to bridge this gap is by concentrating on discipline, improving behaviour and more streaming and setting in all schools."
Source
Australian conservatives winning the education debate
Rednecks rescuing public education? Never. In fact, it's happening in pockets of North America. Accountability is back in fashion and it is a boon for public education. And it may just happen here in Australia. As education becomes a pivotal issue for the Howard Government, the Coalition may end up thanking the self-styled progressive teachers unions for that electoral gift. Each time their union leaders bang on about political issues, it's a reminder that they are less interested in what ought to be their core concern: educating Australian children. Far from working to destroy public education, as the teachers unions allege, the conservatives may just end up saving it. But more on that later.
First, to the shifting electoral sands. Education has long been regarded as Labor's stronghold, an issue that differentiated the ALP from the Coalition. In October 2003 a Newspoll survey revealed that Labor was ahead by 13 points when voters were asked who was best able to handle education. Similarly, Kim Beazley has been regarded, by and large, as more capable on education than John Howard. That appears to be changing. A Newspoll survey last week revealed that Howard is seen as just as capable as Beazley when it comes to education.
It's too early to talk of firm trends in favour of Howard on education, but the gap is closing. As a point of contrast, on the Coalition's traditional strength - handling the economy - it continues to significantly outscore Labor. The October survey had the Coalition ahead by 32 points on the economy front. As Newspoll chairman Sol Lebovic told The Australian: "You don't see that (differentiation) in Labor's strength on education." So education is well and truly up for grabs. Given that 75 per cent of Australian voters rate education as very important in determining who gets their vote, it's clear that Howard will use education as an electoral issue next year.
If it turns out to be a winner for Howard, the teachers unions will be the dunces who handed it to him. Last week The Daily Telegraph reported that the NSW Teachers Federation announced that teachers should not be compelled to include comments about students' performance in school reports. That's from the same union that is blocking any movement towards A to E grading of students of subjects apart from literacy and numeracy. As that newspaper's editorial asked, where does that leave the school report card? Looking rather blank?
The unions also opposed suggestions by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop that teachers be remunerated according to merit, not merely seniority. They scoffed at the idea that principals are best placed to determine the good teachers who deserve greater rewards. It happens in every workplace across Australia, but in schools? Forget about it.
Bloviating against reform on the dubious basis that teachers unions know best, they also opposed moves to inject a greater focus on phonetic instruction into literacy. The knee-jerk rejection by the most powerful teachers union of education reforms suggested by the Howard Government highlights the politicised nature of the unions' agenda. That and the fact union leaders regularly spill the political beans in the most colourful way. It's worth repeating the political outbursts for the simple reason that they may explain why more voters are looking to Howard for leadership on education. Recall NSW English Teachers Association president Wayne Sawyer blaming the re-election of the Howard Government in 2004 on the failure of teachers to create a "critical generation". Then came Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne declaring that teachers needed to be on the progressive side of politics. In her prepared speech to the Queensland Teachers Union conference last year, Byrne complained that "it was not a good time to be progressive in Australia" but assured her union constituency that"the conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum".
It's a neat reminder to parents of who to blame for curriculum woes. The Coalition is inching forward in the polls on education for one simple reason: the so-called progressive agenda thrust on schools has not worked. Every time a unionist calls for more of the same, it may just translate into another point in the polls for the Coalition on education. Alas, some of our education union leaders are not smart enough to work that out. Who can forget Byrne attacking the Coalition for casting the education debate in terms of conservative values. "It has framed the debate in terms of choice, excellence, quality, values, discipline," she said. Crikey. You can almost hear parents saying: "If progressives are opposed to choice, excellence, quality, values and discipline, it's time to give the conservatives a go." Next week, teachers will desert the classroom to march in the National Day of Union and Community Action, railing against the Government's Work Choices legislation. Expect a wry smile from the Howard Government, as parents and students are once again relegated behind union politics.
Union rhetoric that says conservatives want to trash public education does not match what's happening in the real world. In Alberta, Canada, long derided as home to dumb rednecks riding high on the proceeds of oil and natural gas, there has been a dramatic turnaround in the inexorable decline in public education. In Edmonton, the province's capital, recently retired schools chief Angus McBeath says: "The litmus test is that the rich send their kids to public schools, not the private schools." Just read that again. Rich folk are sending their children to public schools. Compare the exodus of Australian students from public to private schools, with parents often working two jobs to pay for private school fees. What's behind Alberta's counter-intuitive trend, in which 80per cent of parents express satisfaction with public education? Put it down to the dreaded conservatives, who have reigned since 1971, and their values. It's simple stuff like reforming the curriculum to focus on core subjects such as maths, English and science, improving teacher training, setting real performance goals for students and tracking student performance in province-wide tests.
As The Economist recently pointed out, Alberta has spent the past three decades building one of the best education systems in the country. And it's turning out clever students who rank higher than their Canadian peers. In Australia, there appears to be a similar yearning for genuine accountability in education. Increasingly, parents are turning away from Labor as being best able to deliver on that front. It's not an unreasonable response, given that reform is unlikely to come while the political bruvvers in the union movement rule in our schools.
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
24 November, 2006
The education debate we're not having
My adopted state of New Hampshire may be at a crossroads. The state supreme court has commanded the legislature to find a new way of funding public schools by next summer, or else the justices will impose a solution of their own. Many people here fear that a directive from the court will require so large a funding increase that a statewide sales tax or income tax would become inevitable - a radical departure from New Hampshire's historic low-tax mentality. Democrats, naturally, are for the most part ecstatic. They would love to see New Hampshire become like neighboring states that tax their citizens through every means possible.
In response, conservative Republicans have proposed that a state constitutional amendment be passed denying the court any say in education matters. All this handwringing over the best way to pay for public schools distracts us from a far more important point: that we are dealing, first and last, with a broken system - and one that is inherently defective. Rather than patch it up with more money, we ought to try a different approach.
Few dare speak of it, particularly in political circles, but an alternative to public schools does exist. While the state, to some extent, has always had its fingers in education, its role was initially minimal. Prior to the wholesale takeover of education by government, parents typically paid about half their kids' tuitions directly, while the other half was made up in local taxes. Education was mostly a private enterprise. The tireless research of historian E.G. West shows that the earliest movements at the state level to increase education funding were meant to address only the perceived need of those living far from city and village life in small pockets of rural poverty.
It was understood even by these early interferers that the overwhelming majority of families were already providing an adequate education for their children, and at their own expense. Parents would routinely forgo creature comforts for the sake of their children's needs. One anecdote West supplies is that of a poor family living on nothing but potatoes so they could afford to send their children to school. Official education commissions in the United States and England in the early 19th century consistently found that children were being competently schooled and, of equal importance, that the number of kids in private schools was steadily growing. Growing demand fueled a boom in the education industry. Rising general income and fierce competition made school more affordable for more people. More schools opened, but that tells only half the tale. There were many different kinds of schools, with different goals, curricula, and teaching styles. Literacy levels were higher a century and a half ago than they are today.
Public-school proponents would have us believe that government took over education for the sake of the poor. The truth is, early activists - urged on by education bureaucrats - idealized the militaristic atmosphere of Prussian schools and wanted to mold the nation's children into "good citizens". Later on, great industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie wanted government schools to mold citizens for work in the factories. Today teachers and their powerful unions love the job security. Meanwhile, quality education falls by the wayside.
Such is to be expected when we relieve families of the responsibility for their children's needs and place their fate in the hands of so-called experts. At a national education summit last year, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a huge supporter of public schooling, nevertheless told the audience that schools were "ruining" the lives of "millions" of children every year. Given the 12 years of mind-numbing, stultifying boredom and mediocrity that makes up the average student's public-school experience, it's hard to disagree with him. Sad to say, the "solution" proposed by Gates and other public-school supporters, including the New Hampshire Supreme Court, is more or "better" funding, and widespread acceptance of this cure-all leads to our present predicament.
It is at times of crisis when free people most need to return to first principles, and the founding principles of our republican government include a belief in individual initiative, importance of family, private enterprise, and personal responsibility. We've largely abandoned belief in these things, and our tragically flawed system of public schools reflects that fact. The Republicans have it half right in this debate: a constitutional amendment is in order - but one that separates school and state
Source
Godless Dawkins challenges British schools
RICHARD DAWKINS, the Oxford University professor and campaigning atheist, is planning to take his fight against God into the classroom by flooding schools with anti-religious literature. He is setting up a charity that will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs attacking the "educational scandal" of theories such as creationism while promoting rational and scientific thought. The foundation will also attempt to divert donations from the hands of "missionaries" and church-based charities.
His plans are sparking criticism from academics, religious leaders and fellow scientists. The Church of England described them as "disturbing", while others complained that Dawkins's foundation bore the "whiff of a campaigning organisation" rather than a charity.
John Hall, dean of Westminster and the Church of England's chief education officer, said: "I would be very disturbed if this project was going to be widely supported because it's not based on reasoned argument."
Dawkins, Oxford's professor of the public understanding of science, is the author of various bestsellers extolling evolution, such as The Selfish Gene. His latest book, The God Delusion, is a sustained polemic against religious faith. He established his foundation in both Britain and America earlier this year and is now applying for charitable status. It was founded in response to what he calls the "organised ignorance" that is promoting creationism, the belief that the Old Testament account of the origins of man is true. Another challenge comes in the form of "intelligent design", the suggestion that life is the result of a guiding force rather than pure evolutionary natural selection.
"The enlightenment is under threat," Dawkins said. "So is reason. So is truth. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance. We even have to go out on the attack ourselves, for the sake of reason and sanity."
Creationism is less widespread in Britain than in the US, but there is a growing movement lobbying to have it introduced as part of the national curriculum. The Emmanuel Schools Foundation, sponsored by Sir Peter Vardy, the Christian car dealer, has been criticised for featuring creationist theories in lessons in the three comprehensives it runs. A spokesman for the foundation denied the claims. However, Steve Layfield, head of science at Emmanuel College in Gateshead, is a director of Truth in Science, a Christian group campaigning to have "intelligent design" in science lessons. Truth in Science has sent DVDs and educational materials to thousands of secondary schools to encourage them to debate intelligent design. Andy McIntosh, director at the organisation and professor of thermodynamics at Leeds University, said: "We are not flat-earthers. We're just trying to encourage good scientific discussion."
Dawkins, however, describes the theory as a "bronze-age myth" and plans to send his own material to schools to counter the "subversion of science". He also plans to campaign against children being labelled with the religion of their parents. "It is immoral to brand children with religion," he said. "This is a Catholic child. That is a Muslim child. I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard that is a Marxist child."
But Hall said: "The European convention on human rights is clear that parents have the right to bring up children within the faith they hold."
Dawkins is also critical of donating money to religion-based charities, warning that pledges for disaster victims should not end up in the hands of "missionaries". His foundation will maintain a database of charities free of "church contamination".
Christian Aid, however, believes Dawkins is "tarring a lot of excellent charities with the same brush". Dominic Nutt, a spokesman, said: "Many charities give aid only on the basis of need."
Dawkins's approach has also offended fellow scientists. Steven Rose, emeritus professor of biology at the Open University, said: "I worry that Richard's view about belief is too simplistic, and so hostile that as a committed secularist myself I am uneasy about it. We need to recognise that our own science also depends on certain assumptions about the way the world is - assumptions that he and I of course share."
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
23 November, 2006
NCLB LAW FAILS TO RAISE BLACK ACHIEVEMENT
No-one who knows what a century of IQ testing shows will find that "perplexing"
When President Bush signed his sweeping education law a year into his presidency, it set 2014 as the deadline by which schools were to close the test-score gaps between minority and white students that have persisted since standardized testing began. Now, as Congress prepares to consider reauthorizing the law next year, researchers and a half-dozen recent studies, including three issued last week, are reporting little progress toward that goal. Slight gains have been seen for some grade levels.
Despite concerted efforts by educators, the test-score gaps are so large that, on average, African-American and Hispanic students in high school can read and do arithmetic at only the average level of whites in junior high school. "The gaps between African-Americans and whites are showing very few signs of closing," Michael T. Nettles, a senior vice president at the Educational Testing Service, said in a paper he presented recently at Columbia University. One ethnic minority, Asians, generally fares as well as or better than whites. The reports and their authors, in interviews, portrayed an educational landscape in which test-score gaps between black or Hispanic students and whites appear in kindergarten and worsen through 12 years of public education. Some researchers based their conclusions on federal test results, while others have cited state exams, the SATs and other widely administered standardized assessments. Still, the studies have all concurred: The achievement gaps remain, perplexing and persistent.
The findings pose a challenge not only for Mr. Bush but also for the Democratic lawmakers who joined him in negotiating the original law, known as No Child Left Behind, and who will control education policy in Congress next year. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative George Miller of California, who are expected to be the chairmen of the Senate and House education committees, will promote giving more resources to schools [i.e, throw money at it. How unable to learn from experience can you be? It's the lawmakeres who need educating] and researching strategies to improve minority performance, according to aides. "Closing the achievement gap is at the heart of No Child Left Behind and must continue to be our focus in renewing the act next year," Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. Experts have suggested many possible changes, including improving the law's mechanisms for ensuring that teachers in poor schools are experienced and knowledgeable, and extending early-childhood education to more students.
Henry L. Johnson, an assistant secretary of education, said: "I don't dispute that looking at some comparisons we see that these gaps are not closing - or not as fast as they ought to. But it's also accurate to say that when taken as a whole, student performance is improving. The presumption that we won't get to 100 percent proficiency from here presumes that everything is static. To reach the 100 percent by 2014, we'll all have to work faster and smarter."
The law requires states, districts and schools to report annual test results for all racial and ethnic groups, and to show annual improvements for each. It imposes sanctions on schools that do not meet the rising targets. Many experts and officials, including the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, have supported the goal of raising all students to academic proficiency, but they have also called it unrealistic to accomplish in a decade. But President Bush, who put education at the center of his 2000 campaign, has been insisting that it is not only feasible but that the gaps are already closing. "There are good results of No Child Left Behind across the nation," Mr. Bush said last month at a school in North Carolina. "We have an achievement gap in America that is - that I don't like and you shouldn't like." "The gap is closing," he said.
The researchers behind the reports issued last week in Washington, D.C., New York and California were far more pessimistic, though. "The achievement gap is alive and well," said G. Gage Kingsbury, an author of the report issued in Washington by the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit group based in Oregon that administers tests. Examining results from reading and math tests administered to 500,000 students in 24 states in the fall of 2004 and the spring of 2005, the study found: "For each score level at each grade in each subject, minority students grew less than European-Americans, and students from poor schools grew less than those from wealthier ones." Minority and poor students also lost more academic ground each summer, the study said.
More here
STUFFY OLD CONSERVATIVE SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION REDISCOVERED
The problem posed in Mrs. Pfeiffer's seventh-grade prealgebra class at Campbell Hall is seasonal: How much turkey is needed to serve 30 people if each person gets 2/5 of a pound? Hands shoot up, with an "ooh, ooh!" here and a quizzical look there. It appears to be a typical math class on the tree-lined campus of the private North Hollywood coed school, except for one thing: There are only boys in the room. The all-girls math class will meet a few hours later. For more than eight years, Campbell Hall has separated the 250 boys and girls in seventh- and eighth-grade math; this fall, for the first time, the school is doing the same with science class. Students benefit because they are less distracted by the opposite sex, said math teacher Michelle Pfeiffer, and instruction can be tailored to the different learning styles of boys and girls. "We can express ourselves better," said Brett Landsberger, 12, a Campbell Hall seventh-grader. "It's like boys are a different species. You walk by the girls classes and they're sitting there all perfect, and you go into the boys class and they're all over the floor."
Single-sex classes and schools - both public and private - are gaining favor across the nation as educators search for ways to boost test scores and students' self-esteem. In 1995, only three public schools in the nation offered a single-sex option, compared with more than 253 today, according to the National Assn. for Single Sex Public Education. Five percent of private schools are single-sex. In Los Angeles, a new girls-only public charter school opened this fall. Another newly opened charter school in Lincoln Heights has launched one of the first formal experiments in single-sex education, creating separate boys and girls classes with plans to study their test scores, classroom behavior and other achievement yardsticks.
Research has long suggested that girls in coed settings defer to boys and receive less attention from teachers. Other educators cite more recent evidence that boys, especially low-income minority youths, might benefit as well. The gap between girls' and boys' test scores has decreased, and girls are applying in higher numbers to college and now obtain more bachelor's degrees than boys.
A recent ruling by the U.S. Department of Education giving public schools more leeway to offer single-sex curricula will probably accelerate the move toward single-sex classrooms, experts said. Previous rules generally banned single-sex classes, with some exceptions. The new guidelines, scheduled to take effect Friday, permit single-sex education in public schools but must be geared toward improving achievement, providing diverse experiences or meeting the particular needs of students. Programs must treat male and female students evenhandedly and offer substantially equal coeducational classes in the same subject. Enrollment must be voluntary. "We're already seeing schools respond to the amended regulations," said Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst with the Education Sector, a nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "There's a lot of public support for at least the notion of single-sex schooling." That support reflects a wave of enthusiasm for greater school choice overall as policymakers, parents and educators struggle to reform an education system that has left American students frequently lagging behind their international peers. The federal No Child Left Behind Act endorsed same-sex programs as an "innovative" practice.
But gender separation is controversial. Critics contend the practice is a slide backward, one that could reinforce stereotypes and lead to different and unequal classroom experiences. The American Assn. of University Women argues that there is little evidence that girls and boys do better apart. Better-funded schools with more focused academic instruction, smaller class sizes and qualified teachers are far more likely to influence learning, said research director Catherine Hill.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued a Louisiana junior high school last summer over its plan to separate girls and boys, arguing that it violated Title IX regulations that require gender equity in educational programs that receive federal funding. The complaint against the Livingston Parish School Board cited statements that girls would be taught "good character" while boys would be taught about "heroic" behavior. The school board dropped the plan.
But such arguments have failed to sway those educators who believe there is much to gain and little to lose in experimenting with same-gender education. They point to a growing body of findings - albeit disputed - that boys' and girls' brains function and develop in different ways. Boys, the theory goes, do better in competitive, action-based, team-oriented tasks, while girls thrive in a more relaxed environment, working in pairs or alone.
Since Campbell Hall began the single-gender classes, girls are taking more advanced math courses in high school and are participating more in class, said junior high Principal Eileen Wasserman. In Regina Choi's eighth-grade math class one recent morning, about 16 girls worked quietly in pairs solving algebra problems. Choi said girls feel more comfortable asking questions in class, while boys prefer to wait to avoid looking less smart in front of classmates. Though the course's content is the same for both sexes, Choi said it is sometimes more effective posing problems for girls using shopping examples and for boys using sports. Another math teacher, Arlene Myles, said she focuses on trying to get the girls to be more competitive and the boys more cooperative. Because teachers and administrators believed the single-sex approach to math was successful, they decided to apply it to science this year. Courses at Campbell Hall's high school are coed.
Students had mixed views. "I like math now a lot more than I used to," said Ally Piddock, 12. "Boys are a distraction because they goof around a lot and it's easier for me to concentrate when they're not there." "It's easier to pay attention in math when girls are not there," agreed Reese Wexler, 13. "But science would be better coed. It's a different environment. In lab, the people you might work better with could be girls or boys."
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest, Jordan High School and King/Drew Medical Magnet are experimenting with single-sex curricula, establishing small academies for at-risk boys. George McKenna, assistant superintendent of the Pasadena Unified School District, said he has tried and failed to interest his staff in trying single-sex classes but is encouraged that the new federal guidelines may ease resistance. Many public schools, including charters, have skirted federal law and used same-gender curricula for years on the "down-low," said Caprice Young, executive director of the California Charter Schools Assn., who predicted that more charter schools will open single-sex programs.
New Village Charter High School opened in September on the grounds of St. Anne's, a residential treatment center for teen mothers. The ninth- through 12th-grade college prep all-girls school will focus on the particular needs of low-income girls. The school opened after receiving a waiver from the state and had fretted at the possible federal response. "I've been a coed advocate all of my educational career, but when you look at the specific needs of these girls it seems absolutely essential that it be single-sex," said Paul Cummins of the New Visions Foundation, which helped develop the school. "This is one very small single-sex school in an ocean of coed schools."
But data from a major California project suggest that single-sex programs are problematic and at the least must be carefully planned. In 1997, as an experiment in public school choice, the state opened 12 single-gender academies - one middle or high school for boys and another identical one for girls - in six school districts. A 2001 study by researchers at the University of Toronto, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley found that the program was poorly implemented and underfunded. Separating girls from boys reduced classroom distractions, said the authors - although students still experienced harassment and teasing. But traditional gender stereotypes often were reinforced, and students received mixed messages from their teachers. Only one of the schools, the San Francisco 49ers Academy in East Palo Alto, is still open.
At the Excel Charter Academy, a middle school northeast of downtown Los Angeles, Principal Patricia Mora and other administrators launched a project to evaluate girls-only and boys-only programs and a coed group for comparison, with students randomly assigned to each group. In its first year, the school is offering only sixth grade, with 25 students in each group. Early observations find the coed group having a few more behavioral problems, said Mora. But the all-boys group seems to be doing especially well academically. One recent morning, the boys' humanities class was reading "Boy of the Painted Cave," about a boy in ancient times who wants to be a cave painter. Both boys and girls were assigned to read the book, and stories with female protagonists will be introduced later. As teacher Cecily Feltham described the hero grabbing a wolf by the neck and fighting a bull, the boys were attentive, offering vivid descriptions of the action. In another room, the girls science class was learning about thermal energy, having built a solar oven. The coed group, meanwhile, took physical education during recess.
The first test scores are due in January, and Mora is hoping to attract a top research group to evaluate the program. "If at the end of the year we find that one group is working out better than the other, then I don't think we'd continue to subject one cohort to being coed," she said. "But I honestly don't know what we'll find."
Source
DISCREDITED BRITISH HIGH SCHOOL QUALIFICATIONS
Eton College is leading a rebellion that could result in it dropping A levels in favour of an alternative examination system with no coursework and tougher questions. Tony Little, Eton Head Master, said that "Pre-U" examinations being developed at Cambridge University would offer pupils more stimulation and a system of testing that rewarded creativity and lateral thinking. He said that A levels forced children to "think inside a very small box" and discriminated against highly imaginative pupils, whose exam answers were often marked down because they were considered too sophisticated. "We are very interested in adopting it and in looking at anything that thinks afresh and in a creative way, which has a stimulating syllabus. We want the best courses that challenge our students and, if that means doing the Pre-U instead of A Level, then we will do it."
Eton is among at least 100 leading independent schools to have shown strong interest in the Pre-U. Others include Harrow, Dulwich College, Winchester and Charterhouse. But there are fears of the creation of a two-tier examination system for rich and poor pupils, with independent schools opting for the Pre-U and state schools remaining with the discredited A-level system. Graham Able, Master of Dulwich College, who is on a steering group advising on the Pre-U, said the diploma would better prepare pupils for university. "It will take us back to the original idea of A levels from the 1950s as a qualification for university entrance," he said.
Barnaby Lenon, Head Master of Harrow, said that A levels were flawed because too many pupils got top grades, examiners made too many mistakes when marking and coursework was vulnerable to cheats. "The Pre-U combines the flexibility of A level with regard to subject choice together with the promise of harder questions and reliable examining," he said. Richard Cairns, headmaster of Brighton College, said that he believed that most independent schools would be in favour of the Pre-U when it is introduced in 2008. "A levels do not discriminate enough at the top end of the ability range. If government reforms to A levels are not satisfactory, we will go with the Pre-U and so will most others," he said.
Kevin Stannard, of Cambridge International Examinations, said that about 20 state schools and colleges had also expressed an interest in the Pre-U. "They represent the tip of the iceberg," he said, adding that he expected more state schools to sign up once it had been officially recognised. Growing support for the Pre-U will put pressure on the Government to speed up reforms of the A-level system. It has promised to make A levels harder. An extended essay will be introduced, together with more open-ended questions in place of those that lead students through a series of highly structured answers. Coursework is also being cut back to reduce plagiarism. A new A+ grade is being considered. Many heads fear that these reforms may be too late, as they will not be ready before September 2008, the date the Pre-U is due to begin.
Dr Stannard predicted that 2008 would mark a turning point. "Schools will have to choose between the reformed A level, the Pre-U and any other alternative," he said. One alternative, the International Baccalaureate (IB), has been adopted by about 90 independent schools, but most have retained A levels as well. After an initial surge of interest, support has levelled off. Many schools find it too prescriptive and too heavily weighted towards very academic pupils. Andrew Boggis, Warden of Forest School, in East London, and chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of independent schools, says that neither Pre-U nor IB is the answer. He has called for the reform of A levels, with coursework being dropped from final grades. A government spokesman said that A levels were here to stay. "However, as standards in schools rise, we need to make sure that we are stretching and challenging all students, particularly our brightest," he said.
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
22 November, 2006
Preferences Forever?
The University of Michigan's president does her best George Wallace impersonation.
Michigan voters struck a blow for equality this month, when 58% of them approved an amendment to the state constitution banning racial discrimination in public universities and contracting. Almost identical measures have previously passed by similar majorities in California and Washington state. That means the original meaning of the 1964 Civil Rights Act--that racial discrimination of any kind is illegal--has won reaffirmation in three liberal states, none of which have voted for a Republican for president since 1988. Supporters now plan to carry the fight to other states.From the outraged cries of affirmative action diehards, you would think the dark night of fascism was descending with the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Mary Sue Coleman is president of the University of Michigan, which has already spent millions of taxpayers' dollars defending its racial preferences in courts. She addressed what Tom Bray of the Detroit News called "a howling mob of hundreds of student and faculty protestors" last week. "Diversity matters at Michigan," she declared. "It matters today, and it will matter tomorrow." Echoes of George Wallace, who in 1963 declared from the steps of Alabama's Capitol: "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Ms. Coleman isn't the only Michigan official to employ Wallace-style rhetoric against MCRI. Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick told a fundraiser last April that the measure would usher in an era of racial prejudice. "Bring it on!" he bellowed. "We will affirm to the world that affirmative action will be here today, it will be here tomorrow, and there will be affirmative action in the state forever."
Another leader in Michigan's massive resistance is Karen Moss, the executive director of the state ACLU. "I do think it's necessary for the courts to slow this thing down and . . . interpret some of the language," she told the Washington Post. That "thing" is an amendment that simply states: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." As the blog Discriminations.us notes, "What part of that language does the ACLU find vague or unclear and in need of "interpretation'?"
Let's be clear what is really at stake here. Racial preferences were intended to help disadvantaged minorities, but they have turned into a spoils system for the privileged. "Most go to children of powerful politicians, civil-rights activists, and other relatively well-off blacks and Hispanics," notes Stuart Taylor of National Journal. "This does nothing for the people most in need of help, who lack the minimal qualifications to get into the game."
School choice and other dramatic efforts to improve the quality of K-12 education would do far more to improve the chances of minorities entering and finishing college than any racial set-asides. Indeed, school choice would represent genuine "affirmative action" in favor of millions of disadvantaged kids trapped in failing schools.
Despite all the demagoguery and misrepresentations hurled at the MCRI, a CNN exit poll of 1,955 Michigan voters showed that the measure had widespread appeal across many demographic groups. A majority of both sexes voted for MCRI, as did 40% of self-described liberals and Democrats. Among nonwhite voters, 30% of men and 18% of women voted "yes."
The public sentiment against racial preferences is in accord with the overwhelming belief of the lawmakers who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They thought they were ending segregation, not sanctioning new race-conscious violations of the Constitution. But it didn't take long for activist courts and bureaucrats to claim the act actually authorized the creation of preference programs.
In recent years, the courts have been slowly inching back towards a belief that the legitimate quest for diversity does not justify any and all race-conscious means to achieve it. In 2003 Jennifer Gratz, a young white woman denied admission as an undergraduate to the University of Michigan, won her case before the Supreme Court. By a vote of 6-3, the high court held that the school's undergraduate college had unconstitutionally awarded applicants a set number of points solely for not being white.
On the same day, however, the court ruled 5-4 against Barbara Grutter's suit against the University of Michigan's law school. The court decided that the law school used race as only one factor among many and upheld the view of the late Justice Lewis Powell, who held in the 1978 Bakke case that race could be used to achieve "diversity" in higher education.
Justice Sandra O'Connor, who sided with Ms. Gratz but wrote the opinion in Grutter, issued some cautionary language that supporters of affirmative action should heed: "The court expects that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." After noting that institutions of higher education in California and Washington were pursuing alternatives to racial preferences, she urged that "universities in other states should draw on the most promising aspects of these race-neutral alternatives as they develop." Just last week, the now-retired Justice O'Connor was asked her opinion of MCRI's approval. She replied that it was "entirely within the right and privilege of voters" to enact a ban on racial preferences.
The blind anger that supporters of racial preferences have shown towards efforts at their reform betrays a lack of imagination. Ms. Gratz, who won her Supreme Court case against the University of Michigan and spearheaded this year's effort to ban quotas in that state, says she would be happy to explore alternatives if the opponents would sit down with her. She believes universities could look to socioeconomic factors rather than racial ones when considering applicants. Economic elements "should be taken into account, regardless of your skin color," she says.
Ms. Gratz is showing great forbearance in holding out an olive branch to her opponents. Just last June Ms. Gratz filed a report with Detroit police accusing Luke Massie, national chairman of the activist group By Any Means Necessary, of displaying a knife during a heated confrontation outside a state civil rights meeting. "It was one of several attempts to either intimidate me or attack my character," she said yesterday in an interview after a speech she gave at the National Association of Scholars meeting in Boston. She said Mr. Massie had a knife in his right pants pocket and toyed with it, pulling it halfway out of his pants but not drawing its blade. Mr. Massie denies the allegation.
What isn't in dispute is that supporters of racial preferences sometimes engage in behavior that resembles the "massive resistance" campaign that tried to preserve segregation in the South, and even led some counties to close their public schools rather than allow integration. Some supporters of preference programs in Michigan are talking about lowering state university admission standards dramatically in hopes that the university will then accept what, in their view, is the proper number of minority students.
Earlier this year, some 250 high school students staged a near riot at a hearing of the state's Board of Canvassers, which was charged with determining whether the initiative qualified for the ballot. The board's four commissioners were preparing to vote when members of Mr. Massie's group began yelling, "They say Jim Crow. We say hell no." Some 50 students began marching on the board, knocking over a table before Lansing police could stop them. Other protesters began stomping their feet, with one yelling at Paul Mitchell, an African-American commissioner, "Be a black man about this, please!"
The board adjourned for two hours only to be faced with more catcalls when they reconvened. In the end, two Republican appointees voted to place the measure on the ballot, but Mr. Mitchell voted "no," and Doyle O'Connor, the other Democratic appointee, refused to vote. Three votes were needed for the measure to secure ballot access. Eventually an appellate court had to finally order the board to do its sworn duty.
We've come a long way since 1964, when the late civil rights hero Hubert Humphrey stood on the Senate floor and told his colleagues that if the civil rights bill contained "any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there."
Four decades later, supporters of racial preferences imposed by government agencies are blocking legal efforts to establish the color-blind society that Martin Luther King envisioned. Dr. King's dream is alive in Michigan, and in other states, but a large number of people seem interested in stirring up a nightmare of massive resistance. Such efforts are likely not only to only fail, but to harden the public's opposition to divisive racial quotas.
Source
BRITAIN: ELITE UNIVERSITIES MUST BE DESTROYED
That's the underlying agenda of Britain's Leftist government. First, stop awarding research funding on merit ....
Britain's elite research universities were warned last night that they could forfeit millions of pounds in a shake-up of higher education. David Eastwood, head of England's university funding council, told The Times that, in future, universities that admit a large number of students from poor backgrounds were likely to receive as much public funding as those that concentrate on research. The shift will make it harder for middle-class students to get places at university.
At present almost a third (32 per cent) of all research funding goes to just five institutions: Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Imperial and University College London. These admit among the lowest number of students from poor backgrounds. They said last night that they feared they would have to fight harder for fewer funds and would struggle to compete with competitors, particularly in America.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) spends 6.7 billion pounds on teaching and research in universities. Of this, 1.6 billion goes on research, 332 million on raising the number of working-class students attending university and 118 million on developing regional business links. Professor Eastwood, its chief executive, said that as students pay higher fees and employers invest more in the sector, universities must play a greater role in society. While insisting that research funding will not be cut, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia said that ensuring more young people attended university was as important as the take-up of subjects such as maths, engineering and physics.
However, Malcolm Grant, Provost of University College London and chairman of the Russell Group of leading universities, said that while all would like to see the funding gap in teaching costs close, that gap was worst for research universities that compete globally for staff. "While we applaud widening participation, it would seem sensible for Hefce to look at ways to allow our world-class universities to compete at an international level and not to tax research funding to cross-subsidise widening participation across the sector," Professor Grant said. While universities have concentrated traditionally on teaching and research, Professor Eastwood said it was now time for institutions to work out what they were good at and act upon it. It was not possible for all universities to excel in all areas, he said, and instead of competing with the large research-led universities for diminishing returns, they should capitalise on excellent teaching and regional economic growth.
Five universities are already involved in pilot projects, including Sheffield Hallam, which has been given 1.2 million to undertake research on food waste, packaging and better ingredients with companies in the region. Forty-two per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds attend university and the Government has set itself a target of 50 per cent reaching that level by 2010. Since the introduction of 3,000 pounds-a-year tuition fees, the numbers applying to university have dropped, especially among poorer school-leavers.
The University of Reading's decision last night to close its world-class physics department, despite the prospect of a government rescue package, was met with dismay by the scientific community.
Source
Australia: More contempt for the people from a Leftist elitist
That kids get turned off school by being bored rigid -- by politically correct preaching masquerading as education -- is not considered
Most Australians are anti-intellectual and hostile towards education, a senior Labor frontbencher said today. In a provocative speech to the Sydney Institute tonight (AEDT), Lindsay Tanner will argue parents are partly to blame for a culture of anti-intellectualism in Australia. "There's a lot of evidence that we're still disdaining of learning, we're still regarding learning activity as something that `real Aussies' don't get into too much," Mr Tanner said on ABC Radio today. "It's not an accident that our levels of education and our level of commitment to education and learning is significantly lower than comparable countries."
Mr Tanner said Prime Minister John Howard had fuelled anti-intellectualism by suggesting it was fine for young people to leave school early, and by allowing Education Minister Julie Bishop to brand schoolteachers "Maoists". "Australians have come a long way in the past 20 or 30 years but there's still a lingering culture of antagonism to learning, and I think the Howard government really has been exploiting that," he said. "We should have a government that's actually upholding learning, that's advocating learning, improving learning. "Instead, we've got a government that's exploiting that anti-learning strand of feeling that's very deep in Australia." It was "staggering" that 46 per cent of school leavers did not go on to either higher education or TAFE, he said.
Mr Tanner defended his strong views. "I don't think it's disdainful, I think it's an acknowledgement of reality," he said. "I've grown up in the Labor movement, for example, where the word `academic' has historically been a term of derision. That's just a reflection of the wider society." A British university's presentation of an honorary degree to Australian cricketer Shane Warne, who once famously boasted that he had never read a book, illustrated that many Australians regarded learning as "a bit of a laugh", he said. "I thought that was embarrassing," Mr Tanner said. "He isn't the first person to receive one of these things ... but I suspect in terms of learning and approach to education, he's probably the least justified."
Source
***************************
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
***************************
21 November, 2006
Australian PM Criticizes anti-business curricula in State schools
Australian schools should teach innovation and the virtues of a free-enterprise culture, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday in comments likely to cause further friction with the states. Mr Howard was the keynote speaker at the Business Summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in Hanoi in Vietnam. He told 500 business leaders that free enterprise and the values of openness and innovation were not emphasised enough in Australian high schools. "I think our whole education system, starting at primary school, going into secondary school, should have a much greater focus on what we used to call, years and years ago, business principles," he told the summit.
The comments are likely to inflame an already-strained relationship with state Labor governments, increasingly nervous about the Federal Government moving into their areas of responsibility. While universities are mostly a federal responsibility, school education is firmly within the states' control. State governments are already on high alert following last week's majority 5-2 High Court ruling that the Commonwealth had the power to regulate employment contracts of corporation employees. Constitutional experts have since warned the High Court decision may open the way for other federal encroachments into state areas. Mr Howard and Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop have previously expressed concerns at aspects of state-run education, including teaching of history.
The above report appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on Nov. 19, 2006
Sinking ... poor white boys are the new failing class
British working-class white boys have taken over from their black counterparts as school under-achievers. Michael Collins explains why
If confirmation were needed that the urban white working class has moved away from the archaic image of a cockney cap-wearing armchair revolutionary, it came via a report published last week from the Social Justice Policy Group: a think tank created by David Cameron and chaired by the former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith. While liberals stand accused of demonising and disenfranchising the white working class, and new Labour legislates on the food that should go in their mouths and the words that should come out, the Conservatives have weighed in with news regarding this urban tribe’s rising generation. The prognosis isn’t favourable: things ain’t what they used to be. The report, entitled State of the Nation - Education Failure, casts the young of the tribe in an image that takes up the baton from Vicky Pollard of Little Britain and the chav industry that erupted a couple of years ago. It brings news of an illiterate underclass, spiralling towards drug dependency, crime and homelessness.
Apparently the rot begins with truancy and poor exam results. For the first time boys from white working-class backgrounds are performing less well in their studies than their contemporaries in any other ethnic group. Just 17% of white working-class boys achieve five good-grade GCSEs, 2% fewer than black boys and far below those from Indian and Chinese backgrounds.
If it's true that urban white boys have long since come to emulate the style, attitude and language of their black contemporaries, this latest development takes the transformation to the nth degree. Respect?
Throwing cash at the problem is not going to improve matters as, to paraphrase the report, the parents are to blame. A lack of parental interest in a child's education is listed along with parental drug and alcohol abuse for the underperformance of working class white lads.
Some of this was evident at some level in many urban neighbourhoods from the 1980s, a point the report fails to reflect on. What's happened in the past 20 years is that the problem has expanded and deepened. As GK Chesterton once said of writers trying to predict the future: "They took something or other that was going on in their time, and then said that it would go on more and more until something extraordinary happened."
According to the report, we are now in the throes of something extraordinary happening. But it strikes me that this is not exclusively a 21st-century issue. Just over 100 years ago, authors, anthropologists and reformers descended on working-class neighbourhoods. The class they were observing then was one that was said to exist without a voice, in the form of a political vote, and emerged as an identifiable crowd only when celebrating a patriotic victory, sporting or otherwise (at which point they were said to emer