Sayonara

This will be my last post on this blog. It has been an interesting venture, but I need to invest my time in better things. I will continue writing about education, but on a different site, to which I will NOT provide a link from this site.

I have had a few months to reflect on why I should make this change. Educators consider this a worthwhile practice, reflecting on and crystallizing what we have learned from a given experience. I can summarize what I learned and why I will not continue to blog here in three topics: Those I hoped to speak to; Those who responded; My essential message.

Those I had hoped to speak to

1. Parents who were not certain they were doing the best thing for their chidlren by sending down the street to look for a yellow bus every day, but needed someone with credentials to provoke them to stop and think hard about this.
2. Teachers who still have a glimmer of hope that there is an option for educating children without the bureaucracy, political correctness, and sense of inefficacy which accompany public school teaching.
3. People who have already seen these problems intuitively, but needed someone to help them articulate why they have ambivalent feelings toward public schools in America.

Those who responded

1. The "Choir" (those who already know and agree with the things I am saying).
2. People who have had a bad experience with private education, and have an ax to grind.
3. Folks in need of the eighth grade Formal Logic class I used to teach (with which most eighth graders have no problem).

Since one must assume there are readers who did not post responses, I have no idea whether I reached any of the folks in the three target groups. But I have learned enough over the past year to have a pretty good idea how I can locate them more effectively.

And now, in parting, here is my essential message about education in the United States:

1. Parents are the first and best educators. They should continually be educating themselves so that they may educate their children. If they decide to entrust their children to an outside educational choice, they should investigate it carefully and hold it accountable.

2. The United States Constitution is silent about education, as it should be, since free adults can make these decisions without government control or expense.

3. There are courageous Americans who are providing quality education in their own homes and in schools of choice. These are national treasures.

4. An education is only as valid as the truth assumptions on which it is built. Most public educators are woefully unprepared (through little fault of their own) to confront truth claims and make responsible decisions. No one holds them accountable for faulty thinking, unless they are so unwise as to make politically unacceptable remarks.

5. Educating chldren should not be "rocket science," but every day in this country there are more follies committed in the name of education than one blog can record. What generally results when these follies are exposed is a lot of finger-pointing, and very little personal involvement in helping a child learn - without "dumbing it down."

Picture a wide-eyed child on the threshhold of a world teeming with adventure and excitement. Erase, from that world, all the busses, buildings, and bureaucracy dedicated to "education." Take the child's hand and walk into the world. Welcome the adventure that Aslan has prepared.

Success in the semi-public sector

An article entitled “The Instigator,” in the May, 2009, edition of the New Yorker magazine tells the story of a group of charter schools in Los Angeles called Green Dot schools, which were started two years ago by ”Rock the Vote” founder Steve Barr, a (more or less) businessman who had previous success with an unusual charter school in an Latino neighborhood. With no educational background whatsoever, Mr. Barr had to actually call a teacher friend to help him interpret the very test scores which proved that his first school was succeeding.

Now the successes of the Green Dot schools among low-income students from primarily single-parent homes are attracting national attention, starting with Arne Duncan, current Secretary of Education. Pragmatists on both sides of the party lines are hailing their success and clamoring for “more Green Dot schools” to be founded – everywhere.

The article is revealing, but not so much for what it says about how the Green Dot schools succeed – they are remarkably “ordinary” in their teaching methods, and often employ teachers who have (mercifully) not had the traditional teacher college education. “At his schools, the principals lay out firm curricular guidelines, in keeping with California state standards and Green Dot benchmarks, but teachers are free to huddle, and decide what to teach and how to teach it, for the most part, as long as students pass quarterly assessments.” According to charter school entrepreneur Don Shalvey, “There is no secret curriculum-and-instruction sauce at Green Dot at all. Steve just hires good people. They’re just doing old-school schooling.”

What is more revealing is one of his critiques of the traditional public schools the students are coming from. “These poor schools, you have an Advanced Placement track, and the teachers only believe in triage, so they put the kids who have a chance in that track,” Barr explains. “It’s built on the back of the other three tracks.”

What can we learn from this?

1. Failing public schools teach the most able and fail the serve the rest effectively.
2. People with no educational background can run successful schools.
3. Teachers with no specific training in education will tend to use tried and true methods, and will tend to be successful with them.
4. It is more important that the teacher know the objective (in this case, state standards and test scores) than teaching methods and the latest philosophies.

It’s not rocket science.

Deep in the heart of....

The following story was first reported by ESPN’s Rick Reilly on December 23, 2008. Here it is retold by The Truth Project’s Dale Tackett. It represents a national treasure.


As a kid growing up in a small town, I remember the excitement that preceded our high school’s home football games. I recall the sense of “oneness” within our community as all the store owners would display “spirit” banners and posters that said “Go Broncos” or “Beat Bonneville” in their windows urging support for “our team” on Friday night. It seemed the whole town would turn out for the game. I dreamed of what it would be like to be one of the players on the field with the whole town cheering you on. And, I experienced it.
High school football is big in America.

But I suppose there is no place where it is bigger than in Texas. Friday nights there are legend.

The fans scream; the stands are packed; cheerleaders with pom-poms jump and sway to the beat of the school band; parents yell encouragement (mostly); mom’s turn their eyes away when their little boys are crunched by the “bullies on the other team who didn’t really have to hit him that hard, did he?” and everybody joins in the chants and stomps their feet on the metal stands until you are sure they will collapse.
This is the frenzy of Texas high school football.

However, there is a football team in Texas that is a little different. When they play on Friday night, their stands are pretty much empty, no band, no cheerleaders, no mass of parents or townsfolk wearing the school colors and waving banners and flags. They take the field without anyone cheering them on. When they get a first down, there is no deafening surge from the stands. When they score a touchdown, which rarely happens, there is no wild celebration behind them…only the individual shouts of satisfaction that come from the 14 players and their coach and the 20 or so people that are sitting on their side of the field. All of it seems hollow and muffled in contrast to the tidal wave of roars and drums and chants that come from the opposing side.

They are the Tornadoes of the Gainesville State School, a fenced, maximum-security facility of the Texas Youth Commission. The young men who go to Gainesville State are there because they have made some major mistakes in their lives. But the players who are on the team are there because they have worked hard and have disciplined themselves to meet the “criteria” that gives them the privilege to leave the facility and play football on Friday nights—always an away game for them—always a home game for their opponents—and almost always a loss. They don’t have a weight program or training equipment or high-paid coaches and assistants. They don’t have a large pool of players to draw from. The school has 275 boys, but many are too old or too young or can’t or don’t meet the “criteria” to play. And they don’t have the support of a town and a mass of parents and family and reporters and bands and cheerleaders.

That is, until November 7th. Something changed. They played Grapevine Faith Christian School.

The way the Gainesville coach, Mark Williams, recounted it for me, it went something like this: Earlier in the week, he had received a call from Faith Christian coach, Kris Hogan, asking him if it would be okay if Faith formed a “spirit” line for his team when they ran on the field. Mark said, “Sure, that would be a real encouragement to the kids.” He thought that the line would consist of a couple of the JV cheerleaders, but when they took the field, there were a hundred people in it and it stretched to the 40-yard line, filled with Faith parents, fans and varsity cheerleaders, complete with a banner at the end for them to burst through that read “Go Tornadoes!”. And then, those parents and fans sat in the stands behind the Gainesville players and when the Tornadoes broke the huddle and went up to the line they could hear people cheering for them, by name. When they got a first down, “their” fans erupted.

You see, coach Hogan had sent an email out to the Faith Christian family asking them to consider doing something kind for these young men, many who didn’t know what it meant to have a mom and dad who cared, many who felt the world was against them, not for them. Hogan asked that they simply send a message that these boys were “just as valuable as any other person on earth.”

So half of the Faith Christian fans were now sitting on the visitor’s side of the field, cheering for the Gainesville team, and in some cases, against their own sons.
–Cheering for a team decked out in old uniforms and helmets.

–Cheering for boys who wouldn’t go home that night and have a smiling dad slap him on the back and feel his mom put her arms around him and say “I’m so proud of you son!”

–Cheering for the underdog.

Though the score was familiar (down 33-0 at half-time), this was a Friday night like no other for the Tornadoes. In the locker room, the players were confused.

“Why are they cheerin’ for us, coach?”

“Because, men, they want to encourage you. They want you to know that they care about you…that you have value.”

Coach Williams said the boys were stunned. For many of these kids, it may have been the first time that anyone had shown them, so visibly, unconditional love.
Williams then encouraged them to set a goal for the second half: to score a touchdown. And when they took the field again, with their fans cheering them on, they did. Williams said, “Everything started to click in the second half. Our passes started to click. Our sweeps and counters started to click.” And they did score. Two touchdowns.

And the fans went wild.

I asked Coach Williams what the bus ride was like on the way home and he laughed and told me that they were all asleep—their bellies were full. After the game, the parents brought a whole bunch of food over to the guys: hamburgers, fries, candy, sodas…and included in the meal sack was a Bible and a letter of encouragement from a Faith Christian player. But then, he said, they formed a line for us out to the bus. And the parents patted them on the back and said, “Nice game” and “Look forward to seeing you guys next time.”

The phone went dead at this point. I think Coach Williams was choking back some tears. And so was I.

I asked him one final question: “If you could tell other people one thing about your kids, what would it be?” He said, “Don’t be scared of them. Treat them with respect. Yes, they’ve made some mistakes, but they are trying their best to turn their life around. Give ‘em a shot at it.”

As they left the field that night, Coach Williams grabbed Coach Hogan and said to him: “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

When the world looks at a Christian, the number one thing they should see is what was shown on a high school football field last fall in Texas.
Jesus said: “Let your light shine among men is such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

Let us do so.

And I must mention (because it is the mission of this column to point these things out) that Gainesville State plays public schools, too. Please notice what kind of school took the lead in this heart-warming experience. We have those kinds of schools here in Tucson, too.

The Winsome Fruit

My first “National Treasure” story comes all the way from Philadelphia. Occasionally those of us in education are reminded that the reall proof of our teaching is not in what our students do in the classroom, but inwhat they do outside the classroom. A friend of mine who teaches at Phil-Mont Christian School in Philadelphia passed along this letter, which his school received after a teacher at a different school overheard two of their students in a bookstore.


Dear Staff and Faculty,

My name is Rebecca Pine, and I am a Theology teacher at Lansdale Catholic High School. I was sitting in Barnes and Noble Booksellers yesterday afternoon grading papers when I had the pleasure of overhearing a conversation between two of your students and two students from Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School. The two girls (both juniors, one full-time and one part-time as she is home-schooled the rest of the time... I wish I had asked their names so I could pass them on to you!) were sitting talking about one of their Bible classes, when the two boys sitting next to them engaged them in what turned out to be an hour-and-half conversation. The boys challenged them on their faith, beginning with the basics and then moving on to more complicated apologetics topics. At first, overhearing them, I silently prayed that the girls would have the grace to defend the Truth well. I quickly discovered that they were perfectly equipped and confident enough to take on the challenge! As the girls clearly, confidently, intelligently, and CHARITABLY defended their faith, I was absolutely stunned and overwhelmingly impressed! I was silently cheering them from the side as they used Scripture, natural law, and logic to BEAUTIFULLY explain and defend the faith. It was awesome to behold. I was praying that the boys would leave so I could go over and affirm the girls without embarrassing the boys, but I had to leave before they did. I walked over and told the girls that I wish my own students could defend the faith as they just had, and they humbly and gracefully accepted the compliment. Wow!!!

I found your addresses on your website, and I write to both the Bible and Physics teachers because I overheard the girls mentioning those two classes most often. I COMMEND you and your staff on all that you are doing at your school. Based on what I witnessed yesterday, you are not only educating and preparing your students for the world they will encounter, but it seems that you are fostering a love of Truth and the ability to explain and defend it. Thank you for your witness, and if you find out who the girls were, please congratulate them once again!

Peace,

Rebecca Pine