Brock Cohen2013-05-24T07:36:27-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=brock-cohenCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Brock CohenGood old fashioned elbow grease.Requiem for a Success Storytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16250452012-06-26T16:23:48-04:002012-08-26T05:12:05-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/L.A. Times blurbs or write complete, coherent sentences. As a rookie English teacher, it would have been challenging enough to turn the dial of literacy among my students from that of decoding simple sentences to the more abstract cognitive domain of synthesizing knowledge and drawing inferences. But my ignorance and ego emboldened me with the blind audacity that I could conquer whatever challenges lay ahead. Never mind that I had no prior experience working with high-poverty or special needs children -- or that I had just signed on to teach at one of the district's more maligned campuses. I was smart, I was funny, I was pretty good with kids: I could do this. Or so I thought.
Once I entered the classroom, however, I began to see that the challenge of filling learning gaps was complicated by a stew of issues that dwarfed my then-underdeveloped skill set. Malnutrition, drug addiction, household instability, physical and verbal abuse, and neglect all lurked beneath the surface of the intractable apathy and abysmal study skills that blocked otherwise bright, young kids from intellectual growth. They were deep-seated social issues that an army of one could only superficially address. I clearly needed help.
Over the remainder of the school year, I gradually sought out and formed relationships with a handful of innovative iconoclasts scattered about campus. Virtually invisible at staff meetings, their respective low profiles belied big ideas about changing the ways in which kids of all backgrounds could be educated. Together, we did something that turned out to be more earth rattling than raging against the machine: we started meeting for lunch.
Those lunches turned into meetings, which turned into a coherent course of action. Eventually, we pushed to revive a dormant interdisciplinary small learning collaborative whose objective had wavered over the years at Grant. It was a model that had been originally constituted by visionary educator Neal Anstead in 1984 and that now exists as the Cleveland Humanities Magnet. Its interdisciplinary, writing-intensive fusion of philosophy, literature, history, and the arts lead to astounding results and resulted in an influx of high-achieving students whose parents were, for the most part, actively engaged in their child's education. (Ironically, many LAUSD administrators who preside over paint-by-the-numbers curricula at their respective campuses send their own kids to Cleveland's Humanities Magnet.)
As for us, we kept the collaborative's name (Humanitas) and sharpened its mandate: we would equip all our students with the reading, writing, and higher-order thinking skills needed to compete with peers at more prestigious schools. This was easier said than done, since, unlike the high-flying Cleveland Magnet model, our version would draw from a population of students who, in many cases, were already gasping for academic survival and whose parents weren't informed or available enough to constantly lobby on behalf of their kids' futures. On another front, we'd also be forced into a bare-knuckle brawl with a new culture of bubblemania: in the coming years, the No Child Left Behind act would gradually turn many urban public school campuses into de facto test prep annexes.
When we finally put our version of the Humanitas program into action, the results came incrementally but conclusively. Students developed intellectually by attending classes taught by a cohort of teachers who regularly shared best practices and collaborated on common thematic units. High-interest reading materials were incorporated into a text-heavy curriculum and a litany of engaging activities. Every day, students were challenged to express their gained knowledge through a variety of media and to employ critical thinking skills while attempting to make connections across disciplines.
As word spread that the program was granted latitude in using professional development time to augment thematic units and to enact its own non-NCLB-friendly curriculum, Humanitas at Grant became stigmatized among many of the school's non-Humanitas staff as a dubious model whose audacity superseded its actual value. This despite the fact that our students scored significantly higher on the almighty high-stakes standardized tests factored into our school's yearly Academic Performance Index (API), or that our kids had better attendance, incurred fewer suspensions, and attended four-year colleges and universities at greater clips than the rest of the school's non-magnet population. And when whispers surfaced across campus that our success was likely attributed to a systematic skimming of the campus' highest achieving students, the Los Angeles Education Partnership produced hard data that revealed details we had already known: our SLC's overall intellectual, ethnic, and socioeconomic composition was essentially a mirror image of the school's -- and the District's -- greater population.
But we already knew we were doing right by the students. We saw it in their essays, in classroom discussions and debates, and in intricate projects that revealed insight, creativity, and an increased proficiency with the written word. We had managed to carve out an island of higher expectations in which students shared ownership and felt valued. This resulted in kids feeling confident enough to express themselves intellectually in an environment where trying and failing was simply part of the learning process. Slowly, steadily, what we were doing produced tangible results. And yet the fatalist in me wondered if it were all too good to be true: At what point would everything we'd worked for get steamrolled by powers who hadn't seen the inside of an urban public school classroom since Dangerous Minds?
Despite my hidden fears, Humanitas has continued to thrive. We have augmented our foundational strategies with additional components that attempt to bolster group solidarity while addressing the inevitable learning gaps that saddle our younger students. Before they are given a chance to plummet into an academic abyss, for example, incoming freshmen are now assigned elder mentors who have already achieved scholastic success. Additionally, each year, the seniors host a Welcome Assembly in September that exposes new Humanitas students to the program's culture of unity and inclusiveness, followed by an Awards Assembly in May that pays tribute to the myriad ways in which students have made positive contributions to the program. Perhaps most importantly, just last fall, Art History teacher Alaina Kommer -- who has been my 11th-grade cohort partner for the past six years -- founded Parents and Teachers of Humanitas (PATH), an after-school program that seeks to develop more meaningful, sustainable connections between the program and our kids' families by reaching out to them, soliciting their input, and including them as integral pillars of the Humanitas community.
Unfortunately, all that we've built over the past decade is likely to fall victim to the LAUSD wrecking ball, due to a district-wide operating deficit. We've already lost one Humanitas teacher; more (including myself) may either be displaced or laid off within the coming year. Though the district's fiscal peril is real, its love affair with inefficiency, its misappropriation of precious resources, and its fundamental misunderstanding in the ways in which high-needs children learn have all been well chronicled.
But there's plenty of blame to go around.
The teacher's union's mixed success in preventing layoffs and preserving the integrity of the profession is largely due to its failure to evolve into something more flexible, versatile, and relevant. It has lost the P.R. wars due to obstinate stances on such hot-button issues as teacher tenure and teacher evaluation and has managed to paint a constituency that was once perceived by the public as selfless and dignified as a pack coffee-swilling, pension-hoarding hacks.
Because of all this imprudence, greed, and mismanagement, Alaina is the teacher whose position is being eliminated. It makes no difference that she's Grant's Art department chair, serves on the School-Based Management committee, and founded PATH. That she has earned a litany of awards for curriculum design while managing to awaken the creative instinct in scores of underprivileged teenagers with little or no previous desire to engage in painting, drawing, or sculpture has not been taken into account, nor has the fact that she has seamlessly integrated writing, literacy, history and the fundamentals of research methodology into nearly every corner of our curriculum. The kids adore her, her colleagues admire her, and, as her cohort partner, my impact as an educator instantly diminishes with her absence.
This past Thursday, Alaina and I met to plan a Humanitas function in which she probably wouldn't be around to participate. Sitting in her nearly vacant room, I struggled to think of what I could do to prevent her forced departure without putting my own career in serious jeopardy. I also wondered what other profession takes a hatchet to its best and brightest. Stupidly, I blurted something about how much she'd meant to the students, to the program, and to me all these years. While sincere, I'm sure my sentiments only made things worse.
"I would do this job for free," she said, fighting back tears. Then, after a few moments of perhaps reflecting on her tenuous circumstances -- of her husband, a middle-school teacher and perennial RIF-getter, and her toddler son, who would still need daily child care while Alaina cobbled together enough sub gigs to get by, she added, "I mean, I couldn't do it for free, but ... this is what I've always wanted to do. Why won't they just let me teach?"
It's a great question. And it's an irony that, at a time when teachers are scrutinized like never before -- where "accountability" is the buzzword of the moment -- quantifiably successful programs like Humanitas are looked upon with skepticism and the best teachers are often treated like disposable, interchangeable widgets.
I'm sorry for Alaina and for all the extraordinary teachers throughout California who have been unceremoniously dispatched -- and to the multitudes of students whose education will suffer for it. It seems it was all too good to be true.]]>Improved Literacy Could Save Health Caretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10274672011-11-04T15:04:02-04:002012-01-04T05:12:01-05:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/biggest concerns regarding the much-maligned Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (A.C.A.) have come to fruition. Nearly two years since its signing into law, obesity and diabetes are still full-blown epidemics, private health insurers continue to gouge and thrive, and 44 percent of adult Americans go without insurance coverage every day. It's true that much of the meat of the legislation won't kick in until 2014, but critics claim that the finished product will still leave millions uninsured (and underinsured) while doing little to control costs.
One of the main problems with the A.C.A. -- for now and in the future -- is that it mainly addresses the code-red aspects of patient care, without placing enough emphasis on sustainable models of disease prevention. While examining the bigger picture has never been a strength of our nation's policy-making process, the current approach will continue to drive the U.S. health care system deeper into the pit of fiscal insolvency -- no doubt to the giddy delight of conservatives and their acolytes.
The good news is that there is a solution to the prevention conundrum, and it doesn't involve yet more screenings or an FDA ban on Cocoa Pebbles. It's one that will require patience and a willingness to give primacy to the ideas of experienced professionals over those of cloistered think-tankers. And if seen all the way through, it will also address yet another one of our nation's most intractable problems.
To rescue health care, we must first acknowledge and then reduce the literacy deficit incurred by low-income children.
We already know that wealthier kids overwhelmingly come from more stable households and attend schools with greater resources and more robust revenue streams. They are introduced to books as toddlers (or even earlier) grow up in environments in which literacy is valued and reading materials are plentiful, and come of age among peers who are likely to view attending college as a foregone conclusion.
We also know that a disproportionate number of poor kids struggle in the classroom. The evidence for this is irrefutable and the reasons many. Some live in chaotic households that throw their lives into constant flux; some are victims of abuse, neglect or malnutrition; and some have never had access to the pillars of cognitive development that so many of us take for granted as fundamental rites of childhood. (Many of my students, for instance, never watched Sesame Street or Blues Clues, were never read to by a family member and rarely discuss their school day with one or both or their parents.) The truly unfortunate kids must deal with a combination of these malignancies while somehow performing to the expectations of a 21st-century low-socioeconomic status (SES) school paradigm that requires them to focus on the rote memorization of factoids for seven hours a day. In speaking to this point, Eric Jensen, author of Teaching With Poverty in Mind, says, "Most low-SES kids' brains have adapted to survive their circumstances, not to get As in school."
Because of these unfortunate circumstances, poor kids lag behind their more affluent peers in virtually all areas of health and well-being. For instance, they're more prone to obesity, making them prime candidates for Type II diabetes. They're also more susceptible to a host of other chronic illnesses, drug and alcohol addiction, teenage pregnancy, depression, and physical disabilities. Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky writes, "...starting with the wealthiest stratum of society, every step downward in SES correlates with poorer health," adding, "the chronic stress induced by living in a poor, violent neighborhood, for example, could increase one's susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, depression and diabetes."
This gap in wellness between social classes also includes a considerable lag in neurocognitive functioning and development among economically disadvantaged children. What this means is that poorer kids have greater difficulties in processing and expressing language. Meanwhile, they also typically exhibit less impulse control and an alarming deficiency in their ability to recall and synthesize knowledge.
It shouldn't be shocking, then, to learn that kids from low-income families often go through grade school engaged in a tenuous relationship with books and that only one in seven meet grade-level expectations in reading.
As an English teacher at a Title I Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) high school, I'm provided a front row seat for this slow-motion disaster each day. Despite the efforts of a number of dedicated colleagues and myself, I continually witness many of my students' relationship with the written word turn sour as they transition into secondary school. Frustration intensifies and interest wanes as vibrant illustrations gradually dissolve into even more advanced text -- along with concepts that require broader and yet more refined thinking skills. Hamstrung by compromised cognitive systems that were never given a chance to flourish, many kids eventually tire of the struggle. Reading becomes cumbersome, boring and seemingly pointless. Whereas avid young readers increasingly see books as an escape, these kids continue to slog through the joyless drudgery of word decoding.
For all of this, there are consequences. Says University of New Hampshire English professor Thomas Newkirk in Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy and Popular Culture, "Unless you're reading fluently in late elementary school, getting an assignment to read a two-hundred-page book will just defeat you." Or, as one of my students recently put it: "How I feel about reading is like I am getting trapped and covered in words." It's no wonder why so many of these kids despise books.
During the first full week of school each year, I ask my incoming 9th-graders to reflect on their feelings about reading in a written composition. This is a fairly common practice among English teachers, but it never ceases to amaze me how eerily similar most of the responses are. This year, one student wrote:
My hatred for reading started when I was in kinder for a fact I hated everything about it one because I was force to read two because it is boring most of the books I have been forced to read for projects usually never caught my attention. Even though reading is good for me I hate it I cant stand it especially books like harry potter too many pages about a wizard kid I dont really care the movies are horrible. Also my family was not interested in reading either mostly because they dropped out of high school. To me books are nothing to me but it does teach you things but its a drag trying to read them.
Another student expressed virtually identical sentiments, writing:
I honestly think books are borring!! In this class you said your hoping to get us to like reading thats going to be a mission for you and me. I only read in class other than that I don't. I dont know why books just dont interest me. Ive only read 1 book that as a class we had to read. Honestly I dont have books in my house the only books I have are my 'textbooks' for school.
I chose these two responses partially to reveal the shoddy grammar, awkward sentence structure and underdeveloped vocabulary indicative of reluctant readers. But also note that both students talk about being "forced" to read "boring" material. As educated adults, we're often quick to dismiss such claims as hallmarks of adolescent lassitude, without considering that a good portion of what we perceive as apathy might actually be the ripple effects of deep frustration. It's true that much of the reading material foisted on public school students is insufferably boring. But the real problem is far more daunting. For a 15-year-old still struggling to sound out words on a page, even the greatest stories rapidly disintegrate into morale-crushing episodes of frustration.
Many of us forget that our own seminal explorations with the written word were infused with fun. We were the beneficiaries of a first rung of literacy replete with funky riddles, pop-up dinosaurs, clever critters and references to bodily functions. In contrast, for their first foray into the world of reading, many low-SES kids are being tasked with decoding Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies (or worse).
Proving that being poor is in itself a risk factor for academic peril, one study found the gap in reading proficiency between low-and-middle-income children to increase by three months during summer vacations. This is because poorer children often grow up in text-poor households where age-appropriate books and magazines are scarce. It's sad to think that these children are rarely encouraged to read at home and heartbreaking to know that many were never read to as young children.
Firing off another cautionary salvo, Kelly Gallagher, author of Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It, notes, "If those students who enter schools linguistically impoverished -- thirty-two million words behind -- do not read extensively, they will never catch up." (Boys often get the worst of this calamity: many low-SES homes perpetuate a stigma against male eloquence, thus propagating an attitude among boys who, according to Newkirk, grow to view the act of reading as "girlie.")
Not surprisingly, these gaps in literacy lead to wholesale academic failure -- a pattern that repeats itself over generations. The conditions of poverty that beset families hinder literacy and academic growth; conversely, academic failure spawns more poverty -- and so on. Such a virulent feedback loop inevitably has a cascade effect on public health: Since poverty is both a predictor of academic struggles and of one's likelihood of contracting disease, individuals who fail to succeed in school are more likely to, at some point, cause a drain on the nation's already frayed health care system. What's more, the perpetual crisis mode triggered in the brains and bodies of poor children by ongoing stressors within their environment put them at greater risk for long-term physical and emotional illness.
Because the poor are less likely to have access to routine health care, unchecked ailments are more likely to metastasize into chronic diseases that tax emergency rooms, drive up insurance premiums and push families to the brink of financial ruin. Needless to say, this toxic scenario presents an enormous challenge not just for families trying to release themselves from the stranglehold of poverty, but for the future solvency of the American health care system.
Platitudes like "teacher quality is everything" oversimplify the complex web of challenges that confront both economically disadvantaged students and their teachers. They also lull the public into believing that poor kids are just a few pats on the back away from meeting the same challenges as their more affluent peers. This mindset grossly underestimates the amount of work that lay ahead in attempting to heal the systemic damage wrought by decades of social inequity. While it's true that every child can learn, poor children are at a distinct cognitive and emotional disadvantage. As such, they require a bevy of specific accommodations and strategies that will enable a reconfiguration of their cognitive processing systems to take place. For starters, this means abandoning the current high-stakes-testing-inspired drill-and-kill dogma that has neither made kids smarter nor more literate. Instead, a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach to learning is needed -- one that initiates critical thinking and infuses curricula with high-interest reading materials chosen to ignite kids' passion for books.
Or we can just carry on with the pretense that socioeconomic status, education, and health never cross paths -- the preferred approach by those with little or no skin in the game. The answers come much easier this way. But that doesn't necessarily make them right. ]]>Teens Rejoice as Perry Vows to Abolish Science and Reason From States' Curricula (Satire)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9530792011-09-07T22:00:12-04:002011-11-07T05:12:02-05:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/
Perry, an evangelical Christian and vocal skeptic of the politically charged theories of natural selection, evolution, and climate change, delivered a vigorous address that underscored the primacy of faith and assailed public education.
"First, they said human beings shared genes with monkeys," said Perry to a restive audience of more than 400 teenagers. "Then it was dogs, then rats, then bugs. But apparently, that's no longer demeaning enough. Now they say what we really come from is some steaming soup of godless filth. Me, you, your blessed grandmother, the Lord Jesus Christ and, yes, Ronald Reagan -- all formed from the same brown muck. At least that's what the scientists say, what the media says -- what your teachers say."
As the charismatic Texan grew increasingly animated, the crowd of urban teens trained their seething eyes on the handful of teachers scattered throughout the auditorium.
Clearly distressed, Home Economics teacher Sylvia Adler blurted, "Please: stop looking at me like that! I'm not the devil! I'm Mrs. Adler, remember? I taught you all how to bedazzle your doilies!"
Undeterred, Perry resumed his sermon. "And so, when I become your president, the first thing I'll do will be to issue an executive order making it a federal crime for your teachers to bring up any of these perversions of truth and decency, often referred to by so-called scientists as "theories."
"In addition," he continued, "I will put forth emergency cease and desist legislation that calls for the complete removal of the chronicles of depravity that litter your classrooms and soil your knapsacks. You know them as textbooks."
"Textbooks suck!" shouted one of the students, whose declaration was quickly taken up by several others, until it culminated in a deafening chant.
But as the governor thrust both his hands high into the air, the angry chorus stopped just as soon as it began. "As I stand here today," said Perry, "I assure all of you that when I'm President, every last one of those volumes of deceit will be cast into flames -- or, at the very least, foisted upon an even more downtrodden high school. But more likely, they will be banished! And destroyed!"
As the auditorium erupted into a din of hoots, hollars, and raucus applause, junior Jonathan Correa rushed the stage to offer the three-term governor a jubilant fist-bump -- along with his Biology textbook.
With Correa's text suddenly in his hands, the three-term governor didn't skip a beat.
Perry cracked open the seldom-used tome and read from its table of contents. "Chapter one: Cells. And thus, the war on God begins."
Perry spat on the textbook and slammed it onto the stage. Then, to the students' roaring approval, the ardent gun-rights advocate withdrew a previously concealed .44 and emptied six shots into the offending object.
Basking in the triumphant glow of his new admirers, the governor returned the gun to its holster, raised the bullet-riddled textbook over his head, and declared, "As you can see, there are an awful lot of gaps in some of these theories!"
Perry then punctuated his display by bellowing, "Come forth lambs of big government!" which instantly triggered yet another curious episode - one that put veteran English teacher Kevin Riggs on edge.
"I've witnessed a lot of bizarre stuff in my career in education," said Riggs, moments after the assembly. "Open house nights when only three parents show up; the entire Language Arts curriculum being replaced by standardized test prep; and then, when the budget cuts hit, the most innovative teacher I've ever seen laid off and then replaced by a sub who played Space Chimps on a loop for the entire semester. But when all these kids lined up to hand over their textbooks to a guy who, just five minutes earlier, referred to Noah as 'The Tricerotops Whisperer,' let's just say it was another dark day for this profession."
Chemistry teacher Susan Ramirez was equally baffled. "I'm not sure what was more surreal," she said, "the fact that the kids were readily handing over their books to a grown man who'd just dismissed the findings of 98 percent of the world's climatologists, or that the governor's aides were waiting there, in the middle of a September high school assembly, with censored versions of A Charlie Brown's Christmas for each of them in return."
"We prefer to call them 'teen-friendly,' said Perry aide Robert Weeks, referring to the modified DVD copies of the Charles M. Schultz classics that were disseminated to students willing to submit at least one textbook. Added Weeks: "Everyone loves the Peanuts gang - just so long as they're behaving in ways that are becoming of true global warriors for Christ. Of course we had our animators add more snow to all the outdoor scenes, so as to mitigate some of Schultz' obvious global warming agenda."
As raucous applause gave way to an orderly single-file line, a practically breathless Rickey Sanchez seemed to speak for many of his peers. "I only wish I was two years older so I could vote for this dude," gushed the junior from North Hollywood, adding, "No homo."
Sanchez wasn't the only student moved by Perry's rhetoric. Having written eleven poems about the GOP frontrunner by the time he'd left the stage, sophomore Alta Johnson already seemed to have many of Perry's proposals memorized. "Let's see: Get rid of books, give yourself over to emotion, ignore evidence, reject logic. Seriously, it's like he's sharing the mind of teenage girls everywhere."
Meanwhile, senior Xavier Rivers was busy recruiting clusters of peers to help him canvass the neighborhood with Rick Perry lawn signs. "Seriously, the guy just makes sense," said Rivers. "And he talks to us like we're real people - like we're one of him. I'm sick of old people talking down to me, thinking they know more than I do. The coolest part about Governor Perry is that he literally doesn't!"
Said sophomore Stephanie Watts, "I liked the part where he said that if Jesus wanted us to learn Physics, he would've made the crucifix rotate. It's funny and true!"
"I really liked the gun thing," remarked sophomore David Lopez before covering his face, giggling, and curling into a tight ball.
But it was Perry's dismissal of environmental stewardship that elicited perhaps the biggest applause line of the afternoon.
"Your teachers probably aren't going to be terribly pleased when I say what I'm about to say," Perry cautioned, "but this obsession with the environment is just flat-out un-Christian. Thinking we have the power to control the temperature and climate patterns over God's earth is not just arrogant, but sinful. And let's be honest: do you really think the Good Lord would've given us hands had he not wanted us to toss our KFC wrappers on the ground every once in a while?"
Following another booming ovation, Perry added, "The point here is that these are decisions that belong to you. Where to put your trash, how to educate yourself, and whom you choose to let inside your apocalypse bunker should be matters of personal choice, not government legislation. Deep down inside, you know what's best for you - not a bunch of Washington insiders!"
In the end, junior Justin Flores was less enamored of Perry's message than many of his peers. "Not to be a buzzkill, but we don't know what's best for us," he said. "Without school, half these fools would either be in jail, smokin' blunts and playin' 360 all day long, or havin' crack babies. Yeah, textbooks are shitty and school is mostly boring, but it beats huffin' turpentine between El Pollo Loco shifts when I'm 32."
When asked if he had also relinquished one of his textbooks, Flores slumped his shoulders and reluctantly produced his copy of A Charlie Brown's Christmas. "See?" he said, "We don't know what's best. Not yet."
]]>Too Black for Quarterbacktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9370802011-08-30T15:40:48-04:002011-10-30T05:12:02-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/the Rush Limbaugh experiment was hitting its vapid apex at ESPN, the king of the right-wing ad-hominem attack suggested, on air, that black quarterbacks were the beneficiaries of a clandestine, league-wide affirmative action gambit. This empty claim ultimately lead to Limbaugh's ignominious resignation. Nonetheless, in conveying his obvious discomfort with the emergence of a few talented black NFL quarterbacks, Limbaugh was actually taking the rare moment to speak beyond his key demographic of Sasquatch spotters and End of Days enthusiasts. While the right-wing radio god's bizarre soapbox moment was overtly racist, Limbaugh was only musing about what many football fans, league personnel, and media heads were already thinking: Despite statistics that suggested otherwise, blacks simply weren't suited to be NFL quarterbacks.
This disquieting sentiment has its roots in both bigotry and nostalgia -- two deep-seated cultural factors that enable it to fester even in today's so-called "post-racial" social climate. To accede to the fact that blacks are amply equipped to play NFL quarterback is to acknowledge that they, too, have the ethical and intellectual wherewithal to be smart, resourceful, assertive leaders of all men -- that they're every bit as capable in the face of chaos and adversity as whites.
Done and done, right?
Not so fast. Because, while us white people have become experts at publically lauding the virtues of racial equality, it's the practice of following through on the substance of this premise where we often falter.
There's an additional component to the insidious Limbaugh conundrum: the sacred image of the strapping, chisel-jawed drop-back passer, standing alone and poised(and white) in the pocket as chaos and violence envelopes him. It's a time-honored image that springs to life at football stadiums and flat screens across the nation each fall -- one of the remaining strands of American culture that continues to span generations. That's right: Cannon-armed WASPS are as much an American institution as two-ton pickups, all-you-can-eat pasta buffets, and calling people who want universal health care "socialists."
As such, in an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual society, NFL quarterback is one of the last islands in the nation's collective cultural imagination that remains the exclusive province of white males. Which means the image of a black quarterback calling the shots on a last-minute, game-winning TD drive is as alarming to a significant segment of the American populace as that of a Cambodian-American cowboy herding cattle on the prairie or an Arab-American firefighter carrying 9/11 victims to safety amidst smoldering ground-zero detritus. These images simply do not reconcile with the cosmogony of Anglo male as quintessential American hero. But Eli Manning delivering a game-winning TD pass in the waning moments of Super Bowl XLII does.
To get a sense of the collective fear over losing control of this sacred image, we need only look to the media gauntlet that recent collegiate QB sensations Cam Newton and Terrelle Pryor have been forced to navigate almost daily.
When ESPN Radio host Colin Cowherd prefaced his analysis of Pryor last week with, "Speaking of train wrecks..." he was only keeping with the zeitgeist of the commentariat, which has dubbed Pryor "raw,""undisciplined," a "project," and "entitled." Additionally, NFL scout Dave Razzano has characterized Pryor as someone who "needs to grow up." Razzano, who apparently resides in a world in which most 22-year-olds regularly listen to All Things Considered en route to Sonoma wine-tastings, added, "I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole."
As for Newton, despite an enormously successful senior campaign at Auburn, the number one draft pick has managed to summon the inner-Jonathan Edwards of virtually every scout and pundit with access to a microphone or laptop. For instance, did you know that, just last year, Newton mastered the seemingly impossible feat of winning the Heisman Trophy and a National Championship while (somehow) managing to maintain an abysmal work ethic and an insufferable personality? According to the experts, who have clearly let their personal biases creep into their professional assessments, Newton represents such an outlier. In fact, if Pro Football Weekly analyst Nolan Nawrocki has any say, Newton's NFL epitaph will read: "has a fake smile, comes off as very scripted, and has a very selfish, me-first makeup."
Meanwhile, the other highly-touted quarterbacks taken in the first round of the 2011 NFL draft - each of whom is white and less talented than Newton - garner Rudy-esque descriptions from most scouts and analysts. So what that they project as career backups? All is forgiven if you look like Captain America or Thor and possess the prized intangibles - like "leadership," "work ethic," and being "a guy that people follow" - that continually seem to elude black quarterbacks.
The now controversial Charlie Rose interview, in which Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson recounted his pre-draft conversation with Newton to ask his future number one pick if he had any tattoos or piercings, may or may not have had anything to do with race. It does suggest, however, that an NFL quarterback's physical appearance is still a determinant in whether or not teams choose to make him the face of their franchise. Richardson claims in the Rose interview that he wanted to "look him [Newton] in the eye, so to speak," which begs the question: Has Richardson followed the same protocol with all his first-round draft picks?
This past Thursday, Cowherd defended Richardson's pointed inquiry of Newton, explaining that the Panthers' owner has every right to protect his brand. There's actually some merit to this argument. Because of the cultural significance of NFL quarterbacks, many pro franchises promote themselves through the glittering smiles and hulking builds of their starting QBs. "Quarterbacks are the most important position in American sports," announced Cowherd, underscoring the point that drafting a dud signal-caller in the first round could hobble a franchise in multiple ways, going forward.
But in the end, Cowherd unwittingly let his own prejudices muddy an otherwise rational argument. In doing so, he invoked New York Jets star cornerback Antonio Cromartie, who is also black, and whom the Jets re-signed to a lucrative contract last season despite his having, according to Cowherd, "eight kids with seven women." Amidst his attempt to delineate the difference in magnitude between a quarterback's appearance and that of any other star player, Cowherd stumbled into the realm of racial typecasting. As a result, the hidden subtext of his argument was brought into full chauvinistic relief by the utterance of five words:
...eight kids with seven women.
Contrary to his earlier statements, this wasn't a discourse on a quarterback's outward appearance. It was an indictment of stereotypical African American male behavior as perceived through the eyes of whites. It was about the importance of not behaving like a stereotypical black man as a requisite to being fully accepted as an NFL quarterback. Cowherd then concluded his piece by adding, "Appearance matters." No, Colin: apparently it's race that matters.]]>(SATIRE) L.A. Private Schools Endure Third Annual 'LAUSD-For-An-Hour Day'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8688922011-05-31T13:36:56-04:002011-07-31T05:12:02-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/
"I just got chewed out for teaching my students Conrad," muttered Patricia Sewell, a lead English teacher at the Campbell Hall upper campus in North Hollywood. Sewell, who has taught Advanced Composition and AP Literature at the elite San Fernando Valley parochial school for nine years, admitted to being dumbstruck when informed that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was not deemed to be appropriate material for a high school English classroom, per LAUSD's curriculum content standards.
"Too long, too depressing, too French," said Raymond Brownlow, a district official in charge of instruction, who conceded that his knowledge of Conrad's opus was limited to the customer reviews section on Amazon.com. "But don't just take my world for it," he added, pointing to a review posted by 2MuchSexy4U that dismissed the novella as "Emo and gay."
Despite his concern over Sewell's teaching practices, Brownlow remained diplomatic.
"Look, I have nothing against Joseph Conrad per se," he said. "In fact, if you know of anything he's written that's between one-and-a-half to two pages in length -- and revolves around a pair of lost shoes, a garden patch or a miserly old man who finds happiness in the smile of a small African American child, let me know -- I'll include it in the binder for next year."
In her downtown office, Tamatha Ludwick, assistant directing co-coordinator of secondary classroom curriculum development instructional methodology and content delivery, said, "We feel that the teaching of novels is a hallmark of educators who lack ambition and creativity. It's much more challenging for the teachers, not to mention far more stimulating for their students, when a series of shorter stories can be taught at breakneck speed within a condensed time frame. We call them short storiellas. The ideal number per period is eight."
As Sewell instructed her students to remove their copies of Heart of Darkness from their desks, she dutifully distributed copies of Miss Maple and My Hand-Me-Down Pajamas to stares of bewilderment.
Moments after class, Sewell admitted to still being shaken by the ordeal. "Other than having to live out of my van since I started doing this job full-time, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."
Samantha Mackowski, math department chair at North Hollywood's Harvard-Westlake School, lamented an hour filled with a seemingly endless stream of trivial P.A. announcements, shortages of resources, student apathy, and unannounced intrusions. "Look, I get what they're trying to do here. But Harvard-Westlake is a perfectly calibrated success machine. Any interruption of our daily routine puts the prestige of this institution and the fate of its students in dire jeopardy."
When asked about the school's reputation for uncompromising selectivity in choosing its student body, Mackowski bristled.
"Are we exclusive? Without question. But I assure you, we get the worst of it. For the past four generations, every faculty member at this institution has carried the burden of upholding Harvard-Westlake's reputation as being one of the premier dream-smashers for families throughout the Southland."
Mackowski then gestured to an expansive string of commissioned oil paintings lining the wall of the school's library.
"Some schools hang paintings of their most prestigious graduates; we hang ones of our greatest rejects." As Mackowski gestured to some of the paintings, she reeled off the names -- a veritable who's who in the fields of art, entertainment and business from the greater L.A. region and beyond. "See that one over there, hanging above the bank of iMacs? Look familiar? It should. It's Ronald Reagan. Oh, and the one hanging by the young adult fiction section? Gandhi."
In a posh enclave, less than ten miles away, Brentwood School AP Calculus teacher Joan Wilkes crouched at the foot of a wheezing, fifteen-year-old Xerox photocopier, on loan from Crenshaw High School specifically for the occasion. Although the school is normally furnished with seven working copy machines, Thomas Broadline, the school's dean of students, had them placed into storage for the entire hour.
Then, to heighten the veracity of the experience, Broadline ordered the head custodian to jab the insides of the existing copier with a screwdriver "four or five times."
For her part, Wilkes worked feverishly to cauterize the ink hemorrhaging from the machine's innards, wiping sweat from her forehead and chin with one of the dangling felt reindeer antlers from her hand-made Christmas sweater - on loan from an educator at James Monroe High.
Frank Healey, headmaster at Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, and founder of 'LAUSD-For-An Hour Day,' says the observance, while painfully unpleasant for all its participants, serves as a stark reminder to the stakeholders of L.A.'s private schools that many local public schools often face an array of daunting challenges too frequently overlooked by more privileged institutions. This holds especially true for the LAUSD, a district in which eighty-seven percent of its students have never had either Blink 182, The Black-Eyed Peas, or the Foo Fighters play at their sweet sixteen parties.
But through force of will, Healey has succeeded in blending the school's already rigorous approach to student learning with a new philanthropic imperative. And with the imprimatur of the school's membership community, he has already successfully altered Chadwick's slogan from "You're not good enough for us" to "We're sorry that you're not good enough for us."
Dave Reynolds, a junior at Viewpoint School in Calabasas, was heartened by the fact that the plight of his public school counterparts was gaining wider exposure. "This guy I know on the baseball team, his cousin celebrated his birthday at Pizza Hut. And so I'm all, 'I didn't know Jack Black did birthday roasts at Pizza Huts.' And he was like, 'Uh, dude, he goes to public school.'"
Flush with emotion, Reynolds, a hulking power-forward on the school's varsity basketball squad, bit into his trembling lower-lip. "So, in other words, it was just him, his parents, and some friends -- no Kobe, no Will Ferrell -- not even a Kardashian. Some things make you so mad and so sad all at once, you just don't really know what to say. But this is the kind of stuff that needs to get out there. The public has a right to know."
The occasion is also a reminder to private school educators that, while their salaries remain woefully modest, their instructional domain is largely shielded from many of the daily frustrations that their public school counterparts must endure -- from overcrowded classrooms, to layoffs and mandatory furlough days, to reluctant learners, to having to adhere to cookie-cutter curricula that include mandatory testing schedules.
After teaching one of its strands to his 10th-grade English class, Ribet Academy's Xavier Trombley stared glumly at an ample binder loaded with mandatory prep materials for the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). "I feel filthy right now," said the fifth-year teacher, his voice cracking with despair. "And that has nothing to do with the fact that I just went to the bathroom and then washed my hands with pink sand." Trombley said that, although he had planned for his students to act out the first act of Macbeth, "instead, we spent forty minutes of class time dissecting a fake instructional manual for a VHS player."
Trombley, whose typical class size hovers in the mid-teens, was awestruck by the sight of forty-seven bodies streaming into his room at the beginning of the period. To make matters even more tenuous, he quickly discovered that various students had pronounced learning deficiencies or emotional disorders. Others could scarcely utter a coherent sentence in English.
"It was a horrible scene," said Trombley. "Kids were left standing, sitting on tops of desks and sprawled on the floor. In my rusty Spanish, I told one of the boys to please remove himself from his girlfriend's lap, and he just glared at me. Later, I found out what I'd really said was, 'Your lady's lap is a dangerous carnival.' Talk about humiliating. What an awful one-seventh of my day."
Still, despite the influx of unfamiliar students pouring into their classrooms, many private school teachers throughout the region showed, for a full hour, why they can also handle their share of challenges -- and why they are held in such high esteem.
Teachers like The Sierra School's Robert Simmons incorporated some of their cutting-edge pedagogical techniques to adapt instruction to an array of student learning needs and skill levels.
"Come on!" exhorted Simmons, when he noticed two new students in the back of the class failing to take notes during his Powerpoint on polynomials. "Let's go! Work harder! Do work! What's wrong with you two? Come...on!"
While some teachers begrudged having to interrupt or limit their lessons for an entire hour, Aaron Jackson, a fourth-year Chemistry teacher at The Buckley School called the occasion "a profound learning experience" and admitted to being startled by the myriad challenges facing some of his more troubled students.
"One of them spent practically the entire period with his head down," Jackson said, "so already, alarm bells are going off like crazy. Then, when I go over to ask him if he's okay, I notice a single tear rolling down his face. Heart wrenching, right? But then I saw that it wasn't just a tear -- it was a tattoo of one. That's when I thought to myself: How sad must a boy be to get a tattoo of a teardrop on his cheek? The saddest boy in all the world, that's who."]]>School Budget Cuts No Excuse For Mediocritytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8407822011-03-29T14:20:23-04:002011-05-29T05:12:01-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/
Depending on the scope of the next round of state budget cuts, my class sizes may well balloon to the upper 40s by next September. In addition to more kids per class, the cuts will also mean fewer visits from an already depleted custodial staff (we all take turns sweeping the floors) and vastly diminished classroom resources. Lost and damaged books won't be replaced; broken down computers and printers will sit idle and in permanent disrepair; and the same balky, Reagan-era Xerox machine will continue to bedevil, confound and infuriate a faculty of 130 teachers. And yet I'll be among the fortunate: I'll still have a job.
As is always the case, the students will suffer most of the collateral damage. Because of their youthful innocence and naivete, they'll overlook the most egregious injustices. The ravaged textbooks, mounting garbage littering the floors and diminished access to outmoded computers will simply remain part of the continuum of inequity they've been weathering since junior high.
Just once, I'd like to have the opportunity to ask the Schwarzeneggers, Guggenheims, Obamas and Arne Duncans of the world if they'd be okay with their daughter sitting in a classroom strewn with yesterday's Doritos wrappers or attending a school-sanctioned "college fair" mainly populated by military recruiters and community colleges. Moreover, would they find it acceptable for her to be precluded from reading The Grapes of Wrath because her English teacher is 12 copies short of a class set? Then again, each of these luminaries is a staunch advocate of continuing the vicious but maddeningly counterintuitive Bush-era policy of penalizing schools populated by students with already low literacy rates by reducing the federal money that could be used to purchase things like... books.
Over the years, I've found my students' increasingly distanced -- and, in some cases, hostile -- relationship with the written word to be alarming. But this trend seems to be slowly reversing itself, though I have no idea why. In fact, on several recent occasions, students have approached me about the possibility of holding weekend car wash and bake sale fundraisers so that everyone in class can have his or her own copy of Luis Rodriguez's Always Running, a book so compelling, lyrical and haunting, that its shelf life in my classroom mini-library rarely exceeds more than a few days. (I've finally put an end to purchasing copies with my own money.) While it's inspiring to have students who are moved by books, why are kids who are least financially able to purchase their own school materials being forced to do so?
Moments before the bell rings, I glance through the blinds of my class bungalow. Outside, construction workers are still slogging through the finishing touches of one among four massive concrete and steel impermeable heat islands that now grace the school's campus. Each site has been designated as a meeting niche for our school's respective small learning communities -- because why intermingle with your friends on a grassy knoll when you can do so on a concrete slab furnished with cell-block-chic picnic tables? As one of the workers drives what appears to be a pygmy backhoe around in circles, I fight back the urge to recall the images of the once towering oak trees that have been sacrificed so that Tater Tots can be eaten in an officially-sanctioned venue. I also can't help but wonder how many of my laid-off colleagues' combined salaries it takes to generate one of these sprawling masses of cement -- or the total number of iPads, laptops or other supposed gateways to educational equity the district could have provided students in lieu of what, at first glance, appear to be four of the lamest skate parks ever constructed.
And so the Kafkaesqe folly of public education parades on, right in front of our complicit eyes. Politicians and pundits extol the necessity of a "21st-century education," our president decries the nation's descent into math and science mediocrity, and yet, what do we get? Multimillion-dollar cement voids, another round of teacher layoffs and repeated hatchet blows to the school calendar.
The way in which many Americans embrace this ongoing stupidity, as reflected in their resignation and ennui, is astounding. We look away as already disadvantaged kids are continually short-changed, and we fail to recognize that we'll all have to pay double when incomplete educations manifest themselves into dead-end jobs, incarceration and addiction (and, consequently, increasing numbers of young adults who become burdens of the state).
And because complexity is befuddling-ly seen as the enemy of reason these days, polarizing demagogues, who come pointing fingers and bearing clean, decisive answers to the public school conundrum, are conferred an air of authority. To that end, they've come to be viewed as the plain-talking saviors of education reform, rather than what they really are: political opportunists.
Amidst all this, I've just begun Ray Bradbury's prophetic Fahrenheit 451 with my juniors as the culmination of a unit that addresses the possible detriments of living in a world in which we're all perpetually wired to the electronic information grid -- even when reading books. I started the unit off by showing them PBS' "Growing Up Online." Then, I had the students pick apart numerous essays assailing modern civilization's excessive reliance on technology. I integrated these with the musings of Thoreau and the rantings of Edward Abbey, both of whom lamented the demise of the sanctuary that only nature can provide. Finally, came readings from Jerry Mander and Neil Postman. Both painted a grim picture of how our brains are being neurologically re-wired to conform to the latest modes of communication.
For these former giants of academia, TV was the bogeyman; today, it's a crinkled Hot Cheetos wrapper amidst the landscape of perpetual electronic noise. With its limitations on interactivity and its inherent inability to offer cover from prying parents' eyes, the actual physical medium of TV is rapidly losing its utility and influence among the Internet generation. This point has been underscored by my students throughout the unit. When I casually asked how many of them watched at least three hours of TV a day, only two of my students (sheepishly) raised their hands. I was flummoxed, and it must have shown.
"We don't watch TV, Mister," said one girl after sneaking a surreptitious pull from a can of Monster.
"Yeah, TV's boring," added a boy drowning in an oversized hoodie. "Except for 'Jersey Shore.'"
I told them that I'd never seen one minute of "Jersey Shore," and yet I can somehow name half the "cast." Then I ask: What might Postman have to say about that?
"I don't know, Mr. Cohen," said one of the least vocal students I've ever had, suddenly galvanized by the mention of his favorite half hour of reality TV, "but you really need to watch that show. Just accept how dumb it is, and have fun." This, followed by multiple nods of agreement.
So in other words, embrace the stupidity.
Maybe it's sage advice. And yet I can't let it happen. If I'm not willing to give Obama a pass, I'm definitely not going to do it for Snooki.
]]>Michelle Rhee: School Reform Savior or Political Opportunist?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.8010742011-01-04T13:38:31-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/her radio show her show alongside one of the giants of the current education reform movement, former Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Throughout her segment, Rhee, the sunny-dispositioned former D.C. schools chancellor and current media darling, clung faithfully to her well-rehearsed series of talking points: All within a five-minute span, she cheerfully excoriated teachers unions, asserted the need for improved classroom instruction, touted the Value Added method of teacher assessment, rationalized parental disengagement, and placed the blame of student failure at the feet of an array of special interest groups, from textbook manufacturers to food companies -- because, let's face it: When it comes to plummeting literacy rates, what's more culpable than tater tots?
Like many of her fellow reformers, Rhee effortlessly doles out exquisitely tailored sound bytes without ever offering up specifics. Frequently substituting bluster for substance, Rhee laments the "crappy" state of education, yet never unpacks the components that constitute sound pedagogy or that define superlative teachers. She trumpets the need for greater teacher accountability but refuses to offer any alternative assessment tools beyond the fundamentally flawed Value Added approach. The Oprah-annointed "warrior woman" talks incessantly about the necessity for greater student achievement without detailing what a student should be able to do once the pomp of high school graduation has come and gone. Predictably, as Rhee takes her premature media-driven victory lap en route to assuming an elite position in national politics or prime time cable news, she has yet to be challenged on any of these talking points.
Which is why, if granted a Q&A with Rhee, I'd bypass the Oprah-like "What do you do to relax?" or "So how did you get to be so awesome?" lob balls and cut right to the following:
Since you continually cite the need for better teachers, describe the specific pedagogical and classroom management techniques that a truly exceptional teacher employs. Which types of cognitive skills does a good teacher emphasize for her students?
In numerous interviews you've said, "I have not met a parent yet who doesn't want the same things for their kids that I want for mine." Despite this claim, many teachers are faced with a far different reality. For instance, in my classroom, on a typical parent-teacher night, it's not uncommon for fewer than 20 percent of my students to be represented by one of their parents. To what extent are parents responsible for their children's academic successes and failures, and are we demanding enough accountability them?
You've said, "If you don't believe that teachers should make up for deficits at home, then you shouldn't be a teacher." How can educators begin to address the scores of slip-through-the-cracks middle- and high-school students who have virtually given up on their education?
Although you've repeatedly mentioned how the Value Added approach is an important assessment tool in gauging teacher proficiency, you've recently added the caveat that it's incomplete. However, this past July, you fired 241 teachers due to their "unsatisfactory" Value Added scores. Considering your evolving perspective, would you admit that it was a reckless act on your part to terminate those individuals without first considering the detriments of relying on a single metric - and without first providing a training and support network to help struggling teachers within your district?
Would you prefer for your children to be assigned to a teacher who focuses more on developing skills such as writing, listening, oral communication, and critical analysis (none of which are evaluated to any significant degree on most high-stakes standardized tests) or rote memorization, identification and the acquisition of facts -- skills that are most frequently called upon when engaging in standardized test preparation?
It's widely acknowledged that the practice of social promotion is irrevocably harmful to its recipients. So why is it rarely mentioned in the reform debate, and why hasn't there been a movement among leaders such as yourself to revoke it?
What are the hallmarks of an educated person? How can we ensure that all students have access to the tools and environments that cultivate these attributes?
What is the single biggest factor contributing to student failure? Other than mass firings, how would you address it?
Does it strike you as the slightest bit unjust that a good portion of public school students' class time is now consumed by standardized test prep, whereas their private and parochial school counterparts are not beholden to them in any way?
You've also said that, "If there is any protection in public education, it should be for the children, not the adults." And yet it's been proven, on repeated occasions, that professionals who work in positive, safe work environments; who feel appreciated by their supervisors, and who are fairly compensated produce at a much greater capacity. As a manager of people, why do you find it reasonable to discount these facts?
Nearly all public school students in this nation are placed on the so-called college track, which means that thousands of potential success stories are being restricted from developing vocational skills. After they have shown proficiency in basic reading and math skills, should students then be given the option to pursue training in trade fields such as carpentry, auto mechanics, and computer tech?
For me, the biggest question of all is, at what point will we start hearing some of these questions asked of the reformer elite such as Rhee - ones that cut to the unpleasant, befuddling core of student and school failure and that require thoughtful, nuanced analysis by the respondent? Try never.
Rhee's charisma, intelligence, and unflappability have made her an easy figure for talk show luminaries such as Oprah, Larry, and John (King) to fawn over and, consequently, promote as a no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip loose cannon and rogue sage of education reform. Which, in turn, makes hard-hitting interview scenarios like mine figments of fantasy. We were already well past the point of ever getting the straight skinny from Rhee. Now, with her substantial screen time in documentarian Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for "Superman", she has officially catapulted herself into that peculiar domain in which a public figures' musings invariably get stashed in YouTube venom chambers, to be accessed and manipulated by the amoral minions of future political foes.
Still, after doing battle with the equally intransigent D.C. teachers' union, in which she proved more than capable of taking and dishing out invective, Rhee's surely aware of the perils of hot-button discourse. Which means that, unless challenged with tough questions, we're more likely to hear more well-worn platitudes like, "What we need is better teachers," "We need to empower parents," and "It's all about the kids" but few specifics regarding the multifarious factors that lead to teacher burnout, parental disengagement, and student failure.
Rhee spent two tumultuous years as a public school teacher before sprinting away from the classroom for good to pursue a career in politics and punditry. Which begs the question: How can a teacher who couldn't hack it in the classroom -- one whose classes were "out of control" because she struggled so mightily with classroom management -- become such a trusted and influential critic of teacher accountability?
Lately, I've been wondering what Rhee would do if she were to walk into my classroom. My guess is she'd probably jump out of her skin with angst and fury at the dearth of Scantron sheets, multiple choice test prep packets, and #2 pencils. This is because she'd likely be confronted with a scene that might appear chaotic and haphazard to the casual observer, but what is actually the messy process of learning. (Administrators and school officials repeatedly tout the importance of student-driven learning and differentiated instruction but then wince upon entering a classroom in which the teacher is not in complete control of every student movement, utterance, or inhalation.)
In my class, at any one time, kids might be working independently or in groups of up to as many as ten (depending on the assignment). And depending on the day, the week, the thrust of the unit, and the current assignment, Rhee might witness any of the following: clusters of kids divided into special interest groups as they prep for a symposium on whether or not neuro-enhancing drugs should be banned from schools and the workplace; a mock criminal trial in which Jay Gatsby is being tried for Murder 1; me showing them how to annotate text via an Elmo projector or using the character of Holden Cualfield to enter into a discussion about a New Yorkerpiece on PTSD that they've just been assigned; or piles of frazzled students frenetically compiling sources for a unit-culminating essay on ethics that critiques all of their readings through the brilliant, half-mad eyes of Plato.
(When the stars are aligned, my room actually sort of resembles an intellectual Santa's Workshop. But then there are the times when the best laid plans go flat, when I overreach, over-teach, or under-explain, leaving my students collectively flummoxed or disconnected. By learning from past miscues, and working at my craft, these episodes have become, mercifully, less frequent.)
Forcing a polite smile to mask her consternation, Rhee might ask one of the groups what they're working on. Depending on their respective stress levels and feelings of urgency, some might reply, "We're doing research and planning our strategy for our roles as neurosurgeons for tomorrow's symposium." More likely, in not knowing or caring that the hottest star in school reform is standing before them, most would probably respond to Rhee's inquiry with: "Could you give us a minute? Seriously, this is due tomorrow."
And I would be so proud.]]>Superman as a Public School English Teacher: Day 1 (Satire)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7962842010-12-14T18:09:24-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/8 a.m.: Room 321
Inside a raucous L.A. public high school classroom that will soon be brimming with a cultural, racial, and ethnic amalgam of 11th graders. The handful of bright, talented kids sprinkled throughout the class is greatly overshadowed by the majority of their academically troubled peers.
The underachievers engage in a variety of unscholarly activities. Some text away on smart phones; others watch or listen to iPods while cavorting with neighbors or sleep with their heads planted on their desks. One student self-consciously cloisters himself between his spaced-out resource aid and a wall.
Having perfected the art of subtlety, the ambitious ones wait poised (but not too poised) and ready to learn, with notebooks open and pens at the ready. These kids possess the uncanny ability to skim notes or read passages without appearing as though they care too much.
The first-period late bell blares as stragglers file in. Half the desks in class are devoid of students; in 20 minutes, there won't be enough seats to accommodate them all.
The sound of bending, twisting metal pierces through the ambient clamor. It comes from outside; all activity freezes as students turn to the commotion.
A beefed-up mountain of a man, clad in red cape, matching boots, and a bright blue uni-tard, emblazoned with the letter "S" across the chest, pries open the bars on the classroom window. With a flick of his fingers, he smashes through the windowpane, squeezes his body through the widened bars, and glides deftly and safely onto the classroom floor.
For the moment, the students of Room 321 sit in rapt silence. They realize this man is no mere mortal: This... is Superman. With one elegant swipe, the storied Man of Steel dusts himself free of glass chards, chipped paint and asbestos shavings, then swaggers to the front of the class.
Superman: Greetings, youngsters!
The great Superman pauses for a fawning reception, which never materializes.
SM: How did you all get in here?
Stephanie Rolls her eyes and then checks her phone for an incoming text.
Stephanie: The door. Custodian opened it.
Superman: Ah, mortals. Always taking the easy way!
Superman forces an awkward smile. Seconds removed from his grand entrance, most students have already lost interest. Several even fall back to sleep. The clackety-clack of texting resumes, followed by the hum of teenage voices.
SM: So word has it you've all been "waiting" for me.
Superman emits a booming superhero chuckle, which is all but ignored by his new charges.
SM: But no -- seriously...
Undeterred, Superman presses on with his trademark good-natured aplomb. He breaks down into an athletic crouch.
SM: Okay! So who's ready to learn, Justice League-style?
Two boys shuffle in and obliviously cut in front of the greatest superhero of all time. One of them flops down into his seat and immediately falls asleep; the other exchanges sleepy fist-bumps with his cronies, en route to his seat. A bemused Superman turns to the fist-bumper.
SM: Excuse me: young man?
A girl -- Tanya -- raises her hand but doesn't wait to be called on.
Tanya: Why are you wearing a leotard, Mister?
SM: This is no leotard, young lady. It's a two-billion-thread-count impermeable sheath, manufactured on the planet Krypton and blessed by the high priestess Tiarlactra. It's amalgamated from 80,000 different materials, only a fraction of which are found on earth.
Arman reaches over and pinches out an inch of fabric.
SM: Hey!
Arman: It's a leotard.
Somebody's cell ring tone activates, to the tune of Lil Wayne's "Got Money."
SM: Sorry, but I'm going to have to ask each of you to please disable all cordless communications devices, as well as any personal radios.
Ignoring the directive, Angel casually answers his cell phone.
SM: (to Angel) Excuse me, young man? Young man! I just got finished --
Angel: (Into his phone) Hold up. (to Superman) Sorry, I gotta get this.
SM: No, sir, You most certainly do not.
Superman reaches to confiscate the phone; Angel recoils.
SM: Young man!
Angel indignantly stashes the phone inside his knapsack.
Angel: There! Happy? Damn!
Angel "mad-dogs" the once unsinkable Man of Steel, who struggles to regain his composure.
SM: Now then: Let's get down to work, shall we? It says here your assignment for today was to compose a one-page critique of F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing style for the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby. So let me have everyone's paper, and then we can get started with the business of some California Standards Test preparation.
Only a smattering of students produce their homework. They're clearly nervous about standing out among their underachieving classmates.
SM: Go ahead and pass your papers to the front of the class. Don't be shy now.
Several papers, in various stages of decimation, trickle to the front of the class.
SM: Looks like we're missing some compositions here...
Sleeping at the back of the classroom, Moises lifts his head long enough to say:
Moises:The Great Gatsby sucks.
SM: It's a classic piece of American literature.
Moises: (putting head back down) And it sucks.
Nearby, DeShaun and Jesus pause from their GT Racing battle on DeShaun's iPhone.
DeShaun: It's boring as hell.
Jesus: Yeah, I don't get it.
SM: (turning to Jesus) Hmm. What exactly don't you get about it, son?
Jesus: All of it.
SM: Could you be more specific?
Jesus: No.
SM: Well, then here's what we'll do: let's take out our books, and we'll figure it out together. Everyone go ahead and turn to page... 42.
Superman thumbs through his copy of Gatsby.
SM: Ah! OK: I think I can see what might be the problem here. So in this section...
Superman glances up to see that only a handful of students have their books out and open; the rest have resumed their pre-class activities. The noise level spikes.
SM: Ladies and gentlemen? Ladies and gentlemen!
Superman's voice is barely audible above the din. The most omnipotent superhero in the universe is rapidly losing control of his class. He surveys the landscape, searching for a way to employ his superpowers and salvage his legacy. Out of options, he unleashes a surprisingly high-pitched scream.
SM: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! Please take out your copies of The Great Gatsby... NOW!
Silence, followed by a sea of empty stares. Taking a respite from gazing into her makeup compact, Brenda raises her hand.
Brenda: Can't we just have a free day?
SM: Absolutely not. The semester's already half over, so there's no time to waste. Everyone who doesn't have a book, look on with a neighbor. Those of you with a book, turn to page 42, and we'll read aloud together. So who wants to get us started?
Superman scans the room for anyone half-willing to read aloud, but somehow all 40-plus students avert eye contact -- except for Garrett, who sheepishly raises his hand.
Garrett: I'll read.
Eyes roll, heads plummet. These kids know something Superman doesn't: While Garrett likes to read, he does so at a third-grade level.
SM: Great! Please, go ahead.
Garrett: The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eck...Uh...
SM: Eckleburg. That's important -- remember that name, kids. Keep reading, son.
Garrett: Um... are blue and juh... juh...
SM: Gigantic. They are blue and they are gigantic. Excellent. Keep going.
Some students groan; others mutter to themselves or shift restlessly in their seats.
DeShaun: Can't we just do test prep?
Jesus: Dude, you hate that shit.
DeShaun: (to Jesus) Would you rather fake-bubble the rest of the period, or talk about some T.J. Eckleheimer fool?
Jesus: Neither. I'd rather watch the rest of Blindside. Where's that other sub at?
SM: (to Garrett) Keep going, son. You're doing just fine.
But before Garrett can proceed, the school fire alarm activates -- at a volume and pitch that might best be described as "agonizing." Students instinctively cover their ears and pop out of their seats. Once again, class grinds to a halt.
SM: SIT DOWN!
Miraculously, everyone listens to Superman and returns to their seats. He shouts at peak volume to be heard above the racket.
SM: DON'T PANIC! EVERYONE GRAB YOUR THINGS AND FOLLOW ME!
The alarm stops. A crackling adult voice chimes in over the intercom.
Intercom Voice: Teachers: please disregard the fire alarm. I repeat, please disregard the fire alarm. And students: take note that anyone who knowingly triggers a false alarm will be given one full week of campus beautification. Thank you.
Garrett raises his hand.
Garrett: Can I keep reading?
Robert stirs restlessly in the back of class.
Robert: Oh, no!
SM: Actually, why don't we give someone else a chance...
Superman turns to Robert and cracks a wry smile.
SM: All right, son. Sounds like you're hankering to showcase your reading skills. Go right ahead.
Robert: Heeeells no! And I ain't your son.
SM: So let me get this straight: Even though you won't try, you find that it's okay to critique others?
Robert: What's critique mean?
Arturo lurches forward in his seat, his face barely popping through an XXXL hoodie.
Arturo: Yeah, why do you gotta keep using all these big words. Just talk normal.
Superman unwittingly commits his first teacherly sin: The patented eye roll.
SM: When you critique, you're giving your opinions on something you've analyzed.
Robert: Then I critique this class to be boring and stupid.
SM: Fine. If it's such a waste of your time, you can leave.
Robert: For real?
SM: If you think that's the wisest choice for your future, sure.
Calling his new teacher's bluff, Robert gets up and exits. Superman struggles to mask his consternation.
Garrett: Now can I read?
SM: Uh... sure. Please continue.
Garrett: ...Their ret... ret...
Anonymous Kid: Retards!
SM: Who said that? Don't say that!
It's impossible to identify the culprit. Several students break out into hyena-like laughter.
SM: The word is retinas. It's part of the surface of the eye. Keep going, son. Doing just fine.
Garrett: ... retinas... are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of...e normous yellow spec... spectacles.
SM: Good! So what are we looking at here? What might this image represent in the story? In other words, why would the author take all this time to describe this creepy, old billboard? Why? Come on, even if you haven't read this part yet -- think.
While a few more casualties of boredom and apathy plop their heads on their desks, several students look as though they might be poised to volunteer possible answers. One kid even begins to raise his hand -- but he's interrupted by yet another frazzled intercom announcement.
Intercom: Teachers and students: we have an important message for all girls frosh-soph cheer candidates. Girls' JV cheer tryouts have been rescheduled from this coming Tuesday to this coming Wednesday on the main field near the big gym. Please adjust your schedules accordingly. Thank you.
SM: (nonplused) OK, so again: Why does Fitzgerald want us to care about the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg?
Diana shoots up her hand.
SM: Yes! The young lady in the light blue blouse!
Diana: Can I go to the bathroom?
SM: Is it an emergency?
Diana: No.
SM: Then no.
Arpine raises her hand.
Arpine: Can we have our old teacher back?
Arpine looks two seats over at Arman for affirmation.
Arman: Yeah, we want Ms. Hamlisch.
Tanya: (to Arman) Damn, you don't have to be rude about it.
SM: Thank you young lady, but I think it's time I leveled with you kids. The district brought me in because they said your test scores were poor and that you lacked motivation. Then they told me your teachers were also mailing it in and that this school had become a dropout factory. They said you needed someone who could come in and bring up your test scores immediately, that you needed someone better than a teacher.
Arturo: But you can't even figure out how to use a door.
Arturo's snap elicits a wave of "oohs" and "ahhs" from his classmates.
SM: Fine. I get it. None of you likes me.
Angel: You got that right.
Stephanie: Speak for yourself, dummy.
SM: The point is, we all have a job to do, right here and now. You know what? Forget Gatsby. Instead, go home tonight and find a newspaper article that interests you. Read it in its entirety, then write a one-page response. In your paper, give your reactions to everything that's going on in that article -- the good, the bad, and how it makes you feel overall.
Jesus: Can it be sports?
SM: Sports, world affairs, local, politics, entertainment, whatever. As long as it's published in a legitimate newspaper, it's fair game.
Moises: Does it have to be in English?
SM: Preferably, yes.
Diana: Can it be from the TV news?
SM: No. I want you to read something.
Garrett: What if you don't get the newspaper?
SM: Access one online. Just Google Search the name of the newspaper. OK, then...
The bell rings. In one big, amorphous mass, the class gets up to leave. But Tanya lags behind.
Tanya: Superperson?
SM: It's Superman. What can I do for you, young lady?
Tanya: Yeah, um, I don't get the newspaper. And I don't have Internet.
With his super-cognition, Superman can discern that Tanya's telling the honest truth. He tries to hide his sadness.
SM: Uh... then how about you do a write-up of the last book you read?
Tanya: I've never read a full-on book -- all the way 'till the end, I mean. I read most of Goosebumps, but that was like in sixth grade.
SM: Well, then... what was the last movie you watched?
Tanya:Hostel 2.
SM: Doesn't quite ring a bell... Oh, what the hay: just go ahead and write up your reaction to that then -- like a film review. Have you ever read a film review?
Tanya: Uh-uh.
SM: Basically, just explain whether or not you thought the movie was entertaining and interesting, or if it was disappointing or boring -- or perhaps even both. OK?
Tanya nods unconvincingly. She leaves right as a new wave of students rumble in for the start of second period. Superman's virtually unaware of the incoming group. Instead, he stares forlornly out the door, watching Tanya disappear into a sea of her peers. And the reality hits him: She won't do it.]]>Yankees Outbid Yankees for Lee's Services (Satire)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7931042010-12-07T10:57:22-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/
At the outset of the MLB Winter Meetings in Orlando, FL on Monday, Lee's agent, Darek Braunecker, had received separate offers from only two franchises: the Texas Rangers and the Yankees, for four and five years respectively. But on Tuesday, moments after receiving a Yankees follow-up offer for an additional year, Braunecker conceded to being "blown away" by yet another Yankees offer that will put his coveted client in pinstripes through his fiftieth birthday -- and perhaps beyond.
Said a still thunderstruck Braunecker, "The second I got the text from Cashman (Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman) for the seven-year deal, I thought to myself, Um, yes please! But by the time I picked up my office phone to call Brian and Hal (Yankees co-owner Hal Steinbrenner), they'd already texted me with an eighteen-year counteroffer."
Responding via text-message from a deer hunting trip near his home in rural Arkansas, Lee remained cautiously optimistic about the offer's veracity. "hly crap, r u seeryus? This bettr not be unother 1 of dem dang praktul jokes brody u tule!!! Ra8zrbaaaaakcks!!!1!"
Lee, an avid outdoorsman whose favorite activities include crossbow deer hunting, fly fishing, and bear trapping, later responded to press inquiries about his unorthodox choice of leisure activities from his smoke house via cell phone.
"Basically, here's the deal," said Lee, "Anything on this green earth that has a heartbeat and ain't in the image of Christ almighty, I'm puttin' buckshots in. Oh. And let's go Yankees!"
When asked if he thought Lee could sustain his current form over the length of the contract, Braunecker said, "Well, let's see: He's a 32-year-old who's had a grand total of four really good years in his entire career, a history of back issues, and a fastball that has been described by some scouts as slower than The English Patient. With that said, I challenge anyone to quantify his intangibles," which, Braunecker said, include Quaker-like stoicism, a sporadic lisp, and a "second to none" collection of medieval weaponry and penitence devices.
"Um, did someone just order up some instant clubhouse chemistry?" chimed Braunecker.
The new contract, which calls for the coveted hurler to earn more than $460 million over eighteen seasons, with a $30 million player option for a possible nineteenth, will effectively make Lee the highest paid pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball.
Although the Yankees have earned a dubious reputation for offering what some critics perceive as egregiously exorbitant contracts to free agents, team officials view Lee's acquisition as essential to a franchise whose starting pitching has often foundered despite an annual payroll that annually exceeds $200 million.
"I'm sure we're going to catch a lot of flak for this one," said Cashman, who is reportedly also set to offer ageless hurler Jamie Moyer a seven-year $85 million deal that will have the 24-year veteran lefty pitching in the Bronx well into his mid-fifties. "But my credo is, when you know that you really want something, you've gotta' just go for it. Unless, you know, you're the Pirates."
]]>Debunking the Fairy Tale of School Reformtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7820102010-11-11T18:35:47-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/Recently, I attempted to unpack the media-augmented narrative -- and national hot button issue du jour -- of public education reform within the context of a fairy tale. I chose the fairy tale as my medium because I couldn't think of any other storytelling device that was simultaneously so magnificently far-fetched and so widely recounted.
And yet, for me to sit here and claim that this fable from hell is complete fiction is just as disingenuous as the media's repeated insistence on its utter veracity. Because embedded among the sweeping generalizations, circular reasoning, scapegoating, and causal oversimplification of this grand morality tale are baby-corn kernels of truth. Which is why it makes for such superb propaganda.
So, allow me to clarify.
Never have public school teachers been more scrutinized, vilified -- and beset by an absolutely staggering array of challenges. Contrary to the sound bytes you hear about the scores of inexperienced teachers amassed in troubled schools, on average, public schoolteachers are more qualified than ever due to a litany of state and federal regulations. Teachers are now required to have advanced and extensive training in addressing the needs of an ever-expanding population of English language learners and students with emotional psychological, and physical disabilities (all while somehow healing the wounds of the centuries of social and racial inequity that has spawned gaping disparities in student performance). Meanwhile, classrooms are bursting at the seams; students are more easily distracted and less literate; support networks have faded into insignificance; and pay and benefits have been slashed. And yet, because teachers are neither publicists nor advertising executives, they are getting brutalized in the PR wars. Their only verbal defense against the constant barrage of denigration has been the even less sympathetic union bosses, who come off sounding more like fat-cat apologists than advocates of fairness and equity.
But lazy, emotionally detached teachers do exist. They complain about meager salaries; substitute creative instructional strategies with pointless busy work; and devour sports sections and crossword puzzles during prep periods. Some of these laggards are virtually invisible and unknowable to their students and peers, ignoring students with glaring deficiencies or mysteriously vanishing into the nooks and shadows of massive school campuses in the middle of faculty meetings. The only thing that ever really reanimates their drooping carcasses are the days leading up to major holiday breaks. Consequently, they possess an almost infinitesimally narrow window of approachability, generally limited to the times in which they're clad in ironically mirthful homemade Christmas or Easter sweaters. Astoundingly -- and tragically -- this small minority of nonperformers has done more to stain the reputation of the teaching profession than him, him, and him combined. Good teachers, whom, I repeat, comprise the vast majority of the occupation, silently resent these people: After countless hours of training, testing, self-educating, tutoring, lesson-planning, mentoring, monitoring, nurturing, grading, counseling, innovating, coaching, and explicating concepts to students with yawning spectrums of ability and ambition levels, they're tired of having to defend the five percent of their peers who have given district officials, reformers, legislators trolling for sound bytes, and the media fodder for demonizing an entire profession.
The unions, while a necessary safeguard against exploitative working conditions -- common practice during the seminal, non-union years of the teaching profession -- can lose sight of their ultimate purpose: enabling teachers to work safely and effectively in environments that foster student learning, while ensuring that their wages alleviate the need to moonlight as Applebee's busboys and hostesses. But the unions have the tendency to overreach, protecting individuals who clearly have no business in the profession; at other times, they get bogged down in an interminable process of political horse-trading. In so doing, they become lumbering, unsympathetic public relations hazards and an albatross for educators who simultaneously need them but who also cringe when they're reminded how stubbornly dogmatic they can be.
The meteoric rise in popularity and reverence for former Washington DC schools chancellor -- and grandstanding media diva -- Michelle Rhee says all you need to know about just how universally despised teachers' unions have become. The thing about Rhee is that she's been endowed with an epic lack of providence and tact. Yet, last year, she offered a shockingly semi-rational proposal to the local union, wherein teachers would be given the opportunity for significant merit-based pay increases in exchange for one year of their coveted tenure. The union, justifiably leery of an agreement that would link test scores to teachers' salaries, predictably huffed and puffed and slammed the door on Rhee. Except there was just one problem with their stratagem: Rhee's proposal had both logic and merit -- two qualities that I never would have expected to associate with a person whom I picture killing a housefly with an R.P.G., agent orange and a drone missile strike. Rather than dismissing her proposal (which, in actuality, was more of a directive) out of hand, the union could have seized the high ground, returning to the table with a pragmatic alternative. Instead, the union's intransigence further cemented their image in the court of public opinion as a bunch of Machiavellian bullies.
Endowed with the state's imprimatur to practice the creativity and independence with which traditional public schools aren't endowed, charter schools might seem to offer the prospect of being the remedy to many of education's ills. Unfortunately, they don't really work -- at least not in all the ways they were intended. Their overall lack of effectiveness is becoming steadily more apparent, despite fawning media accounts of some glowing exceptions. Some, like Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone, along with the handful of others showcased in vaunted documentarian Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for 'Superman', give us small-sample glimpses of best-case scenarios in which strong, prescient leaders employ school-parent coalitions to marshal a wide range of academic and human resources from across a community. This glimmer of promise is what makes charters so seductive. But most recent studies show that, while some charters are wildly successful, many fare worse than their traditional counterparts (only one in six significantly outperforms traditional public schools). And due to a disturbing absence of state or federal oversight, others fail abysmally.
Ultimately, it takes a force of nature with the political wherewithal and unparalleled chutzpah of a Geoffrey Canada to even begin to turn around a failing school, be it a traditional one or a charter. So, as charters increase their numbers over the next decade, expect their results to more closely mirror those of traditional public schools. In other words, today's charters are 2020's "failure factories."
Lastly, with the backing of corporate titans, and with the political winds at their collective backs, a new breed of school reformers has emerged, contributing two key ingredients to the issue failing schools: name recognition and gobs of money. Offering one celebrity to put public education at the forefront of a national debate is laudable: All high-profile public figures should likewise feel the moral pull to parlay their influence into community uplift. But for years, small groups of concerned teachers and parents across the nation have protested the unacceptable conditions under which less economically endowed students and schools have been forced to operate. That none of their last names were Gates, Buffet, Bloomberg, Broad, Murdoch, or Winfrey doomed their movement before it began.
For better or worse, it took a (virtual) village -- of million and billionaires -- to finally push these issues to the front page of our local newspapers. In fact, had these benevolent aristocrats never been bitten by the voracious liberal guilt bug in the first place, we may not even be having this conversation. But they were, and so now here they are, poised to save the world from the national blight of lackluster Home Ec. teachers. Unfortunately, most of the reformistocracy exists in hermetically sealed orbs of affluence and privilege. Never having attended or taught in struggling schools, they remain virtually oblivious to the pervasive challenges that routinely dog disadvantaged kids -- challenges that remain conspicuously absent from the fairy tale narrative. And so it shouldn't come as a shock that these aspiring altruists view public schools as irrevocably malevolent entities.
To his credit, Guggenheim admits to recently having his epiphany. While dropping his daughters off at (private) school, the filmmaker concedes in a recent NPR interview of creeping feelings of guilt while driving past some of the more ominous-looking LA school sites. Not quite enough guilt to send his own kids there, mind you, but just enough to bury those individuals he deems responsible for such an unconscionable charade.
Then, in a recent Time piece, Guggenheim, whose blistering film has him entrenched as one of the more prominent voices of the reform movement, is pictured at home, reading to his two grade-school-age daughters in a well-appointed living space. The younger one burrows into her father's side; the older one gazes up at him admiringly. In the background, bookshelves brim with Chekov, Eliot, Hemingway and what amounts to Phaidon's greatest hits. It's a portrait that's both beautiful and disheartening -- beautiful for its warmth and intimacy, disheartening because such an existence is completely alien to so many children who have no books on their living room shelves, no parent to read to them, no solace in the crook of a father's torso. Apparently blinded by his own good fortune, Guggenheim ironically fails to acknowledge the critical role that a nurturing, intellectually stimulating household plays in a child's cognitive development. Instead, in Superman, he blindly slams dilapidated schools, the unions, and the institution of public education, ad nauseum, while giving parents, school officials, and the economic and social conditions that produce intellectually hobbled children a free pass. It's discouraging: Guggenheim could have done something truly revolutionary. Instead, just like the rest of his reformist clique, he drank the Kool-Aid.]]>The Fairy Tale of School Reformtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7775572010-11-04T01:01:32-04:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/Ali G. interview. And while it's had innumerable opportunities to unravel the eternal conundrum of public education through exhaustive research and nuanced reporting, the press has all but ignored its obligation to offer the public a sober, informed, balanced discourse on a topic with such critical short- and long-term import.
Instead, the school reform debate screeches to its ignoble crescendo. The media has gone all STORM WATCH on us, opting for a sensational script over substance, and emphasizing the fear factor by manufacturing predictable boogie men. For the most part, the American public has jumped onboard for yet another ride on the self-righteous victimhood express.
This half-baked journalistic approach is put on full display in a recent Time expose, wherein the magazine dedicates 16 pages of prime real estate to the school reform quandary. One of the many confounding nuggets broached in the piece is the need for more effective teacher training. Reporter John Cloud writes:
More than 85% of U.S. teachers have an education degree. But many ed schools are fusty, politicized institutions that seem designed to turn out reliable teachers'-union members rather than reliable educators.
He's dead wrong, of course. But Cloud's not alone. Substituting commentary and speculation for substance is all critical to maintaining a compelling narrative. But rather than making a broad assumption based on pure speculation and hearsay, Cloud might have interviewed actual teachers-in-training and impending credential candidates -- though that would have required actual work. Had he sat in on some classes, Cloud would have discovered how patently ridiculous his claim of union infiltration is. Most credential and certification programs are on some level affiliated with local school districts, most of which serve as unions' bitter nemeses. Throughout my own two-plus year credentialing odyssey at Cal. State University, Northridge, I didn't hear the word "union" uttered once, in any context. In fact, along with the annoyance of being given stilted, theoretical -- oftentimes impractical -- lessons in pedagogy and classroom management by instructors who'd been out of public school teaching for years (and, in some cases, decades), a common complaint among my fellow students was that the CSUN teacher preparation curriculum hewed too narrowly to district-sanctioned, state-generated student learning standards -- guidelines that unions had virtually zero input in creating.
When I asked him to reflect on his recently completed CSUN credentialing experience, Greg Cover, a third-year Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus teacher at a public high school located in Van Nuys, CA said, "Some parts were better than others. However, I still think I'm learning to become a better teacher and figuring out what works as I'm teaching. Teaching theory in a book is nothing compared to actually teaching in the classroom." And as for the union's influence? "No," Cover replied. "The union was never mentioned."
Now, I won't say Cloud's lying, but he's clearly been caught up in the vortex of myth-making that camouflages journalism in commentary and speculation. But uncomfortable contradictions and persistent ambiguities kill the buzz of righteous indignation. So lest we let facts bog down a gripping narrative, I submit to you the grand morality tale of school reform.
Once upon a time...
... There lived a group of altruists known as the public school reformists. These munificent spirits selflessly set aside their unfathomably important lives in addressing such a dire issue. What this rarefied collection of heaven-sent do-gooders lacked in basic knowledge of classroom pedagogy and actual firsthand contact with nanny-less human schoolchildren, they more than compensated for in name recognition; soaring rhetoric; and the blind, unwavering conviction that nothing less than a systemic upheaval of the current school system could salvage public education.
Standing in their way were the teachers' unions, Machiavellian cash cows and indomitable incarnations of evil. These oppressors of excellence and ambition enacted a scorched earth policy that forged unholy alliances, bulldozed opposition and entrenched mediocrity for evermore. Their dizzying array of political machinations created a trickle-down effect that was responsible for mashing the dreams of schoolchildren hopelessly lodged in a system that set them on a path for a lifetime of failure, misery, and working at El Pollo Loco.
Thankfully, unions were largely unwelcome inside the kingdom of charter schools. (If you're not sure what one looks like, follow the next rainbow you see: It will inevitably lead to one of these bastions of hope and academic success.) Hailed by reformists as the great new panacea of public education, and fiercely championed by beacons of social justice such as the Obama administration and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (and just about every other guilt-ridden, well-heeled philanthropist who wouldn't dare release his or her own children into the lion's den of a public school campus), these islands of student achievement offered disenchanted parents and their children hope for a sound education that was free of charge and free from the crushing bureaucracy that otherwise hinders a child's intellectual development.
Tragically, not all public schoolchildren were fortunate enough to gain admission to their charter school of choice, a conundrum that inevitably spelled permanent doom for their academic prospects. These unfortunate youngsters became innocent victims in the charade of failing school and ineffective teacher roulette. By this point, all were fully aware that the main reason kids failed was not because they were oftentimes lazy or complacent; not because their parents weren't injecting themselves into their lives in meaningful ways; not because their curiosity, love of learning, and relationship with the written word hadn't been snuffed out by years of high-stakes test prep and spleen-crushing, soul-ravaging literature anthologies; and not because they'd consumed thousands of prime learning and developmental hours Facebooking, TV-watching or all-night XBox Live marathoning: It was because teachers kept giving up on them!
... Snug inside their comfy tenure-pension-padded cocoons, these so-called educators were little more than abetting agents of the status quo. As impossible to fire as Supreme Court justices, their daily highlights included slurping gallons of coffee, surfing the Net, and treating students like fungible livestock. Some of the younger, more idealistic ones were passable at their craft for a while. But unable to stave off the evil wrought by eight weeks of summer recess, caffeine addiction, and the power to issue or deny restroom passes most transitioned to the dark side within a handful of years. And the closer their classrooms were to the teacher's cafeteria -- where self-righteous indignation was served up with as much frequency as tuna helper -- the more rapid the descent.
So there you have it: The story of school reform as framed by the national media.
Obviously, the final chapter of this hyperbolic fairy tale from hell has yet to be written. But by now, it's blatantly obvious where it's all headed. In the end, there will be no surprises, no twists of fate. We'll get exactly what we've been asking for all along: easy, concrete "solutions" to some of the most doggedly perplexing problems since the advent of the public school system.
Nevertheless, stay tuned as I attempt to debunk every last bit of it.]]>A Promise to the Students of an Uncool Teachertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7486602010-10-06T12:27:36-04:002011-05-25T17:55:20-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/Ben Stein's bungalow.
Their eyes say it all: This can't be him. I thought he was supposed to be cool.
I'm not cool -- not really. I'll drive them hard, teach them how to write with cohesion, cogence, logos. And then I'll show them how to develop a writer's voice, how to break away from the abysmally insipid five-paragraph manacles to which they've been collectively shackled since seventh grade.
Oh, and keep your No. 2 pencils inside your backpacks; no need for them here. There'll be no bubbling, no multiple choice-ing, no false-hoping that you can narrow your choices down by half if you just eliminate the two dumbest possibilities. It'll be uncomfortable at first. Most change is. You'll hear yourself utter sentences you'd never thought possible, like, "If we're really good today, can we take a Scantron instead?"
No. You can't. Scantron's are amateur night.
But you'll need pens for sure. Lots of them -- to write all of those essays. And you'll need plenty of highlighters to annotate all of the books we'll read. Full-length books -- not excerpts or anecdotes or brief, sanitized musings squeezed into insipid 87-pound literature anthologies that have done more to alienate kids from books than XBox 360, Facebook, and pot combined.
And I realize that it says American Lit. and Comp on your program card, but we'll read all kinds of books. Ones that burn like acid and ones that heal and nurture like a mother's embrace -- ones that are also mostly estranged from the high school literary canon. You'll read books that capture and distill the human condition, that pry your eyes open to the lives and realities beyond our own. (You have every damn right to be as enriched, worldly, and culturally literate as any of the most elite private school kids, whose academic curricula are impervious to the drudgery of mandatory testing schedules.) Books are the great social equalizer in that they can transport anyone around the world, regardless of race or economic wherewithal. Reading "Enrique's Journey", "The Bookseller of Kabul", "The Omnivore's Dilemma", "Always Running", "Night", "Siddartha", "The Kite Runner", "First They Killed My Father", "Say You're One of Them", "Fastfood Nation", "Through a Window", "The Invisible Man" and Plato's "Republic" will hopefully get you at least halfway there.
Never heard of any of them? Good. All the better. That way, there'll be no preconceived notions or false expectations, much like the ones I see dashed on your faces right now.
I thought he was supposed to be cool.
Sure, we'll probably read some Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Salinger -- all of whom I love -- but we'll save the dead white guys for last, just in case our class time's further truncated by even more standardized test prep, furlough days, or campus lockdowns.
I'm not saying any of this, of course. It's all contained in the syllabus, which they'll receive tomorrow. They'll want to spend the whole period going over that, too, for no other reason than to further put off the expectation of them to do actual work. But I'll tell them to read it on their own time and to approach me individually with any questions or concerns. Most won't do either.
They're still glaring at me, still replete with sullen bait-and-switch resentment. It's okay: they'll get over it.
They don't need me to be cool, to avail their day with faux sunshine and syrupy smiles, to tell them everything they want to hear, to shower them with tired platitudes and trite aphorisms, to inform them that they're all great exactly the way they are. Because it's a lie. Some of them need to make dramatic changes -- and fast. Eleventh grade is one of the flashpoints of a person's academic existence, and some of my students have somehow slogged through five years of middle and high school without ever cracking a book or scrawling a note. These are the kids who jolt to nervous attention when I announce the first rule of my class: No heads down on desks, under any circumstances. (Judging from their body language, the offending rule was tantamount to suggesting that our government should place a moratorium on summer recess, texting, pizza day, Christmas, and oversized black hoodies.)
Many more of my other students view high school as little more than a cumbersome right of passage, acknowledging its necessity but viewing it as a mostly pointless series of inconveniences. They're not entirely wrong, but my goal is to make it less inane, to give them ample opportunities to accumulate knowledge that endures beyond these doors of what they perceive as hollow temporality -- in essence, to enable them to see that their futures are happening right now.
I use the craft of teaching to fortify them with learning tools and imbue them with a sense of urgency. Critics of the profession, many of whom currently identify themselves with the "reformist" meme, maintain that this is standard procedure, and therefore should be slam-dunk easy for any teacher. But the truth is, if most of them ventured to accomplish what I -- and many of my colleagues -- attempt to accomplish for one full school day, they would awaken the following morning feeling like they had just rushed for 30 carries against the Baltimore Ravens defense. Think I'm exaggerating? Go ahead and try it -- for one full day. The occupation of real teaching requires bottomless amounts of energy, mental acuity, caring, and passion. There are no cubicles to retreat to, no "hold my calls," and few restroom breaks. And the job is literally never finished (as I glance at the already daunting stack of essays on my desk). Yet, as I look into this sea of temporary resentment in front of me, I couldn't imagine my life without it.
I am a mentor, a teacher, but not a friend. (Isn't that what Facebook's for?) I'm not interested in niceness. Fairness is another story. Equity. Justice. These kids, many of whom have the opportunity to be the first ones in their family to attend college, should all be entitled to not President Obama's view of a world-class education, which involves exhaustive standardized testing prep and expertise in bubble-filling, but my view (which I share with some truly exceptional colleagues), which incorporates critical thinking with advanced literacy and writing skills and, ultimately, a more holistic, ethical and informed world view. Bubble that.
Although I'm not cool, every so often, I'm funny. I crack daft, self-deprecating jokes, occasionally belt out obscure, off-key, 80s pop hits (Kim Wilde, anyone?) and dole out heaping amounts of high-fives and exploding fist bumps. But that'll all come later. That is, if I ever get of this room with all of my limbs intact.
]]>Value-Added Misses the Mark - And the Pointtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7078862010-09-07T15:49:10-04:002011-05-25T17:35:19-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/that's what we've been told. In the span of time it's taken the L.A. Times to publish what amounted to a three-part love letter extolling the attributes of the esoteric system, Value-Added has gone from experimental evaluation metric to union-busting public education panacea.
Perhaps fearing that their remaining readership would be frightened away by too much complexity, the L.A. Times mostly avoided divulging anything more than a brief overview of the mechanics behind the Value-Added system's calculus and application, choosing instead to focus on the ways in which the new metric will inevitably lead to a systematic dismantling of job security that has apparently lead to such egregiously horrid teaching in the first place.
As a result, Value-Added has officially gone hot-button. Gaping holes of knowledge be damned, the possible virtues and vices of the once obscure system's implementation are nonetheless being hotly debatedthroughout the media, likely at this very moment. It's no surprise. Few things get red-blooded Americans' juices flowing quite like heated rhetoric in which half-truths and false premises are bandied about with the conviction of biblical scripture.
And so the newest "It" metric has alternately been lauded and skewered by radio call-in show guests; decried by union bosses; embraced by parents and civic leaders; and exalted by politicians and newspaper columnists, most of whom couldn't tell you what SDAIE stood for if their kids' Campbell Hall tuition depended on it. Even local news telecasts, momentarily pausing from head-tilting accounts of kitties in trees, red carpet romances, and pre-K-ers lodged in wells, have latched on to the red meat offering of the week, starring the shiniest new toy of the public sector. Its clandestine implementation throughout L.A.'s elementary schools prompted the Times'HUAC-esque outing of the latest group of nefarious mustache-twirlers to grace the American pop culture landscape: teachers (momentarily supplanting investment bank CEOs, billionaire Ponzi schemers, Al Qaeda operatives, and Ben Roethlisberger).
Because Value-Added has been rubber-stamped by clueless school officials, grasping for ways to justify their own existence, and tacitly endorsed by a noteworthy media source that has seemingly become the de facto propaganda wing of the anti-teacher movement, public opinion has begun to eagerly follow suit.
Not that pitting the general population against public school teachers constitutes a major coup. In seeking out a quick and easy scapegoat for an institution beleaguered by a litany of maddeningly complex and seemingly intractable issues, teachers have, for years, been branded as the symbols of a crumbling public education system. We're often caricatured as coffee-swilling, tenure-groping slackers, selfishly standing in the way of student academic growth. It's a portrayal that's comforting, insofar as it absolves the rest of society from any degree of responsibility in raising healthy, ethical, intelligent, socially responsible human beings.
Except there's a fly in the ointment. It seems that the process of repairing public education may take a smidge longer than the time required to nuke a Hot Pocket, and advocates of quick-fix policy will be sad to discover that Value-Added has been described by academics, journalists, and educators as "unreliable," "inconclusive," "unpredictable," "controversial," "flawed," and "unstable." Even the Department of Education weighed in, essentially dismissing the system as too volatile for use in high-stakes evaluations.
Yet in the blind sprint to placate a restive public with any measurement that perceives to merge accountability with transparency, Value-Added has arbitrarily - and prematurely - been coronated by school districts and their fawning officials as the preeminent teacher evaluation method known to humankind, making it a central component in the process of grading - and oftentimes, burying - educators. In Washington D.C., where the system comprises 50 percent of a teacher's overall evaluation, Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee summarily fired 26 teachers due to poor Value-Added scores; in Tennessee and Louisiana, the metric also accounts for half of a teacher's overall annual evaluation; and just last week, LAUSD Supt. Ramon Cortines' vow to make a strong push for it to account for 30 percent of all of the district's teachers' assessments was subsequently followed by the school board's backing. All of this while even the metric's staunchest advocates warn that it should not be used as a primary assessment tool.
From an educator's perspective, it's disquieting to know that the leaders of some of the biggest school districts in the land are completely undaunted by such a paucity of evidence. That, in their quest for having their names associated with school reform, they are either unaware or unmoved by what schools are rapidly morphing into: testing factories, where learning is redefined as a neat, tidy, easily quantifiable process in which a student's ability to master a standardized assessment is directly linked with his level of knowledge. This stubborn refusal by school officials to let inconveniences like acumen, facts, or long-term research hinder their single-minded political aspirations are deeply troubling on two fronts (and yet eerily reminiscent of our nation's "I'm the decider"zeitgeist).
First off, hundreds of innovative, dedicated educators - who most sane observers would consider exceptional at their profession - have been unceremoniously exposed to the public as substandard - courtesy of the L.A. Times, the Value-Added metric, and the concept of audacity. For Times reporters Jason Felch, Howard Blume, David Lauter, and Jason Song to then turn around and take a laughably disingenuous We're -just-reporting-the-facts stance on local call-in shows, days after performing what has amounted to a blind witch hunt, borders on the unconscionable. And providing outed teachers with a designated space to respond to their respective scores in their own personal chat rooms of shame - as the Times has so charitably done - does almost nothing to repair the damage incurred to one's professional reputation. Visibly confounded by such a brazen display of insensitivity, LAUSD school board member Steve Zimmer admonished, "There is a recklessness to putting out a database that is incomplete."
(That a once trusted news source is now trying desperately to revive their diminished relevance beyond lining the bottom of parakeet cages across the Southland by attempting to disgrace teachers is blatantly obvious, shamefully injurious - and more than a wee bit pathetic.)
Linda Brown, a 5th-grade teacher at Hazeltine Avenue Elementary, railed against the Times' disclosure of her Value-Added scores, which designate her "less effective than average overall." On her designated link, Brown inveighed against the results, writing:
I am extremely upset and disappointed with your findings. I would like to know if I was being compared to other 5th-grade teachers with the same demographics and the same school-wide focus. For example, writing was our focus one year and writing was not tested on the CST.
(That's right, concerned parents and taxpayers: A student's writing proficiency is one of the many higher level academic skills for which the most statistically consequential of all the high-stakes California tests does not assess. Also not tested: Research, speaking, listening, and organizational skills. Good luck in college, kids!)
There's also the fact that most of what we do know about Value-Added is what we don't know. Most conspicuously, it has yet to be widely implemented in secondary schools, many of which possess a bevy of variables that the overhyped and over-utilized metric cannot begin to accurately measure, such as frequent student transiency, erratic academic performance resulting from emotional or physical trauma, and the disturbingly common occurrence in which many kids utterly stop trying long before they physically drop out of school. And what about gang activity, deportation, PTSD, pregnancy, and abortion?
Contrary to what the expanding retinue of Value-Added disciples may claim, there are other, more meaningful, accurate, and equitable paths to accountability. But drafting and refining such a system is a fool's errand until we first examine and then reach some kind of consensus on the question of what a good teacher really is. Is a good teacher a classroom showman? A tireless advocate? A subversive visionary? A nurturing mentor? A stern taskmaster? A didactic academic? A test-prep facilitator?
Critics will claim that reaching a consensus on such criteria will be impossible, due to the task's inherent subjectivity. But why reinvent the wheel? Why not simply invoke the attributes and teaching styles displayed by our best teachers - you know, the ones from whom we learned the most, the ones who pushed us to keep our eyes open, our heads up, and our minds laboring with intensity and complexity. They were models of persistence who inspired through force of will, when necessary. Their classes - always dynamic, engaging, and challenging - ended seemingly moments after they began. (Theirs were some of the few classes in which we didn't rejoice upon discovery of a substitute nervously positioned at the front of class, poised to press "play" on a wheezing VCR.) They were bookish iconoclasts; Random House rebels. They understood that real learning could and should be a messy, arduous, creative, introspective process. I can still recall Mr. Evans, my Global Studies teacher from sophomore year, glibly referring to students who excelled on standardized tests and yet faltered when confronted with more analytical coursework as "Bubble-Bots."
Michelle Rhee would've had him on the unemployment line in less time than it takes to say "teacher accountability."]]>Welcome to Bubble Boy Nationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6961092010-08-26T16:20:50-04:002011-05-25T17:30:22-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/KinderKords. Toddler tracking systems. Mall trick-or-treating. Mouth guard party favors. Playground helmets.
Welcome to Bubble Boy Nation, a place inhabited by overprotective parents; delicate, overindulged children; and two major political parties that routinely capitulate to legions of lobbyists and special interest groups, whose main objectives are to a.) guilt parents into purchasing the latest in overpriced, unsustainable flotsam, lest their children ever become sandbox pariahs, and b.) exploit the massive heapings of media-pedaled fear and paranoia, already imbued in the minds of most parents, as their little ones amble off to gang-infested, shooting-spree-addled schools.
Our powers of observation tell us that some of the most prolific structures currently being erected across suburban landscapes are the heinously ornate iron gates that would make a Persian sultan wince and say, "Dude, seriously: that's just tacky." Looming over high-end, tree-lined neighborhoods throughout the region, they sequester and constrict Southland McTudor-styles and McColonials like so many medieval castle moats (effectively separating families, fragmenting neighborhoods, and making communities less safe); that the most well-attended slumber parties now occur at museums; that, overall, children are more indolent and less literate than they were two decades ago; that the most popular gathering spot for children on Halloween night now occurs somewhere between Bed Bath and Beyond and Things Remembered; and that, perhaps most ominously, fewer children are spending time outdoors - playing games, mowing lawns, and just plain bumming around with peers - than ever before.
To be fair, there were far fewer distractions - and options - back in 1990. Twenty years ago, widespread utterance of the term "X-Box Live" would have prompted not thousands of adolescents into endless hours of online gaming ecstasy, but instead a batten-down-the-hatches, code-orange call-to-arms against depravity for the last remnants of the Moral Majority. And back in the be-mulletted era of Collective Soul and House of Pain, the act of "just hanging out with friends" actually required a modicum of planning and follow-through, and couldn't be accomplished simply by accessing a password on one's laptop or iPhone. There were also fewer reasons to keep children corn-fed and cloistered in dens, panic rooms, and Discovery Zones: For one thing, the scream-tastic, freaks-on-parade domain of 24-hour cable news scare-mongers had yet to seize absolute control over our TV sets - and the already active imaginations of parents across the nation.
But the early 90s were also a time when most American teens were able to handle Macbethand the one-mile-run and getting drilled in the face by third-year senior Frankie Del Maccio's 80-mile-per-hour "widow-maker" during dodgeball in P.E. class by their sophomore year, without so much as one personal pain and suffering lawsuit levied against the school district, the gym teacher, or the kickball manufacturers.
To a certain degree, such an exaggerated level of concern for our children's physical and emotional welfare is not entirely without precedent, and even has some of its roots planted in antiquity. Plato cautioned fellow Greeks against divulging the myths of the gods - a notoriously NC-17 lot of irredeemably wanton bacchanalians - to little ones perhaps too young and impressionable to comprehend their allegorical nature, as well as the social necessity of implementing such cautionary tales of debauchery and deceit (tales, incidentally, that pale in quantity, degree, and creepiness to the rampant violence, sex, and inexplicably graphic episodes of fetishism found in the Hebrew Bible).
So what are we so afraid of? Despite an overall dramatic drop in violent crime committed against children over the past decade, the percentage of kids who walk or ride their bikes to school has plummeted, from 41 percent in 1969 to 13 percent in 2001. And death by injury to children has also dropped - by more than 50 percent since 1980. Once deemed safe enough for children to frolic in the street unattended, the new suburban outdoors has been re-imagined, through endless over-the-top media accounts, as killing field gauntlet.
Several weeks ago, at a playground near my apartment in Studio City - a self-conscious Valley enclave - my wife and I stood slack-jawed as we watched an irate mother rip into her preschool-age son for talking to another preschooler. "Don't talk to him," she fumed in that piercing whisper that somehow registers twice as loud as the average person's scream. "You don't even know him!" Even now, I remain unable to pin down exactly what this woman was thinking. Did she really believe that the other kid was a mark, set up to lure unsuspecting pre-K-ers away from their parents and into the back of a ped-a-van? And do we really live in a world whose cynicism is so pervasive that it leads us into this line of thinking by default?
(If you just answered "yes" and "yes" to the above questions, you're officially in the running to win one of these.)
Clearly, in a post-YouTube world, the back of the milk carton has gone completely viral. Abducted children - especially white, female pre-adolescents - are the new high-speed car chases, with some subtle differences. High-speed chases gave us the rush and satiation of instant gratification, otherwise known as American heroin: Banded around TV sets or viewing alone, watching the chases produced a variant of communal bonding. At that given moment, we were among thousands of citizens glued to the TV screen. Tethered by a common (if slightly irrational) desire for swift and harsh justice, we shared in experiencing an accelerated plot arc, of knowing that it won't be long now before that methed-out perp in the '83 El Camino, sheathed in head-to-toe White Power regalia, gets sideswiped, stymied, and ultimately apprehended by beefy, taser-happy, baton-wielding cops. Apprehended children, on the other hand, provide TV audiences with a real-time whodunit, augmented by breathless reports from "field" correspondents (whose wardrobe pre-req. of button-pocketed khaki shirt assures viewers of the situation's gravity and degree of possible peril) and up-to-the-minute gossip crawls - once upon a time reserved exclusively for stodgy stock price updates - screaming across the bottom of the TV screen:
Girl found playing in Pennsylvania barn not Ashley Breslow...Tiger Woods to leave PGA tour to "spend more time with family"...Poll: 1 in 3 Americans fear Obama is really Bin Laden...Girl in Michigan found eating BLT sandwich not Ashley Breslow...Brett Favre seen eating hoagie: Philly-bound?...
But overprotecting, over-admonishing, and over-sheltering kids from strangers actually makes them less safe - not to mention ill-equipped to communicate with unfamiliar individuals who are different than they.
The media-induced perception of the outside world as violence-ravaged dystopia has also lead parents - especially those of adolescent boys - into the false premise that endless hours of video gaming is a superior alternative to exposing one's child to the perils of imminent drive-bys. Regardless of whether such an assumption is valid, the proud and posturing steamball and Nerf football legends, once scattered across backyards and side streets throughout the nation, have been reduced to slouching mounds of torpid shut-ins, trash-talking into headsets about how many fake touchdowns the fake version of themselves has just scored in a fake football game.
As kids tearing around the neighborhood on our wannabe Huffys in the mid-to-late 80s, my friends and I frequently poked fun at the neon yellow sign at the foot of our street that read, "Slow Children Playing." It was trite and tasteless on our part; such cheap and easy humor was almost never lost on our sophomoric sensibilities. But the more I think about it, the less I'm able to recall actually spotting one of these awkwardly punctuated signs anywhere in greater L.A. I shudder to think it might be a matter of cost-benefit: Are there really so few children cavorting outdoors that it's just not worth the taxpayers' money to have Thud and Gorgeous from Cell Block 6 fashioning these things anymore?
Further proof of this trend resides not merely in recent childhood obesity and Type-II diabetes data, but also through observing the well-kempt suburban neighborhoods throughout L.A. seemingly designed for the sole purpose of outdoor activity - for impromptu outbreaks of tag, red rover, and pickle - that are now eerily bereft of the sights and sounds of children at play.]]>Apple to Roll Out .5G iHood for Underprivileged Southland Youth (Satire)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6358342010-07-09T13:40:46-04:002011-05-25T17:00:24-04:00Brock Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brock-cohen/latest multimedia sensation, to as many as 5,000 Los Angeles middle and high school students currently languishing in what many educators school officials have dubbed "the digital divide."
The modified multimedia tablet - named the iHood for to its planned distribution to a select urban populace - will be given to pupils with exemplary performance on the "Steve and Me" essay competition given this past May, to underprivileged secondary students from across the L.A. Unified School District.
Jimmy Ortiz, a 12-year-old from Walter Reid Middle School in North Hollywood, and the overall winner in the eighth-grade division, wowed judges with his essay entitled "Steve and Me and My Uncle Rickey Who Watches Bridezillas All Day."
Said Ortiz, when informed that he would be among the iHood's recipients, "I already have one. A real one. Can I get a Playstation 3 instead?"
The spectacular, scholastically-themed three-hour multimedia extravaganza, held on the floor of L.A.'s Staples Center, was given to an eclectic audience of shareholders, school officials, and star-studded Mac enthusiasts, transforming the capacious arena into a virtual 21st-century urban public school classroom, complete with numerous muffled intercom interruptions promoting discounted yearbooks; a 25-minute halt in proceedings and subsequent emergency lockdown of the arena due to an undisclosed "campus incident"; an ongoing drug and weapons search of all attendees by a frantically giggling campus security guard named Dedrick; the persistent aromatic stew of tater tots, marijuana, and Comet; and a severe shortage of desks for the capacity crowd - prompting some luminaries to sit in aisles or on colleagues' knees.
Following a rousing recitation of Henry David Thoreau's "Inspiration" by Oprah Winfrey, a performance entitled "Ode to Isosceles Triangles" by the Blue Man Group, and an opening stand-up bit from comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld entitled, "Hey: What's the Deal With School?" Jobs addressed the audience by detailing the plight of disadvantaged school children throughout the blighted communities of L.A. County, adding, "The bottom line is, due to circumstances beyond their control, these kids are being left behind academically because their peers in more affluent schools are becoming increasingly more proficient in using the latest -" at which point Jobs' speech was preempted by a piercing false fire alarm and the subsequent announcement by an irate assistant school principal threatening three consecutive days of trash pickup for "the next individual found participating in any of these pointless and very un-adult shenanigans."
Moments later, Jobs continued his impassioned plea, undaunted: "On this day, and in continuing with our proud history as a company that exhibits a deep and abiding commitment to education and to America's youth, I am proud to announce that Apple Computers will be donating 5,000 brand-new .5 gigabyte iHoods to some of the neediest students from Los Angeles. With this donation, thousands of children throughout the Southland will now have a veritable world of knowledge at their fingertips for no fewer than 13 minutes at a time."
In addition to the tablet's 13-minute maximum battery life, Jobs then went on to highlight further functions that the scaled-down devices will provide for their young recipients, including the storage capacity to contain any of the following:
• Two Apple Store Apps
• Three digital photos
• Two podcasts
• 14 pages of text from any book
To compensate for the tablet's paucity of storage capacity, Jobs assured his audience that each iHood will come complete with an extra-thick rubber band that can be used to secure a portable CD player and library card, thereby giving the device multi-media capabilities comparable to that of the more powerful iPad models found in Apple retail stores.
Added Jobs, "Our goal here is not to replace books or even portions of some books -or even more than 14 pages of any single book."
Although Apple has an historically strong relationship with academic institutions, some critics wonder whether Monday's presentation was misleading - or, even worse, a cynical media ploy - due to the paltry discounts the company offers to the neediest individuals on the academic front: teachers and their students.
"Go ask Jobs how much of a discount we get for the pleasure of purchasing one of those overpriced contraptions," said Sanya Tillman, an Algebra and Geometry teacher at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. "I'll give you a hint: It's the same discount that Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson get."
When later asked by a reporter as to why students wouldn't be receiving a full-fledged iPad rather than the scaled-down iteration, Jobs shot back: "Or, what if you all dig into your respective swag bags right now and donate your new free iPads to these needy kids? No? Nobody? Not so much? Didn't think so."
Moments later, in response to the question of why a fully functioning digital tablet from one of its competitors wouldn't offer a distinct advantage over a severely compromised version of Apple's e-book, the already irritable CEO's response was once again immediate and terse:
"E-what? I don't think you understand. This isn't a book: It's a revolution."]]>