Go Bucks School boards

So Ohio's School Boards Association has cut ties with the national brand of the same, the National School Boards Association.  This over the despicable letter sent by the NSBA that labeled, rather broadly I might add, concerned parents as national terrorists. 

Beyond the conflict of interests charges that arose with the DOJ, or the growing idea that opponents of the Left and enemies of the state are one and the same, the bigger problem was the underlying message of the letter.  That message was articulated by such political gurus as Terry McAuliffe.  That is, after over half a century of parents being told to be involve in their kids' education and school systems, we now say shut up and get out of our way. So extreme was the reversal of that generation's long mantra that it caused whiplash for those hearing it. 

Literally.  Actual whiplash.  When I wrapped up my undergrad work, having moved from Political Science to Secondary Education, one of the main goals we were told to strive for was involving parents in the education process.  Get them into the meetings, get them to the hallways and byways of our schools.  But now, the latest example of 'you heard postwar liberals say thus, but the leftist state now says not thus.' 

Now, none of this is to say parents should be threatening board members, though I would like to see the actual evidence they were.  Charges of being threatened in the internet age are as common as actual threats.  A good way to avoid this, I should mention, is by not shutting parents out, shutting them down, and shooing them away when they're questioning school board policies and actions.  

One thing that began setting things off was schools forced to show what they were teaching during the lockdowns last year.  That caused parents to begin asking questions.  At that point, I remember local news stories earlier this year where parents said they were being shut down, told to shut up and deal with it when asking questions about their children's schooling.  That made them understandably angry. 

Again, not saying violence is right, it isn't.  But if the violence is defined as a parent trying to ask questions about raped girls in a school bathroom, and dragged out of a meeting for his efforts, that's not the same as a bomb threat. 

So a hot mess problem for the schools and their leftwing agendas.  Parents told to shut up and stay out of the schools' hair, parents being shouted down in board meetings as was happening earlier in the year, parents being labeled terrorists by a compromised DOJ,  and parents being told by high profile politicians to leave their kids' education alone, have conspired to make school board elections the hottest story in this year's election.  

Usually they're as interesting as the race for local dog catcher.  Not this time.  And that's not what the Left wants.  So expect to see more of this.  We call it damage control.  For their part, I appreciate the Ohio association's severing of ties with this egregious attack on parents and, as an extension, their students.  But it would have been nicer if they would have done this immediately, rather than wait to see where the backlash needle landed on the scale. 

When watching the teachers walk out in North Carolina

Remember one thing:

The average salary for a North Carolina teacher has increased to more than $50,000 a year for the first time. Recently released figures from the state Department of Public Instruction put the average salary for a North Carolina public school teacher at $51,214 this school year.

Actually, remember one more thing:

Workers in North Carolina earn an average salary that ranks toward the bottom half of the nation. The average annual pay in the Tar Heel State was $41,250 in 2011, according to an On Numbers analysis of newly released figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

See that?

Teachers, on average in North Carolina, make about 20% more than the average North Carolinian.

I know, teachers on the news explain that they have to spend their own money for the classes.   I can't account for North Carolina, but here in the Buckeye state, parents have to pay, too.  When I was in school, I was expected to have a tablet of notebook paper and two No. 2 pencils.  That was it.  Any other activities? Free of charge.

Now?  Even when my boys were still in school, we were paying hundreds of dollars for basic supplies and fees.  If they wanted to do extracurricular activities, it could add up to hundreds more.  And we were lucky.  There were other school districts where total expenses for parents could end up in the thousands.

That would be those parents who, on average, make far less than the teachers who are being asked, through taxes, to pay the teachers more.  See the issue?  Like I said here, this is a case where the teachers are not putting it in perspective.  When I hear teachers interviewed on news stories, I can tell they're trying to buttress  their case.  They have to realize  that people know they're doing far, far better than teachers of yesterday, and far, far better than many parents in their school districts today.

Remember what I said about revolutions that never admit they won?  Same with people who always protest for more, even when they are getting more, and more, and more than those who are called on to pay them.

Tolkien on stage with Lewis and Chesterton - and Martin Luther!

C. S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert looks absolutely delightful.  I wish we could get the boys into live theater more than we do.  Finances are the main obstacle.  I admit, I am somewhat intrigued by the whole Hamilton phenomenon, and have considered saving for that.  Anything that helps elevate our nation's past and encourages people to look back at its heroes, and not just dwell on the bad, is OK in my book.  On a theatrical level, however, I wouldn't mind scrounging pennies to see what looks to be an awesome take on some of my favorite authors, and inspiration from my ministry days.

Don't blame the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, so named during the Renaissance, get a bad wrap.  Especially from our age that - for reasons I can't fathom - believes we are so superior to the caricatures of Medieval Europe. Partly due to the polemics that arose during the Reformation, partly egged on by Enlightenment thinkers, and capped off by lazy Hollywood script writing, many believe that the Middle Ages were the era of stupid superstitious people torturing innocent victims when they couldn't take part in genocidal wars of religion and conquest.

Fact is, many of the things we attribute to the Middle Ages didn't happen then, but happened later.  Just like, on the Christian theology front, many of the doctrines the Church is accused of inventing during the Middle Ages were already up and running from the early days of the Church, many of the atrocities and horror stories attributed to that period come much later.

Take the witch burnings.  This is not to say that nobody was ever executed for witch craft during that vaguely defined era known as the Middle Ages.  It is to say that the worst documented cases of mass witch hunts and executions happened after the beginning of the era known as the Renaissance.  Or take European Imperialism.  Hardly a Medieval phenomenon.  Apart from the Crusades, which were understood by Medievals as a defensive maneuver against growing aggression from the Islamic world, the age of exploration and conquest happened well after the end of the Middle Ages.

The same thing goes with torture devices.  Go into any museum of the period, or go to a Renaissance festival, and expect to see displays of all the neat and cruel little instruments of torture that those barbaric Catholic Medevials used on endless armies of hapless victims.  Except, many didn't actually exist in the Middle Ages, if they existed at all.  A fine piece on the phenomenon of faux history versus the real thing over at Medievalists.net is worth your time.  

Hat tip to Michael Flynn for the link.

Consigned to the Catholic Blogosphere

The Catholic blogosphere, like any part of that segment of modern reality, should not be the only place where people go to grow in their faith.  Mostly fueled by amateur apologists, it is a hotbed for all the things that make the Internet generation flawed at best.  So why have I spent so much of my time there?

Well, you have to understand Catholicism.  Even Catholics - yes, even those apologists defending the Church - admit that fellowship and outreach are not the strong suits of Catholic living.  Koinonia is the Greek word for fellowship.  Some Protestant churches used to suffer from what we coined Koinonitis.  That is, we have all the people we want, we want no more.

Catholics seem to have this in spades.  Because many parishes are, in fact, monstrous churches with thousands of families, you imagine it won't be that way.  Most Protestant churches that suffered from this were usually smaller congregations.  So you imagine that in Catholic parishes with thousands, there would be no problem finding groups to fit in.  And you'd be wrong.

After ten years, we have yet to fit in.  Hired by a Catholic lay ministry, involved in RCIA and other educational endeavors, kids in youth groups, public speaking, you'd think we'd have found that magic group to rub shoulders with.  And again, you'd be wrong.

Not that nobody has been open to us.  We've met very friendly people.  Helpful people.  People who would stop and chat for a few.  Even invited to a couple houses.  But it's been like being friends at work.  You know how if you're working with someone you can get to be friends over time?  But then if you transfer to another position or task, and aren't around that person, it sort of fades.  And if you see them six months later, you have to start from scratch.

That's been this.  Priests have so many people to shepherd, they don't have time for constant discipleship and instruction.  And attempts to fit into other groups have often resulted in us sitting by ourselves listening to those who know each other chitchat.  No matter how many times over ten years we've tried to fit in, at the end of the day, we still feel like outsiders.

Some of it is our parish.  A parish with no small set of issues. Mostly liberal, it's fought the recent influx of some fairly conservative Protestant converts.  But beyond that, it's been the way in most cases we've encountered. Those who have made us feel the most welcome are grey haired well past the point of retirement.  In many cases, because they still see value in a Protestant clergy convert.  Younger Catholics, however, don't seem to.  And those in our age group, as well as that of our kids, have felt no compunction in letting us know we'd best get used to sitting by ourselves at the annual picnic.

Even joining the Knights of Columbus didn't help.  And I typically found myself trying to get into the conversations, but ending up standing along the wall, listening to those who know each other carry the conservation.

Hence, in order to find some fellowship, some avenue of interaction, I've been consigned to the dreaded Blogosphere.  A place not for the weak hearted.  At best you can get some who are willing to engage in questions or disagreements on a mature level before being called a hater of the Church or Jesus.  At worst, it comes right out of the gate with accusations of being stupid, evil, not caring about dead kids, Jesus, God, or whatever.  And then it goes down from there.  That not including the obvious blindness to sin, evil, wrong, and other things that a new convert shouldn't be able to recognize as easily as they make it able to be recognized.

Now I would gladly have gone anywhere else for my formation.  But Catholics are, even now, notoriously sketchy with adult education.  Some parishes have done better.  Others still struggle.  But even then, formation is only so effective without the added lair of fellowship.  And that is where a major lack has created a major void.  Leaving Catholics who would seek to grow to turn to the modern equivalent of an English boarding school, where cold and heartless brutality and stunning self righteousness substitutes for actual Christian guidance.  That can only cause problems, unless the new believer is wanting some group that he or she can join in which we thank God for not making us like those loser Catholics over there.

Just thought I'd throw that out.  For all that Protestants might lack, they seem to have what the Church could use.  They understand the importance of instruction and fellowship, not as two different issues worth tackling, but as a single whole needed to help new believers grow from milk to meat in their faith diets.

Catholic schools in Oakland outrage critics

By wanting to be more Catholic.  It's a running joke that if you want to get a great education, go to a Catholic School.  If you want to learn about Catholicism, go anywhere else.  In recent years, some areas have been trying to put the brakes on that trend.  Especially centering around the LGBT issue, since that issue is the one being used by the post-Christian Left to bludgeon freedom and liberty.  So the Diocese of Oakland has sparked outrage - and dare I say, exposed some issues - by expecting its staffers to live up to certain expectations.  Like not living lives and promoting values that fly in the face of the Catholic Faith.

Naturally the East Bay Express zeroes in on a heroic program director who has refused to sign off on the new standards.  We all love a rebel in our hip post-modern world, don't we.  Well no.  Imagine the same director bucking a public school order to open up to and celebrate the LGBT lifestyle.  Would the same treatment be given?  There's no way of knowing.  But I sure have a hunch.

Quint was right

Sometimes us wealthy young college boys don't have the education enough to admit when we are wrong.  And wrong we are.  Often.  Who can forget that part of the legendary movie JAWS?  The rough and tumble, ill-fated shark fisherman with a personal grudge against sharks vs. the wealthy young scientist, money handed to him, studying sharks for the love and admiration of their nature.  The clash between them was one of the more meaningful story lines in the movie, and it added to the depth of their characters, especially as mutual admiration eventually takes over and builds a bond between them. From what they say, a similar course of events happened between the actors Dreyfuss and Shaw, who apparently weren't on best terms, but who at least came to regard one another positively during filming (at least Dreyfuss appears to have built a lasting respect for Shaw the actor).

Thinking on that, the working class guy vs. hip educated kid, I've been kicking things around for a while.  I work more or less as a bean counter in a giant, multi-billion dollar corporation.  My ministry and education days a thing of the past.  There is no union, and at any time I could go in and find my position has been cut.  It's already happened there, just as it happened to my wife a couple years ago. I get the problems with unions, but sometimes working in large corporations sans unions does engender an appreciation for collective bargaining.  Anyway, because of that, there is no shortage of people on edge about their jobs, talking about this job or that job, asking about other jobs and trying to find ways to solidify their positions while always keeping one ear open for other opportunities.

Listening to the conversations that take place has made me realize something.  Most everyone I work with has a college education.  The average age seems to about about mid thirties, with a few in their later 20s, and some my age or older.  But from what I can tell, I think everyone has a college education.  That would be because most companies require college degrees even for the most menial positions.  Based on this article, this is because of a Supreme Court decision that made any other way of measuring potential workers unconstitutional.  I'll get back to that little phenomenon down the road.

But for now, it's enough to say everyone in my department is a college graduate.  And what I hear!  A few weeks ago, my supervisor, who happens to be Catholic, set out some rosaries she picked up somewhere as sort of a witness.  One afternoon, a coworker looked at them and asked 'is that one of those chastity belts'?  Now, I'm not being mean.  To be honest, I hear things like that all the time. But think about it.  The guy has a college degree.  He's working on his Series 7 exam.  College educated.  And he asked that?  Again, it's not just him.  The things I hear people say are stunning.  The things people don't know.  I once quipped to a manger that I had been in the eighth circle of hell regarding a task I was finishing.  The person looked at me puzzled.  I explained I was referencing Dante.  Blank stare. 

All of this has shown me something.  On the internet, you read stupid things.  Appalling things.  Unbelievably stupid, brain dead, moronic things.  Not just on atheist blogs, or fundamentalist blogs, or ABBA fan blogs, or even Catholic blogs.  It's everywhere. On one hand, people will discuss things with an attention and grasp of detail that would shame a prize winning physicist.  On the other, you can see some of the most stupid things ever written.

For some time, I thought it was some Internet phenomenon. The Internet must make us stupid.  People can't be that dumb, not with college degrees.  Not in an era that boasts more college graduates than at any time in history. Something on the Net must be tainting our smarts.  But then I thought of it.  It isn't the Internet making us dumb, it's that the Internet is giving us a false sense of smart when we were dumb already.  

You see, I have a college degree in history and education.  I went back to school and got my Masters in Biblical studies and Church history.  I began a PhD in Systematic Theology (I wanted historical theology, but the school had recently gutted its professors in the name of doctrinal purity, and the options were limited).  I didn't finish (woe is me for that decision) because it was at that time I began toying with leaving Protestantism altogether and looking for other (read: Catholic) options.  

That means in the realm of history, particularly modern 20th century American history as well as Medieval history, I'm not altogether bad.  I also have a decent grasp of Biblical interpretation.  Handy stuff for a former pastor.  I also have an appreciation for the development of Scriptural texts as well as the development of historical theology (with less concern about the systematic nature of it).  Along the way, I noticed I had a knack for geography (always loving maps) and since my original thought was going into political science, I have followed and studied politics for decades.  In those areas, I'm not bad and can hold my own.  In addition to all that, I enjoy music and, for no particular reason, enjoy art.  And each year, at least for many years up until recently, I always tried to pick a subject and study it (language development, archaeology, architecture, a particular country).  

During that time, I had to take other courses: Chemistry, biology, economics, and other such courses which were BER (Basic Education Requirements).  Out of all of those I took, there are about seven things I remember.  But here's the thing.  For whatever reason, timing, the era I grew up, the fact that my parents were older, I don't know, I feel I have a more rounded education for the simple fact that I know what I know, and am keenly aware of what I don't.  Just because I have a degree, doesn't mean I know everything. For that matter, it doesn't mean I know everything about the subjects I know much about.  It certainly doesn't mean I know chemistry, or nuclear physics, or how to make a quilt, or a million other subjects.

And I think that's the point.  Education was once seen as the key to liberty.  The key to living and breathing free.  It's why we didn't want our slaves reading, because that leads to education, and that leads to breaking bondage.  Certainly our Founding Fathers were children of the Enlightenment who saw education as the cornerstone of a free society.  And to be honest, negative stereotypes notwithstanding, the Christian faith has long understood education as important for the right living that leads to Salvation, even if that education was always understood properly as being filtered through Church teaching (a debt it owes to its Jewish ancestors).  Hence the rise of universities in Christian Europe as opposed to anywhere else on the planet.

So education good.  But it means more than 'I have a degree.'  Education means educated.  It means knowledgeable about many important things.  It means being smart enough to avoid the stupid self enslavement of the uneducated. It means knowing better than to sell your birthright for a bowl of stew.  It also means knowing what I don't know.  It means many things that I get the impression have been forgotten about in our modern era of 'the more degrees handed out, the better'.  

First, because education has changed.  An ideological battleground, most public and higher education is where indoctrination fights against counter-indoctrination.  Educating is less important than having our minds right.  Second, today education is seen as a means to a vocational end.  Get educated, get a job.  Technically, that's the role of vocational training.  But because college degrees are needed whether or not the job necessitates such a degree (see above), and because so much emphasis is on science and math and technology as we desperately scramble to save the sinking ship U.S.S. America, people forget that it's not knowledge of math, science or technology that keeps the chains off.  That would be those subjects being forgotten about in the modern scramble to succeed.

Finally we have the Internet itself.  I've always enjoyed Shakespeare and in my ministry days, I enjoyed dropping quotes from the Bard into my sermons.  Not emphasizing them, just dropping them casually in a sentence here or there.  I don't do that now, thanks to Smart Quotes.com and any other website where you can go, never having read a scrap of Shakespeare in your life, and pull an appropriate Hamlet reference for just the occasion.  What does it mean on the Internet to quote Shakespeare?  Or Whitman?  Or Poe?  It means you have access to Google and nothing else.

I could write the following: Nanoarchitetonics.  What's that?  I don't have a clue.  I just Googled 'Scientific terms', found the first Wikipedia article, clicked and grabbed the first term I could find. But give me a half hour with Google and guess what?  I'm the Nanoarchitetonics master!  That's the problem.  I've seen that trend before of course.  But it never dawned on me that the problem isn't just that people can rush over to Google and try to be experts based on the always unreliable Wiki world of knowledge.  I realize now that being college educated doesn't automatically mean we're educated at all.  We may not be smart people cheating on Google.  Truth be told, we may be idiots with degrees cheating on Google.  If we are educated, it may only be about a few subjects, and yet the illusion of 'the Information Superhighway' leads us to believe we are smarter than we are.  

Far beyond just lazily learning by Google searching this or that, with the corresponding lack of appreciation we have for the knowledge since we didn't really earn it, we may be less educated than we believe, while developing an unhealthy confidence because of what we can glean in a few minutes on the Web.  And there is nothing worse than being worse at something than you think.  If knowledge is power, the illusion of knowledge is cognitive impotence.  For an idiot who knows he's an idiot may be willing to listen to an expert.  A genius who is arrogant about being a genius might still be educated and smart enough to avoid putting his head in the trap.  But an idiot who, because of a piece of paper and a Wikiwebsite, thinks he knows all there is to know about Nanoarchitetonics and therefore refuses to listen to anyone in the world but those who sing his praises for being the goto guy for everything Nanoarchitetonic, is likely setting himself up for trouble.  Multiply that a millions times, and you might just have our modern era setting a direct course to disaster. I can hear the chains a'rattling as I write. 

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

and drinking largely sobers us again. 

(And yes, I read that famous quote in a book of poetry years ago, long before I had access to something called the Internet).

It's pie day!

No, it's Pi day.  For the occasion the family made a maple sugar apple pie (in addition to some other homemade goodies).  For my part, allow me to link to a post by the esteemed Cracked Magazine* which sometimes seems to notice what our most brilliant leaders miss by a mile.  In this case, the observation is that all we have in our modern schools may not be brilliant and golden.  My favorite: we need more recesses.  Duh.  My wife and I noticed that with our kids.

At first we thought we were being a couple old cranks.  There's no school like our school!  But when we stopped to put it together, we had to say our kids were missing something.  From Kindergarten to fourth grade, they had about a half hour recess a day, and gym I think once a week.  In fifth and sixth grades, they had fifteen minutes of recess, and one quarter in the year, had gym every day for an hour.

When I was in school, we had gym three times a week.  In sixth grade, it moved to twice a week and then once a week with the girls.  Recesses were three: an early morning recess shortly after school began, about ten minutes.  Then the big one, after lunch, usually finishing off the 'lunch hour.'  Since we could scarf down our food pretty quickly, that usually left us around 30 or 40 minutes of recess.  Then we had a fifteen or twenty minute recess in the afternoon.

So on any given day, we had at least an hour and ten minutes of so of physical activity.  On gym days, we had over two hours.  In today's 'our kids are fat and we're going to die!' hysteria, what do they do?  Slash and hack away our kids' physical activities   In fact, my sons' intermediate school (that's fifth and sixth grade) only had fifteen minutes a day, and that in a former parking lot with two basketball hoops, all in a space no larger than a smallish gymnasium on asphalt.  Really?

That's the brilliance of our education system.  One of its biggest problems is the ideas promoted by people who just don't seem to have common sense.  Which is one reason we pulled our kids from the schools. We were tired of the system looking the problems straight in the eye, and then turning to go the opposite direction of a solution.  The other points in Cracked's observations are no less true.

*Please be aware that the article contains some pretty strong language.  

Press continues to worship at the feet of Jodie Foster

And again, for the second straight day, the press continues to gush over Jodie Foster's brave and bold confession of her lesbianism.  Really.  A woman who made it official years ago that she was a lesbian  and did so on prime time television  comes out and says what everyone already knew, that she's a lesbian.  Not that it was a shock then, but it sure isn't a shock now.  And then - and this is the hilarious part - the press acts as if this is some bold, courageous thing because she made this confession in ... Saudi Arabia?  Afghanistan?  A fundamentalist tent meeting?  No!  She made this bold declaration of what we already knew in a Hollywood awards assembly.  Hollywood.  Ground zero for the entire gay rights movement.  The primary backing and promoter regarding all things homosexual and post-Christian sexual ethics.

Here's the thing.  I could almost begin to have a shred of regard for the progressive juggernaut if it would just stop with the bull.  Just admit that its basic teaching - that all religion is an evil lie made up by evolved animals to make sense of the world, and therefore life is whatever we define it, especially when it leads to sex, legal drugs, and bathroom humor, while being assured of the right to abort (and eventually euthanize) anyone getting in our way - is the up and coming philosophy of the century.  Furthermore, admit that the Western educational system, the media, and the entertainment culture have indulged in an ideological ménage à trois, more than willing to support each others' backs and fronts, while ruthlessly advancing their desire to demand conformity to their indisputable dogmas.  Just admit it. It's time to be real.

Vanderbilt University embraces the Glorious Censorship

For the Advancement of Post-Modern Tolerance.  I've seen several stories on this, and keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.  It always seems as though there is something missing, something that makes the story seem less inflamed than headlines and cable news reports suggest.  But so far?  Nope.

It looks as if Vanderbilt - perhaps from stupidity, perhaps self-righteousness, perhaps because of a deep hatred of non-Secular Leftist religious belief, perhaps because of all three - has basically said Christian groups must disband or eliminate the provision in their constitutions that say leaders in their [Christian] groups are expected to lead prayers and Bible studies.  Supposedly this is to protect all those atheists, non-Christians, and others who want to be officers in those groups but who don't want to be forced to pray or lead Bible studies.

I know.  That's idiocy.  Well, it takes idiocy for political correctness or any censorship to gain a foothold.  It also takes prejudice and bigotry.  Given the state of our higher educational systems today, I'm not against allowing for any of those possibilities.

Nevertheless, so far Vanderbilt has been slow on taking to the microphones and explaining just what it going on here.  It answers in typical, shallow talking points, a few mantras of PC era group think, and that's about it.  If all Vanderbilt has to say is what I've read and heard, it's clearly a case of singling out a lone religious tradition and invoking censorship in the harshest and most flagrant manner imaginable.

Of course smart 21st century enlightened information highway thinkers should rise up in one voice and condemn such flagrant oppression and Marxist (heh) style punishment of wrong think.  But I'm not optimistic about that.  Given the tenor of today's debate, I fear there are many who will cheer such maneuvers.  Either they don't care and are happy to see such heavy handed oppression of not-them type people, or they've bought into the LIE that the First Amendment says 'Congress shall establish a secular leftists state of conformity to good think by brutally oppressing and censoring any religious thought or practice that fails to conform to the Glorious Dogmas thereof.' 

My real hope is that there is something in the details we haven't heard that will explain it better.  Either it was a mistake on Vanderbilt's side, or there is some trivia not yet heard.  But Vanderbilt's own silence and sparse responses make that less and less likely with each telling of the tale.

A reader sends along this insight into today's public education

And asks that I post it on the blog.  Being one of my legions of fans, how could I refuse?  Read and enjoy:

“The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities.   Our goal is to help you make connections with other educators and students”Apprently it's a teacher or educational professional reflecting on a conference about improving our schools. Some food for thought, and a glance into the ideas being tossed about in the hopes of pulling America out of its downward spiral.  I have my own ideas about these things, but will hold off for now.  Any other observations? 

The world of today is not the world of yesterday, but it is also not the world of tomorrow. Yesterday I took part in the Global Education Conference.

What this means is turning students toward being more globally minded, globally interactive learners who not only think about other countries and learn about their histories etc., but they are encouraged to reach across the oceans using technology (like blogs) to do projects and interact socially and educationally with students in another part of the world.

The subjects of the sessions for this conference are very broad. Some focus on infusing 21^st Century skills into the classroom- or other learning environments. Some focus on different aspects of teaching. Each one has a unique take on Education.

The ones I have attended so far are more focused on 21^st Century skills and teaching in different ways.

Inviting Authentic Student Question: If you ask them to question - sooner or later they will question you

The title was interesting but not exactly what the focus of the session ended up being. The presenters began with asking those who were attending the session to give reasons that students do not ask questions in class. The responses that they received I don’t think were the ones that they were expecting. This being an all American crowd they focused on the social interaction aspects.

Responses like – not wanted to be wrong, being made fun of, feeling dumb if they asked a question, bullies etc.

This was clearly not where the mindset of the presenters was at. The focus was supposed to be on the teacher not being open to questions. And telling them about how they can make their students more willing to ask questions- “outside the box” to discover what they really want to learn about. Or “Learner centered education”.

There were some great ideas, innovative thinking as teachers to move from book learning to applied learning. But they really missed the issues that are affecting classes today. The ideas they spoke of would never be able to happen in many schools due to funds, overcrowding, lack of time, and behavioral issues. As a teacher I did employ similar tactics in my classroom. From having small centers where the 2-3 students in each group could discuss openly the ideas that they had about the subject at hand and could say to this small group- I don’t get it and not feel threatened; to removing all the desks from the classroom and taping off sections on the floor to represent the amount of space the pilgrims had coming over on the Mayflower. The students then had to stay in their space each day until we reached the “New World” – or were able to go outside and explore.  This was in a classroom of less than a dozen kids however so it was unfeasible to do. I cannot imagine going to a classroom full of 28 kids and trying that same project. It would not work. For one thing the space in itself would not exist. Kids are crowded in their desk areas probably with less space than the Pilgrims had. They would probably not take the same away that my other class did.

If teachers are to be able to do innovative things to help students go beyond the normal learning we may want to reconsider how schools are set up.

Assessing your Innovation Capabilities

Speaking of reevaluating how schools are set up, the next session I attended was focused entirely on how schools would rate on a rubric that the presenters had created and been using to see the innovation capabilities of schools around the country. The first thing they pointed out made me think they were actually trying to go about things in the right way. They said that only schools that are able to teach the curriculum fully and are succeeding at this aspect of education could move forward and be innovative.

There were many criteria that schools had to meet to move up the ratings on this rubric. It was nice to see that even though they were looking to move from basic skills to applications of learning and student centered learning that they saw it as a process to not jump into until your school was ready.

My take on so much of these types of 21^st century thinking and ideas is that we as a country are not there yet. Our schools are still living in the 20^th century and not doing very good at that. Too much focus on the latest agenda they are supposed to make sure gets taught, too little money and too many demands on teachers. Give the teachers a chance to have a classroom where they can truly take the reigns and not be called out for any number of things like “racism, censorship, bigotry, etc” just for trying to control the classroom that probably does not have the proper equipment, is over crowded, and has students in the class that continually cause problems but they are not allowed to deal with them in a way that would right the situation. In the perfect environment, in the perfect world the teacher could help students progress in learning beyond the basics. But since we do not live in a perfect world and they do not have the perfect set up for their classes be happy when they are able to teach the students the basics successfully. Then we can move forward and try to find ways to help teachers move out of the box and innovate.