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January, 2014

  1. Culture Wars In Education

    January 16, 2014 by Tunya

    The parallels are unnerving — the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 60’s with its beatings and wholesale intimidations  — and the browbeating and intimidations in imposing the common core/21st Century Learning — both were/are meant to permanently change minds and behaviors to what the elite demands.

    CC/21CL methods are demonstrating these CCR similarities:

    – Dumbing down, moving populations to mediocrity through equality measures, assuring compliant populations

    – Brain changes through withholding of basic skills in key early years — Left/Right sides of the brain are engaged differently through phonics and math drills than with inquiry and discovery.  Brain pathways can be irreversibly crippled for later corrections and precision learning.

    – Language is used to deceive — parents are told they are empowered with new engagement and communications strategies, but the effect is to befuddle and enfeeble parents from true monitoring of their kids in schools.

    –  In the Chinese Cultural Revolution the “olds” were to be forgotten, demolished, (old street names, photos of ancestors, solid old furniture) to be replaced by the “news” — new customs, new culture, new habits, new ideas. In the Final Report by Deloitte (p26) — Preparing Youth for 21st Century Responsible Citizenship, this is what is revealed as a  “threat” to our young  — “old thinking by old people in old problems and old constructs.” A good number of similar change-agent documents are painting “traditional”, “conservative”, and “Right” thinking as “old”, outdated.

    These are just a few disturbing conclusions I’ve been tormented with this week.  I’m only a granny with grandkids in school.  I really worry for the parents who have charge of their children full time.  How can they possibly handle such disturbing news that their children are being used as guinea pigs in untested experiments?  A story came out today where teachers themselves were crying because of new reporting methods being imposed on them.  http://metronews.ca/news/calgary/911015/calgary-elementary-teachers-being-driven-to-absolute-tears-over-report-card-changes/

    Australia has just announced a Review of its NEW NATIONAL CURRICULUM, developed during 6 years of a Labor government regime and which was seen as producing a curriculum with a decidedly leftish worldview.  The new conservative government anticipates a volatile 6-month Review period.

    [I posted the above on an American blog — "Invisible Serfs Collar" with the following note to the author:

    BTW Robin:  This last post of yours was the most disturbing of all your other 200 posts.  That Deloitte article which I looked up really tore the cataracts off my eyes. And your conclusion:  “Deliberately creating the discontent and then mining it for ever increasing political power and diminishing mass prosperity” is way too depressing.  But, it’s the recurring theme in your book and posts and reality as it’s being revealed to us.  The CCR lasted 10 long years!]


  2. Parents & Public To Review Education — Australia

    January 15, 2014 by Tunya

    Australia is to undergo an Education Review — nationally.  I will try and find the Terms of Reference as this will be highly interesting given that the report is to be delivered in six months.  Interesting also will be the "Elephant in the Room" — the recent, new and shining NATIONAL CURRICULUM.  I just posted my views in a blog in Nova Scotia.

    TFA In Australia — Success Amidst Another Review

    After six weeks of training at the University of Melbourne, TFA (Teach for Australia) progam graduates teach for two years in disadvantaged schools that serve students from low socio-economic backgrounds. About half teach in the high demand STEM subjects, as many are recent graduates themselves with specialist degrees.

    Here is today’s news, Jan 15, 2014: On a fast-track to a career in education

     http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/on-a-fasttrack-to-a-career-in-education-20140115-30txf.html

    The TFA program will no doubt be an item in the Review just started by the new government of Tony Abbott.  Part of the reason his Liberal/National Coalition won the last Australian election over the governing Labor regime was public disaffection with a new National Curriculum — six years in the making — with a worldview that was considered “leftist”, “New Age” and full of “gobbledygook”.  [I guess that’s Australian for our “edu-babble”.]

    Australia, like Canada, has also been sliding in international education scores, so the Review will look at curriculum as well as teaching capacities.  Parents will have a say in the Review process.  Nick Cater, a respected culture critic, says the curriculum is “beyond saving”.  He disapproves of the “sustainability” agenda being “integrated” into all subjects — English, geography, history, mathematics, science. 

    Cater says: “If the Education Minister is to be criticised, it is for imagining this irredeemable document can be tidied up and put back on the shelf when the only realistic course of action is to tear the damn thing up.”

    Australia is a rather bi-polarized nation, thus it will be a lively time as the Review Duo is to report back in six months time.

    I will be watching for these issues to be deliberated — Why a “national” curriculum at all when states are responsible for education? —  Should public funding be freed-up for a wider diversity of alternatives? — Will teacher training be critiqued for its role in mindsets and standards? — Should one worldview predominate or would a pluralist nation benefit from a live-and-let-live broadmindedness?

     

     


  3. Government Schools Enfeeble Parents

    January 14, 2014 by Tunya

    This is now TWO WEEKS since I started to COMPILE a KNOWLEDGE BANK for parents dealing with public schools.  As I refresh my memory by going through my archives I see that things are NOT GETTING BETTER.  The same obstacles and mindsets of the system still prevail to stymie parents.

    Did you score 100% or near in the Dysfunctionality Rating ?  http://www.parentsteachingparents.net/2014/01/disturbing-trends-for-parents-1981/

    I am going to develop my thesis that things are GETTING WORSE.  As COLONIZERS AND USURPERS the players in the system are now employing ever more sophisticated pscyhological techniques to rob parents of their natural-born instincts and shape the language to ENFEEBLE PARENTS TO STAY COMPLIANT TO THE SYSTEM'S NEEDS.

    I will develop this theme as I go along. Deliberate deskilling of parents, in my opinion, is a moral crime.  Compliant parents actually harm the cause of public accountability in public education.  If ordinary citizens feel that parents are satisfied, or non-complaining, then they too will be lulled into avoiding DUE DILIGENCE in how taxpayer money is spent or corrupted.  

    FIVE ALERTS CAME IN TODAY that cause me to start this train of commentary EARLIER THAN LATER.

    1   The annual PARENT SATISFACTION SURVEY is now going out.  The results are always the same — parents love their school, but think the whole system is doing poorly. "Stroking" of parents in individual schools is proving very successful !

    2    REPORT CARDS are to be changed in a number of districts to eliminate grades, to be replaced with "communicating" with parents.  This is ILLEGAL and outside the requirements of the School Act (BC).

    3   Again, the teacher union, is ACTIVELY PROMOTING PARENT WITHDRAWL OF STUDENTS from standardized tests which test for basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

    4   Our BC TEACHER REGULATION BRANCH makes it easy for parents or public to easily check ithe credentials and status history of any teacher in a public or publiclly funded school. Today, in one school district out of 60 I found I was unable to access the list of names of teaching staff.  A query is in place.

    5   I am closely following what's happening in AUSTRALIA with their just announced REVIEW.  Even on top of a recent complete curricular change, considerable criticism had arisen.  I briefly summarize one Editorial titled "Learning by Gobbledygook." Apparently the previous overhaul yielded considerable "wooly expressions and overt social engineering". ALL curriculum subjects are to integrate and contain THREE OVERARCHING PRIORITIES – indigenous history/culture, global engagement (especially Asia) and sustainability.  "In toto" this editorial continues, this "review is very much in order."

     


  4. Who Listens To Parents?

    January 13, 2014 by Tunya

    It doesn’t matter how logical and practical parents are with their suggestions — it doesn’t matter how much common sense they demonstrate — parents don’t seem to count in decisions being made about education of their children.


    The letter from the young parent in Cowichan School District, says a lot —

    "This is exactly the suggestion I wrote on my form at the Cowichan School District initial consultation. School boards should be abolished and school-based management adopted. Imagine how much money could be saved and how much more child focused the system could become."  But who will listen to such sensible suggestions?

    Far too many decisions in public education are made for the convenience of “the system”. It’s become, unfortunately, an employment agency for educators and bureaucrats who easily overwhelm any logic coming from parents who advocate for their children.


    Older parents can’t wait for the day they will “graduate” with their children and leave all these frustrating, often unsatisfactory, school relations behind.

    Really old parents, who are now grandparents, can’t believe that the same old problems keep arising, with parents still left out in the cold.

    Whereas the other players in the system have the benefit of strong organizations and an institutional memory, parents do not. Reinventing the wheel is the norm. But, of course, any parent’s blurted out commonsense is still left in the dust as the system steamrolls ahead with its own priorities. 

    And parents, on a day-to-day basis, are really too busy with their children to do much research or organizing.

    Thankfully, with the Internet, we are blessed with some enhanced ability to sort through issues. Parent knowledge is a scarce and untapped resource, rarely consulted or instrumental in decision-making. About the only time this knowledge counts is when families decide to home educate or choose a private school for their child. Or, if they live in New Zealand, they are involved in school-based management.

     


  5. DISTURBING TRENDS FOR PARENTS – 1981

    January 12, 2014 by Tunya

    Why re-invent the wheel?  Most enterprises learn from the past.  While institutions that parents deal with — the school boards, the principals, unions, etc., etc. all have massive resources to draw upon and an “institutional memory” to be able to advance their causes and needs, parents do not have this knowledge bank.

    I’m trying on these pages of PTP to bring forward “old” pieces of information and will also be adding new material.  For today I will briefly provide quotes from my 1981 newsletter showing DISTURBING TRENDS IN EDUCATION

    1 — DECLINE IN PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT — “If we believe in the principle that public education is of the public, for the public, and by the public, then the present trend is bad. In my study I have found that we have less public involvement that we had ten years ago.”  – Dean of Education, Art Kratzmann

    2 — POLITICS IN TEACHER TRAINING — “Too often education faculty members seem bent on pressing particular dogma or ideology”. Walter Hardwick, former Deputy Minister of Education, BC

    3 — PARENTS NOT AWARE OF DECLINE — “I don’t think parents are as acutely aware of the achievement decline  . . . I think there’s an enormous unawareness on the part of parents as to what the schools are doing.” John Goodlad

    4 — CRIME/LD CONNECTION — “I estimate that 80-90%% of the young people who came before me in the provincial court were learning disabled as revealed by their pre-sentence reports.” Judge Nancy Morrison

    5 — PURSUIT OF PANACEAS — “Schools, probably more than any other institution in our society, seem to be particularly vulnerable to fads, poorly tested concepts and the need to appear scientific.” Irwin A Hyman, Policy Studies Review

    6 — BLOATED  BUREAUCRACIES —  “In Toronto, only 5,000 of the school board’s 9,000 employees are teachers.” TODAY magazine

    7 — LIP SERVICE TO PARENT INVOLVEMENT —  “Will we as professionals welcome parent involvement . . . or will we follow governmental regulations in the most patronizing way, meeting the regulations only because they are required?” Special Education In Canada

    8 — MISTEACHING LEADS TO LEARNING PROBLEMS — “I always see far more problems in the WAY the students have been taught previously than in the students themselves.” W A T White, University of Oregon

    9 — SCHOOL BOARDS OFF TRACK —  “School Boards deal largely with fringe elements instead of more basic features of school organization and the main components of curricula.” OECD Review Canadian Education ‘76

    10 — DOMINANT TEACHER POWER —  “Citizens seek to enlarge their control of schools. This comes at the same time that teachers seek increased autonomy FROM lay control. Thus, laymen and teachers are on a collision course.” Donald Myers in “Teacher Power”

    2014 Exercise — Match the Quotes to the Issues and Score 0-10 with  0 = NOT applicable, 10 = VERY applicable today.  TOTAL SCORE ________________ = DYSFUNCTIONALITY LEVEL