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March, 2020

  1. media & schooling

    March 31, 2020 by Tunya

    Media and Schooling

    I keep thinking about that opinion piece Bruce Deitrick Price wrote and was passed on to ECC readers by William Brown, Mar 11.

    BDP’s article was entitled: K-12: Media Should Help for a Change. He makes the point that if the media was more attentive to exposing the faults of the public education system many corrective practices would emerge. We would have better literacy and better test scores. He encourages people to write their newspapers to provide more coverage of education matters.

    Now, that might help, but lately the trend has been that newspapers and media generally have been decreasing staffs that work on such stories.

    And, we also must be mindful of the fact that media is not always reporting, but in fact, sometimes are biased promoters of what they see as “the common good” — the public schools. To be otherwise is to be unpatriotic, they think.

    Two such articles that I’ve kept close to mind over the years are:

    – If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/private-school-vs-public-school-only-bad-people-send-their-kids-to-private-school.html

    – Liberals: Don’t Homeschool Your Kids https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/02/homeschooling-and-unschooling-among-liberals-and-progressives.html

    Both these articles generated considerable debate for a time, 2012 – 2013, but did nothing to challenge the prevailing media positive mindset about public schools. In fact, as the first article infers, families could be seen as heroic by keeping their kids in public schools as they’re bound to improve, even if it takes “generations”!

    I’ll jump to my purpose for writing today. I do think we, and public generally, should approach our media outlets to honestly report education stories. Right now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic we see schools being closed and students kept at home. Parents are mounting home education efforts and school systems are scrambling to produce online programs. This will be a time when many innovations can emerge. We should urge our media to report on these efforts.

    In particular, I would emphasize to the media that much home education, or homeschooling as the popular press likes to call it, is not new. Home education has been around since the 80’s and much groundbreaking work has been established. There are parent support groups in many communities. There is much literature and books and resources.

    I will hunt up the contacts for some of these support groups in my area. They would have success stories to tell and probably tips to share. I’ll approach my news sources to report on these successful, and from what I gather, happy experiences.

     

    [Sent to ECC


  2. Education disruption overdue

    March 27, 2020 by Tunya

    No one could have foreseen the disruptions and tragedies that are ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic!

    However, even as major shifts are happening to just try to counter the progress of the worldwide pandemic, articles are appearing that ponder changes that will result when any sense of normalcy happens.  Some see improvements, others see opportunities.  Here is an article in the Globe and Mail, March 25, 2020, — ‘The education world has been turned upside down’: Online learning may reshape the classroom

    — https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-as-online-learning-rolls-out-education-may-change-forever/#comments

    This is the comment I made:

    How much of this education disruption has been foretold?

    Despite decades of “reforms” it takes a world health epidemic to turn schooling “upside down”.

    In ‘71 UNESCO did a report — Wastage in education: a world problem. Issues identified: dropouts, illiteracy, poor training of teachers, the basics, etc.

    In ‘71 Ivan Illich published — Deschooling Society, stating: “The public is indoctrinated to believe that skills are valuable and reliable only if they are the result of formal schooling.” He proposed “learning webs” way before Internet.

    John Taylor Gatto wrote — Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, 1991. He complained re, “compulsory government monopoly mass schooling”.

    With the corona virus entry on the world scene, New York Times, Feb 28, ’20 printed — “Fear of Vast ‘Mass Home-Schooling’ Experiment”, raising the fear that technology and stay-at-home-students would make schools expendable.

    With worries that home education would be unfair for those families unable to harness technology, how long will it be before calls go out for “Ed Relief”?

    Time to discuss accountability, alternatives, family choice in education & ed funding following the child.


  3. wastage in education – world problem

    March 3, 2020 by Tunya

    My comment to ECC, Mar 03, 2020  in response to Wm Brown’s post on

    Manic reforms, depressed scores

     

    A 33-year public school teacher, Curtis Hier, says the ed system is “insane” as funding, instead of producing intended educational results, “goes to an ever-expanding bureaucracy.”

    Time to have a full-scale inquiry into wastage in our public school systems! Especially at this time of a fearful medical epidemic threatening to close schools, we are learning that even with closing schools, education can still continue effectively. A front-page story on Wall Street Journal, Feb 27, ’20 is headlined: “Classrooms Closed, an Entire City Home Schools.” (About Hong Kong.)
    A story in New York Times, Feb 28 (NY edition) had this headline: “Fear of Vast ‘Mass Home-Schooling’ Experiment” and the online story was headlined: “What Would a Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S. Mean for Schools?”

    I proposed such a study of wastage on a popular educator blog a few weeks ago. A provocative post dealt with the topic of government school systems squandering the education dollar, with “The Blob” always saying that whatever funding there was, was “not enough”. Of course, we know “Blob” stands for “bloated education bureaucracy”!

    The blog item I mention is here: How Much Money Does a School System Need? https://jaypgreene.com/2020/02/11/how-much-money-does-a-school-system-need/, and if you really become interested, the author, Greg Forster, links his much more developed analysis in a Think Tank article entitled: “How much money does a government monopoly need? https://www.ocpathink.org/post/how-much-money-does-a-government-school-monopoly-need

    Briefly, here are excerpts from my comment:

    Undoubtedly, many people are annoyed that such a high-expense item in a state’s budget — public education — produces such dismal and uneven results. Few do anything about this irksome puzzle. Some do recycle this mysterious enigma repeatedly in books and articles.

    UNESCO in 1971-2 produced two books, “Wastage in education a world problem” and “A statistical study of wastage at school”. Questionnaires were sent out to member countries, a conference was held, issues were identified: dropping out, illiteracy, inadequate training of teachers, examinations, the basics, etc. Recommendations were made. A literature list is included. However, further work on this seems to have been dropped by UNESCO.

    I think it’s timely, especially as alternatives and choices are being actively deliberated, that this matter be seriously addressed.

    The average person ruminating and despairing about these contradictions in our education system is utterly stymied by it all. However, hopefully, people with voice and connections can galvanize some intelligence here.

    Any suggestions, who, what, might start the ball rolling on an inquiry into public school wastage of the education dollar? It’s not just a local problem — it’s international.