Recently in Education Category

Consider me relieved that some libertarians and conservatives are willing to call a kook a kook. If both parties dial down their kookiness, we can yet navigate this mess.

I think this musing about political diversity from a University of Oregon student is worth considering on college campuses around the country. It's in the interests of liberal faculty to take this seriously, if they are serious about wanting to connect with and shape their world, rather than being cloistered away from it.

Never heard the case against summer vacation made as well as it is here.

Antonio just praised LAUSD Superintendent Ray Cortines and pledged to put "a team in place" to help reform schools.

He's probably said the word "charters" eight times already.

And if our schools don't succeed:

"When wholesale change is the only answer, we will close them down ... and turn them over to charter operators, the mayor's partnership, local universities."

As reported by CNN, UCLA has refused to offer academic credit to some Christian schools' courses on science and history, jeopardizing the admissions prospects of graduates from those schools. Good for UCLA and the UC system.

One religious school administrator offered this other-worldly defense of his school's academics:

Our teachings reflect that God exists ...whereas UC wants courses to be taught from a perspective that there is no God.

And one student offered this defense of her religious school's curriculum:

When you look at our science curriculums -- we're given every theory from intelligent design to evolution... whereas it's more narrow in public schools so I think we're given a broader spectrum.

Sure, that's great. But it's fair to say that, at any school where creationism is taught as a legitimate theory, evolution will be taught as a weaker cousin. In other words, such a school intentionally places its ideology above the ideology of empiricism, which drives American higher education.

So they've made their choice. And choices have consequences. They'll need to go to Azusa Pacific instead of UCLA.

This month you can catch yours truly talking (with my hands, mostly) about charter schools on a roundtable for the city channel. (It's labeled "Rountable #43"). The talk was moderated by KCAL 9's political reporter, Dave Bryan, and included the always amusing Sandra Tsing Loh of KPPC's "The Loh Life" fame, Robin Potash a teacher and UTLA rep and Mikelle Willis, founder and director of the KIPP Academy of Opportunity in Los Angeles.

It's running through July and August on cable Channel 35. You can also see Roundtable #44, which was a discussion of the State of the L.A. Times. Fun stuff.

Today I heard from a highly placed LAUSD official -- who will remain anoymous -- who called today's Daily News editorial about Superintendent David Brewer "amazing," and added, "you nailed it."

This is the editorial, mind you, in which we all but called for the firing of said official's boss.

Someone alert the admiral -- a mutiny appears to be under way.

Today's Daily News features an op-ed from a local dad who was surprised one day to hear his girls' singing the following from their school's upcoming holiday concert:

"Rockin' around, the holiday tree, have a happy holiday..."

Yep, you read that right -- "holiday" tree. And with that, SoCal gets the first local skirmish of the annual War on Christmas, in which aggressive secularists and/or the hyper-sensitive try to banish every hint of the reason for the season. As the dad in this story, Johnny Knight, notes, this purgation is the antithesis of the tolerance we say we want to teach our children:

I want my children to be able to accept that other people have different beliefs, and I hope they have meaningful and fulfilling relationships with these other children as they grow up together. ...

I am bothered, however, about how our children are being taught what seems to be the complete opposite of tolerance in their schools. The lesson they are being taught is not that differences should be honored, celebrated and appreciated, but hidden and squelched. They are learning that to "get along," we all must check our differing beliefs and cultures at the door.

Obviously the rantings of some right-wing Christianist, right? Wrong. Mr. Knight is a practicing Jew raising his girls in his faith. This is not, as he notes, ultimately a question about religion, but tolerance -- and whether we are willing to tolerate beliefs contrary to our own.

Happy Hanukkah, Mr. Knight -- and merry Christmas, too.

The whole world now knows the worst about Los Angeles' public schools, thanks to Matt Drudge, who has linked to this account of LAUSD from a substitute teacher:

There's no teaching going on at LAUSD – only confinement of the sort one may find in a penal colony, complete with walkie-talkie-carrying wardens and bullhorns. And I have "confined" at many different schools within central Los Angeles in the last six months. Many students scream "suuuuuuuub" when they see someone like me – a "guest teacher" – in their classroom and trample anyone and/or anything as they push and shove their way inside.

And it only gets worse from there ...

When we look at what made this nation great, what took people from all over the world and made them into Americans, no institution has been more important than our system of free universal secular education. No ideas transmitted in private schools or our religious institutions have been more decisive than putting children together to learn, to grow, yes sometimes to squabble and even fight, than our schools.

I can argue that our kids could learn more in more focused private schools and without the distractions of language, ethnicity and socioeconomic differences. What is paramount however is what they will not learn by just sticking to “their own kind.” They will not learn how to get along with people who are different. They will not learn how to work out difficulties in communications. They will not learn that stereotypes are not true pictures, and they will not experience just how much they have in common with the so-called “other.”

From all over the world people came to America with a dream. The dream was transformed into reality for many because they communicated over the old narrow sectarian lines of religion, ethnicity and language. They did not have to give up their native language, but learn a new one. They did not have to abandon their religions but tolerate those of others.

Yes, virtually every group experienced problems, friction and persecution, but we worked out a lot of these issues in our schools. The prejudices and fears of the parents were slowly replaced by the real life experiences of their children, their children who became Americans.

We look at the challenges facing us in terms of language and ethnicity today and may feel that the situation is hopeless. It is not. We have done this before, and we succeeded. During my lifetime our whole sense of what differences separated us has changed. Once upon a time, not long ago, a Polish-Italian wedding was a “mixed marriage.” Methodists and Catholics had to be careful about dating and introducing their intendeds to the family. Hispanic-White pairings were unusual. Asian-White weddings were problematic. Black-White weddings were scandalous. We obviously still have a lot of problems and these issues are not fully resolved but America has really changed and become more open.

Propinquity, just having our kids together and experiencing each other, is of great value in making one nation out of many people and many peoples.

This is why the abject failure of our L.A. Unified School District is an embarrassment, but more importantly a tragedy. As the Daily News reported on November 11, a UCLA study shows that California is failing as a State in public education, and Los Angeles is doing worse than the rest of California.

It is easy to place blame. It’s the multi-ethnic nature of our population. It’s the wide geography. It is those teachers and their union. It is a Superintendent who has no experience in education and comes from a military background where people tend to follow orders. The financial waste of Belmont, their recent notice that two schools, long in planning, were located next to pollution-spewing freeways, may make us weep. There are plenty of targets, reasons, and rationalizations, but so what? The issue isn’t blame. We cannot just throw our hands up in either anger or despair and walk away. As we say at time of war: “Failure is not an option.”

Parents with economic options and high motivation are abandoning our school systems across the nation and in Los Angeles in particular. They are seeking private schools in the hope of better education. They are going to religious schools in the hope of not only passing along their own religion, but putting a moral curriculum into the lives of their children. They are trying to flee the discord and danger they perceive in local education. They, understandably, want to feel that their children are physically and morally safe.

I understand. And not wanting to be caught out as a hypocrite, I will tell you that our three boys all had a mixture of private and public school. They went to private schools, including a Jewish school, in their early years and then to public high schools. It was important for them to encounter the wide spectrum of humanity with whom they will share their lives. Nothing could replace these experiences: Adam in the choral group with Blacks and Hispanics who became his closest friends. David in debate and forensics with Asians, Persians and Protestants (Hey, exotic is a relative concept). Daniel just hanging out with everyone—regardless of race, color or creed.

In the course of their public education they had to work out differences of culture of language, religion and socio-economic status. Maybe it would have been easier to stay in private schools. Maybe their already outstanding SAT scores would have been a few points higher but I like to concentrate on what they learned from all of those “different people, who were not really so different fundamentally, and also what they taught. While they experienced many people who were at first the “other” to them, they were also the “other” to many of their acquaintances. Together, they became friends. Together they taught each other, not in books, but in life, what it is to be American.

We could easily throw up our hands at the folly of our local schools. We could retreat to our private schools, our religious schools, our exclusive schools and rationalize it as being best for our kids. But if we do, we will be further weakening the most important institution and process for making Americans: our free universal secular education.

If America is worth fighting for, then our schools, flawed as they are, demand our caring attention and passionate commitment.