Posted on 02/09/2014 8:41:07 AM PST by Arthurio
If Obama had a school system.
Meanwhile, De Blasio is trying to wipe out the charter school movement in NYC...because he says too many of the students are white.
At the same time, a “majority minority” girls charter high school in NYC is desperately asking him not to wipe them out, and many of the people who have protested against his plans have been black. Lower income Hispanic students whose families care often go to Catholic schools, but they are also under attack and the whole plan is to bring down all of the schools so they meet the New Communist Billion-Year Plan to “improve education” by collectively lynching schools that do well.
In fact, in his few weeks in office, De Blasio has even cut back or shut down good programs at public schools because they supposedly “disproportionately” benefit whites.
We have a communication problem, here.
AINT nothing like having two parents at home who are better educated than the children, and take the time to help their children with their school work, to make the teachers “smarter” and “better”.
I see that NYC is giving the non-union/non-government schools a hard time. Kinda like keeping a woman pregnant in the summer and barefoot in the winter isn’t it? AINT never going to be free.
Teachers are worthless without good parents.
But we aren’t allowed to talk about that.
Translation: Teachers who prove themselves to be among the best get transferred to places where they are less likely to be assaulted and injured or killed. Sounds fair to me.
The state of the art is, IMHO, www.khanacademy.org. This provides lectures and computerized drill-and-practice. The key point is not to put "a large screen TV of the best of the best teaching the class,” but - as Salman Khan urges - to “flip the classroom” by having each student view the lecture at home online, and dedicate the class time to one-on-one quality time with the teacher and the individual student. And/or, having the best students help those having problems. Khan says that his videos do not replace the teacher, but they can replace the textbook. Do check out the website.
Khan is an awful teacher. There are far better on the internet. He has some money, and his presentation looks cleaner because of it, but most people wouldn’t be able to learn from him. That’s OK because his market is AP types who probably could figure it out an their own.
I would not argue that nobody could do what he does, nor that nobody does it better (I haven’t done the research to know that). I do argue that he has proven the concept of supplementing/replacing the textbook with bite-sized video lectures made available online, free.By all means, if you can do it better - or get others to do so - I invite you to go for it. Just do yourself the favor and don’t do it differently, in a way which is worse. I respect Khan for his ability to learn subjects which he hasn’t been expert, and then teach them. If you want to improve on his lectures, you should at least take his for a starting point, and improve on them. If you don’t, chances are you won’t end up with a better product. At least, not in all the domains he has lectured on.
- From Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech at the Sarbonne:
- There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
> I also suspect that it was the administrators above her who encouraged her behavior, figuring she was deniable and expendable if there was any blow-back.
And that was the other side of it. The superintendent’s brother was the dean of a local black university, and I’m assuming they were filled with graduates ready to replace 30 year veterans making 80K with fresh grads making 28K. The only problem was the process was going to slowly.
And there, as Paul Harvey would say, you have the rest of the story.
I enjoyed thwarting the status quo by providing my sons better instruction at home than they received in the jungle classroom. They ran head and shoulders above their classmates. That sometimes lead to playground retribution for my middle son. Top fly on the dung heap is a dangerous spot.
Yes, I have incorporated 2-5 minute video clips in PowerPoint slides of a lesson. A pic is worth 1000 words, they say, and it’s true. I can explain something and then SHOW it to cement it in their minds. I don’t need a video with a teacher explaining something I can explain myself, and tailor to the specific needs of students I know. You can use such things as supplements to lessons, but certainly not as the lesson itself. Bloombutt tried to replace veteran teachers in the classroom with first newbies right out of undergrad school. With the adoption of Commie Core, the evolution to just having a big TV screen lesson for everyone (cheaper!!) with a teacher in the room just to keep kids from killing each other, etc. is just around the corner. So who will need teachers, according to this model? But—who will notice that kids have bruises they should not have? Who will comfort students about stuff that happened at home and line up resources for them to help them overcome it? Who will know the student well enough to write college recommendation letters? Who will they brag to that they got a 100 on their math test? Any sane person knows you can’t replace a real live caring teacher with technology. At best, it’s just an adjunct.
“With the adoption of Commie Core, the evolution to just having a big TV screen lesson for everyone (cheaper!!)”
With a single message through the big TV screen, it is much more efficient in indoctrinating large numbers of young Communists on a daily basis. Stalin would have loved it.
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