The Worst Idea Ever

Oh my god. This is the worst idea ever. Ever! This charter school is based computer games - kids love them, and apparently they are the best pedagogical tool since dunce caps. My thoughts?

1. You are teaching kids something that, according to those who run the school, they are very adept at picking up by themselves. Isn't the point of school to teach kids things they wont be motivated to learn on their own?
2. This school seems to assume we should all be ok with the digitally induced attention deficit disorder this generation seems to suffer - why read a book, when you could watch a youtube video, why write an essay, when you could write a numbered list in a blog? Despite evidence to the contrary, I'm not so sure these changes are a good idea. Do we really want to breed a generation who thinks you can learn from making a computer game as much as from reading a book?
3. The rest of this country's education system, and the employers who take cues about workers' intelligence and discipline from it, still value traditional educational methods. Are these kids going to have to explain why their writing sample is a video game?
4. The idea doesn't seem to be that games help kids learn the things that normal schools fail to teach them, but rather that games teach kids a new set of skills that are increasingly useful. While it is hard to argue that there aren't new skills that are important, shouldn't they be taught along with, not instead of the old ones? Are we so sure that book literacy and old school styles of learning are irrelevant that it is ok not to teach them to children?
5. I am not sure I believe, or believe that it is a good thing, this but: isn't part of school there just to teach discipline by making kids suffer through boring things? It is what teaches kids to respect authority, follow directions, fear punishment, seek approval... and this doesn't work if the kids actually are excited about school. On second thought, this is horrible, I have decided that I certainly don't believe it - unless I was just to say that maybe it is ok if kids are not fascinated by every single thing they learn in school

The Next Conservative Revolution is Coming to you from the NYT Op-Ed Page

I wrote a whole long and ranty post about how the NYT's op-ed page has in the past two days sported columns from liberals' favorite and least favorite conservatives, and how the arguments are related, and how they are trying to tear down the consensus that it takes more work than grit and a family emphasis on education to achieve something these days. Anyways, it was too long and too ranty, even for me, so I deleted it. Discretion is the better part of valor, or something. I have, like, opinions, though and why have a blog if you can't share opinions, so for anyone who is interested in what I didn't like about David Brook's article about the limits of policy, and Charles Murray's article about charter schools, here are some bullet points (that will only make sense if you read the articles, and in the case of Murray, are somewhat familiar with his Magnum Crapuses:

Brooks

•  I'll bet someone living in poverty in Sweden has quite a bit higher quality of life than someone living in poverty in the US, even if it (only?) gives them 2.7 more years of expected life.
• How how HOW does comparing native Americans in South Dakota and Indians in New Jersey prove your point that culture not policy matters? Is availability of quality schools and jobs not a policy thing? Also, isn't the fact that the Native Americans are in South Dakota and not New Jersey to begin with a policy thing (that would be the Indian Removal Act, I believe)?
• Isn't the fact that high achieving people tend to live close to each other (in big cities on the coasts) and produce 'positive feedback loops' a reflection of how they vote and their budgeting priorities? Isn't that policy?
• I haven't read Susan Mayer's book, but most social policies don''t try to double anyone's money, they try to improve economic opportunities for those at the bottom, and provide a safety net for everyone else. Tax and spend liberals assume that everyone, not just poor people, won't use their money as well as the government would, and so prefer to spend it on social programs.
• Cool, your policy recommendation of supporting strong social ties but not uprooting people sounds reasonable. Oh, wait, what is your example of that? The army? Because vet's do so well in America today?
• And great preschools! Here we agree! But in the name of strengthening social bonds? Don't great preschools allow mothers to go to work, which, I don't know, might not strengthen social ties? Basically, huh?

Murray

• Unrelated to this article, but nice job going against everything you had ever written and arguing for the abolition of the SAT. Not a nice job with everything else you've ever written. Thanks for creating the racist and harmful meme of the 'welfare queen.' Don't even ask me to talk about The Bell Curve.
• This isn't as complicated. Mr Murray, you are basically arguing that you want to send your children to schools with children who come from families who share your social values. I don't want to claim that this is a code for race and class, but I am going to claim just that. Neighborhood public schools don't allow you to protect your children from the influences of those who - shock - are different! Would choose a multicultural or progressive curriculum over one that emphasizes the late and greats. I don't know dude, I think that's sketchy.

It is when I explain what these articles have to do with eachother that this gets way too ranty, so I'm going to leave it at that. 

Freedom Fries not on the Menu

Here in the US, activists like Alice Waters try to improve the school lunch program in which cheap food is augmented by the leftovers of industrial agriculture. Over in France, things are a little different.

That article reminds me of that moment in Sicko, the Michael Moore movie (which many understandably gripe about) where MM is talking to American expat mothers in France, hearing about how the government sends a nurse to help them at home after the birth, and Michael says (sarcastically) 'Next you'll be saying the send someone to do your laundry,' which, of course, they do. Oh, social democracy.

Pop a Pill to your Preteen?

I am a long time fan of Judith Warner, the New York Times guest columnist who wrote about children, parenting, mental health, and psychiatry even though I have no children, am not a parent, avoid thinking too much about mental health, and don't know anything about psychiatry. She is a very good, and quite thoughtful writer, and set out to write a book about the psychiatric over-medication of children. In the course of doing the research for this book, she found that in fact children taking psychiatric drugs seemed to benefit dramatically from them, parents and psychiatrists are wary, not gung-ho, about medicating children, and that concerns about over-medication might be a class and culture specific way of articulating worries about today's culture and 'social environment.'

I would tend to sympathize more with the pre-research Judith Warner. Although I know neither data nor stories about over-medicated children, I have a vague and unsubstantiated feeling that children, especially young boys, are too often diagnosed with ADD and ADHD, and medicated accordingly.

Perhaps in my head this was related to the fact that I do know many people, specifically African Americans growing up in the projects, who were diagnosed with the vague 'behavioral or emotional disorders,' and not given any treatment, but sent to special ed for the rest of their educational lives. On further thought, these issues are, and should be thought of as entirely separate. I don't really have any more well reasoned thoughts on the matter though, but this seems like an important thing for someone other than a journalist (or a blogger) to figure out.

musings on school

Bob Herbert tells us here that 4th grade kids in American outperform their peers internationally in math and science while 12th graders do worse than students in almost every industrialized country.

Whats going on? What is so different about the perils of puberty in the US? Or is it that the teachers are different? This data confirms my purely anecdotal evidence - I have been to elementary school classrooms in poor, 'undesirable' public schools, and in wealthy suburbs and private schools, and they don't look that different. Younger kids read the same books, do the same art projects, and are often excited about schools. High schools are a totally different story - noone would ever mistake a high school in Grosse Pointe for one in downtown Detroit - there are huge gaps in facilities and materials, classes offered, and often teacher quality, and along with these, in classroom atmosphere and expectations. Does this not happen in countries which are more successful at teaching their high school students? What a puzzle.