E Wayne Ross – Page 93 – Critical Theories in Education

‘Devastating’ Bill Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming This Week

Editor & Publisher: ‘Devastating’ Bill Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming This Week

By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 21, 2007 9:00 PM ET

NEW YORK (Commentary) The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called “Buying the War,” which marks the return of “Bill Moyers Journal.” E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week.

While much of the evidence of the media’s role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again — yet Moyers points out, “the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses.”

Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, “The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should’ve all been doing that.”

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, “I don’t think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war&hellipWe didn’t dig enough. And we shouldn’t have been fooled in this way.” Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to “dig deeper,” and he replies, “No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas&hellip.nope, I don’t think we followed up on this.”

Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a “softer” way, explaining to Moyers: “I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn’t seem ridiculous.”

Moyers replies: “Going to war, almost light.”

Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, “We didn’t question our sources enough.” But why? Isaacson notes there was “almost a patriotism police” after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.'”

Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, “It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan” and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, “Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails.”

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper reporters “do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something.” But Moyers gives credit to Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.

The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell’s presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student’s thesis, downloaded from the Web — with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with “plagiarism.”

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have “two conservatives for every liberal.” Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue’s firing that claimed he “presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a “quick war” with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote “a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war.” The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration’s case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would “editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times.”

Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.

The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that “so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media.” He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, “We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Then he explains: “The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush’s top speechwriter.

“He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist.”

***
Greg Mitchell’s most recent column on Iraq: “Sorry We Shot Your Kid, But Here’s $500”

Rouge Forum Update: Happy May Day!

Dear Friends,

We support the many school walkouts that will take place on May 1, the international workers holiday. All school workers should back the students with the courage to take direct action. We also support the immigrant-workers rights movement that seeks, once again, to demonstrate its potential on this great day.

In that vein, here is a link prepared by the Lawyers Guild on the rights of students, especially as related to walkouts.
Go to www.schoolwalkouts.info

And here is a fine, old, piece by Alexander Trachtenberg on Mayday

Long time Rouge Forum readers will note that we are not linking to our own traditional Mayday flyer, nor have we sent out a Rouge Forum update for two weeks.

That is because our service provider, Earthlink, has had our web site shut down, illegally, since April 1. We have paid all our bills but Earthlink simply refuses to restore the web site.

At least two officials at Earthlink seem to have responsibility for this, a Mr Lunsford at , lunsford.support@corp.earthlink.net , and Bil Quince, Mr Lunsford’s underling at bquince@corp.earthlink.net

Maybe if, say, ten percent of the 4400 people on our email list send them a note, they will wake up and act right. All you need to do is say, “Turn on Richard Gibson’s (rgibson@pipeline.com) web site NOW.”

Thanks to Gil, Tommie, Bill B, Amber, Wayne, Susan H and O, Connie Lane, Doug, Marsha, Sally, Sandy, Nancy, and Nancy P.

We hope to be restored to life, fully, next week.

All the best, r

Teacher’s job on line for student column

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”—Sinclair Lewis

Okay, now advocating tolerance in US schools is controversial.

An Indiana teacher has been suspended from her job because in her role as student newspaper adviser she did not censor a student opinion column that advocated tolerance for people “different than you.”

In the Woodland Junior-Senior High School newspaper, The Tomahawk, tenth grader Megan Chase wrote:

“I think it is so wrong to look down on those people, or to make fun of them, just because they have a different sexuality than you. There is nothing wrong with them or their brain; they’re just different than you.”

Now the school district has recommend that teacher Amy Sorrell be fired because she did not alert school principal, prior to publication, regarding the “sensitivity” of the material.

Read on for the AP wire story:

Teacher’s Job on Line for Student Column
By TOM COYNE
Associated Press Writer

WOODBURN, Ind. — The column in the student newspaper seemed innocent enough: advocating tolerance for people “different than you.”

But since sophomore Megan Chase’s words appeared Jan. 19 in The Tomahawk, the newspaper at Woodland Junior-Senior High School, her newspaper adviser has been suspended and is fighting for her job, and charges of censorship and First Amendment violations are clouding this conservative northeastern Indiana community.

At issue is whether Chase’s opinion column advocating tolerance of homosexuals was suitable for a student newspaper distributed to students in grades 7 through 12 and whether newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell followed protocol in allowing the column to be printed.

Media advocates say the debate has deeper ramifications.

“This is a real threat to quality student journalism if an adviser can be removed for not having censored a perfectly legitimate story that there was no legal reason why it shouldn’t have been published,” said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.

School officials in this community of 1,600 residents, 10 miles east of Fort Wayne, say the issue isn’t First Amendment rights but a teacher’s failure to live up to her responsibilities. They contend Sorrell should have alerted Principal Ed Yoder to the article because of the sensitivity of the material.

“The way we view it is the broad topic of homosexuality is a sensitive enough issue in our society that the principal deserves to know that it’s something the newspaper is going to write about,” said Andy Melin, assistant superintendent of secondary education and technology.

Melin said Yoder would have allowed the article to be printed but likely would have suggested some changes.

Sorrell has been placed on administrative leave and the school district has recommended she be fired. A public hearing is scheduled April 28, and the school board expects to vote May 1.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, argued that students have access to much more mature material in the school library and on the Internet.

“Advocating tolerance is controversial?” she said.

Chase’s column, which she wrote after a friend told her he was gay, said society teaches that “it is only acceptable for a boy and a girl to be together,” which makes declaring one’s sexual orientation difficult.

“I can only imagine how hard it would be to come out as homosexual in today’s society,” she wrote. “I think it is so wrong to look down on those people, or to make fun of them, just because they have a different sexuality than you. There is nothing wrong with them or their brain; they’re just different than you.”

She said she was surprised by school officials’ reaction.

“I didn’t think it was any big deal,” Chase said of the column.

Sorrell, 30, said she showed the principal four stories about teen pregnancy, including an opinion piece advocating teaching safe sex practices over abstinence education, for the same Jan. 19 issue because she thought that “was going to cause the stir.”

But she acknowledges she never mentioned Chase’s column. “There isn’t anything controversial about tolerance,” she said.

Stan Pflueger, president of the Fort Wayne chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays and a graduate of the school district, said he was disappointed with the school system’s reaction.

“The spirit of the article is just asking people to consider what your previous beliefs were about this particular subject,” he said. “There’s a difference between tolerance and agreement.”

But resident Jim Bridge took a tougher stand.

“We all have rules that we have to abide by and it appears that she hasn’t chosen to abide by the rules,” Bridge said. “I own my own business and anybody that did that to me would be fired on the spot. She knew it had to be controversial.”

Sorrell, the daughter of a newspaper editor, said she thought she knew what was acceptable in the school district where she has taught English for four years.

“I’d still make that same judgment,” she said.

___

April 22, 2007 – 11:10 a.m. Copyright 2007, The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP Online news report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/National/School_Newspaper_Flap.html

University goes on offensive against RIAA

Via the Rock & Rap Confidential listserv…

University goes on offensive against RIAA

Advises students to stay anonymous
By Nick Farrell: Monday 16 April 2007, 15:11

from theinquirer.net

NC State University is helping its students stave off attacks from the RIAA. The RIAA filed John Doe lawsuits against 23 students who have been identified by their IP addresses.

Pam Gerace, the director of Student Legal Services at the University, is fighting the lawsuits for her student clients.

Currently she is warning students to remain anonymous because the RIAA has said that it will make sure that their job records are blighted.

Since this is so out of proportion to any copyright protection problems, it was dangerous for students to put their hands up and admit anything. She told the Technician Online that this could prove dangerous for the students, as the RIAA could pursue other legal actions or give the names to record companies.

She said the RIAA implies that cash must be handed over right away, when this is not true.

The outfit has also been changing the number of songs it thinks have been nicked and how much students should pay, which makes it sound like they are making it up as they go along, Gerace said.

Yet another example of how the Dems are no different from the GOP

In his ZNet commentary of April 13, Norman Solomon gives us yet another example of how the leading Democratic candidates for the US presidency are warmongers, just like Bush.

ZNet Commentary
Awful Truth About Hillary, Barack, John… and Whitewash
April 13, 2007
By Norman Solomon

The Pentagon’s most likely next target is Iran.

Hillary Clinton says “no option can be taken off the table.”

Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is “a threat to all of us” and “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.”

John Edwards says, “Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons.” And: “We need to keep all options on the table.”

A year ago, writing in The New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reported: “One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.”

For a presidential candidate to proclaim that all “options” should be on the table while dealing with Iran is a horrific statement. It signals willingness to threaten — and possibly follow through with — first use of nuclear weapons. This raises no eyebrows among Washington’s policymakers and media elites because it is in keeping with longstanding U.S. foreign-policy doctrine.

This year, with their virtually identical statements about “options” and “the table,” the leading Democratic presidential candidates — Clinton, Obama and Edwards — have refused to rule out any kind of attack on Iran.

If you’re not shocked or outraged yet, consider this:

On Feb. 22, the national leaders of MoveOn sent an e-mail letter to more than 3 million people with the subject line “War with Iran?” After citing a need to give UN sanctions “a chance to work before provoking a regional conflict,” the letter said flatly: “Senator Hillary Clinton has provided some much needed leadership on this.”

The MoveOn letter quoted a passage from a speech that Clinton had given on the Senate floor eight days earlier: “It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further congressional authorization. Nor should the president think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in any way, authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority.”

But, while quoting Hillary Clinton’s speech as an example of “some much needed leadership,” MoveOn made no mention of the fact that the same speech stated: “As I have long said and will continue to say, U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. And in dealing with this threat, as I’ve also said for a long time, no option can be taken off the table.”

Earlier this year, David Rieff noted in The New York Times Magazine on March 25, “Vice President Cheney insisted that the administration had not ‘taken any options off the table’ as Iran continued to defy United Nations calls for it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The response from Democrats was not long in coming. Senator Clinton helped lead the charge, reminding the president that he did not have the authority to go to war with Iran on the basis of the Senate’s authorization of the use of force in Iraq in 2002.

“But what Senator Clinton did not say was at least as interesting as what she did say. And what she did not say was that she opposed the use of force in Iran. To the contrary, Senator Clinton used virtually the same formulation as Vice President Cheney. When dealing with Iran, she insisted, ‘no option can be taken off the table.'”

To praise Hillary Clinton for providing “much needed leadership” on Iran — and to mislead millions of e-mail recipients counted as MoveOn members in the process — is a notable choice to make. It speaks volumes. It winks at Clinton’s stance that “no option can be taken off the table.” It serves an enabling function. It is very dangerous.

The stakes are much too high to make excuses or look the other way.

______________________________________

Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

Be nice to America or else

My buddy Paul O sent this in after his latest visit to The States…

Classroom Caste System

Here’s a good commentary article from the Washington Post by a second grade teacher in Silver Spring, MD, who describes the growing divide between rich and poor students as a result of the focus test-prep pedagogy that currently dominates in US classrooms.

Classroom Caste System

By David Keyes
Monday, April 9, 2007; A13

Written five years ago to reduce the “achievement gap,” the No Child Left Behind Act has in fact created a gap in American education. Its pressure to raise test scores has caused many schools to give poor and minority students an impoverished education that focuses primarily on basic skills.

As it comes up for reauthorization, members of Congress should consider the unintended consequence of the act: a new gap between poor and minority students, who are being taught to seek simple answers, and largely wealthy and white students, who are learning to ask complex questions. In my work as an elementary school teacher, I have seen this new gap and I worry about its impact on my students’ future prospects.

Although supporters and critics of No Child Left Behind agree on little, both would acknowledge that testing lies at the heart of the law. Schools approach the act’s testing requirements differently, depending on the students they serve.
Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, American schools remain largely segregated. Schools serving mostly wealthy and white students have a distinct advantage when it comes to testing. Their students are far more likely to be raised in an environment that gives them the necessary tools to succeed on tests. They grow up with the intellectual abundance their wealth provides: books, educational videos and Baby Einstein games, to name a few. Having these resources may not make children smarter, but it does educate them in many of the skills — such as letter sounds and addition facts — that are covered on standardized tests. Knowing their students are likely to succeed on tests gives these schools freedom to teach higher-level thinking skills.

Poor and minority children also come to school with rich backgrounds. They speak foreign languages, make music, tell vivid stories and have other skills not typical of their peers. Their backgrounds, however, often do not provide them with the academic skills needed to succeed on standardized tests. Fearful of poor test scores that can bring punitive measures, schools spend an inordinate amount of time preparing their students for the tests.

Schools often use test-prep programs to try to raise test scores. The problem with these programs is that they teach the skills covered on tests, and only these skills. Poor and minority students spend hours repeating “B buh ball” and two plus two equals four. Every hour spent drilling basic skills is an hour not spent developing the higher-level thinking skills that are emphasized in wealthier school districts.

I have worked in both types of schools. Currently, I teach in an almost exclusively minority, high-poverty elementary school. Administrators require teachers to strictly adhere to a months-long test-prep program. My students recoil at the sight of their test-prep books. Last year, some of my students cried, wracked with anxiety over the tests.

My students are 7 and 8 years old.

I did my student teaching in an almost exclusively white and wealthy school. There, the students studied the role of quilts on the Underground Railroad, brainstormed plans to save wolves from extinction and performed dances based on retellings of Cinderella. The children learned to think and they loved it.

At the end of the year, test results will come out for these two schools. Educators and politicians will trumpet any reduction of the so-called achievement gap. This misses the point. Students will leave these two schools and schools like them with a widely varying set of skills. As the achievement gap is being reduced, another gap is being created. Students in largely wealthy and white schools are learning to ask larger questions; students in poor and minority schools are only being taught to answer smaller ones.

The effect of this gap will be long-lasting. Students taught higher-level thinking skills will be able to compete for jobs at the upper echelon of the 21st-century economy. Students who receive an impoverished education focused on basic skills will be stuck at the bottom.

The No Child Left Behind Act is creating a caste-like system in which students’ future prospects are likely to be similar to those of their parents. This undemocratic development is at odds with a society that prides itself on being a meritocracy. As Congress debates the renewal of the law, members should consider not only whether the act is reducing the achievement gap but also the skills gap it is creating.

The writer is a second-grade teacher at Bel Pre Elementary School in Silver Spring.

Let’s abolish high school

Over the past couple of years there have been some interesting discussions among Rouge Forum folk about the merits of shutting down the schools-we-have and, instead, creating freedom schools.

The key tensions in the discussion include: (a) schools as a key organizing point for social change and (b) schools as mind-numbing, sorting machines/holding tanks that strip many students of their creativity, agency, and ability to think.

A “third way,” so to speak would be to abolish compulsory schooling, which is what this commentary by Robert Esptein is essentially arguing, at least when it comes to high school.

Education Week

Published: April 4, 2007

Commentary
Let’s Abolish High School
By Robert Epstein

Well, not quite. But while writing a new book called The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, I explored some ideas that go almost that far.

I’m a father of four children, and about 10 years ago I noticed—I couldn’t help but notice—that my 15-year-old son was remarkably mature. He balanced work and play far better than I did, and he seemed quite ready to live on his own. Why, I wondered, was he not allowed to drive or vote, and why did he have so few options? Simply because of his age, he couldn’t own property or do any interesting or fulfilling work, and he had no choice but to attend high school for several more years before getting on with his “real” life.

As a longtime professor and researcher, I got curious. Were our young people always required to attend school, and were their work opportunities always limited to babysitting, yard work, and cleaning the floors at fast-food joints? Were they always subject to so many restrictions? Are teenagers necessarily incompetent and irresponsible, as the media tell us? Is there really an immature “teenage brain” that holds them back? After all, past puberty, technically speaking we’re not really children anymore, and presumably through most of human history we bore our young when we were quite young ourselves. It occurred to me that young people must be capable of functioning as competent adults, or the human race quite probably would not exist.

Over time, through interviews, surveys, and scholarly research, I began to investigate these matters in depth. What I learned amazed me—even shocked me.
Consider school, for example. The first compulsory education law in the United States wasn’t enacted until 1852. This Massachusetts law required that all young people between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school three months a year—unless, that is, they could demonstrate that they already knew the material; in other words, this law was competency-based. It took 15 years before any other states followed Massachusetts’ lead and 66 years before all states did. Along the way, some powerful segments of society staunchly opposed the mandatory education trend. In 1892, for example, the Democratic Party stated as part of its national platform, “We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children.”
TalkBack
Join the related discussion, “Creating Young Adults.”

Restrictions on work by young people also took hold very gradually. In fact, the earliest “child labor” laws in the United States actually required young people to work. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that laws restricting the work opportunities of young people began to take hold. Those laws, too, were fiercely opposed, and in fact the first federal laws restricting youth labor—enacted in 1916, 1918, and 1933—were all swiftly struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. After all, young people had worked side by side with adults throughout history, and they still helped support their families and their communities in countries around the world; the idea that there should be limits on youth labor, or that young people shouldn’t be allowed to do any work, seemed outrageous to many people.

Eventually, multiple forces—the desire to “Americanize” the tens of millions of immigrants streaming into the United States to get jobs in the land of opportunity, the effort to rescue millions of young laborers from horrendous working conditions in the factories and mines, the extreme determination of America’s growing labor unions to protect adult jobs, and, most especially, the extremely high unemployment rate (27 percent or so) during the Great Depression—created the systems we have today: laws severely restricting or prohibiting youth labor, and school systems modeled after the new factories, established to teach “industrial discipline” to young people and to homogenize their knowledge and thinking.

Unfortunately, the dramatic changes set in motion by the turmoil of America’s industrial revolution also obliterated from modern consciousness the true abilities of young people, leaving adults with the faulty belief that teenagers were inherently irresponsible and incompetent. What’s more, the rate at which restrictions were placed on young people began to accelerate after the 1930s, and increased dramatically after the social turmoil of the 1960s. Surveys I’ve conducted suggest that teenagers today are subject to 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, to twice as many restrictions as are active-duty U.S. Marines, and even to twice as many restrictions as are incarcerated felons.

Over the past century or so, we have, through a growing set of restrictions, artificially extended childhood by perhaps a decade or more, and we have also completely isolated young people from adults, severing the “child-adult continuum” that has existed throughout history. This trend is continuing. Just last year, Reg Weaver, the second-term president of the National Education Association, while lamenting the fact that 30 percent or more of our young people never complete high school, called for extending the minimum age of school leaving to 21. When adults see young people misbehaving or underperforming, they often respond by infantilizing young people even more, and the new restrictions often cause even more distress among our young.

Some leaders in education are far more trusting of our nation’s young—and also recognize the inherent dangers of infantilization and isolation. The former New York City and New York state teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto has long warned about the dangers of artificially extending childhood, and has blamed our schools for damaging families and stifling creativity and a love of learning. Leon Botstein, the longtime president of Bard College and the youngest college president (at 23) in U.S. history, has called for the outright abolition of our high school system, pointing out the obvious: High school is a waste of time for the majority of the students—that is, for those who haven’t already dropped out.

Our educational institutions today are cursed by at least four fatal legacies of the Industrial Revolution—ideas that may have been helpful a century ago but have no place in today’s world.
In today’s fast-paced world, education needs to be spread out over a lifetime, and the main thing we need to teach our young people is to love the process of learning.

First, although cars can be assembled on demand, it’s absurd to teach people when they’re not ready to learn. As the brilliant German educator Kurt Hahn (the founder of Outward Bound) said, teaching people who are aren’t ready is like “pouring and pouring into a jug and never looking to see whether the lid is off.”

Second, although mass education was exciting in the era that invented mass production, it does a great disservice to the vast majority of students. People have radically different learning styles and abilities, and effective learning—learning that benefits all students—is necessarily individualized and self-paced. This is the elephant in the classroom from which no teacher can hide.

Third, although it’s efficient to cram all apparently essential knowledge into the first two decades of life, the main thing we teach most students with this approach is to hate school. In today’s fast-paced world, education needs to be spread out over a lifetime, and the main thing we need to teach our young people is to love the process of learning.

Finally, whereas that first compulsory-education law in Massachusetts was competency-based, the system that grew in its wake requires all young people to attend school, no matter what they know. Even worse, the system provides no incentives for students to master material quickly, and few or no meaningful options for young people who do leave school.

A century ago, there was no way to address these concerns, but, thanks to computers and the Internet, we now have rapidly improving tools that will soon allow virtually all young people to master essential material at their own pace, and to do so at any point in their lives. There will probably always be a place for the classroom, but it will be a place where intense and intimate learning takes place with highly willing students, not a step on an assembly line.

Are young people really inherently incompetent and irresponsible? The research I conducted with my colleague Diane Dumas suggests that teenagers are as competent as adults across a wide range of adult abilities, and other research has long shown that they are actually superior to adults on tests of memory, intelligence, and perception. The assertion that teenagers have an “immature” brain that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world. Anthropologists have identified more than 100 contemporary societies in which teenage turmoil is completely absent; most of these societies don’t even have terms for adolescence. Even more compelling, long-term anthropological studies initiated at Harvard in the 1980s show that teenage turmoil begins to appear in societies within a few years after those societies adopt Western schooling practices and are exposed to Western media. Finally, a wealth of data shows that when young people are given meaningful responsibility and meaningful contact with adults, they quickly rise to the challenge, and their “inner adult” emerges.

A careful look at these issues yields startling conclusions: The social-emotional turmoil experienced by many young people in the United States is entirely a creation of modern culture. We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.

Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults; to undo the damage we have done, we need to establish competency-based systems that give these young people opportunities and incentives to join the adult world as rapidly as possible.

Robert Epstein is a former editor in chief of Psychology Today, a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and the host of “Psyched!” on Sirius Satellite Radio. His latest book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, was published last week by Quill Driver Books (http://thecaseagainstadolescence.com).

Vol. 26, Issue 31, Pages 28,40

Why ‘model schools’ aren’t a good choice

The B.C. Liberals have been touting segregated schooling for students with disabilities as an educational “reform.”

B.C.’s Education minister, Shirley Bond, has also suggested the possibility that the provincial government might fund separate schools for Aboriginal studies or ESL students or based upon gender.

And, former B.C. Education Minister, Christy Clark, recently wrote in her newspaper column: “Segregation didn’t work as a general rule. But rules have exceptions.”

So, it’s good to this op-ed in today’s Vancouver Sun, which states what is obvious to many: Students with special needs need special instruction from specialist teachers, not separate facilities.

A good source on inclusive education is the Whole Schooling Consortium.

Wednesday » April 4 » 2007

Why ‘model schools’ aren’t a good choice
Students with special needs need special instruction from specialist teachers, not separate facilities

Pat Mirenda, Nancy Perry, Linda Siegel and Joe Lucyshyn
Vancouver Sun

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

There is a movement afoot to establish provincial “model schools” for students with special learning needs who are not succeeding in regular school settings.

In particular, students with learning disabilities or autism appear to be the focus of this movement.

The numerous shortcomings of such special schools in the past — whether they were designed for children who were visually impaired, deaf, intellectually disabled, or aboriginal — is a matter of the public record. All else being equal in terms of resources, accountability and expertise, it is clear that there is nothing necessarily better about places that are designed to educate learners whose only unifying characteristic is that they share some type of label.

It is time to look past “place” as the focus of educational reform and instead consider what we know from research is required for all students to achieve their maximum potential.

So, what do we know?
We know that, for all students, excellent instruction is critically important for learning. We also know that the earlier children at risk are identified, the sooner remediation can begin.

Ideally, this means that students at risk for learning difficulties are identified in preschool (yes, the tools do exist to accomplish this.) But at a minimum, this should occur no later than kindergarten or Grade 1. Then, teachers must be able to assess students’ current strengths and weaknesses, so that they can then identify learning goals accordingly.

They need to know how to design lessons that accommodate all learners, as well as how to adapt and modify curricula for individual students.

They need to know how to deliver instruction using techniques that are based on current research, and how to monitor students’ performance over time using observable, measurable criteria.

Teachers also need to know when and how to use various technologies sensibly and creatively to enhance learning. They need to know how to work collaboratively with families and other professionals who share their desire to deliver excellent instruction.

Both teachers and administrators need to know how to create school and classroom communities that welcome everyone, all the time, everywhere; and how to develop school-wide plans that result in both positive interpersonal relationships and appropriate behaviour.

They need to be able to consult with other teachers who have specific training and experience in special education. These specialist teachers, in turn, need to have the time to provide direct, one-on-one instruction to students who require it in specific areas.

Finally, they need to understand that all of this can happen in the context of inclusive classrooms that are populated by students both with and without special needs. If and when all of these elements are in place, parents will no longer insist that they want “more choice” about where their children are educated, because they will be learning effectively in their neighbourhood schools.

Does this happen now? For the most part, the answer is, No, it does not. But the problem is not the place of instruction.

Most teacher education programs in the province do not include even one course aimed at preparing teachers to meet the educational needs of students with special needs.

In most school districts, teachers with special education training or background are assigned to administrative or resource positions in which they are primarily responsible for supervising special education assistants who work directly with students.

This means that specialist teachers often do not have time to assess students’ needs, deliver direct instruction, monitor progress, or even consult regularly with classroom teachers to solve problems.

It also means that special education assistants — who, of all the professionals involved, have the least amount of training and are paid the lowest salaries — often have more direct contact with these students than do their teachers.

Given this, it is no mystery why many students with special needs do not make progress in reading, math, communication and other critical skill areas.

However, the best research evidence does not support the creation of either new places or a new governance model for special education services as the solution.

Instead of appropriating money to heat and light and furnish model schools, let’s use those same funds to make fundamental changes in how we prepare teachers and how we support them to do their jobs:

Provide additional post-secondary funding so that teacher education programs can truly prepare professionals who know how to teach all learners.

Provide adequate funding to school districts so that they can re-establish special education programs and hire specialist teachers who can work both directly and indirectly with students as needed.

Ensure that administrators and teachers have ready access to evidence-based instructional practices that really work.

And, in so doing, empower teachers so that they can ensure that students become successful learners, whether or not they have exceptional learning needs.

Pat Mirenda, Nancy Perry, Linda Siegel and Joe Lucyshyn teach at the faculty of education at the University of British Columbia.