E Wayne Ross – Page 94 – Critical Theories in Education

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.

No foolin’…here are my picks for MLB 2007

NATIONAL LEAGUE

East
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies*
Atlanta Braves
Florida Marlins
Washington Nationals

Central
Milwaukee Brewers
Chicago Cubs
St. Louis Cardinals
Cincinnati Reds
Houston Astros
Pittsburgh Pirates

West
Los Angeles Dodgers
Arizona Diamondbacks
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Colorado Rockies

AMERICAN LEAGUE

East
Boston Red Sox
Toronto Blue Jays
New York Yankees
Baltimore Orioles
Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Central
Cleveland Indians
Detroit Tigers*
Minnesota Twins
Chicago White Sox
Kansas City Royals

West
Oakland Athletics
L.A. Angels of Anaheim
Texas Rangers
Seattle Mariners

* = Wild Card

PLAYOFFS:
NL Champs: New York Mets
AL Champs: Boston Red Sox
World Series Champs: New York Mets

Player Awards

CY YOUNG AWARD
AL: Johan Santana, Minnesota Twins
NL: Carlos Zambrano, Chicago Cubs

MVP
AL: Travis Hafner, Cleveland Indians
NL: Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies

ROLAIDS RELIEF AWARD
AL: Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees
NL: Jason Isringhausen, St. Louis Cardinals

HANK AARON AWARD
AL: Derek Jeter, New York Yankees
NL: Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies

COMEBACK PLAYER
AL: Rich Harden, Oakland Athletics
NL: Derrick Lee, Chicago Cubs

MANAGER OF THE YEAR
AL: Eric Wedge, Cleveland Indians
NL: Lou Pinella, Chicago Cubs

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
AL Rookie of the Year: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox
NL Rookie of the Year: Scott Thorman, Atlanta Braves

HOME RUN CHAMP
AL: Dave Ortiz, Boston Red Sox
NL: Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies

Bonds does NOT break Aaron’s HR record

Rouge Forum Update

The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil page is updated….but the site is shut down as we had so many hits this month, we overloaded the server even earlier than usual.

So, our web page will be up an perking along, opposing the empire’s wars and its efforts to regiment knowledge, on April 1.

Meanwhile, we call attention to the fine work being done by Tom O’Donnell at the University of Michigan. Tom has worked for several years analyzing the role of oil and imperial politics. A Rouge Forum member attended a presentation Tom led recently and asked that we call attention to his work. Some of it is linked here.

We remind Rouge Forum email members that a chat is going on regarding the structure and communications of the RF. How shall we organize ourselves better in order to face the challenges ahead? To join the discussion, write rougeforum@pipeline.com

Remember Mayday is coming soon. Connect with your local immigrant worker rights movement and plan to march on this international holiday for working people.

Finally, we call your attention to a letter written by whole language leader, Ken Goodman, to the Washington Post, about the Reading FIrst non-scandal.

Thanks to Ron, Marc, Kevin, Colleen, Kathryn and TC, Elba, Sherry, Connie and Doug, Susan O and Susan H, Kathy E., and to the organizers of the Chavez Conference in Fresno. It was great!

All the best, r

Published: March 21, 2007
LETTER
In Reading, a Scandal Without Consequences

To the Editor:
It seems that in Washington there are scandals, and then there are scandals. In February, The Washington Post ran a series of articles on the neglect and mistreatment of wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Generals have been fired and heads have rolled. And that’s as it should be.

We’ve now had a series of reports from the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general on the implementation of the multibillion-dollar Reading First program, part of the No Child Left Behind Act. Not one congressional hearing has yet been held. Despite the recommendations of the inspector general’s reports, only one scapegoat has been permitted to resign. No investigations of violations of the law have been initiated by the attorney general. No grand juries have been convened. And the national press and media have virtually ignored the whole scandal.

When Education Week went through the mountain of e-mails released by the Education Department under the Freedom of Information Act (“E-Mails Reveal Federal Reach Over Reading?” Feb. 21, 2007), it found numerous messages that seem to involve conspiracies by Education Department and Nation Institute of Child Health and Human Development functionaries and their paid consultants to violate and misrepresent the law. And yet those very violations were excused by ranking authorities as being necessary to force teachers and administrators to use reading programs and tests
labeled “scientific” by their own authors, with no supporting evidence for the particular programs and tests.

We need to insist that those responsible for mistreating our returning servicemen and -women be punished. And we must also insist that those abusing the children of these returning service people and the rest of the children in American schoolsalso be
punished.

We need to fully air the impact of Reading First, and NCLB as a whole, before the No Child Left Behind Act is reauthorized for another, even more disastrous five years.

Thanks to Education Week for its full reporting of the Reading First scandals.

Kenneth S. Goodman
Professor Emeritus
Department of Language, Reading, and Culture
College of Education
University of Arizona
Tucson, Ariz.

How come I’ve never heard of these guys before?

Thanks Rich for recommending the fabulous Tielman Brothers on YouTube.

Below is a 1960 Dutch television performance by this sensational Dutch-Indo rock ‘n’ roll outfit.

Here are the notes on the show from “dardanella”:

Dutch Indo-Rock. Sensational rock ‘n’ roll show. Live Dutch TV January 1960. With lead-guitarist, singer Andy Tielman, the uncrowned king of Indo-Rock.
Lineup: Andy Tielman (lead gt.), Reggy Tielman (2d lead gt.), Ponthon Tielman (double bass) and Loulou Tielman(drums).

Indonesia once was a colony from the Netherlands, leading to mutual influences. When Indonesia finally gained independence many Indonesians came to the Netherlands, which secured the still lasting Indonesian influence on the Dutch culture.
Just as it spiced up our food it also spiced up our music. The ‘invention’ of rock ‘n’ roll lead immediately to the invention of ‘Indo-rock’. The Tielman Brothers one of the most important, if not the most important, bands of the Netherlands,
shaped rock ‘n’roll in the Netherlands, added the necessary sex element through their great and acrobatic shows and left a vast collection of music.

Read more about Indo-Rock and The Tielman Brothers: here

US military’s brings Jim Crow policies to Afghanistan

Today’s Globe and Mail reports that in a move that echoes the “colored only” rest rooms of the Jim Crow era, the US military requires Afghan employees at the NATO Kandahar air base to use segregated toilet facilities labeled: “local nationals only.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Blevins, the U.S. officer in charge of administrative contracts, said the segregated toilet policy exists because the bathroom habits of the Afghans are different from those of the North Americans and Europeans who work at the base.

“We’ve always had this policy,” Lt.-Col. Blevins said. “It’s not based on a racial thing; it’s just how they use the toilets. They’re not used to toilets. They use squats, or holes in the ground.”

Lt.-Col. Blevins said he thinks of the policy as a cultural accommodation, and it makes life easier for the cleaners.

Afghan workers on the base told the Globe and Mail that policy is “insulting” and unfair. Afghan employees also noted that there were not enough to toilets to accomodate them and that unlike the ones reserved for non-Afghans, they were not kept clean.NATO’s potty rules shut out Afghans

JOE FRIESEN

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Under a bizarre policy that echoes the days of segregation in the United States, Afghans who work at the NATO base at Kandahar Airfield must use separate toilets marked “local nationals only.”

Several Afghans told The Globe and Mail the practice is insulting, but they are dependent on NATO for their livelihoods and reluctant to speak out.

One Afghan, who has worked at the base for five years as an interpreter, laughed at this suggestion.

He can’t give his name because he works with the coalition and is afraid of being targeted by insurgents.

“I don’t see any reason for separate bathrooms,” he said. “Everybody is human, so it should be one [toilet].”

He said that foreign soldiers told him they wouldn’t use the same toilets as Afghans because they are afraid of catching something contagious.

“Soldiers say they’re scared of local people who might have disease,” he said. “Personally, I [do] not like that, but this is the way of the army so you have to respect that.”

The issue came to light when a Globe reporter tried to use the toilets near the main gate at Kandahar Airfield. The guard on duty directed the reporter to toilets 30 metres away, saying the ones directly in front of him were for the Afghans.

Lt.-Col. Blevins said he thinks of the policy as a cultural accommodation, and it makes life easier for the cleaners.

“When they [the Afghans] use our port-a-potties, they stand on the seats and it causes quite a mess,” he said. “I think it’s just a cultural thing.”

The toilets reserved for Afghans typically have the words “local nationals” written on the door, and are a different colour than the ones reserved for non-Afghans. The toilets look the same on the inside, except the plastic seat is sometimes removed from the local national toilets. Afghans say there aren’t enough toilets to accommodate them, and theirs aren’t as well cleaned as the ones reserved for foreigners.

“It’s not fair,” said Qaseem, an Afghan interpreter who works at the base.

He said some foreigners will use the local bathrooms when the lines are long and it suits them, but local Afghans can’t use the bathrooms reserved for the foreigners.

“Some of the army guys, they use the local bathroom, so we should be able to use their bathrooms, too.”

As he speaks, his uncle comes over to say that the separate bathrooms are very nice, and that he’s grateful to NATO for coming to Afghanistan and he hopes they will stay a long time.

Other Afghans who stand in line waiting to be searched as they leave the NATO base said they can accept having to use separate bathrooms and don’t see it as a significant hardship.

A few Afghan employees have the privilege of being able to use either set of toilets because they have worked with the coalition long enough to be considered trusted agents.

Qaseem said the problem comes down to the way Afghans use water to clean themselves before praying. The foreigners don’t like it, he said.

Lt.-Col. Blevins said there can be problems if water bottles, used by the Afghans in their ablutions, have to be fished out of the toilets. Although Afghans are strongly encouraged to use the toilets marked “local nationals only,” they wouldn’t be prevented from using another bathroom in an emergency, he said.

There are also security issues to be considered, he said. Some foreign-only bathrooms are close to the soldiers’ sleeping quarters, which need to be protected.

More than 1,200 local people come through the gates of Kandahar Airfield most days, according to the Canadian guards who operate the main entrance.

They work in a variety of jobs, from manual labour to translation. They are the Afghans who, in a conflict increasingly characterized as a battle for hearts and minds, have the most direct contact with coalition forces.

Relations between the workers and military personnel range from collegial friendships to wariness and suspicion. Translators, partly because they speak English, can become quite close to some officers, while labourers required to have a permanent military escort are not treated with the same consideration.

They are hired under an Afghans-first policy, which seeks to employee as many local people as possible to ensure they see the economic benefits of the foreign presence.

The Coup Calls Up MySpace Friends To Encourage G.I.s

Boots Riley Comes Out Swinging Against The War In Iraq (via Portside)

Boots Riley – The Coup’s revered, thought-provoking MC is hoping to utilize a post of his band’s incendiary, anti-war song “Captain Sterling’s Little Problem” on its MySpace Blog as a
means to spark a G.I. Rebellion against the War In Iraq.

Riley is encouraging The Coup’s 25,000 MySpace friends to download the Pick A Bigger Weapon track, which features guitar by Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, for free and send it via email or burned CD to everyone they know in the military. In doing so, Riley believes the G.I. dissent could prompt Congress to act more decisively.

“I have this suggestion: the soldiers should demand to be returned home, using any means necessary to make this happen,” Boots blogs. “This would lead to a swift end to this war, saving countless lives, both U.S. and IraqiŠ Congress hasn’t done more than give lip service to wanting the war to end. The people that are directly affected by this war are going to have to act.”

“Captain Sterling’s Little Problem” was originally recorded as the theme for Sir! No Sir!, David Zieger’s recent documentary of the Vietnam War. Inspired by the stories that some of the veterans tell in the film, Boots reports that “at one point a Pentagon report deemed half of the soldiers in Vietnam were ‘mutinous and not to be trusted’,” adding that “the largely unreported G.I. rebellions played a very important role in stopping the Vietnam war.”

Counting lines like, “You brought us to this country not to free but bodybag them/And free up all their money so accounting firms can add them ,” the scorching song – from the Associated Press’ #1 album of 2006 – cannot be ignored.

“So far about 600,000 Iraqi civilians have died in this war and at least 3,100 U.S. soldiers have died,” Riley writes. “Much has been publicized about the role that music plays in the military today. I’ve seen a few news segments about the music that soldiers are listening to on their Walkmans and MP3 players – how they listen to certain songs to get in the mood to do what they have to do. Besides the motivation of purely expressing my thoughts, my experience and my emotions, I also make music to influence people to see my point of view.”

When Curricular Rigor and ‘Pedagogical Fraud’ Go Hand in Hand

Nel Noddings writing in Education Week:

The New Anti-Intellectualism in America

It seems odd to accuse the schools of anti-intellectualism when they are engaged in a relentless drive for higher test scores, and students are required to take more difficult academic courses. Passing rates on some state and local tests show small increases, but there has been little if any improvement on well-established national tests. The small gains we’ve seen may be the result of concentrated instruction on narrowly defined objectives. But we are not promoting intellectual habits of mind. Indeed, we may be reducing intellectual life to mental labor. What are the signs that this is happening?

First, there is a proliferation of fake academic courses. These courses are instigated by the demand that almost all children now take academic courses such as algebra and geometry. The decision for this requirement has not been supported by strong, well-informed debate. Is it true, for example, that all students need more mathematics today than people did in previous generations? If the answer is yes (but there are powerful arguments in favor of a negative reply), then it is reasonable to ask, What sort of mathematics? Must it be traditional algebra and geometry? Why?

Instead of debating these questions, policymakers have mandated—in the name of equality—that all children, regardless of their talents and interests, should have the “opportunity” once reserved for relatively few. Hardworking teachers then must try to get unwilling, unprepared students through material they have no interest in learning. Many youngsters have alternative, genuine talents, but these are disregarded. To give such students a chance to pass the required courses, teachers concentrate on a few discrete skills that can be gained through a steady routine of drill.
Providing a complete structure of what is to be learned and a detailed list of outcomes expected of all students facilitates quick, shallow learning and swift forgetting.

I’ve observed such classes. In some, no word problems or applications are even attempted. In a bow to analytic geometry, the distance formula is memorized, but with no mention of the Pythagorean theorem. In many geometry classes, no proofs at all are done. (Reducing the emphasis on proof is justified, but eliminating it entirely casts doubt on whether the course should be called geometry.) The end result is that many students have “algebra” and “geometry” on their transcripts, but they can’t pass state tests in math, and they need remedial courses in college. They have had pseudo-algebra and pseudo-geometry. This is pedagogical fraud, and such students are doubly cheated. They do poorly in the required courses, and they are deprived of courses in which they might have done well.

I am not arguing that the traditional academic courses are properly “intellectual” and other courses are not. On the contrary, I believe that intellectually exciting topics and challenging problems can and should arise in all well-taught classes—in cooking, chemistry, photography, mechanics, and everything else the schools offer. My objection is to the virtual elimination of intellectual content in many of today’s academic courses.

A second signal is that the overuse of specific learning objectives in all subjects works against the development of intellectual habits of mind. Superficially, it seems fair to tell students exactly what they must learn and be able to do as a result of instruction. This is instructionally sound when we are teaching a narrowly defined skill, but it is a poor way to encourage problem-solving, critical thinking, and the habits of mind that support further, deeper learning. Too often the result of such instruction is students who can add when told to add, or solve quadratic equations when told to “solve the following quadratic equations,” but cannot decide when to use these techniques in solving problems. In the interest of intellectual habits of mind, students must be asked to identify for themselves the important points in every unit of study, construct their own summaries, attempt problems that have no obvious solution, engage in interpretation, and evaluate conflicting explanations and points of view.
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Join the related discussion, “Standardized Expectations vs. Creative Thinking.”

Providing a complete structure of what is to be learned and a detailed list of outcomes expected of all students facilitates quick, shallow learning and swift forgetting. The little actually remembered is very like a collection of meaningless bits for Trivial Pursuit. Students come to expect that they should have answers at their fingertips instead of developing an attitude of inquiry—one of willingness to figure things out.

The insistence on precisely stated learning objectives, moreover, also drastically reduces the number of classroom sessions designed to expose students to new, interesting ideas that may or may not result in specific learning. It is right to pay continuous, careful attention to whether students are learning certain specific material. But there should also be sessions devoted to intellectual “inputs”—topics teachers choose to present or offer—leaving open what students might do as a result.
To support intellectual life and the joy of learning, we should expand the possibilities, not narrow them.

Many intellectually exciting and socially significant lessons conducted by creative teachers are designed to induce awareness, not specific learning. It is a shame to sacrifice such sessions in our zeal to achieve a pre-specified learning objective for every lesson, every day. In addition to asking the question, Has Johnny learned X? we should also ask, What has Johnny learned? In a class of 25 students, we might get 25 different answers to this—some disheartening (from which we should learn), and some quite thrilling.

To support intellectual life and the joy of learning, we should expand the possibilities, not narrow them. Part of our job as educators is to offer opportunities, to open the door to a world of intellectual possibilities. Another part is to encourage our students to think and to take responsibility for their own expanded learning. It is important, therefore, to consider intellectual inputs as well as pre-specified student outcomes.

Students do not come to us as standard raw material, and we should not expect to produce standard academic products. Intellectual life is challenging, enormously diverse, and rewarding. It requires initiative and independent thinking, not the tedious following of orders. It should not be reduced to mental drudgery.

Nel Noddings is the Lee L. Jacks professor of education, emerita, at Stanford University. Her latest book is Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach (Cambridge University Press, 2006).