BLOG, new blog in town
I received an email from KT who has started the blog Deductive or Inductive? to discuss education issues.
What are the questions you think KT should address on Deductive or Inductive?
What are the questions you think KT should address on Deductive or Inductive?
posted by Carl Nyberg at
12:45 PM
15 Comments:
Ms. Coffe says: Look at what your new blogger posted as an example of "deductive". I think she messed up.
By
Anonymous, at 8:59 PM, July 05, 2006
kt,
Ms Coffee is correct.
Re-read your post.
If you don't see it, re-read it again more carefully, or have somebody else read it aloud to you.
By
Anonymous, at 11:41 PM, July 05, 2006
Proofread! Is KT Angela McDaniel?
By
Anonymous, at 10:17 PM, July 06, 2006
I'm sure you mean well, like all the well meaning folks in education mean well. What I don't think is grasped in discussing education is that it is a wholly personal experience.
There is no recipe. There are only interactions. Rather than trying to perfect ONE recipe, the focus should be on providing the widest possible range of interactions.
In lieu of that ideal, kids who don't conform to the various wills being imposed, (i.e. parents, teachers, administrators, pundits, legislators) are being labeled as defective.
Everybody's staring at the kids. Watching them perform and judging their performance. For some kids, the attention is a necessary part of their learning process, for other kids; not so much.
Some are what we would call "morning people", others are wired to be night owls. Some seem to absorb knowledge, others seem to be Scotchgarded against it. Education is an ongoing experiment
and the kids are the lab rats. The "failure" of education is the damage done in trying to crank out cookie cutter geniuses, it hurts all the kids, the book smart ones as well as the street smart ones.
Through your studies you have learned that learning takes many forms. No matter how much we would like to quantify the results, education does not lend itself to easy measurement.
It would be nice to have all the right answers. The questions you pose on your blog have been asked before, answered before, in thousands of scholarly works, articles, essays, and bathroom grafitti.
It's been 35 years since I first read "The Naked Children" by Daniel Fader; I doubt it is still considered or even remembered. I pose that moments after the first school was built, diverse groups and committees were formed, some in support, some in opposition. Since then, it's been a battle; up, down, back and forth in which the kids have learned that the only thing sillier than schoolyard nonsense is School Board yard nonsense.
You want to free up money for classrooms? Eliminate 99.9% of the "thinkers, planners and researchers" suckling on the education teat.
I wish you luck with your blog. In it's present form I doubt I'll post there.
By
Anonymous, at 8:57 AM, July 07, 2006
To K T
i can see that you are a teacher who cares
this is not as common in public schools
i wish all of 209 & 89 teacher had your mind set
please keep up the good work , never stop being a teacher who cares
God Bless You !
by a maywood tax payer for 45 years
By
Anonymous, at 1:27 AM, July 08, 2006
It's a silly pursuit. Some people live in the desert, some in rainy areas. Two distinct and different sets of problems for which there is no universal solution.
It would be silly for a desert person to provide solutions to the rainy areas just because they worked for him.
By
Anonymous, at 11:51 AM, July 08, 2006
Steven,
Perhaps an over-simplification, but hardly non-apparent and certainly not hogwash.
Discussing education in total I do agree with you. Acutely, specifically as it pertains to Proviso Twp,
is where things get dicey. How many approaches have been taken to improve the schools here?
How many have addressed the core problems? What are the core problems as you see them?
Are they the same problems that other districts have or are they unique to District 209?
That education, overall, is a success does not help the situation. In fact, it gets in the way.
I am convinced that the only way that Proviso schools can improve is by dismantling the monolithic
failure that is 209 and rebuilding using a truly community based platform.
Where does such a discussion fit in the general education debate? In short it doesn't, because it's seen as a threat
to all districts. It is seen as a slippery slope. If parents and taxpayers can unite and get rid of instititutions like 209,
what would prevent the same thing happening in "good" districts? There's no shortage of discussion about education and it's successes and failures.
Most seek to apply a one-size-fits-all ideology to a stucture that comprises thousands of districts with no central controls. NCLB has exposed the problems
of trying to homogenize them into something resembling a national system.
By
Anonymous, at 6:02 PM, July 11, 2006
pamela says: To thisisahoot and steven. Even if you don't go to board meetings (which you should), the agenda is public knowledge. It is posted at West, East and PMSA. In the last agenda they moved 6 million dollars to the educational fund. Where was that 6 mil hiding? It seems as taxpayers, you should ask that question. Also speaking of teachers leaving, about half the math dept. at West bailed. Are they maybe tired of being pressured to pass kids who can't add and subtract? I agree with you both. There are too many incompetants in key places. I'm sure there are imcompetants in every school system, but Proviso seems to put them in the top positions.
By
Anonymous, at 7:35 PM, July 13, 2006
Steven, Hoot, KT, Pamela, Ms. Coffee et al.
Shambles doesn't begin to adequately describe 209. That is why the loftier discussions about education are wasted blather. To be fair -which is more than 209 has been with the taxpayers it fleeces- the teachers and students who value education have soldiered bravely, tirelessly and unappreciated for decades, and will continue to do so, regardless of administrative FUBARing of policies.
What seems like eons ago, I started looking at the situation because I could see no logic to the abandonment of Proviso High schools except fear on purely racial grounds. The record is compelling that
white abandonment of East (beginning w/ the Fred Hampton era) removed community support for the schools. The law might mandate that we have public high schools, but it can't force us to send our kids or be involved in the public high school community. This vacuum set up a bad situation in which sub-par schools were acceptable since private schools were an affordable option. It wasn't a conspiracy on the part of the public, but the board and administration of 209's failure to address the issue can be seen as nothing less.
Then came the desegragation debacle of 1976 wherein the school board responded to a federal judge saying, "We'll move the boundary, send Bellwood to West and White flight will take care of the numbers". Compounding the failure and cementing the district's reputation as going down the tubes, but acceptable because it allowed those parents with students at West enough time to get their kids through or make other arrangements.
This illuminates a severe problem in trying to address issues surrounding 209. The affected subset of citizens is small, changes each year and has spent previous years watching the situation continue its decline.
Each new "five year plan" assures that the affected portion of the population will turn over before the plan's success or failure is subject to review. Given the disconnection of 209 from the communities it disserves, any attempt to fight the power is sure to fizzle out before it can attain support or standing in all of the 10 communities.
To me, the only approach that offers hope is the dissolution of district 209. It is the ONLY way to adequately address the disconnect and bring community level involvement back to public education in the communites. This is the only way to bring the caring teachers and citizens back into the decision making process. Far from a threat to teachers, it would empower them. They're stakeholders too and just as the citizens have been distanced from the discussions, so have teachers. Like us, they have stuff coming at them AFTER decisions have already been made. They too are blamed for failures over which they have no control. It seems beneficial that these two parties communicate in meaningful ways without the chasm of District 209 standing between limiting, driving and controlling discussions.
Crunch the numbers. They're shockers.
By
Anonymous, at 5:42 PM, July 14, 2006
Deductive or Inductive...I mean really...who cares?
I could give less than a damn about who poses the best and most intelligent postings and comments. It is getting us absolutely no where...and fast!
We can talk and blog until our face turns blue and our finger tips bleed.
Until we remove the District 209 Board President we will always be in a state of mismanagement and corruption. The Superintendent search and interviews are a prime example.
If you only knew what went on in these closed sessions...
These blogs and postings are useless if they are not accompanied with actions to change the status quo.
So keep on debating "deductive or inductive", apples or oranges, rain or sun or any trivial pursuits our easily distracted hearts desire...while the school board president makes a mockery of our district at the expense of our students.
By
Anonymous, at 12:11 PM, July 18, 2006
The district was a mockery long before Chris Welch. It could be argued that Chris Welch is the natural result of the policies that have ruled 209 since the 1950's.
So taking a page from KT.
Successful High Schools are supported by the community.
Proviso is NOT supported by the community.
Therefore: Proviso is not a successful high school.
By
Anonymous, at 6:14 PM, July 22, 2006
The district was a mockery long before Chris Welch. It could be argued that Chris Welch is the natural result of the policies that have ruled 209 since the 1950's.
So taking a page from KT.
Successful High Schools are supported by the community.
Proviso is NOT supported by the community.
Therefore: Proviso is not a successful high school.
By
Anonymous, at 6:32 PM, July 22, 2006
From KT:
rehctaw:
You make me smile.
I couldn't agree with you more. The last school board meeting lasted all of 19 minutes and the highlight was the fading out of the program for teenage moms. It was a joke. Their were maybe 10 people in the audience, including the reporter from Forest Park. Wow. It is so frustrating to see how little the community and employees care about what is going on. Maybe their minds and attitudes are on summer break.
Sigh.
By
Anonymous, at 5:55 PM, July 24, 2006
If you asked Chris Welch he'd say there are only 19 people attending because everybody is happy with how he's running the show at 209.
How many would need to show up before the board would get the message? For their part, they have three schools to staff and run. That is rightfully their main concern.
Way down on their list is worrying about dissatisfaction of the consumers and taxpayers. They are well insulated against attack from outside.
They're about to reap the profits of the most recent re-assessment of the district's tax base which might mean they'll have enough money to keep PMSA afloat for another year.
I don't expect to hear much preaching from within unless/until they need to utter the dreaded R word.
By
Anonymous, at 6:26 PM, July 24, 2006
I guess blogging about reasoning defies reason.
nice try.
By
Anonymous, at 6:23 PM, August 25, 2006
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