Re: Re: Re: Charters//school vouchers
Rod Hay wrote: "On the issue of school control, favour a system which has central standards and guidelines that have to be met by all schools. Certain material that has to be mastered." And just what are those standards? And what is that material? And who is to say when it is mastered? After all, in my system of central standards, most standards would be aesthetic: How well do you express yourself in colors/movement/sounds? The only math anyone I knew uses is what it takes to balance a checkbook, so my standards would drop all math instruction beyond addition/subtraction and pay for dancers and musicians and clowns and jugglers. But any system of central standards tries to shape individuals to meet its needs rather than meeting the needs of the individuals who make it up. A system of mastering central standards is a system set up to reproduce itself. No system, IMHO, should be allowed to do that. Tom Wood public school graduate
Re: Re: Re: charter schools
My daughter attends a charter school in San Francisco. It is a public school, open to all, with a unionized staff and about 4/5 of the funding of comparably sized public schools, which means parent involvement is not only expected but necessary. For instance, I will spend this Saturday cleaning the school, for free (we could have paid the SFUSD to use their fully-unionized janitorial services, but we decided to use the money to hire a full-time music teacher, instead. We control the budget like that. It means more work for parents, but it was worth it to most of us. Most parents, given the chance, would probably choose the same. It sure beats paying for private music lessons, which almost none of us could afford since most of us are old, working-class freaks) It is a parent-run school: we hire teachers and staff and make the operational decisions. Our charter is intended to establish a constitution which guides the structuring and operation of the school. The school, the Creative Arts Charter School, operates under a Reggio-based philosophy of emergent curriculum, which is infinitely more creative, open, experimental and adaptive to the needs and learning styles and paces of individual children than is any other school in this city of generally adventurous and risk-taking public schools. It is actually the kind of school that most progressives would say a school should be. Learning is hands-on, process oriented, rather than testing/outcome oriented; the curriculum takes shape as a response to the interests of the kids rather than forcing them to learn what it says they should learn. The kids stay with the same teacher the first two years (though I push to establish a system under which they will stay with the same teacher for five years) and the same group of kids throughout their time in the school. It is a small school, 120 kids in k-6, which is ideal for the kids as well as for the teachers. We have all the financial problems, plus more due to our reduced funding and the fact that we pay rent to the SFUSD (other schools don't), of any other public school. I have an older daughter who went to Buena Vista, the public Spanish-immersion elementary school here in the city, and who now attends SOTA, the public performing arts high school. My experience with her in public schools was wonderful. My own was wonderful. My younger daughter IS in public school. I would not have her anywhere else. I also would not have her anywhere where they try to turn her into a robot, which is, unfortunately, becoming more and more the goal of public schools in this city as Silicon Valley takes over and the new citizens institutionally express their fear of creativity, the arts and freedom. Tom Wood public school graduate
[PEN-L:969] Re: Re: Re: Re: unemployed Ph.D.'s
"Disparaging suggestions about class origin -- she must be lower middle class or from the working class -- which are then linked to the putatively exaggerated respect those subjects have for the institutions of higher learning suggest that those making such claims are able, unlike our unemployed PhD, to see right through to the real nature of those institutions." And maybe the poor woman really just wants to teach. And isn't that enough? Isn't that enough to make this one more tragedy of corporate education, no matter what her gender, class origin or political believes? tom wood
Re: Extra Credit Assignment
>I believe it was Jonathan Edwards, the Boston-area folkie (not >colonial-era preacher) who penned a song about Jack Johnson and the >Titanic. If I remember correctly, there were some nasty lines about Jews >in the song, but on that I could be wrong. Otherwise, it was a catchy >song. > >Robert Saute >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, J Cullen wrote: > >> I believe there was a blues/gospel song about the sinking of the Titanic. >> Supposedly Jack Johnson was refused a fare on the Titanic by the owner who >> said "This ship doesn't haul coal." >> >> >One important aspect of the Titanic disaster not mentioned in the film >> >or on the list: >> > >> >The White Star Line made a particular point of not hiring any Black >> >workers, even porters or coal stokers, who were common on other >> >steamships. The sinking was celebrated in African-American communities >> >as an act of retribution, probably one of the first examples of what >> >now might been called the "O.J. Simpson phenomenon." there was an old song by Leadbelly, and a more recent one by Sparky Rucker. Neither mentioned Jews, as far as I can recall. Also, the White Star Line wouldn't hire Catholics to work on constructing the ship, even though it was built in Dublin. Tom Wood
Re: Working-class kitsch
>On Thu, 13 Nov 1997, John Gulick wrote, in part: > >> Here in S.F. where I live, young white men who _look_ like Michael Moore's >> stereotyped depictions of the working class (bowling shirts, tattoos, into >> car repair, etc.) are rarely themselves from a working-class background, hold >> working-class jobs, or have any sense of working-class identity. More likely, >> they derive from a middle-class background and already are members of or >> are heading toward the technical-professional salariat, and are merely >> "slumming" and riding the latest sardonic and demeaning capitalist culture >> industry trend, "working-class kitsch," which itself derives from a >> stereotyped depiction of "Joe Six-Pack." > >This sort of trip is, of course, not unique to San Francisco, but one can bet >that it's more of a blatant hothouse plant there than in, say, Pittsburgh. > > valis Let's get real here. Most of San Francisco is working class. The worker may put on a tie or a blouse and work at a keyboard (though most of San Francisco's employed don't, and most of those who do dress like that to work in SF don't actually live in SF), but the power relations, the security, the pay, the benefits (lack of), the possibilities, the aspirations, are all working class. The one difference may be a lack of a working class identity, though the above affectations may be an attempt to put an old style working class appearance on a new style working class job. But maybe if an effort was made to show how these jobs really are a new urban working class, instead of pointing out how ridiculous the people who have these jobs are for attempting to look like they are rust-belt working class, there may begin to develop a true working class identity. Anyway, believe me, growing up working class in Michigan in the sixties and early seventies never guaranteed a working class identity, either. Unless you think someone in a t-shirt sitting in a car with a beer after work and ridiculing an equally powerless individual in a suit in a car after work, while never looking beyond to those who really have the power and to how the power is used, has a working class identity. This from one who grew up working class in Michigan in the 60's and early 70's and who now has a working class job (without a tie) and lives a working class life in San Francisco. And wears bowling shirts and owns a 15 year old car that needs constant repairs. And is a graduate student with aspirations toward a life with fewer financial concerns, and is white, so probably would be reflexively lumped in with the above berated (though I may be too old). tom wood
Re: Truth?
Ajit Sinha writes: >I think coherence and internal >consistency of an argument is good enough to make 'sense' without any claim >to 'objective truth'. Any argument makes sense when you're trapped inside its parameters. Ask my wife the therapist how coherent and consistent some of her clients are and then ask her how crazy they are. Coherence and consistency are not enough if they refer only to themselves because anything--anything at all--can be made coherent and consistent. It's only when you look up and see the damage that that coherence and consistency has wrought on the rest of the world that you realize it may not be so coherent and consistent with anything else. tom wood
[PEN-L:12422] Re: language-t
Richard Duchesne wrote: >What about pre-linguistic mental capacities, say in the first two >years of a child? This is possible, but should we call that >"thinking"? Are you saying learning is possible without thinking? If so, then a child learns nothing during the "pre-linguistic" period of life. And as a primary caregiving parent and a former pre-school teacher, I assure you that this is not the case. What young children do is think. Constantly. They learn to classify, arrange, sort, order. Thinking is essential to these tasks. They have to constantly consider "How does this thing or experience resemble or differ from other things and experiences?" They do this using sensory/somatic data and memory, direct physical experimentation, and, to a great extent, language. The language they use, however, is receptive rather than productive. Just because they can't speak doesn't mean they don't understand a hell of a lot of what is said around and to them. Still, they learn and think about, for example, the category of weight long before they linguistically understand such an abstract concept or even hear the word. As far as thinking being impossible without words, I have a friend who is an accomplished musician. He tells me his songs appear in his head as musical tones. Words only enter when he thinks about how his songs appear or begins to set them down on paper. He can play them before writing them down and they are still only musical tones. That might be why he is a musician, because he can banish language and make room for something else for even a brief period. Is the act of creating the song then not thinking? Is creativity different from thinking? As a former pre-school teacher and a current instructor of creative writing, most of my adult life has been spent in fostering creativity and I would claim that creativity of any kind is the highest form of thinking. My friend is fortunate enough to be a person in love with HEARING, an act which does not require language. His highest form of thinking is a paeon to the sensory world he loves. Though he might claim that a crashing wave or rain dripping in the redwoods is language. tom wood
[PEN-L:10816] Re: Real Life Question
>The question for the Left: how do we translate our vision of a just society >into popular mythologies and hierophanies with a potential for mass appeal. >wojtek sokolowski >institute for policy studies >johns hopkins university >baltimore, md 21218 >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >voice: (410) 516-4056 >fax: (410) 516-8233 I think this is what happened with the automobile. Depression era bank robbers who raced away to freedom, thanks to the automobile, planted in the American mind an image of the car as provider of freedom and economic justice. Notice the direct action taken by those from whom the myth springs. tom wood
[PEN-L:10761] Re: Limit the Working Day? *$50 PRIZE!*
>"For example, if employees work 9 hours a day and the law provides for >time-and-a-half pay after 8 hours, their daily pay is 9.5 times their >standard hourly rate. But if the law is changed so that overtime is paid >after 7 hours, they are paid 10 times the hourly wage each day. Thus the >cost of hiring an additional employee is, CETERIS PARIBUS [emphasis added], >increased by a reduction in the standard workweek, on these assumptions. >Since the cost of an additional hour per employee has remained the same and >the cost of an additional employee has risen, employees have become dearer >relative to hours, and the cost-minimizing employer has an incentive to >substitute hours for employees, which is likely to yield a longer workday or >workweek." This example is assuming that the employees who worked nine hours on an eight hour workday still work nine hours a day after the workday has been reduced to seven hours. If that is the case, there is no need to hire any additional employees. tom wood
