The Question of the Day

Why should we have schools? Is it (A) because teachers need jobs, or (B) because young people need to learn things?




Answer: If you work for/belong to/support teachers unions, the correct answer is A. If you think charter schools/private schools/vouchers are worth a shot, the correct answer is B.

Saint Patrick's Day +2

Yes, Saint Patrick's Day was actually last Saturday; Irish bishops, with the approval of the Vatican, moved the feast day of Saint Patrick to the 15th so it would not fall within Holy Week.

The only reason you need to know this is so you can b****-slap anybody who tries to pinch you for not wearing green today. It's not Saint Patrick's Day dang it!

For your entertainment...

Awesome Sauce

Special Occasion

As I type, my department chair's student teacher is going over a warm-up an notes with my 8th period Algebra Extended class. I, on the other hand, get to play around on my laptop; thought I'd share a couple things.

Google Reader is awesome.

It's Pi Day!! Did you eat your pi today?

Savage Chickens has been good this week. Peer Pressure. Pi.

Duke lost to North Carolina last Saturday. I think this is why. Check out more Fail Blog while you're at it.

Back Again

More thoughts on a lot of the reaction I'm seeing/reading re: LB 1141.

As soon as I read about this bill and what it entailed, I sort of knew what to expect as far as the "debate" and "discussion" went. And let me say from the beginning, this is what I expected to find and sure enough found out--for the most part. To be sure, there are still well-reasoned individuals in this world who do not fit the broad strokes I paint below. And let it be known that such people are a breath of fresh air from the closed garage with a running car that most posts, blogs and comments on the internet have become.

You can expect anti-home-schoolers to assume that religious, anti-evolutionary zeal is the only reason parents choose to home-school. You can further expect them to wail about how socially inept all home-schooled students must be. You can expect them to claim examples of kids they know who have been home-schooled, but don't know how to read.

You can expect home-schoolers to decry the teaching of the theory of evolution. You can expect to hear about guns and drugs and sex in schools, and not wanting kids to be exposed to all that. You can expect a very impassioned defense as if anything which could vaguely be construed as questioning the ability of parents to home-school their kids as a personal attack.

You can expect a deluge of logical fallacy. Take your pick: (circumstantial) ad hominem, appeal to authority, appeal to belief, biased sample, etc. To sum it all up, you can expect large numbers of people to showcase their ability to assume that their positions are well-thought out and well-reasoned, when in fact, very little thinking has actually taken place.

Here I go ranting again. But once again, let me say that there are people who don't fit into the categories I've just spelled out. Those are the people that I'll actually listen to, and heaven forbid, I might even retool my thought process because of them.

I think I wrote last night that this debate is not one that should center on, or even include, the pros and cons of public/private/home education. This should center on the merits, intentions, and consequences of the bill as written. I haven't seen a lot of that, and what I have seen is largely mistaken. There's a lot of typing I can save myself by sticking to the bill at hand and not the secondary issue of education.

Perhaps I can get to that tomorrow. Because it's late and I've got to teach in the morning.

Prolonged Silence

Yes, yes. Long time, no post. Chew on some of this.

A new bill is floating around the Nebraska State Legislature, LB 1141. Search for it here. Read more here. Feel free to peruse the comments in the Lincoln Urinal Star article. Lots of opinions. From a quick read, what I gather is that his new bill would require students in unaccredited school situations (read: home-school) to be tested on an annual basis at the parents' expense in order to ensure adequate progress is being made. If not, parents can be required to enroll their students in a public school.

One argument in favor of the bill is that legally speaking, the state of Nebraska, per its constitution, is required to provide education for children ages 5 to 21. Being the responsibility of the state, one would imagine they would like to have some sort of oversight. This seems fairly comparable to all of the state and federally mandated testing associated with, among other legislative tom-foolery, the No Child Left Behind Act. As far as I have seen, that one act constitutes a prime example of what we can call a "paper tiger." No teeth. Regardless of the stipulations, I have not heard one whit about schools being closed, funding being cut, etc., which were provisions of NCLB if standards were not met. Now, while I might have agreed in principle that public schools run on government money should be doing a damn good job to be worth the $8000-$13000 a year it costs them to educate ONE student, I did not then, nor do I now agree that it takes a behemoth of government oversight by means of standardized testing to do so. Here's my take on this whole "responsibility for providing education" bit: isn't having an adequate (yes, I'm saying the state's public schools are adequate) school system in place enough to "provide" for education? If parents decide not to utilize the state-provided educated system, isn't that their loss? (I say loss in that they are still paying taxes for the education system they're not using.) Wouldn't the state's time and attention be better spent on those facets of the system that they are currently responsible for instead of trying to bring more territory under their reign?

Most of how I see the conversation being framed is a same old cat-fight between public schooling and home-schooling. This bill is turning into fodder for home-schoolers and anti-home-schoolers to hash it out once again, making the same recycled arguments about why home-schooling does or does not work. While I can appreciate the debate and the thoughts it brings up, I don't see it as being all that pertinent. This shouldn't turn into a debate about whether or not home-schooling is effective; I have a personal opinion that I'm not going to mention, because it's not important. What is important, what the debate should be about, is whether or not students whose parents have taken them out of the public education system should be required to jump through the same hoops as the public education system.

If I may wax philosophical for a moment and throw a question out there, what's the reason for "educating", and how is that best accomplished by a government entity?

Be Afraid...

The attack is coming....

First they cut the power.

Then they attack transportation.

We're in serious trouble here.