There is another bizarre story out of our public school system where a school official at Denair Middle School in Sacramento, California told 13-year-old Cody Alicea to remove an American flag from his bike because of fears that it would trigger “racial tensions.” According to this interview with the Superintendent, Cody has now been informed that he can display the American flag after a review of the supervisor’s decision — and a national outcry.
I remain perplexed by such decisions of officials. As with the mindless application of zero tolerance that we have seen on drugs and guns with absurd results, I cannot imagine why an official would view the solution to such a threat as being to silence the student’s first amendment rights. This is akin to saying, “your free speech is bothering a bully, so stop speaking.” If there is a student or students who will turn violent at the sight of an American flag, they need to be removed from the school. Ironically, Cody has been flying his flag on his bike for two months but was told to strike the colors just before Veteran’s Day. Nice timing.
There is no indication of whether the superintendent considered the decision by this official to be fundamentally at odds with free speech and good judgment. Superintendent Edward Parraz agrees that “the First Amendment is important” but adds “[o]ur Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they’ll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don’t really want. We want them to appreciate the cultures.” The evidence of such appreciation of other cultures appears to be forced silence. It is rather easy to achieve the appearance of cultural harmony when when students are told to be silent on their cultural or national values. The idea is to promote pluralism with the expression of different views — not claiming success by avoiding any expression (and rejection) of views.
The official insists that he or she was trying to protect Cody, but that is a rather sad statement when students are taught that they should hide their views to avoid being attacked in our public schools. If that is the reality of the situation at Denair Middle School, the entire school needs to be placed under special supervision with added measures to protect the students and their free speech rights.
Source: KCRA
Jonathan Turley
Ekeyra,
So, here’s the thing. I actually put a bit of thought into my choice of words. If I had meant the moral of the story to be “Charter Schools are all bad” I would have said something about how Charter Schools are all bad. The whole thing was a setup to “All blanket statements are inaccurate.” If you stop getting frothing in rage that people dare to have a different opinion than you, you may get the joke.
Now, a lesser man than I might fall prey to his baser instincts and comment that you’ve done exactly of what you accuse me of doing. I mean, if I wanted I could scroll up and find where you said “All this story proves is that schools are there to teach you obedience and deference to authority.” claiming that a single negative anecdote proves that everyone of something is bad. If someone was say, sick of getting their politeness taken as a sign of weakness, they’d be inclined to
return sarcasm for sarcasm, especially if they were much more capable of a wordsmith than you. Good thing for you your constant bitter paranoia hasn’t soured the one person trying to engage you in discussion to the endeavor.
Now it’s time to take my own advice. Have fun spitting into the wind, I’ve got better things to do than listen to you howl in rage when your face keeps getting wet.
How do you explain the success of some from real poverty and little formal schooling?
No, “elitist” is merely an accurate description.
As to sending kids to a private school? I have no issue with that as long as the public schools have some parity in quality. What makes Elaine and wonderful person and you not so much is that she, unlike you, does care about the quality education of others children. She’s repeatedly discussed the needs for systemic improvements aimed at all children, not just those whose parents can pony up extra cash.
Enjoy your myopic selfish stupidity.
Its nice to see when i actually do make an argument and present facts it goes back to name calling. The person who rants on and on about happy meals calling me elitist. Im sure the irony is lost on you.
Elaine, they are different because when you were unsatisfied with the service they were providing you had the choice to send them to a different school. More importantly, you stopped funding the school you were unsatisfied with. Also according to buddha that makes you an elitist for sending your kids to private school. You must be a horrible person in his eyes.
Gyges, your one experience with charter schools proves theyre all bad. What was that about blanket statements? I couldnt hear you over your deafening hypocrisy.
Enjoy your ignorance.
Elaine,
That sounds like the story I always bring up when people go on about how Charter schools are the way of the future.
I went to one for about 3 months, exactly one week longer than it took to get the paperwork filed to transfer back to my old high school. That was o.k. because for 2\3rds of my classes I was going to my old highschool anyways (They were sharing the building with each other).
In other words: All blanket statements are inaccurate.
Ekeyra,
So, let’s adopt the best parts of Montesorri method into public schooling. Why is that antithetical to public education? The history of public education in this country goes back before the history of this country.
As to why everyone in society pays taxes to provide for public schools, it’s because everybody in a society benefits when the level of education goes up: lower crime rates, higher wages, etc.
Not all Montessori schools provide children with an excellent education. They are no different from public schools in that way.
Two of my in-laws sent their two children to a Montessori school when they were young. They weren’t happy with the education their children were getting at the school–so they took them out and enrolled them in the public schools in their city. My own daughter attended a Montessori preschool. When she reached kindergarten age, I paid tuition for her to attend the public elementary school where I taught. (I lived in another city–that’s why I was required to pay tuition.) My school was by far a better academic institution than the Montessori school. My school also had a better-educated staff.
Yeah, I mean elitist – as in “what about the ones who can’t afford to pay for two schools”.
You clearly don’t care about the quality of their children’s education. Just your own. Selfish motives you try to sell as social conscience are a hallmark of elitists.
I find it hard to believe that Montessori education prevents bullying even though it is good in many ways. Look at all the lawyers who engage in bullying behavior as adults even though they have great educations. It’s not just sticks and stones that hurt.
Elitist? You mean the parents who actually pay for two schools. The one they actually want their children to attend and the school whose services they dont even use. How horrible must those people be.
http://www.mackinac.org/archives/1997/s1997-04.pdf
“One of the major fears that critics voice about implementing a widespread parental choice program is the notion that it will hurt minorities and economically disadavantaged students and benefit only those who least need it. The evidence demonstrates overwhelmingly that this is not the case. In his review of the Milwaukee Choice Program, Daniel McGroaty points out that through the first four years of Parental Choice in Milwaukee, an average of 92 percent of all children receiving choice voichers were African-American or Hispanic. Chester Finn reports that in a sample of almost 8,400 charter school students across the states, 63 percent were members of a minority group. Many existing private schools located within cities have already opened their doors to minorities and the economically disadavantaged, offering full tuition scholarships to those demonstrating need. In addition, charter schools in Michigan and across the nation have been created expressly to serve populations that have traditionally been locked into an assigned government school. Fears of creating an elitist system are unfounded. Expanded school choice programs increase rather than decrease the range of students taking advantage of alternative schools.”
Thanks for not making a substantive argument and showing you’re an elitist without a clue. Since no one but elitists pay attention to the bleating of elitists, this saves me the trouble of further discrediting your nonsense.
That, however, doesn’t mean I won’t, Ms. Home School Happy Meal.
Thanks for listing a ton of reasons the government should not be providing education. Saves me the trouble.
ekeyra,
Montessori is a method, not a provider, but it’s a method with some merit. However, which flavor of Montessori is a question. There are no uniform standards as Maria Montessori never patented her methods. Some schools labeled Montessori don’t even require certified teachers and most are private although there are a very few public and magnet schools that use the Montessori method.
The question becomes is your primary objection method or provider.
If method is the key to your complaint, there are also other methods than Montessori which render similar results, such as Waldorf (based on the philosophy of anthroposophy and the artistic method eurythmy developed by Austrian writer and philosopher Rudolf Steiner). Process improvements by adjusting methodology is not unreasonable considering how many public schools in this country operate essentially as baby sitting services (more like child prisons) judged by their results in teaching students and the abundance of colleges reporting that their starting freshmen often have deficient math, English and history skills to start post-secondary education and require remedial classes to compensate.
If provider is the key to your complaint, then there’s a problem still: what you suggest is elitist as private schooling provides an economic barrier some people cannot breach.
The question then becomes should children be denied an education due to economic circumstance.
If the answer is yes? You’re an elitist.
If the answer is no? Then the question becomes one not of provider, but of standards and practices. How to get them is the issue.
However, regardless of method, as a staunch egalitarian I think every child should have a first class education in this country, private school or not.
The problem with this is that just like their general funding comes from local taxes, local standards are set by local school boards. See the recent deliberate dumbing down and religious indoctrination introduced in Texas schools to see that problem in action.
But addressing a fundamental change like switching to Montessori cannot be done in a piecemeal manner and expect any better results than you get right now from public schools.
For a significant method change to work, it must be applied globally or almost globally, which would mean turning control of education to the Fed instead of leaving it to a hodgepodge of local standards. Since local tax revenues also vary, this would also entail large Federal government subsidies to equalize the playing field. Both Montessori and Waldorf are time intensive and require smaller classrooms to work than most public schools can currently provide. We’d not only have to hire better teachers, but many more of them, and build or rent appropriate facilities to accommodate the changes in both class size and methodology.
Have you seen how the Federal government has been operating since Reagan? Have you seen how the GOP vilifies any kind of social services and the DNC can’t muster the spine to do anything along the lines of process improvement out of fear, greed and cowardice?
Do you think this kind of standard change has a chance in Hell in succeeding in the current political – and now thanks to the now bipartisan policies of perpetual war and financially bailing out Wall St. criminals – economic circumstances?
The reality is you’re advocating private schools by operation of circumstance and deformations of our political and economic landscape by those out of touch pinheads in Washington whether you realize it or not.
That’s just about as bad an idea as privatizing Social Security or police and fire services.
But alternative methods as a process improvement that doesn’t require homeschooling (manifestly inefficient producing often unacceptable results and not susceptible to standardized methods) or private schools (where only the wealthy can get a proper education)?
I can agree with that in principle even if it’s not in the cards of pragmatic reality given our current state as a nation.
Every one of the regular posters here (trolls excluded) have this in common: we’re from diverse educational backgrounds and work experience, but we are all critical thinkers (many are polymaths). You’ll get better reception and responses to your posts if you keep that in mind and present as full a case for your position as possible with clarity and precision instead of quoting inapplicable sociologists followed by a blanket statement. We’re also hard on illogic and propaganda.
Given your clarifying statement, I’d now like to solicit input from Elaine, our resident education professional (excluding our host, of course).
or this
Gyges,
The montessori method. That would be my alternative.
The Montessori method involves a curriculum of learning that comes from the child’s own natural inner guidance and expresses itself in outward behavior as the child’s various individual interests are at work. Supporting this inner plan of nature, the method provides a range of materials to stimulate the child’s interest through self-directed activity. In the first plane of development (0–6), these materials are generally organized into five basic categories: practical life, sensorial, math, language, and culture. Other categories include geography (a child’s perception of himself in space), history (a child’s perception of himself in time), and science (interactions with the natural world).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_method
It is simply providing kids the enviroment, materials, and guidance to allow children to direct their own learning experience. I would highly suggest this over the psuedo prisons we subject children to now.
A 2006 study published in the journal “Science” concluded that Montessori students (at ages 5 and 12) performed better than control students who had lost a random computerized lottery to attend a Montessori school and instead went to a variety of different conventional schools.
“On several dimensions, children at a public inner city Montessori school had superior outcomes relative to a sample of Montessori applicants who, because of a random lottery, attended other schools. By the end of kindergarten, the Montessori children performed better on standardized tests of reading and math, engaged in positive interaction on the playground more, and showed advanced social cognition and executive control more. They also showed more concern for fairness and justice. At the end of elementary school, Montessori children wrote more creative essays with more complex sentence structures, selected more positive responses to social dilemmas, and reported feeling more of a sense of community at their school.”
Aren’t security cameras effective in reducing attacks on both children and adults? Also, don’t security cameras help stop wrongful accusations?
Kay,
I agree with most of what you said,but I am not a big fan of the security cameras. Most schools do work to prevent and stop bullying of all kinds, but it is not an easy task.
In my parents generation, kids were hassled in Rockford Ill for being of Swedish descent. A lot of Irish kids were hassled in some areas too.
Maybe someone could interview a bunch of old people about being hassled for backgrounds that seem ordinary to us now.
I even remember teachers talking about Swedes being stupid.
It doesn’t matter why kids are attacked. The teachers and staff need to stop it. They need to have enough adults in the playgrounds before and after school and they should probably put in close circuit t.v.s with security camera recorders. Those are only a few hundred dollars.
Buckeye wrote:
Does anyone else have the feeling that FOX channels go out looking for just this type of jingoistic pap?
Anyone?
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The ayes have it. Moving on…