Archive for December 24th, 2008

Ignorance and Want

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 24, 2008 in No category. 0 Comments

‘Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe,’ but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?’
 
‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was
the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’

 
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
 
‘Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.’ exclaimed the Ghost.
 
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.
 
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him
in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
of such enormous magnitude.
 
‘Spirit, are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.
 
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye.
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
And abide the end.’
 
‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.
 
‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses?’”

   - A Christmas Carol, Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

 

The Most Literate Cities in America

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 24, 2008 in Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Minneapolis and Seattle are the most literate big cities in America, followed by Washington, D.C., St. Paul and San Francisco.  Atlanta, Denver, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Portland, Oregon round out the top ten.  There’s no testing involved in the designation.  The study by Central Connecticut State University ranks cities based on six factors: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.  Dr. Jack Miller, the President of Central Connecticut State, examined — and dismisses — criticism that the list is skewered by a decline in newspaper circulation caused by a rise in reading papers online. 

The conventional wisdom here is similar to the claims about the decline in bookstores: it’s caused by the rise in online book buying. And that is the same conventional wisdom that, pre-internet, claimed that library use and support of bookstores were mutually incompatible.  More free book sources would be associated with fewer bookstores. And in all cases, the conventional wisdom is wrong. As the data for this and previous surveys indicates, cities ranked highly for having better-used libraries also have more booksellers; cities with more booksellers also have a higher proportion of people buying books online; and cities with newspapers with high per capita circulation rates also have a high proportion of people reading newspapers online. Cities that rank highly in one form of literate behavior are likely to rank highly in the other forms and practices of literacy. A literate society tends to practice many forms of literacy not just one or another.

USA Today notes America is far behind other countries in a related study examining international literacy.  In preliminary data of per-capita paid newspaper circulation, the U.S. ranks only 31st in the world, “far behind other countries, including Aruba, Liechtenstein and Japan.”

Facebook and Your Students: To Friend or Not To Friend?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 24, 2008 in Education News and Education Practice. 6 Comments

Should teachers allow their students to “friend” them on Facebook?  The Houston Chronicle, following up on a local story of an ex-school aide accused of having sexual exchanges with a 16-year-old former student he contacted online, asks where teachers should draw the line.

Opinions are mixed. Opponents fear innocent educators will be branded sexual predators for chatting with students online, while proponents caution against overreacting to a powerful communication tool. 

Most school districts, says the Chronicle, have yet to “define the rules of virtual engagement.  In the Houston area, many districts block access to social-networking sites on campus computers, but they don’t have policies addressing after-hours use between educators and students.”

Having current and former students as Facebook friends could be a particularly sensitive issue for KIPP charter schools and others where teachers are encouraged to give students their cell phone numbers.  KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg tells the Chronicle he limits his Facebook contacts to alumni. “My personal threshold,” he says, “is not to accept friends on Facebook from KIPP-sters until they are in college.”  But Joseph Miller who runs the KIPP to College program tells the paper Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with current and former students.

Comments from teachers following the story show strongly divided opinions.  Says one, “Here’s the thing; a teacher is NOT a student’s “friend.” It’s called professionalism.”  Echoes another, “As a teacher of 8 years, I have never had the desire or the need to communicate with my students directly outside of the classroom. If I have an issue concerning absenteeism, behavior, or academics with my students that can not be handled in class, then I go directly to the parents and make them at least aware of the issue and leave it to them to accept their responsibility as a parent to raise their own child.”  However another teacher who uses Facebook points out,

“I teach at a school, however, where most students don’t have this kind of [parental] support at home, either because the parents are working multiple jobs or there’s something negative going on. I don’t seek my students out, but do let them “friend” me if they like. This does not mean that we are FRIENDS. It does let me keep an extra eye on them and make sure they are not doing/saying things they’re not supposed to. They find ways to slyly let me know that they appreciate that there’s someone who admonishes them with they curse, etc.”

Ultimately the question of to friend or not to friend becomes a proxy for the nature of the teacher/student relationship.  As another teacher on the Chronicle site puts it:

I am a teacher and it’s a long time coming that people wake up and realize that professionalism doesn’t mean de-humanizing yourself. A lot of times kids need to know that a teacher is human. Too many times teachers come into the classroom thinking that all the are going to do is teach. That’s the wrong assumption. Teachers are counselors, motivators, nurses aides, even temporary banks when kids forget their lunch money. Wouldn’t a parent want to know that their kids had a teacher like that?…We have to realize that this is the way the kids communicate. Most of my students are far more techno savvy than I am and have mobile applications for facebook on their iphones and smartphones. They are always on the go and this is the mode of communication. It’s a major communication shift that not just teachers, but more people need to learn how to integrate into our lives. The days of waiting for the land line phone to ring to get info are no more.

In the alternative certification program I went through, the New York City Teaching Fellows, one of the oft-repeated homilies was “students have to know that you care before they care what you know.”  While we were never explicity told to engage with our students after hours, playing basketball with kids after school, or taking them to a museum on the weekend was taken as proof of our commitment and praised.  On the other hand, the message was decidedly mixed: we were also warned explicitly never to allow ourselves to be in a classroom alone with a student with the door closed for any reason.