Re: Morality Education

["L. Cirincione" <lindac15@MINDSPRING.COM>]

Victor-
I seem to be the only one trying to stop K12 - aside from the groups I've
emailed.. Others seem not to like it, but don't want to get involved. But,
I'll keep trying.

Re: Metrics - the rest of the world may use this, but we do NOT use this in
the US - or in my home. And, the last time I checked, we did not have plans,
as an entire nation, to convert to metrics. So what if the rest of the world
uses that? (And I was a math professor at one point!)
It makes far more sense to me to start teaching a concept at a young age
with items and terminology the child is already familiar with like a
measuring cup & ounces rather than a tall, thin "graduated cylinder" marked
in ml's. My son, at 10, still has trouble remembering & saying the words
"graduated cylinder" & doesn't even remember now ( only 2 months later) what
it was he was learning to measure. When we measured "mass", he could not
relate that term to the concept of weight. If we really want to convert our
entire society, then let's do it in every way. But to be perfectly honest, I
have no intention of using metrics in MY home & so will teach my son to
measure in ounces for now. He can learn metrics in a later grade - if he
needs to.
Linda
----- Original Message -----
From: "Victor Steinbok" <Victor.Steinbok@VERIZON.NET>
To: <ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: Morality Education


> At 5:42 PM -0700 2/1/02, L. Cirincione wrote:
> >Jim-
> >I agree with you. You should check out the "K12" "curriculum" that
William
> >Bennett developed & is pushing by getting states to offer it as an online
> >charter school. (See www.k12.com.) I signed my son up for the COlorado
> >Virtual Academy this year to try it out. I stopped doing all Lang. Arts &
> >History lessons weeks ago because of the religious content &
"morals"-based
> >educational approach.
>
> Those of us who followed Bill Me Later Bennett for years are not
> surprised by this development. What is surprising is how brazen he
> has become with this nonsense. Character education is simply a
> vehicle for religious proselytizing in public schools. Most, though
> not all, the people behind the character education fad are moralizing
> religious conservatives and self-proclaimed anti-Kohlbergians. There
> is a lot more to all this nonsense than meets the eye--not just
> morality and character education, but the phonics vs. whole language
> rhetoric, opposition to "fuzzy" math, anti-teacher-union stance,
> charter schools, rigid "high" standards, tests, privatization and
> state takeovers of private schools, vouchers, grade inflation,
> opposition to affirmative action, etc. All of this is part of a
> concerted, coordinated effort to drive any hint of progressivism or
> liberalism out of the country. The roots go back to the 50s when many
> top neo-conservatives believe that they lost the edge thanks in part
> to McCarty and the general cold war climate and in part to lack of
> conservative intellectual base. It took them forty years to rebuild
> the Great Western Civilization advocates, recruit enough minority
> sycophants, such as Clarence Thomas, Linda Chavez (who is really no
> minority of any kind), Elaine Chao (married to one of the top-ranking
> neo-conservatives) and others, and regain control of the press, which
> actually began to believe in the myth of its own impartiality for a
> while. They were not ready when Reagan took office, but they made up
> for it by placing many ideologically appropriate grunts at top
> positions. Ed Meese, for example, was no intellectual,
> neo-conservative or otherwise, but he brought along Lynne Cheney and
> Bill Bennett and many others. By 2000, this group felt confident
> enough to be able to regain control that they made a do-or-die bet on
> electing a puppet by borrowing a name from the past. One look at the
> list of new Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointments, plus the staffers
> in Labor and Education (and probably many others) should be enough to
> recognize all the usual suspects from the Heritage Foundation depth
> chart. Some are puppets and fronts, like Paige, Mineta and Christine
> Todd Whitman, while others, like Ashcroft, Cheney and Ridge have been
> there for a long time and know exactly what is going on.
>
> >BTW- these are a * PUBLIC * school choice in Colo.It's too bad COVA chose
to
> >use K12. The concept has potential & the people who run the school are
> >really nice & well-intentioned. I just don't think they went into the
> >curriculum in enough depth.
>
> They probably got a grant from Bennett's organization. How come no
> one filed a suit against them? Whatever charter schools are, they are
> not meant to cross the line on separation of church and state--just
> look at the scandal in California last week, where a charter school
> in Fresno was found to operate parochial satellites in the area. If
> someone actually makes the effort to complain to the state, the front
> will come down and they should be forced to revise the curriculum.
>
> >Now they seem to be too committed to it.
> >I should also mention that the Lang. books used are at too high a level
for
> >the average to below average kids & the science emphasis on metric terms
&
> >devices is unreasonable for kids at this age. ie. the reader series
offers
> >books at level 2 for "Grades 1 - 3" & level 3 for "Grades 2 - 4".
>
> There is a reason for that that may not sinister. In some ways, they
> are running an underground experiment, betting that most students CAN
> handle the material. There seems to be too much emphasis placed in a
> lot of child-centered efforts on developmental appropriateness. This
> is well intentioned, however it is largely based on a bad misreading
> of Piaget. Stages may be biologically based, but they are not age
> bound, so "developmental appropriateness" should be more of an
> individually based term than one that refers to all students.
> Unfortunately, this is not the way it has been interpreted by
> developmental and educational organizations. I find most educational
> materials written far below the appropriate level--in some sense,
> they are targeting the bottom student, rather than the average or
> slightly above-average one. What you reap is what you sow--if you
> place low expectations on the students, that's where many of them
> will stay. This is not characteristic of child-centered or
> progressive curricula--all American curricula going back 120 years
> are like that.
>
> >K12 uses
> >the level 3 books for the beginning of 2nd grade. ie. The very 1st
science
> >lesson required the use of a "balance" to measure "mass" in "grams" & a
> >"graduated cylinder" to measure "volume" in "milli-liters" - & we had to
> >insure that our children learned these terms properly(!). They also
covered
> >length in "meters" with a "metric ruler" & "temperature" in "degrees
> >Celsius".
>
> I am not sure about using millimeters, but there is nothing wrong
> with using metrics at that level--the rest of the world does just
> that, we are the only ones left. Millimeters and milliliters are a
> different issue--there are two problems with using these measure.
> First, the units are physically too small for children to manipulate
> them and to read the measurement accurately. Second, because of their
> relatively small size, they require counts that are beyond children's
> initial capacity. Nor can they use conversion factors easily--1 meter
> is 100 centimeters (if you use both) and it is hard for kids to work
> with that many units or even imagine what it is like. On the other
> hand, I would encourage the use of centimeter rulers (and ban all
> inch rulers) in school--this is the only way to catch up with the
> rest of the world.
>
> You don't have much choice with grams since other conversions would
> be too complicated. Ounces do not provide any benefit because of the
> counts involved--we may be used to ounces and pounds, but the
> conversion between them is not at all convenient at the early levels.
> It is actually better to use consistent metric units to reinforce the
> decimal numeric notation. I know that many "experts" would prefer to
> see the common units, but that is only so that parents would be
> comfortable and has nothing to do with children's ability. Your
> discomfort with the units precludes you from teaching them adequately
> to your child--it may be as simple as that.
>
> >There were even little "flashcards for us to print out & cut up.
> >What ever happened to using common household items that young children
are
> >familiar with like a measuring cup & ounces or a bathroom scale to
measure
> >"weight"???
>
> Measuring cups are generally marked in metric units as well these
> days and the scales kids maybe even more familiar are the ones in the
> doctor's office, which are predominantly metric.
>
> >Remember, these are kids only just starting the 2nd grade!
> >The entire program is totally unsuitable to most special ed kids.
>
> Sans your objection to the metrics, I agree with you.
>
> >(Or to
> >parents who don't have 4 hours per day to sit at a pc reading lessons off
> >the screen, printing, answering questions like "Did your child answer
ques.
> >1 correctly?" - click on yes or no, then the arrow to the next page.....
or
> >who don't think teachers should merely be parrots or missionaries for the
> >religious right.)
>
> It sounds awfully prescriptive and inflexible, which is what you
> would expect from this group. Lockstep curriculum breeds compliant
> drones. As for having time, you should have expected that when you
> got into homeschooling--it is not for parents who think they lack the
> time.
>
>         VS-)
>
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