Re: Sub-group Analysis

[ABurke5054@aol.com]

There are medications that can help you.  Get help.

Art

In a message dated 1/31/2004 1:07:39 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
pwmjoy@earthlink.net writes:
ART, MA MAYAN, LETS TAKE A TRIP THROUGH THE FOREST OF YOUR MENTAL DECAY:

>Pete ...Schools can spend enormous amounts of time and taxpayers' money
>looking at "human relationships," turning teachers into "facilitors of
learning,"
>"building bridges to the future," and any number of other pie-in-the-sky
>endeavors while doing an awful job of teaching the kids.

HOW CONDESCENDING OF YOU TO BEGIN WITH, THOUGH DONE WITH AN EDGE OF
POLITENESS. THE FACT IS THAT SCHOOLS HAVE NOT DONE SO BUT ARE NOW WASTING
TAXPAYERS MONEY TO PUSH FORTH ANOTHER ILLUSION COMING FROM THE LIKES OF YOU
AND YOUR COWPLOPS IN THE PASTURE. FURTHERMORE, WHAT YOU TERM "PIE IN THE
SKY" IS PART OF THE SUBSTANCE OF BASIC REFORM BROUGHT INTO MANY PUBLIC
SCHOOLS ACROSS AMERICA WHO ARE PART OF THE CES (COALITION OF ESSENTIAL
SCHOOLS) FOUNDED BY TED SIZER.  YOU SEE, YOU DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE
TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE YOUR LOGIC IS NOT BASED ON EXPERIENCE BUT BY
UNINFORMED HYPOTHESIS. FOR EXAMPLE, I COULD SAY THAT STANDARDIZED TESTS SHOW
HOW SUCCESSFUL SCHOOLS ARE. THEN YOU COULD SAY, BUT THAT COULD HIDE REALLY
POOR TEACHING. ACTUALLY, I WOULD SAY THAT, ART! IN ANY CASE, TOO MUCH OF
YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS IS DISENGAGED TAKING PLACE IN AN ABSTRACTED UNIVERSE
FAR AWAY FROM THE EMPIRICAL PROCESS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING, SO YOU NEED
THE ILLUSORY SIMPLICITY OF REDUCING THE MEANING OF SCHOOLING TO NICE NEAT
CATEGORIES THAT REQUIRE LITTLE IF ANY REAL THOUGHT ON YOUR PART..AND THOSE
LIKE YOU.

People send their kids to
>learn and want evidence that they are in fact learning.  Tests, including
the
>"standardized tests" that have arisen with NCLB, are an important source of
>evidence that kids are learning.

YO, SILLY ART, JUST HYPOTHESIS ON YOUR PART. NOT THAT PARENTS DON'T WANT
EVIDENCE THEIR KIDS ARE LEARNING. OF COURSE THEY DO, SILLY ARTY, BUT WHAT
ISN'T SO SILLY IS THE PROPAGANDA YOU INFECT THEM WITH THAT THOSE TESTS ARE
TRUE INDICATORS OF THAT LEARNING. IN FACT, THERE IS ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO
SUPPORT THE OPPOSITE. BUT, YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO LEAVE THE
WILLY-NILLY-SILLY BOXED IN THOUGHT PROCESS THAT HAS PUT THE SLEEPER HOLD ON
YOUR BRAIN, AND GET OUT THERE INTO THE ACTUAL DAY TO DAY OF IT. AM I GOING
TOO FAR WITH YOUR DISMSSIVE TONE AND YOUR USE OF "SIMPLY SILLY". NAH!

And while I think most of what you say is
>simply silly, I do agree that there is a weakness in NCLB:  it fails to
call for
>direct evidence that teachers are teaching well, which is really what we
need.
>Art
>
HEAVENS, THAT LITTLE PLOY CALLED THE "SET-UP" AGREEMENT. DAMN! THOUGHT I HAD
YOU THINKING FOR A BIT. SILLY OF ME, TRULY SILLY OF ME TO ASSUME SUCH.
DIRECT EVIDENCE? THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. AND THIS "REALLY
WHAT WE NEED" IS SO FILLED WITH SILLY NOTIONS OF WHAT TEACHING IS REALLY
ABOUT.

MAY I END WITH A BIT OF ADVICE: DON'T BE SO TRANSPARENT ABOUT YOUR INABILITY
TO DEAL WITH WHAT SOMEONE SAYS BY RESORTING TO JUDGMENT BYTES LIKE "SIMPLY
SILLY" BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT MEANS THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO
THINK ANYMORE AND REDUCES YOU TO A CARDBOARD CARICATURE OF ELITE NOSE IN THE
AIR STUPIDITY. YOU ARE PROBABLY A LOT MORE CEREBRAL THAN THAT, ART. GIVE IT
A BREAK.....

PETE

P.S. I'D LIKE TO RECOMMEND TO YOU AND TO OTHERS WHO ARE READING THIS SILLY
EXCHANGE THAT DEBORAH MEIER'S BOOK BE READ...WILL STANDARDS SAVE PUBLIC
EDUCATION? IN ADDITION, READ ANYTHING ALFIE KOHN WRITES AND PUBLISHES.


-----Original Message-----
From: ABurke5054@aol.com <ABurke5054@aol.com>
To: arn-l@interversity.org <arn-l@interversity.org>
Date: Saturday, January 31, 2004 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Sub-group Analysis


>Pete ...Schools can spend enormous amounts of time and taxpayers' money
>looking at "human relationships," turning teachers into "facilitors of
learning,"
>"building bridges to the future," and any number of other pie-in-the-sky
>endeavors while doing an awful job of teaching the kids.  People send their
kids to
>learn and want evidence that they are in fact learning.  Tests, including
the
>"standardized tests" that have arisen with NCLB, are an important source of
>evidence that kids are learning.  And while I think most of what you say is
>simply silly, I do agree that there is a weakness in NCLB:  it fails to
call for
>direct evidence that teachers are teaching well, which is really what we
need.
>Art
>
>In a message dated 1/31/2004 5:08:12 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>pwmjoy@earthlink.net writes:
>To Mr. Art, it is not whether or not we can know a good school from a bad
>school, but whether or not we can distinguish between an acceptable
>philosophy of knowledge and a tool of evaluation it embraces from one that
>is unacceptable both philosophically and methodologically. Everyone knows
>that the standardized testing juggernaut flows from an illusory empirical
>philosophy that pretends that its methodology is a scientifically accurate
>reflection of what it supposedly tests, and even if it were accurate, the
>interpretation of the results as well as the prescription for addressing
>problems it exposes tend to eliminate whole avenues of empirical data like
>poverty in its blind approach to the unfortunate, simplistic mandates like
>NCLB that it props up as dogma. The dialogue these past few days has more
or
>less proven that. So, your question can only be adequately answered by a
>much deeper look at human relationships and what makes them work or fail.
>Those relationships involve knowing where students come from, experiences
>they have had, hiring teachers who can relate to them while expecting big
>things from them too, reducing class size, having materials that are worth
>having, changing the power structure in schools, and reconstructing goals
>and evaluation rubrics that require students to show what they know as in
>public exhibitions of their work where they have to explain what they have
>done, for example, and re-thinking ability grouping as well as teachers
>becoming not just subject area experts but real facilitators of learning.
>This is where the money should be going, not a process that exposes quite
>intentionally what we already know are weaknesses and simultaneously
>undercuts the millions of good things happening in schools. Pete Majoy
>-----Original Message-----
>------------------------------------------------
>Direct list questions to listmom@interversity.net