Re: Interesting Panel You're on George C.

[Victor Steinbok <Victor.Steinbok@verizon.net>]

At 1:22 PM -0400 15.05.03, George K Cunningham wrote:
> The chances that you will drive to Washington to attend this meeting
> might be pretty good.  The chances of you getting into the meeting are
> not.  The meeting is by invitation only.

Then perhaps it is an invitation that I am holding--the one that 
tells me to RSVP through appropriate channels by Monday. Perhaps I'll 
see you there, sport. Or perhaps I'll change my mind and find more 
important things to do back home than to go to rigged "symposia".

> The security, due to Mrs.
> Cheney's presence is incredible.  Good luck.  Otherwise, I would love to
> have you in the audience.

Believe me, if Martha Schwartz can show up at one of these events, I 
can--it's no big deal.

> If you are not there, I hope there will be
> someone else who will ask the hard questions.

Perhaps Jerry can make it--it would save me two 9-hour trips.

> If you think that would bother me, you don't know me very well.  Do 
> you think I would be sending messages to this list if I was afraid 
> someone might disagree with me. I appreciate your response and any 
> others.  It is useful to have someone point out any obvious errors 
> before I display my ignorance to an even wider audience.  I am on 
> other listserves who are likely to agree with
> everything I say.

I know.

> I prefer to have someone challenge me.

Hopefully, someone will.

> Apparently, you are not familiar with the INTASC standards.  Do a
> google search, they are easy to find.  There is no reference to academic
> achievement.

I also have been a student (not a teaching-credential student, but a 
graduate student nonetheless) at three schools of education (one 
physically housed my department even though the department was not a 
part of the school). I am also married to a teacher, teach teachers, 
work with teachers and work with those who teach teachers. If you 
think any of these people and organizations give a rat's ass about 
the INTASC standards, you are sadly mistaken. The issue in front of 
ed schools is how to produce teachers who are 1) aware of the subject 
matter they are supposed to teach and  effective methods to convey 
this subject matter to their students, 2) aware of the audience that 
they are supposed to teach, including their psychological makeup, 
apply this knowledge in selecting appropriate materials for their 
students and use these selections to get the most from their students 
3) aware of the affective variables involved in learning and how they 
might be affected by different instructional practices, including 
classroom demographics, special populations and their relations with 
the rest of the student body, instructional feedback and how it 
affects student conduct and performance, issues outside of school 
that affect school performance, second-language issues 4) aware of 
any other current research that might relate to their performance in 
the classroom, including psychological and cognitive studies, 
technology developments and research on how it may become relevant to 
their particular field of expertise, general research on text and 
narrative that might help teachers in all subjects convey information 
to students, linguistic and sociological research, etc. Although 
these are not necessarily in order, these are the main issues that 
confront prospective teachers and, by extension, schools of 
education. Some are likely to slack on (4)--research is a small part 
of most teacher certification programs, but not all. The issue which 
you demonize would fall under (3)--the affective variables, although 
some of these bits are really superficially connected. What passes 
for "multiculturalism" in your book may have more to do with how the 
publishing business is conducted than with teacher education (this 
usually falls under "sociology" in schools of ed). The same goes for 
"self-esteem" (it usually shows up in developmental psych classes, 
but almost never in subject-matter and methods courses). These may 
well be something that is taught in administration and policy classes 
(I know for a fact that this is the case), but this is far less a 
part of teacher education than you or even INTASC try to make us 
believe. Although these organizations may well be a part of formal 
accreditation of schools of ed in 37 states, you know as well as I 
that most schools pay only lip service to their "requirements". And 
the same blindfold is applied when the communication goes in the 
opposite direction--none of these organizations will try to shut down 
schools of ed that are producing qualified teachers (even if not all 
of their graduates may end up being deemed qualified by some group or 
other).

> Plenty of vague talk about "learning."

I talk about "learning" all the time. I want to know how students 
learn mathematics--since this happens to be the subject of interest 
for me--and science, to a lesser extent, because my other interests 
lie there and because the two are interrelated. I try to find out how 
people "learn" from text, from verbal exchanges, from lectures, from 
practice and from various forms of apprenticeship. I get information 
from cognitive studies about the processes that are affected by 
various aspects of instruction. One thing I do not do is look at the 
standardized tests for guidance of any kind. There is a very simple 
reason for this, and, I suspect, you can figure out what that is.

> While they do not
> use the term "self esteem," the document is full of the language of
> self-esteem.  For example:  "The teacher respects students as
> individuals with differing personal and family backgrounds and various
> skills, talents, and interests." and "The teacher makes students feel
> valued for their potential as people, and helps them learn to value each
> other."  This is the language of the whole document.

It's a wonderfully flowery language that says exactly nothing. Since 
you yourself proclaim that these are not "academic achievement" 
standards, how in the world do you propose these organizations 
measure the success along these standards? And if they are simply 
used as guidelines, you've just made my point above--the only 
attention paid to this "language" is lip service. The actual academic 
and other requirements all come from the states--as do the charges of 
these organizations as well. Your beef is with state governments and 
their departments of education, which these governments set up 
without necessarily consulting these organizations.

> This my whole point.

In other words, you point is as vague as the language you criticize.

> These might be fine goals for perspective teachers.

That's "prospective".

> My point is that this is not all they should be doing.

Really? Show me a teacher whose performance in the classroom 
demonstrates the opposite of "The teacher respects students as 
individuals with differing personal and family backgrounds and 
various skills, talents, and interests." Then I'll show a person who 
should not be teaching--there is a difference between training and 
teaching. Training is an enterprise that does not need to consider 
the differences among its audience. Teaching does. And if you think 
otherwise, why stop at public schools? Why not go after the private 
ones that operate on the same principles? I suspect you'd have a hard 
time finding a lot of private schools that defy this description as 
well.

> I would like to see schools of education go back to preparing 
> teachers to teach reading, math, science, etc.

Yes. Is this ALL that a teacher is suppose to do? Than why do we 
bother having people in the classroom? Would it not be much easier to 
simply tape lessons that have been found to be effective in some 
schools and distribute them to all the other schools in the country? 
Just think how much money could be saved if all those slobs were 
fired. Or, better yet, take these same practices and implement them 
in a computer program. Then put all the kids in front of computer 
monitors and throw away the key.

> The documents from these organizations that control or are 
> controlled by education schools are all about everything, but 
> academic achievement.

Can you make up your mind--are they controlled by ed schools or do 
they control them? Who is in charge? Or are you just annoyed that you 
are not?

> I don't think that the public, legislators, and governors believe 
> that the sort of goals articulated by INTASC represent
> everything education schools should be doing.

If you don't believe it, you should attend some legislative sessions. 
What about "civic education"? Any suggestions on that account? The 
same people who oppose the alleged "self-esteem" and 
"multiculturalism" in schools also want more "civic education". I 
would love to know what that entails. Guess what--it's all affective 
variables as well, just as vague and just as un-academic. They wonder 
why schools don't talk about American heroes as much as they used 
to--you know, the heroes like Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Thomas 
Watson and the rest of the Nazi sympathizers. They believe that we 
should present history in the same one sided parade of only qualities 
of the historical characters that the current majority of the 
population would consider positive--for example, we should not 
mention that Lord Amherst (for whom the college and town in 
Massachusetts are named) was the first in recorded history to employ 
biological warfare against the supposedly allied tribes. Of course, 
that means that the decisions on what should and should not be 
included in the textbooks is subjective, but please don't use the 
word "relative" to describe what these people are demanding. I would 
like to know--actually, I already know, I would only want you to 
announce it to the world--where you stand on these issues. Since you 
object to the "vague", "unacademic" parts of the curriculum such as 
"self-esteem" and "multiculturalism", surely you must object at the 
"civic education" and the "hero cult" that it entails.

> If you read the documents from these four organizations you would see
> that this is about all education schools are supposed to be doing.  I
> work in an education school and I can assure you that we adhere to that
> view.

Yes, yes... Of course... And ARE they doing so? How many of the 
accredited schools--just come up with some estimate of the 
percentage--follow these standards to the letter? Oh, and while you 
are at it, I'd like to see some evidence how these goals interfere 
with setting of academic standards. Simply saying that these goals 
exists really does not do the job--I mean, just because people play 
basketball, does not mean that baseball does not exist, does it?

Thanks, George. For once you are actually being honest.
--

	VS-)

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"-G. W. Bush, 
Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000