Fwd: [eddra] Ed Week on Charter Schools

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: csubstance@aol.com
> Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006  12:34:36 AM US/Pacific
> To: mbrady22@cfl.rr.com, MBSOLOMON@aol.com, cgolden@csulb.edu, 
> eddra@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [eddra] Ed Week on Charter Schools
>
>
> In a message dated 8/27/06 7:53:42 PM, mbrady22@cfl.rr.com writes:
>
> <<     4th and 5th grade is about when (traditionally) an emphasis on 
> skills
>
> is replaced by an emphasis on content, content artificially and 
> arbitrarily
>
> sliced into "school subjects," >>
>
> 8/28/06
>
> Etc., etc.
>
> 1. Kids need content in classes. At what time in their lives is 
> debatable.
> Since I taught high school, I can't speak on whether fourth or sixth 
> grade is a
> best time to begin it all, but content becomes it.
>
> 2. Not all schools "fail" with those above fourth grade. Like most of 
> these
> discussions, things are quite different between affluent suburb and 
> hard
> pressed inner city segregated poor.
>
> 3. Class size and overall "climate" (including both the school and the
> community) are key by 4th grade and beyond. Little ones can miss the 
> crack dealers
> on the corner and the whores out for trade by lunch time, but as the 
> kids get
> older they can't.
>
> I taught for 28 years in the middle schools and high schools of 
> Chicago's
> segregated inner city. In two weeks, public school will open in 
> Chicago and out
> of 600 public schools, more than 300 of them will be all-black (and 
> most of
> those, all poor).
>
> How does that combination of poverty and segregation work with 
> children?
>
> It weighs them down, more and more, until for most of them in poor
> communities it crushes them. Eventually, their eyes take on that look 
> we used to see in
> combat veterans who came home from Vietnam -- the "thousand meter 
> stare." You
> can see it in the photograph on page one of the Sunday New York Times 
> magazine
> yesterday. It reminded me how many times I saw that same stare from 
> children
> some as young as 11 or 12 years old, and from many in the high schools 
> I
> taught across Chicago before I was fired and blacklisted for heretical 
> writings
> against standardized testings and bottom lines six years ago.
>
> Heart warming anecdotes don't help overcome those crushings of the 
> children's
> souls. Were class sizes (not "schools" -- class sizes) in inner city
> elementary schools considerably smaller and schools organized to be 
> islands of hope,
> rather than continuations of despair, things might be changed a bit. 
> But the
> despair would still sweep over many. After all, they are on the island 
> at most
> eight hours a day. I could give five hundred anecdotes of how these 
> despairs
> sweep over children, some going back 35 years, and I still remember 
> most of the
> names of most of those children as I enter my seventh decade here and 
> my fifth
> immersed in public education. For every Ophra silliness there are a 
> hundred
> realities that contradict the silly life of anecdote. Within two miles 
> of Harpo
> Studios on Chicago's West Side the desperations of the children and 
> their
> families continue this day just as they did for those children's 
> grandparents
> when I taught them 30 years ago at places like Manley and Collins high 
> schools in
> Chicago.
>
> Last year, I visited public high schools (my expertise) in many Chicago
> suburbs, looking for a job (I found I'm blacklisted from public school 
> teaching
> city and suburbs and eventually found other work).
>
> The more affluent the suburb, the more resources (from lower class 
> sizes to
> sports) are going into each child inside the public schools every day. 
> Easily,
> by any measure, the children of Chicago's wealthier suburbs are 
> receiving
> double the resources as the children I worked with during my nearly 
> three decades
> of teaching in Chicago's public schools. From class sizes that are low 
> enough
> to inspire (rather than break) teachers to lighted campuses that pay 
> for clubs
> and sports well into the evenings, these places do their best for 
> children,
> while in the places I taught every day requires sacrifice for 
> everyone. I could
> easily in two days take anyone who wants to know -- really know, not 
> simply
> repeat comforting platitudes -- from one of the inner city high 
> schools where I
> taught to one of those affluent suburban high schools. All are public
> schools, but to compare the two is almost obscene.
>
> While I was job hunting last year, there were days when I left a place 
> (from
> Evanston Township High School to Stevenson High School in 
> Lincolnshire) ready
> to cry, remembering the places I had taught in Chicago, and the 
> struggles the
> children and teachers had faced.
>
> I wish we could discuss these things less in a generalized context and 
> more
> with an eye towards the differentiations that really exist in the 
> lives of
> children. The children of the desperately poor in the USA today are as 
> invisible
> to most who comment on public education as the children of the poor of 
> New
> Orleans were a year ago today. Briefly visible, they are now invisible 
> again in
> both places.
>
> And our rulers have "solved" the problem of "poor" schools for poor 
> children
> by eliminating public schools and poor children from New Orleans.
>
> George N. Schmidt
> Chicago
>
>
>
>
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