The failure of Nickleby - again

I was a loud opponent of No Child Left Behind, ("NCLB·" or nickleby) prior to its introduction, post its introduction and today. My principal complaint is its contentions that all the problems with US public education were clearly the fault of teachers, that they needed a big stick and that this big stick should be testing. 

The problem with book burning

When I say book burning, I do not mean literally mean the immolation of tomes, although in a wider sense this is included. I am referring to current moves to remove specified books from libraries and from schools, and again by extension certain authors and certain ideas. And when I say "the" problem, I do not mean that we have one and only one, but that there is one sine qua non.

What's in your wallet - update

Regular readers will know that I am boycotting Capital One and why. Well, there's news.

Hiring couples

A conversation at my weekly get-together over coffee with a former colleague turned to a problematic situation at a friend of a friend's school. This school had hired a wonderful new deputy principal. However he had come with a spouse who was not so wonderful and therein lies the problem.

School jenga

Current protests about and against public school boards bring two things to mind. Firstly, these are all public district schools which is of course the root of the problem. Public schools must by definition (and by law) be all things to all people, so including "a" will upset the supporters of "b" and excluding "c" will ignite the followers of "d". The second is the jenga-like nature of schools: it is rarely possible to change just one thing.

Teachers and porn

I recently had news of someone I knew vaguely at high school and then at college. He was a few years older than me, but I knew who he was and we bumped shoulders at various times. Ten or so years ago he lost his position as a school principal because a district-wide IT update lead to the discovery of porn on his school computer. He claimed innocence, hired an investigator, found it was so, and received both compensation and an apology payment for the lack of due process and reputational damage. Now he is in the news again, this time for porn on his cellphone.

A problem with transcripts

I was speaking with a friend yesterday who has encountered something of a problem. She is the dean of a large "college" at a local state university and last week was sent the list of all professorial and teaching staff associated with her college. This was the official list generated by the university's central human resources department, and clearly it has been some time since this was done since she had not received such a list previously. The problem? Roughly 50% of the records were substantively incorrect.

Reaping what you sow; facing consequences

I heard an interview the other day with lawyer Sidney Powell. While I am not commenting on the rights or wrongs of what she said and did, I was struck by a comment she made. I am paraphrasing, but in summary, she felt it was wrong that she was being sued for what she had said about a company and/or its people. Her comment was that there should be no followup from the aggrieved parties and that she should be able to say whatsoever she wants about whomsoever she wants without any consequence.

Is Pre-School expensive?

Recently the press has devoted much time and many column inches to the federal budget proposal on childcare fees. Amongst this wall-to-wall coverage, we hear (read?) again and again about how unaffordable childcare is, and tisis frequently framed as being wrong, unjustifiable, excessive profit-taking and capitalism gone. Is it? I not seen (heard?) any explanation of childcare pricing; again, things are not what they seem.

Old News

I have spent several hours going through one box of many resources accumulated over a lifetime of teaching and administration. One box, taken from a bedroom and a shedful of boxes. This particular box was a collection of carefully collected, collated, organized and filed newspaper articles, commentaries, editorials and so on.  Each piece had been careully cut and trimmed, pasted onto a piece of paper as a background and labelled with date and the name of the publication to produce a photocopiable master. Some were accompanied by ditto masters, some by OHP transparencies. Thousands of hours of work, all on its way to the recycling bin.