Chesterland
This was written in 1998.
Byrd-Bennett to Plead Guilty
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who ran the Chicago Public Schools until she stepped down this past spring amid allegations of corruption, will plead guilty to federal charges that she gave a no-bid $20.5 million contract to a former employer in exchange for future employment and a $250,000 kickback for two relatives. Byrd-Bennett, 66, was charged Thursday with 15 counts of mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud. Also facing federal charges are Gary Solomon, 47, and Thomas Vranas, 34, co-owners of SUPES Academy, a for-profit company that trains principals and administrators. Byrd-Bennett, who headed the Cleveland schools from 1998 to 2006, took over the Chicago schools in October 2012. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer)
Schools Become Prisons, but Learning Not Priority
To the editor:
Pedro Noguera, of Rethinking Schools in Milwaukee, makes several valid and thought-provoking points in regard to school violence.
Combating violence is difficult because it is promoted and legitimized by the mass media and by political leaders. While it is difficult to determine to what extent the glorification of violence in movies and on TV affects young people, psychological studies suggest that such exposure has a numbing effect on viewers.
Given the regularity with which violence is used for legitimate purposes, it is not surprising that children are confused about the appropriateness of responding violently to conflicts with others.
Most of the recent violence in public schools has been in upper-socioeconomic suburban communities—not in urban communities. Currently, the most fashionable response to school violence is the tendency toward making schools more like prisons. It is ironic that we are using prisons as our models for safety and security even though prisons are generally not safe places.
Further, these measures are undertaken without sufficient thought to the social and psychological consequences that may result from changing the school environment in this way. For too many students, going to school is a demeaning experience. The anonymity of large schools and the irrelevance of much of the curriculum to the experience and aspirations of children cultivates apathy, indifference, and disrespect toward school and the adults who work there. Feelings of hostility and resentment are exacerbated when some adults are just plain mean-spirited when they deal with children, exercising their authority over children in a pernicious and vindictive manner.
Laurence Steinberg, in his book Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed, said it best: “No curricular overhaul, no instructional innovation, no change in school organization, no toughening of standards, no rethinking of teacher training, or compensation will succeed if students do not come to school interested in and committed to learning.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Hancock teaches science at Heights High School.
Teachers Shun Public Schools
To the editor:
What’s wrong with this picture? Public school administrators and teachers who homeschool or send their children to a private or parochial school.
If these educators value private / parochial schools so much, why don’t they work there? I’ll tell you why—money and fringe benefits. Salaries are two to three times higher in public schools. This would be similar to a doctor practicing in Hospital X but choosing Hospital Y for medical treatment.
Charles A. Byrne, who represents the Eleventh District on the state board of education, wrote in another publication that State Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman’s 20 percent salary increase to $150,000—and a bonus to $180,000 – was well worth it. I wonder if he feels the same way about public school teachers. I have my doubts.
I never could understand why those who are indirectly involved with students are paid more than classroom teachers, who are. Don’t athletes earn more than coaches?
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Hancock is a science teacher at Heights High School.
A Last Word on Reform? Don’t Bet on It
What terms and phrases come to mind when we ponder education reform? In my thirty years of classroom teaching experience, here are some possibilities: stonewalling, filibustering, phony facades, incantations, pompous ostentations, consternations, debacles, nihilism, arcane jargon, harangues, diatribes, demagoguery, gibberish, and conjurations. It translates to, “When all is said and done—more was said than done!” We still have the assembly-line, factory-model organizational structure—rushed fifty-minute periods and five-minute breaks, seven times a day. No wonder a great majority of students don’t equate school with learning. They equate it with stress or purgatory. Some schools have changed to block scheduling, which seems to have helped this psychological dilemma. A colleague said that one of his education professors (you know the “ivory tower” docent academic theorists) said that education will always be a century behind the times. “If we continue to do the same things in the same way and expect different results, then we are indeed insane.”
This observation is a product of what Herbert Kohl calls “willed not-learning.” In his book I Won’t Learn From You, Kohl says, “Such not-learning is often and disastrously mistaken for failure to learn or the inability to learn.”
“Learning how to not learn is an intellectual and social challenge; sometimes you have to work very hard at it. It consists of an active, often ingenious, willful rejection of even the most compassionate and well-designed teaching. It subverts attempts at remediation as much as it rejects learning in the first place. Over the years, I’ve come to side with them in their refusal to be molded by a hostile society and have come to look upon not learning as positive and healthy in many situations.
“I came to understand that children in school act in ways that are shaped by the institution; therefore, it is essential never to a judge a child by his or her school behavior.”
One final piece of information, as reported in the American Teacher, confirms the relative disadvantage of US teachers. The number of teaching hours a year is 958 at the primary level, 964 at lower secondary, and 942 for upper secondary. The overall means for teachers in the Organization of Economic Countries and Development’s twenty-three member nations at the three levels are 791 hours, 700 hours, and 630 hours, respectively. This proves the ultimate paradox of more is less and less is more.
David A. Hancock
Cleveland Heights
Hancock
