Treat teachers like bankers?

June 7, 2007

A reader named Sam left this comment, in response to my post on teachers being overworked and underpaid, and I elevate it because it demonstrates, once again, how teachers get dumped on in ways that other professions don’t; Sam makes a good point:

It would be interesting to take into effect that teaching is one of the few jobs where people expend large quantities of their own money to do their job. I was a principal in a large urban district before I left education for a private sector consulting job. Part of the reason I left was the paper rationing that occurred during my last two years on the job. Our school district limited our teachers to three sheets of paper per student per week in an attempt to cut costs. Even the best, most engaging hands-on learning takes more than three sheets per week. Add in the lunch menus, report cards, and parent letters that need to go home and it would guarantee that our paper supply usually ran dry by March 1 or so and my teachers ending up buying their own paper.

Could you imagine the uproar that would occur in the mortgage department of a bank if suddenly employees were required to buy their own copy paper? Why is that acceptable for our teachers?

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service even has a specific standard deduction for teachers to use to cover the materials they take to the classroom, that would be supplied by other employers, that should be supplied by the schools. Isn’t it odd that we make provisions in the tax code to try to offset this error, rather than try to fix it?

12 Comments | Classroom size, Economics, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How many WorldNet Daily hoaxes does it take to change a light bulb?

June 6, 2007

Earlier I pointed to a hoax article foisted by WorldNet Daily, claiming families would face exorbitant hazardous waste clean up costs if they broke a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFLs).

Not only did WorldNet Daily never apologize to its readers, the paper is at it again, campaigning in favor of pollution and global warming, trying to scare people who switch to lights other-than-tungsten.

Hoaxmeister Joseph Farah uses an over-the-top, breathless tone: “HEAT OF THE MOMENT
Light-bulb ban craze exceeds disposal plans
Facts about CFLs, heir to incandescents, downplayed in government-enviro push”

Could anyone take that seriously? As Dave Barry used to say, “I could not make this up,” the “danger” from CFLs shows up in serious discussion forums. This forum, inaptly titled “Straight Talk,” demonstrates that people really do believe such hoaxes, especially about things they know very little about, like mercury poisoning.

Folks, five will get you ten, if you told these people about massive mercury poisoning that really exists in the Hudson River, and warned them against eating fish caught there, they’d claim you were an alarmist tree-hugger and laugh it off — though the mercury levels and potential for health-damaging exposure are both significantly greater for fish caught in some rivers, like the Hudson, than they are for broken CFLs.

But just try to suggest a small way to work against global warming, and they’ll pull out that same mercury poisoning argument to justify doing nothing and letting pollution win.

A warning to these people to “use your head” goes completely unheeded, heads having been lost some time earlier.

Here’s an example of just how far Farah twists the facts in order to make his hoax case against CFLs. First, Farah all but calls CFLs a communist plot (he claims the move to use them started in Cuba, under Castro — a dubious claim at best, and funny any way you cut it). Then he points to a Swedish firm marketing the bulbs in the U.S. — them furriners can’t be trusted, Farah implies. The firm is IKEA — never mind they are fine examples of capitalism run rampant. Third, Farah cites an editorial in Waste News , but makes it appear the publication said something the opposite of what it said.

Here’s what Farah wrote:

Those who really care about this problem right now are those involved in the waste industry.

“Most agree more energy-efficient light bulbs can significantly curb air pollution, but fewer people are talking about how to deal with them at the end of their lives,” explained a page 1 story in the April 2 issue of Waste News. It goes on to explain “there is no plan to address air and water pollution concerns that could develop if consumers improperly dispose of the mercury-containing devices.”

Gee, that’s pretty dire. No plans at all for disposal? Are we getting a pig in a poke?

Waste News actually said the bulbs are a “significant” environmental improvement. They point out weaknesses in current recycling, but they stop way short of urging people not switch to CFLs — here, read for yourself, the conclusion Waste News draws is quite a bit at odds with Joseph Farah’s version.

Managing CFL endgame
Waste News, April 02, 2007

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are a hot environmental trend these days, and with good reason. They require substantially less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and last several times longer. Used on a large scale they can dramatically reduce our energy needs and therefore the pollution we create. With their longer life they’re ultimately an economical choice as well.

But CFL bulbs aren’t perfect. They contain mercury, albeit a small amount compared with mercury thermometers, automotive switches and the standard 4-foot fluorescent lamp. Still, there’s no large-scale plan in place to manage the end-of-life handling of these bulbs, and having the mercury end up in the environment certainly is undesirable.

Strong warnings about the need for proper disposal could dissuade customers from buying CFLs, which most people believe are far better environmentally even with their mercury – an element essential to their energy efficiency. Consumers also could get confused about what types of bulbs to throw away and pitch ones with higher mercury. Broken bulbs also pose multiple health risks to waste haulers. Meanwhile, more governments are moving to ban mercury from disposal.

Pressure will be on manufacturers to take responsibility for this. Sylvania is one lighting company that has started to do so, offering take-back programs that involve a fee for consumers. And several lighting companies have agreed to voluntarily limit the mercury content of lower wattage CFL bulbs.

Lighting producers need to continue on this course, and do so sooner rather than later, even though the issue may be years away because sales are still small and the bulbs’ long life makes wide-scale disposal relatively distant. But a sound plan for the products’ end will remove a potentially big obstacle to a significant environmental improvement.

Hello? I thought there were no plans to do anything, according to Waste News — but when I read the article, it says Sylvania already has a program and others are ready to go. Is there no standard of ethics at WorldNet Daily?

Update June 10: More information at these sites:

Update May 10, 2008: The Ellsworth, Maine, newspaper’s environmental reporter tells what should have happened, on his blog.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Environmental protection, Hoaxes, Journalism, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

D-Day – fly your flag if you wish

June 6, 2007

Normandy landing, June 6, 1944, from an LST

D-Day landing taken by Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHOM) Robert F. Sargent of the United States Coast Guard (USCG) Greatest Generation D-day landing

June 6, 2007, is the 63rd anniversary of D-Day, the massive invasion of Normandy by the U.S., Canada and Britain, Free France and Poland, to start the push toward final defeat of Germany in World War II (more formally known as the Battle of Normandy). Germany’s defeat would come ten months later.

The day is not formally listed by law as a day to fly the U.S. flag. Citizens may fly the flag on any day. Many veterans’ groups urge flying the flag today, especially in honor of the thousands who gave their lives in the invasion.

On the Allied side, 29,000 U.S. soldiers, 5,000 Canadian soldiers, 11,000 United Kingdom soldiers,  died between June 6 and August 25, 1944, the formal end of the battle.  France lost more than 12,000 civilians in the fight for freedom, too.

  • Photo: Assault landing One of the first waves at Omaha Beach as photographed by Robert F. Sargent. The U.S. Coast Guard caption identifies the unit as Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division.

2 Comments | D-Day, Flag etiquette, Heroes, History, World War II | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Classroom musical – “Hey, Teach!”

June 6, 2007

Prangstgrüp?

Have you ever wondered whether your misbehaving students were setting you up, perhaps with their cell-phone video cameras running?

Hope they have the grace, wit and production values of this group: Prangstgrüp (click on “Lecture Musical”)

Tip of the old scrub brush to neurocontrarian.

[Couldn’t get this video to embed — sorry.]

Leave a Comment » | Humor, Pedagogy, School discipline, Student projects, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creation Museum: Sad, beleaguered

June 6, 2007

For those of us who worry at every eruption of intentional ignorance, such as Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, the comments of BBC’s correspondent Justin Webb produce a little salve:

There is nothing remotely convincing about the Creation Museum and frankly if it poses the threat to American science that some American critics claim it does, that seems to me to be as much a commentary on the failings of the scientific establishment as it is on the creationists.

And a bit later:

At the Creation Museum, goggle-eyed children watch depictions of the Great Flood in which children and their mums and dads are consumed, because God is cross.

In a nation of kindly moderate people I am not sure this is the future.

I put my faith – in America.

Mencken’s hoax about bathtubs in the White House was innocent enough, but impossible to kill (yet). Ham’s hoax about science, at $27 million (U.S. reports) or $30 million, doesn’t have the grace of its perpetrator confessing the hoax and urging correction (yet).

Faith in America is reassuring, until one remembers P. T. Barnum’s faith that Americans include a “sucker born every minute,” and Tom Sawyer’s assessment of small town politics: ‘Ain’t we got every fool in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?’

3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Museums, Natural history, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

June 5, 1968: The day Bobby died

June 6, 2007

Jim Booth at Scholars and Rogues wrote about what the death of Bobby Kennedy meant to a 16-year old kid out to save the world from darkest North Carolina.

This is just the 39th anniversary of RFK’s death. Next year, 2008, will be the 40th, and will again feature an election in which the war-crippled lame duck president must be succeeded, and the early fields in both parties do not excite the incumbent party’s masses much.

But 1968 was a uniquely terrible year — we hope it was unique. One serious question is just how depressing will it be to hear the “40-years out” stories on the Pueblo crisis, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, the riots, RFK’s death, the convention riots, the money-and-morale-and-morality sapping war (Vietnam, not Iraq — we hope), etc., etc.

And so Mr. Booth’s close is a potent challenge: To rededicate ourselves to the hopes we felt in the first half of 1968, to see the implementation of those hopes now, two generations later — despite the cynicism that wells up whenever we see anyone touted as a great hope of needed change in the country’s direction, or whenever great hopes are dashed to pieces, as they have been in Iraq.

And every June 5th I stop for a few moments and remember how I believed in what America could be once – try to get some of that belief back – and, to use an old Boomer chestnut, “keep on keeping on.”

And I ask Bobby to forgive me – and my generation – for failing to pick up his torch….

1 Comment | 1968, Campaigns, History, Lessons of Vietnam, Politics, Presidents, Radio, Vietnam, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Internet search tips from Google, on posters

June 6, 2007

Have you tried out Google for Educators?

Google is a powerful search tool that is way under-utilized by most of us. Working with students, I constantly find they have difficulty using Google or any other search engine to cut out worthless material and focus on specific items they need for their research.

Google for Educators has several posters offering tips on searching to help out.  Click here for .pdf version of Book Search, from GoogleBook Search poster, from Google for Educators

You can download the posters as .pdf files in a format suited to 8.5 X 11 inch pages, or for 17 X 22 inch pages. The larger size can be printed on the color “blueprint” printers your school’s drafting classes have (This is a good opportunity to go make friends with the drafting instructor — you can use those machines for great maps, too.).  If your school lacks such printers, you’ll find commercial copy centers will reproduce them (we have Kinko’s here) — though my experience is it can sometimes be cheaper to have them treated as photos and processed at a local photo center (Ritz/Wolf’s/Inkley’s, etc.)

I particularly like the “Better Searches, Better Results” poster.

The Texas teacher evaluation forms encourage evaluation on stuff hanging on the walls fo the classroom — if you lack stuff to hang, especially stuff that helps students in times of need, Google offers several posters.  Make the most of it.

[Has anyone else noticed that, as important as visual displays are supposed to be, very few schools make arrangements for easy display of materials?]

Leave a Comment » | Libraries, Maps, On-line education, On-line learning, Plagiarism, Public libraries, Student projects, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Jack Kerouac

June 6, 2007

Jack Kerouac's typewriter, in Lowell, MA - Beat Museum on Wheels

Jack Kerouac’s typewriter, on display in Lowell, Massachusetts. Kerouac attended Lowell High School, and Lowell hosts an annual festival to Kerouac. Photo from the on-line photos of the Beat Museum on Wheels (image downloaded and linked on June 6, 2007)

Kerouac appears in almost all U.S. history texts for high schools, and is to cover the post-World War II poetry mentioned in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Poet and author Jack Kerouac was the “King of the Beats.” The Beats were a group of poets and authors who gave rise and verse to the “Beat Generation.” The word “beat” is short for “beatitude.” Not only do most high school kids struggle with this character from U.S. history — in what should be a very fun section — many high school teachers have only vague understanding of the whole Beat movement. Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Books, Lesson plans, Literature, Music, Poetry, Teaching, Technology, TEKS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What’s the difference between school and prison?

June 5, 2007

Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer, in the Star-Courier, Highlands-Crosby, Texas, March 11, 2004

Give up?

Yeah, often the students give up, too. If you don’t know the answer, your school may resemble a prison.

Gary Stager’s post with jarring comparisons is here, at District Administration’s Pulse! blog. [District Administration purges its archives about every three years, it turns out; here is a copy of Mr. Stager’s column courtesy the Wayback Machine – Internet Archive.]

When the elder Fillmore’s Bathtub son attended intermediate school, he complained of the discipline. So did a lot of other good kids. We got a call from a parent asking if we’d join in a meeting with the new principal, and hoping to learn things were really hunky dory and offer assurances to our son, we went.

Read the rest of this entry »

17 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education success, Ethics, Pedagogy, Public education, School discipline, TAKS, Teaching, TEKS, Testing, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the Moment: Legal clip art for the classroom

June 5, 2007

Royal Typewriter, from legal clip art

Visit Clipart ETC for a great collection of clipart for students and teachers.

There you go: Legal clip art, properly attributed (though not necessarily properly footnoted — that’s another topic). How can you get more licensed clip art? See below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Business Ethics, Classroom technology, Education, Ethics, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Law, Leadership, Libraries, Maps, On-line education, Plagiarism, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival’s coming . . .

June 3, 2007

A little business interference, but it’s coming shortly.  Stay tuned.

Leave a Comment » | Fiesta de Tejas!, Texas, Texas history, Texas Music, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Just for the Texas State Board of Education: Biology texts

June 1, 2007

This is a little test of reading comprehension for the Texas State Board of Education.

So if you’re not one of those people, you can click to the next post.  Of course, if you’re reading this, it’s unlikely that you are a board member, but a Texas parent can dream, can’t he?

Here’s the point:  When you review biology texts for adoption next time, someone will testify that the books you review have errors in them because they carry copies of Ernst Haeckel’s drawings of embryoes, and those drawings are “known to be fakes.”

But that’s not exactly accurate:  Not since 1923 has any book carried the Haeckel drawings, except to point out that they are fakes.

P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula has a post today that lays out the details, “Return of the Son of the Bride of Haeckel,” as he Fisks another Chicken-Little-sky-is-falling press release from the Discovery Institute.

So, in short:  When that first person testifies to you, saying the Haeckel drawings are in some book, ask that person if they’ve read Dr. Pat Frank’s account of searching for that book, and whether they can explain why they think the Texas State Board of Education would be so stupid as to buy that claim, since it hasn’t been accurate in 84 years, since 1923 (older than all of the members of the SBOE, at least).

Then politely thank the witness for their concern, go to the next witness, and don’t ever, ever, ever claim that you think the current textbook publishers need to “get their act together” or whatever language you want to use, to get rid of the Haeckel drawings.

The drawings are gone, long gone, and you know better.

Back to our regular programming:  Did you know that it’s not true that Millard Fillmore put the first bathtub in the White House?

1 Comment | Accuracy, Evolution, Natural history, State school boards, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How it’s done right

June 1, 2007

If I need a lift, I go here. It’s how school should be — probably all the way through.

I don’t know the details of how or why this class is set up the way it is, but day after day they do things that other people use as textbook examples of what a good classroom ought to be doing, sometimes. And they do it day, after day, after day.

Carnival of Education, are you paying attention?

Wow.

I wager right now that these kids will be the top performers on the standardized tests for at least the next five years, in their classrooms and schools. The Living Classroom weblog is a valuable chronicle for how to provide quality education.

Somebody should step up with the money to track how these kids do, especially against their contemporaries. Alas, this is exactly the sort of information that will be lost, due to “lack of funding.” Fortunately, one of the women involved in the classroom made the chronicles, and shared them.

Side note: Looking at the photos, ask yourself, “Does our town offer these types of recreational facilities for use?” Washington has traditionally led the nation in setting aside land for public recreational use — this class has taken full advantage of being in a town that had the foresight to put up public art and public beaches, and other public parks and places. There is a lesson here for city planners, and for mayors and city councils who wonder how they might support their schools, run by other governmental entities.

Dandelion, class activitiy for The Living Classroom

2 Comments | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Brain development, Brain learning, Classroom size, Classroom technology, Education, Education blogs, Education quality, Education success, Lesson plans, Music, Pedagogy, School discipline, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Next Entries »