Issues

March 1990

Teacher Magazine, Vol. 01, Issue 06
Education In Brief
Poland, in particular, needs as many as 10,000 teachers of English to meet the demands created by increased contact with the West, Corps officials report. Teachers accepted for the twoyear assignment--which also includes teaching English to secondary students--will be provided with housing, a living allowance, transportation and medical costs, and a $200-a-month stipend paid in lump sum upon completion of service. No knowledge of a foreign language is necessary, but applicants should be experienced in teaching English as a second language.
March 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Extra Credit
$30,000 to the Harlem School for the Arts of New York City to assess possible costs of renovating property for the school's teaching and administrative needs.
March 1, 1990
4 min read
Education Tune Up, Turn It Down
What Montgomery, along with speech-language pathologists and nurses, discovered was a higher-thanexpected incidence of hearing loss among students in general. Thirteen percent of the district's seniors, for example, experienced hearing loss below the level of 25 decibels (the sound of a whisper at two feet).
March 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Readings Of Notes
From "The School Development Program: A Psychosocial Model of School Intervention,'' by James P. Comer, in Black Students: Psychosocial Issues and Academic Achievement, edited by Gordon LaVern Berry and Joy Keiko Asamen (Newbury Park, Calif., Sage Publications, Inc., 1989).
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education Caffeine Confusion Still Percolates
March 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Music To Think By
"When we went out to clubs, that 'baby' stuff was all we'd hear, when we could even understand the lyrics,'' says Foyne (pronounced fawn) Mahaffey, 36. She and her partner, fellow teacher Conni Blomberg, 37, and two other band members make up the group. "We were tired of going to places where the music was disgustingly loud, where you had to dress in Dior and smell just right,'' Mahaffey adds. "We knew people over 25 needed a place to go to talk, laugh, and reflect with one another. So we started the kind of group that we'd want to go listen to, and we wrote songs about things that mattered.''
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education Without Principal
These latest visitors are educators and other interested observers who come to learn more about a school system that has taken the familiar jargon of reform--site-based management, shared decisionmaking, and teacher empowerment--and put it into practice in a ground-breaking experiment in running a school.
March 1, 1990
20 min read
Education The Mechanics Of Thought
A missionary and a cannibal cross the river together first, then a mission- ary returns alone. Next, two cannibals cross together, and a cannibal returns alone. Then two missionaries cross together, and a cannibal and a mission- ary return together. Then two mission- aries cross, a cannibal returns, then two cannibals cross, one returns, and the last two cross.
March 1, 1990
13 min read
Education What's Wrong With The Schools
Whenever I daydream about moving to a big city, The Schools stop me short. Private elementary school costs are sobering enough. But when I think about the other option--sending my children to a big-city public school--I shudder. Look at those schools, for God's sake--the ones in Boston, New York, Washington, and the rest. Their disintegration is one of the great tragedies of our time.
March 1, 1990
5 min read
Education Classrooms Need Controversy
March 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Wait A Minute...
But the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, has called on its members who serve on the national board to lobby this month for a change in policy that would tie eligibility to possession of a state teaching license and graduation from an accredited preparation program. Last December, the NEA board of directors passed a motion stating that the union "will take whatever steps are necessary'' to bring about the change.
March 1, 1990
4 min read
Education Like Cattle To The Stockyards
March 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Too Many Districts
A compromise was eventually reached on the issue. But many believe that the debate it sparked in Oklahoma could be a harbinger of controversies to come in other states. Faced with seemingly intractable problems of school finance and equity, a small but growing number of state officials argue that it is time to crank up yet another round in the decades-long process of combining school systems in rural areas--a process that has reduced the number of school districts from more than 100,000 to fewer than 15,000 in the past 40 years.
Michael Newman, March 1, 1990
5 min read
Education Class Dismissed
A study by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs reveals that Millie, the Bush family dog, was mentioned in more television stories than Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos during the President's first year in office. It may be small consolation, but Cavazos wasn't alone in taking a back seat to the canine; Millie also received more TV coverage than the Secretaries of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs.
March 1, 1990
4 min read
Education The Moral Life Of America's Schoolchildren
Survey research helps us see general trends and patterns of belief or behavior, but conversations with individual boys and girls give us a sense of the complexity and subtlety at work in the minds of these children-the particular, real-life emotional and theoretical issues with which they struggle.
Robert Coles & Louis Genevie, March 1, 1990
11 min read
Education Democracy's Next Generation
There is some basis for that concern. The findings of this new survey, the results of the recent national tests of reading skills (page 18), and the articles on teaching about Vietnam and the revolutionary developments in Eastern Europe (pages 30 and 32) present a disturbing picture of the moral and mental condition of too many young Americans. Taken together, the evidence reveals that more than half of our young people have no firm moral code to fall back on; that nearly 60 percent of the nation's 17-yearolds are unable to read and write at a level needed to survive, let alone thrive, in a rapidly changing information society; and that a majority of our teenagers are not aware of, or do not understand, the social and political issues that are shaping their world. And, what is worse, they are not interested in, and have no desire to become involved in, the civic affairs of their community and country.
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education A Clean And Sober
"If it hadn't been for this school,'' says Sean, an 18-year-old former addict, "I'd either be dead or in an institution.''
March 1, 1990
5 min read
Education Extra Credit
  • Deadlines Vary. Overseas Study.
March 1, 1990
7 min read
Education Needles On The Sidewalk
"We can't take them,'' one of the boys told me. "We don't have room.''
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education Another Curriculum Debates Heats Up As The Cold War Thaws
Until recently, any objective historical treatment of the Soviet-bloc nations has been considered, as with the Vietnam War, too controversial.
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education Flights Of Fancy
With a rustling whomp, the red, purple, and green parachute--attached to the ParaPlane by a web of thin suspension lines--is driven backward by the force of the propellers. Slowly, the now rigid canopy, its leading edge a honeycomb of pockets designed to trap air, rises like a Technicolor jellyfish. Soon, it looms above the pilot's shiny white helmet, casting a long shadow against the grass on this bright, clear summer morning.
March 1, 1990
7 min read
Education The Moral Life Of America's Schoolchildren
Robert Coles—eminent child psychiatrist, Harvard professor, friend and confidant of the late Robert F. Kennedy, and what some might describe as a member of the liberal intellectual left—recalls, almost wistfully, the good old days when religion was taught in the schools. In what is perhaps an unguarded moment, he reminisces about the teachers who would lay into him, with parental blessing, at the first sign of disobedience or slackness.
Jeff Meade, March 1, 1990
5 min read
Education Now, The REsults
Based on the results of a 1988 test of 100,000 elementary, middle, and high school students, NAEP found that students at ages 9 and 17 were reading better in 1988 than their counterparts tested in 1971, and that those at age 13 were reading at about the same level.
March 1, 1990
5 min read
Education People

I Bet He Didn't Forget His Permission Slip
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education The Play's The Thing
Since her discovery, Daiute has reanalyzed the audio tapes and conducted a similar study of a 5th grade class in a low-income, urban school. In both studies--supported by a grant from the Spencer Foundation--each student wrote a story, collaborated with others on a number of stories, and wrote a final story individually. Daiute compared writing samples before and after collaboration to monitor the students' improvement, and analyzed nearly 20,000 utterances made by 30 children over a threemonth period.
March 1, 1990
3 min read
Education How Private Are Your Records
Lisa Jennings is an assistant editor of Education Week.
When reading consultant Doug- las Oster submitted a personal essay as part of his job application to Staples Elementary School in Easton, Conn., in 1988, he understood that what he wrote would be kept strictly confidential.
Lisa Jennings, March 1, 1990
9 min read
Education Extra Credit

The Picture Of Learning
March 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Smokers Under Siege
Two recent surveys indicate that schools--like many other sectors of society--are moving toward smokefree environments.
March 1, 1990
2 min read
Education Workshops

March 30-April 1
March 1, 1990
3 min read