October 1997
Teacher Magazine, Vol. 09, Issue 02
Education
Books
WE ARE ALL MULTICULTURALISTS NOW, by Nathan Glazer. (Harvard, $19.95.) "We are all socialists now," a British Cabinet member was reputed to have said in 1889 in response to a decision to progressively tax wealthy estates. He didn't mean, Glazer tells us, that socialism was necessarily a good thing but rather an inevitable thing that one might as well accept. Essentially, this is Glazer's view of multiculturalism; it has so swept into the public schools that there's little choice but to ride the current. Students from Mississippi to Oregon are just as likely to study Harriet Tubman as Winston Churchill, the American Indian tale "The Speckled Snake" as the Declaration of Independence. Multiculturalism makes any claim of cultural or moral superiority sound wickedly prejudicial; it's all a matter of multiple perspectives now. Glazer claims he is inured to multiculturalism, but it's clear he is not altogether happy with some of its ramifications. He points out, for example, that our current fixation with race, ethnicity, and gender almost completely ignores social class. In most new curricula, workers' rights and issues pertaining to unionization and corporate expansion are hardly mentioned. More worrisome for Glazer is the fact that public schools have almost given up on the idea of assimilation as a worthy goal, even though it worked for generations of immigrants who believed in the American ideals of liberty and equality. The central reason African Americans never assimilated, Glazer suggests, is that they weren't allowed to. "Where were the blacks?" Glazer asks after examining early 20th-century literature on efforts to Americanize European children. They were at the margins, where white America kept them. Hence Glazer finds it perfectly understandable that blacks have been at the vanguard of the multicultural movement. Multiculturalism, he reminds us, is "the price America is paying for its inability or unwillingness to incorporate into its society African Americans, in the same way and to the same degree it has incorporated so many groups."
Education
A Cop In Class
The young woman seemed like a typical, though somewhat troubled, senior during her semester-long stint last year at two Florida high schools. She enrolled in classes, did homework, and spent hours hanging out with her friends.
Education
Outside Looking In
Paul Hill has been a thorn in the side of the education establishment for years. Whether it's his research on decentralization, his studies of school choice, or his proposal that local boards farm out the operation of their schools to independent providers, Hill likes to challenge America's notions of what makes a public school public. A political scientist by training, the 54-year-old scholar has become convinced that marginal, inside-the-system solutions to improving education won't work. Four years ago, he created the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington to look for bigger answers that will bring real change.
Education
Books Recommended For Kids
PEELING THE ONION, by Wendy Orr. (Holiday House, $15.95; young adult.) Anna is flying high. She is 17, attractive and bright, and driving home with her new boyfriend, Hayden, after winning a karate championship. But in the next moment, Anna's life changes forever when another car slams into theirs, leaving her with multiple injuries. To friends and family, she seems to be coping with the trauma of her cut face and badly damaged body. Inwardly, though, she seethes and rages--at God for allowing the accident to happen, at a friend for deserting her, and at Hayden, who is afraid to touch her. Most of all, she is devastated by the pain. "Nobody tells you that real pain is more than something in your body, it's a black vortex that engulfs your mind, leaving you wondering if there's a border between life and death and what side you're on." Peeling the Onion can be compared to the popular Izzy, Willy Nilly, by Cynthia Voigt. The central characters in both are similar in age and deal with severe injuries caused by car accidents. But there is an important difference. Izzy, though bitter about the drunk driver who hit her and the loss of her leg, eventually comes to terms with her injury and leads an active, almost normal, life. But for Anna, months of therapy fail to ease her pain, and she finds she cannot concentrate. Worst of all, a specialist has misdiagnosed her neck injury, and she learns she will be permanently impaired. Anna is a better-developed character than Izzy, fiercely rejecting pity and meeting every setback head-on. Her inner thoughts reveal her agonizing struggle to determine who she is and what she will become. She is strong and determined and manages flashes of humor at the most unexpected moments. And she is surrounded by a supportive and loving family and a funny and fiercely loyal best friend. Her boyfriend, however, is unable to come to terms with the accident. All Orr's characters, with their frailties and well-meaning attempts to help Anna in her struggle to survive, are beautifully drawn. The Australian setting and expressions add an interesting touch to an exceptional novel.
Education
The Jewel In The Crown
Once a school on the slide, P.S. 161 in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood has taken wing with hard work, fresh thinking, and a reading program that marries phonics and whole language.
Education
On The Corner
In September 1992, David Simon and Edward Burns ventured into Baltimore's Franklin Square neighborhood and began reporting for The Corner. This would be Simon's follow-up to Homicide, the 1991 critically acclaimed account of the homicide unit of the city's police department. Burns was new to writing, but he knew the streets well. A Baltimore native and Vietnam veteran, he had spent more than 20 years with the police force, many of them as a detective gathering intelligence about gangs selling drugs.
Education
Teaching Tools
Following is a list of free or inexpensive resources that teachers can order.
Education
Clippings
Failing The Test: Writing in the New York Times (August 11), Lynne Cheney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argues against "whole math," the term critics use to describe standards set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. "In a field distinguished by reliance on proof," she writes, "an unproven approach is being taken in thousands of schools." In some schools, Cheney reports, the use of whole math has provoked a backlash by angry parents. "Particularly in California, where schools have enthusiastically embraced the constructivist fad, parents have complained about students unable to do simple mental computations, about high school graduates who get A's and B's in whole-math classes and have to do remedial work in college." Cheney wants to see "the whole-math experiment" shut down. "If we want our children to be mathematically competent and creative," she writes, "we must give them a base of knowledge upon which they can build."
Education
Shaking Things Up?
School districts across the country are turning over to teachers, principals, and even parents key management responsibilites traditionally handled by the central office. Educators and parents are drawing up school budgets, hiring and firing employees, and shaping instruction like never before. It's all part of a new national movement to decentralize authority in public education.
Education
Damage Control
If a severe earthquake were to strike near her one-room school in rural Montana, teacher Kerry Graybeal knows that it would be hours--possibly days--before anyone could reach her and her nine students. With that in mind, she and 13 other teachers spent part of their summer vacations learning earthquake safety from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Through a little-known program, FEMA brings dozens of teachers each summer to its training facility in Emmitsburg, Maryland, about 70 miles outside Washington, D.C., for weeklong seminars aimed at increasing awareness of earthquakes and other hazards.
Education
Segregating The Sexes
The controversial idea that girls and boys learn better when they're apart is taking root in California, where three districts opened single-sex academies this fall and three additional systems are expected to do the same later in the year.
Education
Courts Split On Student Harassment
The federal courts continue to struggle with one of the biggest issues in school law: whether school districts and administrators can be held liable for sexual harassment of students by other students.
Education
Schools Get Picky
Starting next fall, all Milwaukee public high schools will be allowed to become pickier about which students they admit.
Education
On The Web
Following is a list of World Wide Web sites that teachers and their students may find helpful.
Education
Q&A: Learning On The Job
Lynn Olson, a senior editor at Education Week and a contributing writer for this magazine, is one of the nation's top experts on the burgeoning movement to link children's school experiences to the world of work. Her new book on the subject, The School-To-Work Revolution: How Employers and Educators Are Joining Forces To Prepare Tomorrow's Skilled Workforce, was published last month by Addison Wesley. In it, Olson describes how various programs work, the promise they hold, and the obstacles they face. She talked with us about the trend.
Education
Balancing The Books
A Florida school district may be the first in the nation to stretch its limited dollars for instructional materials by leasing new textbooks from a used-book dealer.
Education
Teaching And Politics
Each of the four features in this issue is about a teacher. Three of them are depicted mainly in political roles; one is portrayed in the classic role of teacher as mentor. The contrast is stark and provocative.
Education
Connections: Failure And Success
Our failure to educate the impoverished children in America's urban school districts is one of the great scandals of the 20th century. Generations of them--millions of children--have been leaving school, often by dropping out, without learning even the basic academic skills they need to survive in a complex and changing world. The cost to the society in lost productivity, social support programs, and crime amounts to billions of dollars each year; the cost to the individuals in unfulfilled lives is incalculable.
Education
Enrollment Boom
The school enrollment boom that began 14 years ago will continue across the West and South over the next decade but taper off throughout the Midwest and Northeast, according to projections in a new federal report.
Education
For Your Students
Following is a list of contests, scholarships, and internships for students organized by application deadline. Asterisks (*) denote new entries.
Education
Virtual High
This fall, high school students in Hudson, Massachusetts, can take microbiology from an instructor in Pennsylvania. Students in Fremont, California can study statistics with a North Carolina teacher. And seniors in Lumberton, North Carolina, can take part in a bioethics symposium offered by teachers in Ohio. Welcome to "Virtual High School," a unique educational experiment linking students via the Internet with teachers hundreds, even thousands, of miles away.
Education
Opinion
Joltin' Joe And The Blonde
According to baseball lore, Joe DiMaggio was asked late in his career why he still played so hard in every inning of every game.
Student Well-Being
Opinion
She's Gotta Habit
Leaning back in her chair at a cafe near Harvard University, 18-year-old Erin Maguire pulls her fine blond hair into a ponytail, stretches her long legs, and crosses her arms over her chest.
Education
Opinion
Street Smart
In The Corner, Edward Burns and David Simon chronicle life around the Fayette Street drug market in Baltimore.
Education
Opinion
Writing A Wrong
"Give me a break," muttered one 10-year-old girl in disgust. I have no doubt that she scored worse on the test than she would have writing on a computer.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Letters
As a career educator and lifelong Iowan, I read with great interest David Ruenzel's article, "State of Contentment" [August/September]. I found Ruenzel's tone, for the most part, condescending and obnoxious. This is typical of East and West Coast journalists, who apparently prefer the polluted, crime-ridden decay of larger metropolitan areas to clean air, clean streets, and genuinely nice, hard-working people. He describes the majority of Iowa's school leaders as Mayberry yokels embracing 1984-like conformity. As a school principal, I find this description insulting, yet more accurate than I care to admit.
Wake-Up Call
As a career educator and lifelong Iowan, I read with great interest David Ruenzel's article, "State of Contentment" [August/September]. I found Ruenzel's tone, for the most part, condescending and obnoxious. This is typical of East and West Coast journalists, who apparently prefer the polluted, crime-ridden decay of larger metropolitan areas to clean air, clean streets, and genuinely nice, hard-working people. He describes the majority of Iowa's school leaders as Mayberry yokels embracing 1984-like conformity. As a school principal, I find this description insulting, yet more accurate than I care to admit.