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Read this Article in Time Magazine today.
Rhee Tackles Classroom ChallengeSuperintendents, parents and teachers in urban school districts lament systemic problems they cannot control: poverty, hunger, violence and negligent parents. They bicker over small improvements such as class size and curriculum, like diplomats touring a refugee camp and talking about the need for nicer curtains. To the extent they intervene at all, politicians respond by either throwing more money at the problem (if they're on the left) or making it easier for some parents to send their kids to private schools (if they're on the right).
Meanwhile, millions of students left behind in confused classrooms spend another day learning nothing.
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Rhee is aware of the criticism, but she suggests that a certain ruthlessness is required. "Have I rubbed some people the wrong way? Definitely. If I changed my style, I might make people a little more comfortable," she says. "But I think there's real danger in acting in a way that makes adults feel better. Because where does that stop?"
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In October, Rhee vowed to purge incompetent teachers through any means necessary. She has brought on extra staff to help principals navigate the byzantine termination process and says an unprecedented number of teachers have already been put on notice. But she cannot give teachers the huge raises she proposed unless the union agrees to a new contract.
...Tags: i hate school, news, politics, school
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How Obama's College Plan Hurts My GenerationAs a college sophomore who works as an editor at a personal finance website, I'm well aware of the problems facing students. I've gotten emails from peers who were forced to leave their first-choice colleges mid-year because of financial constraints. I have friends who have taken on $80,000 of debt to finance four years at a private college. One friend of mine was told by his parents that he will have to take on a substantial debt load for his final two years of college because of a decline in the value of the stocks they hold.
But Obama's ideas do nothing to confront the heart of the problem. The issue isn't just that students can't come up with the cash for college, it’s that the cost of college is growing far too fast. From 2002 to 2006, tuition and fees at public universities rose 57%, according to The College Board. That's more than three times the rate of inflation and, more troubling, far faster than our real economic and wage growth over that period.
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Increasing the federal Pell Grant program sounds noble, but it really isn't. Given the state of the federal budget, is it really fair for people like me to pay for college by borrowing from the next generation? That isn't just irresponsible. It's immoral. The Baby Boomers have already victimized my generation this way by elevating the national debt to nearly $35,000 for every man, woman and child in America. This was a myopic act of selfishness that my friends and I will spend a good portion of our lives paying for, but the last thing we should do is pass it onto our children with interest.
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Why should colleges worry about cutting costs when the federal government is lending students more money each year to cover tuition hikes, and families are all too willing to take it? The most reprehensible of these programs is the Federal PLUS loan program, which allows parents to take out loans to help their kids pay for college. In 2004, the parents of 15.3% of graduating seniors took out Federal PLUS loans, with an average loan amount of $17,709, according to The Project on Student Debt.
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In fact, a tightening in the student loan market could be just the tough love students need to get them to pay for college the right way: by working 80-hour weeks during the summer, and taking advantage of work-study opportunities. It could push students to take summer classes at a community college (I did this last summer) so they can graduate in less time. Or do their first two years at a community college while working full-time and living at home, then transferring to a more prestigious school to complete their junior and senior years. Or how about this wild idea: spend a little less money on weed.
( Here are a few ways the Obama administration can help restore sanity to college financing: )Tags: politics, school
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Just some school reading. From Wilk: "For Mauss, the answer was that the giving and reciprocating of gifts creates a link between the people involved. His book made some groups of people famous for their "gift economies"... the New Zealand Maori for having a complex philosophy of how the essence of a person is carried in their gifts..." From Mauss: "What imposes obligation in the present received and exchanged, is the fact that the thing received is not inactive. Even when it is abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him. Through it the giver has a hold over the beneficiary just as, being the owner, through it he has a hold over the thief... It is clear that in Maori law, the legal tie, a tie occurring through through things, is one between souls, because thinking itself possesses a soul, is of the soul. Hence it follows that to make a gift of something to someone is to make a present of some part of oneself." Wilk again: "Thus, upon giving the object away, part of the owner's hau (energy/soul) goes with it. This is why recieving the gift always carries an obligation to reciprocate, because the hau 'wants' to return to its original owner, though it may now be attatched to another's object." Tags: reading, school
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"Sociology, in the hands of Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, assumed that human beings ae natural social animals. Humans cooperate and make sacrifices, social philosophers said, because it is part of our social nature, not because we selfishly calculate the results of our actions." Who the heck says we don't do both? By the way, this book is extremely good, if anyone is interested in reading it when I'm done with it. --- The text goes on to say that yes, different theorists have tried to combine these ideas into a more comprehensive, complimentary idea. But the thing I continue to learn is that theories and ideas can't be parsed into a single theory 90% of the time because we don't think single-mindedly. This goes down to the very structure of our brains and thoughts. Our brain is divided into two halves, for one thing! And studies have shown that each side has different functions and strengths. From there, look at the diagram I just posted. We think about all the options, because there are so many. So, I think that we can think on the levels of self-satisfaction, moral obligation, and as social creatures all at the same time because we can be aware of these ideas all at the same time. I'm tired so I doubt I'm making sense... I think we just think the way that theories try and explain that we do separately actually occurs all at once, and is in no way comprehensible in a cohesive, single argument, because we don't think single-mindedly. Tags: school
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Anthropologists have long known that many cultures divide their world into halves: good and evil, light and dark, mind and body, for example. These divisions do not describe what people actually do, but they reveal how people think about themselve and the world. This is how cultural dualisms have power; they push us into thinking in particular ways, they define order, and they help us organize experience and ignore things that don't fit. They serve some people's interests and make it hard for the disadvantaged to understand the source of their problems, because the dualisms make their suffering seem "natural". They can therefore serve very oppressive purposes. Many of the Dualisms in Western culture mirror a basic division between public and private that is deeply gendered, as shown in the following list: public : private
economy : family
man : woman
rational : emotional
mind : body
historical : natural
objective : subjective
science : humanities
economics : sociology
competitive : nurturant
independent : dependentThe point is that economics has systematically defined itself as an enterprise concerned with male-gendered activites. It has defined the things women do, largely, as noneconomic. Tags: quotes, school
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