The death of education?
In his letter of resignation to the Superintendent of Westhill Central School District in Syracuse, New York, vetern teacher Gerald Conti describes a litany of problems arising from the unwillingness of administrators to defend educational values against the relentless pressure of ideology and political correctness. But the problem does not begin with administrators; it begins with parents, parents with egos so utterly dependent on the perception of success that they prefer to cripple their children for life rather than hold them accountable for living up to standards that will prepare them for genuinely successful lives and careers.
It is difficult to fathom the lengths to which people will go to tear down educators and their institutions when, by doing so, they can deflect from themselves responsibility for their children’s poor performance, attitudes, or behaviors. No form of malicious gossip, character assassination, or outright slander is taboo, even from individuals occupying the highest levels of communal leadership.
History offers tragic examples of the damage inflicted on individuals and whole communities through irresponsible speech. Innuendo, exaggeration, and outright lies, repeated often enough, seep into the consciousness of even the most well-intentioned people, until the damage eventually becomes irreversible.
Read the whole article here.
What teachers really want to tell parents
Published at CNN.com by Ron Clark, Disney’s Teacher of the Year
This summer, I met a principal who was recently named as the administrator of the year in her state. She was loved and adored by all, but she told me she was leaving the profession.
I screamed, “You can’t leave us,” and she quite bluntly replied, “Look, if I get an offer to lead a school system of orphans, I will be all over it, but I just can’t deal with parents anymore; they are killing us.”
Unfortunately, this sentiment seems to be becoming more and more prevalent. Today, new teachers remain in our profession an average of just 4.5 years, and many of them list “issues with parents” as one of their reasons for throwing in the towel. Word is spreading, and the more negativity teachers receive from parents, the harder it becomes to recruit the best and the brightest out of colleges.
So, what can we do to stem the tide? What do teachers really need parents to understand?
Read the whole article here.
A few choice quotes:
For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don’t fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.
Trust us… And please don’t ask whether a classmate can confirm what happened or whether another teacher might have been present. It only demeans teachers and weakens the partnership between teacher and parent.
If you don’t want your child to end up 25 and jobless, sitting on your couch eating potato chips, then stop making excuses for why they aren’t succeeding. Instead, focus on finding solutions.
And parents, you know, it’s OK for your child to get in trouble sometimes. It builds character and teaches life lessons. As teachers, we are vexed by those parents who stand in the way of those lessons; we call them helicopter parents because they want to swoop in and save their child every time something goes wrong.
In all honesty, it’s usually the best teachers who are giving the lowest grades, because they are raising expectations. Yet, when your children receive low scores you want to complain and head to the principal’s office.
Please, take a step back and get a good look at the landscape. Before you challenge those low grades you feel the teacher has “given” your child, you might need to realize your child “earned” those grades and that the teacher you are complaining about is actually the one that is providing the best education.
And please, be a partner instead of a prosecutor. I had a child cheat on a test, and his parents threatened to call a lawyer because I was labeling him a criminal.
Finally, deal with negative situations in a professional manner.
If your child said something happened in the classroom that concerns you, ask to meet with the teacher and approach the situation by saying, “I wanted to let you know something my child said took place in your class, because I know that children can exaggerate and that there are always two sides to every story. I was hoping you could shed some light for me.” If you aren’t happy with the result, then take your concerns to the principal, but above all else, never talk negatively about a teacher in front of your child. If he knows you don’t respect her, he won’t either, and that will lead to a whole host of new problems.
We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask — and beg of you — to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve. Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible.
That’s a teacher’s promise, from me to you.
A song of hope
An elaboration of remarks made this week at the l’chaim for my son Yaakov and his kallah, Amanda:
It’s especially fitting to celebrate an engagement this week, when we will observe Shabbos Shira. It’s difficult for us to imagine what it was like for the Jews of Egypt when, after watching the systematic and miraculous obliteration of the empire that had oppressed them for generations, after witnessing the death of four-fifths of their brethren who refused to trust in the hand of heaven, after setting forth into the forbidding desert with great wealth and fanfare, after finding themselves trapped between Pharaoh’s advancing chariots and the unyielding sea – after all that, to launch themselves forward between towering walls of water may have been the only option available to them but was by no means a simple act of self-preservation.
Panic, desperation, terror, relief, and disbelief – all these emotions caromed back and forth through their collective consciousness as they raced forward into uncertainty. And, as they came out soundly on the other side, the cacophony of thoughts and feelings coalesced into a divinely inspired harmony we call the Shir Shel Yam – the Song of the Sea.
For all that, the commentaries all question the syntax of the opening phrase, Oz yoshir Moshe u’vnei Yisroel – contextually translated as, “Then, Moshe and the Children of Israel sang,” but curiously rendered in the future tense rather than the past. Explains the Sfas Emes: although the people were inspired to sing as they passed through the sea, their preoccupation with the practical business of fleeing for their lives demanded that their lyrical expression of elation would have to wait until their salvation was completed.
And so we learn that Hashem is closest to us not during those times when we have already connected with Him, but rather when we are seeking Him with the sense that revelation is nearly within reach. Naturally, we express our deepest gratitude after we have been saved. But our most intimate connection with the Almighty comes during those moments when salvation is imminent but not yet complete. Only then can we experience the spiritual intensity of absolute dependence upon divine intervention even as we see our redemption unfolding before our eyes.
Indeed, the Zohar tells us that Moshe Rabbeinu felt humbled when he beheld prophetically the generation before the coming of Moshiach. For Moshe, who lived in an era of open miracles and divine revelation, it seemed a simple matter to trust in Hashem and His providence. But to live in a generation of such spiritual darkness that even the faintest glimmer of divine light seemed to have vanished, and to retain nevertheless even the smallest shred of faithfulness to Hashem and His Torah – that was something the Moshe himself could not fathom; that was the source of his profound humility.
We find ourselves in such a generation, so much so that it’s easy for us to reckon ourselves like King Louis XV of France who said, “Things may last my time, but after me – le deluge.”
It’s terrifying to contemplate the world in which our grandchildren will grow up and the storms our children will have to navigate. But on the occasion of this l’chaim, I’m filled with hope.
After two decades of trying, by constant teaching and imperfect modeling, to instill in my children the primacy of middos tovos, after laboring to impress upon them by any means that qualities such as honesty, integrity, loyalty, modesty, and respect are the foundations of Torah life and Torah society, I thank the Ribono Shel Olam that my son has chosen a young woman whose impeccably fine character testifies to the quality of her parents and her upbringing. I look with nachas at my own son, whose maturation into a ben Torah and a ba’al middos testifies to the inscrutable power of tefillah.
And looking at them, I feel as the Jews must have felt when they were passing through the Yam Suf – I want to sing shira. For as frightened as I am for them and all the challenges they will have to face, they give me hope for the future and inspire me with confidence that very soon we will all merit the final redemption and the coming of Moshiach.
Originally posted at Beyondbt.com.
The Danger of Lowering our Expectations
Unfortunately, Jewish schools and educators have not been immune to the lunacy sweeping the educational enterprise—suppression of competition, safeguarding students’ feelings at all costs, promoting self-esteem over academic achievement and dumbing down coursework to the level of the least-capable student. What has been lost is the insistence on excellence, an aggressive curriculum of core subjects (both Jewish and secular) and devotion to hard work.
The truth is that this is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it goes back to nearly 2,800 years ago and, in a very real sense, it lies at the heart of all the problems that have plagued the Jewish people ever since.
Read the whole article here.
Mistaking Identity
Consider the Egalia preschool in Stockholm, Sweden, where staff avoid such culturally loaded words as “him” and “her,” addressing the children as “friends” rather than “boys and girls.” According to the AP, “breaking down gender roles is a core mission in [Sweden's] national curriculum,” and many preschools have hired “gender pedagogues” to devise strategies for eliminating “stereotypes.”
No More Training Wheels
What my four year old son taught me about challenge and achievement.
Thanking the Garbage Man
Lessons my two-year old taught me about appreciation and the power of a smile.
1984 and the Language of Confusion
Sixty years after Orwell’s masterpiece, his message is more prophetic than ever.
And my apologies for the typo in the fifth from the last paragraph. Essays on language should be pristine.
Apostrophe Catastrophe
Someone once said that if the English language is going to die, at least it will die laughing. But this kind of story makes me want to cry.
Please read it, since you may not believe me without seeing it yourself. In fact, I still can’t really believe it.
England has decided to remove aspostraphes from its street signs. King’s Heath will now become Kings Heath. What’s the reason? Apostraphes are too confusing.
According to Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city’s transport scrutiny committee, “Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed,” he said. “More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don’t want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it.”
Maybe this is why Tom Daschle didn’t pay his taxes — he found them too complicated. And perhaps that’s why Rod Blagojevich crashed and burned — he found bribery and corruption laws too confusing. And no doubt this is why the auto industry continued manufacturing substandard gas-guzzlers, why the banking industry collapsed, and why congress is throwing a trillion dollars good dollars after a trillion bad — because responsible business practices and real solutions to difficult problems are just too hard to understand.
But don’t imagine that it can’t get any worse. It will. The closing of the American mind was probably never limited to North America, but it’s spreading like cancer.
It’s more important now to remember Aristophanes: Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.
Terror is the New Communism
Hey, I got a social disease!
Remember that line from West Side Story? It seems that the street gangs of half a century ago may have had more on the ball than college students today. Especially in light of the deeply disturbing conversation on a plane recounted here by Dennis Prager.
Apparently, from the lofty view of the ivory tower, terrorism is merely a foil for the political right to wield in its pernicious agenda to trample our civil rights – just like Communism was only a threat in mind of Joseph McCarthy.
With apologies to Ann Coulter, McCarthy was one of the great criminals of American history. With apologies to academe, Communism was much worse.
Perspectives
Dawn to Destiny:
Exploring Jewish History and its Hidden Wisdom
By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
A comprehensive overview of Jewish History from Creation through the redaction of the Talmud, illuminating the intricacies and complexities of Torah tradition and philosophy according to the sages and classical commentaries, spanning the length and breadth of Jewish experience to resolve many of history’s most perplexing episodes, offering profound insights and showing their relevance to life in the modern world.
How did the sin of Adam transform mankind and the world? How were the prophecies of Noah fulfilled through the rise of the Greek Empire? Why did lifespans shrink so dramatically after the Flood? How did the builders of the Tower of Babel believe they could wage war against G-d? Why did the Torah have to be given in both written and oral form? What was King David’s transgression regarding his involvement with BasSheva? Why did some Jews oppose the construction of the Second Temple? How can we trust the transmission of Torah if our scholars engaged in such fierce disagreements? These and many other questions are answered in this unique volume.
An invaluable resource for scholars and laymen. A priceless tool for education and outreach. With approbations from HaRav Dovid Cohen and HaRav Zev Leff.
FOR EXCERPTS CLICK HERE.
FOR ORDERING INFORMATION CLICK HERE.
Mission Statement for the Jewish People — from the extraordinary wisdom of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz, founder of Torah education in America.
Why Jews are Liberals — the origins of ideological confusion, and a follow-up piece exploring the practical applications.
The End of the Age of Reason — the sages’ vision of a future that is at our doorstep, and a follow-up piece in response to, and including, some colorful comments.
Israel: History, Politics, and Ideology — Answers to the attacks of apologists and antagonists.
Defining “Objective” History — How can we determine the accuracy of historical records? How do we resolve contradictions in history?
Evolution Forum — Is it possible to have a civil debate on the subject?
The Language of Confusion — 60 years after 1984, Orwell’s prophetic dystopia remains more relevant than ever.
The Final Battlefield – The current economic crisis foretold a thousand years ago and the climax of the ultimate ideological war. Also, variations on a theme inspired by Pink Floyd and this recipe for the only truly secure investment.
The Fallacy of Moral Relativism — How I taught a class of cynical teenagers the illogic of unrestricted personal freedom.
Hurricane Season– With meteorologists predicting more hurricanes on the scale of Gustav, Ike, and Katrina, these thoughts on the Pacific Rim Tsunami are worth another look.
Talking the to the Wall Department — My efforts to engage an ideologue in civil discourse. Draw your own conclusions, and feel free to weigh in … respectfully.
Insights into the weeky Torah Portion
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SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS– I am often available as a scholar-in-residence, chazzan-in-residence, or lecturer. For lecture topics and samples of weekend programming click here. Inquiries may be directed to the email below:
Contact me at torahideals [at] att.net.
