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| 9781452283708
| B00ATUCQZ8
| 4.00
| 7
| Apr 01, 2012
| Apr 10, 2012
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liked it
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Cyberbullying and sexting are problems that continue to grow in our nation's schools mainly due to the ever-changing advancements in technology and th
Cyberbullying and sexting are problems that continue to grow in our nation's schools mainly due to the ever-changing advancements in technology and the inability for schools to keep up with it. It doesn't help that many adults---parents, teachers, and administrators equally---don't know how to recognize the problem and probably wouldn't know what to do if they did. Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin's "School Climate 2.0: Preventing Cyberbullying and Sexting One Classroom at a Time" is a good reference for parents and teachers. Written more for educators, parents of students who may be being cyberbullied or are cyberbullies will find some useful information. Bullying, which is still a serious problem in schools, used to be defined as the aggressive behavior and harassment by one person or a group of persons, carried out repeatedly over a period of time, involving a power differential. It's the power differential that's significant: generally the strong picked on the weak, the big picked on the small. With the advent of technological advances such as computers and cellphones, the power differential isn't as significant. Anyone can be a bully, and anyone can be bullied. Not only that, but traditionally bullying occurred solely on school grounds, during school hours. Home was a safe area. Not anymore. Cyberbullies can attack anytime, from anywhere. Sexting, for those who don't know, is the sending or receiving of sexually explicit texts or nude or semi-nude pictures or videos via cellphone or other forms of technology. Recent studies have found that a significant number of teenagers have sexted, and that sexting becomes more frequent as teenagers get older. Those naughty little selfies teens send to their significant others can often be copied and disseminated to many other people. What many kids don't know is that, owing to the fact that most of these kids are underage, their sexts, if found, fall under certain child pornography statutes. Sexting could conceivably land kids in jail and have a "sex offender" status permanently attached to their record. It may not be fair, but it is the law, and it has happened. One of the things that schools can do, according to Hinduja/Patchin, is take a proactive approach by implementing strategies for creating a more positive school climate, one in which students feel that teachers sincerely care about them, where misbehavior is monitored and dealt with in a fair and consistent manner, where students feel that they are being better prepared for the future, and where they feel safe and secure. Research has indicated that schools with positive school climates---as rated by students and teachers---have a marked reduction in incidents of cyberbullying and sexting. While somewhat dry in its writing and overloaded with statistics (it is a textbook, after all), "School Climate 2.0" is nevertheless a useful resource for the latest research on an issue that probably won't be going away anytime soon. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 21, 2014
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Apr 10, 2014
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Sep 27, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 0553381563
| 9780553381566
| 0553381563
| 4.34
| 28,873
| 1980
| Oct 01, 2002
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it was amazing
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I never attended a military academy, and I never wanted to. Indeed, military schools are, in my mind, the punishment desperate parents dole to their u
I never attended a military academy, and I never wanted to. Indeed, military schools are, in my mind, the punishment desperate parents dole to their unruly male children. Or they are the punishment given to rich kids when their wealthy parents want absolutely nothing to do with parenting. In either case, it’s punishment. Pat Conroy has a love-hate relationship with military academies. Well, one military academy in specific. The Citadel, located in Charleston, South Carolina, is a gorgeous sprawling campus that has, over the years, consistently garnered high academic rankings. It has also provided the military with many young soldiers, and, in fact, during the second world war, it had the distinction of having the highest percentage of its student population go into military service. It officially became racially-integrated in 1966, and it ended its male-only admissions policy in 1996. Conroy attended the Citadel from 1963 to 1967, graduating from the school. All graduates are given a ring that is as highly cherished as a wedding band. Indeed, the famous first sentence of Conroy’s now-classic 1980 novel “The Lords of Discipline” is “I wear the ring.” There is an almost contradictory sense of loyalty and loathing that Conroy writes about regarding his feelings toward the Citadel. He has nothing but compassion and love for his fellow brethren of the Class of ’67, but he also clearly has distinctly negative feelings toward what was called “the plebe system”, the strict and, in many ways, abusive, honor code system lorded over by upperclassmen as a way to, ostensibly, build young boys into men. In reality, it was more of an excuse for upperclassmen to torture and abuse underclassmen. The novel follows Will McLean, a young man from a lower-class Southern family, through his four years of attending the academy. A poet at heart who wants nothing to do with the military, McLean learns to navigate his way through a system that he finds abhorrent. Along the way, he learns a lot about himself, what it means to be honorable, and what it truly means to be a man. There is much to love about this novel. Besides Conroy’s gorgeous prose stylings, the novel touches on a plethora of themes—-friendship, loyalty, class distinctions, racism, male-female relationships. There is also a mystery, of sorts, at the heart of the story, as McLean and his roommates stumble upon a secret society within the Citadel; a discovery that will have major repercussions on McLean’s tenure at the school, as well as his life and the lives of his friends and loved ones. As always, Conroy transports the reader to another world through his gorgeous, almost ethereal, writing. In this case, it is Charleston, South Carolina of the late-1960s, a somewhat alien world to 21st-century readers but one that—-if looked at closely—-isn’t all that different from our own. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 05, 2024
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Apr 09, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0593655036
| 9780593655030
| 0593655036
| 4.45
| 38,924
| Mar 26, 2024
| Mar 26, 2024
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it was amazing
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If you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: Ho
If you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”. It may save yourself much frustration, fear, and grief down the line. Haidt’s book is the inevitable endpoint of research and knowledge that started in 2010 with Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to To Our Brains” and followed, in 2022, by Johann Hari’s book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t pay Attention—-and How to Think Deeply Again”. Haidt’s book provides conclusive (or pretty damned near) evidence of what Carr could only hypothetically predict would happen 14 years later and substantiates, with further studies and statistics, what Hari was saying in his book. The basic premise is this: Sometime around the years 2010 to 2015, something drastic and worrisome started happening to children born in the late-1990s (a demographic of children often referred to as “Gen Z”). Rates of childhood depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation began to skyrocket across the country. This was across racial, ethnic, and gender lines, although it seemed to effect girls more. Haidt and his researchers believe that a combination of factors are the reason for these high rates of mental illness among children. One factor is a type of parenting called “helicopter parenting” that became prevalent, which essentially involves an extreme overprotection of children, out of an irrational sense of safety, that does not allow—-or over-regulates—-certain childish activities that children of the ‘70s and ‘80s engaged in quite regularly: climbing trees, walking unsupervised to the park or school or store, playing on a playground, skateboarding, staying in a house by him or herself. Another factor is the prevalence of devices that allowed children a preponderance of “screen time” that far exceeded previous norms in previous generations. Haidt directly links this rise of device usage to the introduction of smartphones (specifically, iPhones, which were brought to market in 2007) and popular social media platforms like Facebook (launched in 2004). A third factor is an inexplicable “underprotection” of children from the Internet and, specifically, social media sites. So-called helicopter parents were fearful of their children playing on a jungle gym, but they seemed to have a complete lack of worry about their children being vulnerable to cyberbullying or on-line sexual predators. One explanation for this—-given by parents themselves in studies—-is the parents’ own distractedness and addiction to device usage. Haidt’s solutions—-based on the advice of mental health professionals, educators, and social scientists—-is weirdly simple: Don’t give your kid a smartphone until they are about 16-18; Limit kids in both time and access to the Internet; allow kids to do more activities unsupervised; increase the amount of playtime for kids. According to almost every scientific study, playtime has been shown to be vitally important to a child’s development. Despite this fact, many schools have limited or eliminated playtime and replaced it with more academics, such as testing, to detrimental results. Thankfully, there is a swing back towards more playtime during school hours, especially more unsupervised playtime. Even Haidt acknowledges that it goes against every fiber in one’s being to let your kid walk to the grocery store in town by him or herself. On the same token, it’s hard to give up the “babysitter” benefits of the iPad or iPhone. I’ll be honest: I get a shitload of laundry and house-cleaning done when my daughter is curled up on the couch playing God-knows-what on her iPad, and while I trust that my daughter is playing appropriate games and not browsing Youtube for porn, I realize that it’s not the healthiest thing for her. Seriously, Haidt’s book is an important resource for parents, teachers, and health care providers. We need to be more aggressive advocates for the health of our children, but if healthier children means loosening the reins and letting our kids engage in more risky activities by themselves while simultaneously limiting—-or forbidding—-access to stupid shit like Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook, then we need to do some serious soul-searching as parents. ...more |
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Apr 27, 2024
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May 11, 2024
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Mar 21, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 031608915X
| 9780316089159
| 031608915X
| 3.73
| 619
| Jul 05, 2011
| Jul 20, 2011
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it was amazing
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As a former substitute teacher, I really appreciated Chris Gall’s wonderfully funny and gorgeously illustrated children’s book, “Substitute Creacher”.
As a former substitute teacher, I really appreciated Chris Gall’s wonderfully funny and gorgeously illustrated children’s book, “Substitute Creacher”. Ms. Jenkins needs a mental health day, so Mr. Creacher steps in to her rambunctious class of students. The kids are excited, because substitute teacher day means one thing: all classroom rules are out the window and they can behave as badly as they want. One problem: Mr. Creacher actually does have eyes in the back of his head. Three of them, in fact. He also has dozens of tentacles which enable him to write on the chalkboard, turn pages in a book, grab that note that Billy is passing, and stopping Daisy from climbing out the window. Seeing what he is dealing with, Mr. Creacher stops his lesson to tell the children some bone-chilling tales of terror about other naughty children and the fates that befell them. Such as the story of Keith, who loved eating glue, so much so that things started sticking to him, until one day, he was buried under a pile of junk! Or the story of Sara, who never cleaned her desk out, until one day it became so full of stuff that it blew itself to bits! Oh, there’s more, and with each story, the naughty kids of Ms. Jenkins class begin to realize that their naughty ways could end in disaster as well. This book is a joy to read, for anyone who has ever substitute taught or been a naughty kid or both. ...more |
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not set
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Sep 29, 2021
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Sep 29, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 0735224900
| 9780735224902
| B076NVFT5P
| 4.24
| 46,767
| Jul 17, 2018
| Sep 04, 2018
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it was amazing
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I haven’t been on a college campus in about 25 years. Things have changed: I get it. I wasn’t aware, however, until reading Greg Lukianoff and Jonatho
I haven’t been on a college campus in about 25 years. Things have changed: I get it. I wasn’t aware, however, until reading Greg Lukianoff and Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”, how things have changed so terribly. If you’ve followed the news at all in the past couple years, you’ll get a sense of how fucked up things are, but the media doesn’t always capture the whole story, and in today’s politically divisive atmosphere, the media is going to skew facts depending on where one stands, politically: those on the left see its significance overblown and exaggerated by the right, while those on the right see it as a sign of the apocalypse. The truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle. But things are really bad, and Lukianoff/Haidt have spent nearly a decade rigorously studying the whys and wherefores and hows of the whole mess. Their conclusion? Well-intentioned but nevertheless bad parenting, coupled with the rise of social media and roughly three extremely awful ideas that seemed to have permeated our culture as a whole, have created the perfect storm of an overprotected, anxious, depressed, and fragile generation of kids who can’t do anything. Lukianoff/Haidt can pretty much pinpoint exactly when things started going to shit. The year 2013; which is the year when kids born in 1995 started going to college. These kids, known as the iGen (anyone born in 1995 and beyond, during the years in which the Internet basically exploded in popularity), were a generation of kids who have, for the most part, been coddled and protected by smothering, overprotective “helicopter” parents. These are kids who, for the most part, spent most of their childhood indoors in front of a computer screen rather than socializing with other kids the old-fashioned way: outdoors and completely unsupervised, like those of us who grew up in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. For some reason, parents of the iGen instilled in their kids the sense that they were fragile creatures who could be easily hurt, maimed, or killed by anything that made them uncomfortable or frightened. Whether it was walking home from school, going to the mall with friends, watching zombie movies, or listening to speakers who espoused ideas that threatened to jostle their set religious and political beliefs, these kids learned that taking risks and being challenged was a bad thing. Herein lies the first of the three Great Untruths that Lukianoff/Haidt refer to as one of the underlying reasons that kids are the way they are: The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. Clearly, this is a reworking of Friedrich Nietzche’s famous aphorism, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”, which is basically a common theme in most classic literature and philosophy. It is the idea that in suffering and adversity one gain’s an appreciation for life and true consciousness. Seriously, everyone from Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Sigmund Freud has alluded to this idea. Yet, somewhere, somehow, in the late-20th century and early-21st century, this idea got flipped on its head. Lukianoff/Haidt believe that it started out with the best intentions. Parents want their kids to be safe. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when parents started going overboard and sheltering kids from everything out of a misguided belief that keeping kids away from things that could potentially cause injury (physical as well as mental), they were unknowingly creating paranoia and crippling anxiety in their kids. Protecting kids from dangerous objects is one thing. Protecting them from dangerous ideas goes against everything most psychologists and scientists would deem a healthy upbringing: “A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy. (p. 29)” This culture of “Safetyism” that has evolved as a result is what has contributed to college campuses in which students have protested professors, speakers, and other students for saying things that they not only deem “offensive” but also “damaging” to their worldview and belief systems. Conservatives have cruelly dubbed these kids “snowflakes”, but it is simply a natural byproduct of what Lukianoff/Haidt refer to as the second Great Untruth. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings. We’re probably all guilty of spreading this one. Some of the blame can be handed to our collective national reactions to 9/11, in which it became an acceptable knee-jerk reaction to report anything suspicious, regardless of how trivial. “See Something, Say Something” was a popular ad campaign in the years immediately subsequent to September 11, 2001. There is something to be said for listening to one’s inner voice sometimes. If you get a bad vibe from your weird uncle or that older kid down the street that’s always trying to lure kids into his house with candy, maybe you should listen to those feelings. Unfortunately, some kids have taken this approach way too far, to the point that anyone who says anything that is deemed “offensive” (a rather subjective label), intentionally or not, is an awful bigoted person who has committed a crime against their person. Needless to say, this does not cultivate a healthy learning environment. This is why the incidents of “disinviting” guest speakers to college campuses has risen in the past few years. It’s why the UC Berkley campus---a college once known as a bastion of free speech---recently erupted in violence by protestors who refused to let guest speakers speak. It goes against everything that a free speech advocate believes in, and the irony is that these students believed that they were protesting in the name of “tolerance”. It also goes against the very idea of education, as expressed by Hanna Holborn Gray: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make people think. (p. 51)” Unfortunately, in this toxic atmosphere of political divisions and bitterness, the third Great Untruth rears its head. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People. Life isn’t simple, or black and white. There’s a lot of grey areas that can be confusing and uncomfortable to deal with. One of the toughest grey areas to grasp is the idea that no one is completely good or evil, that we are all split down the middle. Unfortunately, an entire generation has apparently grown up to believe the opposite: that there are good people (us) who must constantly, vigilantly, stand up to the forces of evil people (them). In the nineteenth-century, Karl Marx simplified the dichotomy of man by separating people into the bourgeoisie (the capitalists, or rich people) vs. the proletariat (the workers). Today, the split has morphed into liberals versus conservatives, or the Left vs. the Right. There used to be a time when the Left and the Right simply disagreed on issues but managed to remain civil, knowing that neither side was necessarily right or wrong, good or evil, just different. This has changed, especially in the minds of young people. Today, most college students (a vast majority of which tend to lean left) view those on the Right as an enemy; a particularly evil one, too. College campuses, which are predominantly liberal, have made it very difficult for conservatives. Conservative professors have seen a rise in administrations chastising or firing them for seemingly innocuous slights, more often than not interpreted as offenses against a student or students. This has resulted in a stressful “walking on eggshells” by conservatives in an attempt to not garner the wrath of liberal students. It has become so bad that many conservative professors simply remove parts of their curricula that they think students will find “offensive” or simply quit. Neither option is conducive to a healthy learning environment. A Simple Fix Lukianoff/Haidt don’t just examine the problem. They even offer solutions, some of which are so common sense that it is frightening that most parents, teachers, and college administrators haven’t already enacted them. Unfortunately, therein lies part of the problem. While it’s easy to make fun of or even feel pity for these college kids, it’s not always easy to assess blame, especially when the blame rests on all of us: parents, teachers, college administrators, politicians, scientists. Everyone has helped to perpetuate the untruths mentioned here, so it is up to us to recognize what we’ve done wrong and correct it. One way to do that is read this book. Seriously, this book should be required reading for every parent today. ...more |
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not set
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Jan 16, 2019
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Dec 23, 2018
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ebook
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| 1610398386
| 9781610398381
| 1610398386
| 3.94
| 672
| Apr 17, 2018
| Apr 17, 2018
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really liked it
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People (normally those who don’t have kids yet) talk about the “terrible twos” as if a child has a switch in their head that magically flips on when t
People (normally those who don’t have kids yet) talk about the “terrible twos” as if a child has a switch in their head that magically flips on when they turn two years old, turning them into lunatics. Actually, my daughter was an angel at two. It was starting about three that there began the rumblings of the tantrum-throwing, hands-on-her-hips, bossy little thing that constantly screams “NO!” when my wife and I tell her to do anything and everything. She’s four now, and somedays I honestly feel like calling an exorcist. We’re not even Catholic. Thankfully, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, a mother of three children herself (oh, the horror: the very thought of having more than one child now makes me break into cold sweats), argues pretty convincingly that parents need to relax more and not stress out when their kids throw hissy-fits. This isn’t to say that parents should simply let their kids continue to throw hissy-fits. It’s the way the parents react, communicate, and create consequences that makes the difference. In her book “The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever---And What to Do About It”, Lewis starts off by saying that if you think kids are more crazy and undisciplined today than ever before in history, you’re absolutely right. Something (and scientists don’t know exactly what yet, although they have their suspicions) is going wrong with kids’ biology and neurological makeup. They are less able to control themselves. Their self-regulation monitoring system is malfunctioning. They are more likely to be depressed, neurotic, and suffer other severe forms of mental illness than children in the past. It’s not a case of over-diagnosis. It’s not a lack of religiosity, strong discipline, or self-esteem. It’s clearly something off-kilter about kid’s brains. But it’s not something to freak out about. It’s simply childhood in the 21st century, according to Lewis. We, as parents, simply need to be aware of how we are reacting to our children’s misbehavior. We also need to be aware that what may have worked for our parents and grandparents won’t necessarily work for us. Indeed, some of the steps we may have to take as parents will seem extremely counterintuitive and downright uncomfortable, but we need to do them, for the ultimate well-being of our children. One of the strongest and most interesting new trends in thought regarding parenting is the emphasis on play, and how vitally important it is. Peter Gray, professor emeritus at Boston College and author of “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life” writes about how, through play, children self-learn everything they need to know in life. Play feeds children physically, intellectually, and spiritually. There is, according to Lewis, “a barrage of evidence that children who have more autonomy and more unsupervised playtime develop better learning skills, more creativity, and a greater sense of responsibility for their own actions. (p. 29)” More play and less-structured play helps the development of executive function in children, which is the ability to control one’s thoughts and behavior in order to achieve a goal. If you ever watch children at play, you will begin to see how children learn how to help others, share, police each other’s behavior, and deal with problems. Certainly, a parent’s first instinct is to run to the aid of a child when something goes wrong on a playground---one kid is running around screaming at the top of his lungs, another kid shoves your kid out of the way on the slide, another kid won’t share the toy truck in the sandbox---but Lewis suggests that, unless it’s to prevent serious injury, one should just let the kids play. They’ll be alright. This is, of course, crazy talk to many parents, but it’s ultimately going to do wonders for your kids. In a sense, it’s a lot like what recent studies have shown in regards to overprotectiveness. Helicopter parents may think they are helping their kids out, but they are actually doing more harm than good. Take, for example, studies of separation anxiety: Children who had experienced separations from parents early in life were less likely to have separation anxiety in later life. Similarly, over-protective parents’ attempts at shielding children from certain things actually increases the likelihood that the children may develop phobias or anxieties about those things later in life. Likewise, adherents of the recent trend in assertive parenting---the Tiger mom method---are finding that their methods may also be backfiring. Studies show that parenting programs that encourage parents to be tough and assertive toward children---yelling, insulting, and restricting a child---have been associated with increases in depression and self-destructive behavior. Permissive parenting became all the rage in the 1990s, a direct result of, and rebellion against, the authoritarian style of parenting of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The focus was on self-esteem and becoming “friends” with your children. For a lot of parents, it meant a complete lack of boundaries and letting kids get away with murder. To them, it was far better than the ridiculous rules and punishment and hard-line parenting under which they were raised. The problem is, according to Lewis, “permissive parenting is even worse than authoritarian parenting in the long term. A slew of research studies from the 1990s to the present show that, with both parenting styles, children have an increased risk of depression and lower self-control, and that permissive parenting also is associated with lower academic achievement. (p.63)” Children today are less obedient and respectful of authority, which is perhaps being modeled to them by their parents, many of whom are afraid or unwilling to discipline them because they felt that their own parents were too hard on them. Raising one’s voice and threatening children with punishment is, to these parents, antithetical to their nature. Giving children positive energy and rewards for good behavior has to be a good thing, right? Not necessarily. Just as harsh punishment can be counterproductive, rewards don’t help much either. Research shows that “[w]hether given for grades, household jobs, or behavior, [rewards] erode the child’s interest in the activity and risk turning a potentially fun challenge into a task to be dreaded. (p. 91)” The key is communication. Yelling isn’t good communication, but, then again, neither is saying nothing and letting your kid throw that hissy fit. A parent’s job is to figure out why that kid is throwing the hissy fit. Is Billy not getting attention? Does Suzy feel like you are treating her unfairly? Does Guillermo secretly have an ear-ache? This is where reflective listening comes in, which is listening that “requires restating what you believe you heard and asking for confirmation or clarification. (p. 137)” Once a parent knows why a kid is throwing a tantrum or doing something he’s not supposed to, it may help in figuring out the proper consequence. Parents who utilize the age-old “time-out” quickly learn that it doesn’t always work. Sometimes foregoing the time-out for a civil conversation with your kid may do wonders. It requires a parent to treat a child with respect and acknowledgment of an intellectual capability for which we don’t often given children credit. Lewis’s book is a treasure trove of information and knowledge for both parents and educators. While it is more descriptive and less prescriptive (Lewis is a journalist, not a psychiatrist), Lewis nevertheless provides the reader with an abundance of other great source material, websites, and nationwide programs for parental assistance. There are many great take-aways from Lewis’s book, but one of the more important take-aways is this: “[C]hildish misbehavior isn’t an emergency situation or a sign of something gone wrong, but simply a natural part of growing up. Pause and respond with intention to your child’s behavior. Getting out of reactive mode will improve your connection to your kid, give you a chance to communicate better, and offer your child the space to build their capability for whatever the situation is, without you swooping in. (p.226)” ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 21, 2018
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Apr 25, 2018
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Apr 21, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0062280546
| 9780062280541
| 0062280546
| 3.36
| 45,067
| Jul 02, 2013
| Jul 02, 2013
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really liked it
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Alissa Nutting’s 2013 novel “Tampa” is fucked up. It is also funny, disturbing, and gross. And hot. But not, like, temperature-hot. It’s sexy-hot. Whi
Alissa Nutting’s 2013 novel “Tampa” is fucked up. It is also funny, disturbing, and gross. And hot. But not, like, temperature-hot. It’s sexy-hot. Which is really fucked up to say, considering the book is about pedophelia. And I know that right now you’re thinking, “Holy shit, this dude just called a book about pedophelia “hot”, which is so fucked up!”, and you’d be totally right, but it’s also true, and I’m just trying to be honest, although I’m really beginning to question my sanity and morals and everything right now because of this book. So, thanks, Ms. Nutting, for totally giving me a mind-fuck. To say this book is “controversial” is an understatement. It’s also kind of brilliant, though, so before you write it off as a book you will never ever ever read because of its subject matter, give me a minute or two to try and explain why maybe you should read it. One reason is because closing your eyes or ears or mind off to a subject matter simply because it makes one feel uncomfortable or disturbed is pretty dumb. There’s only two reasons why you don’t want to talk about pedophelia: 1) Thinking about stuff you consider “taboo” or don’t like (and, trust me, I hate pedophelia just as much as you) is naturally uncomfortable. I get it. But if you are someone, like me, who wants to see something done about a problem (in this case, an end to sexual abuse of children), not thinking about it and sweeping it under the rug is the completely wrong way to fix it. It’s basically ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away. And that never works. Confronting it, thinking about it, learning about it, considering ways to deal with it, talking about it rationally: these are ways to fix a problem. The second reason why you don’t want to talk about pedophilia is: 2)You’re a pedophile. So, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that #2 is NOT the reason you don’t want to read the book. Another reason you probably should read this book is that it deals with the weird double standard in our society that, when we hear the word “pedophile”, we almost always envision a perverted white middle-aged man, driving around town in a white van, picking up little kids with a lollipop lure, and then buggering them to death. Which is pretty accurate most of the time, but it doesn’t cover the wide range of types of pedophiles. Like the smoking hot young English teacher who has sex with teenage boys. This image isn’t that prevalent, mainly because for a lot of people (men, especially), this example is less representative of pedophelia than it is of every teenage boy’s fantasy. Let’s be honest: a high school girl having sex with her male teacher is (according to society) “being taken advantage of by a powerful male predator”, but a high school boy having sex with his female teacher is, well, “livin’ the dream”. Never mind that the sexual abuse is equally damaging to either child, male or female. It’s just that, for some reason, we tend to give the hot young female teacher more of a pass than the male teachers. A third reason one should read this book is that Nutting likes to totally mind-fuck the reader, and she does it really well. Like I mentioned before, this book was (in my opinion) pretty sexy. I’m not gonna lie: the sex scenes (and there were plenty) were steamier and way more erotic than E.L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Of course, this is comparing apples to a box of dildos, really, as Nutting is a far better writer than James, who writes like an 80-year-old sexually repressed nun due to her weirdly prudish inability to actually include the words “penis” and “vagina” anywhere in her book: an odd problem to have if you are writing erotica (or porn or whatever the hell “Fifty Shades of Grey” was. And, yes, I read the damn thing, from beginning to end. That’s three days I will never get back.) The protagonist of “Tampa” is Celeste Price, an apparently strikingly gorgeous petite blonde of a high school English teacher. (I pictured Kristin Bell, strictly to have a face with the name.) Told from her perspective, the novel seduces the reader into the mind of a horribly narcissistic sociopath. Celeste is married, but it is a complete sham, at least, on her end. Her husband, Ford, is a clueless schmuck who thinks he has it great: a good job as a cop, a house, a hot wife, and rich parents (who Celeste secretly hopes will die very soon so that they will inherit a shit ton of money.) She only wants her job as a teacher because for her entire life she has had one secret passion: to fuck 14-year-old boys. Why? Does it matter? Pedophiles may have reasons for what they do, but does anybody give a shit? They’re pedophiles, the lowest scum on the planet. They have, in my opinion, lost their right to carry a human card. Nevertheless, Nutting tries her damnedest to get us to, if not sympathize, understand the basic workings of the mind of a pedophile, and for the most part she succeeds. Sometimes, she succeeds too well. When Celeste does finally rope a young man named Jack, the sexual intensity is off the charts. Nutting writes her sex scenes like well-choreographed scenes in a porno. I’m ashamed to say these scenes turned me on, but they also worked to make me feel pretty sick afterwards because of it. This was a grown woman having sex with a 14-year-old, after all. There’s no way to spin that as right. Therein lies Nutting’s brilliance. Nutting makes us understand and appreciate the almost biological (if vile) need that this woman has by roping us in by our own libidinous desires, making us see that our own sexual cravings and fetishes and appetites can sometimes be dangerous if unregulated by a moral structure. This, however, is Celeste’s undoing, because she has no moral structure or center. She is, even by her own admission, soulless. She is completely ruled by her animalistic lust for teenaged dick, and because her libido is given free and unregulated reign of her life, she inevitably makes a ton of mistakes. Her ridiculous sex drive is her ultimate undoing, which is usually the case with pedophiles. They can’t help themselves. “Tampa” is one of those books that probably doesn’t get read a lot in book clubs. Or, if they do, they probably result in a lot of awkward conversations in which some people say too little and some people say too much. I’ve probably said too much in this review, but I don’t give a shit. I don’t like taboos, because taboos work to perpetuate negative and illicit behaviors by creating an atmosphere in which no one wants to say anything about it. This is the kind of thinking that got Trump elected. So, I say, fuck it. I’m going to talk about it, whether you like it or not. And kudos to you, Ms. Nutting, for writing “Tampa” and at least starting some of those awkward but necessary conversations. ...more |
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not set
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Oct 12, 2017
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Oct 12, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1402281005
| 9781402281006
| 1402281005
| 3.71
| 572
| Jan 01, 2013
| Aug 06, 2013
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it was amazing
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Fifty percent of all new teachers will leave the field within the first five to seven years. This statistic may actually be higher, as more and more s
Fifty percent of all new teachers will leave the field within the first five to seven years. This statistic may actually be higher, as more and more school districts across the country are finding themselves going into state receivership due to serious financial cuts because of a growing number of charter and private schools. Public education---one of the best things that our founding fathers ever devised---is in its violent death throes, and politicians don’t care. Teacher turnover rate is a serious issue. It has surpassed the divorce rate in this country. When it comes to our failing educational system, politicians (conservative ones, at least, although some liberal voices seem to echo them) would put the onus on teachers, as if everything wrong with public education is their fault. Never mind that for the past four decades, teachers have been mandated to follow policies and practices---at the risk of losing their jobs---devised by people in Washington, D.C. who have never taught, never worked in the field of education, and who expect schools to follow these mandates without offering any attempt to help pay for them. Never mind that teachers are still accused of being “money-grubbers” and “whiners” when it’s the administrators and superintendents who are getting paid ridiculous amounts of money. Strangely enough, it’s their salaries that get yearly raises while most teachers haven’t seen a raise in their salary for the past ten years, and, in fact, most teachers have seen a decrease in salaries due to rising healthcare coverage costs. Never mind that many people within the general public harbor an inexplicable hatred for teachers, most likely borne by FOX News, one-sided media attacks (such as the film “Waiting for Superman” which was unquestionably anti-union and pro-charter schools), and ridiculously unfair Hollywood-ized depictions of teachers as either horrible people (“Half Nelson”, “Bad Teacher”, “Fist Fight”) or miracle workers (“Stand and Deliver”, “Dangerous Minds”, “Freedom Writers”). Never mind the number of completely false “truths” that still exist in the minds of most people: teachers get paid all year, even on the three months they’re off in the summer (they don’t---their salaries are calculated for a nine-month calendar, but teachers have the option of having paychecks spread out over 12 months), they only work part-time hours (if, by part-time, one means over 60 hours a week because a teacher’s day never ends at 3 p.m. and it doesn’t end on weekends), it’s impossible to fire a bad teacher (it’s not; it’s quite easy in fact, although it depends on what one means by “bad”), and teachers are overpaid (if, by “overpaid”, one means, as a national average, roughly $55,000 a year.) But, hey, it’s still the fault of the teachers. Well, the bad ones anyway. So, what exactly is a “bad” teacher? John Owens attempts to answer that in his 2013 book “Confessions of a Bad Teacher”, which describes his (brief) tenure as an eighth-grade teacher in the New York City school system. He was, by his own admission, a “bad” teacher. But what made him “bad”? It may help to illustrate Owens experience with my own. Because I was a bad teacher, too. In the 2008-2009 school year, I started teaching at an east side Cleveland public high school. A predominantly black suburban demographic, the school was a pretty typical one, dealing with the typical problems of budgetary cuts, a lower-income populace, and a growing gang problem. I was excited to get the job, mainly because I was excited to get a job, any job, teaching. Despite the fact that I had many people express worries about me working there, I actually wasn’t worried. A small part of me may have been nervous, but only because my only experience prior to this job was a private Catholic high school. The demographics may have been different, I thought, but kids are still kids. Things started to go sour almost immediately, but it wasn’t the kids at all that was the problem. I loved the kids. They may have been a little more rough around the edges than I was used to, but they were great. Discipline-wise, they were certainly more of a challenge than the parochial school kids, but one learns to adjust. The problem actually came from an unexpected source: the faculty. The teachers I worked with were a great, and diverse, mix of personalities and teaching styles. I was excited to learn from them, and they seemed earnestly excited to offer a helping hand. If what I describe in the following paragraphs gives the impression that that wasn’t actually the case, then I apologize, because my view of them still stands: they were good people. And good teachers. The problem (and I have had several years to ponder my experience at this school, so this is merely my assessment based on those years of reflection) is that many of these teachers were veteran teachers, some had been there for many years, some for a few, but all had more experience than me. Their worldview was shaped by the fact that they simply had a better understanding of how the educational system really worked, not how it SHOULD work. I think what happened is that the system was so corrupt and problematic, these teachers simply adapted---for their own sanity---to accommodate to the system. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to remember what their original ideal of what being a teacher was anymore. I remember, during the first week, I was teaching a lesson on the Transcendentalists. In class, we read aloud an essay by Emerson and a short excerpt from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and discussed tthem. The reading was short enough to keep the kids engaged and interested, but the discussion that followed was amazing. The kids were excited. We talked about Naturalism and Fate and, somehow, our discussion brought in everything from Freudianism to Stephen King. These were ninth graders, mind you. I doubt most of them had even heard of Freud or even King, for that matter. Anyway, during our weekly staff meeting, I was pumped and excited to share my first success story. I told the group of teachers in my department about my lesson and about the way the kids were engaged. I told them what we had discussed, the wide range of topics that came up in the discussion, and how the kids were really interested. Based on the expressions of the faces as I told the story, however, one would think that I had pissed in their breakfast cereal. One lady actually shook her head and said, “Oh no, no, no...” As it turns out, what I had done was wrong. I had strayed from the important things, such as the state standards, and I had taught nothing that would help the students for the upcoming standardized tests that was mandatory for all of them and would determine whether they would actually graduate. I hadn’t “taught to the test”. I felt sick after that meeting. I put on a happy face and pretended to heed their gentle and (in their minds) extremely helpful warnings, but I was devastated. It literally set the tone for the rest of my year there. When, in May, I was called into the principal’s office and told that my contract was not going to be renewed for the next year, a large part of me was actually relieved. Outwardly, I was upset and saddened (and terrified---I would, after all, have to find another job), but deep down i actually felt as if it might actually be the best thing for me. I was a bad teacher. Or rather, I was made to feel like a bad teacher, and that’s pretty much the same thing. Owens’s book resonated strongly with me because he had a similar experience. It has, apparently, resonated with countless other teachers across the country. This country is in crisis. Anybody with eyes and ears already knows this, but it goes beyond being a problem that can be fixed by throwing money at something or changing a few policies here and there. It is deep-rooted and systemic. It has been rotting from the inside out for decades, and what we are seeing is now the cascade of devastation and death of the educational system in this country. I want to have hope. I have to have hope that things will get better, but I---and millions of other bad teachers out there---see it getting much worse before it gets better, if it ever does. ...more |
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Oct 08, 2017
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Oct 10, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0525429077
| 9780525429074
| 0525429077
| 3.72
| 2,065
| Feb 09, 2016
| Feb 09, 2016
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really liked it
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(The following review is based on an advance copy from the publisher. There was no tacit or explicit agreement to write either an overwhelmingly glowi
(The following review is based on an advance copy from the publisher. There was no tacit or explicit agreement to write either an overwhelmingly glowing or disparaging review. I accepted it with the full intention of writing an honest review of the book, based upon my own honest reaction to it, which is what I did.) During my substitute teaching days, I once had the opportunity to sub for a kindergarten teacher. It is important to note that I am certified English/Language Arts for grades 7-12. I have NO formal training with early education. And yet, due to the fact that I am either extremely brave or extremely stupid (it’s a fine line), I agreed to do it. Remember that scene in the movie “Kindergarten Cop” when Arnold Schwarzenegger---a tough-as-nails police detective who has taken down mobsters and drug lords---has just spent one day undercover as a kindergarten teacher and arrives home looking disheveled and beaten-down and mutters, “I need a vacation...”? Yeah. That pretty much sums it up. If I didn’t have a great appreciation for what early education teachers did everyday before going in, I certainly did afterward. High-schoolers are one thing, but a roomful of 20-plus adorable (and, yes, they really are adorable: you don’t agree to sub a kindergarten class if you don’t absolutely have a soft spot for little kids) six-year-olds wandering aimlessly around a room, occasionally gently pulling one’s pant legs or shirtsleeves, saying things like, “I gotta go potty, Mister.” or “Suzy won’t let me use the crayons.” all the while watching every corner of the room, making sure kids aren’t climbing out a window, trying to eat glue, or cutting up pages of expensive-looking picture books with safety scissors, is a completely other thing altogether. I’m embarrassed to say that I was only in charge of the class for fifteen minutes when the actual teacher, a petite young bouncy thing with a disarming smile, came back and took over. I’m not sure what sorcery she utilized, but within seconds the children were sitting in the center of the room, quiet and focused on her. Meanwhile, I’m sweating my ass off like I had just spent two hours on a bucking bronco at a rodeo. The purpose of this anecdote (other than, perhaps, self-deprecation) is to illustrate how much I respect and admire those teachers in the early-education field. It takes a special kind of person to do what they do. Everyday. All day, usually. I stuck around and observed the rest of the class, and I noticed how much the kids absolutely loved this teacher. They hung on her every word, and they actually listened and did what she told them to do, without question. The key to her success, of course, was that the love was clearly reciprocated. She obviously adored these kids, each and every one of them, and she obviously had taken the time to get to know every one of them. It was evident in the way she talked to them. It went beyond just knowing each of their names and one or two important facts about them. You can know a kid hates broccoli and loves anything to do with “Star Wars”, but that doesn’t mean you actually know him or her. I’ve come to find that the key to any successful teacher is this true love they have, not only for their profession but for the kids they mentor, regardless of the age group. I’ve also come to find that every single teacher I know has this true love for kids, even if they aren’t necessarily what one would call a “successful” teacher. I believe even “bad” teachers (and, yes, they do exist, although nowhere near the amount that the media or the politicians would like you to believe) have love for their kids, but they have become bad teachers because (like in a bad marriage) they have forgotten what it was that initially made them fall in love in the first place. (Newsflash: it wasn’t the money.) Erika Christakis is one of the successful teachers. In her new book, “The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need From Grownups”, Christakis joyfully advocates for the children that she knows and loves, both in and out of the classroom. Thankfully, she is NOT one of the many political pundits or policymakers making lofty claims or diagnoses about the field of education. Unlike most (if not all) of those people, Christakis knows what she’s talking about. She’s spent years in the classroom (she’s a licensed preK-second grade teacher in the state of Massachusetts), and she teaches college-level courses on child development and education policy at the Yale Child Study Center. “The Importance of Being Little” is a richly-detailed, well-researched examination of what is being done right in the field of early education (which is, sadly, not a lot) and what is definitely being done wrong. If it were only that, though, I doubt the book would be as enjoyable or significant. Christakis doesn’t want to be just another voice of gloom and doom for education in this country, though, which is why the book is a treasure-trove of valuable information and ideas---based on national and international research studies, observations from her own experiences, and anecdotes from fellow parents, teachers, and administrators---on what can and does work. If there is one complaint about the book, it is that it is all over the place in terms of ideas. In some ways, her book reminded me of that day in the kindergarten class, where kids were roaming around every which way, without structure. It was chaos. Sure, they were having fun, but chaos is still chaos. Christakis’s book has that same sense of chaotic fun. What her book lacks in terms of focus, though, it more than makes up for in enthusiasm and hope for the future for education. There are several points to which Christakis keeps coming back within the book: process, not product; schooling and learning are two separate things; and the importance of play. “It’s the process, not the product” Everyone recalls making those ridiculous Thanksgiving turkey projects in which one traced one’s hand and used it to create a hand-shaped turkey. Other than fine motor skills (Yay! I traced my hand!), what purpose did that exercise serve other than to create another annoying art-piece to hang on the refrigerator door? Well, even Christakis acknowledges that the project does serve some useful purposes. (e.g.) gauging a student’s attention span, ability to follow directions, ability to share materials, etc.) The “process, not product” movement was, according to Christakis, a useful and sound pedagogical paradigm shift that acknowledged children’s creativity while downplaying stifling ideas of what academic-minded adults thought children needed: “It’s encouraging that we no longer force every child to produce in lockstep the exact same construction-paper Thanksgiving turkey. Even the dreariest early childhood programs have generally moved beyond pure mimicry as a pedagogic strategy, and one of the basic evaluation criteria for preschool pedagogy is the absence of a model of what each art project is supposed to look like.(p. 64)” The problem, according to Christakis, is that the “process, not product” movement can, occasionally, be taken too far. She uses the turkey project as an example. Without any kind of supervision, Christakis writes, “the pretense of process not product in such a narrowly defined scenario---what survey researchers call a forced choice---just makes a lot of young children feel ashamed or irritated. The problem with our catchy phrase is that process not product doesn’t go nearly far enough. (p.64)” Oftentimes, a project like the Thanksgiving turkey serves to point out what Christakis calls the “matter-over-mind” problem: “Those exercises still presume that the child’s goal is to make something, rather than to make meaning. (p. 67)” She likens children in this example to assembly line workers in a factory without quality control, endlessly making defective products and not learning anything about efficacy or presentation. Children don’t often get the credit they deserve for their analytic and reflective skills. At least, it isn’t often reflected in many education policies. Art for art’s sake is nice, but it isn’t very helpful. With the proper scaffolding, children can utilize artistic expression as a valuable means of learning. Indeed, artistic expression “isn’t a subject area whose worthiness for study could be debated. Rather it is a learning domain, like critical thinking or number sense. (p. 79)” “Schooling and learning are often two different things. (p.xiii)” In this current climate of data-driven curriculum policies in which children are standardized tested to death, where teachers barely have time to teach anything of value because they are too focused on “teaching to the test” due to the fact that their jobs are on the line if the school’s overall performance drops below a certain level, the concept of “school” isn’t what it once was, compared to just 10 years ago. When I was in school, especially in the higher grades, the choices were varied and vast. I had the option of taking any variety of Home Economics classes---Cooking, Sewing, Basic Life Skills---or Shop classes---Auto Repair, Machinery, Woodworking---which were good alternatives to the various Art courses---Architectural Design, Graphic Design, Sketching, Pottery, or Painting. Physical Education even had electives: Golf, Weightlifting, and Health & Nutrition were some of the options available. In academics, there were electives in History---Current Events and Economics---and electives in English---Creative Writing, Poetry, Science Fiction/Fantasy, and even a Film course. This wasn’t a private school, either. This was a normal public school in an average (albeit slightly well-to-do) suburban setting. The only standardized tests I ever took were the SAT and the ACT, which I had to take my senior year in high school in order to qualify for college. Today, most if not all of those elective options are gone. The rooms where many students learned to fix carburetors, build cabinets, or weld are used mostly for storage. The Home Ec rooms are now teacher lounges. No one questions the fact that students need the basics of Science, English, History, and Mathematics, the so-called “common core”. Unfortunately, students also need the Arts and Humanities, Music, Phys. Ed., and a variety of special electives to choose from: all of which are inevitably the first to go whenever a school levy fails or a district is feeling the effects of an economic recession. Today, school isn’t school. It’s just a daytime prison for most kids. The reason schools are the way they are is partly due to all the new studies that have proven that very young children possess more innate intelligence than we once thought. According to Christakis, these studies, which should by all rights be accepted as good news have resulted in an irrational fear among educators. “So here we have a bizarre development in the world of preschool learning: the more good news we discover about children’s innate intelligence, the more anxious we become that children aren’t achieving enough. In an effort to capitalize on this apparently limitless potential, we set up various processes to harness it---new curricula, program philosophies, outcome measures, and actual pen-and-paper tests for four-and five-year-olds---the result being that we undermine the very thing we are so concerned with. How so? By spending time measuring learning when we should be spending those hours fostering the learning itself. ( p. 90)” One only has to observe young children with other children to see that real learning often takes place within the playful give-and-take of playtime and childish conversation, not with worksheets or lectures or 20-page multiple choice tests to be answered on bubble sheets. “That young children learn primarily from their relationships is both an unfamiliar and self-evident reality, but it is a reality that is too often lost in our current debates about what is best for preschoolers. (p.xiv)” The importance of play Christakis spends much of her time in her book talking up playtime. Not that she believes that a child should spend all of their waking hours getting into mischief. That kind of thinking is, according to her, a societal knee-jerk reaction and a result of the negative connotation of the word “play”. According to Christakis, “Play is the fundamental building block of human cognition, emotional health, and social behavior. Play improves memory and helps children learn to do mathematical problems in their heads, take turns, regulate their impulses, and speak with greater complexity. (p. 146)” Unfortunately, academics are being pushed down children’s gullets at younger and younger ages, and “play” has become a four-letter word. This is especially true amongst many lower-income families, who expect to get more out of their child’s preschool experience than more cheesy construction-paper fridge art. It’s a competitive world out there, and they simply want to provide their children with the best tools to survive. But preparing a child for a “competitive” world and surviving in the new marketplace of globalism should not mean depriving children of the opportunity to be children. Doing so has resulted in some unforeseen negative results such as the fact that American children are getting, on average, much less sleep than their counterparts just 20 years ago as well as their contemporaries in other countries. The long-term negative medical, emotional, and social effects of this sleep deprivation are just now being realized and studied. The upside to all this is that we have within our grasp the knowledge and ability to make the necessary changes. Christakis, a parent herself, believes that the key to this change lies within the parents, who are still the most significant and vital factors in a child’s life, moreso than teachers, administrators, or social media. With the proper attention, care, and feedback, Christakis advises that simply “getting out of the way is often the best thing we can do for a young child. (p.xvi)” ...more |
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Feb 12, 2016
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Feb 14, 2016
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Hardcover
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| 0375414827
| 9780375414824
| 0375414827
| 3.66
| 686
| 2003
| Apr 01, 2003
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it was amazing
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“For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water convers
“For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics.” ---Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451” Long before her excoriating examination and dissection of the current state of affairs in U.S. education policy, including a caustic critique of the No Child Left Behind Act (the George W. Bush-era education bill which she herself originally endorsed), in her 2010 book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education”, Diane Ravitch had been ringing warning bells and finding red flags in our incredibly flawed (and some may say broken) educational system for years as an education historian and Research Professor of Education at New York University. Her resume tells a tale of a hard-working, dedicated leader in educational policy analysis: Under George H. W. Bush, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education; appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by Bill Clinton; co-wrote a weekly blog on the Education Week website from 2007 through 2012; and she now has her own blog (dianeravitch.net), in which she discusses anything and everything having to do with education. In her 2003 book “The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn”, Ravitch uncovered a frightening policy of institutionalized censorship going on right under the noses of everyone working in the field of education. Even more frightening was the fact that it had been going on for decades by seemingly well-intentioned but overzealously cautious members of so-called “bias and sensitivity” committees, who were originally given the daunting task of poring through questions and readings for standardized tests and determining whether they were racially or gender-biased but who, gradually over time, caved to the pressures of right-wing and left-wing groups in order to avoid controversy. Conducting research into standardized testing and the “cartel-like” industry of cut-throat textbook publishing, Ravitch uncovered a routine policy in which seemingly innocuous and inoffensive text readings were being cut from tests because of language that could, potentially, “offend” or “confuse” a young reader. Examples include: ****A passage about the history and significance of quilting by pioneer women during the mid-nineteenth century was removed because it contained stereotypes of women as “soft” and “submissive” and would give young girls a negative image, despite the fact that the article was historically accurate. ****A passage about a blind mountain climber who hiked to the peak of Mount McKinley was taken out because of “regional bias” (some children may not understand what mountainous terrain was like, owing to the fact that they may not live near mountains) and because it suggested that blind people may be slightly disadvantaged compared to those with sight. ****A historical passage describing life in ancient Egypt was stricken because it included images of the extremely wealthy living in palaces and farmers and city workers living in hovels. To the bias and sensitivity reviewers, this was clearly classist (despite its historical accuracy) and may have offended or upset children living in lower-class dwellings. According to Ravitch, this ridiculous and dangerous institutionalized censorship is pandemic to the entire testing and textbook industry, creating dull literature textbooks that succeed in making children who already dislike reading hate it even more and white-washed history textbooks that give students a distorted and often completely wrong examination of historical events. Who’s to blame for all of this? Ravitch points her fingers at two culprits: the religious right and the far left. Both extreme ends of the political spectrum seem to have converged into a perfect storm of censorship. Censors from the right “aim to restore an idealized vision of the past, an arcadia of happy family life, in which the family was intact, comprising a father, a mother, and two or more children, and went to church every Sunday. Father was in charge, and Mother took care of the children. (p.63)” Social problems---divorce, dishonesty, criminal behavior, homosexuality, etc.---are anathema to a good education, so no mention of any of these subjects must appear in textbooks. Censors from the left “believe in an idealized vision of the future, a utopia in which egalitarianism prevails in all social relations. In this vision, there is no dominant group, no dominant father, no dominant race, and no dominant gender. (p. 63)” Anything that may hurt a student’s self-esteem or give him or her the impression that there exists inequalities in the world is something that must be avoided in textbooks. Ravitch provides a three-fold solution to this problem: 1) Eliminate the state textbook adoption process thereby allowing for more competition among publishers. 2) Educate the public by shining a larger spotlight on the issue. 3) Create a system that better educates teachers, making them masters in what they teach. Anyone who thinks that the censorship that Bradbury was writing about in his dystopic future world in which the government destroys books because of their fear of people getting ideas was simply science fiction is sadly ignorant. Censorship and thought control is a reality. Thankfully, we have whistle-blowers like Ravitch fighting the system from within. ...more |
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not set
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May 05, 2014
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May 06, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0325005958
| 9780325005959
| 0325005958
| 3.88
| 306
| Feb 12, 2004
| Feb 12, 2004
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really liked it
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While I had to read this for a class, I was impressed enough by it to give it four stars, as it goes above and beyond a dry education textbook. Harvey
While I had to read this for a class, I was impressed enough by it to give it four stars, as it goes above and beyond a dry education textbook. Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman's "Subjects Matter: Every Teacher's Guide to Content-Area Reading" is an excellent overview of a non-mandated but highly-suggested program that many school districts have, with varying degrees of success, tried to implement. While some schools do it better than others (and some don't even try), it probably hasn't been embraced sufficiently enough to make a difference in public schools, which is why private school settings seem to have a better time with it. I remember hearing about this during an in-service during my student teaching days (which was, sadly, ten years ago). As any teacher knows, in-services are a waste of time, literally. No teacher I know likes them, as they waste valuable time that teachers could be using to grade papers, write lesson plans, read a book, watch a movie, stare at nothing, or sleep. Unfortunately, administrators usually require teachers to attend them as a way to justify their own ridiculous jobs and pay. Occasionally, in-services do offer useful advice and ideas. As was the case that day, I thought, but no one else seemed very interested. During that in-service, the program was called "Writing Across the Curriculum", but I have heard it called many different things: interdisciplinary writing, reading across content, content-area reading, etc. Essentially, it's the idea that reading/writing should be utilized in EVERY content area, not just Language Arts, as a way not only to improve reading/writing skills (which, according to studies, it has) but to also improve a student's understanding of the particular content area (which, also according to studies, it has). In other words, having students read and write more in science, math, art, and pays.ed. will not only make them better readers and writers in general, it will also improve their grades in those given classes. It seems intuitive, but for many teachers---most of whom are already inundated with paperwork---the thought of them adding MORE to their already-busy daily schedule is frustrating, to say the least. As a teacher who has seen the ridiculous number of useless hoops teachers must jump through (some of which are federally-mandated), I can't blame them, despite the fact that content-area reading is a good idea. Which is why I think Daniels/Zemelman's book should be required reading for teachers. It doesn't ask teachers to undergo a major paradigm shift. It offers very specific, detailed reading and writing strategies that any teacher in any content area can utilize easily. In some cases, the strategies may even reduce the amount of work a teacher has to do, as it enables students to self-learn, which is what any good teacher tries to inculcate in students. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 25, 2014
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Apr 22, 2014
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Mar 25, 2014
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Paperback
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| 1565849558
| 9781565849556
| 1565849558
| 3.65
| 383
| 2005
| Jun 29, 2005
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liked it
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Most, if not all, teachers have heard it all before: "You only got into teaching because you get to have three months in the summer off." or "You're g
Most, if not all, teachers have heard it all before: "You only got into teaching because you get to have three months in the summer off." or "You're getting a full-time salary for a part-time job." or "You're overpaid." That such ridiculous statements are still being made by ignorant people (most notably politicians and journalists) is a testament to the vitriolic and politically-motivated anti-teacher and anti-public education hysteria that seems to be rampant today. That these vicious and untrue accusations are continuing to be perpetuated by people who have, most likely, never stepped foot into a public school classroom in the role of a teacher for even a day is all the more ridiculous and depressing, because the average American's view of teachers is probably already a negative one ("Why do THEY get to have health coverage?", "How come THEY can't get fired for being lazy and ineffectual?", "What is it with those three months off every year---must be nice.") and the shit-talking from their elected officials and media simply adds fuel to the fire. Teachers rarely speak up, either, because they know that they are going to get shot down as whiners, money-grubbers, or people who want to "justify" their "pathetic" jobs. The only time they can make a statement is usually when they are on a picket line during the rare and unfortunate event of a teacher strike. Then watch the average person's opinion of teachers drop even further. "The only people they are hurting is the students," "The teachers are nothing more than thugs or bullies," "They're being greedy and selfish---the district should fire every last one of them." Never mind that these teachers are the last people on Earth who WANT to strike, that they have usually been trying for months to negotiate with a School Board or Administration who refuses to budge or even listen to what the teachers have to say, that they are quite mindful and saddened by the fact that their students are missing out on the education they deserve. Daniel Moulthrop, Ninive Clements Calegari, and Dave Eggers collaborated, in 2005, on the book "Teachers Have it Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers", which was an attempt to counteract the lies, distortions, and myths that the general public seems to have about teachers and that politicians seem to love to spew. In it, the authors attempt to show a bleak portrait of the field of education, told through interviews of roughly 200 teachers---young, old, first year, retired, from teachers working in poor school districts to teachers working in more affluent ones, from teachers who love what they are doing to teachers who quit after only a few years for a variety of reasons. Interspersed throughout are interesting (and not-so-shocking) statistics about teaching. Here are a few that I found very telling: *"Most teachers work far beyond the hours stipulated in their contracts. (p. 6)" Based on polls of teachers, the average teacher generally works 50 hours a week or more. It often depends on the number of students for which they are responsible. Teachers who teach six classes a day, with each class of 20-25 kids (a very conservative estimate), are responsible for grading, evaluating and planning for roughly 150-200 kids a year. A teacher's job does not end after the last bell. It doesn't even end on Friday. *"In order to maintain their certification, teachers are often required to attend university classes and professional development seminars in the evenings or on weekends. (And teachers are often required to pay for these classes---themselves---out of their already strained salaries.) (p. 6)" Consider, too, that these seminars, workshops, or classes, can run anywhere from $200 to $2,000 of non-refundable money, which is not reimbursed by the district. *An average public school teacher "can go six hours at a stretch without a moment even to go to the bathroom. (p.6)" Keep in mind that, by law, a teacher is required to be present in the classroom AT ALL TIMES. If something happens to a student in that classroom, the responsibility is SOLELY the teacher's. Time between class bells is usually only 4-5 minutes, and the bathrooms are invariably at the other end of the building. * "As much as 42 percent of teachers teach summer school or work a different, non-teaching job. (p.7)" The myth that teachers have their summers off is pervasive. For some teachers---those that are lucky enough to afford it---it's true. There is also the myth that teachers actually get paid for those three months (as opposed to getting paychecks during those months, which is often true). This is untrue. Check with your local school boards to confirm it. Teacher salaries are calculated for only the nine-and-a-half months they are actually required to be in school. * "At least 20 percent of public school teachers report having second jobs outside of the field of education. (p. 49)" In today's economy, this is just inevitable. * "Research by the Texas Center for Educational Research suggests that as many as 43 percent of new teachers in Texas leave within the first three years of teaching... The National Center for Education Statistics puts the figure at or around 20 percent. (p. 167)" * "In 2000, the nonprofit research organization Public Agenda surveyed 802 college graduates under age thirty who chose professions other than teaching... Their reasons [for not choosing teaching] varied. Among the statements respondents agreed with most often were these three: 1) teachers are seriously underpaid (78 percent), 2) Teachers do not have good opportunities for advancement (69 percent), 3) Teachers do not get a sense that they are respected or appreciated (66 percent). (p. 179)" Most teachers will tell you that they did not choose to go into teaching for the money, or even to be appreciated. They went into it because they believe that a good education is important for a healthy society. They also went into it because they believe children are our future. Sadly, with the growing anti-public education sentiment out there today, the health of our society and our future looks somewhat bleak. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 08, 2012
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Mar 15, 2013
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Mar 08, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 1586489275
| 9781586489274
| 1586489275
| 3.50
| 1,082
| 2010
| Sep 14, 2010
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it was ok
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I'm having a hard time with this one. Maybe it's because I didn't see the movie yet. I plan to, although everything I have heard about the film is mak
I'm having a hard time with this one. Maybe it's because I didn't see the movie yet. I plan to, although everything I have heard about the film is making me already not like it. Reading this book isn't helping either. Rumor has it that the film is very pro-charter schools and very anti-union. I happen to be kind of pro-teacher's union and my experience with charter schools isn't wonderful. Statistically, too, charter schools have demonstrated little to no difference in terms of improving education. Yes, a small percent do actually perform extremely well. But just as many are actually major failures, and the rest are no better or worse than regular public schools. The "Waiting for Superman" book is just a lot of feel-good essays that don't offer a whole hell of a lot in terms of substance. Yes, we know that public schools are a mess. So, anyone have any bright ideas? Because this book sure doesn't have any. Skip this book and read Diane Ravitch's brilliant "The Death and Life of the American School System". Ravitch isn't very specific, but she at least does attempt to provide some potential solutions.
...more
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Notes are private!
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Nov 13, 2011
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Feb 02, 2012
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Sep 11, 2011
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Paperback
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| 0465014917
| 9780465014910
| 0465014917
| 4.05
| 5,632
| 2010
| Mar 02, 2010
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it was amazing
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If you care at all about the future of the educational system in this country, and if you have young children whose lives will feel the effects of the
If you care at all about the future of the educational system in this country, and if you have young children whose lives will feel the effects of the decline in efficacy of our nation's schools, you need to read Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System". Ravitch, a Research Professor of Education at New York University, was one of the co-creators of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act started under the Bush administration in 2001. With the most current statistics and data through years of thorough research, Ravitch has examined NCLB's effects of our country's schools and found it to be more than lacking: in her opinion, NCLB is a complete failure. Of course, most if not all teachers, if asked, would say the same, but to hear it from one of the very people who helped create it is all the more impressive and disturbing. Ravitch's focus is on what she considers two things that have been the most troublesome aspects of NCLB: testing and choice. Anyone who has gone through the public school system in the past 20+ years is familiar with standardized testing. They induce cringing and loathing in students and teachers alike. Ravitch, who is not against standardized testing for what it was originally intended---a useful barometer of a student's academic progress, is, like most if not all teachers, upset and disturbed that standardized testing has become the sole determiner of a student's progress. It is now not just a tool but THE tool to determine whether a child graduates or not. It has become a tool to make or break teachers, too. If test scores are low, teachers are now at risk of losing their jobs for being "incompetent" teachers. "If testing inspires a degree of loathing," Ravitch writes, "it is because it has become the crucial hinge on which turns the fate of students and the reputations and futures of their teachers, principals, and schools. (p. 152)" This has unfortunately forced many principals and schools to do regrettable things, from the least egregious (denying admission of low-performing students to attend the school in order to keep test scores high) to the downright illegal (from "losing" low-scoring tests to actually changing a student's wrong answer to the right ones). Aside from these extremes, testing has forced teachers to focus a majority of their teaching time to only that information that will be required on the tests, a situation that has notoriously been dubbed "teaching to the test". All of this emphasis on standardized testing has come about even after a 1999 report by The Committee on Appropriate Test Use of the National Research Council said that "tests are not perfect" and "a test score is not an exact measure of a student's knowledge or skills. (p. 153)" Still, testing remains the sole determiner of academic progress and test scores have become the sole determiners of a district's, and state's, academic standing. It has become so ridiculously bad that even state governments have taken to "fudging" numbers in order to boost scores. Many states who claim to have high proficiency have simply lowered the standards. For example, the state of Mississippi claimed that 89% of its fourth-graders were at or above reading proficiency. Unfortunately, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the true number was closer to 18%. Mississippi wasn't the only state, by far, to do this, either. Many states, including Ohio, lowered their standards to make their numbers look good. Since when is 40% on a test a passing grade? And yet many states have essentially made that a "passing" grade for the students within its borders. Then there is the issue of charter schools. Having subbed and tutored at a few charter schools in Cleveland, I have seen the spectrum of efficacy that charter schools have to offer. Even Ravitch agrees that some charter schools are excellent, but just as many if not most are no better or worse than public schools, and some are just plain dangerously awful. Ravitch quotes a 2009 national study done by researchers at Stanford University of 2,403 charter schools in 15 states. At the time, that was roughly half the number of charter schools in the country and roughly 70% of charter students. What the study concluded was that 37% of the charter schools "had learning gains that were significantly below those of local public schools", 46% showed "gains that were no different", and 17% of the charter schools demonstrated "significantly better" growth in learning. (p.142) Not exactly a ringing endorsement for charter schools. What started out as a decent idea has become (in the worst cases) a way for some con-artists to make money at the expense of children's learning, or lack there-of. Ravitch also discusses other issues that have currently been plaguing education. Most notably is the new wave of anti-unionism sweeping the political field from both the left and right. Teachers have become the new bogeyman according to the media, and teacher's unions are akin to the Gates of Hell. Ravitch criticizes the media and recent films such as "Waiting for Superman" for putting unions in a negative light. Unions, according to Ravitch, are not the issue. "[U]nions do not cause high performance or low performance; they give teachers a collective voice in negotiations about working conditions and compensation and protect teachers against arbitrary or abusive decisions (p.256)," writes Ravitch. Without unions, teachers would still be able to teach and good teachers would still teach well, but unions often provide a peace of mind for many teachers that boost morale in school situations that would likely destroy morale if a union were not present. I can speak from experience, having taught in a district going through a very tough contract negotiations. A union strike was constantly on the thoughts of many teachers. Thankfully, a strike scenario never occurred, but knowing that the union was doing everything in its power to carry on negotiations was relieving. Anti-union politicians claim that unions are a primary cause of low teacher performance. Ravitch says that one need only look at statistics and performance data to see that that claim is wrong. According to Ravitch, "the highest-ranking states are Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, which have long had strong teachers' unions. (p.256)" Most charter schools do not allow teachers to belong to unions. If unions caused low performance, it would make sense that charter schools would be performing better. As was mentioned before, however, the evidence clearly shows that charter schools are neither better nor worse than traditional public schools in terms of performance. In a nutshell, NCLB sucks. Ravitch calls it "the worst education legislation ever passed by Congress. (p.244)" So, after all is said and done, what to do? Well, Ravitch is relatively non-specific on that point. Clearly something needs to be done. There needs to be much less reliance on standardized testing, and Ravitch seems to think that well-delineated and SPECIFIC national curriculum standards need to be implemented, which may be impossible given the hostility such a proposition garnered back in the 80s when it was first suggested. I myself like her idea of national standards, especially when she talks about integrating the classics and more of the humanities (art and music, especially) back into a curriculum that has been gutted down to English, Social Studies, Math, and Science; a.k.a. the "common core", but I am leery of how it will be implemented, mainly because I am leery of just about any major nation-wide educational policies that our federal government has its hands in. Basically, I'd just like to see an end to the over-reliance on standardized testing and the data-driven school policies and programs that more often than not bind the hands of teachers, as well as attempt to quantify that which can not be quantified: a student's creativity and imagination. For example, as an English teacher, it often frustrates and disgusts me that great books like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" or "Slaughterhouse Five" are dropped for being "too controversial" and replaced by books written by mediocre contemporary young adult authors for blatant politically-correct reasons. Mediocrity seems to be the end-goal, though, for most politicians, and our children will suffer for it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 13, 2011
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Jan 26, 2012
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Aug 17, 2011
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Hardcover
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