The (Not So) Latest
7/9/06: Bill is Back!
Since this is a blog, I figured I should update the thing at least once every 11 months.
I've enjoyed reading all the email you guys have sent me. It's been a while since I've added any new content here, and I have only one excuse: I've been busy! I spent the last year teaching in a public school but teaching outside my subject area. All the stuff Bush said about his No Child Left Behind Act putting a teacher in every classroom who knows the subject matter is complete crap. I spent several years studying social science and preparing to teach same. Unfortunately, there are a lot of social science teachers flooding our K-12 system. There is a shortage of English, math, and hard science teachers. So I spent the last year teaching English at a high school that was desperate for an English teacher. I spent 5 hours a day teaching my students and then spent every other waking moment (when I wasn't correcting students' work) teaching myself the material I had to teach my students.
Since I last updated, this site has had a big increase in visitors. Geocities actually sent me a nasty letter about exceeding bandwidth yada yada yada. The biggest reason for the increase in traffic, unfortunately, seems to be that our review of Agent Cody Banks gets a high listing when people Google "Angie Harmon cleavage." All I can say is: Welcome, lonely old men!
Anyway, despite the growing popularity of this site, updates will continue to be touch and go. But I am adding a review of Dennis Lehane's disappointing novel Sacred. Once Google spiders this page, we are sure to win a high ranking whenever someone searches for lots of sex for $7.99.
8/7/05: For Teachers, Knowledge not Required
In my search for a teaching job, I've been filling out applications for districts all over California. The applications ask a lot of questions about my academic and employment background. One interesting thing I've noticed: none of them — not one — has asked for my Grade Point Average. They ask which colleges I attended. Some even ask for the addresses of those colleges. They ask what degrees I earned. But none of them ask about my grades. Schools looking for teachers don't seem to care which applicants aced all their classes and which ones were barely able to pass.
To be fair, about half of them ask for college transcripts, which contain grades. But those transcripts also contain other information the applications do ask for, such as dates you attended the colleges. The only conclusion I can draw is that they consider grades less important and don't feel the need to have that information very handy when they're deciding which teachers to hire.
Why do they care so little about grades? It might be that K-12 schools assume grades are meaningless since the grades they give their own students bear little reflection on those students' abilities. I think it is more likely, however, that school districts simply don't care how knowledgeable or ignorant their teachers are. That certainly fits my experience. Many teachers I've met seem to think knowledge is unimportant. Why would administrators value knowledge any more?
Many applications have asked me what extra-curricular activities I could supervise. It seems the schools are more interested in my ability to coach football than my ability to accurately answer students' questions about history.
A physics professor I had once told our class about his first job interview, trying to get a job at a different community college. One of the interviewers, he told us, dropped an eraser on the floor and asked him, "Is the energy conserved?" My professor nervously answered the physics question wrong, and didn't get that job.
I've now been interviewed by two school districts hiring social science teachers. Neither interview involved any questions about history, government, economics, or any other aspect of social science. Both interviews included questions about my disciplining of students, my sensitivity to the cultural diversity of students, and my communication with students' parents. One interviewer asked which sports I would be qualified to coach. But no one asked if I know anything about social science.
[update 9/06: Now I've had over a dozen job-interviews, been offered two social science teaching positions, and still have not been asked one question about history, government, economics, or geography.]
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To see the job application for teachers at your local K-12 school, go to your school district website and find the page for "human resources" or "personnel." There you are almost certain to find a job application marked "certificated." That's the application for people who need a teaching credential or other certification. There, you'll find what your school district looks for in a teacher. And what they look for probably won't be knowledge.
7/25/05: New Content
We've added an examination of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, a campaign by oppressed students to change their school's policies suppressing free speech. The formatting will look a little different. This was originally a term paper for a college class I took. I was too lazy to write new HTML coding for the whole paper with all those footnotes, so I just used MS Word to save the document as HTML. It will take you longer to load and it won't look as good, but that's your problem.
7/1/05: O'Connor Gone
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has finally resigned. She has not yet said whether the reason is because the Pro-Youth Pages shamed her into resigning, but hey, we never expected her to admit that.
Let's just hope W. can find his way to nominating someone less bigoted to replace her.
6/27/05: Campus Suppression
Ashley and Brittany Graham were angry their Texas school board is considering searching students' urine for evidence of drug use. They asked classmates to sign a petition urging the school board to reject this unconstitutional idea. School administrators were furious students would dare to voice objection to having their rights violated. The principal threatened the girls and bullied them into stopping.
I'm not sure why the administrators felt so threatened by circulating a petition. If the school board members had cared enough about students to listen to them, they would care enough to immediately reject any plan to humiliate students with urine tests.
The only way students could protect themselves from such humiliation would be with more drastic action. I don't know what. Maybe bring cups of urine to the school board meeting and throw them at the board members who vote for this idea. "You want our urine? Here you go!"
Still, a petition is not totally futile if, in addition to collecting signatures, the activists also collect phone numbers and email addresses. This can be an important first step. The activists then have a way to contact supporters and organize them for action.
6/26/05: Peeping on your Sex Life
Congress is now debating a law that would require any health clinic taking federal money to notify your parents before giving you birth control pills. Of course, this only applies if you are younger than 18. They would never do this to women who could vote against them.
In the Senate, this bill is S 1279. In the House of Representatives, it's HR 3011. Contact your Senators and Representative today and urge them to oppose this invasive legislation. Be polite, but be clear.
This proposed law would violate privacy and violate dignity to punish those teenagers who wish to act responsibly by using birth control. Such legislation would only increase the number of unintended pregnancies, the number of abortions, and the number of children born in poverty to unprepared parents. Yet some politicians would gladly do this to humiliate teenagers.
6/21/05: My Bad
I mistakenly wrote that Real Genius was Val Kilmer's first film. Whoops. Turns out Top Secret! was released before Real Genius. My apologies for the error.
6/19/05: I'm Telling
Gotta love this.
During my student teaching this semester, I borrowed some books from the middle school's library to use in my classes. I was never given a due date, but assumed they should be returned by the last day of school.
My student teaching ended a little earlier than I'd expected, so I kept the books until the next time I would be driving near the school.
On the day I was planning to return them (a full week before the end of the school year), I was awoken by a phone call from the school library. I let my machine take it. They left a message demanding I return the books. This was the first time they had contacted me about this, but already they were making threats. The librarian said if she didn't hear from me in another day or so, she would email my professor at the university. She didn't leave a phone number for me to contact her. Incompetent and abrasive, too.
It reminded me of when I was a student in middle school and someone would threaten to call my parents. It's like these morons only know one way of dealing with people.
Anywhere else in the world, people give you a friendly reminder, then only if you ignore their friendliness do they escalate to threats — usually delivered in a friendly way. Frankly, I didn't like this woman threatening me. I felt tempted to keep the books a few more days just so it wouldn't look like I was knuckling under. I finally decided, however, I would not let her silliness alter my plans.
In her message, she listed the books I had out. I had 2 books she didn't know about, thanks to the school's sloppy record-keeping. Should I keep those 2 for petty revenge? No. I chose to do the honorable thing and return all the books.
I got there about three hours after she called me. When I did, the librarian gave me attitude, proud of herself, thinking she had bullied me into submission. (What did she think I was planning to do with these books? Sell them on a street corner? "Psst, buddy. Wanna buy a used 6th grade history book?") I didn't say anything. Let her have her fantasies.
Then I learned she had already emailed my professor. Yep. Less than 3 hours after leaving the message on my machine. Only in a K-12 school can you find people this obnoxious, making threats as a first step and carrying out the threats before the victim has a reasonable chance to respond.
Do I really want to work around people like this? No. But it does remind me why we should fill the schools with more people like me.
6/15/05: Genius
It's 2005, the 20th anniversary of Val Kilmer's first starring role in the film Real Genius. How will you celebrate?
Real Genius is not Oscar-worthy, but it is a decent comedy. It tells the story of a studious 15-year-old science genius (Gabe Jarret) who gets into a top college and hangs out with an equally brilliant party animal (Kilmer) who teaches him to loosen up and enjoy life. That makes the film sound more sophisticated than it is. It's mostly college guys playing practical jokes and ogling chicks. But the film is noteworthy for two reasons besides giving the world Val Kilmer's best performance.
First, it ends with students getting revenge on a bad teacher. That is all too rare. In most films, adults bully youth and youth accept it. If the adult is punished, he is usually punished by other adults. In Pump Up the Volume, for example, it is the school board that punishes the evil school administrators after a teacher exposes their crimes, while the teenaged protagonists do nothing. In Real Genius, it is the young protagonists who take down their villainous professor.
Second, this is the only film I've seen that rejects the ageist cliché of youth lusting after their elders. In Real Genius, the 15-year-old is approached by an old chick who wants to seduce each of the 10 smartest men in the world. But he rejects her because he is more interested in a fellow college student closer to his own age.
If you find this film at your local video store or public library, it's a worthwhile pick.
[Correction: Real Genius was actually Kilmer's second film.]
6/12/05: Sniped
- If I get sniped tonight you'll know why,
'Cause I told you to fight.- — Eminem ("Mosh")
I was supposed to get my teaching credential this semester, but it won't happen. In my 8th grade class, the regular teacher kicked me out. One reason was her fear I was making her look bad. She believed the students hated her, and she knew they liked me. She also felt insecure as a history teacher since she had little background in history. I have two degrees in social sciences; she has one degree — in art. Having me show her up in her classroom didn't make her feel good.
She once told me she was angry Gov. Schwarzenegger wants teachers to get merit pay based on test scores. She spoke of an unmotivated student in our class whom I'll call Jack. "Should my pay be based on how someone like Jack does on a test?!" she complained. The funny thing is, when she needed excuses to kick me out of her classroom, she pointed to a lesson plan of mine that, by her own admission, would have engaged Jack and gotten him interested in the content of this class.
I wanted our class to read highlights of Henry David Thoreau's classic essay "On Civil Disobedience." This brilliant essay by a rebellious intellectual inspired such people as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. This is why the state of California includes Thoreau in the state standards for 8th grade history. Yet this 8th grade teacher was appalled I would even suggest teaching this. "How do you think Jack would respond to this?" she scolded me.
"He would probably find it engaging," I told her. "It would help him articulate his own rebelliousness and give him a reason to care about history and philosophy."
When I suggested it would engage him, she responded, "Yeah!" as if I'd finally stumbled across what was so obviously wrong with the lesson, why I needed to be banished from her classroom for even offering this lesson plan.
This "teacher" complains about how unfair it is to judge her by how successfully she engages and educates students, then she rejects a chance to engage and educate because she fears empowering students to think for themselves, to make their own decisions and take responsibility.
What did she want to do instead? She wanted students to take notes on the California Gold Rush, an event not even in the state standards. She doesn't want to educate. She just wants to put students to sleep, to keep them quiet and docile. The last thing she wants is for students to be inspired like King and Gandhi were inspired.
Knowledge is power. Teachers who want to keep students weak have a conflict of interest, to say the least. And at this middle school, no one was pressuring her to educate.
I'm not a fan of Governor Schwarzenegger. (Hell, I didn't even like most of his movies.) But this experience convinced me he's right about one thing: merit pay is a good idea. We need to give teachers incentives to teach, because too many of them are choosing not to.
My only fear about merit pay is that it might encourage schools to hire even worse teachers in order to save money.
Many complain about standardized testing, and the government giving less money to schools whose students score low. There are problems with it, but personally I'm for anything that motivates schools to make education a higher priority. From what I've seen, education is a low priority for too many teachers and too many administrators, and this is why students learn so little.
As a student teacher, I wasn't supposed to get kicked out of the classroom unless I was causing harm to students. No one tried to argue I was. The principal's top concern was keeping the teachers happy, and I don't mean the student teachers. My university didn't put up much of a fight. They were more concerned about protecting their relationship with the placement site than about protecting their tuition-paying students or seeing middle school students receive a meaningful education.
So I got screwed. I won't get my credential this year, which means I need to either repeat a semester of unpaid student teaching (no way in hell will I go through that again), or I need to somehow get a job as a teacher and use that as my student teaching. There is never a shortage of history teachers, and in this tough economy with many schools laying off teachers, very few schools will be interested in hiring a teacher with no credential who has a record of not getting along.
I got screwed and my students got screwed. They won't learn about the writer who inspired so many of history's greats. They won't be inspired themselves to learn more about America's history or to engage our society and consider the morality of current government policies and prepare to take their place as voters in a democracy. Students like Jack won't be inspired to regain an interest in school. The students won't even learn the information called for in the state standards.
- In such settings [as K-12 schools], order trumps most other institutional aims. To keep the place running smoothly, students' behavior becomes more important than their understanding, acquiescence more valued than inquiry. In pursuit of order, school and classroom rules routinely supplant the disarray of kids' questions, objections, suggestions, and problems.
- — Kathleen Cushman (Fires in the Bathroom)
6/5/05: Students told Miracles are Fact
In some public schools, students are told evolution is "only a theory" but are told Christian miracles are historical fact.
Even in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area, where I've been student teaching, 6th grade history classes use a text called Content-Area Reader: The Ancient World: Prehistory to the Roman Empire edited by Judith Irvin [published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston; ISBN: 0-03-065033-X]. One article included is "The Spread of Christianity" by Pamela Palmer. This article, about the early Christians, includes this passage:
Just northwest of Jerusalem, in Lydda, [the Apostle] Peter healed the invalid Aeneas, and at Joppa, he brought Dorcas back to life. Miracles such as these attracted many followers, which gave the Church increasing diversity.
Other history textbooks about this era describe miracles, but at least preface them with barely noticed phrases such as, "It was reported that …" or "The Bible describes what happened next, saying …" This text doesn't even bother with such qualifications.
The 6th grade class where I was pushed to use this article has several children who are Hindu, Muslim, or otherwise non-Christian. The textbook does not describe leaders of these other faiths having the ability to perform miracles. Only Christianity gets that level of validation.
I'm a Christian myself, but I don't like to insult people of other faiths. I certainly don't like our government doing that through the schools, using tax-payer money to promote Christianity to a captive audience. I have a friend who grew up in Syria. She, too, is a Christian, and she tells me she hated the way her schools taught her the "historical fact" of angels speaking to Mohammad and showed no respect for the non-Muslim students. How sad to see the U.S. doing no better.
Worse yet perhaps, this textbook discourages critical thinking, giving students no tools to examine the accuracy of the information put before them. Okay, that's true of most textbooks found in 6th grade classrooms; but that doesn't make it right.
Using a textbook like this makes school a mockery in the eyes of every student who does not believe Christians can perform miracles. These children grow up watching their schools lie to them. And then we in the school system sit around with dumb looks on our faces wondering why students don't want to do the work we assign them, why they don't want to study the information we put before them, and why they don't take us seriously.
If we get textbooks like this in the liberal Bay Area, I can only imagine the textbooks used in the Bible Belt.
5/1/05: V-Day
This Tuesday, May 3, 2005, is Vagina Day. Show your support for Ms. Rethlefsen (see 4/23 post) and her vagina.
4/23/05: Not Ashamed of Your Body? You Better Hide.
After watching The Vagina Monologues, Minnesota high school senior Carrie Rethlefsen was inspired to wear a button reading, "I (heart) My Vagina." Unfortunately, the administration of her school decided young women should be ashamed of their body parts, and if Rethlefsen wouldn't remove her button, they would remove her from the school, lest her example encourage other young women to feel less ashamed of their own bodies.
Ms. Rethlefsen, however, isn't taking this lying down. She has organized over 100 of her fellow students to show up to school wearing t-shirts reading "I (heart) My Vagina" or for males, "I Support Your Vagina."
You can support Ms. Rethlefsen by contacting the principal of this high school and sharing your views with her. Be polite, but let her know her oppressive attitude is more offensive than even a word like "vagina."
The principal:
Nancy Wondrasch
Winona Senior High School
901 Gilmore Avenue
Winona, MN 55987
nancy.wondrasch@winona.k12.mn.us
Telephone: 507-494-1504
Fax: 507-494-1509
For more details, check out Ms. Rethlefsen's blog.
4/22/05: Drinking Age Campaign
The National Youth Rights Association is currently working to lower the drinking age in Vermont. The day-by-day reporting is dramatic and sure to be educational for those of you who have never run a political campaign before. This is a great illustration of how a few people can and do make a difference. Check it out at http://www.oneandfour.org.
4/10/05: What's Appropriate in School?
Recently, I went to my college's seminar on filling out the form to get a credential. Near the start of this PowerPoint presentation, the speaker told us filling out the form can be scary. To underscore this point, she brought up a slide that was supposed to get a laugh: a photo of a child screaming as he is struck by a car. Only one or two people actually laughed at this. But still she uses it every time she gives the presentation. I know because I accidentally attended the same presentation a few years back. When I enquired about how to enroll in San Jose State's credentialing program, a secretary got confused and referred me to this seminar on filling out the form, which you do at the end of the credentialing program, not the beginning.
This slide, of course, is yet one more example of encouraging teachers to hate students, encouraging us to laugh when students suffer.
I recently got in trouble in my student teaching because, when the 6th grade textbook on ancient history, mentioned that Aristophanes was a famous playwright in ancient Greece, it didn't say what he wrote. What's the educational value of just giving students a name and occupation? For this to be meaningful, students need a little more detail. So I explained to the students that Aristophanes' most famous play was an anti-war sex-comedy. (When I said this, it was the first time I ever saw all 38 students highly interested in ancient Greece.)
I was called on the carpet for this and put in danger of failing my student-teaching and being denied a teaching credential. They told me it was "highly inappropriate" to inform students a play was a "sex-comedy".
Was I actually harming the students in some way? Most of the students have heard of sex-comedies before. The fact that such comedies exist was not news to the students, only the fact that they existed in ancient Greece. I didn't read any excerpts of the play to the class.
No, no one complained that I was actually causing any harm. Their only concern was that some parent might not like it, therefore it's "inappropriate."
But I guess it's perfectly appropriate to encourage teachers to hate students and laugh at their pain. The school system won't protect students from hatred; it works instead to protect students from knowledge.
How can ignorance and hatred be appropriate in a school while education is not?
3/10/05: Laughing at Children's Pain
The other day in the teachers' lounge, an administrator shared with us a story he found hilarious. A student in our middle school got angry at another student for snitching on him. So the angry one, this man told us gleefully, "sharpened a pencil and then stabbed the kid right in the chest!" The administrator laughed excitedly as he told us, "The kid had a chunk of lead stuck in his chest! Probably get lead poisoning!"
Not all the teachers in the room laughed along, but many did. They were thrilled, feverish with excitement, to see another child hurt.
The administrator went for more laughs. "When the kid who did it was sent to my office, I asked him, 'Did you stab him hard?' He said, 'As hard as I could.'" More cheering and laughter.
My regular readers know, of course, this is not the first time I've had to witness teachers relishing student's pain.
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