Group items tagged

The third group is more difficult to discuss, and I don't want to dismiss or demean, but I think of them as "the colonized." These are people from traditionally out-of-power groups who have decided to fully "play the game" of their oppressors. They tend to wear the charter school ideology around their necks the way certain Nigerians and Indians and other "citizens of the Empire" in the early 20th Century donned British powdered wigs and joined the colonial governments. It is tough to argue with much of what they say: They are looking to "save kids now." To open "real opportunities." To build "within the realities we have." And to argue with this is to engage in that oldest of battles among the colonized - do we achieve freedom and power on "their" terms, or "ours." Do we want our children to grow up as -and this will depend on the argument you are making - Brits and citizens of the world/Second-class Brits or to grow up as Nigerians, Indians, South Africans, Irish, Israelis/poor separatists in a global economy. As with most great issues, the answers are not clear cut, not "black and white," as they say. We want our identities, we want freedom and possibility based in our culture, and yet, yes, we also live and work in a world designed and controlled by the powerful. So when people like @dropoutnation argue for charters and vouchers as their "answer," it is not just a matter of being co-opted. They have convinced themselves that this is the only logical solution in the world they see now. And I can argue for greater faith in the future, for greater faith in diverse communities, but altering someone's fundamental world view is tough.

The common characteristics that I find in what I describe as "the best schools" (see primary and secondary), that is, schools which "work" for the broadest range of students, is student choice. These are schools which help students discover their path, not their parents' path. These are schools which are willing to help students find success even if their parents are incapable, or destructive, or just uninterested. Parent choice - the concept of charters and vouchers - is socially reproductive from the start.

great public schools have student choice. No two classes in the same grade or subject should be anything alike. No common reading lists or classroom management. No common grading system. No common organization. Ideally, even schedules should vary. Only with that kind of choice can students find what they need, not what even the most well-meaning adults find for them. And great public schools are being made impossible by "choice" advocates, who pull a certain segment of students out of the mix, reducing workable choices for those left behind. I'm a parent, and I like parents. But I've also known all kinds of parents, and I value children too much to leave all the decisions in parental hands.

most college students are not just unwilling, but functionally unable to be without their media links to the world. "I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening," says one person in the study. "I feel like most people these days are in a similar situation, for between having a Blackberry, a laptop, a television, and an iPod, people have become unable to shed their media skin."

what they wrote at length about was how they hated losing their personal connections. Going without media meant, in their world, going without their friends and family

they couldn't connect with friends who lived close by, much less those far away

there is little to no attention being paid to giving full-time faculty the training to teach students who have a wide range of capacities when it comes to what counts for normal classroom discipline:  sitting still for an hour and taking notes, being in crowded rooms where they risk being bumped and touched, overcoming obsessive behavior to get to class or hand in a paper on time, working in small groups with other students, or being in large classes with crowds of strangers.  It is also happening in a context in which being full-time faculty is becoming anomalous, and the financial “flexibility” of running higher education on per-course labor makes it unlikely that the vast majority of faculty will be eligible, or open to making unpaid time available, for the training that would make their classrooms accessible to autistic students

People with autism, Gilman notes, also tend to have disordered sleep, affecting the capacity to function at high-stress times of the semester when we assume that most students are pulling all-nighters.  They have difficulty relating to someone they are intimate with (much less an impatient, overworked faculty member who wants all students to act like the adults they appear to be), what they are experiencing and what is wrong, which would make even the most generous office hours not useful. So when we are putting together arguments for hiring full-time faculty in the next round of budget cuts and declarations from foundations that tenure is holding us back, think about adding this one in.  The demands on faculty to be well-trained, knowledgeable, creative and flexible teachers are growing — not subsiding — and attention to this will make all the difference in keeping our classrooms truly inclusive

colleges and universities don't have the infrastructure to replicate what these students have relied upon in high school

PETITION TO THE CALIFORNIA PUBLIC UTILITIES COMISSION (CPUC)

. Recognize that the Hopi and Navajo tribes from 1970 to 2005 were consistently under-compensated for thousands of tons of coal and over 45 billion gallons of precious aquifer water to power the Mohave Generating Station (Mohave) to provide Southern California with lower cost electricity.

Such compensation should be drawn from the proposed sale of Edison's share of Sulfur Dioxide allowances credited to owners of Mohave for cutting 40,000 tons of toxic gas produced by Mohave prior to its closure in 2005.