Curses on Cursive

by Tammy Drennan 

There’s no end to what the powers that be can make into a major issue. Now they’re arguing over whether school children should be taught to write in cursive or if printing is good enough.

After all, one side argues, the only thing people write by hand anymore is personal stuff, like shopping lists (although my house sports five computers, we generate hundreds of pages of handwritten stuff each year).

Just a minute, the other side argues, cursive develops muscle control and hand-eye coordination (they could replace it with special non-cursive hand-eye exercises). Besides, they add, children could end up one day in some remote area without computers (maybe even their own backyards where they might see a butterfly and feel suddenly inspired to pen a poem).

At any rate, the important thing to understand here is that whoever wields the most political clout will win. Different views may win in different states or school districts, and one day, if we keep careening in the direction we’re going, we’ll have federal “standards” and everyone will develop the skill or not based on what Uncle Sam dictates.

If we think that the arguments aren’t even more vehement about other subjects, we kid ourselves. Let’s work harder yet to achieve full independence and rid ourselves of all this nonsense.

For over 150 years, America thrived without the state telling people how to write, yet clearly it was not a problem. The signers of the Declaration of Independence came from all manner of backgrounds. Some had a lot of formal schooling, some had virtually none. Yet they signed — then they wrote home about it, often eloquently — utilizing more than 140 characters — because they could, both mechanically and intellectually. Today’s students, by many accounts, lack both the mechanical and the intellectual skills to express their thoughts. Of course, all too often they lack thoughts worth writing, so maybe they don’t need the skills after all. Maybe schools could just teach how to twitter better.

The tragedy of all this is that there is strong evidence that children want to learn more, stretch their brains and skills, come to grips with the meaning of life on a deeper level. Even at the level of handwriting (200,000 entries in a penmanship contest), there’s evidence that children long for the substance state schools cannot offer for the very reason that they are state schools and unavoidably political.

In a world in which education is a free act of the people, instead of a state action against them, people will gravitate toward what benefits them in the lives they choose for themselves and what enables them to interact effectively with one another. Common knowledge and skills have always been common because people are naturally social creatures — they need and want each other and they do what they need to do to enrich their desires and to meet their needs. No government created this state of affairs, but like the proverbial Johnny-come-lately, almost every government has rushed in to try to take it over then take credit for literacy and human competence.

Enough is enough. Let’s leave them in the whirlwind of their own self-importance and just walk away. Let’s join relatives and friends and neighbors and fellow church members to create better options. Let’s take back our humanity.

 

President to Children: Wash Your Hands

by Tammy Drennan

[Okay, there’s a ton of stuff out there about this speech, and I wanted to get your attention.*]

The big speech is today – September 8, 2009. Of course, it’s already on the web, so we all know what the president will say.

And what does he say?

It’s the type of rah-rah speech you’d expect. There are a few good, inspirational lines. There are the obligatory three examples of real people who did it that marks almost all political speeches today. There’s the “my story” part, too.

It’s hard to overlook the fact that the speech seems to have been written mostly for disadvantaged children, kids who face tough neighborhoods, low income families, absent fathers.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but you do have to wonder if these children are weary of hearing about how hard life is and how hard they need to work in the face of their trials. Mr. Obama’s mother, he tells us, dragged him up at 4:30 every school morning (for a time) to give him extra tutoring, but did she preface each session with a speech about how tough his life was and how he could overcome his disadvantages? This may be good and necessary for older students to hear, but it could be discouraging for younger children, who may wish that the grown-ups would just start being grown-ups (and I don’t mean only their parents).

Which brings is to another popular mantra in education circles today — the call on children to prepare themselves to save the world we’re messing up. We can’t even seem to manage to prepare them adequately, because we need them to do that, too.

The furor over the president’s speech comes, I think, mostly of people growing in their distrust of him – or maybe suspecting he’s more talk than feeling, that he doesn’t really connect with the common man. I’m not going to address that here – just make the observation.

I’m sure we could pick apart many past speeches by presidents to school children and find as much fault as we can with this one.

Of greater influence than the speech will be what teachers do with it, and that will, too often, be influenced by their own ideology. Not much can be done about that. It’s the chance parents take when they commit their children’s education to the state. We all have a worldview (though for most it’s not a consciously chosen one but one we picked up here and there along the way — with no small amount absorbed from our schooling), and it’s hard to prevent it from surfacing when we interact with others.

Normally, such a speech would have passed way under the radar of most people, parents included. A few kids might have been inspired, most would have forgotten the speech within minutes of hearing it or would not have paid attention in the first place. Teachers would have made some related comments afterward then returned to the lessons of the day. And the speech would have slipped into history as one more boring school lecture.

But the storm has turned it into something that will be examined, dissected, analyzed, criticized, praised, and used one way or another in schools, homes, the media, workplaces and on the streets.

Maybe that’s not so bad. It’s not the greatest way to get more people involved in the conversation about education, but it’s better than nothing.

* After a long soliloquy about how “you can do it, try harder, keep focused,” the president inserted this contribution to America’s future:

“And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.”

President Obama & Bill Gates

[Related commentary: President to Children: Wash Your Hands]

President Obama to Address School Children, Bill Gates to Follow 
  
President Obama will address public school children in a 15-20 minute speech on September 8, 2009 at noon (EST) from the White House via the White House web site and C-Span. His administration (Department of Education) has developed companion lesson plans for teachers to use to prepare for and help children evaluate the speech.1
 
The lesson plans are carefully couched in the language of “teachers could, teachers can” do this or that. Among the things teachers might want to do with their students:
 
• Before the speech, read about presidents’ lives, including President Obama
• Discuss what the president might say
• Discuss what the president did say and what he is asking of students and others
• Create poems, essays, songs and art based on the president’s speech (implied)
• Set personal goals and develop ways to track them
 
Almost needless to say, there is a fair amount of outrage over this event. Individuals and groups are questioning the propriety of a president telecasting himself into classrooms full of confined children.
 
But this is not the first time a president has addressed school children about the challenges they face, and while it is up to individual schools districts whether or not they’ll show the speech (as it has been in the past), and while parents can always keep their children home that day, it nevertheless does bring up issues of concern about the federal government’s increasing involvement in education, something that portends frightening consequences.
 
Bonus Feature: The Get Schooled Initiative
 
More disturbing may be what follows the president’s speech on September 8.
 
Later in the evening, will be the kick-off of a five-year program — The Get Schooled Initiative — sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in partnership with business leaders, policymakers, entertainers and others:
 
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom Inc. will join other corporations and nonprofit organizations, as well as education thought leaders, policymakers and concerned entertainment industry professionals at the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood to formally launch the Get Schooled initiative and engage students, families and community members in efforts to reform the nation’s public schools and provide American youth with a world-class education.”2
 
The opening ceremonies will feature, among others, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller, New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, and Los Angeles area high-school athletic director Stephen Minix.3
 
Also premiering will be a documentary called Get Schooled You Have the Right, “which highlights the education stories of three successful professionals who work with President Barack Obama, 2009 NBA MVP LeBron James and pop superstar Kelly Clarkson.”4
 
The documentary will be aired at 8 P.M. (EST) “in the first programming “roadblock” of any kind across all Viacom networks, including BET, MTV, VH1, CMT, Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land, and Nickelodeon.”5
 
The Department of Education offers this explanation of its own part in The Get Schooled Initiative on its web site:
 
Is the “Get Schooled” television event in the evening on Sept. 8 hosted by the Viacom network and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation connected to the president’s speech?
 
While the U.S. Department of Education is a partner in this effort, the president’s noontime address is a separate event. Get Schooled is a five-year national platform developed by Viacom and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that connects, inspires, and mobilizes people to find effective solutions to education challenges….

The grand finale of the opening ceremonies of the September 8 kickoff of The Get Schooled Initiative: “[T]he Gates Foundation and Viacom will welcome corporate partners AT&T, Capital One Financial Corporation, and NYSE Euronext, which have each signed on to the Get Schooled initiative…” [end quote]
 
One can’t help but feel that this effort is reminiscent of the powers that contributed so heavily to the government takeover of education to begin with, as documented in John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education.
 
What do you think?
 
The most important questions about President Obama’s speech will not likely have anything to do with the content. It’s hard to imagine that he will say anything too radical or anything students don’t hear every year from their government-employed teachers, principals and counselors.
 
Some of the bigger questions include:
 
• Is this an appropriate thing for a president to do?
• Is this one more step toward a more embedded presence of the federal government in education — and what might that lead to?
• What are the implications of the government working in any way with a private foundation, which is working on the same project with powerful business leaders and influential entertainers, to influence the formation of children into adults?
 
Your thoughts are most welcome. 
  
References
 
1. Suggested lesson plans and activities from the U. S. Department of Education:
http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/prek-6.pdf
http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/7-12.pdf
 
2, 3, 4, 5. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/get-schooled-documentary-launches-in-hollywood-090827.aspx