Education reform brought to you by The Hands

I was recently reading a friend's blag post found here: http://spyewtsrfat.blogspot.com/2011/07/edu.html. He gives some pretty good ideas of how to reform education. Being a friend of his who is not counted as one of the education majors who is "dumber than a box of hammers" I gave him props and submit my own few ideas (I wrote this as a comment on his blag first, but decided to post it here, too):

1) Pool all resources so as to eliminate disparities between all schools. They do this in Canada and it works out great. Of course the nature of people in Canada seems to be to agree to pool resources and make equal treatment available whether it be education or healthcare. The problem with doing this in the states is the whole 'local control' idea, which is a really big thing (especially in Utah) and I don't see it happening.

2) Cut administrative costs. Some of these school districts are enormous and have a huge bureaucracy (Thus New York public school's leading the nation spending $17,000 per pupil). This can be cut for sure, but I think the larger problem lies in the number of small school districts. Example: Wyoming has 48 school districts for their 87,000 students. There are 33 school districts in America with larger enrollments than the entire state. This is obviously a problem caused by the extremely small population density of Wyoming, but it exists because of people'e feelings for local control. People can't seem to get over their desire to control the education of their children, yet complain when they see the results stacked against the world. You know why the Asian Tigers lead in education? Because the state controls education and the parents push the kids. The difference is that A)our parents either forget that their kids may need to not participate in 14 extracurriculars in order to appropriate sufficient time to their studies or forget to do the whole parenting thing altogether and B)our bureaucracy is open to pretty much anyone these days, whereas in Asian countries it is a highly respected position that requires-you guessed it-a high score on a state mandated intelligence test. Which brings me to..

3) Teachers need to be required to perform some sort of professional development, and I'm not talking about showing up to a conference or a meeting and counting up hours. It should require advanced college classes and research and a portfolio. Right now re-credentialing is done online and costs, like, $100 depending on the state. More should be required. Also, in order to get an endorsement teachers are required to pass an ETS administered tests (although some states have their own because they think they're more special or should have more local control), but the scores required by states are all about 70%. That needs to be upped.

Plumbing Fail

I tried using a drain snake to unclog our bathroom sink. Little did I know the J-pipe had the structural integrity of a wet paper towel. As you can see, the snake did not make the turn, but went straight through, uncovering yet another problem for me to fix. I think it may have been the original fixture (circa 1950). As I tried to unscrew the IP later the pipe twisted in half, cutting my thumb in the process. But I installed the new pipe and flushed the clog out with drano and a hose, as per the instructions of my landlord (who is 80 and doesn't want to spend money on a plumber to come fix it), so now all is well.

State Reciprocity

The term "state reciprocity" is used by universities to describe a degree or license awarded that is recognized by other states as well. Most schools claim to award teaching licenses or certificates that are recognized by nearly every other state of the union. So with my certificate from BYU I've been applying for jobs all over the country, including 19 states and the District of Columbia, not to mention a job in Calgary, which was both my first application and my first rejection letter (no one promised reciprocity with other countries). I thought expanding my horizons would give me a better chance at getting a job, and at first that idea held true. My first real interview (not a screening interview) was with a school in Wellton, Arizona--a town known for its massive feed lot and more recently, for a psycho shooter that drove into Yuma. The interview went well and the principal explained the licensing process I'd go through upon getting the job. It was easy-take a few ESL courses and teach for a year, then apply and BAM, it would be mine. Well, I didn't get the job, and my count is at 132 jobs I've applied for, and among the rejection letters/emails, most have been from out of state schools. I didn't think anything of it, but then I had a screening interview with Phoenix Union High School District. The interviewer asked me if I had started my application for an Arizona teaching credential. I answered "Why pay over a hundred dollars for something I only need if I actually get a job?" He answered that every teacher in the district must hold and Arizona teacher's license at the beginning of the school year. So much for state reciprocity.

The idea of the state having control over its education system is based solely on the founding fathers failing to enumerate public education as a power of the federal government. It would take a constitutional amendment to create national control of public education, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. That's because even though everyone in the country believes that we should provide free public education to all children we must A) stick to the constitutional verbage written by the founding fathers (who did not believe in national education--except for Thomas Jefferson) and B) localize control of what our children are learning.

Local control is one of those phrases that gets a lot of use and a lot of respect in education policy circles. This makes a lot of sense to me because funding for schools is locally based, so the control is locally based. Funding does come from the federal government, but the bread and butter of every district is local. States try to standardize things and streamline their programs, which creates this whole mess regarding teacher training reciprocity, not to mention high school education reciprocity.

But this is the reason for public education. Any nation's public education is built for a single purpose, which is to indoctrinate the youth of a nation with the culture of the governing class. However, because our national government is handcuffed from controlling education, the indoctrination includes the fundamental beliefs of the predominate culture of the state and in some cases even the areas of school districts. In America we created public education to perpetuate the idea of the American Dream (one's ability to succeed in "attaining the fullest stature of which (he or she) is innately capable, and be recognized for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position). That is the only common stream in the education system--anyone can succeed (We might also compare this to the myth of the medals in Plato's Republic, but that's a story for another time). Our education system lacks a common thread because of the need for state and local control, breeding the indoctrination of state and local culture, not national culture. This organizational fault is part of the reason we see so much disparity between states and between urban-rural-suburban schools. Because the curriculum and teacher credentialing standards are different from state to state and district to district the education of students from one state or district to the next will be inherently unequal.

So ending this on a slightly different vein than I started, I would like to say a word about winning the future: it won't happen unless we centralize our educational system. It's the only way we can properly work together as a nation to meet the changing needs of the American workforce. But there are two reasons this will never come to pass: 1) Conservative interpretation of the Constitution and the difficulty of creating an amendment empowering the federal government to provide public education and 2) America is not a 'melting pot' as much as it is actually a grocery store. Yes, there are a variety of cultures here, but they are--for the most part--compartmentalized into different regions and even different areas of cities and towns. Therefore the predominant culture within the district will beg/cry/fight for its right to push its agenda (strong words, I know, but it is what it is) on the children in its jurisdiction, and it will do so under the assumption that it is what the parents want and what they believe is best for their children--regardless whether or not it is what is best for the country represented by the flag to which they pledge allegiance every morning in the classroom.

Curse of the Amish Friendship Bread

A couple of weeks ago Courtney's visiting teacher came during the day when she was asleep. I answered the door and took from her a wrapped up piece of bread, a bag filled with gooey stuff and page of directions. When Courtney shared the bread with me I decided that it would be worth it to squish the dough every day and add the stuff to make the bread. As the days passed Courtney made fun of me for doing it, and I understood why. This is ridiculous. How could passing on such a taxing recipe possibly make someone think you want to be friends? It seemed like punishment to me. In fact, I decided not to pass it along as per the directions, but to just bake the whole eight loaves myself and give them away. Besides, there's no telling how long this had already been passed on, and how rotten that milk was. I thought I was doing our friends a favor by saving them the hassle of the ten day process and just baking them a loaf of bread.

Great idea, right? Well...

You know those chain emails that say "if you don't pass this to ten people then a baby seal will get clubbed by Dick Cheney" that you always delete? That's sort of how I felt about this bread, but a baby seal actually did get clubbed by Dick Cheney. I misread the directions and got this as a result:

Those stinkin' Amish cursed their stupid bread recipe. I was going to stop the chain and I was the baby seal that got clubbed. It tasted alright, but the texture was similar to bread pudding, which I cannot handle, so I threw both loaves and the other starter mixes out because my proportions were off.

(In the future, I'd be more than happy to try again Amish friendship bread, but I'll plan on perpetuating the stupid recipe instead of taking matters into my own hands)

The System is Broken

"The system is broken." That's what they've told us recently, at least. It seems to be code for, "We don't have any money to fund public works, so we're cutting budgets, restructuring and blaming it on 'problems' in the system that we were too lazy to fix before." We've heard it about immigration, the BCS, collective bargaining in Wisconsin, and the most popular target--education. Some of these claims are true--the immigration situation is ridiculous, as is college football's method of finding a national champion, as is the public paying for the equal benefits and retirement plans of uneducated careerist bureaucrats and members of the most underpaid and consistently educated profession in America--teachers. While I do not believe the education system is 'broken,' I do believe that parts of it are, and that few or none of these parts are being addressed by state legislatures. I started three posts in the last two months about various problems I have with some states' new education plans (particularly Idaho), but they were all filled with bitterness, Idaho election results and budget histories, and Glen Beck-esque conspiracy theories about Watson on Jeopardy! being the new computer overlord of Idaho--and I don't really want to subject anyone to any of that.

This post is about something in education that recently made me thing, "The system is broken." I read about it a year and a half ago in the first chapter of Goodlad, Soder and Sirotnik's 'The Moral Dimensions of Teaching.' The problem dates back further than I'd care to research, but in 1961 it was amplified when Yale hired C. Vann Woodward with the highest salary for a professor in the country and was not required to teach at all in his first year. To many of you who have been to a university lately, this may not surprise you--part of being a professor is doing research. In fact, they are required by the university to get published in order to stay on faculty. We've all had professors who were awful, horrible teachers, yet were kept on staff because of their amazing research. Even in schools of education the faculty is not filled with highly-experienced teachers who have been hired because they were rock star teachers. It's filled with Faustian academics who research high up in their ivory towers, then come down to classrooms where they lecture to future teachers, preparing them to do a job they've never done themselves.

I was lucky enough to have as the supervisor for my major someone with years of experience as a teacher, who was sought out by the university to get his PhD and teach for BYU. One of the faculty members on the hiring committee told me that a principal once told him that my professor was 'the best teacher he had ever seen in all his 30 years in the school system.' I believe it, too. He was a great influence for me to be a teacher and taught me more than any of those learned sages of research in the McKay School of Education. I thought that this professor of mine was so awesome that I wanted to do what he did--get pre-service teachers pumped and prepared for the careers n teaching ahead of them.

So it was to my great surprise and delight that on a visit to his office in January, he told me the university wants another supervisor for the major, and that he wanted me to get my degree and come back to do the job. I recently talked with him about choosing graduate schools and degrees. He told me to get a master's in statistics to go along with my doctorate to reinforce my research skills. I've applied for a lot of jobs teaching social studies because health teaching jobs are so hard to find, and he told me not to worry because I have an undergraduate degree in health and all they care about is research anyways, and they're just looking someone who can do that, has a PhD and is willing to do the job. I was shocked. Here I thinking that he was sought out and hired because he was one of the greatest health teachers in the Utah valley, and here he was conceding that his expertise wasn't even why he was hired for the job--it was because he was willing to go to school and get the training to be qualified to do it.

So I came home excited for graduate school, but also disappointed because the system was broken. Universities don't want the best teachers to prepare teachers, they want researchers who will get the name of the school printed underneath their own name in academic journals. I began to worry about whether I'll be a good enough teacher to feel that I warrant the job for which I'm preparing. Since my realization about the lack of professional teaching experience in teacher preparation programs I've wanted to research the problem, but now I feel like I'm already on the road to becoming one myself. It's very possible that I'll never get the chance to teach health. States such as Idaho are making it an online course in order to cut costs (yeah, I know, totally picked the wrong teaching major, but the fact that it was the shortest teaching major really should have been a clue). But even if I teach Utah history for five years I can get this job because I'll have my undergraduate degree, my student teaching experience and a few years of in-classroom teaching experience.

Well, anyways, no use worrying about this when I can't even find a job in the first place...first things first.

Jerry Sloan's Final and Greatest Influence

I've been waiting for Jerry Sloan to step down for years. I remember when I came back from my mission, seeing Jerry Sloan and thinking it was his frozen corpse hauled out into the coach's seat. Then I saw him explode on a referee in the third quarter and get T'd up, at which point I realized that he was not actually dead. He made a great run with the Jazz, and was an NBA legend (despite never winning a championship). In fact, if it weren't for Michael Jordan he might have been the greatest Chicago Bulls player of all time and have two rings with the Jazz (probably just one, though, I don't see them beating Bird's Pacers in 1998-that team was awesome). He was a great coach, in fact I highlight the season after Stockton and Malone left when he just about coached his team led by Andrei Kirilenko and Matt Harpring to the playoffs as his greatest accomplishment, and had a great run, but he ran out of gas and couldn't handle it anymore. He was there for 22 years and only had one losing season. The only other coach in the NBA with more than 10 years with his current team is Greg Popavich (in his 15th). Pop's been there since the second half of 1996, and in his first draft acquired Tim Duncan, who he's ridden to four championships and a career .678 win percentage. Pop's ability to adjust to changes is a subject for another post (his ability to coach the Spurs, with their stars in decline, to an amazing 44-8 start this season is incredible), right now let's just focus on this: long tenured coaches with a single team are not the norm. Not in the NBA, not in other professional sports. Sloane resigning , like Bobby Cox retiring after 20 years at the helm of the Atlanta Braves, marks the end of a great run filled with winning seasons, hall of fame players and lost championships. It is the end of an era.

Today I was driving back from a doctor's appointment and heard the cheers of

Egyptians ringing out on NPR celebrating the resignation of their

leader. Hosni Mubarak did not plan on being a dictator, but did an excellent job at it for 30 years. After weeks of

quiet, civil disobedience by the Egyptian people, yesterday Mubarak tried to convince his people that it was a good idea for him to stay in power, while delegating powers to the Vice President. This is what Joe Paterno has done for years, and it has served him well, as he has been the head coach at Penn State for 44 years, and lucid for 38 of them (Just kidding! Long live JoPa!). Well, unfortunately for Mubarak, the people didn't take to that idea well, so he went the way of Bobby Bowden, who was forced to retire from his position at Florida State after 35 years.

And so Mubarak is at a Red Sea resort contemplating the future, looking back on the fantastic run he made as the 'democratically elected' president of Egypt. I'm not sure where Jerry Sloan is, but he's probably going through the same contemplative practice. I wonder if he sees what I see. I wonder if he sees a president at his home in Cairo watching Sportscenter and seeing an aging man give a speech about his stunning career, announcing its end, and repeatedly stating how much he has been blessed. He thinks to himself, "I have been blessed. I have done much good for this country. We are better now than we were 30 years ago. Maybe it's time." And he calls the vice president and tells him to announce his resignation. That's what I see.

And there you have it, Jerry Sloan influences Hosni Mubarak to step down as president of Egypt. Just think about it, it's not that much of a stretch.

The Strength of Any Nation is Rooted in the Walls of its Homes

On September 23, 1995 "The Family" was proclaimed to the world by Gordon B. Hinckley. This came at the end of an address to the world's largest organization of women, the Relief Society. He followed the reading of this inspired document with the statement, "The strength of any nation is rooted within the walls of its homes," which I chose to title this post. These ideas are not new, but they are forgotten by many. Listening to Pres. Obama's state of the union address one would think that the strength of the nation is dependent on the wealth of both individuals and families. Of the several times Obama mentioned families, only once was it not in reference to their financial standing, If the nation is in distress, it is not (only) a policy problem, but I'm willing to bet it's a problem in following the Lord's commands. And the root of a generation forgetting how merciful the Lord hath been can be found in errant families. Fathers and mothers not fulfilling their responsibilities, young children not being taught, the youth of a nation not being held accountable--these are the events which lead to national tribulation. They are what lead us to make those policy decisions and sleazy business moves. If we were a stronger nation, we would be more concerned about what happens in the walls of the home. And I don't know about you, but I'm all for making 'Merca a stronger country. I have included the proclamation at the end of my post because it is always a good idea to review the truths taught therein.

That's me at six weeks. From my very birth I was part of a family. That alone is a blessing that is all to often taken for granted. I was born within the bonds of matrimony to a father and mother who followed the tenets of this proclamation before it was even issued (Then again, nothing much had changed in 1995 as far as church doctrine goes, it was simply necessary to send this message to the world to warn all of the eternal nature of and responsibilities of members in families in order to protect from the ensuing onslaught of offenses to the idea of family, which we have witnessed at various times, in various ways over the past 15 years). I owe who I am today to the parents who fulfilled their divine calling as father and mother and provided me with opportunities to learn about the gospel and choose for myself my path in life.

A little over two years ago I got married in a ceremony binding me, Courtney and our future children together for all time and eternity. This week we celebrate that long awaited time when the 'future' becomes 'now' Our little girl was born a day before Thanksgiving, healthy and happy. This past week has opened my eyes to my new role as a father. The first night I waltzed around the hospital room bouncing my baby to get her to go to sleep I looked at her small face and I thought about the potential she has. One day she will have all the opportunities her mother and I have had, but only if we respect the responsibility of parenthood given us, just as our parents before us. I really believe that it is the family that keeps communities and nations going. When the family loses sight of its purposes and responsibilities, the children don't become the upstanding citizens this country (or any country, for that matter) needs--or in certain circumstances, there are no children at all! I just don't understand that. Having our little girl stare back into my eyes I can't think of why anyone wouldn't want to bring one of God's spirit children into this beautiful world. And now we'll do the best we can to raise her up right and prepare her to be a good mother that she may experience the lasting joy a family brings, just like we have.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

"We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

“All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

“In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally. UAdd a Note

“The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

“We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.

“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. ‘Children are an heritage of the Lord’ (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

“The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

“We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

“We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”