The Stupidest Place In California
That would be the California Public Schools. I'm not a teacher and I don't have kids, but I've experienced the stupidity myself, in conjunction with a program I put together -- going to an inner city high school once a month and talking to the kids to demystify what it takes to "make it."
I had the idea a while ago, that inner city kids are actually being rational and sensible by not working very hard in school. After all, the adult world around them is people dealing drugs, going to jail and working at low-paying, bad jobs. If they believe that's all that's possible for them in life, school is just an annoying way to spend the time during the day, and something they have to do.
My program, WIT (What It Takes), is intended to be administered by Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and involves people from a variety of jobs and professions -- those that require college and those that don't. They go speak at inner city schools, laying out what it takes to do what they do.
A chef, for example, lets kids know that she didn't get her job by magic -- she had to lug garbage to the dumpster and peel potatoes and get her ass kicked by those above her until, over a number of years, she rose in the kitchen. The important thing is showing kids there's a step-by-step process for becoming somebody, and it takes hard work, some sense in choosing something you have an aptitude for, among other things.
All speakers, like me, speak entirely for free. The money for the program would go to have BGCA administer it across the country -- to make sure they get the right speakers (per the guidelines I figured out) and to make sure they know what to say and how to say it.
Included in each speaker's message is a bit about how getting pregnant or getting a girl pregnant before being married and settled removes the chances of all the exciting stuff they've heard, and continues the cycle of poverty...and is especially terrible for any kid because of the bad outcomes for children of single mothers. All they have to do is work hard in their 20s and make something of themselves, and then they can do that stuff right, and do right by any kid they have -- as an intact family.
Back to my experience talking at a local high school; I'd wanted to do this since I lived in New York, but it took me until I moved to L.A. and met this great teacher and bugged her to schedule me in to talk to the kids. It's pretty amazing -- I just tell them what I do for a living, and take apart how I got to where I am (emphasizing all the hard stuff and humiliations and how I got through them). I change what I'm talking about to suit the class at hand, and afterward, answer their questions...allay their fears, tell them about what they can expect, what to worry about and what not to. I can tell that most of them get a lot out of it. That's pretty exciting.
After I'd been doing this for a while, there was a "Career Day" at the school. The teacher had them bring me in for that. After I spoke to a couple classes, there was a lunch for all the speakers in the teachers' lounge. I had this idea -- instead of putting this teacher through the hassle of asking other teachers and scheduling me in and working out the logistics, I'd ask the Career Day administrator to do it.
And I did -- telling her that not only would I speak, that I'd asked people like successful writer/producer Rob Long, and a self-made black fashion designer who already takes inner city girls camping, and a guy from a poor family in Harlem who'd started his own company done well in real estate. I even tried to get Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), who politely turned me down (he's already doing his own stuff in schools).
I waited for her to tell me when we could start. Well, she told me, it would take at least six months to propose it and at least year to get approval -- if she could even get approval. (And remember -- this is for really incredible people to come in and tell kids about what they do for a living and the steps they took to do it, and to motivate them...free of charge!)
Just nuts. I nodded, went for another piece of cheese, found the teacher on the other side of the room and asked her to schedule me into somebody's class for the next month.
Here's similar idiocy, chronicled by George Will, in the WaPo:
Becoming governor next year will be a daunting challenge for California's Republican insurance commissioner, but Steve Poizner has surmounted other obstacles, as when he volunteered to teach without pay in an East San Jose high school. After he sold, for $1 billion, one of the technology companies he founded after moving to California from Texas, and after serving as a White House fellow, he walked into San Jose's school district office, explained that he graduated No. 1 in his class at the University of Texas, earned a Stanford business degree and now wanted to teach American government to high school seniors. A functionary declared: "Nothing you have said qualifies you to be in the classroom."Undeterred, he placed calls to the district's 12 high school principals. Eleven did not return his calls. The 12th, whose students were mostly from working-class Hispanic families, gave Poizner the opportunity he describes as the hardest, and most rewarding, thing he has ever done.
On his first day it rained, the roof leaked and he probably violated union contracts by moving a trash can to catch the seepage. When some parents -- they were plumbers -- offered to fix a broken water fountain, they were spurned. The education code, by which state legislators micromanage California's thousands of schools at the behest of teachers unions, is, Poizner says, 2,000 pages "and growing rapidly." He is disgusted that more than half of the 600,000 employees in primary and secondary education are not in classrooms. The most "telling statistic," he says, is that in Los Angeles (where one in three school dollars goes to teachers' pensions) 25 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools.
By the way, the grant I applied for (not for me, but for every cent to go to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, who are already plugged in in all the inner city schools) has been delayed and delayed and delayed. It's Google's Project 10^100. I'm hoping they'll finally get their act together this Fall. If they don't, in the next few months, I'll seek other financing. If somebody knows of an organization that would be interested in funding a program like this, I have a comprehensive writeup I can send.
Will link via RobertW
Charters and vouchers.
Most teachers have lost the sense of service that gave the profession social standing and respect.
Now we need to start at the bottom - by at least reminding them that they have customers.
Ben-David at September 12, 2009 11:46 PM
The single most important change one could make to the school system is to return control of each school to it's own, local school board. No more state and national interference.
In many, if not most states, there are more bureaucrats than teachers working in "education". The result is not only money going to the wrong place - it's far worse. The bureaucrats have to be seen doing something, which means that they interfere endlessly in with the teachers trying to do their jobs.
I recall vividly a friend of mine, who was a relatively new primary school teacher: she was only allowed to copy 35 pages per week. Yet there were nearly two administrators for every teacher in the district. How many handouts could she have made, if half the administrators were fired?
bradley13 at September 13, 2009 12:23 AM
>>
My fear is that the school systems are administrator heavy, in part, because of all the bureaucracy and red tape requirements. I don't know that for a fact, it is just a suspicion. I currently have a son in the California school system. Seeing some of the nonsense first hand, I can tell you this next item from one experience. The school's top administrators clearly behaved as part CPA's, part lawyers. part politicians and not as stewards for educating the young (on a side note: fortunately the empty threat of home schooling was a powerful weapon to get them to do the right thing). And though I haven't seen this first hand, I greatly suspect the politicians and the teacher's union are hurting the school system.
TW at September 13, 2009 2:37 AM
Sounds like a very useful program. I hope it's successful.
Patrick at September 13, 2009 5:16 AM
I hope that you don't give up,Amy. I'm sure its frustrating but you really understood that there was a need to show these kids a different way of life and that it is worth the work. Sometimes these kids get pregnant so young because they want something of their own to love and they find out too late just how hard it really is and often they are stuck in that cycle of poverty.
There was a time volunteering at a school was appreciated and easy to do. We had an old man at my son's old school that was widowed and would come read to his grandchild's class. He continued it for many years after his grandchild graduated. My son still remembers him fondly. I couldn't imagine now a man walking into a school saying he wants to read to kids being welcomed with open arms.
Kristen at September 13, 2009 6:18 AM
Sometimes these kids get pregnant so young because they want something of their own to love and they find out too late just how hard it really is and often they are stuck in that cycle of poverty.
Thanks, Kristen, and I realize that and tell them that -- and tell them about the cycle of poverty they'll continue by doing that. That this is the time for them to develop themselves, and that only after they do, is it time for them to have a baby. And then, they'll be somebody and they can teach the baby things and take care of it -- in an intact family, which is the way you give a kid the best shot in the world.
I love doing these talks -- I can see right then and there that I'm having an impact. Some kids don't pay attention, but most do, and they ask a lot of questions. I'm very open that "I'm not so great" -- meaning that I'm not from a rich family with connections (I got my job at a New York ad agency by trying to sneak in and failing and then waiting outside for somebody important looking to walk out, then giving a guy my funny and original resume -- a handwriting "analysis" of my name with funny stuff on it relating to what I had done and could do -- and only then did I get an interview...after all my letters to the head of production had been ignored. I'd wanted to go to grad film school, but my parents thought that the idea that they'd pay for me to watch a bunch of movies, which was how they perceived it, was just HILARIOUS. "Go to the movie theater if you want to see movies!" my mother said. "And then think about them afterward. Even write yourself a paper!"
Also, I tell the kids I have some problems (like ADHD) and I have to compensate for them. I show them how I do -- with a picture of me at LA Times Festival of Books moderating a panel of authors. Because ADHD causes issues with organization of large amounts of information (for me, anyway) reading four books and prepping questions was a challenge.
I told the kids that most moderators just read the books and write down a list of questions from their heads. I had, like, 10 pages of notes and questions. I showed the kids how, contrasting the shot of me looking like Miss Polished Presenter, at 6 a.m. that morning, I had hundreds of cut-up strips of paper on my carpet which I was taping together...and Lucy was walking through them messing it all up (I have a picture of this, which I show them). The point, once again: "I'm not so great -- I'm not the smartest person out there or the most talented, but I work harder than people who are probably smarter and more talented than I am, and that's how I go places."
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2009 6:55 AM
"I'm not so great -- I'm not the smartest person out there or the most talented, but I work harder than people who are probably smarter and more talented than I am, and that's how I go places."
Ahhh, but how many of those who are smarter or more talented would spend their free time helping kids understand and learn and show them what you've done to become successful? Not many! You are great! Maybe it's the measurement that is off!
And as for Poizner, I guess if you didn't go to school to learn how to indoctronate youth with propoganda, someone with his resume might be considered a threat to the system. Because kids might actually learn something valuable, ya know?
Feebie at September 13, 2009 10:56 AM
One of my father's really dear friends sat me down on time and told me "You wonder why they don't teach kids anything of value in school anymore - it's because smart people will ask the right questions, and will expect the right answers in return".
Right now it would seem all they really want out of kids is compliance.
Feebie at September 13, 2009 11:15 AM
I guess its sadly not a surprise. I tried to volunteer as a free tutor at the local elementary school. I have an engineering degree from an ABET University, and being in the nuclear power side of the Navy, I figured I'd be a shoe-in for a math/science tutor. I was told I couldn't do it because I wasn't certified.
I guess engineers are only smart enough to build buildings and circuits, not teach.
Why not start at a private school, so that the program gets off the ground? It would be horrible to see something like this die.
Ryan at September 13, 2009 11:33 AM
Looking back, the basic information I learned in school could have been completed in a year or two. I taught myself how to read (in 3 languages). I would sneak books under my desk which I would secretly read while teachers were conducting lessons about subjects I had already learned on my own, or things that were painfully uninteresting to me. I loved math, it made sense and any questions I had would be answered by my dad, an aircraft engineer. What a horrible waste of years!
It seems to me that a lot of time in school is spent getting children to conform and become good followers who don't do much thinking. The dullness of mind that results doesn't even make for good employees. What's the point?
Marina at September 13, 2009 11:34 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/09/13/the_stupidest_p.html#comment-1667458">comment from RyanWhy not start at a private school, so that the program gets off the ground? It would be horrible to see something like this die
Thanks, Ryan, but private schools in Los Angeles have a different kind of kid. I'm talking to kids who get bused in from bad neighborhoods to University High. I learned my lesson - just keep going through the teacher. I just talked to her and she said September's a bit bad (reorganization of something or other at the school), but she knows I'm eager to start again and will book me in. I just can't do it officially or it becomes some big problem, as with all the others who've tried volunteer.
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2009 11:46 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/09/13/the_stupidest_p.html#comment-1667459">comment from MarinaLooking back, the basic information I learned in school could have been completed in a year or two. I taught myself how to read (in 3 languages). I would sneak books under my desk which I would secretly read while teachers were conducting lessons about subjects I had already learned on my own, or things that were painfully uninteresting to me.
That was my experience, too, Marina. And I read very, very fast, and my mother had to go tell my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Ramsey, that when I said I'd finished reading the history chapter, I actually had read it, not just flopped to the last page.
I barely did a night's homework in 12 years of grade school through high school, and I got an internship at the NBC station in Detroit in my senior year in high school, and then skipped the two days a week I was supposed to be in school, turned in papers at the end of the year, and got As.
Meanwhile, these days, I study my ass off -- just as I did back then, but not on the school assignments directed to people with a fourth-grade reading level who happened to be in high school. I'll sometimes read 10 studies for a particular column -- a slow process, since I didn't take stats in college, and often have to turn to Stats For Utter Fucking Morons (or a book with some title along those lines) orBiostatistics: The Bare Essentials, recommended by my prof friend, Catherine Salmon, to read the studies properly.
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2009 11:52 AM
My all time "favourite" story about how insane union mentality has become in schools is this: A good friend of mine, Sharon, sent her daughter to a public elementary school in Metro Vancouver. A few years her daughter and her classmates embarked on a class project to grow a little vegetable garden outside their classroom window. A while later the powers at be discovered the garden and dug it up, citing that such "landscaping" work was not done by union members and thus was not permitted. The little kids were devastated. The parents raised holy hell but the garden was never reinstated.
That, my friends, is the Leftist mindset at work.
Robert W. (Vancouver) at September 13, 2009 12:38 PM
Amy, my first semester at USC, I took a statistics course. It was part of the general education requirements, and I figured I'd get it over with so I didn't have to spend the next few years dreading it. To my surprise, it turned out to be one of my favorite classes. All these years later, I still use the information I learned in a book I read for the class. It is called How to Lie with Statistics. I don't know if it's still in print, but if it is, I highly recommend it. It's a slim book, as I recall, not more than an afternoon of reading.
Marina at September 13, 2009 12:55 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/09/13/the_stupidest_p.html#comment-1667466">comment from MarinaThanks so much, Marina. Found it here: How to Lie with Statistics. Going to get it as soon as I finish writing this comment.
It also sounds right up my alley. An epidemiologist friend is constantly showing me how to spot biases and shoddy methodology (and outright dishonesty) in research. Typical of the stuff he sends me is this piece, which I have in this month's pile of stuff to read:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/jul20_3/b2680
"How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network," by Steven A Greenberg, associate professor of neurology. I think you can read it without a subscription at that link. I think I pulled it right from there (he'll send me studies I can't get without a subscription).
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2009 1:21 PM
Trying to help? Without compensation?
No good deed goes unpunished... .
Jay R at September 13, 2009 1:23 PM
You're welcome, Amy! :) And now, I need to dig up my copy because I want to re-read it.
Your point about not studying through school brought back an experiment I conducted in 12th grade. My parents had enrolled me in a private high school, whose only advantage over public school was the lack of gang violence. We didn't even have proper P.E. classes, and the teachers for the most part were of very low quality.
In my World History class, the teacher would take his seat at his desk, open up his notebook and read his lecture, looking up only when the bell rang to signal the end of class. There were no discussions. If one were to raise one's hand to ask a question, it would not be noticed, not by the teacher, nor by the other students. Everyone was furiously taking notes, as he required that our notes match his lecture exactly. So, for one of the tests, I decided that I would memorize the lectures, word for word, and regurgitate them on the answer sheet. Wanna guess what my grade was?
Marina at September 13, 2009 1:56 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/09/13/the_stupidest_p.html#comment-1667474">comment from MarinaHow disgusting.
Schools' first mission should be to teach kids to think -- to reason. I so often get letters from kids who haven't the slightest clue of how to think for themselves and have no values or standards to go by in making choices for themselves.
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2009 1:59 PM
"So, for one of the tests, I decided that I would memorize the lectures, word for word, and regurgitate them on the answer sheet. Wanna guess what my grade was?"
This is maddening! This was the ONLY way I could pass a class - and then later, I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to think for myself.
Feebie at September 13, 2009 2:07 PM
Amy, I took a look at the article in your link. Very interesting, I will dig into it tonight, when I'm done working.
To your point, and Feebie's, many of my piano students, when they first begin studying with me, have not a clue how to use reason to answer a question. Some are quite adept at storing direct information and giving it back to me, but then, to take the next step and figure out an answer based upon the information, seems to require a huge mental leap which is foreign to them.
Marina at September 13, 2009 2:36 PM
I trust you've all made the connection between nightmares in education and nightmares in healthcare?
In both cases, and in fact in all cases in life, the issue isn't really one of private vs. public but rather a matter of accountability vs. unaccountability. When most human beings are unaccountable - can do whatever they want or don't want - and there are few to no repercussions for poor performance, then the system breaks down and fails.
My qualms with most public sector institutions aren't because they're run by the government but rather because the employees within usually have a job for life no matter how shoddy their work is.
The fact that Californians haven't demanded a complete overhaul of their public school system long ago is an indication of how powerless the average person feels against powerful unions in bed with politicians.
Robert W. (Vancouver) at September 13, 2009 2:38 PM
I have talked to a couple of teachers at a couple of local inner city schools.
Here is what I have surmised and the teachers agree.
Many people had kids they never really wanted ( aka welfare children).
The parents never valued an education and they certainly don't teach their kids to value an education.( I'm speaking in generalities).
Their kids misbehave at the public school but short of using a deadly weapon at school you can't kick the bad kids out.
The parents deny their kids did anything wrong and threaten to sue schools that want to expel their kid.
It's not that they think their kid is not misbehaving it's just that they don't want to watch them and be resposible for them, so they dump the responsibility on the school.
The teachers feel, if I have to get paid for teaching under these conditiond, I might as well get paid for this shit. Thus the reason the teachers union is so strong.
The teachers unions always plead for more money because people think more money translates to a better education. This is emphatically not true. Some of the school districts with the highest dropout rates and poorest test scores get the most money. Washington D.C. is one example.
If parents don't value an education, and look at the schools as a dumping grounds for someone to be responsible for their kids, thekids won't value an education either.
The poor taxpayer bears the brunt of this as they are always preached to that more money is the answer. Not true. Parents that care about their kids and value an education are the answer.
David M. at September 13, 2009 3:04 PM
I admire Alkon's spirit, but on the other hand, should anyone who wants to be allowed to address public school kids on what they think it takes to "make it."
Shouldn't there be a screening process?
Suppose someone proposed an Alkon-like program, was approved, and then turned out to have a child-molesting past, or to be a Green Jobs guy, like Van Jones. The acrimony would never stop.
And even after screening, surely there has to be a limit on the number of such speakers (I always imagine inner-city kids being mentored to death, given the number of volunteer programs I have read about, or been asked to contribute to).
Kids have curriculums that they should master. How many do-goody programs should be allowed?
The LAUSD strikes me like most LA city-scale public organizations, whether they be the LAPD, or the Community Development Department, or the DWP--just too big and hidebound to be good, despite the best intentions of many.
Most smaller cities seem well-governed, and usually draw good-ish reviews from businesses or citizens, such as Pasadena, Glendale or Culver City.
I submit the problem is not public education, or unions (remember, Alkon loves the unionized Kaiser Permanente and the very, very, very unionized LAPD), but the size of the LAUSD.
Chop the LAUSD up into neighborhoods schools again. Kill the busing (no longer meaningnful).
People seem to like the charter schools, and the elementary school in my area is highly regarded (primarily Hispanic).
Public schools should have the right to expel students, and quickly.
No one should have right to disrupt education. Asian students thrive in the LAUSD. It must be doing a lot right. My next door neighbors sent two daughters to Ivy League schools (Penn and Harvard), and they went through LAUSD.
The LAUSD cannot make good students--only parents and students can make good students.
i-holier-than-thou at September 13, 2009 8:33 PM
Alkon loves the unionized Kaiser Permanente
I got health care that would be affordable over my lifetime. I couldn't care less that it's union because I don't see that having any effect on my care.
Teachers are present when I'm talking and I laid out what I would say to begin with the the teacher who brought me in to begin with.
The program, which has been thought out and planned in great detail, is for speakers to start in the earliest grades and go in once every three months.
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2009 9:54 PM
In 2000 I lived in CA and used Kaiser... $130 a month including dental, $10 copays.
I moved to MA in 2001... $360 a month for my insurance... no dental! $15 copay. Still worth it as they covered my moped accident.
... but I LOVE Kaiser.
I agree that having too many random speakers could get old. I think it would be better to build a curriculum around it, so that kids were also learning math skills while balancing checkbooks and then having an accountant or businessperson come in and speak, and things like that.
When I taught Jr and Sr Highs, it was sometimes annoying to have classes cancelled for special assemblys, especially if there was a test or vacation coming up. There's a lot of material to cover in a year.
I think common sense skills like Amy teachers should be worked into the curriculum.
NicoleK at September 14, 2009 6:11 AM
I'm full of typos today, forgive me.
NicoleK at September 14, 2009 6:12 AM
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