Thursday, March 10, 2011
Rock Hill High Band of Distinction BBQ
Friday, March 18th 11:00 am-7:00 pm & Saturday, March 19th 11:00 am- 1:00 pm at Hopewell 1571 S Anderson Road, Rock Hill, SC.
Pork BBQ plates and ½ Chicken plates for $7.00 per plate.
Plates will include BBQ, slaw, beans, & roll.
Pork BBQ by the pound for $8.00 will be available at the door!
Limited delivery is available for 10+ orders if the order is received by 4:00pm on Wednesday, March 10th.
Please contact Joe Gulledge @ jgulledg@rock-hill.k12.sc.us to set-up your order.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
A Continuing Discussion
I get comments from folks of my generation about how education isn't as good as it was in their day. I tell them it is different, that education now covers more areas than before, and a student today has more opportunities than the "Good Ole Days". That contrary to what you might read or hear, the numbers show that education is better today than in their time. But parents actually have to take a more active role to ensure their child gets the maximum out of education today. The "Good Ole Days" didn't have the options - you either were preparing for college or work. A parent could put their child in one tract or the other and could expect a certain outcome. Now the college tract has several outcomes - and - unfortunately - CP, or College Prep shouldn't be one of them. Entrance to college is tougher now and requires a tougher course load to ensure being able to get in to their school of choice. As for the work option? The jobs students could expect to get out of high school no longer exist. Most jobs require more skills than in the "Good Ole Days". The student can start getting those skills in high school, or plan on getting them in a Tech school. The world of today requires more, demands more. Which drives discussion similar to the one below.
A post from Education Week:
The Ghost of Schooling Past
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. Einstein
The excellent essayist Nancy Gibbs explores the theme of revolution vs. reformation in a recent issue of Time magazine, comparing our national drive to lead global progress (our most important product, as Ronald Reagan would have said ) with our periodic spasms of nostalgia for a better, more satisfying past. Gibbs notes that Sarah Palin, master of the "cross-platform political-celebrity mashup" has exploited this idea, publicly calling for "not transformation, but restoration...we already feel (it) emerging across America."
Hmmph. Thinking back over the last half-century, wherein I have been a student, teacher and up-close observer of education in American, there isn't much I would want to "restore." A lot of our collective rosy memory about schooling in the past--from those happy days at Oak Street Elementary to pulling all-nighters at State U to get research papers done--belongs to a relatively small subset of privileged Americans, anyway. Our impression of how schools used to be--better, right?--doesn't have much to do with challenging, engaging academic study, strengthening the national economy or democratic equality.
My husband attended a well-regarded Catholic academy in the Detroit suburbs. He and his former schoolmates still share comical (to them) stories of Sister Victorine brutally humiliating fifth graders whose parents she didn't care for--or reminisce about third grade, 1956, when there were 50 boys in a single classroom, crammed into a windowless, subterranean cement rectangle under the nave, taught by the intrepid Sister Joseph Marion. None of this is worth cherishing--or restoring.
Most of the students at this school went on to professional careers, becoming upstanding citizens and contributors to society. It wasn't Sister Victorine's inspired teaching (or ruler on the knuckles) that made them smart and industrious, however; it had more to do with the fact that their mothers were using powdered milk to save money for their tuition. Parents believed that a good education (in public school communities as well as private schools) was an investment that would lead to a better world--not just economic success for their children, but a hope that education might lead to solutions to our most persistent and difficult problems. Progress.
What were our thorniest dilemmas in 1956, the ones that only progress could address? War. Injustice. Poverty and inequity. Disease. Global unrest. Ignorance.
Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in 1843. In the most terrifying scene, the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the children of mankind--Ignorance and Want--hiding under his robes. Of the two, he says, we must be most afraid of Ignorance.
I'm not perceiving a lot of progress here, across decades, or even centuries, around the idea of education or enlightening literature leading us toward that shining ideal of progress, the eradication of ignorance and tackling intractable problems. Especially when "inspirational" media of modern times suggests that the best way to address injustice, inequity, and ignorance is not transformation but restoration: schools with desks in straight rows, plaid jumpers and school ties, textbooks, homework and--God help us--competitive admission via lotteries.
The problem is that we don't have a new and compelling national vision of Schooling Yet to Come. Other nations have rebuilt--transformed--their education systems to fit ideals of equity and opportunity. The Bolder, Broader task force outlined a potential plan. We don't need more technology. We need new leadership. And we need to address the festering sore at the center of our inability to fix American schools: education will not substantially improve unless we simultaneously address the dangerous gap between haves and have-nots.
We have not yet bent the legendary American will and can-do spirit around the eradication of ignorance. We're stuck with longing for the good old days that never were.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Another View
Which brings me to this post, South Carolina's junior senator, Jim DeMint, has a video (posted below) making the rounds in favor of school choice. There really isn't anything new in there (in fact, this one might be more fair than most), but you should watch the video and form your own opinion. While you watch, you will hear:
- Senator DeMint say that private schools cost half as much per student as public schools because of government regulations forced on public schools. You should support choice because it saves tax payer dollars. The implication being those regulations are bad. Wouldn't we save a lot more money by eliminating government regulations for all students (if they are bad regulations)? Where is the Senator on this?
- You will hear that private schools have more innovative ideas and better address the different learning styles that all children have. Ask yourself, what are those ideas and learning techniques and are you sure they are not available in the public schools?
- You will hear that private schools get more parent involvement and are more responsive to parent's needs. What are these schools doing and why can't public schools do them as well?
- Without the same academic accountability that public schools are required to have, how will parents know the academic quality of their private school? How will you, the tax payer, know your taxes are being well spent (either as a voucher or tax credit).
- What will prevent a re segregation of schools by economic class, if not by race. Would this be good for America if it happens?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
