John McCain: A V.O.I.S.E. for Change

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Forget textbooks and handouts. Forget No. 2 pencils. And if you’re looking for curricula for science or English class, you’ll need to go online. At the VOISE Academy, a new high school opening this fall in Chicago, classwork is guided and shaped by the tech tools of the twenty-first century, providing an intriguing glimpse at what schools may look like in the future.

With the help of outside funding, VOISE (Virtual Opportunities Inside a School Environment) will bring the best online education offers to a real-life classroom. Each student will have a wireless-enabled laptop for use at school; those without a PC and Internet access at home will have that provided, too. With tech as the backbone, designers say, VOISE will make learning what it should be: student directed, project based, rigorous, and relevant.

No More Pencils, No More Books: A School of the Future Readies for Launch, Edutopia, Sara Bernard

I almost couldn’t believe my ears when the left press, starting with Mother Jones, pointed out that John McCain considers himself “computer illiterate.” He’s proud of it too, more evidence of his maverick standing.

After nearly eight years of the violent attacks on public schools embodied in the No Child Left Behind fiasco, it’s sickening to think of a president who will simply not understand initiatives like the V.O.I.C.E. Academy.

I think McCain’s willful ignorance is the worst sort of continuity with the Bush regime. Why do these sorts of men keep getting nominated? A very American anti-intellectualism: a fear of knowledge among the powerful.

Our health care system is ruined and Bush simply ignores it, as if the ruin is the point. The same with the housing system and the social welfare system and the trains and the highway and bridges and the public schools.

It’s as if Republican’s decided to apply a little of capitalism’s’ famous creative destruction to selected targets in the public sphere. Piece by piece it all falls. And, just to be sure, nominate leaders who won’t– can’t– notice.

Posted in: Composition, Professional, Writing

Class Writing

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Les Perelman, director of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks the writing test is so bad that he coaches students on how to write abysmal essays, while including words that the College Board likes (“plethora” is key) and to end up with great scores. (The story of one of his successful efforts is here.)

Perelman said that it’s absolutely no surprise that students who do well on the SAT writing test do well in college. The College Board favors the traditional “five paragraph essay” format taught to high school freshmen, and those who are going to succeed in college have generally mastered the format and picked up the various tricks that earn good scores on the essay. (One of Perelman’s students, to show how the scoring favors quotations from famous people, accurate or not, took the test using various quotes that happened to be visible in the testing room, and attributed all of them to Lee Iacocca — and she earned great scores.)

“The writing test is teaching students a lot of bad habits,” said Perelman. “It’s real predictive value, in terms of writing, is nil.”

Scott Jaschik, The New SAT: Longer, but No Better?

It’s hard to believe that the standardized test still exists, especially for college entrance exams. They are rooted in eugenicists’ attempts to prove racial superiority and have long been implicated in a kind of racial and class profiling. Even the testers themselves have given up the game, admitting that high school grades are better at predicting college grades.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Economics, Language

Education and Class

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Phrasing class-talk in terms of job types or income sits well with the American discomfort with class-differentiation. Putting people into classes seems like it’s defining who they are, whereas defining them in terms of job describes what they do and defining them in terms of income is by what they are getting. Doing and getting are activities, and activities are changeable. Being is a state, and more time-stable (a term from linguist Talmy Givón), and therefore perceived as less inherently changeable. If you’re uncomfortable with describing someone as being something, a solution is to describe them as doing something or having something done to them. This fits with the American notion of equality of opportunity. We know we’re not all equal–and identifying people by their job or income acknowledges this. But by identifying people by what they get and do, there’s an implicit suggestion that they could have taken other opportunities and had better jobs with better pay. Or that they didn’t have the skills or talents [or connections] necessary to make the most of the opportunities presented to them–but in a culture in which we tell children that “anyone can grow up to be President”***, we tend to gloss over the things that make ‘equality of opportunity’ an unachievable myth.

Separated by a Common Language, Thursday, April 03, 2008

I’ve had one of those busy months that don’t allow me much time for reading around the blogs I enjoy. I missed this wonderfully complex post on Separated by a Common Language, for example. It was brought to my attention by the Education and Class blog, on May Day.

I am always trying to talk about class in academic settings and it’s always frustrating. If you talk about it in terms of anyone outside of academia you get a positive reception. Everyone agrees that poverty is unjust, education should be more accessible, the wealthy are often selfish and self-serving.

The trouble starts when you begin trying to understand class within the higher education system. The white elephant in the room is not simply the role higher education plays in maintaining inequity in the society at large, it’s the shocking inequities embodied in the system itself.

What’s rarely acknowledged is the way a very organic self-interest stands in the way of any substantive discussions of class inequity in higher education. At conferences, for example, you quickly notice that the professional conversation is dominated by professors at research one institutions.

It makes sense, given that they are the ones who have the time and support to write the articles and prepare the presentations that earn social capital. It also makes sense that they are going to be the least likely to acknowledge, must less challenge, their own remarkable privileges.

I think what higher education has to begin to talk about is the way it has long distributed resources unequally, giving the most to those who already have the most, at private and research institutions, and the least to those who have the least, at two-year and community colleges, to cite only the most obvious examples.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Economics, Language, Professional

Writing, Technology and Teens

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Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.

Family, Friends & Community: Writing, Technology, and Teens

The perennial cliche in computers and writing is that ‘the kids’ know more about technology than we do. I always thought that was a little odd, coming from professionals who spent their lives studying technology.

In any case, what is more true is that the kids have a different sense of technology, and often different technologies, than their professors, at least if there is a great enough age difference. That became clear several years ago when cell phones and texting hit the U.S.

In the academic world we had been all excited (some still are, oddly) about instant messaging. Meanwhile, right in front of our eyes the kids shifted away from email and towards their cell phones. They will likely never know what P.D.A. stands for, much less use one.

It may or may not be generational but the Pew Report suggests that the gap is growing on both sides. In some ways it just makes sense. College students don’t like the same music that I do, at least in most cases, so why should they favor the same communication technologies?

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Language