Teachers with Guns

Classes have begun in a school where teachers are allowed to carry guns. As some may have read about a few months ago, a small Texas School District has allowed teachers to carry concealed weapons beginning this school year (Reuters reported on this in August of this year). 

 

The Texas School District justified their actions by saying that they were keeping the school safe and further that this was all "common sense," and parents didn't question them. I'd like to think that for most Americans this isn't common sense. 

 

After my initial shock and horror upon hearing about this,  a lot of questions came up. What have our schools become if this is allowed? What have we made of the teaching profession? And dare I ask, are teacher education programs in Texas going to start a course in weapon training? While for now this is an isolated issue, it has made international headlines, and all over the world there have been instances of school violence from disgruntled students.

If we look to Hegel, Herbart, Dewey and others, we can envision the school as in some way a place for expanding the learner's horizon of thought and experience beyond the immediate realm of their private sphere. 

Perhaps one might argue that a certain amount of safety is needed to enact this vision. But what kind of agreement are we asking students to enter into when they have to come to school all the while knowing that the authority figures may have guns? The threat to stop whispering to your friend in the back of the class, or not to criticize your teacher's beliefs becomes that much more serious when the teacher says, "stop acting up (and by the way I have a gun!)".

Honey, who's watching the kids?

If you search "surveillance in schools" in Google News you'll find that more and more districts across the country are turning to video surveillance to monitor student and teacher activity in schools, including in some cases in elementary schools. And it seems that it is not just security experts who can watch the live and recorded footage, but also administrators and authorized staff. ( e.g. "Thompson District School Board Oks video cameras and High Schools upgrade security camera access )

As NPR reported today, many cities are now using planned wireless networks to link hundreds of surveillance cameras that create greater opportunities for monitoring in areas all over the city, including in public schools as is the case in Chicago. However, as the article also states there is high potential for abuse of surveillance material. The ACLU reported that “video surveillance systems lack an adequate system of checks and balances” and in Privacy International’s 2007 report “the U.S. ranked worst country in the democratic world when it comes to putting laws on the books to protect privacy and enforcing them.” See full article: Cities gone Wireless: Safety or Surveillance? 

Will surveillance and privacy be an issue in the upcoming election? Who is protecting the right to privacy of those young people who can’t yet vote?

The Kings of New York

The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Genuises Who Make Up America's Top HighSchool Chess Team by Michael Weinreb should interest all progressive educators and members of the John Dewey society.

The Kings is a profile of the national championship winning chess dynasty at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, New York. Murrow is a magnet school for gifted kids that provides a lot of protected space for its students to 'do their own thing'. The founding principal, Saul Bruckner, transferred to Murrow from John Dewey High School in Coney Island, a school with a project-based curriculum, where the students did not receive grades. Murrow went even further in the 'progressive school' mode, providing lots of free time by having each class meet only four days a week and looking the other way if kids hung out in the school yard or smoked in the bathroom, or even cut classes for weeks on end. As the principal of this school for its first thirty years, Bruckner became something of a cult figure in New York high school circles. Surprisingly, Diane Ravitch has praised the school, perhaps because of the great achievements of many of its students.

The chess coach, Elliot Weiss, had a scouting system for chess talent that makes major league sports look, well, minor league. By placing himself on the board of the organization running chess tournaments in the New York region, he had early notice of promising elementary school kids. And even though competition for admission to Murow was very stiff, Weiss could get these kids into Murrow even if their academic performance through Junior High was terrible. And chess prodigies, obsessed by the game, are notoriously poor school students.

An organization called Chess in the Schools (CIS) had funded chess instruction at several New York elementary and middle schools, and one, PS 318, had become a chess dynasty because its instructors were high ranked master players. 318 became, in effect, the farm team for Murrow.

Kings chronicles a couple of years in the life of the team members as they pursue their national championships. The players include Russian and Lithuanian immigrants, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, and African-Americans. Each is a kind of troubled genius with a fascinating life story.

What stands out is how a considerable number of selfless heros (I do not use this word lightly) including Bruckner, Weiss, the funders of Chess in the Schools, the chess instructors, and a few private benefactors, made this incredible story possible.

Even when you add up how much they all had to give in time and effort and money so that a bunch of misfit geniuses could develop their unusual natural gifts, however, you realize that a rich country like this could provide something as wonderful for everyone needing it and capable of gaining from it. If, that is, the entire culture were not so slanted to selfishness and greed and if accountability schemes would stop driving them out and destroying schools like Murrow.

The book documents the steady changes in Murrow school brought about by No Child Left Behind, as well as by draconian school security measures imposed by the Bloomburg administration that have eliminated free time, hanging out, and cutting classes.

Draconian Measures Against Student Anti-War Protesters

Walter Feinberg Sends along the following:

High school is a fertile recruiting ground for the military, yet high schools often neglect to engage students in serious discussions of pacificism, the principles of just warfare or acceptable and unacceptable behavior of soldiers in time of war. While many districts have little difficulty with military recruiters on campus many are reluctant to allow peace activist to provide a counter message.

In one school, Morton West High School in Berwyn, IL (a suburb of Chicago)over 37 school students face either expulsion or suspension over an Antiwar Sit in on November 1, 2007.

The Superintendent has refused to back down as of this writing. Hence instead of teaching students about their right as citizens to protest, the school has decided to take the most Draconian measures available against a group of peacefully protesting students.

The failure to teach students about their basis responsibilities in times of war is a professional failing on the part of teachers and administrators. Soldiers and civilians in Iraq have paid a high price for this neglect. There is a need for professional and educational bodies to establish clear standards that can protect students' basic rights. There is also a need for those students who are inclined to enlist in the military to understand what international standards of behavior will and will not permit.

Those interested in the Morton West High School case can call or write.

Dr. Ben Nowakowski, Superintendent
District 201
2423 South Austin, Cicero, IL 60804
bnowakowski@jsmorton.org
(708) 222-5702

Mr. Lucas, Principal
Morton West High School
2400 S. Home Ave.
Berwyn, IL 60402
jlucas@west.jsmorton.org
708-222-5901