Whatever happened to those Québec student protests?

It's been a while since the rest of the world heard much about the Québec student protests. After a spring filled with hundred-thousand strong marches, things have died down considerably. There are very few protests in the streets, and hardly anyone is banging on pots.

Given this relative tranquillity, one would think that the issue had been resolved. This, however, is far from being the case. The government and the students never managed to negotiate an agreement, and the legal challenges to Law 78 (which severely restricted the right to protest) are ongoing. So if the disagreements are still outstanding, why is everything so quiet?

"What Really Matters is the Quality of Teaching": Gender Balance and Primary Education

Over on the IOE London blog, Director Chis Husbands has recently contributed an account of some of the economic and historical reasons why the number of male primary teachers in some European countries is so low. He also explains why we have good reason to think that this number will improve into the future.

As a former primary school teacher, I found his analysis pretty spot on - I fell into primary school teaching after training to be a high school teacher. We were always told that high school teaching was "serious" business, while primary work is an extension of daycare. I see that this is no longer the case, of course, and in many respects my primary teaching years have comprised some of the best and most fulfilling work I have had the opportunity to engage in. I only wish I had gotten that message earlier in my teaching career.

The comment that seemed to have gotten the most attention, however, is Husband's concluding remark:

There is a recurring concern about the absence of men in primary schools, and the claimed lack of role models for boys. The evidence on the importance of gender role models in primary school is mixed. It’s important, for all sorts of reasons, that public service professions are not gendered. But in the classroom, what really matters is the quality of teaching.

Is the quality of a teacher's practice and the role modelling of gender entirety separable issues? Even if gender does in fact have little demonstrable impact on individual educational attainment, might an educational environment defined by great gender balance contribute to the educational process in other important ways?

Another great article on for-profit colleges

Check it out in The Village Voice...

Penn State? Who created the darkness?

If someone commits evil under cover of darkness, whom shall we punish? The one who commits the evil or the ones who create the darkness?

(The above is a "remembered quote" rattling around in my head. However, I can remember neither the source of the quote nor the exact wording. I apologize for my failing memory, but the point is still worth a bit of meditation.)

It occurs to me that this thought applies equally well to the Sandusky/Paterno/Penn State saga as it does to the Aurora massacre. That there were small children present for the premier of "The Dark Knight Rises" and that we put guns in the hands of a young man who is clearly mentally ill (perhaps sent over the cliff into insanity by the last iteration of the Dark Knight -- think Heath Ledger) implicates all of us in a tragedy beyond measure. We created the darkness that covered James Holmes.

But this morning as talk radio (not just sports radio) is bloated with bloviation about the NCAA sanctions, my mind is on the multiple layers of darkness with a common epicenter in Happy Valley. I have been concerned for months that the legal and institutional responses to this travesty render a clear judgment that the behavior of Sandusky, Paterno, Spanier, et al. (including Jay Paterno and Mrs. Paterno and Mrs. Sandusky) was not in any way acceptable. I have also been concerned that those responses be constructive: making the victims whole by acknowledging the complexity of their experience for which they were and are not responsible, and ensuring that this could not happen again. In other words, I have been concerned that we would lift the multiple veils of darkness.

The Freeh Commission began the process.
1) Joe Paterno was only human. He was gloriously talented and accomplished and so very sadly flawed. (He was also aging. Does anybody seriously think that his judgment was not compromised as other problems -- players in legal trouble remaining on the team, for example -- emerged in a program that had once been squeaky clean? Who is responsible for failing to level with Mr. Paterno about his own failings? His son, Jay, perhaps? The Board of Trustees, unquestionably. The PSU alumni? You bet. By the way, Graham Spanier is not responsible for this layer of darkness .... He tried to save Joe from himself.)
2) The Board of Trustees supported the deification of one man, failing to fulfill their own responsibility to the well-being of all young people.
3) The administration of the university owed their jobs to Joe. They could not or would not challenge him.
4) Major college athletics dominates decision-making in universities around the country.

But there are more layers of darkness that have to be exposed:

5) Penn State fans pass their season tickets down from generation to generation constructing and legitimizing a cult that is impenetrable. This is why the university could announce a hike in football ticket prices this week in advance of the NCAA's announced sanctions.
6) The legislature in Pennsylvania (and legislatures throughout the country) have been cutting state aid to public and publicly-supported higher education for decades. Penn State, a land grant institution, has had subsidies cut to the bone. At the same time, there is significant political pressure to keep tuition affordable. In that fiscal stranglehold, the Board of Trustees understandably supports the care and feeding of the "golden calf" that at Penn State really did subsidize the academic side of the ledger. (So when Governor Tom Corbett gets up and says that no taxpayer money will go into paying the $60 million dollar fine the NCAA has levied, he is either terribly stupid or wildly hypocritical -- and frankly, the evidence suggests both. If it's football ticket money that pays for this, then there will be less football money to subsidize academics ... and tuition will rise and/or program quality be cut. The citizens of Pennsylvania will pay.)
7) As a community, writ large and writ local, we have failed to understand the meaning of responsibility. A Penn State employee told me that "insurance" would pay for law suit settlements, etc. Anybody who ever claimed insurance compensation knows that this is nonsense. A claim (whether to an insurance trust or a self-insurance fund) has to be recouped and replenished. There is no free ride. But the point of responsibility is not retrospective punishment -- as emotionally satisfying as that may seem in the moment. The point of responsibility is prospective. Who are we going forward? What does "We are Penn State!" mean? What will it mean tomorrow and tomorrow?

For the most part, the University has been remarkably good about taking responsibility for its role in creating the darkness that gave Jerry Sandusky cover and that allowed Paterno et al. to keep the lights off. But others are not. I just heard Franco Harris on the radio (Franco Harris whom I have always admired as an athlete) saying that this hasn't played out yet and the Freeh report is just one source of evidence. Oh, please, Franco ...

The NCAA has come up with a ridiculous set of sanctions that will allow all the other NCAA Division I schools where all sorts of "evil" (sexual harassment, rape, academic corner-cutting, misuse of young athletes) are being covered up under cover of a related darkness. And I suspect they have done so in order to label Penn State as the source of the evil and to cloak themselves in a cover of "light."

They didn't have to take away fourteen years worth of victories ... just two victories would have cleared the way for Grambling's Eddie Robinson. (Or do they truly have a gallows sense of humor, establishing Mike McQueary as the last successful Penn State quarterback??)

I am more concerned about what the NCAA did not do. Yes, they have punished Penn State severely, making it likely that education will cost more. But in the process of punishing just Penn State, they have made it seem that only they are the transgressors ... when it is we who have created the darkness.

[Postscript: If I were the Queen, I would have required that a statement be read at the start of every NCAA event (and printed on all tickets) at every school for a period of three years minimum saying something like: "We in the NCAA are committed to the prevention of child sexual abuse and every other kind of human abuse and harassment (physical, sexual, emotional, psychological) and we pledge to bring such abuse and harassment to light. What happened at Penn State and Syracuse and -- we acknowledge -- in other forms in other NCAA institutions, will not happen again." And then I would leave the financial and juridical consequences of all this to the courts.]

[Post- postscript: Would somebody please tell Jay Paterno to stop whining?]

John Dewey and His Continued Relevance

I have a new book out this month and after having the manuscript out of my hands with the publisher for a while now, I sat down to flip through it. The book is about how to develop good citizenship skills in school children, especially the ability to speak out in political dissent, given recent shifts in American democratic practice following open protests in our streets promoted most notably by the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. When looking back at the book, I was reminded at the outset of chapter 1 of a debate I had with myself about John Dewey and his relevance today.

Like many other authors, I decided to start the book with a quote. I had an array of suitable lines at the ready, most by political leaders. Yet I found myself coming back again and again to a quote by Dewey. Despite being from 1922, I was surprised at its continued pertinence to life in US schools and society. Ringing in the back of my mind were words spoken partially in jest and partially in sincerity by a dear member of my doctoral committee when I decided to write my dissertation on Dewey several years ago: “get over Dewey.” While herself enamored with many of Dewey’s ideas, I had wondered if perhaps she was right; maybe it was time to move on to someone new or different. Yet I just can’t seem to do it. I continue to find such rich insight in Dewey, such careful assessment of context that, though many things have changed in our contemporary age, still serves as a model for how to analyze educational contexts today and still rings true in many cases. So, like many others, Dewey opens my book and I’m sure that many others in the future will use his words as well.

And for those who are wondering what those words might be:

“What will happen if teachers become sufficiently courageous and emancipated to insist that education means the creation of a discriminating mind, a mind that prefers not to dupe itself or to be the dupe of others? Clearly they will have to cultivate the habit of suspended judgment, of scepticism, of desire for evidence, of appeal to observation rather than sentiment, discussion rather than bias, inquiry rather than conventional idealizations. When this happens schools will be the dangerous outposts of a humane civilization. But they will also begin to be supremely interesting places. For it will then have come about that education and politics are one and the same thing because politics will have to be in fact what it now pretends to be, the intelligent management of social affairs.” Education as Politics, 1922, p. 141

Democratic Culture and the Culture of Fear

I have just published a new op/ed style essay, Democratic Culture and the Culture of Fear, on the recent protests in Québec. It's part of the second volume of a special rush issue of the Journal of Mobile Media. It's available here, along with many other interesting articles on the same theme.

Making an Educational Statement!

Many individuals in and outside the educational profession are aware of the rising drop-out rate of students. We have heard and discussed educational reform, but do we really "see" the importance/need for finding ways to reach students in our ever-changing society? One such organization, SS&K, has taken the initiative to visually demonstrate what 857 students dropping out of high school every single hour, every single school day in the United States looks like. As Adam Hollander, the person responsible for the desk display stated, "We now live in a very visual culture. Now, you have to see it to believe it. Everybody hears that 857 number, but it doesn't really mean anything until you're able to see it." The visual statement was made with the goal of calling attention to the urgency for educational change in our society. Will 857 desks on the National Mall make a difference? Yes, no, maybe so . . . While such a demonstration may not give steps/directions for movement, it definitely calls attention to how fast our high school students are fleeing classrooms.  


857 Empty Desks

What’s in a Zero? Policy-Borrowing and Bad Ideas?

The 'no-zero' policy - the idea that teacher's cannot assign students a zero for incomplete assignments - has just celebrated it's first anniversary in Newfoundland and Labrador's Eastern School District. Along with some recent controversies in Western Canada over the suspension of teachers that have allegedly refuse to follow a similar policy has come some renewed media attention on the policy.

You can hear a short audio report of how the policy has been received in Newfoundland by students, teachers and parents here. Some think that the policy ensures that the assessment of learning is treated separately from discipline. Other feels that the policy teaches children that there are few consequences for not meeting deadlines.

The topic is an interesting one in it's own right, but as a recent editorial in the Evening Telegram points out, this is also a good example of ‘policy-borrowing’ or policy-exporting - the spread of educational polices from large centers to small ones. The no-zero policy in the Eastern School District is thought to be at least partly inspired by an Ontario policy directive that “teachers separate their evaluation of students’ work from their evaluation of students’ behaviour“. Smaller school districts do not have the same resources as larger centers. Perhaps policy-borrowing represent an attempt to 'keep-up' or appear 'cutting edge'?

I’m sure there are other influences. But it’s worth wondering about how districts decide what polices are worth importing, and equally, what assumptions about teaching and learning are underwriting the policies that are brought in. Like introducing and foreign species, or bad fashion trends, policy-borrowing can have unintended consequences.

What was he thinking?! Montreal teacher shows murder video to his students

Some of you may have heard that Montreal was recently gripped by the horrifying killing of a Chinese student, Jun Lin. This person, the notoriety of whom we do not need to increase by mentionning his name, filmed the whole thing, and the video somehow became available on the web.

Normally, I wouldn't write about this, since it has nothing to do with education. But in a bizarre development, a Montreal 10th grade History and Citizenship teacher apparently decided to show this murder video to his students! He was, not surprisingly, suspended on the spot. Patrick Lagace has broken the story in La Presse, and CBC now has the full story (in English) here.

Interestingly, CBC tells us that the teacher asked the students to vote on whether they wanted to see the video, and they decided (via secret ballot) that they wanted to see it. This was, to say the least, a major error in classroom democracy.

This is probably the strangest education story that I've come upon in a long time. Right now, we have few details, but I will keep you updated as it develops.

Check out this special issue dedicated to the Québec protests...

One of my colleagues at Concordia, Kim Sawchuk, edits Wi, a journal of mobile media. The journal has just published a special issue on the Québec protests (and the repressive Bill 78) that can be found here. There are a number of interesting contributions by students and faculty from Concordia, Mcgill, and Université de Montréal--check them out!