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 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA
 NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 1992


     ~~~~~ TI-101 ~~~~~
     OUR 4/A UNIVERSITY

     by Jack Sughrue
     Box 459
     E.Douglas MA 01516

     [BB&P Editor's note: This is the
 first in a series of articles about
 the 99/4A and public education to be
 initially published in this
 newsletter by Jack Sughrue.  Jack
 teaches third grade.  In the cover
 letter that accompanied this article
 Jack says, "In the future I want to
 explore holism up to the ways
 computers can be used in the class.
 Then I'd like to show the variety of
 ways the TI can be an important part
 of any child's education (and adults,
 too) by giving many specific
 applications through modules, disks,
 and tapes and even combinations of
 all (and not discounting direct
 applications in the form of
 programming)."]

 .CE
     #1 Corpus
     Historical Perspective

     The corpus calosum is that
 wonderful band of billions of nerve
 fibers connecting the hemispheres of
 the brain.  Forty years ago that band
 was surgically severed to
 contain grand mal seizures in
 epileptic patients.
     That was the beginning of a
 profound revolution in education that
 is quietly (though, at times, quite
 noisily) continuing through today.
     Through the massive research done
 since that fateful slice, we, as a
 society, have learned more in the
 past quarter century about how people
 learn than we knew about the subject
 in all the tens of centuries humans
 have considered the process.
    This educational revolution was
 not without its prophets.  John Dewey
 was one.  Today there are many great
 teachers out there operating under
 the umbrellas of "Process Learning,"
 "Open Methodologies," "Whole-brain
 Teaching," "Open Classrooms,"
 "Science/Logic Approach," and
 piles of other names, including
 "Whole Language." The last is
 probably having the most profound
 influence on the real education in
 the English-speaking World as any
 philosophical approach since Horace
 Mann "Manndated" public education in
 America so long ago.  (So long ago
 that we take free, public education
 for all as a given, as an inalienable
 right.)
     But there is a problem.
    (Isn't there always?)
     When the Germans first devised an
 efficient way of organizing a mass
 education in the 19th Century, they
 decided to make  a step-by-step
 system of completing a given body of
 work at a given chronological year of
 a child's life.  Thus, 6-year-olds go
 through a first grade (and an
 artificially-created, adult-generated
 curriculum).  After completing this
 predetermined set of tasks, the child
 turns seven and, if lucky, moves into
 the second grade where another set of
 artificial goals awaits HIM (no
 girls, of course).
     And so on.
     The fact that 7-year-olds are not
 developmentally on the exact step at
 any time (any more than all the
 47-year-olds are) made no difference
 to the people operating this 19th
 Century system.  In order to protect
 the system, an achievement hierarchy
 was developed, which has come down to
 us, unfortunately, even to today in
 too many schools.  It is a system
 that never worked because it created
 an invisible - though profound -
 class system.  The system created a
 society of elitists, of average Dicks
 and Janes, of losers.  The basal
 reader system (unfortunately still in
 place in most American schools)
 requires that the classroom be
 divided into three groups: the good
 readers, the average readers, the
 poor readers (sometimes called
 Bluebirds, Robins, and Snowy Egrets -
 or whatever).  But you know and I
 know that those groups, begun in
 kindergarten and carried all through
 elementary school, created what are
 perceived as the smart snobs, the
 struggling middle class, and the dumb
 (and bad) kids.  By the time official
 tracking takes place in junior high
 (middle school) the system is firmly
 in place.  You'll never guess which
 group has the greatest number of
 dropouts or which group has the
 greatest number of kids who go on to
 advanced degrees (followed by the
 best jobs).  These determinations for
 the most part are made in the primary
 grades in elementary school.
     The same 19th-Century system also
 created a hierarchy of adults.  Prior
 to the institutionalization of
 education the teacher was the most
 important adult in the learning
 process.  After the system overtook
 the world, administrators became the
 most important part of the system.
 This is usually followed by the
 operational staff.  (Go into ANY
 school and see if that institution
 operates around the things that
 secretaries and custodians require
 before all else or whether the
 teachers get top priority. Surprise!)
     In this topsy-turvy setup,
 highly-paid administrators make the
 decisions.  These decisions (from
 administrators operating in an
 entirely separate building from a
 school, believe it or not) are then
 handed down to other adminstrators
 who have offices and secretaries.
 The decisions are then handed down to
 administrators who are in schools
 (principals, which means, by the way
 "first or highest in rank and
 importance").  In secondary schools
 these decisions are usually then
 handed down to department heads.
 Then - possibly - the teachers are
 told.  These are the same teachers
 who adminstrators love to hold
 "accountable," even though they have
 been excluded from the decision
 making.  Doesn't this "accountability
 without authority" have a bit of the
 ring of "taxation without
 representation" about it?
     Generally speaking,
 administrators - who have the most
 opportunity and time to learn about
 all the masses of reseach on how
 children learn - know the least.
 They are divorced from the youngsters
 and from the realities of day-to-day
 education. They don't realize, for
 example, that the clientele has
 changed.  That the students today are
 not made the same way, intellectually
 and emotionally and socially, that
 youngsters 25 years ago were.  That
 the horrors of nuclear war, AIDS,
 street violence, fanatic consumerism,
 drugs, and so on were not part of our
 growing up, of our everyday
 consciousness and reality.  That when
 I was growing up the attention span
 of youngsters in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
 was estimated to be a little over an
 hour; that seven years ago for
 students in K-12 it was 22 minutes;
 that last year for that same group it
 was 10.8 minutes!
     And education is a big - a
 humongous! - business.  Publishers
 determine the curriculum in America
 and sell their goods to
 administrators who foist these
 materials upon the trained classroom
 professionals.  This is a
 multi-billion dollar business and one
 that stomps out any attempt at
 teacher input for better ways of
 doing things in the classroom.  Such
 changes may cause these influential
 profiteers to lose money; influential
 bureaucrats to lose power.
     Millions of Americans sense (even
 if they don't have statistics at
 hand) that something is drastically
 wrong with schools that still use
 19th-Century methods and materials to
 teach 21st-Century life skills and
 that still put profits and political
 power (inside and outside the
 schools) ahead of the education of
 our children.  These parents and
 other friends of pulic education are
 afraid for America, for the Earth.
 For all our children.
     Some parents (former Bluebirds)
 have the lucky financial fortune to
 put their children into expensive
 private schools.  Others have sought
 to find some solace and protection
 from the outside world by placing
 their youngsters in religious schools
 where they hope their own values will
 be inculcated.  Others, who have the
 trained academic and intellectual
 background (like Barry Traver) teach
 their children at home.  The vast
 majority of us parents are, however,
 just working class stiffs who want
 and expect public education to do its
 job by our kids.

     But, wait a minute!
     Aren't we the same society that
 put a man on the Moon just because
 Jack Kennedy set us that national
 goal?  Didn't we (not England, not
 Chile, not Russia, not China, not
 Iraq) send those Voyager spacecraft
 out into the wilderness of our Solar
 System? Aren't we the country with
 the most Nobel winners?
     But those achievements all
 stemmed from a society that prized
 education. Weren't these and most of
 the other masterful achievements of
 our nation developed during a high
 level of caring for our youngsters
 (our future), and of developing a
 liberal climate of risk-taking and
 experimentation?
     What has happened since Nixon's
 Presidency to change all this?  In
 spite of the lip service given to
 education by our recent Presidents,
 the State of the Union,
 educationally, has regressed
 catastrophically following the
 Kennedy/Johnson Era.  And, because
 federal and state programs to assist
 and enhance the education of our
 nation's greatest resource - it's
 children - has virtually dried up and
 property taxes are the primary source
 of funding education, teacher bashing
 has become a national pastime.
 Blaming the teachers (the lower paid
 members of the staff who are not
 allowed to make important educational
 decisions nor even to give input in
 most cases) is like blaming the
 production line worker for the stupid
 concepts American car manufacturers
 have been promulgating.  As a matter
 of fact, it is an interesting
 solution on the part of these rich
 conservatives to save American
 business (and, thus, America) by
 laying off the workers, as if they in
 some way were to blame for the
 decision-makers' gross and blatant
 stupidities.
     That, of course, is another
 story.
     There is a revolution happening
 in American education, and it will
 prove to be the saving of our nation.
 This revolution has many names and
 takes many forms, but it has a
 commonality: holism.  It's an idea
 whose time is long overdue, and your
 TI has its place in this scheme of
 things.  We'll begin to look at those
 next time in TI-101.
     .PL 1