Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy – radical eyes for equity

Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy – radical eyes for equity

Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy

You said “I think I’m like Tennessee Williams”
I wait for the click. I wait, but it doesn’t kick in

“CITY MIDDLE,” THE NATIONAL

A refrain by my father throughout my childhood and into my adolescence has shaped how I try to live my life; it remains possibly the strongest impulse I have as an adult.

My father’s parenting philosophy was possibly as misguided as it was reflective of the essential problem with how adults interact with children and teens: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

As a child growing up in the rural crossroads of Enoree, South Carolina, I witnessed my father announcing his dictum, sitting in our living room with a glass of Crown Royal in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

By the time I was a teen, the scenes were often far more physical, occasionally ending with me on the floor as my father attempted to wrestle me into compliance.

A game of him demanding, “Don’t say another word,” and me replying, “Word,” as he tightening his hold on me against the faux-brick linoleum of a different CONTINUE READING: Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy – radical eyes for equity

Alfie Kohn: The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom: What Active Adult Involvement Does and Doesn’t Entail | National Education Policy Center

Alfie Kohn: The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom: What Active Adult Involvement Does and Doesn’t Entail | National Education Policy Center

Alfie Kohn: The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom: What Active Adult Involvement Does and Doesn’t Entail

According to Michael Harrington and many other scholars, a careful reading of Marx’s work makes it clear that he “regarded democracy as the essence of socialism.” Soviet-style Communism, by contrast, corrupted socialism “by equating it with a totalitarian denial of freedom.”¹ But, as Noam Chomsky has often pointed out, it served the interests of both the U.S.S.R. and the United States to pretend otherwise — that is, to equate the Soviet system with socialism, as if it represented the very apotheosis of Marx’s vision rather than a cynical misuse of it. The Soviets wanted to bask in the glory of Marx’s vision of bottom-up control and liberation from oppression, while the Americans wanted to make capitalism seem more appealing by linking the alternative of socialism to the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin.

I was fascinated by this paradox when I first encountered it — the idea that two diametrically opposed belief systems might embrace the same (faulty) conclusion for entirely different reasons. And I recognized it again years later when I saw something similar playing out in the field of education.

Traditionalists believe that teachers should have absolute control over a classroom: Adults know more than children do and therefore ought to make all the important decisions — setting and enforcing the rules, managing students’ behavior, planning the curriculum, dispensing knowledge, and so on. Groovy alternative educators, meanwhile, believe that children can be trusted to learn and grow and solve their problems essentially on their own, without outside interference.

Their prescriptions are utterly opposed. But both sides — direct-instruction behaviorists and Our Lady of the Fiercely Snapping Ruler, on the one hand; unschoolers and proponents of “free” CONTINUE READING: Alfie Kohn: The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom: What Active Adult Involvement Does and Doesn’t Entail | National Education Policy Center

Teacher Tom: Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

Teacher Tom: Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

I was watching a boy named Henry carry a yellow traffic pylon across the playground. He carefully placed it on the ground, not on it's base, but on it's side, taking care to get it "just so," before climbing atop an old packing crate. He stood poised atop the crate for a moment then launched himself, coming down on the pylon. Crack! I heard the sound of the pylon breaking from across the yard.

Stupidly, I asked him, "Henry, why did you do that?"

Without missing a beat he replied, "I wanted to see if I could break it." Duh.

We had a brief conversation about property after that, although in hindsight I think that "property" has a somewhat different meaning when we spend our time on a junkyard playground like ours, but I keep this episode in mind whenever people begin to talk about "play with a purpose," a mantra for those who have accepted the importance of play CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful