HISTORY MAKERS – Dad Gone Wild

HISTORY MAKERS – Dad Gone Wild

HISTORY MAKERS

“Success is never so interesting as struggle”
― Willa Cather

 

It was the bottom of the last inning and we were trailing 6-1. In order to get a shot at winning, we were going to have to score the maximum allowable runs per inning of 5. That would send the game into the extra-innings, and give us a shot at victory. A daunting task, but not an inconceivable one.

We had the top of the order at-bat, and we’d never lost to this team.

Peter was our first hitter, and after running the count to full, he hit a screaming liner up the middle for a double. Promptly stealing third, we were now poised to score the first of the five needed runs. One of our best hitters was at the plate, so things were off to a great start.

Peter has always been aggressive on the base path, showing an understanding of the art of baserunning at an early age. Due to this fluency, our third base coach had a tendency to try and push him beyond his comfort level, and be even more aggressive. Something I’ve cautioned against throughout the year, with mixed results.

The batter ran the count to one and two. With my attention focused on the kid at the plate, I was shocked when Peter was suddenly caught up in a run down. Apparently, the third base coach had pushed him into a bigger lead than circumstances warranted and the pitcher was able to trap him CONTINUE READING: HISTORY MAKERS – Dad Gone Wild

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems? | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems? | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems?

This post is a lecture I gave at University of Luxembourg in 2011, which was published in a book, edited by Daniel Tröhler and Ragnhild Barbu,  Education Systems in Historical, Cultural, and Sociological Perspectives.   To save you the trouble of buying the book on Amazon for $200, I’m reproducing it here.  This piece draws on material from my 2010 book, Someone Has to Fail.

Schools have long been asked to solve myriad social problems, but 

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WHEN IS SCHOOL AN ANSWER TO WHAT SOCIAL PROBLEMS?

Lessons from the Early American Republic

In modern societies, we ask schools to fix an enormous variety of social problems, both large and small.  We ask them to reduce social inequality and increase social mobility.  We ask them to provide the economy with job skills that will increase productivity, enhance economic growth, and strengthen the nation.  We ask them to promote democracy, improve health, save the environment, and empty our prisons.  And at the same time we also assign schools smaller missions, such as improving driver safety, reducing tooth decay, fighting obesity, and deterring teenage pregnancy.

We ask schools to solve all of these problems even though they have demonstrated time and time again that they are unable to do so.  Increasing educational attainment has proven to have no effect on the rates of social equality and social mobility, and its impact on economic growth has proven at best to be indirect and limited and at worst counterproductive.  So why do we keep turning to schools for answers they cannot provide?  One reason is that they are available.  Schools are publicly controlled, located in every community, and willing if not able to take on new public missions.  Another is that asking schools to fix problems is a lot easier than trying to address the problem directly through the political system. 

If schools are a weak mechanism for solving social problems, however, then the topic of chapter – the movement that established the American common school system – was the exception that CONTINUE READING: David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems? | National Education Policy Center

Barbed Wire (from "Have To" History) | Blue Cereal Education

Barbed Wire (from "Have To" History) | Blue Cereal Education

Barbed Wire (from "Have To" History)

Stuff You Don't Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About... Barbed Wire

Three Big Things:

1. Barbed wire became the fencing of choice in the west after the Civil War. It was relatively cheap, withstood a wide range of conditions, and held back the biggest, most stubborn livestock.

2. Barbed wire favored homesteaders moving west, who tended to be small farmers. It threatened, and eventually helped destroy, the mythical “open range” and cowboy culture.

3. Barbed wire is rarely asked about specifically in history standards; it’s central to a wide variety of stuff that is, however.

Introduction

There are barbed wire museums in nearly a dozen different states. That’s right – museums devoted exclusively (or at least primarily) to the origins and impact of pokey wires in all its many varieties. The Oklahoma Cowboy Museum boasts over 8,000 varieties of prickly steel yarn, while the Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean, Texas, promises “everything you want to know about barbed wire and fencing tools.” There are several collections in and around DeKalb, Illinois, the birthplace of barbed wire, but it’s the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum which makes the grandest claims and boasts the most extensive curated exploration of this marvelous innovation.

It’s fencing. Made of wire. What’s the big deal?

Expansion, Technology, and Conflict

American history is largely a tale of expansion. Many of our best conflicts have resulted (at least in part) from our eternal need to expand and renovate. As CONTINUE READING: Barbed Wire (from "Have To" History) | Blue Cereal Education

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY – Dad Gone Wild

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY – Dad Gone Wild

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

 

This week, amidst great fanfare, the State General Assembly came to a close. For many, it couldn’t have come fast enough.

I would argue that this year’s legislative session produced an overabundance of bad bills. Especially when it came to public education. From bills that devoted millions in resources to a problem that we can’t even measure, learning loss, to attacking transgender athletes, whose numbers we can’t even measure, this year legislators favored bills that favored emotion over minds.

The bizarre moments for me were when the General Assembly ignored conservative tenets despite being a conservative supermajority. The size of the government was grown. Power was shifted away from local communities to the state. The state enacted laws that seemed to indicate that local communities were incapable of solving their own issues without the heavy hand of a central government. It’s almost like Democrats without book knowledge were running the state.

The senate government even went as far as trying to pick winners and losers, going as far as to CONTINUE READING: THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY – Dad Gone Wild

“Are You Popular?” An Educational Film from the 1940s | Diane Ravitch's blog

“Are You Popular?” An Educational Film from the 1940s | Diane Ravitch's blog

“Are You Popular?” An Educational Film from the 1940s

Are You Popular? 1947 Coronet Instructional Films; Teen Dating Social Guidance from Jeff Quitney on Vimeo.

When you think of the late 1940s, do you think about President Truman?

Here is an educational film from 1947: “Are You Popular?” The lesson: Don’t park in cars with boys.

These short films were called “social guidance” films. They were shown to students in schools.

“Are You Popular?” An Educational Film from the 1940s | Diane Ravitch's blog

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and must be willing to bear the expenses of it.” —John Adams | janresseger

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and must be willing to bear the expenses of it.” —John Adams | janresseger

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and must be willing to bear the expenses of it.” —John Adams

The late political theorist Benjamin Barber believed that the American system of public schools—schools located in every community, schools accessible to all, schools paid for by the public—are the heart of our U.S. democracy. And he worried that school privatization and consumerist school choice threaten to fragment our society:

“Through vouchers we are able as individuals, through private choosing, to shape institutions and policies that are useful to our own interests but corrupting to the public goods that give private choosing its meaning.  I want a school system where my kid gets the very best; you want a school system where your kid is not slowed down by those less gifted or less adequately prepared; she wants a school system where children whose ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’ (often kids of color) won’t stand in the way of her daughter’s learning; he (a person of color) wants a school system where he has the maximum choice to move his kid out of ‘failing schools’ and into successful ones.  What do we get?  The incomplete satisfaction of those private wants through a fragmented system in which individuals secede from the public realm, undermining the public system to which we can subscribe in common. Of course no one really wants a country defined by deep educational injustice and the surrender of a public and civic pedagogy whose absence will ultimately impact even our own private choices… Yet aggregating our private choices as educational consumers in fact yields an inegalitarian and highly segmented society in which the least advantaged are further disadvantaged as the wealthy retreat ever further from the public sector.  As citizens, we would never consciously select such an outcome, but in practice what is good for ‘me,’ the educational consumer, turns out to be a disaster for ‘us’ as citizens and civic educators—and thus for me the denizen of an American commons (or what’s left of it).” (Consumed, p. 132)

Tom Ultican is retired from a career teaching mathematics and physics at the public Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach, California.  A prolific California teacher-blogger, Ultican recently described what he learned about the important role of public schools in the small CONTINUE READING: “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and must be willing to bear the expenses of it.” —John Adams | janresseger

South Carolina Republicans Seek to Politicize History – radical eyes for equity

South Carolina Republicans Seek to Politicize History – radical eyes for equity

South Carolina Republicans Seek to Politicize History

For over 40 years, George Graham Vest served first as a Missouri state Representative, next as a state Senator in the Confederacy, and finally as a U.S. Senator for Missouri from 1879 to 1903.

In a speech from August 21, 1891, Vest included a claim about history that has been echoed by many: “In all revolutions the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians, for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias existing on their side.”

Considering Vest’s complicated relationship with the state and country that he served, we should keep in mind that his comment represents something many people misunderstand about history: All history is biased, and history is created by whoever is telling the story.

Often associated with Winston Churchill, the adage “history is written by the victors” seems to repeat itself in times of great upheaval.

One of our most recent moments of political conflict was the siege on the U.S. Capitol in early January 2021. Less dramatic but more significant, that was CONTINUE READING: South Carolina Republicans Seek to Politicize History – radical eyes for equity

The most effective civil rights protest that you probably never heard of | Eclectablog

The most effective civil rights protest that you probably never heard of | Eclectablog

The most effective civil rights protest that you probably never heard of

In 1977, the longest occupation of a federal building in the history of the United States of America took place and, when it ended, the protesters had achieved what nobody thought possible: regulations covering the enforcement of a four-year old law — Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The protest is now called “The 504 Sit-In” and for over three weeks, members of the disability community occupied the Federal Building at 50 United Nations Plaza in San Francisco, which housed the regional office of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), the federal agency tasked with creating the regulations required by Rehabilitation Act.

The original protest rally at the HEW office in San Francisco was part of nationwide day of protests which began on 44 years ago today on April 5th. Unlike the protests in other cities, the organizers of the San Francisco rally had been quietly planning an occupation of the office there. Occupiers came to the rally with backpacks filled with some essentials and, when the rally concluded, the entered the building and refused to leave until HEW Secretary Joseph Califano signed the Section 504 regulations which gave guidance on how the law would be enforced.

Stories from the nearly month-long occupation are riveting and dramatic. Over 100 people with disabilities of all kinds participated. People with deafness. People with blindness. People living CONTINUE READING: The most effective civil rights protest that you probably never heard of | Eclectablog

How Teachers Taught: A Look in the Rear-View Mirror | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Teachers Taught: A Look in the Rear-View Mirror | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Teachers Taught: A Look in the Rear-View Mirror

Much present and past policy making to make better classroom lessons is anchored deeply in myth and memory. Both morph into one another as policymakers (aka “reformers), many of whom are parents, connect their children’s tales of what occurs in classrooms filled with iPads and Chromebooks to memories of what went on in their elementary and secondary classes.

Sure, school boards and superintendents consult with researchers and look at classroom studies, and ponder the changes that new technologies have made in how teachers teach but even research findings are sorted through memories of writing an essay for that English teacher or the 5th grade quizzes that constricted one’s intestines. So I do not discount the power of myth and memory to shape policies aimed at getting teachers to teach better even after a decade of new technologies being tamed by teachers to become part of their instructional repertoire.

What is too often missing from the mix of data, Golly Gees over new software and remembrances are the few accounts by historians of education who have documented–albeit in fragmentary ways–what actually went on in classrooms over the past century. Some CONTINUE READING: How Teachers Taught: A Look in the Rear-View Mirror | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The History of the Future of Education (Audrey Watters) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The History of the Future of Education (Audrey Watters) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The History of the Future of Education (Audrey Watters)

From Audrey Watters’s self-description:

I am an education writer, an independent scholar, a serial dropout, a rabble-rouser, and ed-tech’s Cassandra.

“It’s a long story,” I often say. You can catch snippets of it, if you pay attention. I’ve got a CV if you care about such formalities. And I wrote an FAQ if that helps.

I love science fiction, tattoos, and, some days, computer technologies. I loathe mushy foods and romantic comedies. I’m not ashamed to admit I like ABBA and dislike Tolkien. I am somewhat ashamed to admit I’ve not finished Ulysses, and I’ve never even started Infinite Jest. I prefer cake to pie, unless we’re talking pastry projectiles. I pick fights on the Internet. I’m a high school dropout and a PhD dropout. I have a Master’s degree in Folklore and was once considered the academic expert on political pie-throwing. I was (I am?) a widow. I’m a mom. I have a hard stare that I like to imagine is much like Paddington Bear’s and a smirk much like the Cheshire Cat’s. I am not afraid.

I travel as much as I possibly can. “Home,” at least according to my driver’s license, is Seattle, Washington.…

My essays have appeared in multiple places, but mostly I write on my blog Hack Education. I’ve published four collections of my public talks, The Monsters CONTINUE READING: The History of the Future of Education (Audrey Watters) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Election Reform: Now and Twenty Years Ago, A Personal Story | Diane Ravitch's blog

Election Reform: Now and Twenty Years Ago, A Personal Story | Diane Ravitch's blog

Election Reform: Now and Twenty Years Ago, A Personal Story

Republican-controlled legislatures across the nation are planning to enact legislation that would have the effect of suppressing the vote. Georgia passed a law to restrict access to voting, known by its critics as the Jim Crow law. More states in Republican hands will do the same. Republicans in the Senate are likely to block a bill passed by the House to protect voting rights.

Why are Republicans afraid of a large turnout? Twenty years ago, Republican leaders insisted that every qualified voter should vote and that every vote should be counted.

In the aftermath of the highly disputed Presidential election of 2000, which was decided by 537 votes in the state of Florida, many of our most prominent political leaders recognized the need for reform of the voting system.

A prestigious commission was created called the National Commission of Federal Election Reform. The co-chairs of the commission were former President Jimmy Carter and former President Gerald Ford. Its composition was CONTINUE READING: Election Reform: Now and Twenty Years Ago, A Personal Story | Diane Ravitch's blog

Whatever Happened To the Dalton Plan? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Whatever Happened To the Dalton Plan? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Whatever Happened To the Dalton Plan?

When, where, and why did the Dalton Plan arise?

Begin with Helen Parkhurst. A 20th century educator much taken with the Progressive approach to schooling, she designed the Dalton Plan after World War I as a way of organizing instruction consistent with Maria Montessori’s and John Dewey’s ideas of individualizing all academic work and building school community. The core of the Plan was students making contracts with their teachers to study and learn content and skills.

Deeply concerned by the grouping and lock-step movement of children and youth in American schools, Parkhurst sought to reorganize classroom work so that teachers would be able to convert traditional age-graded schools and classrooms where whole-group teaching, 55-minute periods, textbooks, and tests prevailed into laboratories where individual students contracted with their teachers to work on topics that interested them. Students then would have to make decisions on what to study when, finishing assignments, and meeting the terms of the contract to complete the teacher designed work (see below for description of Dalton Plan).

Parkhurst named the Plan after the public high school in Dalton, Massachusetts where it was first put into practice in 1920. She also was the founder of a New York City private school named after the Plan where it was the primary means of CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened To the Dalton Plan? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Opening Up the Textbook (Sam Wineburg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Opening Up the Textbook (Sam Wineburg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Opening Up the Textbook (Sam Wineburg)

Sam Wineburg is a professor of education and history at Stanford University, He along with Susan Ramiraz and Peter Stearns authored Human Legacy, a high school world history textbook.This appeared in Education Week, June 5, 2007

History textbooks have long merited special scorn. Thicker than a Duraflame log (and weighing more), today’s books feature pages that rival news Web sites (think CNN) for busyness and clutter. Artwork with multiple call-out boxes, tricolored pictures with captions of “How to Read Me,” and pointers to end-of-chapter test questions cued to state standards (with special editions produced for your state) dominate the text like the bun that smothered the patty in that famous burger ad.

Years ago, when I first started teaching future history teachers, I urged them to do what I had done as a young teacher: Ditch the book in favor of primary sources. Now, with Google, the job of finding sources is infinitely easier than in my day.

I soon found, however, that of my yearly crop of 30 future teachers, maybe one was practicing anything remotely like what I preached. The vast majority were just trying to survive. Enough desks for each student, a working computer (Apple IIs do not count), a blackboard: This was a high bar. But in 2004, things got better in California. That’s when Eliezer Williams et al. v. State of California, a CONTINUE READING: Opening Up the Textbook (Sam Wineburg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

March 14, 2020 | JD2718

March 14, 2020 | JD2718

March 14, 2020

TOP POSTS THIS MONTH 3/14/20

One year ago today.

One year ago today was Saturday. NYC public school attendance had been plummeting. But schools were scheduled normally for Monday, March 16.

Cuomo and de Blasio were still insisting that schools stay open. Not just de Blasio, but Cuomo too. Those of you blinded by him not being batshit nuts during his press conferences, don’t forget how bad he was. And not just about nursing homes. And group homes for the developmentally disabled. March 14, 2021, the mayor and governor were insisting that schools stay open.

1199 did not want to close schools. They were concerned about how their members – crucial hospital workers – could work if they suddenly had childcare needs thrown on them. Many teachers were sympathetic. Eventually we got REC centers, but on March 14 this was very much part of the conversation.

The UFT was recommending to de Blasio that he close schools. “Recommend” is weak language, right? And that recommendation was not made until Friday March 13. Read Mulgrew’s press release. He agreed to disagree? Also, the UFT leadership started a petition on March 13 to de Blasio to close schools. It got lots of signatures, though not nearly as many as the earlier member-initiated petition to Cuomo.

Side note – it was already clear that the UFT leadership was afraid of criticizing Cuomo. This foreshadowed April, when they went ballistic when de Blasio took away Good Friday, but Mulgrew told members to suck it up when Cuomo stole Spring Break.

I have heard some confusion about Mulgrew threatening to go to court. We need to be precise. Mulgrew DID threaten court action – but it was not to close NYC public schools. The NYCDoE was violating its CONTINUE READING: March 14, 2020 | JD2718

Defamiliarizing the Idea of the Modern: Where Do We Begin World History?

Defamiliarizing the Idea of the Modern: Where Do We Begin World History?

Defamiliarizing the Idea of the Modern: Where Do We Begin World History?

By Paul Horton.

No question is more puzzling to teachers of World or Global History than, when did the modern world begin?

We inherited this question from the hand-me-down versions of Western Civilization and European history that served as the foundations for World History as it gradually evolved away from the “Rise of the West” approach of William McNeill in the 1950s to the decentered (“nonEurocentric”) and delinked Global History of today.

This debate moved to center stage with the recent controversy surrounding the curriculum of the AP World History course. While the new consensus of global historians is that we must move modern to earlier dates to critically assess “connected histories” that suggest that European Exceptionalism is on shakier ground, conservative historians and organizations like the National Association of Scholars argue that the Renaissance still represents a fundamental shift in the course of World History that demarcates “traditional” cultures from “modern” cultures.

When the College Board sought to begin a course revision at 1450, a date corresponding to the beginning of the Renaissance, historians pushed back to demand that the course begin at 1200 in order to incorporate new research on global economic and cultural exchanges that set the stage for the Renaissance.

But, despite this debate, the course still accepts the idea that what we call modern began in Europe with economic and cultural developments in Italy that were diffused to the rest of Europe in the 16th and CONTINUE READING: Defamiliarizing the Idea of the Modern: Where Do We Begin World History?

Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals

Six Dr. Seuss books are being retired after decades of criticism over racist imagery in the illustrated children’s stories. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the organization that carries on the author’s legacy, announced Tuesday that it will stop publishing and licensing “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.” “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” the organization said in a statement Tuesday morning, adding that the decision was made last year with a panel of e...

Read More Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

Bayard Rustin: A Remembrance | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bayard Rustin: A Remembrance | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bayard Rustin: A Remembrance

My youngest grandson is in second grade. His class was studying Black History, and each student was asked to make a project. He chose to create a poster about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. I was thrilled to see his finished project, because it was not only well done, but because I knew Bayard Rustin and I started thinking about him. He was a good friend of my then-husband and me.

We got to know him in the mid-1960s. He was the bravest man I ever met. He was arrested many times for his pacifism and his civil rights activities. He was beaten many times by counter-demonstrators. He dedicated his life to standing up for others. He served prison time as a conscientious objector during World War II because he refused to fight. He told us that he realized later that he was wrong because he did not know then what a monster Hitler was.

He was very close to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was the chief organizer for the March on Washington in 1963. Bayard was a strategist and a thinker, in addition to being a fearless activist. He was a brilliant speaker and writer.

Soon after we became friendly with him, in the late CONTINUE READING: Bayard Rustin: A Remembrance | Diane Ravitch's blog

What's In A Blaine? | Blue Cereal Education

What's In A Blaine? | Blue Cereal Education

What's In A Blaine?

I've written about the Blaine Amendment before in the context of Oklahoma GOP shenanigans a few years back. This time around, I'm looking to go a bit 'bigger picture' and give it a brief chapter in "It Followed Her To School One Day," which might actually be finished before summer. Below is the first draft of that chapter.

The final product will be tighter (this one's too long) and less ranty-ravee about things.While I'm not going for detached and boring in the book, I will shoot for something a bit more balanced and accessible to the average reader. This is not an ethical decision so much as capitalistic lust. I mean, let's be honest - conservative dollars spend the same as liberal dollars, and they have WAY more of them, so no sense alientating them right out of the gate. Keep it subtle, so they can be offended and horrified after it's too late to return it.

Here with you, however, my Eleven Faithful Followers, I can share my unfiltered wisdom with spices and color intact. 

What's In A Blaine?

While it was not always mentioned by name, several major decisions of the Court in the early 21st century very much involved the history and potential future of the “Blaine Amendment.” Blaine is a general label applied to various provisions in 37 different state CONTINUE READING: What's In A Blaine? | Blue Cereal Education