Mixed Feelings

I never thought I would have mixed feelings about ethics, but I do in this case. While I'm glad that the special session in the Alabama legislature seems to have produced meaningful ethics reform, I also doubt the wisdom of one of their recently enacted reforms.

Although I am hopeful about a possible end to blatant political corruption, I am very much against the new rule disallowing union dues to be taken out of the paychecks of government employees, including teachers. I regard this as a move that will disempower the Alabama Education Association (AEA), of which I am a member. I see the AEA as the power structure standing in the way of a further degeneration of Alabama's already struggling public education system, in a state that is basing its future on attracting low-wage manufacturing jobs. After state budgets have caused two years of teacher job losses and left schools with a severe lack of resources, we are now looking at another legislative action, in the name of ethics reform, that will have serious consequences for public schools. The power of the AEA has preserved teacher jobs, thus keeping many schools and classrooms open and operating, which has in turn preserved some semblance of normalcy and hope for many families during some really bad times these last few years.

By disallowing AEA dues to come directly from teachers' paychecks, membership in the union will inevitably decrease, if for no other reason than a loss of convenience -- we don't even have to renew our membership each year; it is renewed automatically -- and revenue to AEA will also decrease. All of this means a reduction in resources for the AEA , a union with great power in the last four decades, which in Alabama have been controlled by the Democrats. I worry because Republicans are not famous for being pro-public education, but they are famous for being anti-union.

I am deeply concerned that Alabama's future under a Republican-led state government may see a further downgrading of quality in public schools, thus providing a consistent cheap-labor pool for manufacturing interests, as a way of creating a "pro-business climate." It is going to take a hardcore attitude on the part of teachers to keep our union strong after this setback to our way of doing business.

The Education System, Huh?

I know I wrote that I was on hiatus, but this article set me off . . .

An article from the Associated Press, which was republished on December 21 by al.com, tells us in its first two paragraphs that an organization called the Education Trust blames the education system for the high failure rate on the military's entrance exam. According to the article, 23% of "recent high school graduates" who take the initial exam to get into the US military do not score high enough to get in. Education secretary Arne Duncan is quoted later in the article as blaming the high dropout rate, so right off the bat I don't get what the article is driving at: are we talking about the failures of dropouts or graduates?

However, some other facts that are relayed in the article are equally important to me. It goes on to tell readers that 75% of applicants are turned down because they are "physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn't graduate from high school," three times as many as are kept out due to a low test score. Even though there is relevance between those three factors and the education system, all three of those factors have a lot to do with parental involvement. First, eating habits and exercise habits can be influenced by schools, through classes like Health and Physical Education, but home life has a heavy influence on eating habits; moreover, any consumption of sugary sodas and other junk food originates at home, since school lunchrooms don't serve or sell those items. Second, even though schools give children a better alternative to street life, morals are learned at home and supervision over children can keep them out of bad situations, which is the work of parents and communities. Third, the education system can only help children if they show up in mind, body and spirit; once a child drops out or just stops doing schoolwork altogether, that child's family and community must accept that will be his or her only "teachers." On down the article, a 19-year-old man is cited as saying that the military entrance exam "is easy for those who paid attention in school," even though he "blamed the education system for why more recruits aren't able to pass the test." This man nailed it in the first part of his statement: the test is a no-brainer for people who went to school and accepted what was offered to them.


I would also like to proffer two related more items for consideration. First, this article's inflammatory title and first two paragraphs seem to indict the education system, then the information rambles around from topic to topic, eventually landing at the fact that the really staggering number is the obesity rate, which keeps more young people out of the military than the test scores. The writer's lack of focus that follows the inflammatory introduction is stunning. The article also gives the typical and now-expected numbers on the racial gaps, with Blacks performing lowest, Hispanics a little better and Whites best, but the lowest passing rates were in Wyoming, which is almost an all-white state. The writer makes no connections at all about these disparate facts. The final impression that I took from it is not that the education system is failing, but that teenagers today should stop eating junk food and playing video games, and start exercising and paying attention in school!

Second, this article offers no indication of any solutions to any of the problems, because the Education Trust's report didn't offer solutions, only problems. I browsed the report, which was offered as a download on al.com, but did not see any positive action suggested. At the end of the report, their missions is stated: "to promote high academic achievement for all students." I am disappointed in their approach in this report, since all I saw in it, and in the article, was an elaboration of the problems. So what do we do about it?

The implication in this article's title and opening paragraphs is that graduates are being allowed to pass without really having an education, which is supposedly the education system's fault. If you ask me, the truth involves much broader issues about parental involvement, the role of schools, young people's use of technology, and more.

About the education aspect presented in the article, this matter brings me back to my same old diatribe about objective testing, multiple choice formats, and standardized tests. It's suspicious to me -- though not surprising -- that standardized test scores are continually rising, as they are legally required to do by NCLB (or else federal funding is cut), but there is a crisis in actual learning as shown by this report from a compilation of data about military recruiting; when these kids who are passing high school standardized tests go out and try to function in the real world, they aren't educated enough to do it. The military can't use a whole generation of young soldiers who want to pick A, B, C or D and get the points; the military needs people who know how to use information, make connections, think and produce results, which our current methods aren't teaching students to do.

Just as one last somewhat cynical note, did anyone ever think that some young people fail the test on purpose because someone (a parent, a friend, a teacher) is pressuring them into joining the military when they don't want to? Just a thought.

Hiatus

I will be on hiatus from the blog for the rest of December. I have papers to grade right now and exams to give and grade. Once we're out for the holidays, my kids will be at home with me for two weeks. In addition, I have to spend that time off focusing on writing more of the introduction for Children of the Changing South, which is coming along well. [See the entry titled "Working Hard (On Another Book)" from October 25, 2010.] If you're interested in what is here, there are 93 posts before this one to keep you busy for a while . . .

No matter whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, or something else, I hope you have a happy and safe holiday season.

I will begin writing again in January.

AUMLAC

I just got the word that I will be one of four readers on the Poetry panel of the AUMLAC conference in February. In 2009, Auburn University at Montgomery begun hosting a Liberal Arts Conference. Last year, I gave a talk on options for using creative writing assignments as an alternative to academic/critical assignments in English literature classes. This year the conference's theme is Southern Studies, and I will be reading some of my poems.

Rationalizing the Education Crisis, Part Three

[Continue from a previous entry]

Third, the discrepancy in our ideas about education does not extend into our realistic expectations of cost and quality. It seems that people feel the need to demand quality in things that they pay for, but we also understand that we should expect more quality for higher-priced items or services. However, despite a plethora of examples of the public allowing or even condoning cuts in education funding -- what, in Alabama, is called "proration" -- many people are outraged at the results. This logic makes no sense. No one is surprised when cheap clothes or shoes tear up quickly. No one is shocked when a cheap car breaks down. Why are we shocked when poorly funded schools have problems?

Sometimes, when I discuss what I see as unfair attacks of schools, people often remind me that everyone funds them with their taxes. But a converse notion of ownership does not apply to efforts toward improvement. When it comes time to increase taxes to fund schools or to ask for personal involvement to bolster improvement, I hear retorts like this one from older people: “I’ve already raised my kids so why should I have to pay?” or this one from wealthier people: “My kids go to private school so why should I have to pay?” If public schools belong to everyone, as I hear so often, then we are all responsible for their maintenance and their improvement, since the "product" of public schools -- the children who later enter society and are expected to function as independent, responsible adults -- affects us all, too.


There are some people whose actions match their words, whose desire for good schools is supported by real action. You may ask any school PTA president how many parents show up to campus clean-up days or other events to improve the school, and he or she will tell you how few -- in a school of 500 or more children, see if a dozen parents show up to put action with their words. If a person neglects his house, the paint will chip and the structure will sag; if a person neglects his yard, the weeds will grow and rats will nest the debris; if a person neglects his health and hygiene, he will get sick. And if a person neglects his child's education, his child will suffer from the neglect, too.


We get what we pay for. And when we have realistic expectations, and when we don't finger-point anymore, and when we admit that children's education should be more important than our blame-game, we will continue to get what we pay for. But then, at that point, we will be pleased with what we receive for our efforts, unlike now.

Rationalizing the Education Crisis, Part Two

[Continued from a previous entry]

Second, the basic ideas in the phrase (and the bill) “No Child Left Behind” are unrealistic and inconsistent with our ideas about public services, and our ideals about education should be re-examined. If we once again view the education system as a function of government, which it is, then we have to apply a rational standard to what it is capable of accomplishing. Similarly, we have to consider the roles of the employees who will carry out the governmental function for the public that will utilize them. For instance, if the need of the public is safety from personal harm or unjust loss of property, then we employ police officers as employees who will work against a problem (crime) in pursuit of a more desirable situation (safety). As another instance, if the need of the public is safety from fire, then we employ trained firefighters to go into the dangerous situation (an out-of-control fire) while the owner of the property and owners of nearby properties stand aside safely until a more desirable situation (an under-control fire) is achieved. So, it seems that our view of public works seems to be that citizens pay taxes to fund personnel and resources that will provide services by trained and knowledgeable people to eliminate undesirable situations and help to create more desirable situations.

The next aspect of our expectations of public service is important to acknowledge: cooperation. The ordinary citizen’s duty is to cooperate with those personnel, including taking proactive steps to initiate those services if they are needed, all while remaining a cooperative partner in the performance of those services. For the police to be able to control criminal activity, ordinary citizens must alert the police about crimes that may occur or crimes in progress, and those citizens with relevant information must follow through by providing true and accurate information during the investigation and during a trial. For the fire department to be able to fight fires, ordinary citizens must take precautions not to cause fires and must report fires that they do witness, followed by cooperation in the form of providing accurate information about the fire’s sources. It seems to me, using these examples, that we know as citizens what is expected of us in order for personnel providing government-run services to do their jobs effectively.

Now, we should apply that idea of cooperation to our education system. The need of the public is to educate children in a variety of subjects and in a way that is beyond the scope of one individual parent or parents. Teachers in public schools do this work through a compartmentalized and specialized system.  Despite the strengths of this system, one weakness is that all students cannot be adept in all subjects, even though all subjects are taught and required. Asking all teachers to ensure that all students succeed in all aspects of all subject areas is unrealistic. It would be like asking every police officer to catch and imprison every criminal for every crime that gets committed every day, or like asking every firefighter to save every flame-engulfed home or property on every call. We know that standard isn’t realistic. We hope for it, but we know it won’t happen. Will some criminals get away? Will some houses burn to the ground? Will some students fail? Yes to all three. For some reason, we are trying to hold public school teachers to that irrational standard. Furthermore, extreme tactics like mass teacher firings in low-performing schools would be akin to firing every police officer in cities where crime is rampant. No one will claim that it is the school's sole right and duty to educate children, and thus the schools should bear the sole responsibility for the failing child.

The hypocrisy toward teachers, when viewed in connection with the public perception of other public service professions, is astounding. When police officers cannot seem to get crime under control in a city, their department is given more resources, more officers, more technology . . . yet when teachers cannot get tests scores to expected levels, the call is to make them work longer hours, to cut their benefits, or to fire them all! When teachers are not performing to expectations, the call is for more work, more restrictions, staffing cuts, or reducing benefits. When fire fighters don’t save a burning house, people say, “Isn’t that a shame,” but when teachers don’t save a student the response is “Those teachers ought to be ashamed!” When the people want crime to end, they join with the police and say, “Enough is enough! How can we help?” But the same kind of uproar does not come when people are fed up with their schools. The most shameful aspect of the situation is not the teachers' performance, but the amazingly hypocritical double-standard that some people want to apply.

[Continued in next entry ]

Rationalizing the Education Crisis, Part One

Because I am a teacher and because these issues affect me directly, I think a lot about the current education crisis. I have long been a believer in reductionist logic, breaking things down to the barest essentials, in order to view what they really are. It seems to me that some important aspects of our dilemma about education can be pointed out that way.

First, even though teachers are not the sole problem in the system, the expected direction for fingers to point is them (us, since I'm a teacher), for two reasons. One, teachers are the employees of the system who can be held accountable and forced to face the situation, and two, it is natural for any person to find fault with other people before finding fault with himself. Public schools are, after all, government entities that provide a public service, and while a government can impose new policies and consequences on its employees, it has more trouble doing the same to its citizens, i.e. parents, without criminalizing certain behaviors. No politician who ever wants to get re-elected will propose the criminal prosecution of the parents of students who are failing in school. No one will introduce a bill that would put consequences on the parents who are not overseeing their children’s homework or who are allowing their children to play video games instead of studying. The easier scapegoat for doling out the consequences is the teacher, whose job can be threatened, who can be harried with paperwork and oversight measures, who can be “held accountable” for the failing student without criminalizing the issue. (This is not to say that the teacher has no responsibility for the failing student, but that rarely should teachers bear the full responsibility for failing students.)

The other reason lies deep in human nature. Admitting guilt and accepting the need for penitence and action to cleanse one’s self is difficult for human beings to do. Scapegoating is much easier and more convenient – “It’s his fault!” As a group, teachers are easy targets for legislators who underfund their schools and for many parents who do too little to monitor their own children at home. (Notice that I wrote “many parents,” not “all parents.”) When the children are failing in underfunded schools, a lack of resources can be to blame. Or another reasonable place for place is the parents do not oversee their academic work at home. The easy solution is to claim that the teachers must not be teaching and that more should be done to assure that the teachers do a better job. The harder solution is to admit the need for involving everyone: improved teaching and improved parental involvement, improved funding, and improved policies. Saying “They have a problem!” is so much easier and more convenient than saying “We have a problem.” Finally, there is the example of administrators in failing school systems, who will never be heard saying to the public, “Actually, our teachers are doing a great job. I’m the one whose policies aren’t working. I’m the one stifling progress. I load them down with so much bureaucratic paperwork and standardized testing that they don’t have time to teach.” It isn't true in all school systems, but it is true in some.

[Continued in next entry]

An Artist's Statement, via Autobiography, Part Five

In this final installment, after discussing what I see and what my work means to me, the final feature is arts education. I have taught at an arts magnet high school for seven years now, and I have seen the transformative power of teaching young people to think creatively.

Too much of modern educational practice is geared toward objective testing, which usually comes in the form of multiple choice. These kinds of tests rank high on measures of "validity" because the answering process is not open-ended and the scoring process is not subjective. Thus, the rationale is that students (the test-takers) can be compared more accurately to each other through a surety of the correct answers to each question on the test. That may sound wonderful -- no personal opinions or leeway in scoring, and high "validity" -- but this type of assessment measures the weakest skills of the human mind: recognizing one correct answer among four, or at least weeding out wrong answers and narrowing the field before guessing. These types of objective testing are only really capable of measuring how well a student may have memorized facts, because the truth is that the student may have guessed. Also, because questions are not connected or linked in anyway, there is no indication of how well students are linking bits of information together to understand the big picture, as they should in a subject like history.

Arts education is nearly the other end of the spectrum. Teachers ask students to take a set of instructions, lessons, or rules and interpret them freely, rather than simply regurgitating them, to create something previously nonexistent. Assessment is much more subjective, though not totally so. This type of education requires critical thinking, problem-solving, and making connections between bits of information; and the result is not darkened bubbles on a Scantron, but an actual utilization of what is learned -- a real, tangible product.

There are widespread efforts to use the scientific method to improve education. Education experts and policy makers, like legislators, want data to use in decision-making. The major problem is that objective standardized testing provides that data, while arts education cannot. So legislators can stand up in front of their constituents and proclaim, "We have proof that this is the right decision!" or "We have proof that our decisions improved our schools!" It is all political rhetoric, and improved test scores don't necessarily mean improved schools. Improved scores on objective tests only prove that students either learned more facts or guessed right in a one-out-of-four situation more often. Those results don't prove that the education they got was any better, because the purpose of education is to learn things for future use. The standardized tests provide little or no evidence that the children learned the lessons of history, only the facts of history. Anyone could memorize that Hester Prynn wore a letter A in The Scarlet Letter, but does that mean that the person understood the novel?


I am advocate for arts education because I am more interested in student learning than I am providing data to administrators and legislators. Now, the trend seems to be to add these kinds of assessment methods to teachers, to determine whether or not that teacher is doing a good job. And those methods will fail at assessing teacher quality just like it fails in assessing student learning. If the purpose of education is to prepare children for their futures as adults, then objective testing only measures whether or not they will be able to sit in a cubicle somewhere and do exactly what they are told -- no critical thinking, no creativity, no deviation, just memorize the facts and do what you're told.

In addition to being an advocate for small class sizes and adequate funding for resources, I am also an advocate for arts education, because if our children are not the creative critical thinkers of tomorrow, then they will be the drone workers of tomorrow. I don't advocate for arts education, because I want all children to be artists. Some will be, while others will not. But arts education -- teaching through methods like Discipline Based Arts Education (DBAE) -- employs far better methods to achieve sustained student attention and real learning than teaching in ways that require inflexibility, rote memorization, and constant objective assessment.

In short, to end this five-part statement, I work, using within the fields of writing and education, for the improvement of American society, particularly in the South, through three things: promoting a public recognition of the damaging effects of the Southern ideals of the past, utilizing a multicultural point-of-view that emphasizes openness and cooperation among diverse groups of people, and teaching young people to be creative thinkers who expect more from life than drone jobs and petty materialism.

An Artist's Statement, via Autobiography, Part Four

In my experiences with Civil Rights commemoration, I have often heard, "Look Back! March Forward!" What this means to me is being capable of understanding the past -- both its mistakes and its successes -- and also be capable of moving on from the worst while keeping the best. For me, multiculturalism is one answer to the South's problems.

The South's major difficulty for so long has been a lack of diversity in all aspects of our lives. The "Negro problem" implied a two-race social system: whites on top, blacks on bottom. The demagogic rule of the South's Democratic Party, from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to the end of the Solid South in the early 1970s, left an either-or choice in politics: the dominant Democrats or the massively outgunned Republicans. And if you like dichomoties: how about the Southerner/Damn Yankee or the Good 'Ol Boy/Outside Agitator? Always it comes down to "us vs. them."

However, today's global economy has placed new demands on the South. Because so much of our economy is based on manufacturing or agriculture, the South has had to cooperate on a global scale, including selling on world markets and welcoming international corporations to bring factories. Near Montgomery, where I live, is a huge Hyundai plant, and right across the Georgia border is a huge Kia plant. Major international manufacturing interests, including Mercedes and Thyssen-Krupp from Germany, have brought jobs and expectations to the South from Asia and Europe, and we have had to open ourselves up to them if we want what they have to offer. Now, add to that the recent waves of the immigration of Hispanic people seeking work in large farming operations,  the South has had to accept the influx of international cultures, however begrudgingly.

I think these changes in our population make-up are excellent developments for Southern culture. While it brings in jobs and other benefits, the "outsiders" also bring in their own ideas, lifestyles, expectations, demands, food, and languages. What that means for the South -- and this is something that has not happened yet -- is that we have to meet their needs. We can't welcome people down here to do what we want done, then not accommodate them. For example, on the Gulf Coast are large pockets of Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen and shrimpers, who are not Christians but Buddhists, and who have changed the culture of places like Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Consequently, our governments, schools, police, and other public services need to become more accommodating, especially in terms of language differences. We don't need to go the way of Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James, who closed-mindedly proposed English driver's license exams and eliminating the testing options current offered in 17 languages.

The South is already changing. The world is changing, for that matter. Insisting on the Old Southern us-versus-them mentality is not feasible anymore. And also insisting on the other Old Southern custom of extractive employment practices -- setting up systems where a few people have all of the rights and privileges and everyone else has almost nothing -- cannot continue either. If the South is unfriendly to the realities of a global economy, then the global economy will probably be unfriendly to the South.

An Artist's Statement, via Autobiography, Part Three

My writing and editing work has focused primarily on neglected Southern voices, characters, personalities and stories. When considering ideas for new projects, I often ask myself, "What has no one done before?" So far this approach has landed me squarely as a "writer of rare books," as Will D. Campbell has dubbed himself. I'm not famous, nor will I probably ever be. But I get a word here and there, from people all over the US, commenting usually on my either my Clark Walker book or my John Beecher book, letting me know that at least somebody is paying attention . . .

For me, this work of finding and writing about neglected aspects of Southern culture is not about money or awards. The books I write or edit will not be big sellers, and I know that when I start work on them. For that matter, the Treasuring Alabama's Black Belt curriculum guide was given away free and mainly appealed to humanities teachers in Alabama. The Life and Poetry of John Beecher is about a poet who disappeared from mainstream culture for 25 years before I began writing about him in 2005, and the book retails for $99.95, which would be prohibitive even if the book was accessible to read. Even though it had the greatest sales potential of any book I have written, I Just Make People Up retailed for $45, was released in January 2009 (after Christmas, and during the month the bottom really fell out of the economy); the publisher also refused to give it a full listing on Amazon, having it listed only as a Marketplace item, until it had been out for more than a year. I probably won't ever win a Pulitzer or National Book Award. I doubt if I will ever write a book whose subject has broad appeal . . . because if everyone was interested enough in it, there would probably already be a dozen books about it and I wouldn't worry about adding to it.

The work that I do has importance, though, in our "Information Age." If there is not sufficient and easily accessible information about a subject, it disappears. If we can't "Google it," it may as well not exist, in some ways. And being a writer who doesn't want to write another book about William Faulkner or Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . well, it leaves me to do what I do. My next two forthcoming books are an edited collection of memoirs about growing up in the South during and after the Civil Rights movement, and then a book about modern-day Alabama. The former is contracted and nearly finished, though the latter is a work in progress.

Southern culture needs to be understood in the context of more than George Wallace vs. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, these men were archetypes of the struggle, but stereotypes and oversimplifications bore me, and they offend me. The beauty of Southern culture is its complexity, and its characters, and its hypocrisy, and its nostalgia. I may be a fool for chasing the minor characters of Southern history, but so be it.

[more in the next entry, "An Artist's Statement, via Autobiography, Part Four"]

An Artist's Statement, via Autobiography, Part Two

If this is an artist's statement, then what is it that I am trying to do? The first and most important thing to understand about me is that I consider myself a writer first -- an artist, not a journalist, not a teacher, although I am a writer who teaches. That last statement may seem in odd lieu of having received several awards for my work as a teacher, but I think those awards only lend credence to my belief that education is being handled all wrong. But I'll get to that later.

I believe that writing is Everyman's art form, but that the poor results of inadequate literacy education is the impediment to full participation in it. Literacy is the ability to receive messages, but writing is the ability to send them. Writing is the ability to respond to life with an audience that exceeds the sound of one's own voice. Even though current modes of composition involve computers and digital media, writing and its usage are not limited by technology, the ways that music and film are. Anyone can pick up a pen and paper and write, and send it off. Sound and video recordings require technology. The recording of a person's words only requires pen and paper. Of course, publication and are not so simple when the media is handwriting, but that doesn't change the facts of recording.

This week, I was talking with a former student who was asking what I thought about ethnography, and in the course of the conversation, I explained to her that she had to remember that I am a writer mainly. While I am interested in history, sociology, and ethnography, I have no interest in being objective. I filter my perceptions through my own personality, through my own ideas, and I do that without any remorse at all. I told her that is why I like Hunter S. Thompson or Truman Capote or The New Yorker -- because I want the story filtered through the writer to get to me. I don't want stale portrayals of "just the facts, ma'am." I reminded her that, while I may write some journalism pieces, I am not a journalist. Nor am I a historian, though I often deal in history.

I teach both my creative writing students and my English 12 students that a work of literature should tell us something of what it means to be human. Human beings aren't objective or unbiased, and their essence can't be captured by statistics or polls. Those things can be very useful, but are still inadequate for making final conclusions. You can't know who someone really is by giving them a survey, because many of them will guard their true feelings or even lie, but a person's life, their story, doesn't lie. What a person really is, what he really wants or believes, will come out in his actions, in his statements, in his life. And that is what I love about literature, and it why I am a writer first.

[more in the next entry, "An Artist's Statement, via Autobiography, Part Two"]