In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Reason #849 My Son Amazes Me

I checked on Ethan last night as I was going to bed and noticed his bedroom door was covered with two dozen yellow sticky notes. I crouched down to look at them and look at what I found:

If you have a hard time reading this, it says “Tchaikovsky Music.” The ultimate bonus is the stick drawing of Pablo complete with label.

Done!

I finished my projects last night and sat down in front of the tube, but I was too wired to sit there. And so I ended up doing an amazing array of things until 5:30 in the morning. Luckily my first class was cancelled, so I was able to get a nice three hour nap before my first class of the day.

This was the day that I was to give a brief, informal presentation for my poopin’ dogs project: a sad PP presentation in which a lone white dog takes a crap all over beautiful landscapes. As much as I appreciate attempts at letting us be creative in class, I often end of making fun of a) the project or b) myself during the project’s implementation. This one was a bit of both. See the picture detail sans literary caption.

The project was based on a book I’ve been reading all semester, “Teaching As A Subversive Activity,” a book written in the 1960s on implementing critical thinking skills above the factory-style teaching to the test. The premise is how to reform schools in order to make the best of critical thinking skills, above all to teach kids how to value their voices in a growing political and digital age and promote several levels of literacy that many schools do not acknowledge. It’s a great book if you ignore some of the gendered and racial language (a contemporary rewrite would be in order), and surprisingly, it remains wholly relevant almost thirty-five years after its publication.

My favorite question in this book is, “What is worth knowing?” Teachers are never at a loss of content, thanks to new federal laws that all Florida elementary schoolers know what a toboggan is. The relevance is up for questioning. Add compulsory standardized testing and we’re fucked. My presentation was titled after the first chapter of the book, “Crap Detecting,” in which the first sentence sarcastically begins “In 1492, Columbus discovered America…”

This is total crap. Hence the poopin’ dog.

All the pictures were a bit of a Where’s Waldo? thing, this one being the last in the picture series (at which point my classmates would detect the pictorial crap, and hopefully not notice that the whole project was an exercise in trying to cover up the crap that my project unfortunately is). But with only three hours of sleep, I walked up in front of the class and embarassed myself by giving a completely incoherent talk on school models and critical thinking. I got absolutely no response but crickets chirping and a quiet appreciation for my ability to photoshop a reflection of a poopin’ dog on a still lake.

From now on if class is optional and I am sleep-deprived, I’m so not going.

Crap

Crap, crap, crap.

Lots of writing and printing to do today and I have not only run out of paper, but ink as well. Crap!

The last thing I want to do is go to the store. Let this week be over.

End Of Semester Stupidity

For some reason, this semester seems like it has been the least motivated, frustrating semester in a long while, not only for myself but all of my friends and classmates. Just yesterday, I received an email from my friend titled, “DO YOU HAVE A GLUESTICK?!” That is a sign of something, people, but I don’t know what.

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Obligatory End of Semester Stress Post, II

The amount of sleep I got last night is so little it’s just stupid. I’m so tired I can’t see straight.

On today’s agenda: Nap, walk to campus labs, caffeine, back to the computer. Let this week be over, amen.

Somebody Convince Me Not To Drop Out

Welcome to the obligatory end of semester procrastination post. Why, if it weren’t for this blog, I might be doing something else. Like writing the four papers due on Thursday.

Tonight’s goals:

  • Finish two 3 page papers. Email both to prof.
  • Have thesis and opening statements for 3rd paper.
  • Not get sidetracked by laundry, cat, or blogs.
  • Don’t drink too much caffeine.
  • Plan 4th paper; try to find corresponding sources.

Yo, Lauren, good luck on this. Excellent. I’m already blogging about not blogging.

I’m Going To Sleep For the Next Year

I just got an email from the university telling me that I am “required to attend” an “Internet Workshop” for “mandatory internet training” because the school I am placed in for student teaching has “networked internet.”

Good holy goddess. Shoot me.

Legal Trouble for NCLB

Connecticut is expected to sue the first legal complaint against No Child Left Behind in their dispute with the federal government over annual school testing. Though other states have filed legal complaints, Connecticut is the first to sue.

Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg and other state officials met for one hour with U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in Washington. Afterward, they said there is only about a 1 percent chance that they will get a waiver for the No Child Left Behind education act’s requirements for testing in grades three, five and seven. State officials had sought periodic assessments of those students instead of testing, because Connecticut already tests students in grades four, six, eight and 10.

…Federal officials agreed there is little chance they will give in on the annual testing requirement of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

…Connecticut’s planned legal challenge is expected to focus on a lack of federal funding for states to implement changes mandated by the law. No Child says states and school districts will not have to spend their own money to meet the law’s requirements.

Dr. Betty J. Sternberg, Connecticut Education Commissioner, was called “un-American” by Margaret Spellings, the secretary of the United States Department of Education, for criticizing the law as a “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Though Dr. Sternberg has asked for a formal apology none has been given.

eRobin has done a good job at dissecting the political implications of this battle, but I’m more concerned with the practical applications. We have all heard the phrase “teaching to the test” and criticisms of this phenomena, but Dr. Sternberg perfectly captures the real problem with all this testing. She writes that replacing Connecticut’s bipartisan, twenty year record of testing in alternate years for a yearly standardized test “will cost millions of dollars and tell us nothing that we do not already know about our students’ achievement.”

So what’s with all the talk about NCLB’s progress?

Northwest [a research company] found that test scores on its exams did, in fact, go up from one year to the next under No Child Left Behind, typically by less than a point. The reason successive classes appear to do a little better than those before them may stem from the fact that younger students have grown up during a time of more regular testing than their immediate predecessors, the researchers said, and are therefore higher achievers.

But rising test scores tend to mask how much progress individual students make as they travel through school, the researchers found. Since No Child Left Behind, that individual growth has slowed, possibly because teachers feel compelled to spend the bulk of their time making sure students who are near proficiency make it over the hurdle.

The practice may leave teachers with less time to focus on students who are either far below or far above the proficiency mark, the researchers said, making it less likely for the whole class to move forward as rapidly as before No Child Left Behind set the agenda.

Public schools and public school teachers are vilified as socialist bevies of decay, but there is evidence now that some of our assumptions about public school and private school are wrong. Kimberly Swygert looks at some surprising research on public and private schooling: public school students outperform private school students every quarter.

As per the BushCo patterns, and shucking any accusations of conspiracy theories, I firmly believe that if the purpose of NCLB isn’t to strip the school systems of funding and legitimacy and force them into privatization altogether, it is to turn the public school system (a socialist system, as Rush would say) into business models.

This particular attempt at running a school like a business was quite successful. They ran it like Enron.

More Education Reading:
This week’s Carnival of Education.
The Super’s Blog, by a superintendent in Indiana. Heavy on satire, including this post titled “Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels admits he would lie, steal, cheat or put a dead horse head in your bed, in order to get what he wants.”
Minnesota, a Nanny State?: Some Minnesotan politicians are legislating mandated curriculum literally from birth, including a statewide testing system that requires preschoolers are tested at least once for state-determined proficiency by the age of three.

Nunya Business

I can’t help but quote this piece at length:

The next time someone calls abortion a moral choice, I will ask him the results of his last prostate exam, or her the results of her pelvic exam. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time someone argues against gay marriage, I’ll ask him or her when the last time he or she made love with their spouse. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time somebody defends pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control pills, I’ll ask them what prescription medicines they are currently taking. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time someone says that Terri Schiavo was murdered, I’ll ask them if they’ve made arrangements for a local government official to be in their loved one’s hospital room making final decisions. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time some legislator proposes banning sex toys, I’ll ask them what method of masturbation they prefer. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time someone talks about family values, I’ll ask them to tell me what the last thing they disciplined their child over. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

We cannot allow our panic at being out of power to lead us to separate abortion rights, gay rights, end-of-life-decision rights, parenting rights, medical rights from the basic human right to live free of someone else butting their nose into our personal lives.

Exactly.

Horowitz: The Man from Self-Victimizationville

Getting Some Business Out of the Way, or The (Much) Shorter Version of What Happened Last Night

The Longer Version, In Which I Realize that Horowitz is a Depressing & Irrelevant Individual

Fellow Feministers, please don’t regret that you missed the Horowitz lecture, unless of course you were in the mood for some neoconservative political theatre. Please read on to experience vicarious cringing, laughter, and sadness.

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