On September 25, 1957, 300 United States Army troops escorted nine black children to Central High School in Little Rock after unruly white crowds had forced them to withdraw.
In 1976, the shooting of a 13-year-old sparked a children’s uprising against apartheid that spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.
September 15, 2009, Seattle schools plan to lower the passing grade from C to D, partly match the rest of the state’s districts and partly to keep their funding by keeping kids in school.
On September 24, 2009, thousands of South African children peacefully marched to City Hall demanding better schools, libraries and librarians.
September 2009 a debate at Answers.com is hosting a wiki debate on the value of homework. (Read it and weep at the language skills that dominate the anti-homework crowd who are your future employees.)
Finally, I just received an email (thanks Sunie!) with this picture and comments on the spelling of “bokay.” Many florists use this spelling in their marketing, but one of the comments made me cringe, “I thought is was spelled bowkay” and the writer seemed serious.
I wonder what would happen if
school became a right that could only be earned by the child’s effort, not by the parent’s efforts or their money;
student performance, not attendance, was the criterion for funding;
being a ‘tough’ teacher by demanding performance was encouraged;
kids had to work at whatever menial job they could find when they chose not to perform in school
None of this will ever happen, but it is interesting conjecture.
It probably dates back to the cavemen, but it’s become more acceptable with the passage of time. Or maybe it’s just that the level of cheating needed to upset people and the stakes involved have increased so much.
Of course, the best thing to do if you’re going to cheat is don’t get caught, but if you do and lie about it the penalties increase exponentially.
For some reason people are tolerant of the cheating, in some cases they even seem to expect it, but they go totally ballistic when they get denial and lies from the cheaters when they are caught.
Nixon and the Watergate tapes are a case in point. Dirty tricks in politics were nothing new; it was his blatant lying and lack of remorse that resulted in his impeachment.
When Nixon was up there denying that he edited the tapes and claiming to know nothing about it one thought kept going through my mind and my conversations, “How stupid does he thing we (the American people) are?” and that reaction hasn’t changed with any of the hundreds (thousands?) of accusation/proof/denial scenarios that have played out since, whether in politics, business, religion, sports or any other arena.
It takes a great deal from our so-called leaders to get a reaction beyond a shrug of disgust from me, probably because I have no-to-low expectations.
But treating me as if I am stupid will send me around the bend in no time flat.
I have no liking for Bernie Madoff, but at least he had the guts to plead guilty as opposed to Jeff Skilling, who added the cost of his trials and appeals to the rest of his fraud believing that we were too stupid to see/understand what he did.
The saddest part is the example these clowns set for younger generations.
What really happens to those like Nixon, Ebbers, Skilling, and all the lesser cheats?
Some serve a few months or years in jail; they might lose their “good name,” although that will fade in time, but they won’t be left destitute. Most go back to their old life; if they can’t do that they can always write a book, become a guest speaker or go on the talk show circuit.
The same actions that brought them down will serve to lift them up, so what’s the big deal?
As to the sports arena, another athlete on steroids or some other performance-enhancing drug is barely news these days.
“The Canadian sprinter stunned the world by running 100 meters in 9.79 seconds. Oops. Busted. Turned out Ben Johnson was the world’s fastest steroid abuser.
“How many athletes are using performance-enhancing substances? The answer is, everyone who’s willing to.” says Jay Coakley, author of Sport in Society: Issues and Controversies.
“Every athlete looks for an edge,” says Charles Maher, Cleveland Indians team psychologist. “Some are conflicted about it. They want a competitive advantage but they don’t want to damage themselves.”
With no real consequences in the vast majority of cases, and whatever penalties there are quickly forgotten, why not cheat?
Remember the old line “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”
It’s not true. Most people who go into teaching do it because they have a true passion—at least when they start.
But passion is hard to sustain when all you hear is that
you are too easy/hard;
you give too much/not enough homework;
you too often receive little-to-no respect from parents, kids, administrators and even your colleagues;
more time is spent on politics than lesson plans;
you spend more time teaching basic manners than educating; and
your de facto hourly pay rate is around minimum wage in spite of a 9 month work year.
Some manage it and they are the ones who truly leave their mark.
Most of us remember the teacher(s) who really touched us, who opened our eyes and helped us see the world differently.
And we remember the worst we had, but the majority fall in-between and become a blur.
some of the best come to teaching from other successful careers.
One of the highest profile of these is Tom Bloch, who left H&R Block (the family business founded by his father) after 18 years, five as President, and a salary of nearly a million a year to teach math at an inner-city middle school in Kansas City, because he wanted to make a difference—and he has.
Listen to this interview and then read his story in Stand for the Best. Share it; maybe it will inspire others to apply their passion to teaching, but if nothing else, perhaps it will encourage them reconsider their own attitude towards teachers.
Most of you know that I write a feature every Thursday called Leadership’s Future; it’s the outgrowth of articles written by CandidProf, who guested regularly last year, and is written around education, kids, parents and Millennials.
The trouble is that I find far more articles than I can write about, so today I’m giving you links to the best of them. I hope you take the small amount of time necessary to click through and read them, because they are important to y/our future.
First is a question that has been asked for decades and still has no real agreement. Do advanced degrees in education make for a better teacher or just a higher paycheck? But below the surface of this question lurks a larger problem—what happens when the schools conferring the degree has a second rate, or worse, program?
Next is an article about “effortful control” in toddlers and the value of guilt, or what the kids call “a sinking feeling in the tummy,” with a link to the actual study. The researcher also spells out the substantial difference between guilt, doing something bad, and shame, being a bad person—guilt is productive, shame is destructive.
Third is Boston Public Schools has reinstituted their Parent Academy after killing it earlier this year in the midst of budget cuts. Call it a parent engagement project and they are sweeping the country. The one in Boston cost between $50-100K, a cheap price for getting parents actively and positively involved in their kids education.
Last is an update on an article that CandidProf wrote last year regarding the dismal graduation statistics resulting from tying funding to college recruiting. Now the results are starting to show. “The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree.” Only Italy has a worse record; pretty sad. Be sure to read the comments for a number of interesting views.
The silly blow-up over President Obama’s back-to-school speech drove home once again how I am that won’t be around when the current crop of kids take the reins of political, social and business so-called leadership roles.
I am continually amazed and revolted as I watch so-called conservatives of all stripes work to be sure their children are exposed to nothing that conflicts with whatever ideology they are steeping them in.
I say ‘conservatives’ because so-called liberals seem more flexible within their stands. (Please note that I said ‘flexible, not changeable.)
What exactly was in this speech, that some kids weren’t allowed to hear? Here are some excerpts that I found especially uplifting to hear—and if you think I cherry-picked the contents you can read it in its entirety and decide for yourself.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world — and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.
You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to train for it and work for it and learn for it.
What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. The future of America depends on you. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.
[After describing specific kids’ situations] But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their lives, for their education, and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star. Chances are you’re not going to be any of those things. The truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject that you study. You won’t click with every teacher that you have. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right at this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and that then allows you to learn something new.
So today, I want to ask all of you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?
Why? Because he encouraged them to take responsibility for themselves? Because he said that our country’s future depends on them? Because he was raised by a single mom? Because he told them that success was a function of very hard work?
Or is it the closed-minded attitude of the ideologue represented by 15-year-old Andrew Quick, near Orlando, Fla., who said “he considered the speech to be a potentially disruptive interruption of his school day, so decided not to watch it. “I’m a Republican,” he said, “and I really don’t like Obama all that much.”
I translate that to mean ‘I don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t think as I think and agree with me’, an attitude that doesn’t bode well for our country’s future.
Exactly what in this speech was of such concern to the conservative agenda that their kids should not hear it?
Perhaps the problem is the message that, in the end, they are each responsible for what they become—not their parents or teachers or politicians and certainly not God—just them.
That they will be what they choose to be and whether that choice is active or passive; it’s their choice as thinking individuals—assuming they choose to think and not just blindly follow a given ideology.
Are you aware of the new teaching approach in middle school English classes that gives kids a say in which books they read?
The approach is known as “reading workshop” and “…students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading…”
I sent the article to my niece, who alternates between teaching and being a school librarian. She started as a teacher, was driven out of it by internal politics and unreasonable parents, got a Master of Library Science and spent a few years as school librarian and is now back to teaching.
She wrote back, “This is how I teach! Cool! Thanks for sending it. It is controversial and some English teachers think I’m nuts but I love it!”
My niece, along with many others, is the type of teachers we need more of—they love reading and learning and work to pass that love on.
But there is a lot of opposition to moving away from the way reading has been taught.
“In the method familiar to generations of students, an entire class reads a novel — often a classic — together to draw out the themes and study literary craft. That tradition, proponents say, builds a shared literary culture among students, exposes all readers to works of quality and complexity and is the best way to prepare students for standardized tests.”
I bolded the last five words because they are the crux of the problem.
Is the purpose of school to prepare for standardized tests or to teach kids to think?
Are communities stronger and the workforce more cohesive because the people all read To Kill A Mockingbird in eighth grade? And what of those educated elsewhere?
What serves the future better, a love of learning and reading or the skill to ace a standardized test?
Hypocrisy has had a high profile on my blog this summer, especially as it relates to the emerging attitudes of young people.
One of the current hypocrisy poster boys is Senator John Ensign, who really drove home what is acceptable and not acceptable in the prevailing attitudes of those who claim the moral high ground.
The Senator, who roundly condemned then-President Clinton’s sexual peccadillo and subsequent lying to a grand jury, said, “I haven’t done anything legally wrong.” (My emphasis.)
Which mean that if Clinton had admitted screwing around with Monica Lewinsky it would have made it a “distraction” (Ensign’s term for what he did.) as opposed to the felony created by lying.
Ensign is prominent member of the Promise Keepers leadership, which lists seven basic tenets, the third being, “A Promise Keeper is committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity” and the fourth, “A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and Biblical values.”
Ensign violated both and compounded the violations by having his parents pay off his mistress.
These don’t count, since Promise Keepers isn’t a legal entity and, obviously, lying to your followers and constituency isn’t illegal—just unethical and immoral.
What kids will absorb is that there are no real repercussions; Ensign still holds his Congressional seat, will probably win reelection, hasn’t changed his role in Promise Keepers, and is still cheered when he gives a speech. And if reporters dare to raise additional questions, his response is “I’ve said everything I was going to say about that.”
We may ring our hands and lament the lack of accountability of society in general and the Millennials in particular, but we don’t have to look very far to find the cause.
Millennials and those who study them love to position them as demanding different things from the workplace than their predecessors.
The latest is a list from LeaderTalk that describes Millennials’ Five Leadership Truths:
Truth #1 – Leadership development begins with self development; it’s about the individual; what is the first question most people want to ask a new leader?
Truth #2 – You can’t do it alone
Truth #3 – The foundation of Leadership is Credibility
Truth #4 – You either lead by example or you don’t lead at all.
Truth #5 – Being forward-looking most differentiates leaders.
Nearly two years ago Success Television listed Gen Y’s 10 main turnoffs…
Inflexibility.
Judgmental attitudes.
Close-mindedness.
Fear of and an unwillingness to use technology.
Unwillingness to listen to and respect Gen Y’s opinions, ideas and views.
Intimidation.
Being told they have to “pay their dues”.
Lack of professional and leadership development through the company.
Emphasis on traditional dress (coat or suit and tie are out).
Lack of intellectual horsepower. [By what yardstick? Miki]
Now I ask you, what on either of these lists is new? It seems to me that they are the same things that Boomers and Gen X (and previous generations) have been complaining about for years; the language changes, but the concepts aren’t new.
Sadly, I believe that the workforce will be complaining of the same types of things long after I’ve turned to dust.
Boomers and Gen X were just as much a disruptive force in the workplace-of-that-time as Millennials are today.
Granted the willingness to stick it out has shortened considerably, but even the willingness to walk if you’re not happy is based to no small degree on a healthy economy where the next job is easily available.
Add time and a few age-driven responsibilities—kids, mortgages, aging parents—to the mix and soon Millennials will be the establishment with another generation ranting about their unwillingness to change.
The demands of each generation are what forces change, both large and small, upon the workplace—always has and always will.
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing M3’s founder KG Charles-Harris.
Why did you start M3? I started the M3 Foundation when I became aware of the plight of black boys in school. In the San Francisco Bay Area, 73 percent of black boys drop out of school (nationally the average is 54%). These statistics places one of the wealthiest areas of the world on par with war torn areas like the Congo or very impoverished nations like Laos. The statistics, along with meeting some of these kids, shocked me into action.
Another issue was that I wanted my own children to receive a good public school education.
To ensure that this happened, it was necessary to put a structure in place that enabled teachers to do what they were supposed to, i.e. teach students who were performing at or above grade level.
Sadly, most teachers and schools are unable to do this because of the significant portion of students lagging several years behind grade level; that results in remedial teaching and a lower level of education for all.
How did you come up with the approach? The approach was based on common sense. We cannot expect people who are lagging behind to work less and still achieve the same results as those who have worked more in preceding years. Also, we have to make a fundamental decision. Are these boys unintelligent, or is it their environments that are affecting them negatively?
We put together a program which used sports and hip-hop as a carrot and focused on providing homework assistance, extensive mathematics tutoring and surrounded the boys with role models (UC Berkeley male students) as tutors and team leaders.
The program is intense; we work with the boys three times per week for 4 hours in the afternoon and 4-6 hours on Saturdays. One of the keys to the program is our excursions; it is difficult to have vision and dreams when one never has been exposed to something beyond the few blocks of inner-city where one resides.
What have been the most difficult roadblocks? We are encountering road blocks all the time. We are still a startup, though we have proven that black low-income boys can perform well. We now have an average GPA of above 3.0 across all the school sites where we are active.
The most difficult roadblock we encountered was being shut down by the school district because of a perception that we discriminate. We have created a model for the most difficult student population, African American boys from low-income backgrounds, and have proven it works. Unfortunately, due to legal restrictions, it is difficult to serve this population since we are unable to select students based on race, gender or other characteristics.
Luckily, thanks to the assistance of one of our Board members, we were able to move beyond this with the school district and are now experiencing them as good partners.
Of course, we are always experiencing challenges of hiring strong team members, retaining and motivating students, working with parents, and many other issues.
Is M3’s approach scaleable? When I started M3, one of the goals was to create a scalable and cost-efficient model. Because these were some of the founding thoughts, we constructed the program around these objectives and are managing to have a cost per student that is significantly lower than other programs working with these types of students. In fact, we have lower costs and better results (in most cases).
We have managed to accomplish this by leveraging the resources we have through partnerships with other organizations and also measuring everything we are doing to ensure we get the results we desire. If we fail to achieve the results, we are able to evaluate our performance from an objective perspective.
This has been difficult to engender since most non-profit organizations are more “touchy-feely”; we want to ensure that we are both empathetic and results oriented.
A personal note from KG. I cannot have this opportunity to speak to all of you without appealing to your generosity.
Since more than 50% of US African American males fail to graduate high school, and 64% of those who drop out end up in the penal system, one of the strongest ways to lower crime is to ensure that these boys receive a good basic education.
The absolute proof is that less than 1% of college educated black males end up in prison while 64% of drop-outs end up there.
Please feel free, whether to fight crime, enhance education or because of racial pride, to donate to M3. Please visit our website; click to donate or send a check to M3 Foundation, 832 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94710
Here’s the Millennial solution for new grads who can’t find jobs: sue your alma mater.
That’s what Trina Thompson is doing to the tune of $72000; $2000 of which is compensation for the stress engendered by an unsuccessful three month job search; she graduated in April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology.
I’m not sure what planet Thompson is on, but she seems to think that her attendance record combined with a 2.7 GPA makes her a great find for any company.
Thompson finds major fault with the Monroe College Career Center…
“They’re supposed to say, ‘I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right — can you interview this person?’ They’re not doing that. They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement.”
Apparently it never dawned on her that it’s the companies who look for better GPAs.
And when did education come with a guarantee? Especially one that transcends all factors—economic conditions, grades, intelligence and, especially, attitude?
Apparently this business major hasn’t noticed the recession and has no understanding of the global economy.
She did show up, although learned very little based on her current actions.
Jim Gordon, who draws mY Generation for my other blog, graduated with a degree in industrial engineering and a similar GPA; he landed a three month internship and just received a full time offer.
What Jim has is a solid gold attitude, the kind that all managers want on their team; he doesn’t think he knows everything, wants to learn, assumes that attendance is a given not an accomplishment and that hard work is the name of the game—in short, he’s an aMillennial.
Thompson thinks that any new grad who doesn’t find a job should sue.
“It doesn’t make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald’s and Payless. That’s not what they planned.”
After all, the world owes you—just ask Trina Thompson.
This follow-up to the article came Wednesday.
The Ski Channel has offered Thompson an entry level job. According to Founder/CEO Steve Bellamy, “Either Ms Thompson is a cunning out of the box thinker and we want he or she isn’t, and her position would not last long. Either way, the law suit would no longer be clogging up the courts because there are now no damages. She now has a bonifide job offer. She just needs to call us and go over the details. But it is real and valid. If she is this feisty, we’ll try her out. But if she is playing the victim card and pushing her problems onto everyone else – then her job wouldn’t likely last long.”
It will be interesting to see if Thompson accepts the position and, if she does, whether her efforts will go beyond good attendance.
Be sure to read the comments, two really stand out, “She’s not “a cunning out of the box thinker”, she’s a brat with a sense of entitlement.” And “I know the girl and don’t think it is a wise hire.”
Many said it was a great idea because it will remove the suit from an overloaded court (But what happens if every new grad that doesn’t get hired follows suit?), while others said that Ski Channel should expect a lawsuit if they do fire her.
I’ll keep you posted.
Hat tip to Andrew Gordon, who sent me this irresistible article and the follow-up.
Be sure to see what my buddy Mark Jabo has to say about Trina over at Biz Levity.
Apologies to those of you who expected the interview with KG Charles-Harris, founder of M3, today. The interview will be next week.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Finally, I just received an email (thanks Sunie!) with this picture and comments on the spelling of “bokay.” Many florists use this spelling in their marketing, but one of the comments made me cringe, “I thought is was spelled bowkay” and the writer seemed serious.
Cheating isn’t new, 
The trouble is that I find far more articles than I can write about, so today I’m giving you links to the best of them. I hope you take the small amount of time necessary to click through and read them, because they are important to y/our future.
I am continually amazed and revolted as I watch so-called conservatives of all stripes work to be sure their children are exposed to nothing that conflicts with whatever ideology they are steeping them in.
The approach is known as “reading workshop” and “…students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading…”
One of the current hypocrisy poster boys is Senator John Ensign, who really drove home what is acceptable and not acceptable in the prevailing attitudes of those who claim the moral high ground.
Now I ask you, what on either of these lists is new? It seems to me that they are the same things that Boomers and Gen X (and previous generations) have been complaining about for years; the language changes, but the concepts aren’t new.
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing M3’s founder 
That’s what Trina Thompson is doing to the tune of $72000; $2000 of which is compensation for the stress engendered by an unsuccessful three month job search; she graduated in April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology.
