Bashing the Self-Esteem Sychophants

Here's a John Rosemond article I read today in the Buffalo News. He really hits the nail on the head.

Today's parenting vs. yesterday's parenting
Source
7/20/06

One of the great ironies of our time is that today’s parents, with more professional resources at their disposal than ever before, are experiencing more and greater problems in the area of discipline than their grandparents even thought possible. Once upon a not-so-very-long-ago time, children were mischievous. They tried to get away with what they thought they could when adults weren’t looking. All too many of today’s kids are surly, rude, disrespectful, ill-mannered, petulant, and openly defiant.

The nature of the child has not changed in fifty years, so the problem must lie with changes in how parents are going about their job. Indeed, today’s “parenting” bears little resemblance to the child rearing of fifty-plus years ago. Even if one overlooks such things as working moms, day care, and the ubiquity of the single parent family, the differences between then and now are considerable.

In the good old days (and make no mistake about it, while certainly not idyllic, they were far better), parents concentrated their energies on shaping character. They were intent upon raising children who embodied the Three R’s of respect, responsibility, and resourcefulness. Today’s parents, by contrast, seek to raise children who possess high self-esteem, which researchers have found is correlated highly with low tolerance for frustration, low self-control, and a sense of personal entitlement. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

Yesterday’s parents valued good manners. Today’s parents value skills and accomplishments, especially academic. Along with many if not most of my peers, I entered first grade not knowing my ABCs. My first grade teacher taught fifty children. She had far fewer discipline problems than a first grade teacher today who, with an aide, teaches twenty. Furthermore, those fifty kids—none of whom were held back because of late birthdays—exited first grade reading better than today’s first grade grads, many of whom knew their ABC’s before their fourth birthdays.

Yesterday’s parents didn’t much care what grades their kids brought home as long as the grades reflected their children’s best efforts. Mothers didn’t help their children with homework, nor did they challenge teachers who reported misbehavior. If a child misbehaved in school, the teacher’s report was accepted, and the child got into double trouble at home. But then yesterday’s parents understood that one could not be a good enough parent to prevent one’s child from behaving despicably on any given day. Today’s parents seem to think that despicable behavior reflects bad parenting; therefore, today’s kids are incapable of behaving despicably.

In those better days, when you misbehaved, your parents tried to make you feel guilty. Many of today’s parents try to discipline their children without causing guilt, not realizing that the anticipation of guilt is the best preventive of misbehavior, not the anticipation of “negative consequences.” Most people in my generation will testify that knowing you disappointed your parents was the worst consequence of all. But then, we were not on pedestals. The pedestals were occupied by our parents. Needless to say, today’s parents are more concerned about disappointing their kids than their kids are about disappointing them, if they are even concerned at all. It’s that pedestal thing.

The bottom line: You cannot raise children in two entirely different ways and arrive at the same outcome. I sometimes ask parents, “Who would you rather be raising, you or your child?” Eight out of ten answer along these lines: “Oh, that’s a no-brainer, John. Me, of course.”

Unfortunately, that’s not the right answer.

The State Should Devise a New Acronym: SCAM

State...Certification...(Another)...(Money Grab)
At long last, after years of procrastination (10 years after my initial certification) and avoiding the outrageous fee ($88)to take the New York State Content Area Speciality test in Social Studies, I sat for the four freaking hour exam. Ninety multiple choice questions later, (and one should note that there were hardly any questions dealing with global history,) the exam required a "DBQ"-style essay explaining the context of, and comparing the intents of, the Prussian General Code of 1791 with the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789. Finally, something other than New York, US history, geography and economics. Kind of weird that there were no documents to examine, though, just a few bulleted highlights on each.

The French revolution was easy enough, but I had never heard of the Prussian document. I goggled it earlier today, and had only 5 hits, one of which was the California Content Test for Social Studies...and to my surprise, there was the exact question...boy these testing companies are laughing all the way to the bank...oh, yeah, the test is specially tailored to your state's needs...blah, blah, blah.
And to think my school is swallowing all that pre-fab College Board curriculum hook, line and sinker. I guess there is an upside to the district only implementing 1 or 2 years of a five-year program, before abandoning the program du jour and following the funding for some other curriculum cash cow/panacea.

Eight Fallacies and Principals of Education

Looking at samples of sabbaticals that other educators have taken, I came across an interesting piece from a professor who was exploring pedagogy. Something that many of us spend little time pondering--as we're too preoccupied with our passion, content.
This is from a report filed by Professor Dennis Plies:

On March 27, 1999, I had the pleasure of meeting with Richard for nearly five hours in Los Angeles. He had recently presented his rendition of the heart of the venerable Frances Clark, who died last year. She taught at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, as head of the piano department since 1955. He applied his thoughts to the first eight lectures he heard her give in a course called Fundamentals of Piano Pedagogy. I will present a distillation of his November 19, 1998 address to the New School for Music Study. Richard titled it, Eight Fallacies of Education/Eight Basic Principles.

"The important thing about basic principles, of course, is that they never change, they never get old, they never go out of date. But, the applications of those principles grow and change every day that we teach, so long as we manage to keep our minds open and for as long as we accept the fact that any problems our students have are our problems, not theirs. I think it is possible to pinpoint each problem that comes up as a violation of a basic principle. Then, after recognizing which basic principle we have broken, we can go the next step and devise a way to teach that gets us back on track. To me, learning how to do that is the definition of teacher training" (1).

"Frances began her first lecture by saying that it takes three things to be a successful teacher. One is knowing WHAT to teach. Another is knowing HOW to teach. The third is knowing WHY we teach. She went on to say that the WHAT and the WHY are pretty simple" (1). You can not learn to teach from a book. "Teaching, like performing, is an art, and in its best form it can¹t be copied. No one can become a good teacher by mimicking another teacher. No one can tell you how to teach. Teaching is personal; every teacher is different. The art of teaching is created out of a study of the people we teach, of how they learn, under what circumstances they learn best" (2).

These are the fallacies and principles that informed Frances Clark¹s teaching:

Fallacy 1: I Tell You, Therefore You Know.

Principle 1: I Tell Myself, Therefore I Know.

"A question that has the answer within the question is not a question, it is simply interactive telling" (2).

Fallacy 2: The Best Way to Present Material Is in a Mass of Fragments.

"All of us remember trying to memorize a list of dates for history examinations--a mass of fragments. We have all taken tons of true-false and multiple choice quizzes--more masses of fragments" (3).

Principle 2: The Best Way to Present Material Is From the Context of the Whole.

"Our job when we teach anything new is to decide what the context of the whole is, and then to create situations in which students can practice the whole rather than the fragments, to allow the whole to tell them the fragments. When we find that students are having problems with little details, we have probably committed this fallacy" (4).

Fallacy 3: We Assume That the Fragment Is the Same to the Student As It Is To Us.

"To teach is to communicate. There are several levels to making communication work. Sometimes it is simply necessary to be careful with the words we use" (5).

Principle 3: It Is the Teacher¹s Job to Make the Fragment the Same to the Student As It Is To the Teacher.

Fallacy 4: It Is More Important to Measure Than It Is To Teach.

"Much of our education system, including music teaching, proves that we believe the following: It is more important to measure than it is to teach.

The usual routine is simple: Teacher assigns, Student studies, Student recites, Teacher grades--measures.

Think for a moment about college jury examinations. A performance major spends a semester practicing a particular set of repertoire. The teacher shapes each piece into what all hope will be a stunning performance come jury time.

The teacher assigns, the student practices, the student plays, the jury measures.

But what has the jury measured? The student¹s ability to recite what the teacher has coached, or the student¹s ability to teach himself or herself without help from the teacher?

Alter the scenario: At the beginning of the semester, the student is assigned a Beethoven Sonata that the teacher intends to mold into a perfect performance--always a very worthy goal. But at the same time, the student is assigned a 2nd Beethoven Sonata and told: this one is your project alone. At the end of the semester, the jury will hear both sonatas. Your grade--your measurement--will be based on how well you apply what the teacher teaches you to the sonata you are learning without help. The jury wants to know what you are able to teach yourself.

That jury is saying it is more important to teach than to measure--that it is important to measure what students teach themselves.

And just think how different this performance teacher will go about teaching. It will suddenly make a difference between what students can do by simply being told and what students understand well enough to tell themselves, what they can apply to a new situation. (6-7)

Principle 4: It Is Important That Students Learn to Measure Themselves.

[A side note: While at North Seattle Community College, interviewing Tom Drummond, one who teaches Early Childhood Education and also applies concepts to faculty-wide development, he personalized an example for me. His rhetorical question was, "Dennis, of whose benefit is it that your triplets, when played, are truly accurately placed in time--the professor or the student?" I saw it more fully than I had ever seen it before. Assessment is for the student.]

Fallacy 5: The Teacher Furnishes the Motivation.

Principle 5: Students Furnish Their Own Motivation.

"Our job is to understand the motivation that already exists in each student and then find ways to expand it beyond where it already is. Our job is not to replace his motivation with our own" (8).

Fallacy 6: The Answer Is More Important Than the Process by Which It Is Reached.

"Think of the algebra assignment which the teacher grades by checking for correct answers. The student who has no idea of how to solve the problem but has gotten the correct answer with help from someone at home will get an A. Students who understand the process and do their own work, but make mistakes in some small part of the addition or subtraction, get wrong answers and fail. The math teacher who does not go further, does not make sure who understands the process, believes, that the answer is more important than the process by which it is reached.

For piano teachers, the recital performance is the equivalent of the correct answer. We tend to judge a piano teacher by how his or her students play on recitals, juries, contests, auditions, etc. At the same time, we really know that many of those performances do not represent what students understand, only what the teacher could somehow get the students to do" (8).

Principle 6: The Process by Which an Answer Is Reached Is More Important Than the Answer Itself.

"The opposite of this fallacy is, of course, The process by which an answer is reached is more important than the answer itself. The cause is more important than the result. Only understanding leads to more learning. It is understanding that makes students ready to supply their own answers" (8).

Fallacy 7: Working On Tasks Devoid of Purpose Is Good Discipline.

"Tasks for which the student sees no purpose make sense only to students who simply want to please the teacher."

"Or we produce a submissive person, one who just does what he¹s told--and then forgets just as quickly" (9).

Principle 7: Working On Tasks With a Purpose Is Good Discipline.

Fallacy 8: Education Is Preparation for Life.

"Much of what goes on in all our educational programs suggests that we believe that the purpose of education is to prepare students for the cold, cruel world. Education that seeks to prepare people for something in the future, without providing opportunities for using that preparation as part of the learning process, produces two kinds of people:

One group is just champing at the bit to get out of school and start living. They¹ve never tried what they¹ve been prepared for, but they are convinced that they are prepared enough--let me loose on the world, I¹m ready. They may even believe that they know more than their professors--otherwise why aren¹t they out there living in the real world instead of sticking around these fusty halls of learning.

The other group is made up of those who try to find ways to stay in school forever, afraid to get out there and start living. They may even know that their preparation stopped short of actually doing anything useful, but as long as they can find more courses to take, more degrees to earn, more repertoire to learn, more research to pursue, they can avoid taking responsibility for their own lives--they can remain in a state of preparation forever" (11).

Principle 8: Real Education Is Life Itself.

How has this sabbatical experience changed me? What difference has it made? Several initial thoughts come to mind. Permission to think in a convoluted, confluential manner is one glorious effect. General confidence is another. Some freedom from shyness has occurred. How could I possibly have the courage to ask professors I had not met to allow me into their classroom and into their mind? But through these many experiences I grew and I gained a wider purview of the world and how it works in general. By isolating the area of teaching in higher education, I was afforded the privilege to focus. Through watching how systems worked in many institutions, I am quicker at perceiving systems at work in other organizations. I learned about warmth of personality, of great teachers extending themselves to all people around them. That trait will always catch my attention in whatever situation.

The joy of focusing was paramount, the protected space of time during which it was thoroughly legal to edit from my life. While the edited matter would otherwise be healthy, nevertheless it served as a distraction, for it paled in light of my essence. I learned again, the power of knowing who I am and what the pith of my personal/professional mission statement comprises. I need now to continually remind myself of who I am and what motivates me. Based on that knowledge and applying such wisdom, I find greater joy when excluding what otherwise are fine activities but not warranted in the scheme of my ontological locus.

Having determined who I am, then being who I am and living into that, has become priceless insight. I have known that I am gifted in teaching. I know that teaching is ultimately energizing, as students grapple with content and their being. I know that I wish to serve a community where learning is valued everywhere, not limited to the classroom or professor¹s office. I want to be a part of a learning community where everyone cares for everyone¹s learning, which includes each person¹s being. I am convinced that helping students grow in knowledge, acquiring skills, and developing their talent conjoined with seeking and finding truth is life-giving to me. I expect that a subsequent expression will occur as a result of students moving toward the truth, for the truth makes one free indeed, free to serve others. So I agree: Real Education Is Life Itself.

Foer's How Soccer Explains the World

Having slogged through nearly all sixy-four games of Germany 2006 World Cup, I've had little on my mind except soccer. What a perfect opportunity to pick up Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.

I enjoyed it, and think it would be an interesting read for most soccer fans. It is filled with many anecdotes and histories of "supporters" and clubs. But as for the grandiose title suggesting insights on globalization, there's not much there. I'd stick to Thomas Friedman's books for that fare.

Here's one interesting passage I found regarding globalization:

“In response to the rise of corporate power, there’s a natural inclination to believe that self-interest hadn’t always ruled the market. Soccer writers in England often portray the old club owners as far more beneficent, public-minded citizens doing good for their old working-class friends. But this is nostalgia for a social market that never existed. Before the nineties, there was so little money in the game that owners let their stadiums decay into reprehensible safety traps. In effect, owners treated their fans as if their lives were expendable. Their negligence resulted in a complete breakdown, the broken –windows theory of social decay in microcosm. Fans began to think of life as expendable, too. They would beat the crap out of one another each weekend. To be sorrowful about the disappearance of this old culture requires grossly sentimentalizing the traditions and atmosphere that have passed. Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous, even when they deserve to be left in the past." (pp. 98-9)

Another passage that helps to explain how American soccer fans differ from their counterparts, and in part, why soccer isn't as popular in the United States:

“In every other part of the world, soccer sociology varies little: it is the province of the working class. Sure, there might be aristocrats, like Gianni Agnelli, who take an interest, and instances like Barca, where the game transcendently grips the community. But these cases are rare. The United States is even rarer. It inverts the class structure of the game. Here, aside from Latino immigrants, the professional classes follow the game most avidly and the working class couldn’t give a toss about it. Surveys done by the sporting goods manufacturers, consistently show that children of middle class and affluent families play the game disproportionately. Half the nation’s soccer participants come from households earning over $50,000. That is, they come from the solid middle class and above.” (pp. 238-9)