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The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours fie years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.
And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.
If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online, New York Times, 1/20/10
It’s hard to believe this can end well.
It just gets worser!
“It will destroy your family, your happy home is gone
No one can protect you from it once you turn it on.”
“It will led you into some strange pursuits,
Lead you to the land of forbidden fruits.
It will scramble up your head and drag your brain about,
Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out.”
– TV Talking Song, Bob Dylan, 1990
A little vignette from another place on this beautiful earth, North Korea:
Children learn a ditty called “Shoot the Yankee Bastards” in music class. One verse goes:
Our enemies are the American bastards
Who are trying to take over our beautiful fatherland.
With guns that I make with my own hands
I will shoot them. BANG, BANG, BANG.
– North Korea Keeps Hiding, and Fascinating, NYT, 1/26/10
How about you? Fascinated?
The MEA seems to have vowed to “fight the cuts” in the proposed education budget*.
We just say “Good luck!”
Take a look around at state finances. California is bankrupt, and as a functioning governmental entity, at least as we’ve understood such of late, is imploding.
New York state is cutting their budgets, especially education; in fact the state is on the verge of bankruptcy, only one step behind California.
You can watch the crisis unfold in state after state at Stateline.org. (Here’s some international perspective: 2010: The year of bankrupt gov’ts.)
Reality is a harsh mistress.
In this context, observers have to ask whether “fighting the cuts” is the best strategy for the MEA.
MIght as well try to hold back the storm!
I went down Virginia, Seekin’ shelter from the storm.
Caught up in the fable, I watched the tower grow.
Five year plans and new deals, Wrapped in golden chains.
And I wonder, Still I wonder Who’ll stop the rain.
- John Fogerty (CCR), Who’ll Stop the Rain (1969)
* There’s a good roundup of these developments in the December 22 postings at MDISchools.
That’s the message from this new study:
“We were startled to find that there is so much research published on learning styles, but that so little of the research used experimental designs that had the potential to provide decisive evidence,” says Harold E. Pashler, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego and the paper’s lead author.
“Lots of people are selling tests and programs for customizing education that completely lack the kind of experimental evidence that you would expect for a drug,” Mr. Pashler says. “Now maybe the FDA model isn’t always appropriate for education—but that’s a conversation we need to have.”
and
Mr. Pashler’s study does not dispute the existence of learning styles. But it asserts that no one has ever proved that any particular style of instruction simultaneously helps students who have one learning style while also harming students who have a different learning style.
Of the hundreds of research papers that have been published on learning styles, Mr. Pashler says, almost none have randomly assigned students into one classroom type or another. Only that kind of experiment, he says, can suggest anything definitive about causation. And the few studies that have used an adequate research design, he adds, have mostly failed to support the hypothesis that teaching styles should match students’ learning styles.
Wow! Is nothing sacred?
Perhaps what’s proven is that “theories”, the theories that make careers and sell books and programs, and the theories that linger like swamp miasma over ed schools have little to do with classroom realities and the hard, ordinary, and valuable work of teaching.
Maybe?
Revealed: the young can learn mathematical concepts.
Is this truly news? How often do you read of some educational research results and say “I knew that”?
The follow-on: So educational professionals thought 5-and-youngers couldn’t learn math. There’s a frightening and shocking thought!
Maybe we should focus on that troubling revelation and ask exactly why the professionals missed this. Maybe theory got in the way. Mebbe they don’t know any kids!
The Governor’s budget: Brian has it all over at MDISchools (see the December 20 post).
It’s slash and burn time, the wolf is at the door, fly away home your house is on fire. Use any image you want, but we’re up against it. You knew it was coming.
Matthew Stone has the story here. Read it all.
Particularly worthy of notice is this section:
Aside from mergers, the education commissioner called on local teachers unions to consider pay freezes, rather than stick to contracts that bind school districts to annual, incremental pay raises. The move, she said, would prevent some school staff members from being laid off.
Teacher and staff salaries covered by contracts account for more than half of school district budgets, Gendron noted. “Saving 2 or 3 percent of that cost would be a great savings for our local school districts.”
Chris Galgay, president of the Maine Education Association, called Gendron’s comment unfortunate. “I don’t think she should use the bully pulpit” to command local pay freezes, he said.
“They make these decisions locally,” said Steve Crouse, the teachers union’s government relations director.
Galgay and Crouse, if I remember aright, were silent on consolidation. Talk about the “bully pulpit”!
It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of Gendron’s suggestion.
The initial reaction suggests that the MEA will sacrifice some of its members rather than consider freezes. A bit out of touch, eh?
Fast-food standards for meat top those for school lunches. Are you surprised? We always knew Mickey had high standards.
You read it here first: Devices to Take Textbooks Beyond Text “It’s wonderful not to have to lug those books around.”
At Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, they thought they could force students to lose weight. But no more!
We break our recent radio silence for this important message.
New state cuts hit education, social services hardest
Gov. John Baldacci ordered more than $63 million in midyear budget cuts Friday in a curtailment order that heavily targets state funding for education and social services programs.
Faced with a two-year revenue shortfall approaching $400 million, Baldacci took a first step toward balancing the budget by ordering immediate spending reductions even as administration officials and lawmakers prepare to grapple with even larger cuts.
(Bangor Daily News, 11/21/09)
The whole article is important reading, but let’s highlight these salient paragraphs:
While unwelcome news, the $38 million in cuts to education came as no surprise to school officials. At the urging of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron, superintendents began preparing for cuts of that magnitude several months ago.
“We’ve actually been preparing for this since midsummer,” said Jim Boothby, superintendent for RSU 25 in the Bucksport area. “We anticipated this curtailment and made a concerted effort not to fill positions if we could find ways to cover those positions. We tried to address this earlier than later.”
[Roger] Shaw [Superintendent of SAD 42], who oversees schools in Mars Hill and Blaine, said the advanced warning has helped him and other superintendents prepare. But that doesn’t make the task of cutting any easier, he said.
“When cuts come in the middle of the year, you don’t have many places to go other than personnel,” Shaw said.
Betsy Webb, superintendent of schools in Bangor, said she is hoping to avoid any layoffs, but it all depends on how much is cut in the supplemental budget. The curtailment ordered $754,000 in cuts to Bangor schools.
Let’s hope, indeed, that all districts have planned for this.
Maybe you saw this one already. Why does everything Chicago-related so quickly seem to spin out of control? 25 Chicago Students Arrested for a Middle-School Food Fight. We know that at least one apple and an orange were thrown. What else? The quality of American journalism is declining, clearly, if the article doesn’t answer this vital question.
In Danvers, Massachusetts a school admin is in a twist about “meep”. Must be their test scores are just excellent, if he’s reduced to worrying about “meep”. I wish him a Merry Meepmas and Happy Meeping New Year!
The food police are going after chocolate milk in schools. Must be that their schools are near the pinnacle of achievement and if they can just get rid of chocolate milk, they’ll break on through to the highest levels possible! [Psst! Hey kid! Want some chocklit milk?]
Insanity, all of it!
- Ann Althouse pins Edu-Obama to the wall, deservedly:
Should you really stand in front of a big group of middle schoolers and brutally inform that that the minority kids are doing worse? What does that sound like to a kid? It’s especially harsh since he’s expressing concern not for the personal fulfillment of the individual but for the fact that it’s costing some amorphous “us” a whole lot of money. Students matter not because they are human beings but because — as a group — they are “our future workforce.” They aren’t even workers. They are to be merged into a mass called The Workforce.
When I was a teenager, talk like that stirred rebellion in me. I’m trying to imagine how I would feel if I were not doing well in school and I were a member of a group the President stigmatized as lagging. I’ve got to assume I’d feel more rebellious.
- This is good too: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy Forcibly Guest-Edits High School Newspaper Article About His Own Visit
- Money for grades? Not explicitly!
It was part of Rousseau’s vanity that he believed himself incapable of base emotions.”I feel too superior to hate.” “I love myself too much to hate anybody.” “Never have I known the hateful passions, never did jealousy, wickedness, vengeance enter my heart…anger occasionally but I an never crafty and never bear a grudge.”
In fact he frequently bore grudges and was crafty in pursuing them. Men noticed this. Rousseau was the first intellectual to proclaim himself, repeatedly, the friend of all mankind. But loving as he did humanity in general , he developed a strong propensity for quarreling with human beings in particular.
One of his victims, his former friend Dr Tronchin of Geneva, protested: “How is it possible that the friend of mankind is no longer the friend of Men, or scarcely so?”
…
Being an egoist, Rousseau tended to equate hostility to himself with hostility to truth and virtue as such. Hence nothing was too bad for his enemies…
from Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, 1988
Apropos, of course, of nothing!
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
(Image from the Canadian War Museum)
…is the complaint of many a teacher. But they have to do the paperwork. And the testing. And the programs that have little to do with teaching.
The Center for American Progress (some scary dudes, IMO — info here and here) thinks we’re not very innovative.
Actually, hardly anyone is. Nice to know. Matthew Stone lays it out for us here: “Maine faulted for lacking education innovations“.
Teachers, good teachers, have ideas. They know what they’d like to do, given a chance.
What chances do they have in the present situation? When have you seen a centralized, top-down, “we’ve got rules!” bureaucracy that was innovative?
You can put a tutu on a bear, but that doesn’t mean the bear can dance!
Update: The report, “Leaders and Laggards: A State-By-State Report Card of Educational Innovation”, is here. I earlier misread Matthew’s article; the report is not just a product of CAP’s brainpower. Co-conspirators are the American Enterprise Institute and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. Geesh!
Here’s an interesting turn of events.
Some of our esteemed solons, including Justin Alfond of Portland (we keep running into that name!), are suggesting that we dump the present school budget approval process.
Read about it in this morning’s Kennebec Journal here.
“Money” (pardon) quote:
Three lawmakers on the Education Committee have recently suggested eliminating the two-step school-budget approval process, according to committee e-mails the Kennebec Journal recently obtained under the Maine Freedom of Access Act. A number of school superintendents also suggested the move at a budget strategy session held in Augusta in late August.
“I’ve heard over and over from superintendents and school board members that it’s a redundant process that costs time and money. And, quite frankly, people don’t show up,” said Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, the Education Committee’s Senate chairman.
The 2007 school-district consolidation law put in place a two-step budget approval process requiring school districts to let voters sign off on budgets at town-meeting style gatherings and later by referendum. Districts must repeat the process until voters OK a budget.
They’d like to eliminate the present process and substitute something different to save money. That ought to prick up your ears!
We certainly don’t object to looking at the process again.
But to fiddle with it solely — they say — to save money?
We well know that representative government is expensive (hoo boy!), but tell us, Mr. Efficiency Man, what alternative would you suggest?
(We’re reminded, again and again, that elections have consequences.)
 There's the State! They'll save me! Cartoon from Boots and the Mystery of the Unlucky Vase, Edgar Everett Martin, 1943. The caption came to us one night in a dream.
The Bangor Daily News’s justly-famous election results pages are here.
If the election and its results/aftermath have made you grumpy, why that’s good, and good for you. Everybody has an “Eeyore day“.
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News & Reading- Phone texting 'helps pupils to spell', BBC, 1/20/10 - #
- School consolidation remains the law of the land, PPH, 11/4/09 - #
- Patriotic photo refused, Concord Monitor, 10/31/09 - #
- More state cuts on tap, KJ, 10/30/09 - #
- Report Questions Duncan’s Policy of Closing Failing Schools, NYT, 10/29/09 - #
- Schools cut spending as state aid loss loom, PPH, 10/28/09 - #
- Vote yes on 3 to repeal school consolidation law, BDN, 10/27/09
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- MEA to battle 'real threat', KJ, 10/25/09
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- Report card shows U.S. students need to improve math skills, CNN, 10/14/09 - #
- Campaign defends '07 school merger law, PPH, 9/27/09 - #
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