Sunday, June 24, 2018

The Rise of Numbers, the Demise of Spirit, the Death of Learning


The Rise of Numbers, the Demise of Spirit, the Death of                                                     Learning

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 6/24/18

            What did Tina Turner, Robert McNamara, and No Child Left Behind have in common?    For starters they all advanced the notion that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
In one of her classic songs, Turner raised the question, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”  As Secretary of Defense, McNamara ran the Vietnam War like a general manager, sounding forth on the Sunday television news shows as though he were still running Ford Corporation.  The No Child Left Behind law set in motion the great folly of trying to measure the immeasurable.
Let’s begin with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), while granting pure motives to its originators.  Let’s view it for what it was: an educational reform centered on “measurable goals” as a way to improve schools and heighten student performance.  Its catchy, humane title implied that great efforts would be made to close the achievement gap.  In 2015 President Obama signed a new version of this law which was called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  ESSA was an acknowledgement that after 14 years, NCLB had brought only slight improvement.  No wonder.  Both bills tried to make education a managerial science.
The centerpiece of NCLB, inaugurated by President G.W. Bush in 2002, was annual testing.  Specifically, NCLB required any public school receiving federal funds to administer the annual tests to ensure that levels of proficiency would rise in math, reading, and science between grades three and eight.  The federal government mandated various penalties for schools that couldn’t show yearly improvement through standardized tests.  One penalty was the dismissal of underperforming teachers and principals.  Measure and punish, in other words.
Unintended consequences abound in far too much legislation. The punitive nature of NCLB/ESSA led to such consequences.  One was the inordinate amount of time spent preparing for and giving the tests.  Another was the predictable practice of “teaching to the test,” a spirit-killing practice if there ever was one.
The prissy word for all of this business is “metrics.”  Boiled down, metrics is the placing of numbers above people.  For decades we’ve known that the mindset of bureaucrats and managers is to measure all things quantitatively, to examine success rates, to look at the bottom line.  We can understand this.
We should also understand, however, that children and teenagers are neither salesmen, machines, nor responsible adults for that matter.  They are growing, developing minors whose learning can’t always be “measured” by quantitative methods.  Pity the teacher who is the hottest teacher on the planet, has been teacher of the year three times, has received national acclaim, but one year gets classes that possess no intellectual curiosity and are chiefly from dysfunctional families.  Don’t tell him or her that it’s the teacher’s responsibility to get the weak classes up to par on standardized tests unless you yourself have taught at least one year, in which case you would never expect such a miracle from any teacher.
The metrics craze ignored the fact that there are other methods besides tests to measure achievement such as grades, student work, attendance, and teachers’ evaluations.
Equally misguided, the military is often touched by the bad philosophy of “metrics.”  Defense Secretary McNamara was dubbed a managerial extremist for arguing that military commanders should be good at determining costs and profit margin.  Like the classroom, like the battlefield.   Education and war simply lie outside the realm of managerial principles, yet the managerial ethos is the heart of NCLB/ESSA.  War seems to defy neatly held ideas about numbers and how they should look.  So does a dynamic classroom filled with young human beings with as many different needs as there are children in the room. 
Turner’s song asks, “What’s love but a second-hand emotion?”  Her lyrics were actually sarcastic, pointing to our contemporary disdain for emotion or spirit and for things that cannot be quantified.
“Metrics” kills spirit.  Spirit is needed for athletic teams, the battlefield, and for children and teens in school.  In sales and in corporate land, maybe not, but in many of life’s endeavors, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”  Much of teaching is to get students to dream, aspire, and reach higher, better things.  Measure that.
 Things that matter most – beauty, spirit, and the joy of living – cannot be measured.  The managerial mind has its place, but not in the classroom.  Knowledge must be tested, but tinkering with numbers and placing students into “cohorts” or “supersubgroups” to “measure” their progress is an abysmal practice.
Please call your senators, representatives, principals, and superintendents and tell them so.

Roger Hines
6/20/18
   
      

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Time to Get our Dictionaries Out


                                      Time to Get our Dictionaries Out

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 6/17/18

            Let’s avoid the word treasonous right now, but subversive is not at all too strong.  President Trump’s detractors are engaging in subversion.
            Let’s also keep things simple.  To learn what a word means, rush to its verb form.  To subvert means “to intentionally weaken, overthrow, or destroy as in government” (The New International Webster’s Standard Dictionary, 2006).
            Leftists of all stripes are openly saying we should bring down our current president.  Comedian Bill Maher, who illustrates that comedy is serious business, recently opined that if it takes economic disaster to bring down Donald Trump, then let it happen.  MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace, a former G.W. Bush staffer, called the president a liar while he was abroad seeking the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula.  She equated him with Kim Jong-un.
            Obviously Maher has no problem paying monthly bills, and Wallace has no grip on world history or geo-politics.  They are not alone.  The heightened anti-Trump verbal outbursts of countless entertainment figures and media stars have reached the level of subversion as well.
            Words don’t just have meanings.  They also have nuances and shades of meaning.  At what point do words become subversive?  At what point is the 1st Amendment being stretched too far?  If treason is betrayal or a breach of faith involving one’s country, Wallace came close when she characterized the nation’s leader as a murderer.  Judases and Matthew Arnolds we will always have with us.
            All presidents have received their fair share of vilification, but some have received more than their share.  President Obama brought us the excessive Dodd-Frank banking reforms,  Obamacare, and a new and radically different definition of marriage, yet he was never so personally, so angrily, or so incessantly vilified by Republicans as President Trump is by Democrats and the liberal media.
             Democrats and moderate Republicans are disguising their anger against Trump.  They are justifying their invective with “a concern for the future of the nation,” “our democracy is at stake,” and “we can’t be governed by an unstable man.”  The 2016 losers are still so embarrassed they are coloring the Trump-Clinton contest as a battle between the lower half and upper half of the IQ scale.  Those 63 million Trump voters were “barbarians at the gate.”
            I’m going to grant the Trump haters that last sentence.  I love a good figure of speech, and don’t mind being called a barbarian since it puts me in the company of Joan of Arc, William Wallace, and Barry Goldwater.  I can hear Goldwater saying, “Barbarianism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and timidity in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
            A barbarian is an uncivilized, uncultured person, and that’s just how the progressives and their sycophant press still view those 63 million working folks.
            Justice is what the 63 million forsaken, hardworking barbarians sought.  Tired of happy talk and fuzzy, futile promises, they tried a new path and a new leader.  Seems like they’re mighty happy with him so far.  Ask South Carolina Congressman Mark Sanford.  He trashed Trump and lost his first election ever this past week to a lady state representative who declared, “We are the party of Trump.”  Ponder the effect Sanford’s loss will have, or had better have, on other Republican candidates.
            Trump’s victory was no indicator of anybody’s IQ.  It was a revolt of those with more common sense against those who have less.  It was classic class warfare: the elites vs. the regulars.
            Despite the unbridled subversion of Trump’s opponents, Trump won fair and square.  To use his own words, he “did a big number” on Dodd-Frank and Obamacare.  But his adversaries should do what is historic and very American: accept the results of an election and work hard to remove him from office the American way, not the way of chaotic, unstable states.
            Can anyone deny that Trump, a 70-year-old, outworked 18 younger candidates?  His billions apparently haven’t diminished his work ethic.
            If liberals depose Trump or if they don’t, their next goal will be to abolish the Electoral College.  Despite losing the popular vote, Trump won the electoral vote.  That’s how we elect presidents.  We help little people (in this case little states), a practice liberals claim they believe in.  Without the Electoral College, the populous eastern seaboard and California would pick our presidents.  Without it, we are a pure democracy, one of the most chaotic forms of government.  With it, we are a republic which is what our ingenious founders intended.
            In addition to a dictionary, maybe we also need a tenth grade civics book.

Roger Hines
6/13/18

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Go Teach … and Make Friends with the Coach


               Go Teach … and Make Friends with the Coach

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 6/10/18

            The high school I was teaching in was doing well in basketball, mainly because of a single player who could not be stopped by any opposing team’s defense.  He was, as they say, a hoss.
            This outstanding player was a senior, an humble, quiet lad who struggled in my senior English composition class.  I admired him because he stayed in the struggle and never gave up.  He wound up being a good writer, but more importantly, a stellar example for his classmates who viewed him as the athletic star that he was.  Happily, he took advantage of the positive pressure placed on him to do well.
            Jarvis was one of the few black students in the school.  His coach and I had the same lunch period and discussed him often.  We knew he wanted to go to college but would not be able to without substantial financial help. 
The coach and I knew about a junior college in Mississippi with a reputation for both academics and high ranking basketball teams.  One day at lunch we made a decision and a deal.  Since the coach had always wanted to visit this junior college, and since I had not visited my home state in over a year, we decided we should take Jarvis to check out the college and fulfill our ulterior motives at the same time. Coach would drive his car and buy gasoline.  I would pay for our overnight lodging.
            Leaving with Jarvis early on a Thursday morning, we stopped for breakfast just before reaching the Georgia-Alabama line.  It was a truck-stop that serves the kind of breakfast Southerners can’t resist.    
We chatted with Jarvis during breakfast.  Or tried.  The coach, like all others I have ever worked with, exhibited the skill of getting a timid youth to relax and talk.  Jarvis began to open up.   We consequently learned more about his family and how he had helped support his family since he was 12.  Mixing this new knowledge with the character he had displayed in my class, I admired Jarvis even more.
            I already knew that the coach thought highly of Jarvis himself, not just his athletic prowess.  As Jarvis related an amazing story of fatherlessness, poverty, and a strong, struggling mother, I watched as the coach arrested a tear that almost escaped his eye.  Our respect was fast turning into deep affection for this young man of character.
            Walking to the car, we were hailed down by a young white man who had exited the truck-stop a few yards behind us.  When we turned toward him, he blurted, “That’s a mighty cute black boy you got there.  You gonna let him ride with ya?”
            Something came over me.  I blurted back, “Yeah, we are.  But you better be careful ‘cause he don’t like rednecks.”  Full disclosure: I’m an educated redneck.  I respect good rednecks, but this was a bad one.
            To my surprise the coach and Jarvis reacted to my retort with looks of fear, and so did the redneck who snorted something unintelligible as he rushed to his pickup.
            Inside the car, the young coach who would never call me by my first name said, “Mr. Hines, what you said scares me a little bit.  That dude might follow us and do no telling what.”  He was right.  I was hasty.  That dude did follow us closely for several miles but finally exited the interstate. 
 Over a decade older than the coach, I admired him for challenging an older man’s action.  I admired him more for following up with Jarvis and helping him get the athletic scholarship he badly needed.
            This coach’s concern typifies all coaches I have worked with.  In two states and in five schools, coaches have been my study.  Motivators, encouragers, and generally people of joy, they have set many a Jarvis on the right path, not all of them athletes, just youths at the school who need direction or help.  The one bad apple I’ve known never represented or marred any of the other coaches I’ve known.
            Schools need a mix of both young teachers and old.  I wish more people approaching retirement would consider teaching as a second career.  It’s a tough work, but getting to know  the coaches will help.  They will infuse, delight, and inspire.
            I hope coaches are getting some summer rest, but I know what their minds are on and I suspect that, actually, they are incurably restless, but in a positive, productive way.

Roger Hines
6/6/18
             

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

I Hear America Singing Again


                              I Hear America Singing Again

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 6/3/18
What do NASCAR fans, Wal-Mart customers, plumbers, electricians, county sheriffs, teachers, blue-collared workers, green collard eaters, steel workers, Michigan machinists, coaches, chicken growers, drill operators, beer drinkers, tee-totallers, pro-lifers,  gun owners, self-described rednecks, café owners, hunters, miners, and a passel of lawyers, doctors, and pastors have in common?
            You probably know. It’s an undiminished, still passionate support for President Trump.  Or so says Salena Zito, a reporter for the Washington Examiner and a political analyst for CNN. (You read that right, CNN).
            A respected reporter and researcher, Zito has drawn her findings from over 25,000 miles on roads less traveled, and from hundreds of interviews of citizens who are from a work-based and faith-driven ethic and culture.  In articles for the Washington Examiner and in a culminating new book titled “The Great Revolt,” Zito concludes that the heartland spoke in 2016 and that its voice is still reverberating.
            From my own daily interactions, I can experientially add several more Trump constituents to the list above: carpenters, committed Christians, retired military officers, garage door repairmen, computer experts, and non-voters in 2016 who are now registered voters.  None of what I see and hear bodes well for those awaiting a Democratic comeback or a blue wave of any size.
            Review the long and the shorter lists above.  Do they both not reflect a hardcore, hard working America?  Do they not illustrate heartland authenticity and cultural realism?  Do the lists make you think of Wall Street or Main Street?  Hollywood or Marietta?  Karl Marx or Adam Smith?  Corporate influence or small business owners?  Globalism or localism?
            Never have so few misjudged so many and miscalculated so much as in the 2016 presidential election.  The few were pollsters and media stars who simply got it wrong.  Who in the world were they polling?  Not the good people of all races at the gas stations where I pump gas.  Not the exterminators who come to my house.  The many were the working stiffs who got behind a candidate who didn’t put on airs, spoke plainly, and challenged our media stars.  The  talking heads, that is, who pontificate on things they know not of, while showing ignorance of and condescension for a populace with whom they never mix.
            Zito attributes Trump’s victory and continuing popularity to several things.  One is the “Perot-istas” (voters who propelled outsider billionaire Ross Perot to a considerable showing in 1992 against President H.W. Bush).  Another is the “King Cyrus Christians” (comparing Trump’s Christian supporters to ancient Jews whom the good pagan of Persia freed, allowing them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple), and another the “silent suburban moms” (voters who were uncomfortable revealing their support for Trump but supported him still).
            As for the “King Cyrus Christians,” Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council probably represented them well when he remarked, “My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values, but upon shared concerns.”  Which leads me to ask if any Jews rejected King Cyrus’ help just because he was a pagan and not a worshipper of Jehovah.  The prophets Ezra and Nehemiah certainly didn’t.  Turns out, modern Christians aren’t as self-righteous as their critics have claimed.     
A new populist coalition is not just in the make.  It’s already built – of former Democrats, unionists, conservative Republicans, evangelicals, southerners, and Midwesterners – and is holding steady.  I call it rural and small town America.  It is the coalescing of working people who embraced a different style candidate, one well educated with a good vocabulary but who avoids the words “proliferation,” “vis-a-vis” and “sequestration,” opting for “swamp,” “hellatious,” and “lovely.”  Think Harry Truman.
             Suited politicians appearing daily on television just no longer inspire.  The same goes for the media stars who frankly are no longer needed.  Disaffected blue-collar voters are quite aware of the disdain in which they are held by those who dwell at the heights of finance, media, and government.  Their Andrew Jackson-style revolt is for real.
            Poet Walt Whitman heard America’s heartbeat as he penned lines that heralded the common man: “I hear America singing … the carpenter as he measures his plank, the mason as he makes ready for work, the young wife sewing or washing, the boatman singing what belongs to him on his boat, each singing what belongs to him…”
             America’s long unheralded workers are stirring.  They’re not “peasants storming the gates.”   They’re fed up citizens doing their duty and shaking things up.  Corporate America thinks the workers and their unorthodox leader are not long for the road.  But they are wrong.

Roger Hines
5/30/18