Nine Shift

Even when they do what they are supposed to

So about six years ago, Willie got sick for about three weeks. The doctors didn't know what it was. So we drove him to a specialized expert children's hospital. The doctor examines Willie, comes out, and asks, "Have you considered a new school?"  At the time I, an educator, felt like screaming at the doctor "HE'S SICK. CURE HIM. DON'T TELL ME HE NEEDS A NEW SCHOOL." The doctor was right, of course. A few years later Julie found a new school and we enrolled Willie.

Willie's new school is wonderful. Every kid has a laptop. The school is wireless.((Here's Willie and Landon on our roof logged onto the Internet and doing homework)) Homework is posted online. Grades are posted online so we as parents (and Willie) can see what's been done, what hasn't. After the first day, we asked Willie's friend (who also enrolled) how the new school was different. "They don't yell at you" was his answer.  Willie's doing work that would be college level in most colleges. Some 99%+ of students go to college. It's got to be one of the top 200 high schools in the country.

Yet, yet, as Bill Gates said recently, even when schools are doing what they are supposed to, they are obsolete.

Colleges with no grades

This week Willie and his friend Brownie are visiting Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
He applied to four colleges; got accepted at four colleges; this is one of them.

Evergreen is one of the 40 colleges listed in the Colleges That Change Lives book (so were 3 out of 4 of the colleges to which he applied).

One reason why we as parents like Evergreen is that we have heard there are no grades at Evergreen.
Boys get worse grades than girls, even in college.  The GPA gender gap never diminishes.
The American association of admissions counselors won't tell you this - - a representative lied on public radio about it when I called in to ask.

((Boys also have a higher drop out rate than girls.))
We just want him to learn at college, not be punished.

Children Never Forget

Virginia Woolf, in "To the Lighthouse," wrote that "Children never forget."

Last year Willie, Julie and I went to interview the oldest man in my hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin - Langdon Divers, age 102.

When Langdon was a senior in high school, in 1920, he was the ONLY student to pass physics class. Every other student failed. But because he did not return his workbook, the teacher flunked Langdon and passed everyone else. 

As he was a senior, that meant Langdon had to repeat his entire senior year in high school.
((The lesson here, because most folks still don't get it - - is that behavior does not matter. It is knowledge that matters.))

Some 85 years later, there was still hurt in his voice when he told us.
((The lesson here, because most folks still don't get it - - is that the boys will still hurt emotionally for their lives because of what schools are doing to them now))

Why Gender Matters

This week at the Mountain Plains Adult Education Association conference, Julie Coates talked about gender and learning in an overflow session, then attended another great session on the topic by Jeb Schenck of Thermopolis, Wyoming.

She also has finished reading the new book by Jonathan Sax, Why Gender Matters.  As more and more books, speeches, press coverage (see for example) and voices are being heard, the issue of boys in school is starting to get some attention. Yeah!

A few facts:
* Female teachers (85% of teachers) do not speak loadly enough for many boys to hear them. Boys do not hear as well as girls.
* Because their synapses are hooked up until their twenties, boys are not able to describe their feelings in papers and essays in middle and high school.
* Girls (and female teachers) like to work face to face.  Boys learn much better when the teacher sits side by side.
* There are 300 genes exclusive to males; 100 genes exclusive to females.
* At 9 months, boys choose trucks over dolls by a large majority. Girls choose more trucks than boys choose dolls. This is genetic: boy and girl chimps show the same pattern.
* Infant boys, when given a choice between looking at a mobile in motion and a face, look at the mobile in motion.  Infant girls, given the same choice, look at the face.

During the breaks at the conference, both mom and dad educators told the same stories about their boys and how bad school is for them.

Take responsibility for yourself

Part of our "Will Willie graduate?" series.

Our son Willie, a senior in high school, submitted his paper on preventing genocide and got:   an F. 

We thought it was brilliant, showed it to others and they thought likewise.
We weren't looking for an "A."  A "B" or even a "C" would have been acceptable, but an F means he may flunk the course and not graduate from high school this spring.

So Willie's mother submitted the "F" essay as part of Willie's college application. The outcome: Willie was accepted at the college within 14 days, and offered a partial scholarship.

Thus our son has been accepted at all four colleges he has applied to, instantly becoming (as one college admissions officer put it) a "wanted man."  But we're still not sure he will graduate from high school.

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career," *

All this is irrelevant to you, dear reader, except that Willie is not alone. There are 2 million boys, and probably a bunch of girls, who are suffering the same ill treatment at school.  Their stories will end less successfully, with emotional scars for life, most of them not going to college.  Only 35% of college graduates today are boys, down from 50% in 1980 and the majority before then.

Should teachers take responsibility for themselves, and start treating students as individuals? Has the "my way or the highway" approach made schools, as Bill Gates  recently observed, obsolete?

* Lyrics from John Lennon's Working Class Hero.

 

 

Will Willie graduate?

He's been accepted at four colleges.
He has high SAT and ACT scores.
But he might not graduate from high school.

Follow the plight of one smart boy whose situation represents millions of other smart boys, and the state of education today.

Check it out, now until May 15, with regular updates, right here. 

McDonald's to save Social Security

I knew Ronald McDonald could save Social Security.

According to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, life expectancy of Americans may actually decrease due to obesity induced early deaths. 

With enough of today's American children dying before their natural time, we'll have fewer older adults on Social Security, and plenty of obese young folks to pay for them. 

I never really thought of the McDonald's arch as a life expectancy chart before.....

Tweedledum and Tweedlee both approve roads

100 years ago, Helen Keller graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe,* financially sponsored in part by Mark Twain and other notables of the time.

A great socialist (suprised you, didn't I), Keller referred to the Democrats and Republicans of her day as "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," citing few differences between the two major political parties.

Today Tweedledum and Tweedledee both are approving of massive- - and useless- -  expenditures on roads. These new improved roads will help:
- Japan sell more cars to Americans.
- Chinese move their goods across the country.
- The US be more dependent on oil producing nations.

How any of this will help Americans is wrapped up in fog, unsound slogans (e.g. Jobs will be created) and obsolete assumptions. The big broad support for roads is not surprising, just disappointing.

* Ms. Keller always referred to Anne Sullivan as Teacher.  At the age of 10, she signed to Sullivan, "Teacher, I am not dumb now."

Gadgets rule

A headline is worth a thousand words.

In the battle between the 21st century and the 20th century, sometimes the same article is in both. This was the case in this week's USA Today story about how laptops, wireless connections, email, cell phones and other technology "rule" on college campuses today.

The story is great. Nine Shift happening all the way on college campuses. Especially good news is the advance of wireless buildings/areas on campuses. 

But the headline writer is firmly stuck in the last century, writing the headline "Gadgets rule on college campuses."   

Happy April Truth Day

In a radio comedy piece this morning, Jim Ed Poole, a radio announcer who also does sound effects for Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion show, made the casual observation that fewer people "celebrate" April Fool's Day now because there is so much untruth and misinformation throughout the whole year in the American media.  He jokingly suggested an April Truth Day. To see what that would look like, click here.