Bill Gates on Education and Poverty: Blame the Poor

Bill Gates recently spoke to the National Urban League, arguing that it is a “myth that we have to solve poverty before we improve education.”

“Let me acknowledge that I don’t understand in a personal way the challenges that poverty creates for families, and schools and teachers,” the billionaire said at the civil rights group’s annual convention. “I don’t ever want to minimize it. Poverty is a terrible obstacle. But we can’t let it be an excuse.”

Half-hearted effort to walk back what is patently false aside, Gates’s remarks do demonstrate the real danger of the corporate-Republican nexus on education. No matter how compelling the evidence, both nationally and internationally, they can’t help but shake this almost religious faith in the idea that most of what ails schools is poor decisions by students and poor work habits by teachers.

Deep-seated, crushing poverty and intermittent hunger?  A lack of the resources that allow middle and upper class students to succeed? Those are hardly excuses; they are the reality for far too many American children–and it’s just possible that those kids, poor through no fault of their own, might struggle to see the promise of education.

It’s admirable that Gates and other business leaders want to give back to improve American education. It would be even more admirable if they acknowledged just how difficult improving American education without addressing poverty will be.

Heresy! A Teacher Likes A Standardized Test

Earlier today, I referenced an interview with Jonathan Kozol, the education reformer who, along with his stirring critique of economic inequality in our schools, has consistently opposed the negative repercussions of standardized testing. In this latest interview, Kozol said:

The testing agenda that Duncan is perpetuating is segregative and divisive in yet another sense. In inner-city schools, where principals are working with a sword of threats and punishments above their heads — for fear that they’ll be fired if they cannot "pump the scores" — they inevitably strip down the curriculum to those specific items that are going to be tested, often devoting two-thirds of the year to prepping children for exams….

So culture is starved. Aesthetics are gone. Joy in learning is regarded as a bothersome distraction. "These kids don’t have time for joy, or whim, or charm, or inquiry! Leave whim and happiness to the children of the privileged.

It’s devastating, and as cheating scandals across the nation have helped demonstrate, it’s true. There is incredible pressure in school districts across the nation to prove proficiency on these tests, even though there are so many logistical and theoretical problems with them.

That thought in mind, I happened across the 12th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress sample questions for 2010 today. I expected to find the kind of questions I hate to give as a teacher—soulless, rudimentary exercises in effort rather than intellect. Instead, I found questions that I want students to be able to answer, questions that required some knowledge about current events and culture.

While they’re not incredibly difficult, they’re appropriate measures of core knowledge.

You can take a look at the sample questions here.

Does my approval of the questions mean that I think Kozol is wrong? No. Test-mania focused on exam preparation (especially the kind of objective, multiple choice measurements used for measuring Annual Yearly Progress for NCLB) absolutely drives critical thought and engagement out of classrooms, especially in low-performing schools under the threat of sanctions. They’re simply not capable of completely assessing a student’s capabilities or knowledge.

Yet good test questions that measure core knowledge do matter. We need to ensure that our students are aware of the fundamentals of Geography, English, History, Science, and even Math. Finding a way to teach and measure these skills—while preserving student critical thought—is the real challenge going forward.

I should offer the disclaimer that I am not a Social Studies teacher, although one colleague does mock me for teaching her curriculum in my Debate and AP Language classes.

Do yourself a favor: read Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation.

The Original Great Gatsby Film

No need for a dumbed-down text of the novel or a Leonardo DiCaprio film; we just need to find a copy of this lost silent film version.

As it notes, “The Great Gatsby is Great!”

Monday Morning Mental Mix 11 July 2011

The New York Times reviews Honeybee Democracy, which argues that the life and death decisions bees make about issues like moving the colony are much like New England town hall meetings. Somehow, I suspect Henry David Thoreau would enjoy this book.

Joanne Barkan, writing for Dissent, takes on the war against teachers. The opening of the piece offers a sobering assessment: “In a nation as politically and ideologically riven as ours, it’s remarkable to see so broad an agreement on what ails public schools. It’s the teachers.

Rajan Menon argues in the National Interest that Colonel Qaddafi has won the war in Libya: Yet this what the interventionists maintain, never mind that their righteous rendition begs a question: Why, under such favorable circumstances, has the world’s most powerful alliance failed to oust a reviled ruler who presides over what is now a third-rate military machine and faces relentless air attacks, wide-ranging sanctions, and an opposition that is said to reflect the public’s sentiment and now receives external arms, training and money?

David Ralph’s review of Chocolate nations: Living and dying for cocoa in West Africa provides some excellent insight into the ongoing conflict in Côte d’Ivoire and the exploitative practices associated with chocolate production.

Finally, Nissan offers another effective advertisement for its Leaf car.

See Daisy Drive. See Jay Swim. Look Out, Jay!

Roger Ebert  pointed out the “obscenity” of a retelling of The Great Gatsby by Margaret Tarner, a book which is presumably intended for struggling high school readers.

Ebert points out the contrast between Fitzgerald’s original novel and Ms. Tarner’s “retelling” most effectively when he contrasts the endings of each work.

Fitzgerald:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—-
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Tarner:

Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our dream wherever it takes us.
Some unpleasant people became part of Gatsby’s dream. But he cannot be blamed for that. Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn’t he?

I’ve had the opportunity to teach Gatsby each of the past two years and have come to appreciate it more each time I’ve read it. My students teased me this year because every day I would come to class earnestly proclaiming one sentence or another as “the finest piece of writing you’ll ever come across.”

It’s a beautiful, moving, complex text which can transform a reader. You know, what literature should do. Ebert is right that Gatsby is accessible to high school students and that they deserve the opportunity to read and experience the original text. Boiling down art to a means to transmit plot and low-level vocabulary not only destroys the art, but damages the reader.

No teacher should have such little faith in her students as to teach this text.

I disagree with Ebert, however, when he uses this text as evidence of a collapsed American educational system. He writes:

What depresses me is what this Macmillan Reader edition says about our American educational system. Any high school student who cannot read The Great Gatsby in the original cannot read. That student has been sold a bill of goods. We know that teachers at the college level complain that many of their students cannot read and write competently. If this is an example of a book they are assigned, can they be blamed?

It’s too easy to blame the educational system alone.   As pressure mounts to increase graduation rates without maintaining intellectual and academic growth and as the federal government and business interests demand education focused less on ideas and more on “marketable skills” and “proficiency,” we’ll see more pressure to lower the bar, even as low as this:

“My name is Nick Carraway. I was born in a big city in the Middle West.”

In his essay Dehumanized, Mark Slouka persuasively argues that education our education system has become almost entirely focused on commerce at the expense of ideas:

Education in America today is almost exclusively about the GDP. It’s about investing in our human capital, and please note what’s modifying what. It’s about ensuring that the United States does not fall from its privileged perch in the global economy. And what of our political perch, you ask, whether legitimate or no? Thank you for your question. Management has decided that the new business plan has no room for frivolity.

Is it any wonder that, in a climate like the one Slouka correctly describes, books like retellings of classic novels are finding their way into classrooms? That a cursory look at the plot suffices?

Teaching literature is difficult in a culture increasingly dominated by short attention span entertainment. It’s even more difficult when those who teach literature are told it has limited value in the marketplace or on standardized test scores.