CSotD: … and we’re back!
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During my year-long sojourn in talk radio, I learned many things, one of which was that you are not supposed to say "And we're back!" every time you come out of a commercial break.
But I'm live blogging again, so we're back, and I'm glad most of you behaved while I was on the road. Some of you drew cartoons based on the controversial and complex theory that the governor of New Jersey is fat, and I see that a few others are still making up silly things about the Affordable Care Act, but most of you were very good and some of you were even excellent.
F'rinstance:
Signe Wilkinson is not targeting a new issue, rather a worsening one. And she's right.
We simply refuse to budget for adequate guidance counselors in our schools, and it's not as simple as "we all have to do more with less," because there weren't enough a quarter-century ago either.
In the years since we have (A) made it even harder for students to drop out, (B) increased the pressure on them to attend college and (C) failed to make any provision in school staffing to deal with the obvious and readily-foreseeable impacts of these developments.
Yes, people whine that the schools shouldn't have to deal with the kids' personal problems. Back in the Olden Days blahblahblah.
As I noted here recently, the idea that, in the Olden Days, parents always worked hand-in-glove with schools and didn't challenge poor grades or claims of misbehavior is absolutely preposterous.
But the theory persists that going back to the Olden Days, when reading and writing and 'rithmetic were taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick, would solve all our educational problems.
Because nothing helps motivate kids to excel, and gets them to calm down and behave, better than hitting them.
Which nonsense feeds into this toxic disconnect: Although we insist that the way to stop school shootings is not to restrict access to guns but rather to deal with mental health issues, we apparently don't mean the kind of dealing with mental health issues that would include paying attention to kids with mental health issues.
Gosh, no. Guidance counselors cost money, and the ones we already have need to process all those college applications.
However, this is not new. It's just worse.
I knew a guidance counselor in 1998 who was responsible for 400 kids, and he said it was all he could do simply to meet them each once. He had no prayer of helping the ones who needed anything more complex than to drop Spanish II in favor of French I, or to find a web site about career opportunities in veterinary medicine.
And my own kids, who had both graduated by then, spoke of how their guidance counselors spent all their time on college applications and didn't have time for kids with problems. This in response to my questions about why certain kids weren't getting the help they clearly needed.
Bottom Line: It is a commonplace to observe that we would rather build jails than spend money on schools, but it is accurate and sometimes heartbreaking.
It is also accurate to observe that we would rather train teachers to deal with the aftermath of a suicide or an act of violence than hire enough counselors to deal with troubled kids in the first place.
And we'd rather babble about the Olden Days than deal with the Right Now Days.
But back in the Olden Days, kids with impossible lives dropped out and disappeared.
Back in the Olden Days, people kept their mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed children home, hidden away like Mr. Rochester's mad wife, or locked away in institutions.
Back in the Olden Days, a large percentage of the kids who did finish school went off to work in the mill or joined the army or got married and settled into domestic life and didn't need to fill out college applications.
Pay Attention, America: Even the Olden Days that weren't some pastoral figment of Norman Rockwell's imagination are over. And it matters to our children, and to our future as a nation, in more ways than how it effects our schools.
But that's not a bad place to look for symptoms and signs of our societal dysfunction.
Last month, Linda Darling-Hammond was interviewed on Morning Edition and had a number of vital observations on testing and the Common Core and other well-intentioned, poorly targeted educational reforms, but I was particularly struck by this exchange:
INSKEEP: I wonder if you feel, at this moment, that schools are failing.
DARLING-HAMMOND: Well, you know, in general, our schools do better with the challenges they have to face, than I think is true of most high-achieving nations around the world. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty, mortality, lack of health care, homelessness of any developed country in the world at this point. And we have unequal funding, so that we give more money to the education of rich kids than poor kids.
So our affluent districts in schools do quite well, and are still the envy of many in the world. Our low-income schools and districts are struggling with all these responsibilities and challenges and very little and inadequate public support. And yet, they perform extraordinarily well, given the circumstances they have to meet.
The remainder of that interview is well worth reading, but this particular piece of the puzzle is a no-brainer: Other countries invest far more in their children than we do.
In the words of the bard, "Please get out of the new road if you can't lend a hand."
I love this
One of my favorite Shirley & Son classics came up today. There's nothing new about little boys, frogs and freaked-out moms, but the mutual startle and the frog coming out of the panel blew my mind a dozen years ago and they still delight me every time I see this one.
LOL doesn't begin to cover it.
… and this …
And especially this:
(Raul Fernando Zuleta, who needs to get his web page up and running!)
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