WELL Folks Erskine College, under the esteem leadership of Randy Ruble, has established another step in showing just what the College mission statement really means.
Randy Ruble has struck once again in the name of Christian Commitment.
Folks you gotta love this one: Along with auctioning off dates and having car washes with the young men wearing Speedos to raise money for the college; now Dr. Randy is pulling the rug from under long time employees in the housekeeping department.
Dr. Randy has just entered the College into a contract with Aramark, a giant in ancillary services of all types. What has Randy done to give the housekeeping department the security they once enjoyed at the small College located in Due West, SC? Randy jerked the security rug from under long time employees of the College. They went from being part of the Erskine family to numbers on the employee sheet of Aramark.
No longer will the housekeepers have the feeling that they belong to a caring college family. No longer will they have the feeling of the security they once felt while they were employees of Erskine College. Now they are going through mixed feelings of being thrown away to feelings of despair and feeling very insecure, thanks to Randy. The housekeepers went from happiness to great despair all in the name of Christianity.
By the way Randy, just what God do you and the College serve? Is there a new God that I have not heard about, is this a new-age God? What has happened to the teachings of the God that I have always heard of his name as having been, and will always be, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the same God as yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13-8)?
Now let’s add this up and try to figure out just what a Christian College is. Is this where you want you sons and daughters to attend school?
Your daughter may be auctioned off to date a young man she has never met. Your sons may be washing cars wearing Speedos. Your daughter may end up 90% naked sitting in a young man’s lap while he is holding a gun. How about a professor dating the students? All of this is going on in the name of Christian Commitment and Excellence in Learning. Is all of this being done with the board of trustee’s approval? Now that’s a very good question. Is this a Christian atmosphere or a scene from an adult movie?
My deepest condolences to the housekeepers and my sympathy to the parents that want their kids safe and thinking their kids are in a Christian atmosphere, and my admiration to the chief of Police of Due West for doing his best to keep all of the citizens of Due West safe.
Keep up the Christian work Randy. Lets not forget that the College charges the students a fee to go to church and fines them if they do not attend church. I am sorry I cannot reference this anywhere in any Bible.
It is my personal opinion that Randy Ruble does in fact want to serve God, but only in an advisory capacity.
Until next time, I remain a close observer of the joke of Erskine College.
Go Randy.
Bobby Caldwell
Friday, March 14, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Read below and tell me if this is a joke
V. Erskine's Purpose
The purpose of Erskine College should be to provide sound training in a campus environment where evangelical Christian influence is supreme and pervasive. The role of the church-sponsored college is the distinctive one of relating academic disciplines to the Christian realities of faith and responsible selfhood.At the same time, there must be intellectual stimulation and open dialogue; and creative individualism should be fostered. The basic premise of education ought to be that the goals of education are to open the mind and the heart to truth, to teach one to think Biblically and objectively and to give direction to daily life. "In Thy light shall we see light."As an arm of the Church, Erskine College exists to enlarge and help sustain the mission of the Church. It exists, primarily, for the benefit of its students. Their interests must be paramount and their individual and collective needs a matter of continuing concern. Erskine's goal must be to afford them the opportunity and encouragement to integrate knowledge and moral values in the development of the highest and best use of their abilities. A primary objective of the College should be to guide the student into the development of a mature faith within a Christian system of values which defines contemporary pressures in their true light and which is staunchly resistant to the impersonality and relativism of our time. Erskine's ultimate objective for every student must be the gaining of an understanding of the truth that "man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."
The purpose of Erskine College should be to provide sound training in a campus environment where evangelical Christian influence is supreme and pervasive. The role of the church-sponsored college is the distinctive one of relating academic disciplines to the Christian realities of faith and responsible selfhood.At the same time, there must be intellectual stimulation and open dialogue; and creative individualism should be fostered. The basic premise of education ought to be that the goals of education are to open the mind and the heart to truth, to teach one to think Biblically and objectively and to give direction to daily life. "In Thy light shall we see light."As an arm of the Church, Erskine College exists to enlarge and help sustain the mission of the Church. It exists, primarily, for the benefit of its students. Their interests must be paramount and their individual and collective needs a matter of continuing concern. Erskine's goal must be to afford them the opportunity and encouragement to integrate knowledge and moral values in the development of the highest and best use of their abilities. A primary objective of the College should be to guide the student into the development of a mature faith within a Christian system of values which defines contemporary pressures in their true light and which is staunchly resistant to the impersonality and relativism of our time. Erskine's ultimate objective for every student must be the gaining of an understanding of the truth that "man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."
Friday, February 29, 2008
Erskine, is this what the college stands for
I cannot for the life of me understand how Erskine College or any other College for that matter could every possible call their educational institution a Christian College and tolerate such behavior as putting on car washes in speedos, and actuation off dates.
I would like to know what the next stunt the Administration is going to permit the students to do at Erskine College in the Name of Jesus Christ.
I would like to meet the person that gave Erskine College the name Christian College.
I personally think that losing 14 freshman would get someone's attention.
Maybe with my help spreading the word about the professor and the S I. student playing house, at her house
What was the professor's name oh yes, I heard it was Rachael, and what about the rumor concerning the theft in the financial aid office? How many employees has Erskine had to fire in the last 3 years?
AH yes and lets not forget the infamous Tony Santella, Ladies man extraordinarine
Hire you a good Lawyer Tony, May is coming soon, I pay all of my Debts
Tony and the Grade Chaser's Don't push girls, their's enough A's for everyone.
like I always say, if you have a son or daughter that likes the anything goes college life and loves to date professors, drink when they are underage learn the art of gambling and
just think, They can do all of the above under the guise of Christianity.
I would like to know what the next stunt the Administration is going to permit the students to do at Erskine College in the Name of Jesus Christ.
I would like to meet the person that gave Erskine College the name Christian College.
I personally think that losing 14 freshman would get someone's attention.
Maybe with my help spreading the word about the professor and the S I. student playing house, at her house
What was the professor's name oh yes, I heard it was Rachael, and what about the rumor concerning the theft in the financial aid office? How many employees has Erskine had to fire in the last 3 years?
AH yes and lets not forget the infamous Tony Santella, Ladies man extraordinarine
Hire you a good Lawyer Tony, May is coming soon, I pay all of my Debts
Tony and the Grade Chaser's Don't push girls, their's enough A's for everyone.
like I always say, if you have a son or daughter that likes the anything goes college life and loves to date professors, drink when they are underage learn the art of gambling and
just think, They can do all of the above under the guise of Christianity.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Christian College, WHAT?
Hey Everyone, THe annual SCA/ODK auction will be held next Thursday, March 6th at11:00 am during convo. We will be auctioning off fun things likerounds of golf, trips to the tanning bed, intellectual dinners withyour favorite teachers, boy and girl dates, speedo car washes...andMUCH MUCH MORE!!! ;) So don't forget to come and bring your moneybecause we WILL hunt you down until you pay us!!! Besides what couldbe better than a little fun and some convo credit all at the sametime? The money from the auction will actually be going to the JanetAlexander Memorial Scholarship for students, the betterment of ODK andSCA in numerous ways so that we can give back to you the Erskinecommunity, and hopefully to the students themselves via activites,funds, and services. Every year we have topped the year before so Iwant all of you to be there to make this the best one yet!! We areexcited to have our own beloved Jason Nussbaum as our auctioneer soget ready to spend some MOOLAH!! Hope everyone has a good rest of theweek and see you next Thursday!Sincerely,AShlee LaFontaine (ODK President)Philip Bunch (SCA President)
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Part 1
Part one.
HARD LESSONS is a collection of essays about crime control by Richard Hil and Gordon Tait.
While the lessons most directly apply to New Zealand, Australia, and the UK, the cycle of dysfunction described parallels that seen in the U.S. The book is divided into case studies which illustrate the failure of governments to devise policies that are effective in controlling crime. The authors argue that being tough on crime is a sure vote getter for politicians, but that in general it seems that policy makers do not foresee or plan for negative side effects of their policies.
Chapter One, written by editor Gordon Tait, argues that government “hurtles from crisis to crisis, from failure to failure, and it is the regulation of that failure which produces new initiatives and new forms of governance” (p.9).
This accurately describes government handling of school violence in the U.S.. Faced with the trend of violence in school, a logical response would be to find out how it happened that school became such a place as to compel students to risk arrest, injury or death, and then remove the reasons for violence.
Instead, U.S. legislators, (like those in N.Z., Australia and the U.K.), chose the simpler alternative of harsher penalties for violence.
In doing so, they copied previous failures of the same type: zero tolerance policing is based on ideas published in a seminal article entitled “Broken Windows” in the Atlantic Monthly magazine (George Kelling and James Q. Wilson 1982). Implications of the broken windows theory included that strict enforcement of petty crime would prevent the development of an atmosphere conducive to more serious criminal offending.
Kelling & Wilson’s model didn’t concern itself overmuch with why these crimes occured - it focused on suppression.
This approach had been discredited long before: “... consistent findings of operant psychology that the application of punishment is unpredictable, and unlikely to lead to the learning of new behavior.”
Skinner, B. F. 1953. Science and human behavior.
Skinner’s research in turn recapitulated still earlier experience during the Prohibition Era, when it became abundantly clear that raising penalties for manufacture, sales and use of alcohol had no effect on any of those enterprises.
In the next essay of Hard Lessons, author Murray Lee asserts that officials cultivate public fear of crime in order to demand more power with which to suppress that crime.
This, too finds it’s parallel in U.S. policy: the failing “War On Drugs”, which is modeled on the failed Prohibition, which is modeled on a previous failure of drug-control which began back when Sears, Roebuck & Company still sold cocaine syrup in quart bottles advertised in their catalogue. In all these cases, politicians played on public fears in order to assume expanded powers-of-office claimed necessary to ‘eradicate the problem once and for all.’
Zero‑tolerance first received national attention as the title of a program developed in 1986 by US Attorney Peter Noone in San Diego, California impounding seagoing vessels carrying any amount of drugs. The impracticality of this should be obvious: merchants could - and did - eliminate rivals by planting drugs for law-enforcement officials to ‘find’, bribing same to turn a blind eye to their own traffic, or both.
Innocents could easily be penalized with the guilty, as well: By 1990 the customs service boat impoundment program was quietly phased out after a Woods Hole oceanographic Institute research vessel was siezed for a marijuana cigarette foundin a seaman's cabin.
That is, by 1990 the folk who originated Zero Tolerance already knew it didn’t work, and abandoned it; meanwhile, the simplistic allure of the slogan was beginning to catch on with the general public.
If the politicians who cheered Zero Tolerance in 1986 didn’t know it was a failure by 1990, they should have. This begs the (rhetorical) questions: If our political leaders did not know ZT was useless - why not? ... and if they did know ZT was useless - why would they continue to push it?
Author Murray Lee’s essay continues on the subject of politician’s cultivation of public fear: ‘this often increases the fear of crime rather than providing a mechanism to ease societal anxiety.’ This too has it’s parallel in the history of Zero Tolerance.
In a sense, politicians are part of the Entertainment Industry; they sell their bit of drama to the public at a price like other actors. They have a natural conjunction of interest with news-media: profit.
Mass-media sell air-time to advertisers for money; politicians sell rhetoric to voters for power rather than cash, but the mechanism by which both operate is the same: getting and holding public attention.
Fear draws more attention than fun-stuff; logic tells us that we can indulge our interests, or let them slide; survival-instinct tells us that we must pay attention to that which can do harm.
The history of Zero Tolerance offers many examples, of which the following is representative: Court TV Radio - 04 Oct., 2006 University of Virginia psychologist Dewey Cornell looks at school shootings:
Julie: “Professor Cornell, ... It seems to me that the media would report
that school homicides and violence in general has been declining for ten years ....”
Dewey Cornell: “Violence and fear is more interesting than facts.”
Court TV Host: “... I think our societal perceptions are that school violence is NOT rare ‑ are we wrong on that?”
Cornell: “ ... We DO have a lot of bullying at school....” We do need to talk with students about violence, but not necessarily the extreme kinds we hear about in the news....Students will encounter fights, bullying, teasing, drugs, etc. in school. We need to focus our time and energy and school security dollars on the problems that we face every day....”
NicNYC: “What school‑based prevention methods are effective?”
Cornell: “... The most effective programs include counseling, cognitive behavior therapy,
conflict resolution, training, social skills training. ... One student alone cannot do much, but the whole school should address the problem. Teachers and parents and students need to be educated about bullying.”
Note: In this 2006 interview, Cornell echoes Skiba & Peterson six years previous in Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence (2000): ... “Professional opinion has begun to coalesce around ...:creating a more positive school climate, attending to early warning signs, and effectively responding to disruption and violence with a broad array of strategies.”
(APA, 1993; Walker et al., 1996) Dwyer et al., 1998; Skiba & Peterson, 2000; Note also significant differences between Zero Tolerance strategy and Early Response strategy: Zero Tolerance deals with a complex social problem using the blunt tactic of a blacksmith: hammer it flat.
It requires no thought, no personal involvement - perfect for an assembly-line worker in a factory. Early Response demands personal investment of time and effort to deal with problems before they become dangerous. Zero Tolerance requires that citizens give up certain civil rights so that politicians can solve problems without bothering citizens. Early Response entails that social problems can be solved without sacrificing individual rights.
Returning to Hard Lessons, Chris Cunneen’s piece, “The Political Resonance of Crime Control Strategies: ZeroTolerance Policing,” traces the history of zero tolerance policing in New York City and New South Wales (Australia).
The findings here follow a familiar pattern; zero tolerance policing has done little to reduce crime in the long run, has contributed to social conflict and excited concerns of racism, and it is heavy handed and confrontational by definition.
Policies regulating western democracies create a tragic patchwork of reform after reform, with little improvement.
That is, Zero Tolerance is not the problem; Zero Tolerance is one example of a much greater problem visible in all these nations: based on the hard lessons of history, politicians have neither the interest nor the competence to set the standards by which other human beings run theirlives.
Their function - on paper - is to express the will of those who elected them - no more, no less.
When they depart from that, they are automatically dangerous to the very principles they were elected to protect.
Humanity as a species has come a long way from beginning to present, but systems of government are essentially un-changed from those in use several hundred years B.C.E.
It seems reasonable that a species which is capable of creating ways to travel between planets is, by now, also capable of social engineering far more useful than what’s now in use.
The course of the Zero Tolerance issue provides examples of what’s gone wrong with the System, and suggests remedies.
HARD LESSONS is a collection of essays about crime control by Richard Hil and Gordon Tait.
While the lessons most directly apply to New Zealand, Australia, and the UK, the cycle of dysfunction described parallels that seen in the U.S. The book is divided into case studies which illustrate the failure of governments to devise policies that are effective in controlling crime. The authors argue that being tough on crime is a sure vote getter for politicians, but that in general it seems that policy makers do not foresee or plan for negative side effects of their policies.
Chapter One, written by editor Gordon Tait, argues that government “hurtles from crisis to crisis, from failure to failure, and it is the regulation of that failure which produces new initiatives and new forms of governance” (p.9).
This accurately describes government handling of school violence in the U.S.. Faced with the trend of violence in school, a logical response would be to find out how it happened that school became such a place as to compel students to risk arrest, injury or death, and then remove the reasons for violence.
Instead, U.S. legislators, (like those in N.Z., Australia and the U.K.), chose the simpler alternative of harsher penalties for violence.
In doing so, they copied previous failures of the same type: zero tolerance policing is based on ideas published in a seminal article entitled “Broken Windows” in the Atlantic Monthly magazine (George Kelling and James Q. Wilson 1982). Implications of the broken windows theory included that strict enforcement of petty crime would prevent the development of an atmosphere conducive to more serious criminal offending.
Kelling & Wilson’s model didn’t concern itself overmuch with why these crimes occured - it focused on suppression.
This approach had been discredited long before: “... consistent findings of operant psychology that the application of punishment is unpredictable, and unlikely to lead to the learning of new behavior.”
Skinner, B. F. 1953. Science and human behavior.
Skinner’s research in turn recapitulated still earlier experience during the Prohibition Era, when it became abundantly clear that raising penalties for manufacture, sales and use of alcohol had no effect on any of those enterprises.
In the next essay of Hard Lessons, author Murray Lee asserts that officials cultivate public fear of crime in order to demand more power with which to suppress that crime.
This, too finds it’s parallel in U.S. policy: the failing “War On Drugs”, which is modeled on the failed Prohibition, which is modeled on a previous failure of drug-control which began back when Sears, Roebuck & Company still sold cocaine syrup in quart bottles advertised in their catalogue. In all these cases, politicians played on public fears in order to assume expanded powers-of-office claimed necessary to ‘eradicate the problem once and for all.’
Zero‑tolerance first received national attention as the title of a program developed in 1986 by US Attorney Peter Noone in San Diego, California impounding seagoing vessels carrying any amount of drugs. The impracticality of this should be obvious: merchants could - and did - eliminate rivals by planting drugs for law-enforcement officials to ‘find’, bribing same to turn a blind eye to their own traffic, or both.
Innocents could easily be penalized with the guilty, as well: By 1990 the customs service boat impoundment program was quietly phased out after a Woods Hole oceanographic Institute research vessel was siezed for a marijuana cigarette foundin a seaman's cabin.
That is, by 1990 the folk who originated Zero Tolerance already knew it didn’t work, and abandoned it; meanwhile, the simplistic allure of the slogan was beginning to catch on with the general public.
If the politicians who cheered Zero Tolerance in 1986 didn’t know it was a failure by 1990, they should have. This begs the (rhetorical) questions: If our political leaders did not know ZT was useless - why not? ... and if they did know ZT was useless - why would they continue to push it?
Author Murray Lee’s essay continues on the subject of politician’s cultivation of public fear: ‘this often increases the fear of crime rather than providing a mechanism to ease societal anxiety.’ This too has it’s parallel in the history of Zero Tolerance.
In a sense, politicians are part of the Entertainment Industry; they sell their bit of drama to the public at a price like other actors. They have a natural conjunction of interest with news-media: profit.
Mass-media sell air-time to advertisers for money; politicians sell rhetoric to voters for power rather than cash, but the mechanism by which both operate is the same: getting and holding public attention.
Fear draws more attention than fun-stuff; logic tells us that we can indulge our interests, or let them slide; survival-instinct tells us that we must pay attention to that which can do harm.
The history of Zero Tolerance offers many examples, of which the following is representative: Court TV Radio - 04 Oct., 2006 University of Virginia psychologist Dewey Cornell looks at school shootings:
Julie: “Professor Cornell, ... It seems to me that the media would report
that school homicides and violence in general has been declining for ten years ....”
Dewey Cornell: “Violence and fear is more interesting than facts.”
Court TV Host: “... I think our societal perceptions are that school violence is NOT rare ‑ are we wrong on that?”
Cornell: “ ... We DO have a lot of bullying at school....” We do need to talk with students about violence, but not necessarily the extreme kinds we hear about in the news....Students will encounter fights, bullying, teasing, drugs, etc. in school. We need to focus our time and energy and school security dollars on the problems that we face every day....”
NicNYC: “What school‑based prevention methods are effective?”
Cornell: “... The most effective programs include counseling, cognitive behavior therapy,
conflict resolution, training, social skills training. ... One student alone cannot do much, but the whole school should address the problem. Teachers and parents and students need to be educated about bullying.”
Note: In this 2006 interview, Cornell echoes Skiba & Peterson six years previous in Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence (2000): ... “Professional opinion has begun to coalesce around ...:creating a more positive school climate, attending to early warning signs, and effectively responding to disruption and violence with a broad array of strategies.”
(APA, 1993; Walker et al., 1996) Dwyer et al., 1998; Skiba & Peterson, 2000; Note also significant differences between Zero Tolerance strategy and Early Response strategy: Zero Tolerance deals with a complex social problem using the blunt tactic of a blacksmith: hammer it flat.
It requires no thought, no personal involvement - perfect for an assembly-line worker in a factory. Early Response demands personal investment of time and effort to deal with problems before they become dangerous. Zero Tolerance requires that citizens give up certain civil rights so that politicians can solve problems without bothering citizens. Early Response entails that social problems can be solved without sacrificing individual rights.
Returning to Hard Lessons, Chris Cunneen’s piece, “The Political Resonance of Crime Control Strategies: ZeroTolerance Policing,” traces the history of zero tolerance policing in New York City and New South Wales (Australia).
The findings here follow a familiar pattern; zero tolerance policing has done little to reduce crime in the long run, has contributed to social conflict and excited concerns of racism, and it is heavy handed and confrontational by definition.
Policies regulating western democracies create a tragic patchwork of reform after reform, with little improvement.
That is, Zero Tolerance is not the problem; Zero Tolerance is one example of a much greater problem visible in all these nations: based on the hard lessons of history, politicians have neither the interest nor the competence to set the standards by which other human beings run theirlives.
Their function - on paper - is to express the will of those who elected them - no more, no less.
When they depart from that, they are automatically dangerous to the very principles they were elected to protect.
Humanity as a species has come a long way from beginning to present, but systems of government are essentially un-changed from those in use several hundred years B.C.E.
It seems reasonable that a species which is capable of creating ways to travel between planets is, by now, also capable of social engineering far more useful than what’s now in use.
The course of the Zero Tolerance issue provides examples of what’s gone wrong with the System, and suggests remedies.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Erskine College
Erskine College
Mission Statement….. Christian Commitment and Excellence in Learning
Does anyone know what this means?
Nestled in the small town of Due West, SC, Erskine college at first glance gives one the thoughts of a quiet small college with all of the peacefulness and tranquility of a utopia.
You hear the conversations that whisper into one’s head as they walk along the paths that lead from building to building while listening to the spill that is memorized by the tour guide selling the prospective student and the parents on enrolling the student in Erskine College.
Well folks it works. Its not until later that you learn that behind those walls of the quant buildings are lurking two of the professors who are checking out all of the females that are going to enroll and before the female student even gets her feet on the ground (so to speak).
Tony Santella and Mickey Conway are devising ways to get the student off campus for a little R and R that has nothing to do with the subjects that are taught in the class rooms
They are like two copperheads lurking in the bushes waiting to strike.
Erskine is unlike the college’s sister college, Presbyterian College located in Clinton, SC.
Erskine students are allowed to drink at any age just as long as the administration doesn’t see it.
The experience I had with this so called Christian College is that I wanted my family member to go to a college where they had a Christian atmosphere along with the regular academic subjects and taught good Christian values.
The shock I was in for was beyond belief. First Tony Santella was advertised as the teacher of the year at Launder University and had come over to Erskine to teach.
Upon investigating Mr. Santella, I learned from Launder University that Mr. Santella was never, I repeat NEVER recognized for anything.
As time went on Mr. Santella started trying to get my family member off campus, first it was bowling and when she refused to take part in this Mr. Santell devised another scheme, he decided to have a contest between the students.
The contest was to split the class into two parts and he sent half of the class to one coffee shop in Abbeville and the other half of the class to another coffee shop in Abbeville.
The two coffee shops we to compete in order to see who could sell the most coffee.
This was supposed to be a lesson in Sales Management, as the class was titled.
The member of my family asked Mr. Santell what should she do to try to sell coffee, when Mr. Santella replied that she should stand on the corner and do whatever it takes to sell the coffee.
I ask you, what does this have to do with sales management?
When someone comes into a Duncan Donut shop does anyone really have to persuade them to buy coffee?
When my family member refused to take part in this craziness she had to write a paper.
When she received her final grade she received an A in the class. This is academic fraud because she learned absolutely nothing about Sales Management at a very high cost.
She received an A and should have received an F and the teacher should have been fired.
Is this the kind of College you want your Daughter to attend?
My family member attended Summer College at Erskine, where she had an adjunct professor named Mickey Conway from Clemson University. Mr. Conway taught at Erskine in the summer.
Mr. Conway immediately started trying to date my family member.
She got to the point of being scared to go to Erskine and I was beginning to be afraid for her, so I took the appropriate steps, I notified Dr. Ruble, the president of Erskine, and I informed him of what was taking place, he did nothing.
I then notified Dr. Don Weatherman the Dean of Academics at Erskine and relayed the same information, he did nothing. I finally called Guy Smith the Chairman of the board of trustees and he did nothing.
I was in shock; the complete ignoring of the situation by the very people that are supposed to protect the students was condoning this kind of conduct from two of their professors.
She wanted to quit going to Erskine College out of fear for her safety.
I made a call to Clemson and informed them of what was taking place and they gave it their undivided attention. But if it hadn’t been for the Chief of Police whom I called when I was at my wits end and she was on the verge of dropping out of college that this good man and police officer gave us his reassurance that she would be safe along with any one else that came into the town of Due West.
This caring man is Chief James Smith, whom we will always be grateful to.
Mickey Conway was supposed to teach every day and he never taught on Fridays, not a single Friday and he was absent the entire last week of school, yet the students were charged the full price as though he were in the class room teaching even though he was absent for more than 20% of the class meetings.
Well, so much for excellence in education.
Now lets look at Christian commitment.
In the 2007 year book one of the Christian students was sitting in another students lap and he was holding a gun and she was covered by nothing more than 3 handkerchiefs
The caption read “Bond Girl”. I ask you what Christian Administration would allow this in a year book much less condone it?
Along with the almost NAKED student through the pages of the year book you will see men dressed as women and students holding wine bottles.
I ask you just who were they praying to, certainly not Jesus Christ, and certainly not the Christ I preached about for 32 years.
Well, so much for the mission statement of Erskine College.
Is this the College of your choice to send you sons and daughters?
It is my opinion that Erskine Colleges is allowing the students to break local and state laws by allowing underage students to drink alcohol and to advertise for poker players on the Erskine web site and to Vandalize local businesses by removing their benches they have for people to sit on outside the stores.
Mission Statement….. Christian Commitment and Excellence in Learning
Does anyone know what this means?
Nestled in the small town of Due West, SC, Erskine college at first glance gives one the thoughts of a quiet small college with all of the peacefulness and tranquility of a utopia.
You hear the conversations that whisper into one’s head as they walk along the paths that lead from building to building while listening to the spill that is memorized by the tour guide selling the prospective student and the parents on enrolling the student in Erskine College.
Well folks it works. Its not until later that you learn that behind those walls of the quant buildings are lurking two of the professors who are checking out all of the females that are going to enroll and before the female student even gets her feet on the ground (so to speak).
Tony Santella and Mickey Conway are devising ways to get the student off campus for a little R and R that has nothing to do with the subjects that are taught in the class rooms
They are like two copperheads lurking in the bushes waiting to strike.
Erskine is unlike the college’s sister college, Presbyterian College located in Clinton, SC.
Erskine students are allowed to drink at any age just as long as the administration doesn’t see it.
The experience I had with this so called Christian College is that I wanted my family member to go to a college where they had a Christian atmosphere along with the regular academic subjects and taught good Christian values.
The shock I was in for was beyond belief. First Tony Santella was advertised as the teacher of the year at Launder University and had come over to Erskine to teach.
Upon investigating Mr. Santella, I learned from Launder University that Mr. Santella was never, I repeat NEVER recognized for anything.
As time went on Mr. Santella started trying to get my family member off campus, first it was bowling and when she refused to take part in this Mr. Santell devised another scheme, he decided to have a contest between the students.
The contest was to split the class into two parts and he sent half of the class to one coffee shop in Abbeville and the other half of the class to another coffee shop in Abbeville.
The two coffee shops we to compete in order to see who could sell the most coffee.
This was supposed to be a lesson in Sales Management, as the class was titled.
The member of my family asked Mr. Santell what should she do to try to sell coffee, when Mr. Santella replied that she should stand on the corner and do whatever it takes to sell the coffee.
I ask you, what does this have to do with sales management?
When someone comes into a Duncan Donut shop does anyone really have to persuade them to buy coffee?
When my family member refused to take part in this craziness she had to write a paper.
When she received her final grade she received an A in the class. This is academic fraud because she learned absolutely nothing about Sales Management at a very high cost.
She received an A and should have received an F and the teacher should have been fired.
Is this the kind of College you want your Daughter to attend?
My family member attended Summer College at Erskine, where she had an adjunct professor named Mickey Conway from Clemson University. Mr. Conway taught at Erskine in the summer.
Mr. Conway immediately started trying to date my family member.
She got to the point of being scared to go to Erskine and I was beginning to be afraid for her, so I took the appropriate steps, I notified Dr. Ruble, the president of Erskine, and I informed him of what was taking place, he did nothing.
I then notified Dr. Don Weatherman the Dean of Academics at Erskine and relayed the same information, he did nothing. I finally called Guy Smith the Chairman of the board of trustees and he did nothing.
I was in shock; the complete ignoring of the situation by the very people that are supposed to protect the students was condoning this kind of conduct from two of their professors.
She wanted to quit going to Erskine College out of fear for her safety.
I made a call to Clemson and informed them of what was taking place and they gave it their undivided attention. But if it hadn’t been for the Chief of Police whom I called when I was at my wits end and she was on the verge of dropping out of college that this good man and police officer gave us his reassurance that she would be safe along with any one else that came into the town of Due West.
This caring man is Chief James Smith, whom we will always be grateful to.
Mickey Conway was supposed to teach every day and he never taught on Fridays, not a single Friday and he was absent the entire last week of school, yet the students were charged the full price as though he were in the class room teaching even though he was absent for more than 20% of the class meetings.
Well, so much for excellence in education.
Now lets look at Christian commitment.
In the 2007 year book one of the Christian students was sitting in another students lap and he was holding a gun and she was covered by nothing more than 3 handkerchiefs
The caption read “Bond Girl”. I ask you what Christian Administration would allow this in a year book much less condone it?
Along with the almost NAKED student through the pages of the year book you will see men dressed as women and students holding wine bottles.
I ask you just who were they praying to, certainly not Jesus Christ, and certainly not the Christ I preached about for 32 years.
Well, so much for the mission statement of Erskine College.
Is this the College of your choice to send you sons and daughters?
It is my opinion that Erskine Colleges is allowing the students to break local and state laws by allowing underage students to drink alcohol and to advertise for poker players on the Erskine web site and to Vandalize local businesses by removing their benches they have for people to sit on outside the stores.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Hijacking the futures of Greenville County students
Hijacking the futures of our Students
I would like to know what is happening to the people of Greenville County SC.
We are sitting on our hands and letting the Greenville County Superintendent of education hijack the futures of our sons and daughters.
Greenville County School Superintendent Penny Fisher knows the she is heading a failing system and she does not care as long as she is paid 200,000 dollars a year and does not go against the Board of Education even when she knows they are wrong.
Give the Board of Education and the school superintendent an F for educating our students.
The board and the school superintendent hate success in any public school.
The Charter High School located on the Greenville Technical College campus is a perfect example of their contempt for success in any public school in Greenville County.
While all of the Greenville County public schools are furnished buses, meals for the poor, money for the utilities and maintenance personnel for the public schools, Charter High school does not receive any of these necessities.
THIS IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE, GREENVILLE TECH'S CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL IS DOING A LOT MORE FOR A LOT LESS
Hoorah for Mr Crawford and his staff
Mr. Crawford is doing a great job of hiring the best teachers, instilling the desire for the students to learn and the pride his teachers have in teaching all of the students.
Does anyone think this may have something to do with Charter High school being rated number 15 on the best one hundred high schools in America.
I am of the opinion that if the superintendent of education and the Greenville County school board wanted the students of this county to have a successful future they would take some valuable lessons from Mr. Crawford and the teachers at the Greenville Tech Charter high school and insist that the rest of the county's schools start direct teaching instead of being the manager of their attitudes in a diverse society.
Being the most popular student in a multi cultured society will not land you in a good college or a good paying job.
Employers want people that are able to think and to read and able to write,
Greenville County schools are at the very bottom of the national list when it comes to academic standings, but we are the highest in the nation when it comes to high school dropouts. Greenville County school principles should be held accountable for the education the students are getting in their schools and they should be terminated if they are running a failing school. We are failing our students and when we do that we are failing America.
The Greenville County school system is not teaching our students, they are dummying them down. For instance, there are 16 and 17 year olds who cannot read and write.
Teachers that are not proficient in the subjects they are teaching.
When the principles hire a teacher to teach science and he/she is not able to set up a lab to test the students, the principle and the teacher should be sent packing.
The citizens of Greenville County have but a few voices on the school board who sincerely wants the students to succeed in school and be ready for entrance into any college or university they choose to attend.
These few friends of the students are almost always outvoted on any issue if it favors the student in their quest for an education.
South Carolina is the high school drop out capital of the United States and the only people who are happy about this is the special interest groups that make big money for recruiting corporations that move here to Greenville County to hire employees at the lowest possible pay.
We the people have a name for our school system it’s called Educational Operation NO TRUST.
The Greenville County school administrators like to boast about having the states largest school district; they say nothing about the states largest educational failure.
The Greenville County school board’s favorite son,
Bobby
I would like to know what is happening to the people of Greenville County SC.
We are sitting on our hands and letting the Greenville County Superintendent of education hijack the futures of our sons and daughters.
Greenville County School Superintendent Penny Fisher knows the she is heading a failing system and she does not care as long as she is paid 200,000 dollars a year and does not go against the Board of Education even when she knows they are wrong.
Give the Board of Education and the school superintendent an F for educating our students.
The board and the school superintendent hate success in any public school.
The Charter High School located on the Greenville Technical College campus is a perfect example of their contempt for success in any public school in Greenville County.
While all of the Greenville County public schools are furnished buses, meals for the poor, money for the utilities and maintenance personnel for the public schools, Charter High school does not receive any of these necessities.
THIS IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE, GREENVILLE TECH'S CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL IS DOING A LOT MORE FOR A LOT LESS
Hoorah for Mr Crawford and his staff
Mr. Crawford is doing a great job of hiring the best teachers, instilling the desire for the students to learn and the pride his teachers have in teaching all of the students.
Does anyone think this may have something to do with Charter High school being rated number 15 on the best one hundred high schools in America.
I am of the opinion that if the superintendent of education and the Greenville County school board wanted the students of this county to have a successful future they would take some valuable lessons from Mr. Crawford and the teachers at the Greenville Tech Charter high school and insist that the rest of the county's schools start direct teaching instead of being the manager of their attitudes in a diverse society.
Being the most popular student in a multi cultured society will not land you in a good college or a good paying job.
Employers want people that are able to think and to read and able to write,
Greenville County schools are at the very bottom of the national list when it comes to academic standings, but we are the highest in the nation when it comes to high school dropouts. Greenville County school principles should be held accountable for the education the students are getting in their schools and they should be terminated if they are running a failing school. We are failing our students and when we do that we are failing America.
The Greenville County school system is not teaching our students, they are dummying them down. For instance, there are 16 and 17 year olds who cannot read and write.
Teachers that are not proficient in the subjects they are teaching.
When the principles hire a teacher to teach science and he/she is not able to set up a lab to test the students, the principle and the teacher should be sent packing.
The citizens of Greenville County have but a few voices on the school board who sincerely wants the students to succeed in school and be ready for entrance into any college or university they choose to attend.
These few friends of the students are almost always outvoted on any issue if it favors the student in their quest for an education.
South Carolina is the high school drop out capital of the United States and the only people who are happy about this is the special interest groups that make big money for recruiting corporations that move here to Greenville County to hire employees at the lowest possible pay.
We the people have a name for our school system it’s called Educational Operation NO TRUST.
The Greenville County school administrators like to boast about having the states largest school district; they say nothing about the states largest educational failure.
The Greenville County school board’s favorite son,
Bobby
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Bring Back American History
Diversity history noise
Robert HollandJanuary 11, 2008
In his Jan. 11, 1989 farewell address after eight years as President, Ronald Reagan warned that the teaching of U.S. history could be going into irreversible decline in the nation's elementary and secondary schools.
”If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are,” he said. “I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”
The Great Communicator's words have a poignant ring now that we know the memory-robber called Alzheimer's was about to afflict him. But his words were prescient in anticipating the assault on study of U.S. history that grows ever more intense almost two decades later.
The multicultural doctrine promoted by academic elitists is a prime culprit.
In Texas, academics have prepared a set of college readiness standards for the high-school curriculum that emphasize “diverse human perspectives and experiences” while omitting pivotal events and heroic movers and shakers.
For instance, while ignoring the enormous sacrifices made by the Greatest Generation to defeat fascism in World War II, the standards ask students to explain the impact of that war on “the African-American and Mexican-American Civil Rights Movements.”
While the standards make no mention of Pearl Harbor or the Battle of Normandy, they invite students to second-guess President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
Instead of probing the intellectual roots of a Declaration of Independence that still motivates oppressed people around the world today, the proposed Texas standards imply that the American Revolution was nothing special.
Specifically, students are to “identify how revolutions such as the American, Cuban, French, Russian and Iranian Revolutions affected the functions and structure of government in those countries.”
The academics who drafted the standards up for adoption by the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board on Jan. 24 boasted that their approach was consistent with that of other states and national organizations. About that much they are right. Multiculturalism is weakening the study of U.S. history in many school systems.
Chicago is a case in point. There the public school system uses a voluminous curriculum guide for teaching history to its Latino students — Mexican history, that is, with U.S. history a mere footnote. The guide expresses hope that the instruction, pegged to state education goals, will “awaken in each child the joy and pride of the Mexican heritage.”
In tracing the Mexican independence movement, the guide praises Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla for ringing church bells as a call to the faithful to battle the Spaniards. So Chicago students learn of his exploits, but not of Paul Revere's Midnight Ride to warn American patriots of the British Army's advance on Lexington and Concord.
Later, Chicago students are taught in detail about Benito Juarez, a leader in developing the Constitution of 1857 limiting the power of the Mexican army. So they learn about him but not about James Madison, father of the U.S. Constitution. They also learn much about guerrilla fighters like Francisco “Pancho” Villa. But nothing about General George Washington.
The guide is full of time-consuming classroom activities to celebrate Mexican heritage and culture. Students can spend hours and even whole days making confetti eggs, pottery, blankets and goody bags for parties. Surely that time would be more productively spent teaching immigrant children to speak English, the primary language of their parents' adopted country.
Another exercise asks students to compare and contrast Independence Day celebrations in Mexico (Sept. 15) and the United States. As background, they are told of Father Hidalgo's bell ringing and address from the balcony of the palace in Mexico City. As for Independence Day in the U.S., the guide states that it is “celebrated on July 4 with elaborate fireworks displays throughout the country.” That's it — nothing about Thomas Jefferson's stirring evocation of mankind's “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence.
The anniversary of Ronald Reagan's farewell provides an occasion to pause and to take his warning to heart. We need to insist that schools teach all children how America came to be, how it has striven to overcome its imperfections, and what it represents that is so special in the long history of the world.
Speculating about “diverse perspectives” ought to be secondary to teaching history — United States history.
Robert Holland is a policy analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
Copyright 2007 The Washington Times
Robert HollandJanuary 11, 2008
In his Jan. 11, 1989 farewell address after eight years as President, Ronald Reagan warned that the teaching of U.S. history could be going into irreversible decline in the nation's elementary and secondary schools.
”If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are,” he said. “I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”
The Great Communicator's words have a poignant ring now that we know the memory-robber called Alzheimer's was about to afflict him. But his words were prescient in anticipating the assault on study of U.S. history that grows ever more intense almost two decades later.
The multicultural doctrine promoted by academic elitists is a prime culprit.
In Texas, academics have prepared a set of college readiness standards for the high-school curriculum that emphasize “diverse human perspectives and experiences” while omitting pivotal events and heroic movers and shakers.
For instance, while ignoring the enormous sacrifices made by the Greatest Generation to defeat fascism in World War II, the standards ask students to explain the impact of that war on “the African-American and Mexican-American Civil Rights Movements.”
While the standards make no mention of Pearl Harbor or the Battle of Normandy, they invite students to second-guess President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
Instead of probing the intellectual roots of a Declaration of Independence that still motivates oppressed people around the world today, the proposed Texas standards imply that the American Revolution was nothing special.
Specifically, students are to “identify how revolutions such as the American, Cuban, French, Russian and Iranian Revolutions affected the functions and structure of government in those countries.”
The academics who drafted the standards up for adoption by the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board on Jan. 24 boasted that their approach was consistent with that of other states and national organizations. About that much they are right. Multiculturalism is weakening the study of U.S. history in many school systems.
Chicago is a case in point. There the public school system uses a voluminous curriculum guide for teaching history to its Latino students — Mexican history, that is, with U.S. history a mere footnote. The guide expresses hope that the instruction, pegged to state education goals, will “awaken in each child the joy and pride of the Mexican heritage.”
In tracing the Mexican independence movement, the guide praises Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla for ringing church bells as a call to the faithful to battle the Spaniards. So Chicago students learn of his exploits, but not of Paul Revere's Midnight Ride to warn American patriots of the British Army's advance on Lexington and Concord.
Later, Chicago students are taught in detail about Benito Juarez, a leader in developing the Constitution of 1857 limiting the power of the Mexican army. So they learn about him but not about James Madison, father of the U.S. Constitution. They also learn much about guerrilla fighters like Francisco “Pancho” Villa. But nothing about General George Washington.
The guide is full of time-consuming classroom activities to celebrate Mexican heritage and culture. Students can spend hours and even whole days making confetti eggs, pottery, blankets and goody bags for parties. Surely that time would be more productively spent teaching immigrant children to speak English, the primary language of their parents' adopted country.
Another exercise asks students to compare and contrast Independence Day celebrations in Mexico (Sept. 15) and the United States. As background, they are told of Father Hidalgo's bell ringing and address from the balcony of the palace in Mexico City. As for Independence Day in the U.S., the guide states that it is “celebrated on July 4 with elaborate fireworks displays throughout the country.” That's it — nothing about Thomas Jefferson's stirring evocation of mankind's “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence.
The anniversary of Ronald Reagan's farewell provides an occasion to pause and to take his warning to heart. We need to insist that schools teach all children how America came to be, how it has striven to overcome its imperfections, and what it represents that is so special in the long history of the world.
Speculating about “diverse perspectives” ought to be secondary to teaching history — United States history.
Robert Holland is a policy analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
Copyright 2007 The Washington Times
Friday, January 11, 2008
Clarion CallTeaching Teachers How Not to Teach
Do our schools of education really do good a job of training teachers?By George Leef
January 09, 2008
When Mom and Dad see little Sally’s report card, it probably never occurs to them to wonder how competent her teacher is. Teachers, after all, are professionals. They’re trained in university programs and licensed by the government, so they must be good at their jobs – right?There is a surprising amount of disagreement over that. As long ago as 1953, Professor Arthur Bestor ridiculed education schools (where nearly all aspiring teachers must obtain their credentials) as “educational wastelands.” More recently, in her 1991 book Ed School Follies, Rita Kramer wrote, “What we have today are teacher-producing factories that process material from the bottom of the heap and turn out models that perform, but not well enough.” Criticism of education schools doesn’t just come from outsiders. Some highly knowledgeable and vocal critics are to be found among the ranks of current and former education school professors. One of those critics is George Cunningham, who taught for many years at the University of Louisville. In a new paper for the Pope Center, Professor Cunningham explains why he does not believe that schools of education in North Carolina are doing an adequate job of training future teachers.As he sees it, the great problem is that most of the American public holds to one view of the role of schools, while most of the education school elite – the deans and the professors – hold a very different view. The public overwhelmingly believes that the function of schools should be mainly academic – that is, to make sure that children learn very well the skills and knowledge that it takes to succeed in life. If you accept that view, then schools succeed only if their students graduate with a high degree of literacy, with proficiency in mathematics, with a good working knowledge of science, history, our social institutions, and so forth. It follows that teacher training programs should ensure that their students are expert in teaching those things to young people. Someone who intends to teach math, for example, should be both well-versed in the field and well-trained in the techniques of explaining math to their students.On the other hand, the dominant view among those who run and teach in our education schools is that the key role of schooling is to achieve various social objectives. In their opinion, it’s more important for teachers to properly adjust students’ outlook on life and society than to instruct them in “mere” knowledge and facts. Under that view, teachers who devote too much time to “rote learning” (for example, learning multiplication tables) are not doing a good job and a school could be performing poorly even though all its students have mastered the “3 Rs.” Cunningham writes that according to this theory, “a child’s education is successful if he is exposed to the right attitudes by teachers, even if he does poorly in measures of learning on reading, math, history, science, and so on.”Cunningham has long observed the march of this “progressive” view through the nation’s education schools. His paper focuses on the University of North Carolina’s largest schools to see if the contagion is widespread here. He finds that it is.One sign of that contagion is the mission statements and “conceptual frameworks” of the education schools in the state. Read them and you’ll see that progressive theory controls. At Appalachian State’s Reich School of Education, for instance, the conceptual framework says:
"We believe that theory should guide practice in all aspects of our work. While we use a variety of theoretical perspectives in the preparation of educators, socio-cultural and constructivist perspectives … are central to guiding our teaching and learning. Our core conceptualization of learning and knowing – that learning is a function of the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs (i.e., it is situated) and that knowledge is actively constructed – emerges from the intersection of these two perspectives."As a result of the dominance of progressive theory in our education schools, we find a good many courses devoted to instructing prospective teachers that they should be “change agents” helping to combat all manner of social ills. What we do not find are courses that emphasize the most effective ways of imparting knowledge to young people. Education school students are not taught about a proven approach to primary education called Direct Instruction, for example, because its focus is purely on academic mastery, leaving no scope for socio-cultural diversions.Reading is the sine qua non of primary education. If a child doesn’t learn to read well, he will struggle in nearly everything. Through the work of the National Reading Panel, we have solid knowledge about the essentials for competent instruction in reading. How well do UNC education schools do in that regard? Cunningham reports on a 2006 study of 70 education schools nationwide that graded these schools on how many of the five key components of reading instruction they covered. Of the four UNC schools included (UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, Fayetteville State, and Elizabeth City State), only UNC-Greensboro received a passing mark.Cunningham comments, “Unfortunately, it is quite possible for a prospective teacher to graduate from an education school in North Carolina without having received solid training either in reading or math teaching.” The fact that things are just about as bad in other states is cold comfort.In perhaps the most startling quotation in the paper, Cunningham quotes a principal from an inner-city school who says that as much as possible, she avoids hiring people who have been through education schools. She would rather hire someone who knows a subject and has the desire to teach it than someone with an education school diploma and a head full of “progressive” theories that waste precious time. If we want more effective teachers, we need to turn away from our current approach to teacher training. Read Professor Cunningham’s paper and see if you don’t agree.George C. Leef is the vice president for research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh.
Return to the
Do our schools of education really do good a job of training teachers?By George Leef
January 09, 2008
When Mom and Dad see little Sally’s report card, it probably never occurs to them to wonder how competent her teacher is. Teachers, after all, are professionals. They’re trained in university programs and licensed by the government, so they must be good at their jobs – right?There is a surprising amount of disagreement over that. As long ago as 1953, Professor Arthur Bestor ridiculed education schools (where nearly all aspiring teachers must obtain their credentials) as “educational wastelands.” More recently, in her 1991 book Ed School Follies, Rita Kramer wrote, “What we have today are teacher-producing factories that process material from the bottom of the heap and turn out models that perform, but not well enough.” Criticism of education schools doesn’t just come from outsiders. Some highly knowledgeable and vocal critics are to be found among the ranks of current and former education school professors. One of those critics is George Cunningham, who taught for many years at the University of Louisville. In a new paper for the Pope Center, Professor Cunningham explains why he does not believe that schools of education in North Carolina are doing an adequate job of training future teachers.As he sees it, the great problem is that most of the American public holds to one view of the role of schools, while most of the education school elite – the deans and the professors – hold a very different view. The public overwhelmingly believes that the function of schools should be mainly academic – that is, to make sure that children learn very well the skills and knowledge that it takes to succeed in life. If you accept that view, then schools succeed only if their students graduate with a high degree of literacy, with proficiency in mathematics, with a good working knowledge of science, history, our social institutions, and so forth. It follows that teacher training programs should ensure that their students are expert in teaching those things to young people. Someone who intends to teach math, for example, should be both well-versed in the field and well-trained in the techniques of explaining math to their students.On the other hand, the dominant view among those who run and teach in our education schools is that the key role of schooling is to achieve various social objectives. In their opinion, it’s more important for teachers to properly adjust students’ outlook on life and society than to instruct them in “mere” knowledge and facts. Under that view, teachers who devote too much time to “rote learning” (for example, learning multiplication tables) are not doing a good job and a school could be performing poorly even though all its students have mastered the “3 Rs.” Cunningham writes that according to this theory, “a child’s education is successful if he is exposed to the right attitudes by teachers, even if he does poorly in measures of learning on reading, math, history, science, and so on.”Cunningham has long observed the march of this “progressive” view through the nation’s education schools. His paper focuses on the University of North Carolina’s largest schools to see if the contagion is widespread here. He finds that it is.One sign of that contagion is the mission statements and “conceptual frameworks” of the education schools in the state. Read them and you’ll see that progressive theory controls. At Appalachian State’s Reich School of Education, for instance, the conceptual framework says:
"We believe that theory should guide practice in all aspects of our work. While we use a variety of theoretical perspectives in the preparation of educators, socio-cultural and constructivist perspectives … are central to guiding our teaching and learning. Our core conceptualization of learning and knowing – that learning is a function of the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs (i.e., it is situated) and that knowledge is actively constructed – emerges from the intersection of these two perspectives."As a result of the dominance of progressive theory in our education schools, we find a good many courses devoted to instructing prospective teachers that they should be “change agents” helping to combat all manner of social ills. What we do not find are courses that emphasize the most effective ways of imparting knowledge to young people. Education school students are not taught about a proven approach to primary education called Direct Instruction, for example, because its focus is purely on academic mastery, leaving no scope for socio-cultural diversions.Reading is the sine qua non of primary education. If a child doesn’t learn to read well, he will struggle in nearly everything. Through the work of the National Reading Panel, we have solid knowledge about the essentials for competent instruction in reading. How well do UNC education schools do in that regard? Cunningham reports on a 2006 study of 70 education schools nationwide that graded these schools on how many of the five key components of reading instruction they covered. Of the four UNC schools included (UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, Fayetteville State, and Elizabeth City State), only UNC-Greensboro received a passing mark.Cunningham comments, “Unfortunately, it is quite possible for a prospective teacher to graduate from an education school in North Carolina without having received solid training either in reading or math teaching.” The fact that things are just about as bad in other states is cold comfort.In perhaps the most startling quotation in the paper, Cunningham quotes a principal from an inner-city school who says that as much as possible, she avoids hiring people who have been through education schools. She would rather hire someone who knows a subject and has the desire to teach it than someone with an education school diploma and a head full of “progressive” theories that waste precious time. If we want more effective teachers, we need to turn away from our current approach to teacher training. Read Professor Cunningham’s paper and see if you don’t agree.George C. Leef is the vice president for research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh.
Return to the
Who's minding the Campus
Students Lose When Diversity Is Main Focus
By JAY P. GREENE AND CATHERINE SHOCK Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 4:30 PM PT
A good education requires balance. Students should learn to appreciate a variety of cultures, sure, but they also need to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Judging from the courses that the nation's leading education colleges offer, however, balance isn't a goal. The schools place far more emphasis on the political and social ends of education than on the fundamentals.
To determine just how unbalanced teacher preparation is at ed schools, we counted the number of course titles and descriptions that contained the words "multiculturalism," "diversity," "inclusion" and variants thereof, and then compared those with the number that used variants of the word "math." We then computed a "multiculturalism-to-math ratio" — a rough indicator of the relative importance of social goals to academic skills in ed schools. A ratio of greater than 1 indicates a greater emphasis on multiculturalism; a ratio of less than 1 means that math courses predominate.
Our survey covered the nation's top 50 education programs as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, as well as programs at flagship state universities that weren't among the top 50 — a total of 71 education schools.
The average ed school, we found, has a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 1.82, meaning that it offers 82% more courses featuring social goals than featuring math. At Harvard and Stanford, the ratio is about 2: Almost twice as many courses are social as mathematical.
Teachers' Clique
At the University of Minnesota, the ratio is higher than 12. And at UCLA, a whopping 47 course titles and descriptions contain the word "multiculturalism" or "diversity," while only three contain the word "math," giving it a ratio of almost 16.
Some programs do show different priorities. At the University of Missouri, 43 courses bear titles or descriptions that include multiculturalism or diversity, but 74 focus on math, giving it a lean multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 0.58. Penn State's ratio is 0.39.
(By contrast, the ratio at Penn State's Ivy League counterpart, the University of Pennsylvania, is over 3.)
Still, of the 71 programs we studied, only 24 have a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of less than 1; only five pay twice as much attention to math as to social goals.
Several obstacles impede change.
On the supply side, ed-school professors are a self-perpetuating clique, and their commitment to multiculturalism and diversity produces a near-uniformity of approach. Professors control entry into their ranks by determining who will receive the doctoral credential, deciding which doctoral graduates get hired, and then selecting which faculty will receive tenure. And tenured academics are essentially accountable to no one.
On the demand side, prospective teachers haven't cried out for more math courses because such courses tend to be harder than those involving multiculturalism. And the teachers know that their future employers — public school districts — don't find an accent on multiculturalism troubling. Because public schools are assured of ever-increasing funding, regardless of how they do in math, they can indulge their enthusiasm for multiculturalism, and prospective teachers can, too.
Dissent Punished
Accrediting organizations also help perpetuate the emphasis on multiculturalism. In several states, law mandates that ed schools receive accreditation from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. NCATE, in turn, requires education programs to meet six standards, one entirely devoted to diversity, but none entirely devoted to ensuring proper math pedagogy. Education schools that attempt to break from the cartel's multiculturalism focus risk denial of accreditation.
Ensuring quality math instruction is no minor matter. The Program for International Student Assessment's latest results paint a bleak picture: U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 30 industrial countries in math literacy, tying Spain and surpassing only Greece, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, and Turkey, while trailing Iceland, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic and all of our major economic competitors in Europe and Asia.
The issue isn't whether we should be teaching cultural awareness in education colleges or in public schools; it's about priorities. Besides, our students probably have great appreciation already for students from other cultures — who're cleaning their clocks in math skills, and will do so economically, too, if we don't wise up.
Greene is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the endowed head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Shock is a research associate in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. This article was adapted from the winter issue of City Journal.
By JAY P. GREENE AND CATHERINE SHOCK Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 4:30 PM PT
A good education requires balance. Students should learn to appreciate a variety of cultures, sure, but they also need to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Judging from the courses that the nation's leading education colleges offer, however, balance isn't a goal. The schools place far more emphasis on the political and social ends of education than on the fundamentals.
To determine just how unbalanced teacher preparation is at ed schools, we counted the number of course titles and descriptions that contained the words "multiculturalism," "diversity," "inclusion" and variants thereof, and then compared those with the number that used variants of the word "math." We then computed a "multiculturalism-to-math ratio" — a rough indicator of the relative importance of social goals to academic skills in ed schools. A ratio of greater than 1 indicates a greater emphasis on multiculturalism; a ratio of less than 1 means that math courses predominate.
Our survey covered the nation's top 50 education programs as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, as well as programs at flagship state universities that weren't among the top 50 — a total of 71 education schools.
The average ed school, we found, has a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 1.82, meaning that it offers 82% more courses featuring social goals than featuring math. At Harvard and Stanford, the ratio is about 2: Almost twice as many courses are social as mathematical.
Teachers' Clique
At the University of Minnesota, the ratio is higher than 12. And at UCLA, a whopping 47 course titles and descriptions contain the word "multiculturalism" or "diversity," while only three contain the word "math," giving it a ratio of almost 16.
Some programs do show different priorities. At the University of Missouri, 43 courses bear titles or descriptions that include multiculturalism or diversity, but 74 focus on math, giving it a lean multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 0.58. Penn State's ratio is 0.39.
(By contrast, the ratio at Penn State's Ivy League counterpart, the University of Pennsylvania, is over 3.)
Still, of the 71 programs we studied, only 24 have a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of less than 1; only five pay twice as much attention to math as to social goals.
Several obstacles impede change.
On the supply side, ed-school professors are a self-perpetuating clique, and their commitment to multiculturalism and diversity produces a near-uniformity of approach. Professors control entry into their ranks by determining who will receive the doctoral credential, deciding which doctoral graduates get hired, and then selecting which faculty will receive tenure. And tenured academics are essentially accountable to no one.
On the demand side, prospective teachers haven't cried out for more math courses because such courses tend to be harder than those involving multiculturalism. And the teachers know that their future employers — public school districts — don't find an accent on multiculturalism troubling. Because public schools are assured of ever-increasing funding, regardless of how they do in math, they can indulge their enthusiasm for multiculturalism, and prospective teachers can, too.
Dissent Punished
Accrediting organizations also help perpetuate the emphasis on multiculturalism. In several states, law mandates that ed schools receive accreditation from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. NCATE, in turn, requires education programs to meet six standards, one entirely devoted to diversity, but none entirely devoted to ensuring proper math pedagogy. Education schools that attempt to break from the cartel's multiculturalism focus risk denial of accreditation.
Ensuring quality math instruction is no minor matter. The Program for International Student Assessment's latest results paint a bleak picture: U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 30 industrial countries in math literacy, tying Spain and surpassing only Greece, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, and Turkey, while trailing Iceland, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic and all of our major economic competitors in Europe and Asia.
The issue isn't whether we should be teaching cultural awareness in education colleges or in public schools; it's about priorities. Besides, our students probably have great appreciation already for students from other cultures — who're cleaning their clocks in math skills, and will do so economically, too, if we don't wise up.
Greene is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the endowed head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Shock is a research associate in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. This article was adapted from the winter issue of City Journal.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Over Representation of Minority students are disciplined in schools
Overrepresentation of African American Students in Exclusionary Discipline The Role of School PolicyPamela Fenning
Loyola University Chicago
Jennifer Rose
Loyola University Chicago
The overrepresentation of ethnic minority students, particularly African American males, in the exclusionary discipline consequences of suspension and expulsion has been consistently documented during the past three decades. Children of poverty and those with academic problems are also overrepresented in such discipline consequences. Sadly, a direct link between these exclusionary discipline consequences and entrance to prison has been documented and termed the school-to-prison pipeline for these most vulnerable students. In this article, the authors argue that ethnographic and interview data would support teachers' perceptions of loss of classroom control (and accompanying fear) as contributing to who is labeled and removed for discipline reasons (largely poor students of color). Exclusionary discipline consequences are the primary medium used once students are sent from the classroom. The authors recommend substantial revisions to discipline policies consistent with models of positive behavior support.
Key Words: ethnic disproportionality • discipline policies • suspension • expulsion
Loyola University Chicago
Jennifer Rose
Loyola University Chicago
The overrepresentation of ethnic minority students, particularly African American males, in the exclusionary discipline consequences of suspension and expulsion has been consistently documented during the past three decades. Children of poverty and those with academic problems are also overrepresented in such discipline consequences. Sadly, a direct link between these exclusionary discipline consequences and entrance to prison has been documented and termed the school-to-prison pipeline for these most vulnerable students. In this article, the authors argue that ethnographic and interview data would support teachers' perceptions of loss of classroom control (and accompanying fear) as contributing to who is labeled and removed for discipline reasons (largely poor students of color). Exclusionary discipline consequences are the primary medium used once students are sent from the classroom. The authors recommend substantial revisions to discipline policies consistent with models of positive behavior support.
Key Words: ethnic disproportionality • discipline policies • suspension • expulsion
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Is Zero Tolerance going to far
ERO TOLERANCE POLICIES ARE NOT AS EFFECTIVE AS THOUGHT IN REDUCING VIOLENCE AND PROMOTING LEARNING IN SCHOOL, SAYS APA TASK FORCE
Research Finds that Mandatory Discipline Can Actually Increase Bad Behavior and Drop Out Rates in Middle and Secondary Students
NEW ORLEANS – A review of the school discipline research shows that zero tolerance policies developed in the 1980s to stop drug use and curtail unruly and violent behavior in schools are not as successful as thought in creating safer environments to learn. These policies, which mandate that schools severely punish disruptive students regardless of the infraction or its rationale, can actually increase bad behavior and also lead to higher drop out rates, according to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) report. Based on these results, the APA today adopted a resolution recommending ways to target discipline more effectively in order to keep schools safe while also eliminating the need for a one-size-fits-all punishment for misbehavior.
APA’s governing body, the Council of Representatives, commissioned the Zero Tolerance Task Force to examine the research conducted to date on the effects zero tolerance policies have on children in schools. The task force reviewed the last 10 years of research to determine whether these policies have made schools safer without taking away students’ opportunity to learn; whether they incorporated children’s development as a factor in types of discipline administered; and whether educators referred juveniles to the justice system too often with costly consequences. Lastly, the review showed how families and communities are affected by these policies.
According to the report’s findings, schools are not any safer or more effective in disciplining children than before these zero tolerance policies were implemented in the mid 1980s. The research also shows that while school violence is a serious issue, violence in schools is “not out-of-control.”
Furthermore, the evidence suggests that zero tolerance policies do not increase the consistency of discipline in schools. According to the report, rates of suspension and expulsion in schools vary widely and can actually increase disciplinary action for those students who are temporarily withdrawn from school. The research also shows that schools with higher rates of suspensions and expulsions have a less than satisfactory rating of climate and governance and spend a disproportionate amount of time disciplining students. The evidence also shows that zero tolerance policies have not been successful at decreasing racial biases in disciplining students. The report found that a disproportionate number of students of color are still overrepresented in expulsions and suspensions, especially for African Americans but also for Latinos. “This uneven representation of discipline,” said the report chair, Cecil Reynolds, PhD, professor at Texas A&M University, “may happen because neither teachers nor school safety or security personnel are trained to evaluate or understand cultural differences that may influence behavior.”
The zero tolerance policies also do not consider children’s lapses in judgment or developmental immaturity as a normal aspect of development, said Dr. Reynolds. “Many incidents that result in disciplinary action in school happen because of an adolescent’s or a child’s poor judgment—not due to an intention to do harm. Zero tolerance policies may exacerbate the normal challenges of adolescence and possibly punish a teenager more severely than warranted. Zero tolerance policies ignore the concept of intent even though this is a central theme in American concepts and systems of justice.” Evidence also shows that zero tolerance policies have increased referrals to the juvenile justice system for infractions once handled in the schools.
Having to go outside the school system to deal with an unruly adolescent puts more stress on families and communities who may already be involved with school personnel. According to the review, those parents and other family members with teenagers who get suspended or expelled from school end up spending more money on incarceration ($40,000.00 a year versus $7,000.00 for yearly education) once their children get involved with the justice system. Costs are also incurred if students drop out of school from uninsured medical expenses, welfare, and treatment for increases in mental health problems.
There are strategies, according to the report findings, that can target disciplinary actions to specific misbehaviors without giving up school safety and mandating all students to the same punishment. Three levels of intervention are offered as alternatives to the current zero tolerance policies. Primary prevention strategies could target all children. Secondary strategies could target those students who may be at-risk for violence or disruption and tertiary strategies could target those students who have already been involved in disruptive or violent behavior. Initial reports of these strategies show reduced office referrals, school suspensions and expulsions and improved ratings on measures of school climate. The APA report does not recommend abandoning Zero Tolerance Policies but rather their modification so they can actually accomplish their original intent, to make schools a safer, more secure environment for all students and teachers. Based on current research findings, the APA recommends the following changes to zero tolerance policies:
Allow more flexibility with discipline and rely more on teachers’ and administrators’ expertise within their own school buildings.
Have teachers and other professional staff be the first point of contact regarding discipline incidents.
Use zero tolerance disciplinary removals for only the most serious and severe disruptive behaviors.
Replace one-size-fits all discipline. Gear the discipline to the seriousness of the infraction.
Require school police and related security officers to have training in adolescent development.
Attempt to reconnect alienated youth or students who are at-risk for behavior problems or violence. Use threat assessment procedures to identify those at risk.
Develop effective alternatives for learning for those students whose behavior threatens the discipline or safety of the school that result in keeping offenders in the educational system, but also keep other students and teachers safe.
Task Force on Zero Tolerance: Chair: Cecil R. Reynolds, PhD, Texas A&M University; Jane Conoley, EdD, University of California at Santa Barbara; Enedina Garcia-Vazquez, PhD, New Mexico State University; Sandra Graham, PhD, University of California at Los Angeles; Peter Sheras, PhD, University of Virginia; and Russell Skiba, PhD, Indiana University.
Full text of the resolution is available at: http://www.apa.org/releases/ZTTFReportBODRevisions5-15.pdf
For more information/interview contact: Dr. Reynolds at 512-656-5075 or by email.
Research Finds that Mandatory Discipline Can Actually Increase Bad Behavior and Drop Out Rates in Middle and Secondary Students
NEW ORLEANS – A review of the school discipline research shows that zero tolerance policies developed in the 1980s to stop drug use and curtail unruly and violent behavior in schools are not as successful as thought in creating safer environments to learn. These policies, which mandate that schools severely punish disruptive students regardless of the infraction or its rationale, can actually increase bad behavior and also lead to higher drop out rates, according to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) report. Based on these results, the APA today adopted a resolution recommending ways to target discipline more effectively in order to keep schools safe while also eliminating the need for a one-size-fits-all punishment for misbehavior.
APA’s governing body, the Council of Representatives, commissioned the Zero Tolerance Task Force to examine the research conducted to date on the effects zero tolerance policies have on children in schools. The task force reviewed the last 10 years of research to determine whether these policies have made schools safer without taking away students’ opportunity to learn; whether they incorporated children’s development as a factor in types of discipline administered; and whether educators referred juveniles to the justice system too often with costly consequences. Lastly, the review showed how families and communities are affected by these policies.
According to the report’s findings, schools are not any safer or more effective in disciplining children than before these zero tolerance policies were implemented in the mid 1980s. The research also shows that while school violence is a serious issue, violence in schools is “not out-of-control.”
Furthermore, the evidence suggests that zero tolerance policies do not increase the consistency of discipline in schools. According to the report, rates of suspension and expulsion in schools vary widely and can actually increase disciplinary action for those students who are temporarily withdrawn from school. The research also shows that schools with higher rates of suspensions and expulsions have a less than satisfactory rating of climate and governance and spend a disproportionate amount of time disciplining students. The evidence also shows that zero tolerance policies have not been successful at decreasing racial biases in disciplining students. The report found that a disproportionate number of students of color are still overrepresented in expulsions and suspensions, especially for African Americans but also for Latinos. “This uneven representation of discipline,” said the report chair, Cecil Reynolds, PhD, professor at Texas A&M University, “may happen because neither teachers nor school safety or security personnel are trained to evaluate or understand cultural differences that may influence behavior.”
The zero tolerance policies also do not consider children’s lapses in judgment or developmental immaturity as a normal aspect of development, said Dr. Reynolds. “Many incidents that result in disciplinary action in school happen because of an adolescent’s or a child’s poor judgment—not due to an intention to do harm. Zero tolerance policies may exacerbate the normal challenges of adolescence and possibly punish a teenager more severely than warranted. Zero tolerance policies ignore the concept of intent even though this is a central theme in American concepts and systems of justice.” Evidence also shows that zero tolerance policies have increased referrals to the juvenile justice system for infractions once handled in the schools.
Having to go outside the school system to deal with an unruly adolescent puts more stress on families and communities who may already be involved with school personnel. According to the review, those parents and other family members with teenagers who get suspended or expelled from school end up spending more money on incarceration ($40,000.00 a year versus $7,000.00 for yearly education) once their children get involved with the justice system. Costs are also incurred if students drop out of school from uninsured medical expenses, welfare, and treatment for increases in mental health problems.
There are strategies, according to the report findings, that can target disciplinary actions to specific misbehaviors without giving up school safety and mandating all students to the same punishment. Three levels of intervention are offered as alternatives to the current zero tolerance policies. Primary prevention strategies could target all children. Secondary strategies could target those students who may be at-risk for violence or disruption and tertiary strategies could target those students who have already been involved in disruptive or violent behavior. Initial reports of these strategies show reduced office referrals, school suspensions and expulsions and improved ratings on measures of school climate. The APA report does not recommend abandoning Zero Tolerance Policies but rather their modification so they can actually accomplish their original intent, to make schools a safer, more secure environment for all students and teachers. Based on current research findings, the APA recommends the following changes to zero tolerance policies:
Allow more flexibility with discipline and rely more on teachers’ and administrators’ expertise within their own school buildings.
Have teachers and other professional staff be the first point of contact regarding discipline incidents.
Use zero tolerance disciplinary removals for only the most serious and severe disruptive behaviors.
Replace one-size-fits all discipline. Gear the discipline to the seriousness of the infraction.
Require school police and related security officers to have training in adolescent development.
Attempt to reconnect alienated youth or students who are at-risk for behavior problems or violence. Use threat assessment procedures to identify those at risk.
Develop effective alternatives for learning for those students whose behavior threatens the discipline or safety of the school that result in keeping offenders in the educational system, but also keep other students and teachers safe.
Task Force on Zero Tolerance: Chair: Cecil R. Reynolds, PhD, Texas A&M University; Jane Conoley, EdD, University of California at Santa Barbara; Enedina Garcia-Vazquez, PhD, New Mexico State University; Sandra Graham, PhD, University of California at Los Angeles; Peter Sheras, PhD, University of Virginia; and Russell Skiba, PhD, Indiana University.
Full text of the resolution is available at: http://www.apa.org/releases/ZTTFReportBODRevisions5-15.pdf
For more information/interview contact: Dr. Reynolds at 512-656-5075 or by email.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Zero Tolerance or Zero Sense
Zero Tolerance, 100 Percent Control
by William L. Anderson
In its daily editorial website, the Wall Street Journal keeps a running tabulation of the “zero tolerance” inanity that has swept public schools in this country. From the suspension of a third grade boy in Monroe, Louisiana, for drawing a picture of a soldier to the high school honor student kicked out of school because someone saw a dull table knife in her car, we are treated to accounts of “education” bureaucrats running amok.
The stories are treated with a humorous tone, largely in part because the actions of school administrators seem to be so ridiculous that it is hard not to laugh. One is tempted to believe that if the WSJ or other publications run enough of these stories, then the bureaucrats will be so shamed that they will stop this insanity. However, “zero tolerance” runs much deeper than what seems to be the case, as it is just one more tool that the public school establishment employs to control people. We ignore this truth at our own peril.
School administrators and school boards defend “zero tolerance” on the grounds that they are simply trying to prevent another Columbine High School copycat massacre. However, “zero tolerance” policies would never have prevented the Columbine murders in the first place, something that both the supporters and critics of these policies have failed to point out.
Before explaining why “zero tolerance” cannot prevent the kind of outrages we saw at Columbine, we need to examine that particular case. The two perpetrators, Dylan Kliebold and Eric Harris, had already skipped morning classes and entered the school building at the lunch hour. Therefore, even if they had been suspended from school for utterances or threats of violence on their web site, nothing would have prevented them from invading the school in the manner they did.
Furthermore, it is doubtful that the school authorities would have had any reason to suspend them at all. All of the planning done by the boys was in secret; the problem was not lack of school oversight, but a lack of interest by their parents in what their children were doing. Kliebold and Harris engaged in a surprise attack against unarmed teachers and students, which is why there were so many casualties.
Two teenage boys who most likely had no business being in school in the first place carried out the Columbine outrage. That is a far cry from seven-year-old boys being suspended for saying “bang,” or kicking a child out of school for drawing a soldier. Likewise, keeping an honor student from graduating because a table knife was in her car is not how one prevents bloodshed on school grounds.
It is hard to imagine that even public- school bureaucrats are so dull and witless that they cannot figure out what is obvious to everyone else. (I do give some leeway here, since some of the dullest and most witless people I have ever known have been public-school bureaucrats. One should never underestimate their potential for ignorance and stupidity.)
If “zero tolerance” does not prevent school violence – and most likely no one believes that it does – then why do school administrators insist of having such policies? I believe there are two answers to this question, the first being that officials believe such policies might help blunt liability charges should violence occur. The second (and this is much more likely) reason is that “zero tolerance” is a way for school bureaucrats to engage in mind control.
Few things strike more fear into school bureaucrats than trial lawyers, and one cannot blame anyone for trying to keep this class of parasites at bay. However, even if a school has the most restrictive policies in the world, the way that US judges have defined liability these past few decades means that no matter what one does, if a problem occurs, the property “owner” is at fault, period. The current legal climate actually makes such policies useless in avoiding liability.
Thus, we get to the most important reason for “zero tolerance” rules. They are a very effective way of controlling both children and, to a lesser extent, their parents. Like those in our culture who have defined deviancy downward, school bureaucrats are able to use these rules to create new categories of deviants who must be “cured” by the state if they are to return to decent society.
Take the youngster in Monroe, Louisiana, for example. The boy’s father is in the US Army, and the boy simply was drawing a likeness of him. While no one at the school was remotely threatened by this drawing, the fact that school officials suspended the boy and labeled him “potentially violent” has the effect of clouding the child with suspicion. He begins to wonder if, indeed, he is as bad as his teachers say that he is. This child, then, is a perfect candidate for the kind of indoctrination that has become famous at public schools.
No doubt, many children who have been severely punished under “zero tolerance” policies have found themselves in what are basically “rehabilitation” classes. For example, the honor student in Florida who had the table knife in her car has now been labeled as someone who might be dangerous. To repair her own record, school officials are going to insist that she receive some sort of indoctrination in order to “prove” to them that she is not going to harm anyone.
If this whole thing seems to be something out of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” it is because the same principle is at work. Kafka’s main character, who was on trial but was never made aware of his offense, ultimately sees himself as guilty. In the same way, school bureaucrats seek to make children who are of no threat to anyone suddenly think of themselves as deviant and potentially violent and to be in need of “cleansing” by the proper authorities.
If this seems far-fetched, remember that as students ourselves, we drew guns in art class, got in fights, and made “I’m going to kill you” threats regularly. Yet, no one called the police or had us suspended. A fight may have earned us a trip to the principal’s office, but that was about the extent of it.
Those days are gone forever. Whatever excesses we may have found in public-school systems 30 years ago, they were nothing compared to the totalitarian attitudes that are found in administrators and teachers, especially those who are active in the National Education Association. Instead of being the brainchild of overzealous administrators trying to keep peace in the schools, “zero tolerance” policies must be seen in the light of the current zeitgeist of public education, that being the worship of the state. Indeed, “zero tolerance” rules do not prevent violence. They are, instead, another example of the state’s violence against decent and law-abiding people.
June 7, 2001
William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], is assistant professor of economics at North Greenville College in Tigerville, South Carolina. He is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
© 2001 LewRockwell.com
William Anderson Archives
Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)