Still preparing review of Charles Payne’s new book, but I found this statement that I think would be a great litmus test to see where someone stands on the political spectrum and how close they are to the daily life of urban schools:

“The basic picture of life in inner-city schools has not changed much in several decades.”

There’s a bunch of articles out there describing President Obama’s advocacy of merit pay for teachers; here’s a transcript of his March 10th speech on education. He alludes several times to this issue, albeit indirectly.

Today’s Inquirer takes it further, enlisting always quotable Ted Hershberg and new Superintendent Arlene Ackerman as foils to dry, conflict averse Jerry Jordan. Incentives are one thing — finding a middle school math teacher is nearly impossible — but systems of pay based on merit…

I wish anyone pushing for merit pay would read Charles Payne’s exceptional new book — So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools. His description of many troubled urban schools as demoralized, as essentially irrational places where reforms cannot penetrate is not only accurate but a sound explanation for why these sorts of merit pay plans cannot work in Philly. For such a system to function would require multiple parts that simply do not exist and cannot be created overnight: thoughtful administrators who know instruction, motivated teachers who haven’t been burned again and again, and a reasonably efficient administrative system.

“Historians become controversial when they do not perpetuate myths, when they do not transmit the received and conventional wisdom, when they challenge the comforting presence of a stabilized past. Members of a society, and its politicians in particular, prefer that historians be quietly ironic rather than polemical, conservators rather than innovators.”

cited in Linenthal, Edward Tabor, and Tom Engelhardt. History Wars : The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co., 1996), 60.

I like this recent article on the new school reform efforts in Philadelphia because every adult in it is trying to play the “I care about kids and you don’t” card.

Whoever can get it out first, whether a Superintendent, a Union Leader, a member of the SRC, and whoever can sing it loudest, somehow wins.

There are several variations of this tactic. There’s the “oppose me and you must hate kids” version. There’s the “I’m for kids and as such, I’m above your petty politics” version.

Unfortunately, it’s a conversation stopper and does lasting damage to relationships; it’s hard to recover good will towards someone who levels this charge at you.

I’m always dreaming of courses I’d like to teach but will never get the chance to. Today, as I finished “The Known World,” I thought of a new class: an introduction to historiography taught mostly through literature:

Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose (to discuss the use of sources)

Edward Jones, the Known World (to discuss agency vs. structure)

Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (to discuss family/diaspora)

Madison Smart Bell, All Souls Rising (to discuss what’s known and what’s ignored)

Short story: Randall Kenan, Let the Dead Bury The Dead

some wisdom

“The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or just make a baby yawn.”

Jones, Edward P. The Known World (New York: Amistad, 2003), 1

Absolutely. I mean speaking for myself, while the nuances have changed slightly, my rooting for the Red Sox today is intrinsicaly no different than when I rooted for the Red Sox when I was 6 years old.

Soxaholix

I used this article with great success in my class last night. Sadly, it’s sort of a novel concept — how do the books you read shape who you are — but the conversation about language also fueled a good conversation.

Kakutani quotes James Baldwin:

Language is both “a political instrument, means, and proof of power,” and “the most vivid and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.”

No better place to start a course on literacy and adolescence, on pedagogy and schools…

What song best represents Tuesday and the election; lots of folks have identified various versions of A Change is Gonna Come…great song even if folks know it best from American karaoke.

For some reason, I think this Bob Dylan song gets it best, particularly for those who’ve waited. It’s as much the sound of the song as it as the lyrics…

The ocean wild like an organ played,
The seaweed’s wove its strands.
The crashin’ waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and sands.
Lay down your weary tune, lay down,
Lay down the song you strum,
And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum.

I stood unwound beneath the skies
And clouds unbound by laws.
The cryin’ rain like a trumpet sang
And asked for no applause.
Lay down your weary tune, lay down,
Lay down the song you strum,
And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum.