Too cranky and disgruntled to write much lately. More math wars in district. It's been quite an experience, including insinuations of bribery to be on the math committee, and suggestions by one "friend" that I'm on because of my politesse and accommodationist tendencies. All I'm missing is the rolled-up black umbrella. It's hard for me not to see this as sexism: the PTA involvement isn't taken seriously compared to the "Math Men," none of whom had been previously involved in things district-related. Math Men didn't bother with us b/c we're just bake sales and class parties, or because it simply didn't occur to them (more of the latter, I think).
Whatever. It's about the kids, right? And the shitty, shitty math instruction that's going on, and the atrocious special education scores, which the superintendent, a divide-and-conquer pro, suggests the Math Men won't care about b/c it's spec ed.
Lots of rhetoric, including on the sup's part, that tries to turn this into culture wars. And once again I find myself in the conventional liberal position of feeling that I'm not sure I know enough to make an absolute decision. I'll pat myself on the back and say, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
2 comments:
I admire your patience and fortitude on this! I could not put up with the hooey, because life's too short.
I went to our SD's info session recruiting parent members for the upcoming math curriculum evaluation. They're reviewing it ahead of schedule because of the outcry from the last adoption. I came out of that meeting convinced it wasn't for me and didn't even bother applying (though several folks had encouraged me to do so).
Frankly, the thought of spending 2 years dealing with these whiny/crazy folks who had already made up their mind that we should just coin toss between Saxon and Singapore, throw all calculators out of everywhere, and say to heck with everyone who isn't TAG-like-me (OK, TAG-like-my-kid) just annoyed me. There were about 8 people there who just wouldn't shut up (this was an info session, not a grandstanding session). I had never met these people in person, but I knew them from emails. And they're just as strident IRL as they are in email.
At one point, another of the other more neutral parents pointedly asked if they could possibly limit their speech-making to the meeting immediately after (Superintendent's open-mic listening session) so that those of us who had actual questions about the committee process itself could get those answered instead of hearing how awful the current curriculum was, citing biased statistic after statistic about how nothing good could possibly ever come of constructivism and the world as we know it would end in 2 years if we didn't change the curriculum yesterday.
I'm generally a reasonable person who keeps her emotions fairly well contained while being rational and measured in my responses. But I would be all "STFU already" on these guys before this summer. Not a good thing, and not worth my energy.
Yes, it is all about the kids. But also about petty-bureaucrat politics and tax dollars. Which makes for a very volatile situation for folks who can't keep their emotions in check and figure that any deviation from their own righteous curriculum vision cuts their kids off from their destiny at Harvard or Stanford and darnitall, they're paying beaucoup taxes so they should be able to dictate how it oughta be. (YSDMV, that's my sense of this group of parents at ours)
I have the quasi-libertarian's view that says that there isn't a single right answer because every individual is working toward different goals. Toss in a willingness to be philosophical and step back to first principles: "What is the role of a public education, given that we're coercing all to pay for it?" IMO, it ain't a program that completely covers all the bases for kids to go to Yale or Caltech any more than the PE program is about sending kids directly to the Olympics.
Your Opinion May Vary because the world would be a boring (but more rational!) place if everybody thought the way I did...
Actually, my M doesn't V at all: as I like pointing out to people, there are not one but two developments in this town named after colleges. And there's some anxiety/inferiority b/c we're not nearby Woodbury or Syosset or Jericho. The superintendent is pretty cavalier re test scores and rankings, and while I agree w/him to some extent, the reality is that this town is not Woodstock or Berkeley, and we are hyperfocused on certain (narrow) definitions of success. Most of the discussion I hear is that not enough kids are getting 4's and our rankings are low. I care a whole lot more re the fact that special needs kids' scores take a giant nosedive in fifth grade and don't really recover by eighth.
And I think it's the height of hubris to do a bit of webcrawling (or even a lot of webcrawling) and decide you know exactly what curriculum to use when you've never taught a day in your life and you don't have the big picture at all and you're looking at sites that are put up specifically to bash TERC and constructivism. This is me being snobby again, but I get the feeling some of these people are undereducated and don't know how little they know or how much should be involved in decision-making. It doesn't mean these people are entirely wrong: I am NOT crazy re TERC at all. It does mean that there's an awful lot of hubris and arrogance to assume that they have the alternative based on their extensive use of Google.
It is kind of a fascinating look at how the Net has democratized this kind of discussion for better and for (much) worse. The Math Men and co. are getting their point out via Internet petition and a website they've set up; administration's response has been IRL and quite flat-footed, IMO.
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