"Graduate Housing Tips" - Steve Breen, San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego, California, US
Showing posts with label teacher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teacher. Show all posts
Friday, February 23, 2018
Thursday, February 11, 2016
"Testing Stress" by Nate Beeler
Thursday, November 19, 2015
I am an adjunct professor who teaches 5 classes. I earn less than a pet-sitter
Not surprised at reading this article. But I am indeed sad at what is happening to our world. The world is unfair but it is just getting to an absurdly low point. Education is becoming meaningless in this modern world. Educated people who are without any influential networks are being used as mere slaves; jobs with low pay & without much benefits, if any.
People who are making six-figures or even millions are doing it by either exploiting others or themselves. All of the rich people in the modern world have become rich by trampling the basic human dignity, for example, by paying the federally-mandated minimum wages, which are themselves quite low. Some others are making money by exploiting narcissistic trends in social media or taking off their clothes in front of the camera. For example, some gamers, fashion & media vbloggers, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashian clan, most, if not all, rappers & hip hop artists, & of course, even the porn stars.
People who are working hard to teach & build the next generation are being treated like mere pawns. What message is being shown to the young minds of next generation? That it is better to go in sales (where one doesn't really need a relevant education & just be good in hustling or lying with a straight face), start making own videos for social media on completely inane topics, start twerking & dancing in front of millions, & of course, porn industry is another great option, too.
What kind of society are we expecting when the teacher of the next generation is being paid less than the cashier or grocery bagger at your local grocery store? After all, a simple cost-benefit analysis would lay the facts bare that just graduating secondary school is far better, since it's free (at least in North America, Europe, & some Asian countries) & that young kid won't even have to waste time, money (thousands of $$$ in most cases) in university, & his/her effort, to receive minimum wages, or perhaps, even less.
Frankly, why the world keeps shouting that education is important for everyone. It is indeed important, when the educated person is treated the way he/she deserves to be treated. It is indeed important in a meritocracy. But that's not the world we are living in right now. Grads are unemployed & burdened with student loans. Whereas, people who didn't go to university, but are good in selling (whatever they are selling) are swimming in cash.
Then, how can we expect this modern world to be any better than the world of yore? Then, how can we expect any kind of fairness in this world when the people with whom we are dealing got where they are by "selling" themselves, their morals, & their ethics?
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Like most university teachers today, I am a low-paid contract worker. Now & then, a friend will ask: “Have you tried dog-walking on the side?” I have. Pet care, I can reveal, takes massive attention, energy & driving time. I’m friends with a full-time, professionally employed pet-sitter who’s done it for years, never topping $26,000 annually & never receiving health or other benefits.
The reason I field such questions is that, as an adjunct professor, whether teaching undergraduate or law-school courses, I make much less than a pet-sitter earns. This year I’m teaching five classes (15 credit hours, roughly comparable to the teaching loads of some tenure-track law or business school instructors). At $3,000 per course, I’ll pull in $15,000 for the year. I work year-round, 20 to 30 hours weekly – teaching, developing courses & drafting syllabi, offering academic advice, recommendation letters & course extensions for students who need them. ...
I receive no benefits, no office, no phone or stipend for the basic communication demands of teaching. I keep constant tabs on the media I use in my classes; if I exhaust my own 10GB monthly data plan early, I lose vital time for online discussions with my students. This, although the university requires my students to engage in discussions about legal issues & ethics six days a week, & I must guide as well as grade these discussions.
Three of my Philadelphia-area friends are adjuncts with doctorate degrees. One keeps moving to other states for temporary teaching posts. The others teach at multiple sites to keep afloat financially – one at no less than seven colleges & universities.
Having heard all my life about solid “government job” benefits, I figured I might have more stability, & still be able to handle teaching, if I worked for the Post Office. I started carrying mail in early January. As a City Carrier Assistant, I earned less pay than regular postal carriers do, though I did more than “assist”: my job was to handle absentee carriers’ routes. I had no medical insurance, no sick leave allowance & had to agree to work as much as managers deemed necessary for 360 consecutive days (whereupon I could sign up for a second 360-day contract, with no promise that it would bring me any closer to a permanent job offer). I worked on Sundays too, under the US Postal Service’s contract with Amazon.com. With human flaws – I fell on ice more than once – I was no match for the drones Amazon intends to deploy. After 2 months on the job, which was long enough to develop a lifetime fear of Rottweilers, I was behind in my university work. I turned in my cap.
In late March, I started a retail job. It offers real days off, & I expect to be eligible for health & dental benefits soon.
Last week, a friend came in to shop, saw me, & exclaimed, loud enough for all to hear: “What are you doing here?” Friends who know I hold two law degrees & teach at a university can’t fathom that my teaching doesn’t cover rent. Some writers have discussed adjuncts waiting tables or bagging groceries alongside their students as though it’s the ultimate degradation. I see things differently. I’m trained by the people who deliver parcels, serve meals & bag groceries & who might, any day, apply to take my courses. I am their equal, & I know it at a level most established faculty members do not.
Faculty members do not even interact with each other as equals. Most adjuncts aren’t included in regular faculty meetings, let alone conferences where ideas are exchanged & explored. A concept called the inclusive fees campaign seeks to make conferences affordable for adjuncts. (It focuses on PhDs, but could encompass teachers whose positions require law degrees or other alternative qualifications.) “Inclusivity” for a systematically exploited group is only a patch. But it’s good to see established professors challenged to acknowledge contingent workers, who now comprise the preponderance of the faculty community. Yes, of the 1.2 million instructional staff appointments in US higher education, 76% – more than 900,000 – are now contingent.
We are working for institutions that claim to open doors to career opportunities even as they etch contingency into their hiring practices. The significance of the inclusive fees campaign lies in its implicit question: how will the schools hear our voices over the silence of the tenured?
Even more daunting than the dearth of dollars is the fragmentation of the adjunct’s time. Recently, an editor at the University of Oregon School of Law asked if I’d be a conference panelist. Can I travel, yet still clock enough hours at my second job to stay above the threshold for health insurance?
Every day I live two people’s lives, & it’s fatiguing. Every day I need more time with students while being pulled away from them.
The best that could come of the adjunct crisis is a teaching community broadly committed to the civility & inclusivity we’ve been missing. This could lead to a new kind of education, based not on ranking, not on status, but on genuine guidance for living with decency & respect on this planet.
A conference on this is well overdue – & I don’t want to miss it while watching the time clock.
People who are making six-figures or even millions are doing it by either exploiting others or themselves. All of the rich people in the modern world have become rich by trampling the basic human dignity, for example, by paying the federally-mandated minimum wages, which are themselves quite low. Some others are making money by exploiting narcissistic trends in social media or taking off their clothes in front of the camera. For example, some gamers, fashion & media vbloggers, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashian clan, most, if not all, rappers & hip hop artists, & of course, even the porn stars.
People who are working hard to teach & build the next generation are being treated like mere pawns. What message is being shown to the young minds of next generation? That it is better to go in sales (where one doesn't really need a relevant education & just be good in hustling or lying with a straight face), start making own videos for social media on completely inane topics, start twerking & dancing in front of millions, & of course, porn industry is another great option, too.
What kind of society are we expecting when the teacher of the next generation is being paid less than the cashier or grocery bagger at your local grocery store? After all, a simple cost-benefit analysis would lay the facts bare that just graduating secondary school is far better, since it's free (at least in North America, Europe, & some Asian countries) & that young kid won't even have to waste time, money (thousands of $$$ in most cases) in university, & his/her effort, to receive minimum wages, or perhaps, even less.
Frankly, why the world keeps shouting that education is important for everyone. It is indeed important, when the educated person is treated the way he/she deserves to be treated. It is indeed important in a meritocracy. But that's not the world we are living in right now. Grads are unemployed & burdened with student loans. Whereas, people who didn't go to university, but are good in selling (whatever they are selling) are swimming in cash.
Then, how can we expect this modern world to be any better than the world of yore? Then, how can we expect any kind of fairness in this world when the people with whom we are dealing got where they are by "selling" themselves, their morals, & their ethics?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like most university teachers today, I am a low-paid contract worker. Now & then, a friend will ask: “Have you tried dog-walking on the side?” I have. Pet care, I can reveal, takes massive attention, energy & driving time. I’m friends with a full-time, professionally employed pet-sitter who’s done it for years, never topping $26,000 annually & never receiving health or other benefits.
The reason I field such questions is that, as an adjunct professor, whether teaching undergraduate or law-school courses, I make much less than a pet-sitter earns. This year I’m teaching five classes (15 credit hours, roughly comparable to the teaching loads of some tenure-track law or business school instructors). At $3,000 per course, I’ll pull in $15,000 for the year. I work year-round, 20 to 30 hours weekly – teaching, developing courses & drafting syllabi, offering academic advice, recommendation letters & course extensions for students who need them. ...
I receive no benefits, no office, no phone or stipend for the basic communication demands of teaching. I keep constant tabs on the media I use in my classes; if I exhaust my own 10GB monthly data plan early, I lose vital time for online discussions with my students. This, although the university requires my students to engage in discussions about legal issues & ethics six days a week, & I must guide as well as grade these discussions.
Three of my Philadelphia-area friends are adjuncts with doctorate degrees. One keeps moving to other states for temporary teaching posts. The others teach at multiple sites to keep afloat financially – one at no less than seven colleges & universities.
Having heard all my life about solid “government job” benefits, I figured I might have more stability, & still be able to handle teaching, if I worked for the Post Office. I started carrying mail in early January. As a City Carrier Assistant, I earned less pay than regular postal carriers do, though I did more than “assist”: my job was to handle absentee carriers’ routes. I had no medical insurance, no sick leave allowance & had to agree to work as much as managers deemed necessary for 360 consecutive days (whereupon I could sign up for a second 360-day contract, with no promise that it would bring me any closer to a permanent job offer). I worked on Sundays too, under the US Postal Service’s contract with Amazon.com. With human flaws – I fell on ice more than once – I was no match for the drones Amazon intends to deploy. After 2 months on the job, which was long enough to develop a lifetime fear of Rottweilers, I was behind in my university work. I turned in my cap.
In late March, I started a retail job. It offers real days off, & I expect to be eligible for health & dental benefits soon.
Last week, a friend came in to shop, saw me, & exclaimed, loud enough for all to hear: “What are you doing here?” Friends who know I hold two law degrees & teach at a university can’t fathom that my teaching doesn’t cover rent. Some writers have discussed adjuncts waiting tables or bagging groceries alongside their students as though it’s the ultimate degradation. I see things differently. I’m trained by the people who deliver parcels, serve meals & bag groceries & who might, any day, apply to take my courses. I am their equal, & I know it at a level most established faculty members do not.
Faculty members do not even interact with each other as equals. Most adjuncts aren’t included in regular faculty meetings, let alone conferences where ideas are exchanged & explored. A concept called the inclusive fees campaign seeks to make conferences affordable for adjuncts. (It focuses on PhDs, but could encompass teachers whose positions require law degrees or other alternative qualifications.) “Inclusivity” for a systematically exploited group is only a patch. But it’s good to see established professors challenged to acknowledge contingent workers, who now comprise the preponderance of the faculty community. Yes, of the 1.2 million instructional staff appointments in US higher education, 76% – more than 900,000 – are now contingent.
We are working for institutions that claim to open doors to career opportunities even as they etch contingency into their hiring practices. The significance of the inclusive fees campaign lies in its implicit question: how will the schools hear our voices over the silence of the tenured?
Even more daunting than the dearth of dollars is the fragmentation of the adjunct’s time. Recently, an editor at the University of Oregon School of Law asked if I’d be a conference panelist. Can I travel, yet still clock enough hours at my second job to stay above the threshold for health insurance?
Every day I live two people’s lives, & it’s fatiguing. Every day I need more time with students while being pulled away from them.
The best that could come of the adjunct crisis is a teaching community broadly committed to the civility & inclusivity we’ve been missing. This could lead to a new kind of education, based not on ranking, not on status, but on genuine guidance for living with decency & respect on this planet.
A conference on this is well overdue – & I don’t want to miss it while watching the time clock.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Black teachers still face racism on the job in Ontario
I used to be surprised when people used to get surprised at the news that there's racism in Canada; the country which thinks it is better than US in regards to such form of discrimination & hatred.
But I don't get surprised at them, because I already know those people, who are the majority of the population, are living under a rock, when it comes to their social knowledge. They may know a lot about their profession, politics, sports etc., but when it comes to know what's going on in their vicinity which is affecting adversely to their fellow human beings, they are completely clueless.
I know there's racism in Canada because I suffer it myself. I know there's racism in Canada because I hear from other people in my community who suffer from it. But most people in our supposedly "diverse" society live in so insularly that they are completely oblivious to these daily facts of life.
Recent riots & violence in US in regards to racism didn't come out of nowhere, but they were the result of years & decades of racism by the American "white" majority. Since, African-Americans are that many more in population in US than any other race, racism affects them with that much force.
In Canada, the adverse effects of racism are few but intense. Reason being that a large majority of some 35 million of Canadians are of one race, & other races make a small portion of the whole population. On top of that, many stories of racism never surface, so we never come to hear the full extent of racism in our society.
As interim president of ONABSE says in the article below that "racism is still deeply ingrained in society."
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Many black teachers across Ontario still face racism on the job, according to a new study of educators, half of whom said they believe being black has hurt their chance of promotion. Some told of hearing the ‘N’ word used in the staff room & being mistaken for a trespasser.
“I had a supply teacher tell me I am not allowed to park my car in staff parking,” said one of the 148 black educators across 12 Ontario school boards surveyed for a report ... . “The ‘N’ word was used in casual conversation in our staff room,” said another. “I was introduced as ‘home girl’ to a student teacher.”
The 63-page report, The Voices of Ontario Black Educators, prepared for the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators (ONABSE), calls for Ontario to enact tough employment equity legislation, provide training against anti-black bias, set targets for promoting teachers of colour & cluster black teachers in particular in schools where there are high numbers of black students.
“We’re disappointed, but not surprised at the findings — racism is still deeply ingrained in society,” said Warren Salmon, interim president of ONABSE, which commissioned the report because of concerns expressed by its members.
Of the black teachers, principals & vice-principals surveyed, one-third said they believe they have been passed over for advancement because they are black. Some 27% said racial discrimination by colleagues affects their day-to-day work life & 51% said they believe anti-black bias at their school board affects who gets promoted.
Equity consultant Tana Turner of Turner Consultants conducted the survey, & called for school boards to “set equity goals & timetables — not just have an employment equity office which merely measures the numbers of employees …"
Toronto vice-principal Darlene Jones said she has not experienced racism either as a teacher or as vice-principal of Beverley Heights Middle School — “not at all; but I’m not alarmed that it exists. It’s our world; you just have to hope that by changing mindsets, things will change.”
...
The report included numerous anecdotes of “micro-aggressions … the everyday slights, insults & indignities” that imply black teachers don’t belong:
• One was “asked by a principal if I would ever consider straightening my hair.”
• Another was “told I should steer away from too much black history in the class as black history is not important when no black students are present.”
• On arriving at a new job assignment, “colleagues asked if I am a new caretaker.”
• “A colleague was shocked that I was raised by both parents — & expressed it in the staff room.”
Turner noted that in 2011, 26% of Ontarians were “racialized” (visible minorities) — a figure that soars to 72% in Markham, 66% in Brampton, 54% in Mississauga & 49% in Toronto. However, she said the percentage of teachers of colour lags behind the population.
Some 31% of the Toronto District School Board’s staff self-identified as visible minorities in 2012. At the University of Toronto’s faculty of education, 46% of current students self-identified as being part of a visible minority.
The ONABSE report calls for more rigorous tracking of the diversity of teachers in Ontario schools.
But I don't get surprised at them, because I already know those people, who are the majority of the population, are living under a rock, when it comes to their social knowledge. They may know a lot about their profession, politics, sports etc., but when it comes to know what's going on in their vicinity which is affecting adversely to their fellow human beings, they are completely clueless.
I know there's racism in Canada because I suffer it myself. I know there's racism in Canada because I hear from other people in my community who suffer from it. But most people in our supposedly "diverse" society live in so insularly that they are completely oblivious to these daily facts of life.
Recent riots & violence in US in regards to racism didn't come out of nowhere, but they were the result of years & decades of racism by the American "white" majority. Since, African-Americans are that many more in population in US than any other race, racism affects them with that much force.
In Canada, the adverse effects of racism are few but intense. Reason being that a large majority of some 35 million of Canadians are of one race, & other races make a small portion of the whole population. On top of that, many stories of racism never surface, so we never come to hear the full extent of racism in our society.
As interim president of ONABSE says in the article below that "racism is still deeply ingrained in society."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many black teachers across Ontario still face racism on the job, according to a new study of educators, half of whom said they believe being black has hurt their chance of promotion. Some told of hearing the ‘N’ word used in the staff room & being mistaken for a trespasser.
“I had a supply teacher tell me I am not allowed to park my car in staff parking,” said one of the 148 black educators across 12 Ontario school boards surveyed for a report ... . “The ‘N’ word was used in casual conversation in our staff room,” said another. “I was introduced as ‘home girl’ to a student teacher.”
The 63-page report, The Voices of Ontario Black Educators, prepared for the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators (ONABSE), calls for Ontario to enact tough employment equity legislation, provide training against anti-black bias, set targets for promoting teachers of colour & cluster black teachers in particular in schools where there are high numbers of black students.
“We’re disappointed, but not surprised at the findings — racism is still deeply ingrained in society,” said Warren Salmon, interim president of ONABSE, which commissioned the report because of concerns expressed by its members.
Of the black teachers, principals & vice-principals surveyed, one-third said they believe they have been passed over for advancement because they are black. Some 27% said racial discrimination by colleagues affects their day-to-day work life & 51% said they believe anti-black bias at their school board affects who gets promoted.
Equity consultant Tana Turner of Turner Consultants conducted the survey, & called for school boards to “set equity goals & timetables — not just have an employment equity office which merely measures the numbers of employees …"
Toronto vice-principal Darlene Jones said she has not experienced racism either as a teacher or as vice-principal of Beverley Heights Middle School — “not at all; but I’m not alarmed that it exists. It’s our world; you just have to hope that by changing mindsets, things will change.”
...
The report included numerous anecdotes of “micro-aggressions … the everyday slights, insults & indignities” that imply black teachers don’t belong:
• One was “asked by a principal if I would ever consider straightening my hair.”
• Another was “told I should steer away from too much black history in the class as black history is not important when no black students are present.”
• On arriving at a new job assignment, “colleagues asked if I am a new caretaker.”
• “A colleague was shocked that I was raised by both parents — & expressed it in the staff room.”
Turner noted that in 2011, 26% of Ontarians were “racialized” (visible minorities) — a figure that soars to 72% in Markham, 66% in Brampton, 54% in Mississauga & 49% in Toronto. However, she said the percentage of teachers of colour lags behind the population.
Some 31% of the Toronto District School Board’s staff self-identified as visible minorities in 2012. At the University of Toronto’s faculty of education, 46% of current students self-identified as being part of a visible minority.
The ONABSE report calls for more rigorous tracking of the diversity of teachers in Ontario schools.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Corporal punishment in India's schools
A good article on corporal punishment being used by school teachers as a form of discipline. I'm personally in favour of corporal punishment but within, some bounds.
The article does try to put it into a proper perspective that "blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations."
Beating children because they are poor or being absent from class because they have to provide help in the family farms or not having proper school supplies due to poverty is definitely wrong.
But beating children because they are cheating on the test/exam (that is not "teamwork") or they have not done their homework or they are late to class/school are very plausible reasons to punish students. However, if those children didn't do homework because of lack of school supplies or came late because of a family emergency, then they must not be punished.
Corporal punishment make the children know that teacher is to be respected. Being of a Pakistani background, I know the experience of corporal punishment, first hand. After moving to Canada in my teens, I was aghast at watching how students in secondary school talked back to teachers. Teachers have little to no respect in the eyes of students in the West, except a few good students.
On top of that, I was reading an article a few months back (I may have even wrote a blog post on it) that how teachers, in North American elementary to secondary schools, are always afraid of their students, that when & who may allege something against them to the school authorities.
There was an example that how a elementary school substitute teacher saw a student throw away a perfectly good banana in the garbage during lunch hour. The teacher told the student to take the banana out of the garbage & eat it. The student took it out & took 1 bite of the banana, & then threw it back in the garbage. This all happened while he kept staring back at the teacher, like challenging her back. The incident didn't stop there. The student went home & told his parents that the teacher forced him to eat the fruit from the garbage. Parents, of course, stormed the principal's office. Consequently, the teacher got suspended while the matter was investigated. Although, no charge was ever laid against her for child abuse, she was never called back again to teach at that school. After all, which school administration would want to go through the whole hassle of investigation against such a teacher who was merely teaching a student the value of food & discouraging him from wasting food?
Corporal punishment is being removed from schools around the world. One of my maternal aunts in Pakistan, who is a secondary school teacher for around 20 years now & is highly respected, was decrying back in December 2013 that teachers are being banned from using corporal punishment as a form of disciplining the children. Her school is a network of private schools in Karachi & kids from middle to upper middle class attend that school (so not exactly poor kids who need to help out their families in the farms are attending that school). She was saying that school children are becoming more & more brave & talk back to teachers & don't listen to what teachers are saying because they know that teachers can't touch them now.
I fully agreed with her. Because, I have seen the effects of how much respect teachers really have in North American schools. And, it's only getting worse. Teachers aren't allowed to discipline students. So, students have a free rein to do whatever they like, however they like, in whichever way they like. If they want to smoke & deal drugs right outside the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to start a fight in / around the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to bring a gun / other weapons to school, who is going to stop them? If they want to harass / bully another student(s), who is going to stop them? Definitely, not the teachers, because their hands are tied.
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Despite widespread concern about the effects of corporal punishment on children, it persists in schools across the world. Its eradication in many countries is proving difficult, & India is no exception.
... more everyday forms of violence may go unnoticed or unquestioned, & limited academic attention has focused on gender differences in the way punishment is meted out to boys & girls at home, school, & society at large. For children in many parts of India, norms relating to femininity mean that girls are required to be docile & submissive, & not to be “naughty”. Ideas about masculinity may mean that boys are supposed to be able to accept physical punishment & to withstand pain.
India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, & has many policies that ban corporal punishment in schools. But these seem out of kilter with everyday realities. The Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education Act of 2009 guarantees school for all children between the ages of 6 & 14. Although elementary schooling has expanded, this rapid expansion has not been matched by comparable increases in the teaching workforce. There is a shortage of teachers across schools, & class sizes are very large, putting pressure on teachers to control high numbers of children.
The government of India commissioned research that included more than 3,000 children aged from 5 to 18, asking about physical abuse by teachers. In all age groups, 65% reported being beaten at school. Our own findings back up these figures. Younger children (aged 7–8) were significantly more likely to have witnessed & experienced corporal punishment than the 14- to 15-year-old cohort, with over two-thirds of the younger children having been physically punished at school in the past week, compared with one-third of the older young people. Poorer children were more likely than less poor children to be punished.
However, among children aged 14–15, we found that girls & boys alike experience routine corporal punishment, with boys experiencing particularly high levels. There was a less sharp distinction in use of corporal punishment between boys & girls in the younger cohort. This may be because corporal punishment is part of the socialisation of younger children, but when they are older it is no longer seen as an appropriate way to discipline young women, while “toughening up” young men may be normative.
It may be seen as part of boys’ socialisation & transition into adulthood. One 15-year-old boy complained about the unfairness of the beatings being meted out on boys, whom he perceived as being punished much more than girls. The violence children & young people experience in schools may not be visibly gendered but it may reinforce gender differentiation because of the ways in which it is employed by male & female teachers. Some children, for example, spoke of being particularly afraid of the male PE teachers. However, the reality is that young boys & girls alike are physically abused in schools, & it is being children that make them vulnerable, rather than their gender.
Reasons to be punished
Girls and boys spoke of a range of other reasons for punishment, including being absent from school due to work, illness or attending family celebrations, missing classes, not doing their homework, not reading well, making mistakes, receiving poor marks in exams, not wearing uniform, not having the right equipment, or not paying the teacher for extra lessons. One girl, aged 10, said:
“If we don’t study, they beat us. If we ask other children for help, they beat [us]. I went to drink water without asking sir, so he beat me that time. They said all children should come back to class by the time they count 10 after the interval. But I went home [to use the toilet]. After coming back to school, he beat me.”
Punished for poverty
Poverty at home also clearly influenced school discipline practices. Living in poverty meant that children were sometimes not in a position to follow the rules & expectations of school. Children described being punished for not having uniform or the right equipment, or money to pay fees.
...
As Young Lives data have shown, economic constraints & family circumstances mean that boys & girls in rural areas engage in seasonal agricultural work on family land, & miss school for days, weeks, or months at a time. Although the boys & girls did different gender-specific work, the impact was the same: when they did return to school, they faced punishment. Although older boys rarely spoke directly about their fears of punishment, their mothers spoke of their sons’ emotions. Ranadeep’s mother explained:
“Without him, we cannot run the family, we don’t get labourers & there is no other way for us. When he returns to school they shout at him & he is terrified ... His father goes there & informs them ... they scold us, they say ‘how will he get on if he is absent for such a long time?’... We try to pacify them by telling them about our problems at home.”
What can be done?
In global policy debates, much emphasis has been placed on the role of education as the solution not only to reducing cycles of poverty in developing countries, but also to addressing gender violence.
However, the evidence presented here suggests that we must question this, at least in the Indian context. All children, regardless of gender, experience high levels of physical violence in schools. But it is teenage boys who experience the most.
But blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations.
Approaches need to develop not only from the top down, but from communities, families & teachers to find ways of working together to change practices.
Violence as an integral part of schooling may have consequences for boys’ & girls’ development that go beyond the here & now of childhood to social & economic factors in adulthood. In India, this needs to be understood in the context of the high expectations that parents & children have of schools. Some children dislike school for many reasons, but if they discontinue school because of their experience of corporal punishment, & if they learn that corporal punishment is the solution to behaviour that is out of line, then formal schooling may inadvertently be reinforcing both cycles of poverty & the use of violence.
Virginia Morrow is a senior research officer at Young Lives & a University of Oxford associate professor. Follow Young Lives on Twitter.
The article does try to put it into a proper perspective that "blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations."
Beating children because they are poor or being absent from class because they have to provide help in the family farms or not having proper school supplies due to poverty is definitely wrong.
But beating children because they are cheating on the test/exam (that is not "teamwork") or they have not done their homework or they are late to class/school are very plausible reasons to punish students. However, if those children didn't do homework because of lack of school supplies or came late because of a family emergency, then they must not be punished.
Corporal punishment make the children know that teacher is to be respected. Being of a Pakistani background, I know the experience of corporal punishment, first hand. After moving to Canada in my teens, I was aghast at watching how students in secondary school talked back to teachers. Teachers have little to no respect in the eyes of students in the West, except a few good students.
On top of that, I was reading an article a few months back (I may have even wrote a blog post on it) that how teachers, in North American elementary to secondary schools, are always afraid of their students, that when & who may allege something against them to the school authorities.
There was an example that how a elementary school substitute teacher saw a student throw away a perfectly good banana in the garbage during lunch hour. The teacher told the student to take the banana out of the garbage & eat it. The student took it out & took 1 bite of the banana, & then threw it back in the garbage. This all happened while he kept staring back at the teacher, like challenging her back. The incident didn't stop there. The student went home & told his parents that the teacher forced him to eat the fruit from the garbage. Parents, of course, stormed the principal's office. Consequently, the teacher got suspended while the matter was investigated. Although, no charge was ever laid against her for child abuse, she was never called back again to teach at that school. After all, which school administration would want to go through the whole hassle of investigation against such a teacher who was merely teaching a student the value of food & discouraging him from wasting food?
Corporal punishment is being removed from schools around the world. One of my maternal aunts in Pakistan, who is a secondary school teacher for around 20 years now & is highly respected, was decrying back in December 2013 that teachers are being banned from using corporal punishment as a form of disciplining the children. Her school is a network of private schools in Karachi & kids from middle to upper middle class attend that school (so not exactly poor kids who need to help out their families in the farms are attending that school). She was saying that school children are becoming more & more brave & talk back to teachers & don't listen to what teachers are saying because they know that teachers can't touch them now.
I fully agreed with her. Because, I have seen the effects of how much respect teachers really have in North American schools. And, it's only getting worse. Teachers aren't allowed to discipline students. So, students have a free rein to do whatever they like, however they like, in whichever way they like. If they want to smoke & deal drugs right outside the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to start a fight in / around the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to bring a gun / other weapons to school, who is going to stop them? If they want to harass / bully another student(s), who is going to stop them? Definitely, not the teachers, because their hands are tied.
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Despite widespread concern about the effects of corporal punishment on children, it persists in schools across the world. Its eradication in many countries is proving difficult, & India is no exception.
... more everyday forms of violence may go unnoticed or unquestioned, & limited academic attention has focused on gender differences in the way punishment is meted out to boys & girls at home, school, & society at large. For children in many parts of India, norms relating to femininity mean that girls are required to be docile & submissive, & not to be “naughty”. Ideas about masculinity may mean that boys are supposed to be able to accept physical punishment & to withstand pain.
India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, & has many policies that ban corporal punishment in schools. But these seem out of kilter with everyday realities. The Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education Act of 2009 guarantees school for all children between the ages of 6 & 14. Although elementary schooling has expanded, this rapid expansion has not been matched by comparable increases in the teaching workforce. There is a shortage of teachers across schools, & class sizes are very large, putting pressure on teachers to control high numbers of children.
The government of India commissioned research that included more than 3,000 children aged from 5 to 18, asking about physical abuse by teachers. In all age groups, 65% reported being beaten at school. Our own findings back up these figures. Younger children (aged 7–8) were significantly more likely to have witnessed & experienced corporal punishment than the 14- to 15-year-old cohort, with over two-thirds of the younger children having been physically punished at school in the past week, compared with one-third of the older young people. Poorer children were more likely than less poor children to be punished.
However, among children aged 14–15, we found that girls & boys alike experience routine corporal punishment, with boys experiencing particularly high levels. There was a less sharp distinction in use of corporal punishment between boys & girls in the younger cohort. This may be because corporal punishment is part of the socialisation of younger children, but when they are older it is no longer seen as an appropriate way to discipline young women, while “toughening up” young men may be normative.
It may be seen as part of boys’ socialisation & transition into adulthood. One 15-year-old boy complained about the unfairness of the beatings being meted out on boys, whom he perceived as being punished much more than girls. The violence children & young people experience in schools may not be visibly gendered but it may reinforce gender differentiation because of the ways in which it is employed by male & female teachers. Some children, for example, spoke of being particularly afraid of the male PE teachers. However, the reality is that young boys & girls alike are physically abused in schools, & it is being children that make them vulnerable, rather than their gender.
Reasons to be punished
Girls and boys spoke of a range of other reasons for punishment, including being absent from school due to work, illness or attending family celebrations, missing classes, not doing their homework, not reading well, making mistakes, receiving poor marks in exams, not wearing uniform, not having the right equipment, or not paying the teacher for extra lessons. One girl, aged 10, said:
“If we don’t study, they beat us. If we ask other children for help, they beat [us]. I went to drink water without asking sir, so he beat me that time. They said all children should come back to class by the time they count 10 after the interval. But I went home [to use the toilet]. After coming back to school, he beat me.”
Punished for poverty
Poverty at home also clearly influenced school discipline practices. Living in poverty meant that children were sometimes not in a position to follow the rules & expectations of school. Children described being punished for not having uniform or the right equipment, or money to pay fees.
...
As Young Lives data have shown, economic constraints & family circumstances mean that boys & girls in rural areas engage in seasonal agricultural work on family land, & miss school for days, weeks, or months at a time. Although the boys & girls did different gender-specific work, the impact was the same: when they did return to school, they faced punishment. Although older boys rarely spoke directly about their fears of punishment, their mothers spoke of their sons’ emotions. Ranadeep’s mother explained:
“Without him, we cannot run the family, we don’t get labourers & there is no other way for us. When he returns to school they shout at him & he is terrified ... His father goes there & informs them ... they scold us, they say ‘how will he get on if he is absent for such a long time?’... We try to pacify them by telling them about our problems at home.”
What can be done?
In global policy debates, much emphasis has been placed on the role of education as the solution not only to reducing cycles of poverty in developing countries, but also to addressing gender violence.
However, the evidence presented here suggests that we must question this, at least in the Indian context. All children, regardless of gender, experience high levels of physical violence in schools. But it is teenage boys who experience the most.
But blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations.
Approaches need to develop not only from the top down, but from communities, families & teachers to find ways of working together to change practices.
Violence as an integral part of schooling may have consequences for boys’ & girls’ development that go beyond the here & now of childhood to social & economic factors in adulthood. In India, this needs to be understood in the context of the high expectations that parents & children have of schools. Some children dislike school for many reasons, but if they discontinue school because of their experience of corporal punishment, & if they learn that corporal punishment is the solution to behaviour that is out of line, then formal schooling may inadvertently be reinforcing both cycles of poverty & the use of violence.
Virginia Morrow is a senior research officer at Young Lives & a University of Oxford associate professor. Follow Young Lives on Twitter.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Sats stress is crushing children's love of learning
A great opinion piece on how current education system in UK (but I can expand it to pretty much all education systems around the world, except maybe a few ones, which don't conform to what's being said here) are not igniting the flame of life-long learning & curiosity in children in school & instead, making them hate schools & learning in general by forcing them to do things in school, which is killing their curiosity & love of learning.
I see this everyday around me. People who were very smart & intelligent in school life (elementary, secondary, post-secondary etc.), & are still intelligent in their work lives, eschew even basic reading. Some still are curious & love to read but they are mostly reading fiction novels of romance & thrill. These are majority of our populace. Heck, these people don't even like to watch documentaries, to expand their learning & mental horizons.
So where's the disconnect that such intelligence in school life stays behind in their school lives?
Problem is the current modern education system. They are trying to make children rote learners or mere tools for teachers & the education boards to show that their students are successful in schooling system, & hence, those education boards & teachers are meeting their periodic targets.
Kids to adults in the education system come to learn that if you want a good job, assuming it is being awarded on merit & not on networks, then you need as high marks as there can be, & based on current education system, those marks can be achieved through rote memorization, regurgitation, & essentially, doing what the teacher / professor is telling me to do in class & in exam.
But that's not how learning & school used to be. Learning & education system built by such great teachers / philosophers as Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle were not based on strict tracking & meeting targets but essentially based on absorbing the knowledge for life. Their idea of learning was for learning is for life. They created curiosity in their students. They wanted their students to not study just enough to get a great mark in the next exam, but to think and learn about themselves, their society, & their world around them; however small it might be, whatever it might be.
That's why, in today's "modern" world, lots & lots of people are "educated" but they have not learnt anything. They are considered "educated" based on the number of degrees they have earned, which they got by regurgitating the materials on exam papers. They never actually gained the powerful idea of how to be curious & actually read & watch & travel to learn. Most people's lives don't revolve around learning about themselves, their society, & their world around them, but what can I learn now, which will help me make some money. Well, that course of "learning" has got us where the world is today; everyone is at someone's proverbial throat, because people have lost humanity & selfishness is enjoying its day out.
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It’s funny really, we’ve all been there. We all remember sitting on the carpet with our legs crossed, listening wide-eyed to our teachers reading a book to us in class. That’s what many of us recall about primary school – how fun it was & how free we were to explore our ideas.
In many ways, that’s the point; to immerse our children in a world where learning is fun, to open up their imaginations & encourage them to be inquisitive in a safe space. As Socrates said, education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. As a primary teacher, that’s a good guiding mantra. Let children discover, their eyes light up & sparks ignite.
Unfortunately, in the wake of their Sats preparation, my year 6 class – & I’m sure every year 6 child across the land – would probably say this isn’t so. Flame lighting has been swapped for vessel filling. Yes, they’ve been learning & yes, they have made “progress” (lots of it for some). We know this because we’ve measured their strict diet of test, drill, repeat twice every half term for the entire year.
The issue here is whether it was worth it, because in so many respects the drive for floor targets & pupil premium percentage increases have robbed students of their primary school experience. The regime is focused on spelling & grammar, reading comprehensions & mental maths – combined with extra practice tests, interventions & booster clubs fitted in anywhere between dusk & dawn. Children can hardly remember what an art book looks like, or what a decent PE lesson feels like, or what a music lesson sounds like. They’re so confined to their desks that the process of developing the whole child has gone out of the window & their actual interests & other skills no longer have a place in school life.
Little Ricky, for example, loves geography. He’s fascinated by the world around him & can’t wait to get the atlases out on the search for capital cities, rivers, mountain chains & forests. This is where he comes alive & feels worthwhile. Excitement fills his wings & he’s ready to fly anywhere in the world – until he is pulled out for his maths booster. Yes, he needs extra support in adding fractions & rotating around a point, but seeing his shoulders drop & his smile fade is heartbreaking & frustrating. Nobody is denying he needs his maths – he has to be ready for secondary school & his future – but it’s just as important that he gets time & space to be him. He needs to connect with what he wants to learn because that’s where he switches on. That’s what he’s good at; that’s where we get him.
It’s at this point we need to wonder who we’re doing this for. Is it really for him? Because it feels like we’re missing who he really is, who they all are. What sparks their flame gets dampened. If your dyslexic child flourishes through art, tough. If the quiet, timid child at the back of your classroom comes out of their shell through drama, forget it. If the young carer, who comes in late because they’ve been changing their parent’s bed, feels they can express themselves through a map, no chance. Get down & give me the area of a quadrilateral.
Already so many children are being turned off school. It’s not just my Victorias & Emilys, who read every night & write stories for fun. It’s not just these children who are going home & telling mum it’s all getting too much. At least these children can complain – my Jaleels & my Delanes don’t know how to, their protest is not so eloquent. They share their thoughts through their poor punctuality & lack of focus. They are sick more, turn up less & don’t want to be there because it’s easier not to try than fail to get the results they “need”. A regime of test & repetition, rote & regurgitation is putting them off. They’re bored. They’ve had enough. They are saturated.
Apart from lesson objectives, all these children are really being taught is that school is a chore & a burden. Because of their Sats, these children are anxious & unhappy, rather than excited or inspired. They are only 11 years old & already asking for extra papers to take home so they can cram over the weekend. Some have trouble sleeping & can’t eat, while others stop attending school altogether. This is all before they have even started secondary education.
Of course, their levels will be great; we make sure of that – we have no choice. But what are they really learning? They are learning that education isn’t stimulating & nobody is listening to their needs. The kindling of their educational flames is fast being extinguished by tracking & targets.
We need to ask ourselves what we want for our children. Do we want them to learn that their passions, interests & dreams don’t count? Do we want them to learn that bottom lines & level 4s are more important than their self-confidence & talents? Or do we want them to know that we hear what they have to say? That the question is more important than the answer? That learning is a lifelong journey that should inspire?
As teachers, it’s our job to ensure that the flame of learning gets kindled & burns brightly for all, whatever their capacity, interests or age. But we need to think really carefully about what we put children through, because there’s no way we can engage them through more years of study if they’ve already run out of appetite.
I see this everyday around me. People who were very smart & intelligent in school life (elementary, secondary, post-secondary etc.), & are still intelligent in their work lives, eschew even basic reading. Some still are curious & love to read but they are mostly reading fiction novels of romance & thrill. These are majority of our populace. Heck, these people don't even like to watch documentaries, to expand their learning & mental horizons.
So where's the disconnect that such intelligence in school life stays behind in their school lives?
Problem is the current modern education system. They are trying to make children rote learners or mere tools for teachers & the education boards to show that their students are successful in schooling system, & hence, those education boards & teachers are meeting their periodic targets.
Kids to adults in the education system come to learn that if you want a good job, assuming it is being awarded on merit & not on networks, then you need as high marks as there can be, & based on current education system, those marks can be achieved through rote memorization, regurgitation, & essentially, doing what the teacher / professor is telling me to do in class & in exam.
But that's not how learning & school used to be. Learning & education system built by such great teachers / philosophers as Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle were not based on strict tracking & meeting targets but essentially based on absorbing the knowledge for life. Their idea of learning was for learning is for life. They created curiosity in their students. They wanted their students to not study just enough to get a great mark in the next exam, but to think and learn about themselves, their society, & their world around them; however small it might be, whatever it might be.
That's why, in today's "modern" world, lots & lots of people are "educated" but they have not learnt anything. They are considered "educated" based on the number of degrees they have earned, which they got by regurgitating the materials on exam papers. They never actually gained the powerful idea of how to be curious & actually read & watch & travel to learn. Most people's lives don't revolve around learning about themselves, their society, & their world around them, but what can I learn now, which will help me make some money. Well, that course of "learning" has got us where the world is today; everyone is at someone's proverbial throat, because people have lost humanity & selfishness is enjoying its day out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s funny really, we’ve all been there. We all remember sitting on the carpet with our legs crossed, listening wide-eyed to our teachers reading a book to us in class. That’s what many of us recall about primary school – how fun it was & how free we were to explore our ideas.
In many ways, that’s the point; to immerse our children in a world where learning is fun, to open up their imaginations & encourage them to be inquisitive in a safe space. As Socrates said, education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. As a primary teacher, that’s a good guiding mantra. Let children discover, their eyes light up & sparks ignite.
Unfortunately, in the wake of their Sats preparation, my year 6 class – & I’m sure every year 6 child across the land – would probably say this isn’t so. Flame lighting has been swapped for vessel filling. Yes, they’ve been learning & yes, they have made “progress” (lots of it for some). We know this because we’ve measured their strict diet of test, drill, repeat twice every half term for the entire year.
The issue here is whether it was worth it, because in so many respects the drive for floor targets & pupil premium percentage increases have robbed students of their primary school experience. The regime is focused on spelling & grammar, reading comprehensions & mental maths – combined with extra practice tests, interventions & booster clubs fitted in anywhere between dusk & dawn. Children can hardly remember what an art book looks like, or what a decent PE lesson feels like, or what a music lesson sounds like. They’re so confined to their desks that the process of developing the whole child has gone out of the window & their actual interests & other skills no longer have a place in school life.
Little Ricky, for example, loves geography. He’s fascinated by the world around him & can’t wait to get the atlases out on the search for capital cities, rivers, mountain chains & forests. This is where he comes alive & feels worthwhile. Excitement fills his wings & he’s ready to fly anywhere in the world – until he is pulled out for his maths booster. Yes, he needs extra support in adding fractions & rotating around a point, but seeing his shoulders drop & his smile fade is heartbreaking & frustrating. Nobody is denying he needs his maths – he has to be ready for secondary school & his future – but it’s just as important that he gets time & space to be him. He needs to connect with what he wants to learn because that’s where he switches on. That’s what he’s good at; that’s where we get him.
It’s at this point we need to wonder who we’re doing this for. Is it really for him? Because it feels like we’re missing who he really is, who they all are. What sparks their flame gets dampened. If your dyslexic child flourishes through art, tough. If the quiet, timid child at the back of your classroom comes out of their shell through drama, forget it. If the young carer, who comes in late because they’ve been changing their parent’s bed, feels they can express themselves through a map, no chance. Get down & give me the area of a quadrilateral.
Already so many children are being turned off school. It’s not just my Victorias & Emilys, who read every night & write stories for fun. It’s not just these children who are going home & telling mum it’s all getting too much. At least these children can complain – my Jaleels & my Delanes don’t know how to, their protest is not so eloquent. They share their thoughts through their poor punctuality & lack of focus. They are sick more, turn up less & don’t want to be there because it’s easier not to try than fail to get the results they “need”. A regime of test & repetition, rote & regurgitation is putting them off. They’re bored. They’ve had enough. They are saturated.
Apart from lesson objectives, all these children are really being taught is that school is a chore & a burden. Because of their Sats, these children are anxious & unhappy, rather than excited or inspired. They are only 11 years old & already asking for extra papers to take home so they can cram over the weekend. Some have trouble sleeping & can’t eat, while others stop attending school altogether. This is all before they have even started secondary education.
Of course, their levels will be great; we make sure of that – we have no choice. But what are they really learning? They are learning that education isn’t stimulating & nobody is listening to their needs. The kindling of their educational flames is fast being extinguished by tracking & targets.
We need to ask ourselves what we want for our children. Do we want them to learn that their passions, interests & dreams don’t count? Do we want them to learn that bottom lines & level 4s are more important than their self-confidence & talents? Or do we want them to know that we hear what they have to say? That the question is more important than the answer? That learning is a lifelong journey that should inspire?
As teachers, it’s our job to ensure that the flame of learning gets kindled & burns brightly for all, whatever their capacity, interests or age. But we need to think really carefully about what we put children through, because there’s no way we can engage them through more years of study if they’ve already run out of appetite.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Social media teacher abuse 'rising'
So now, cyber-bullying is not the exclusive domain of irate & immature kids & teens, but ... surprisingly (& supposedly, mature) parents, too.
So, what & why do we expect kids to stop cyber-bullying when presumably, their own parents are also in on the abusive action? What kind of society is it becoming when teachers are being abused by parents, let alone, the kids?
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Sexist, racist and homophobic remarks were being used by pupils against school staff, as well as offensive comments about appearance, the NASUWT said.
There were also examples of parents being abusive on social media, it added.
About 60% of 1,500 teachers questioned in a poll said they had faced abuse, compared with 21% last year.
In one case, a photograph of a teacher was posted online with an insulting word underneath.
In another, pupils used the name of a heavily pregnant school worker to post insults, the teachers' union said.
Insulting comments
Of those who had been subjected to insults, nearly half (48%) said these remarks were posted by pupils, 40% said they were put up by parents, & 12% said both parents & pupils were responsible.
Almost two-thirds (62%) said pupils had posted insulting comments, while just over a third (34%) said students had taken photos or videos without consent.
A third (33%) received remarks about their performance as a teacher, 9% had faced allegations from pupils about inappropriate behaviour & 8% had been subjected to threatening behaviour.
More than half (57%) of pupils responsible were aged between 14 & 16, & 38% were 11 to 14, the teachers' poll found, with a fifth aged 16 to 19 & 5% were seven to 11.
Among the examples published by NASUWT was the case of a student uploading a teacher's photo & then, along with classmates, writing insults underneath.
Cancer jibe
One teacher had been harassed for nine months by students who sent sexually explicit messages & set up a fake social media account in the teacher's name.
The union said it had been told of a teacher receiving the comment "I hope she gets cancer", while the heavily pregnant worker had faced abusive remarks.
Another school worker faced comments from a pupil's family member about how they looked & that they were ugly.
Chris Keates, the union's general secretary, said: "It is deeply worrying to see that the abuse of teachers has risen by such a huge margin this year. Equally concerning is that it appears that more parents are the perpetrators of the abuse. The vile, insulting & personal comments are taking their toll on teachers' health & well-being, & undermining their confidence to do their job."
So, what & why do we expect kids to stop cyber-bullying when presumably, their own parents are also in on the abusive action? What kind of society is it becoming when teachers are being abused by parents, let alone, the kids?
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Sexist, racist and homophobic remarks were being used by pupils against school staff, as well as offensive comments about appearance, the NASUWT said.
There were also examples of parents being abusive on social media, it added.
About 60% of 1,500 teachers questioned in a poll said they had faced abuse, compared with 21% last year.
In one case, a photograph of a teacher was posted online with an insulting word underneath.
In another, pupils used the name of a heavily pregnant school worker to post insults, the teachers' union said.
Insulting comments
Of those who had been subjected to insults, nearly half (48%) said these remarks were posted by pupils, 40% said they were put up by parents, & 12% said both parents & pupils were responsible.
Almost two-thirds (62%) said pupils had posted insulting comments, while just over a third (34%) said students had taken photos or videos without consent.
A third (33%) received remarks about their performance as a teacher, 9% had faced allegations from pupils about inappropriate behaviour & 8% had been subjected to threatening behaviour.
More than half (57%) of pupils responsible were aged between 14 & 16, & 38% were 11 to 14, the teachers' poll found, with a fifth aged 16 to 19 & 5% were seven to 11.
Among the examples published by NASUWT was the case of a student uploading a teacher's photo & then, along with classmates, writing insults underneath.
Cancer jibe
One teacher had been harassed for nine months by students who sent sexually explicit messages & set up a fake social media account in the teacher's name.
The union said it had been told of a teacher receiving the comment "I hope she gets cancer", while the heavily pregnant worker had faced abusive remarks.
Another school worker faced comments from a pupil's family member about how they looked & that they were ugly.
Chris Keates, the union's general secretary, said: "It is deeply worrying to see that the abuse of teachers has risen by such a huge margin this year. Equally concerning is that it appears that more parents are the perpetrators of the abuse. The vile, insulting & personal comments are taking their toll on teachers' health & well-being, & undermining their confidence to do their job."
Thursday, May 7, 2015
As teens learn their rights, they're defending them -- & winning
A great article telling both sides of this issue. This issue is becoming very important. Educators' hands have been tied behind their backs with strict laws against spanking to the point that teachers are afraid of students. Lawsuits have been mounted, tarnishing teachers' respected profession.
Parents are exacerbating the problem. On one hand, they want teachers to not only teach the curriculum but also make them a good citizen of the society, but, on the other hand, they also help their kids destroy the lives of good teachers (I'm not talking about those teachers who take advantage of their status as an authoritative figure to abuse their students, e.g. having a sexual relationship with them).
Parents don't have time or are just lazy so they hand this crucial duty of raising a good citizen to teachers but when teachers do take some kind of action, e.g. the teacher in the article tells the kid to not throw a perfectly good banana & make him take that banana out of the garbage & eat it, she gets suspended & reprimanded. Her colleagues' response was "grin & bear it." That's not a solution.
This article started with a case that 2 high school students took their school principal to court because he was planning to put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking at the prom. The students won the lawsuit. Now that's become a precedent, all other schools in Ontario have to follow this rule & not put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking. Although, those 2 kids discussed the matter with their peers for 2014 prom & nobody drank & the whole event went smoothly, but would all high school students in Ontario discuss not drinking with their peers? Obviously, not.
Now, although, those students won the case for all the high school kids in Ontario, but what happens when a high school student is sexually assaulted because he/she was drunk OR he/she dies from alcohol poisoning OR he/she drives off the school parking lot while heavily drunk & kills someone in a drunk driving accident. In some cases, the school administration might be held responsible for the deaths, & even if they don't, they may still have to spend money, effort, & time to go through the whole lawsuit process.
The cases in the article highlight the problem that society seems to be bending to the rules of kids. As a OISE psychologist says that kids are still kids & they don't understand the ramifications of their actions. They haven't gone out into the world & seen that there can be very dire consequences of actions. At the same time, they can argue that adults also don't think thoroughly the consequences of all their actions; all the way down from a hillbilly to all the way up to government leaders. That's one reason, why our world is in this mess.
Anyway, in the light of Islamic teachings, kids should know their rights BUT they should also know their obligations. Everyone has rights AND obligations.
Also, in the light of Islamic teachings, capital punishment should be allowed to discipline kids & raise a good citizen for the society. What kind of a society will we be forming when parents show to their 9 year old kid that throwing perfectly good food is not only ok but if someone reprimands you for doing that, we should stick it to him/her. Heck, parents & their kids are now cyberbullying their teachers. Teachers & parents should be allowed to hit kids, if necessary. As that teacher says in the article that there will always be bratty kids, & they need punishment, not coddling from the society & their parents.
Punishing the wrongdoer is a cornerstone of our civilization, regardless, of ethnicity, race, language etc. In the name of justice, we punish the wrongdoer, like locking up a criminal. Heck, countries go to war & thousands die in the name of justice & punishing the evildoers. Similar to that, kids need to be punished, according to their severity of their wrong actions, so they understand what justice is & their actions have consequences.
Challenging authority for the right reasons is not only needed in our society but should be encouraged. BUT, a line should be drawn. Challenging authority while you are doing something wrong (underage drinking, wasting food, disrespecting teachers, bullying others etc.) is not only wrong but you need to be heavily punished, so you remember that punishment for your future.
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Teenagers used to be second-class citizens whose rights were, in effect, whatever their parents decided they were. And kids, for the most part, accepted that. But, like all teenagers who have challenged authority, Millennials & Generation Z have started pushing back & the balance of power is shifting. “Young people today are much smarter & more aware of their rights than may be fashionable to admit,” says Sukanya Pillay, executive director & general counsel for the civil liberties group [Canadian Civil Liberties Association] ... . “They’re not taking things lying down. They’re not just going to accept whatever’s prescribed to them.” Kids these days know their rights, &, for better or worse, they’re defending them. And winning.
The United Nations had declared 1979 the International Year of the Child, which “really created an excitement,” says David Morley, president & CEO of Unicef Canada, who remembers watching people march through the streets in Brazil in support. Though it may have had more significance in the developing world, where exploitation, health care & education were a concern, Canada wasn’t immune from its effect. For one, the Children’s Aid Foundation was established to support the most vulnerable children in society: those in the child-welfare system. “That year fundamentally changed the way the world thought about the rights of children,” says Morley.
... In 1984, the Young Offenders Act established a separate justice system for children between the ages of 12 & 17, recognizing that they did not have the same moral, intellectual or emotional maturity as adults. The 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN’s most widely ratified treaty, recognized “that childhood is entitled to special care & assistance.” A decade later, after a Charter challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which permits spanking, the Supreme Court of Canada set out new boundaries on the use of disciplinary force against children.
... today’s youth have grown up in a wildly different environment than previous generations. “We always hear about how kids don’t understand privacy rights because they’re ceding their privacy with social media & Facebook.” But Pillay sees Twitter, Instagram, & Snapchat as a testing ground where kids are introduced to the concept of rights by trial & error—who can see what they post, whom they can block & whom they can delete from their online lives.
Today’s cohort of teens is the first to grow up almost entirely in a digital, post-9/11 world. Because of their technological sophistication, they can witness & participate in conversations about rights, whether the topic is invasive anti-terror legislation or WikiLeaks & government secrecy. “We’re facing mass state surveillance,” Pillay says. “There’s a trickle-down effect. In schools, administrations are taking a more heavy-handed approach to the students. But the students, exercising their democratic rights, are saying, ‘Wait, that’s not right.’ ”
Parents are still the gatekeepers for their kids’ rights because, until they’re 18 or 19, depending on the province, kids can only launch lawsuits through a litigation guardian. That’s usually an adult, but, in the case of emancipation—where a minor is an adult in the eyes of the law—young people can act on their own.
... in December [2014], another New Jersey student, a 21-year-old who lives with her grandparents, successfully sued her divorced parents for nearly $17,000. In a blog post called “The age of entitlement,” her mother describes her daughter as a hard-drinking, rebellious runaway who managed to spin the law to her advantage. “She doesn’t want a family; she wants money,” her mother wrote. “And the courts have told her that this is completely acceptable.”
Never have young people had so much power, but most don’t grasp the need for great responsibility. Michele Peterson-Badali, an Ontario Institute for Studies in Education psychologist who specializes in children’s rights, says there’s a gap between young people’s awareness of their rights & their understanding of what it entails: the responsibility to respect the rights of others. “They might think they’re savvy & act like they’re savvy, but they’re not,” she says. “Even at 16 . . . few kids will understand that rights are a bounded entitlement. I can’t do whatever I want. I can’t say things that are hateful. I can’t hurt somebody.” And that’s what throws adults into an uproar: if they’re still the same old irresponsible, mischievous & occasionally nefarious kids, why hand them so much power? “There tends to be a gut reaction on the part of adults to feel threatened by the idea—‘these kids, they have too many rights,’ ” says Peterson-Badali. “I think that’s a misconception.” The trick, she says, is to ensure kids properly appreciate what rights really mean.
These days, they’re learning much of what they know from television & YouTube videos. “We’ve interviewed thousands of children, & I haven’t met one who knew their rights,” says Katherine Covell, co-founder of the Cape Breton University Children’s Rights Centre. The centre developed a curriculum that incorporates rights-based case studies & role-play exercises & shopped it around to schools, but Canadian educators weren’t interested. “If you’re going to respect the rights of the child, you have to listen to them & give them opportunities to express their opinions,” Covell says. “A lot of teachers were wary of that.” British schools, meanwhile, embraced the program & saw a drastic transformation over its 10-year implementation: bullying all but disappeared, discipline issues dwindled & children performed better academically. “You can’t just have Rights Week or Rights Day,” Covell explains. “It’s not a quick fix.”
Along with the recent swell in cases involving children’s rights, there have been abuses. Children, exercising their new-found power, can subvert the laws to serve their own malicious, if not criminal, purposes.
It was April 2012 when Ontario teacher Susan Dowell learned this the hard way. When the Grade 4 students walked into their music class at a school north of Toronto to find Dowell was the substitute for their regular teacher, they immediately started horsing around & putting her patience to the test. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. My intuition told me to nip that in the bud,” says Dowell, 52 ... . She sent 4 kids to the office. After the bell, Dowell moved on to cafeteria duty—or, as she describes it, “being thrown into a pack of wolves.” As she watched over the screaming, food-flinging masses, a boy walked by & tossed an uneaten banana into the trash. “You don’t throw perfectly good food out,” she told him. “Take it home or eat it or save it for after school.” He took the banana out of the garbage, peeled it, took one bite & threw it back in.
The following week, she was dismissed from another job because students at the previous school complained that she had used excessive force on some & publicly humiliated another. ... Her union told her to wait on word from the Children’s Aid Society, whom the vice-principal had called to sort out the matter. In the meantime, she wasn’t allowed to step on school property or talk to other teachers. “I had no support,” she says. “No one to talk to.” Eventually, she learned that the boy with the banana had told his parents Dowell made him eat from the garbage. She says the parents complained to the vice-principal, who interviewed the troublemakers sent to the office; they said she’d grabbed one of the girls by the neck. According to Dowell, no one asked for her account.
It was a month before Children’s Aid cleared Dowell’s case, allowing her to return to work. The events had shaken her, though, & tarnished her reputation. Kids & colleagues treated her differently, she says. The accusing child & parent, however, faced no consequences. Dowell’s union told her that this was the “new normal”—she would have to grin & bear it.
She did—for a while. Last year, while on a long-term placement she thought would finally lead to a steady teaching position, Dowell was accused of scratching a student. She was off work for 3 weeks. Again, the case was dropped. To this day, she doesn’t know who complained.
“Kids just have no idea of the ramifications of what they’re saying or the power they have,” she says. There have always been—& there will always be—bratty kids, but today’s parents are raising increasingly entitled children, she says. In her eyes, it’s become an us-versus-them battle, & young people now have the advantage. “When did that switch happen?” she asks. “I would correlate it entirely with when children began to understand that they had rights.”
In 2012, a B.C. student launched an elaborate accusation of sexual assault against her teacher, lifting scenes from a TV show to describe his actions & creating a fake diary as evidence. Most cases are kept quiet, & false accusations aren’t recorded, so no official statistics exist. But a 2010 Nipissing University study about a shortage of male teachers showed 13% of 223 male Ontario teachers surveyed had been falsely suspected of inappropriate behaviour. School boards, says McGill University associate professor Jon Bradley, who has spent years studying false accusations, don’t have basic policies to deal with an allegation, such as consulting all involved parties & explaining to accusers the implications of a false allegation. “It’s innocent until proven guilty. If a teacher is guilty, they can hang from a lamppost,” says Bradley. “But we need procedures.” Even in an era when kids can & do sue adults, they can do just as much damage without any legal action at all.
Parents are exacerbating the problem. On one hand, they want teachers to not only teach the curriculum but also make them a good citizen of the society, but, on the other hand, they also help their kids destroy the lives of good teachers (I'm not talking about those teachers who take advantage of their status as an authoritative figure to abuse their students, e.g. having a sexual relationship with them).
Parents don't have time or are just lazy so they hand this crucial duty of raising a good citizen to teachers but when teachers do take some kind of action, e.g. the teacher in the article tells the kid to not throw a perfectly good banana & make him take that banana out of the garbage & eat it, she gets suspended & reprimanded. Her colleagues' response was "grin & bear it." That's not a solution.
This article started with a case that 2 high school students took their school principal to court because he was planning to put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking at the prom. The students won the lawsuit. Now that's become a precedent, all other schools in Ontario have to follow this rule & not put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking. Although, those 2 kids discussed the matter with their peers for 2014 prom & nobody drank & the whole event went smoothly, but would all high school students in Ontario discuss not drinking with their peers? Obviously, not.
Now, although, those students won the case for all the high school kids in Ontario, but what happens when a high school student is sexually assaulted because he/she was drunk OR he/she dies from alcohol poisoning OR he/she drives off the school parking lot while heavily drunk & kills someone in a drunk driving accident. In some cases, the school administration might be held responsible for the deaths, & even if they don't, they may still have to spend money, effort, & time to go through the whole lawsuit process.
The cases in the article highlight the problem that society seems to be bending to the rules of kids. As a OISE psychologist says that kids are still kids & they don't understand the ramifications of their actions. They haven't gone out into the world & seen that there can be very dire consequences of actions. At the same time, they can argue that adults also don't think thoroughly the consequences of all their actions; all the way down from a hillbilly to all the way up to government leaders. That's one reason, why our world is in this mess.
Anyway, in the light of Islamic teachings, kids should know their rights BUT they should also know their obligations. Everyone has rights AND obligations.
Also, in the light of Islamic teachings, capital punishment should be allowed to discipline kids & raise a good citizen for the society. What kind of a society will we be forming when parents show to their 9 year old kid that throwing perfectly good food is not only ok but if someone reprimands you for doing that, we should stick it to him/her. Heck, parents & their kids are now cyberbullying their teachers. Teachers & parents should be allowed to hit kids, if necessary. As that teacher says in the article that there will always be bratty kids, & they need punishment, not coddling from the society & their parents.
Punishing the wrongdoer is a cornerstone of our civilization, regardless, of ethnicity, race, language etc. In the name of justice, we punish the wrongdoer, like locking up a criminal. Heck, countries go to war & thousands die in the name of justice & punishing the evildoers. Similar to that, kids need to be punished, according to their severity of their wrong actions, so they understand what justice is & their actions have consequences.
Challenging authority for the right reasons is not only needed in our society but should be encouraged. BUT, a line should be drawn. Challenging authority while you are doing something wrong (underage drinking, wasting food, disrespecting teachers, bullying others etc.) is not only wrong but you need to be heavily punished, so you remember that punishment for your future.
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Teenagers used to be second-class citizens whose rights were, in effect, whatever their parents decided they were. And kids, for the most part, accepted that. But, like all teenagers who have challenged authority, Millennials & Generation Z have started pushing back & the balance of power is shifting. “Young people today are much smarter & more aware of their rights than may be fashionable to admit,” says Sukanya Pillay, executive director & general counsel for the civil liberties group [Canadian Civil Liberties Association] ... . “They’re not taking things lying down. They’re not just going to accept whatever’s prescribed to them.” Kids these days know their rights, &, for better or worse, they’re defending them. And winning.
The United Nations had declared 1979 the International Year of the Child, which “really created an excitement,” says David Morley, president & CEO of Unicef Canada, who remembers watching people march through the streets in Brazil in support. Though it may have had more significance in the developing world, where exploitation, health care & education were a concern, Canada wasn’t immune from its effect. For one, the Children’s Aid Foundation was established to support the most vulnerable children in society: those in the child-welfare system. “That year fundamentally changed the way the world thought about the rights of children,” says Morley.
... In 1984, the Young Offenders Act established a separate justice system for children between the ages of 12 & 17, recognizing that they did not have the same moral, intellectual or emotional maturity as adults. The 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN’s most widely ratified treaty, recognized “that childhood is entitled to special care & assistance.” A decade later, after a Charter challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which permits spanking, the Supreme Court of Canada set out new boundaries on the use of disciplinary force against children.
... today’s youth have grown up in a wildly different environment than previous generations. “We always hear about how kids don’t understand privacy rights because they’re ceding their privacy with social media & Facebook.” But Pillay sees Twitter, Instagram, & Snapchat as a testing ground where kids are introduced to the concept of rights by trial & error—who can see what they post, whom they can block & whom they can delete from their online lives.
Today’s cohort of teens is the first to grow up almost entirely in a digital, post-9/11 world. Because of their technological sophistication, they can witness & participate in conversations about rights, whether the topic is invasive anti-terror legislation or WikiLeaks & government secrecy. “We’re facing mass state surveillance,” Pillay says. “There’s a trickle-down effect. In schools, administrations are taking a more heavy-handed approach to the students. But the students, exercising their democratic rights, are saying, ‘Wait, that’s not right.’ ”
Parents are still the gatekeepers for their kids’ rights because, until they’re 18 or 19, depending on the province, kids can only launch lawsuits through a litigation guardian. That’s usually an adult, but, in the case of emancipation—where a minor is an adult in the eyes of the law—young people can act on their own.
... in December [2014], another New Jersey student, a 21-year-old who lives with her grandparents, successfully sued her divorced parents for nearly $17,000. In a blog post called “The age of entitlement,” her mother describes her daughter as a hard-drinking, rebellious runaway who managed to spin the law to her advantage. “She doesn’t want a family; she wants money,” her mother wrote. “And the courts have told her that this is completely acceptable.”
Never have young people had so much power, but most don’t grasp the need for great responsibility. Michele Peterson-Badali, an Ontario Institute for Studies in Education psychologist who specializes in children’s rights, says there’s a gap between young people’s awareness of their rights & their understanding of what it entails: the responsibility to respect the rights of others. “They might think they’re savvy & act like they’re savvy, but they’re not,” she says. “Even at 16 . . . few kids will understand that rights are a bounded entitlement. I can’t do whatever I want. I can’t say things that are hateful. I can’t hurt somebody.” And that’s what throws adults into an uproar: if they’re still the same old irresponsible, mischievous & occasionally nefarious kids, why hand them so much power? “There tends to be a gut reaction on the part of adults to feel threatened by the idea—‘these kids, they have too many rights,’ ” says Peterson-Badali. “I think that’s a misconception.” The trick, she says, is to ensure kids properly appreciate what rights really mean.
These days, they’re learning much of what they know from television & YouTube videos. “We’ve interviewed thousands of children, & I haven’t met one who knew their rights,” says Katherine Covell, co-founder of the Cape Breton University Children’s Rights Centre. The centre developed a curriculum that incorporates rights-based case studies & role-play exercises & shopped it around to schools, but Canadian educators weren’t interested. “If you’re going to respect the rights of the child, you have to listen to them & give them opportunities to express their opinions,” Covell says. “A lot of teachers were wary of that.” British schools, meanwhile, embraced the program & saw a drastic transformation over its 10-year implementation: bullying all but disappeared, discipline issues dwindled & children performed better academically. “You can’t just have Rights Week or Rights Day,” Covell explains. “It’s not a quick fix.”
Along with the recent swell in cases involving children’s rights, there have been abuses. Children, exercising their new-found power, can subvert the laws to serve their own malicious, if not criminal, purposes.
It was April 2012 when Ontario teacher Susan Dowell learned this the hard way. When the Grade 4 students walked into their music class at a school north of Toronto to find Dowell was the substitute for their regular teacher, they immediately started horsing around & putting her patience to the test. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. My intuition told me to nip that in the bud,” says Dowell, 52 ... . She sent 4 kids to the office. After the bell, Dowell moved on to cafeteria duty—or, as she describes it, “being thrown into a pack of wolves.” As she watched over the screaming, food-flinging masses, a boy walked by & tossed an uneaten banana into the trash. “You don’t throw perfectly good food out,” she told him. “Take it home or eat it or save it for after school.” He took the banana out of the garbage, peeled it, took one bite & threw it back in.
The following week, she was dismissed from another job because students at the previous school complained that she had used excessive force on some & publicly humiliated another. ... Her union told her to wait on word from the Children’s Aid Society, whom the vice-principal had called to sort out the matter. In the meantime, she wasn’t allowed to step on school property or talk to other teachers. “I had no support,” she says. “No one to talk to.” Eventually, she learned that the boy with the banana had told his parents Dowell made him eat from the garbage. She says the parents complained to the vice-principal, who interviewed the troublemakers sent to the office; they said she’d grabbed one of the girls by the neck. According to Dowell, no one asked for her account.
It was a month before Children’s Aid cleared Dowell’s case, allowing her to return to work. The events had shaken her, though, & tarnished her reputation. Kids & colleagues treated her differently, she says. The accusing child & parent, however, faced no consequences. Dowell’s union told her that this was the “new normal”—she would have to grin & bear it.
She did—for a while. Last year, while on a long-term placement she thought would finally lead to a steady teaching position, Dowell was accused of scratching a student. She was off work for 3 weeks. Again, the case was dropped. To this day, she doesn’t know who complained.
“Kids just have no idea of the ramifications of what they’re saying or the power they have,” she says. There have always been—& there will always be—bratty kids, but today’s parents are raising increasingly entitled children, she says. In her eyes, it’s become an us-versus-them battle, & young people now have the advantage. “When did that switch happen?” she asks. “I would correlate it entirely with when children began to understand that they had rights.”
In 2012, a B.C. student launched an elaborate accusation of sexual assault against her teacher, lifting scenes from a TV show to describe his actions & creating a fake diary as evidence. Most cases are kept quiet, & false accusations aren’t recorded, so no official statistics exist. But a 2010 Nipissing University study about a shortage of male teachers showed 13% of 223 male Ontario teachers surveyed had been falsely suspected of inappropriate behaviour. School boards, says McGill University associate professor Jon Bradley, who has spent years studying false accusations, don’t have basic policies to deal with an allegation, such as consulting all involved parties & explaining to accusers the implications of a false allegation. “It’s innocent until proven guilty. If a teacher is guilty, they can hang from a lamppost,” says Bradley. “But we need procedures.” Even in an era when kids can & do sue adults, they can do just as much damage without any legal action at all.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
How to make sex unsexy: Teach it
Well, the author, Emma Teitel, does make some good points that kids, regardless of how much their parents try to protect them or teach them the dangers of sex at home, they will get their sex-ed through their peers (& of course, internet), which will be far more dangerous, wrong, & unhelpful. Teaching it in class in a sterile environment can make it unattractive.
And enrolling kids in a Catholic or Islamic school won't help either, since those kids will still live among & socialize with kids who are watching porn, mainstream movies (even movies are quite sexually explicit now), sharing sexual pics, & using chatting apps to chat up with other gender & maybe even child predators etc.
There's no sex-ed in seemingly religiously conservative countries like Pakistan or UAE (Dubai & Abu Dhabi), but teens there know a lot about sex related stuff. Heck, making a boyfriend & girlfriend is not allowed, but does it stop anyone from enjoying the pleasures of forbidden love? After all, all those abandoned infants in garbage dumps & hospitals, & abortions (both legal & illegal), are not all legitimate kids but the consequences of a culture which is out of sync with the realities of the world around it.
Sweeping the problem under the carpet will only exacerbates the problem since it becomes more pleasurable because humans, & especially teens, have a tendency to do what they are not supposed to do. Something hidden & forbidden is much more pleasurable than the same thing out in the open.
Disclaimer: I am not entirely supportive of the new sex-ed curriculum because of only 1 point ... teaching my future kid that homosexuality is alright. Islam strictly forbids homosexuality & that's the only sticking point for me. Hence, it's Islamic school for my future kid. I, myself, don't care what people do in their bedrooms.
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... the province’s revamped sex-ed curriculum ... includes other topics equally significant to the modern age: sexting, cyberbullying and LGBT issues ... .
The new curriculum, revised in 2010 but shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty after a small group of socially conservative parents complained, will be introduced to the province’s schools in September—but not without controversy.
Chief among the things that disturb this group is the early age at which students will learn the facts of life. Kids in Grade 2 will learn about consent, kids in Grade 3 will learn about homosexuality & same-sex marriage (which is to say they will learn that such things exist ... ). Students in Grade 7 will get the facts on contraception, STDs, & oral & anal sex. Being products of a hypersexual era, they will likely know these things already (& a whole lot more), whether their parents want them to or not; some kids watch porn for the first time when they are 10.
But parents wary about sex ed in Ontario—or parents wary of progressive sex education anywhere in the country—shouldn’t despair at the thought of teachers taking health class into the future. They should rejoice. In fact, they have more reason to rejoice than their socially liberal counterparts, for there is no dissuading voice more powerful when it comes to sex than the voice of an enthusiastic, open-minded authority figure. Kids don’t giggle in health class because they are titillated, but because they are embarrassed. Talking to a teacher about sex, watching him circle the urethra on a giant diagram of a penis, or put a condom on a banana, does not typically make a kid hot & bothered; it makes her cringe.
Students will not find out about sexting from their friends—or from those sexting them—but from their teachers. In other words, when Susie receives her first explicit text message, she may not be able to shake the memory of Mr. Johnson’s lesson in sex ed about the “the dangers of dick pics.”
This doesn’t mean that cybersex will never be had again, or that kids will stop downloading porn, but that an intensely private world will, for the first time, be made public in a very sterile, cerebral & unsexy place. In the end, then, progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence.
And enrolling kids in a Catholic or Islamic school won't help either, since those kids will still live among & socialize with kids who are watching porn, mainstream movies (even movies are quite sexually explicit now), sharing sexual pics, & using chatting apps to chat up with other gender & maybe even child predators etc.
There's no sex-ed in seemingly religiously conservative countries like Pakistan or UAE (Dubai & Abu Dhabi), but teens there know a lot about sex related stuff. Heck, making a boyfriend & girlfriend is not allowed, but does it stop anyone from enjoying the pleasures of forbidden love? After all, all those abandoned infants in garbage dumps & hospitals, & abortions (both legal & illegal), are not all legitimate kids but the consequences of a culture which is out of sync with the realities of the world around it.
Sweeping the problem under the carpet will only exacerbates the problem since it becomes more pleasurable because humans, & especially teens, have a tendency to do what they are not supposed to do. Something hidden & forbidden is much more pleasurable than the same thing out in the open.
Disclaimer: I am not entirely supportive of the new sex-ed curriculum because of only 1 point ... teaching my future kid that homosexuality is alright. Islam strictly forbids homosexuality & that's the only sticking point for me. Hence, it's Islamic school for my future kid. I, myself, don't care what people do in their bedrooms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... the province’s revamped sex-ed curriculum ... includes other topics equally significant to the modern age: sexting, cyberbullying and LGBT issues ... .
The new curriculum, revised in 2010 but shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty after a small group of socially conservative parents complained, will be introduced to the province’s schools in September—but not without controversy.
Chief among the things that disturb this group is the early age at which students will learn the facts of life. Kids in Grade 2 will learn about consent, kids in Grade 3 will learn about homosexuality & same-sex marriage (which is to say they will learn that such things exist ... ). Students in Grade 7 will get the facts on contraception, STDs, & oral & anal sex. Being products of a hypersexual era, they will likely know these things already (& a whole lot more), whether their parents want them to or not; some kids watch porn for the first time when they are 10.
But parents wary about sex ed in Ontario—or parents wary of progressive sex education anywhere in the country—shouldn’t despair at the thought of teachers taking health class into the future. They should rejoice. In fact, they have more reason to rejoice than their socially liberal counterparts, for there is no dissuading voice more powerful when it comes to sex than the voice of an enthusiastic, open-minded authority figure. Kids don’t giggle in health class because they are titillated, but because they are embarrassed. Talking to a teacher about sex, watching him circle the urethra on a giant diagram of a penis, or put a condom on a banana, does not typically make a kid hot & bothered; it makes her cringe.
Students will not find out about sexting from their friends—or from those sexting them—but from their teachers. In other words, when Susie receives her first explicit text message, she may not be able to shake the memory of Mr. Johnson’s lesson in sex ed about the “the dangers of dick pics.”
This doesn’t mean that cybersex will never be had again, or that kids will stop downloading porn, but that an intensely private world will, for the first time, be made public in a very sterile, cerebral & unsexy place. In the end, then, progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Multiple Choice, Multiple Students
A great idea to improve learning in students & works more like how decision-making takes place in today's workplace ... as a team. Plus it may sow the seed of curiosity & learning in students than students just preparing for a test without understanding or remembering any of the material as soon as the final exam is over.
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Immediately after each student completes a 30-question, multiple-choice exam, Gilley makes all his students take the exact same test again, only, this time, in groups of four. ... But does it help prepare students for life after university? “Nobody goes into a room & writes a multiple-choice test for their job,” Gilley says. “People sit down in groups & discuss things to get points across.”
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Immediately after each student completes a 30-question, multiple-choice exam, Gilley makes all his students take the exact same test again, only, this time, in groups of four. ... But does it help prepare students for life after university? “Nobody goes into a room & writes a multiple-choice test for their job,” Gilley says. “People sit down in groups & discuss things to get points across.”
A recent study co-authored by Gilley showed higher retention of course material when students have collaborative group tests immediately after the individual test. “It’s not just that I know the answers better,” says Danny Congleton, a first-year bachelor of arts student at UBC. “I understand the reasoning behind why certain answers are correct.”
Faculty over the years have seen the benefits of the two-stage exam, to the extent that more than 50 classes at UBC have implemented them today, across courses in physics, chemistry, biology, math, statistics & computer science.
One drawback to the test, however, is that consensus doesn’t necessarily translate into the correct answer. As well, for some difficult questions, a group may leave without any certainty over which answer was correct.
“The longer you delay the feedback, the less useful it becomes,” says Jim Sibley, a staff member at UBC’s Centre for Instructional Support & co-author of a book on team-based learning. “Can you imagine you hit a golf ball & I tell you in a week in which direction it went, & then you try to adjust your shot?”
And, to make sure no slacker shows up unprepared, the two-stage exam system can be weighted such that the individual test accounts for 85% of the exam mark, whereas the remaining 15% comes from the group test. In that case, everyone knows the right answer by the end of the exam, everyone has individual accountability, & the students learn from each other. “You’re not the teacher anymore,” says Sibley. “You’re the architect of a learning experience.”
Sunday, January 11, 2015
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