Macbeth as a Game of Thrones

If I was teaching Macbeth today, I would have made this analogy, too. I used everything from REVENGE OF THE SITH to THE TWILIGHT ZONE to THE SIMPSONS to Abbott & Costello's famous "Who's On First?" routine in my English classes.

"Funky Winkerbean" Sunday, September 21, 2014

Some Funny Comics About Teaching

 All comics are by Jonny Hawkins from the "2013 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day"

The Difficulty of Teaching

I came across this interesting article today that was published a few days ago in the Washington Post. It's from a gentleman who left a job in the high-tech industry to become a high school math teacher. In the United States, people generally have no idea how difficult it is to teach. For the most part, teachers are constantly asked to do more and more and more with less and less. When I was getting my teaching certificate, the statistics were that within the first three years of entering the profession, 30% of teachers leave and never return. In the ten years since then those statistics have risen and the percentage is now around 45%. I'm actually surprised it hasn't raised above the 50% mark, yet. However, my guess is that in another 1-3 years from now with the full implementation of Common Core it will rise above that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/05/03/teaching-is-harder-than-working-in-high-tech-by-a-teacher-who-worked-in-high-tech/?tid=up_next#comments

A Post-Book Education?

--Jonny Hawkins, 2012 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

Teaching Perseverance

--Jonny Hawkins, 2012 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

The History of Confusion

--Jonny Hawkins, 2011 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

TV GUIDE as literature

--Jonny Hawkins, 2011 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

Geology and the Flinstones

--Jonny Hawkins, 2011 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

Standardized Test Scores and the Average Bear

--Jonny Hawkins, 2011 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

The Principal As Boss

-Jonny Hawkins, 2011 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

I'm not for sure why, but I find this particular comic extremely funny.

Teaching and Game Shows

-Jonny Hawkins, 2011 Teacher Cartoon-a-Day Calendar

What Teaching Can Really Be Like

--by Jonny Hawkins

Exploding Class Sizes

--Cartoon by Jonny Hawkins

Education Comics

Here are a few cartoons about teaching and education from the TEACHER CARTOON-A-DAY: 2011 DAY-TO-DAY CALENDAR by Jonny Hawkins. My favorite of the three is the one that alludes to Byron.

The Art of Politics

Another strip from the 2011 Daily teaching comic calendar I have.

Books Versus Wikipedia

This comic came out of a daily calendar I have that is all teaching comics.

Whitewashing Huck Finn

In case you haven't heard, a professor at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama named Alan Gribben is coming out with a dual edition of Mark Twain's classics TOM SAWYER and HUCKLEBERRY FINN. In the books Gribben has deleted all uses of the word "injun" (such as Injun Joe) and changed all uses of "nigger" to "slave". It doesn't surprise me because it seems that the more politically correct our institutions become the crazier society becomes. However, I think it is a terrible idea that's not only a complete disrespect to Twain, but an attempt to whitewash history. You can't eradicate the past. What has been done has been done. If you pretend to ignore it, society will eventually repeat those mistakes. Gribben maintains that his version will allow the books to be taught in more schools and allow more students an opportunity to read the books. However, at a deeper level Gribben's edition of the books does the exact opposite of what he claims.

I like how Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times puts it: "Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist."

Read more the whole The New York Times article here.

Unable to Fail in School or Socialism in Education

As reported by The Washington Post, students at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, VA will no longer be able to receive an "F" and fail their class. Instead, they will receive an "I" and have an opportunity to receive a "regular" letter grade before the end of the year. According to the article, "the change in educational philosophy is intended to encourage students to continue working toward mastery of material rather than accepting a failing grade and moving on."

As many of the teachers at the school have pointed out, the new policy just provides an out for students not to do the work when they are supposed to. One English teacher reported that during the first quarter half of the students in her classes received an "I". I know from personal experience in teaching at high schools that unless a student commits a crime, it's next to impossible to remove them from school. I also know that if a teacher is doing their job, students actually have to work to fail. I had some students who failed a class, but they really worked at it--they never turned in any homework, they tried to sleep in class, they didn't study for tests, they didn't participate.

According to the Assistant Superintendent at the district, Peter Noonan, "If we really want students to know and do the work, why would we give them an F and move on?"

Why would you give a student an F and then move on? Well, because that's how life is Mr. Noonan. You usually don't get an opportunity to go back and fix the mistakes you do in life. This is just another example of a policy and philosophy that has no meaning in the real world. It's also another way to punish students who actually do the work when they are supposed to. It all sounds a bit socialist, perhaps even communist to me.

The Continuing Push For Longer Schooling

In the Nov. 8, 2010 edition of Newsweek, there is an article entitled "Class Action" about extending school days and the overall school year. I applaud the author, Sehba Ali, for starting a public charter school in San Jose, CA. I must also recognize that this article is the first time I've read something by a proponent of longer schooling that actually points out negatives of pursuing longer school days and a longer school year. Most proponent of More-Schooling won't even acknowledge that there are negatives, let alone actually discuss them.

With that said, I think the author is wrong. A longer school day and longer school years, even when accompanied with more focus on subjects besides reading, writing, and arithmetic and increased teacher assistance will not "fix" the education problem in the United States. Based upon the article, it seems that the author is under the false assumption that public education is a social panacea.

Public education is not a panacea. It's not going to fix society's problems. The problem isn't that students don't spend enough time in school. Therefore, adding more hours to a school day or lengthening the school year is not going to solve anything. The problem is that the home lives of many students outside of school and the breakdown of social norms. True education is founded upon truth, but if a person is surrounded at home and bombarded by messages from their culture and society that tell them everything is relative, then no matter how much time is spend in school, real education can never take place.

Final Thoughts About and From THE DUMBEST GENERATION

"The production of spirited citizens requires more than meditations by academics and strategies by activists, and it transpires not only in classrooms and among advocacy groups. Learning and disputation, books and ideas, must infiltrate leisure time, too, and they should spread well beyond the cerebral cliques. This is why leisure trends among the general population are so important. They log the status of knowledge principle, and when the focus on under-30-year-olds, they not only reveal today's fashions among the kids but also tomorrow's prospects for civic well-being....

"The Dumbest Generation cares little for history books, civic principles, foreign affairs, comparative religions, and serious media and art, and it knows less. Careening through their formative years, they don't catch the knowledge bug, and tradition might as well be a foreign word. Other things monopolize their attention--the allure of screens, peer absorption, career goals. They are latter-day Rip Van Winkles, sleeping through the movements of culture and events of history, preferring the company of peers to great books and powerful ideas and momentous happenings. From their ranks will emerge few minds knowledgeable and interested enough to study, explain, and dispute the place and meaning of our nation. Adolescence is always going to be more or less anti-intellectual, of course, and learning has ever struggled against immaturity, but the battle has never proven so uphill. Youth culture and youth society, fabulously autonomized by digital technology, swamp the intellectual pockets holding on against waves of pop culture and teen mores, and the Boomer mentors have lowered bulwarks to surmountable heights. Among the Millennials, intellectual life can compete with social life, and if social life has no intellectual content, traditions wither and die. Books can't hold their own with screen images, and without help, high art always loses to low amusements.

"The ramifications for the United States are grave. We need a steady stream of rising men and women to replenish the institutions, to become strong military leaders and wise political leaders, dedicated journalists and demanding teachers, judges and muckrakers, scholars, and critics and artists. We have the best schools to train them, but social and private environments have eroded....Teachers try to impart knowledge, but students today remember only that which suits their careers or advantages their social lives. For the preparation of powerful officials, wise intellectuals, and responsible citizens, formal schooling and the workplace training are not enough. Social life and leisure time play essential roles in the maturing process, and if the knowledge principle disappears, if books, artworks, historical facts, and civic debates--in a word, an intellectual forensic--vacate the scene, then the knowledge young people acquire later on never penetrates to their hearts. The forensic retreats into ever smaller cells, where nerds and bookworms nurture their loves cut off from the world.

"Democracy doesn't prosper that way. If tradition survives only in the classroom, limping along in watered-down lessons, if knowledge doesn't animate the young when they're with each other and by themselves, it won't inform their thought and behavior when they're old. The latest social and leisure dispositions of the young are killing the culture, and when they turn 40 years old and realize what they failed to learn in their younger days, it will be too late....

"Fewer books are checked out of libraries and more videos. More kids go to the mall and fewer to the museum. Lunchroom conversations never drift into ideology, but Web photos pass nonstop from handheld to handheld. If parents and teachers and reporters don't see it now, they're blind.

"If they don't respond, they're unconscionable....Adults everywhere need to align against youth ignorance and apathy, and not fear the "old fogy" tag and recoil from the smirks of the young. The moral poles need to reverse, with the young no longer setting the pace for right conduct and cool thinking. Let's tell the truth. The Dumbest Generation will cease being dumb only when it regards adolescence as an inferior realm of petty strivings and adulthood as a realm of civic, historical, and cultural awareness that puts them in touch with the perennial ideas and struggles. The youth of America occupy a point in history like every other generation did and will, and their time will end. But the effects of their habits will outlast them, and if things do not change they will be remembered as the fortunate ones who were unworthy of the privileges they inherited. They may even be recalled as the generation that lost that great American heritage, forever."

From The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein, pp. 233-236.