Miscellany

Here is a bunch of stuff highlighting the difficulty of remaining sane.

I

This month was The Atlantic's special report on education issue.  Usually I make a point of ignoring anything having to do with education, but an article on pg. 96 entitled "The Writing Revolution" got the better of me.

This is an article that suggests the teaching of expository essay writing improves student performance in all areas.  This is the reason why I avoid education articles, but I kept reading.  It seems the principal at New Dorp High School on Staten Island, when confronted by study after study showing the effectiveness of writing instruction, decided to make essay writing in EVERY CLASS except math the focus of the school.  Non-English teachers freaked.  There were already doing a bang up job, they insisted, all evidence to the contrary.  The problem with New Dorp students (other than the name of the school itself) was that they just weren't bright enough to do the kind of writing the principal wanted.  Regular English teachers freaked as well because ever since the 90's writing "instruction" revolved around things like first person memoirs, short pieces of fiction, and peer editing.  That fluffy approach, conventional knowledge said, was the way to get students to invest in their education.

The New Dorp experience exposes that warm and fuzzy approach for the chimera it is.  Since instituting a new approach through the teaching of grammar, sentence structure, and expository writing, test scores have shot up, the number of kids eligible for college admission has more than doubled.  Life is good.

Well, hello!  Kathie and I could have told you that would have been the result.  Toward the end of our career, some of the newer and younger teachers in our department started rebelling against the kind of formulaic writing we championed.  The newer teachers (Todd Reynolds, he of the red hair, homunculus physique, and asshole personality, comes immediately to mind) thought that controlling statements were works of the devil, squelching poor kids' creative instincts.  They thought giving kids explicit instruction on things like transitions, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, five paragraph essays, and the like were all stupid wastes of time.  Instead, we should allow kids the freedom to explore their talents and gifts and interests.  Hey, I'm as much for following creative instincts and interests as the next guy, but I also know that one must start with a formula for beginning writers.  Of course, there are exceptions.  I had plenty of them and guess what, they all grew in spite of my squelching of their instincts.  If a kid really can write and think and read, no amount of teacher bumbling is going to get in the way, but those kids in the sophomore year are few and far between.

Anyway,  teachers at New Dorp are doing exactly what Kathie and I and Janet and Sue and Peter and all the rest did all those years ago.  They are teaching grammar.  They are teaching coordination and subordination.  They are counting paragraphs.  Mostly, they are making kids write till their arms fall  off.  That has always been the key. They are doing all those things kids need and they are starting a "revolution" in teaching.

My only problem is, like all teaching "revolutions",  it is just revisiting those old methods that have always worked before some hotshot reformer bound on saving education from moribund teachers like me decided to discredit them.  It makes me crazy.

II

Tom Friedman wrote a great piece in The New York Times yesterday ("Obama's Best-Kept Secrets"). Friedman is at a loss to understand why the President doesn't more vigorously and specifically defend his successes, instead of just warning everybody about how it will be a disaster if Romney wins.  For instance, Romney is getting a lot of traction among women voters by spinning the number of jobs women have lost under Obama and by assuring them he will get jobs for their husbands.  He will also see to it that any woman he hires personally will have a schedule flexible enough for her to rush home and make dinner for her hubby (or partner?, probably not), and help the kids with homework and the like.  I'm sure Romney has never considered the possibility that a husband might make the dinner.  That sounds a lot like European socialism, doesn't it?  Instead of arguing back that Romney will outlaw abortions and make it more difficult and costly to get contraception, why doesn't the President fight back on the economy instead of conceding it.  There is NO evidence that Romney has even a clue about creating jobs.  NONE.

Anyway, Obama's secrets are Race-To-The-Top and raising the mileage standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025.  Romney vows to stop both of these programs.  He offers no reason why except that since they are initiatives by Obama they must be bad.  But they are actually the among the biggest drivers of our (admittedly slow) economic growth.  The fact is there are numbers of jobs out there that are unfilled because we lack the kind of single minded training we need in our schools to fill them.  Race-To-The-Top is designed to ameliorate that and it is being surprisingly successful across the country.  Believe me, it is hard for me to admit that, but the evidence is persuasive.  And the new fuel economy standards, instead of sounding a death knell to the auto industry, have spurred more innovation and jobs based around that innovation.  Engineers are going back to work again.

Romney, a businessman who rejects the value of research and development, would scrap the new standards even as he tries to build his pipeline from Canada.  This guy knows the value of symbols.  Too bad he doesn't understand the value of fact and logic and science.  But the average voter, the ones who will hear Romney speak for maybe the third time, will never be able to sit still for such an argument.  They will either vote for Romney because he is a more accomplished liar, or they will vote for Obama because his family is so beautiful.

III

A study was conducted by The Department of Agriculture in conjunction with Iowa State University and The University of Iowa on crop rotation and the use of chemicals.  Quick background:  the typical farmer in our country uses a two year rotation of crops with corn one year and soybeans the next.  The study wanted to see the effect of longer rotation periods with more crops.  To make a long story short, they discovered that a four year rotation using corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa gave a yield almost twice the size and didn't have to rely on chemicals to keep the crops free of weeds and pests because with the longer rotation the farmers could use the manure their cows were producing as a fertilizer more easily than in a two year rotation (I don't completely understand how, but the guys in the Ag Dept. did).  The labor costs go up, but the money saved on fewer chemicals makes up for it.

The problem is that the results of the test seem to be counter intuitive because they fly in the face of the way things  are CURRENTLY DONE and so major publications are refusing to publish the results.  Also you can bet the Monsanto Corporation would like to see the information suppressed.

It is a lot like killing the electric car campaign waged by the oil companies a few years ago.  More and more this is a country about nothing more than the bottom line.

IV

I'm going to watch football instead of the debate tonight.  I encourage you to join me.  I just can't stand Romney's willingness to pander at any cost and I can't stand Obama's maddening refusal to speak specifically about anything that matters.  And I really can't stand the thought of listening to the punditocracy pontificate about who won, who had the best body language, who was more likable, what the polls REALLY mean.  I've already voted.  I voted for the President.  He is a good man and he is smarter than anybody in the other party.  I don't see how any other vote is possible.  Besides, the Bears are playing tonight and I want to watch Jay Cutler screw up.

By the way, for all those hordes of people reading this, I'm not looking for an argument about this.  I'm sick of arguments.  That's why I listen to MSNBC instead of Fox.  I love to hear from people who agree with me, but as someone in his mid-60's, if someone disagrees with me I don't give a shit.  It's a nice place to be.