CMS Saga: A Transcript of Correspondence on the Four-Day School Week

Let me introduce you to an experienced, life-long teacher in the NC public schools: Thomas M. Townsend. Mr. Townsend, or Tommy to those close to him, began his teaching career in the late '70s after he graduate with a Masters in Education from Appalachian State University. His first post was Quail Hollow Middle School in Charlotte, NC, where he taught for several years. Since he lived in Stanly County and the commute to Charlotte was nearly an hour, he found it to his benefit to transfer to South Stanly High School when the opportunity arose, and some years later, he switched schools again, this time to Albemarle High, also in Stanly Co. At Albemarle, he taught Drafting and Cabinet-making with pride and distinction for many years. His career path took him into the private sector for nearly a decade from the late '90s through about 2005, but the recession that hit after September 11, 2001, was the beginning of the end for his private enterprises and he resumed teaching again, this time back in Charlotte once more, at Albemarle Road Middle School as a Business Technology teacher. So, for the better part of 30 years, Mr. Townsend has been in the trenches of America's public school system learning first-hand the pros and cons of our educational landscape. Teachers like him are the kind of people we should pay attention to when they speak up and have something to offer, and it just so happens that Mr. Townsend does have something to contribute.

If you have followed my blog here, it will come as no surprise to you that our public schools are in a dire state, and the recent economic downturn has only made that situation worse. There are so many reasons to consider all possible options for positive school reform, it defies the space available here to state them all, so we'll forgo the sad lament of the current state of affairs and take our start at a point far less attended to, albeit infinitely more needed and, furthermore, inspirational: a solution. No, not a grand, fix-all, universal solution to all the ills of the school system, but nonetheless a solution to a significant set of problems that schools across the nation face today. After all, sucess begins with but a single step.

Mr. Townsend has been attending classes through a satellite program from ASU in Winston-Salem for three semesters now. His course of study is a Masters program in Public School Administration, and last month Mr. Townsend wrote a research paper on the pros and cons of the "four-day school week," a calendar proposal that has been implemented for decades in various isolated school districts throughout the country. His paper was thoroughly researched and objective in its approach to this option, and the conclusion that he and many others came to amounts to an overwhelmingly positive appraisal of this option.

Pursuant to writing his research paper on the four-day school week, Mr. Townsend sent the following email – essentially a summary of his paper’s findings – to three of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System’s (CMS) Board of Education's members, “Coach” Joe White (Member-at-large), Tom Tate (Vice-chairman), and the Board’s Chairman, Eric Davis.

Since his words speak to his point s better than I could rephrase them, I post here the text of his email to these three members of the Board:

[Member’s Name],

Please read the attachment and truly consider this option. We as teachers cannot understand why this option has not been considered as a true option, and has only been given lip service by the school officials. As research points out the excuses given to the teachers for not considering the four day week do not hold up to scrutiny once examined thoroughly. School calendars have been a source of contention ever since they first came into existence. The agrarian nature of society during the early days made it imperative that school children get out of school early enough in the spring to help plow the fields and plant the seed. In the fall, it was important to have the children at home to help with the harvest and storage of the crops. During this time family sizes were very large to help in the fields. Today our way of life has changed significantly. Our economy is no longer primarily agrarian, and where it is, machinery and migrant labor have taken away the need for children to stay at home and help do the cultivating, planting and harvesting. Yet we still find ourselves using basically the same school calendar that we have been following since its conception. You may ask “why”; I know I did. As I read through article after article to try to understand this issue, I found that I was not alone in my query or quest to find a better calendar. This is not a new question by any means and has been contemplated and toyed with for many years now. With student test scores so poor that they have gained national attention, and teacher morale at its lowest in decades, everyone is looking for alternative ways to make education more meaningful and engaging. Couple this with the worst economy since the great depression, and you have ample incentive to search for changes that can be made in order to save money and keep the schools running – among them, changes to the calendar. President Obama proposed that American school children extend their time in class, either by extending the school day, or spending less time on school vacation. “We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day,” Obama said. He continued with: “That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy.” (As noted in the March 12, 2009 Ed in Review News Blog) The Obama plan does not take into consideration, however, the cost of running schools for longer periods of time. More school days, or year round schools cost the systems many thousands of dollars more per day for transportation, food service, maintenance, teacher salaries, etc. At a time when school boards are scrimping to just get by, having to make tremendous cuts in their operations budget, and laying off teachers and staff, the ability to keep students in school more days is, well let’s just say, not in the budget. So if going to school for more days is not economically feasible, then what else can school boards consider that might work? One good option would be the four-day school week. Let’s explore this option in more detail. It seems the more I read about this option the more convinced I became that for supposedly educated people, many school boards and school superintendents sure do like to speak out before doing their homework. I know that bringing up the option of a four-day week can be scary for someone in politics, but aren’t we trying to do what is best for the children? The fact of the matter is that four-day school weeks have been in use successfully for many years now in a large number of states. There are more than 100 school districts in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Louisiana, Wyoming, Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky, and Wisconsin that have switched to a four-day calendar. In New Mexico, eighteen districts operate on a four-day week. The calendar is most popular in Colorado; witness a 2006 report from the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), which stated: “Sixty-two school districts, constituting 34% of the 178 school districts in Colorado, serving 2.7% of students, utilize the four-day week as the structure for organizing their school year.” There are, of course, pros and cons to a four-day school week. The North Carolina Board of Education has as its task “to provide every child with the opportunity to receive a ‘sound basic education’ during a minimum of 180 days and 1000 hours of instruction covering at least nine calendar months.” (ELNC, General Powers and Responsibilities.) Keeping this in mind, let’s look at some of the pros and cons that many superintendants and school boards have voiced. Following is a partial list of pros and cons that came from (www.associatedcontent.com/article) Con: It will force many parents to have to pay for a baby sitter or daycare for the day the children are off. Many parents do not have another family member to help look after their child, and to find someone or someplace that will keep their child will cost money. Pro: It will help the school system save on the cost of fuel for bus transportation. One of the main reasons it seems that rural schools are considering the four-day school week is because it is costing a large amount of money for fuel for the buses to transport the children. Con: Children will have a much longer day than normal which could interrupt their sleep. Many children right now have homework and extracurricular activities that they need to do after school. Between the longer school day followed by dinner, extracurricular activities, then their homework, they may be getting to bed much later only to have to get up at the same time that they are used to the following morning. Pro: there could be more uninterrupted lessons and projects in school during those four days. Some lessons take longer to teach and have to be continued the following day, which could break the thought process of some students. Other articles brought up further pros and cons such as, on the positive side, districts may save 20% on fuel cost alone, while the district would also save by serving breakfast and lunch four days instead of five, keeping the building temperature down for three days instead of two. Students do not have to miss school for appointments, because most can be scheduled for the Monday that they are off. The only viable cons that I could find are those listed above pointing primarily to parents having to find daycare, provide meals (breakfast and lunch) for an extra day, and worry about fatigue and school achievement dropping. But the research supports the fact that surveys show the four-day school week has a 90% approval rating, and students attend school better because they know they have Monday off for appointments. According to David L. Silvernail, director of the Center of Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine, most of the research on the subject has shown four-day school weeks to have a positive or negligible effect on student achievement. (Gilmore, J. 2010). Joyce Reinke in her paper entitled “More with Four: A Look at the Four-Day Week” took a look at two southern Oregon schools that implemented the four-day school week on a trial basis as far back as 1982-83, and five eastern Oregon districts that continue to use this schedule today. She found according to the enthusiastic responses of parents, staff, and students on annual surveys, the four-day week produced: 1) A 15% to 23% reduction in cost plus additional savings in energy costs and non-teacher salaries. 2) More actual learning time due to less set-up time and fewer interruptions. 3) More time for staff development, extracurricular activities, and family business. 4) Less student and teacher absenteeism 5) Higher teacher morale and student enthusiasm 6) More parental involvement. 7) No adverse effects. Also noted in this report were the following disadvantages: 1) Difficulties of restoration of the five-day week, if desired. 2) Increased cost for some parents. 3) Increased teacher stress. 4) Tiredness in younger children. 5) The impact of holidays on the schedule. 6) Concerns about the national movement toward a longer school year. Also according to the CDE: “Among districts which have implemented the concept, the practice of the four-day week is very popular among students, parents, and teachers. Satisfaction surveys indicate that 80% -90% of the community members favor continuing the four-day week in districts which had been on the schedule for several years. The opposition seems to come from members of the community not directly associated with the school, and from those who feel that school employees should work a traditional week.” (as noted by CDE p5) It appears that the only opposition that could be found in systems that had made the change to a four-day week came from resistance to change, jealousy, and ignorance. The CDE also backed up the claim that in the districts that had moved to the four-day school week, they were saving approximately 20% on transportation cost, approximately 20% on food service. There is some savings on staff such as aides and paraprofessionals who may or may not work the same number of hours per week. The CDE report goes on to explain: “The issue of baby-sitting seems to be a wash. With the longer school day, students get home at approximately the same time as their parents. The latchkey issue is virtually non-existent on school days. The issue is the full day of childcare needed on the fifth day. Most people have made the adjustment within neighborhoods or in other ways. With schools closed more baby sitters are available. It does not seem more difficult to arrange for a single full day of babysitting than for a couple of hours five days per week. In many cases a single day is simpler.” (As noted by CDE p7) The CDE report points out that there has been no conclusive evidence that student performance has been significantly affected by the four-day week either way, but the general feeling is that students do no worse on the four-day week than on the traditional schedule. They also point out an interesting side note in their study that shows when the financial crisis eased, programs were expanded. Many Districts offer programs for gifted students, art/music programs, remedial programs, and disciplinary programs. Another report that investigated the impact of a four-day school week in the Shelley district of Idaho was performed by Richard L. Sagness and Stephanie A. Salzman included the following: 1) Surveys of all district stakeholders, which included 2,039 k-12 students, 492 parents, 103 teachers, and 85 support staff. 2) A comparison of student-achievement scores with previous years. 3) Classroom observations of engaged time. 4) An analysis of student, teacher, and staff absenteeism data. 5) Cost-factor analysis. In their results they found: “That student achievement increased at some grade levels, and at other grade levels it was comparable with achievement for previous years. Other outcomes included high levels of student on-task behaviors, less disruption of instructional time, sustained student engagement, a decrease in employee and student absenteeism, and an approximate 1.6 percent savings in the district budget.” (As noted by Sagness, Salzman, p.1) Let’s take a look at a district a little closer to home and how they are handling the budget crisis. Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is facing some- where close to an $80 million shortfall in their budget this year. They had another huge deficit last year and solved the problem by firing teachers, cutting back on security personnel in the schools, and reducing the number of administrative staff, such as assistant principals and some secretarial positions, along with cutting other administrative staff at the central office level. Every time they were asked about the possibility of moving to a four-day school week, their response was “we are mandated by the state to have our students in school 180 days.” At no time have they indicated that they have gone or are going to the legislature to ask for a change in policy that would allow CMS to consider the possibility of moving to a four-day week. Instead they are proposing to fire another 600 teachers, cut back on some of the learning communities, and cut some more administrative staff. They are also looking at cutting out middle school sports. It should be noted that the 180 days and 1000 hours was a fairly arbitrary standard set long ago, and has no real basis in fact – in terms of how it’s best for students or faculty. It’s often over-ridden when a district has many extra snow days, or days off due to any sort of bad weather or unusual circumstances.] All studies show that increasing class size has a detrimental effect on student achievement. An average class of 30 students might have a demographic consisting of 4 to 5 Behavioral Mentally Handicapped (BEH), 2 non-English speakers, 3 Limited English speakers (LEP), 3 to 4 gifted and talented, and a range of students with varying degrees of ability filling out the class. For those that have never taught it should be kept in mind that it is the teacher’s job to keep these students actively involved in a learning activity that teaches them the subject matter needed to achieve satisfactory test scores. These test scores are the basis by which the teacher’s performance will be judged, and their pay will be based. This is not an easy task considering that some of the students had no sleep the night before, no breakfast that morning, and many may be staying in homeless shelters, or living mostly on the streets. Many of the students are hooked on drugs, involved in gangs, and some are too old to even be in the grade level they are in, and are intent on disrupting class as often as possible. Many of these children have no parents, and some have parents that just do not care. Some have parents that do care but are just too overwhelmed themselves trying to keep food on the table to have time to get involved, while other parents just simply do not know how. You also have the students that the system has already failed by letting them move up grade levels when they cannot read, write, or do basic math even at an elementary level. Yet it is the teacher’s job to keep them on a par and up with the curriculum that the state has mandated in terms of content, and the pace at which the teacher must teach. And this is just the tip of the iceberg that the education system has crashed into. Taking all this into consideration, it’s obvious that it makes no sense to fire teachers and increase class size by even one student. It was not too many years ago that we wanted to find a way to help our children get a better education so that they would not find themselves out on the street. Break it down per student to see how much time each child can receive from a teacher during a class period, and you can better see the impact of such reduction. During an 80 min block class schedule, a class of 35 students will have a chance after taking roll during a warm-up activity to get almost 70 min of instruction. That is 2 min of individual attention each if nothing else takes up any of the teacher’s time. Now in reality there will be quite a bit of time taken giving out instructions, going over activities with the group, and handing out papers or worksheets, etc. If the teacher is lucky they might have 35 to 40 minutes left to help children on an individual basis. Add to this dealing with a discipline problem, or working with a student that speaks no English, or explaining a differentiated lesson plan to a slow learner, and that teacher might only have 10 to 20 minutes, or about 35 seconds per child left to work with each of the other students helping them understand their assignment, or checking their work. If we increase the class size to 40 students then the individual time for each student on a good day would drop to 30 seconds per child. This is getting far beyond the point of reasonable expectations for anyone attempting to educate children. Surely there is a better way to cut spending without further destroying the teaching profession and the system’s ability to provide every child with the opportunity to receive a "sound, basic education". In conclusion, switching to a four-day school week is not, and will not, be a fix-all for education in any system, but it is, and has proven to be, a very viable option that should be considered as a means of retaining qualified teachers and increasing the ability of students to get an opportunity for a sound basic education. There is an old saying; “Do what you have always done and you will get what you have always got.” Let us as educators not bury our heads in the sand and ignore the facts. There are other, much better solutions to budget problems than firing teachers and increasing class sizes. We as educators need to practice what we preach, thinking outside the box, with innovation and creativity. This 21st century is a bold new beginning and we need to embrace it with enthusiasm and courageous, well-planned actions, based in truth, not rumor.

Sources:

R, L. (2008). Pros and cons of a four day week. Lifestyle, Retrieved from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/962826/pros_and_cons_of_a_four_day_school_pg2.html?cat=25

Pytel, B. (2006). No schools on fridays . Suite101.com, Retrieved from http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/no_school_on_fridays Badgley, A, &

Borman, M. (2010, March 23). Lawmakers split on four-day school week. The Telegraph.com, Retrieved from http://www.thetelegraph.com/articles/school-37973-students-districts.html

Sood, K. (2010, March 24). Four day school week in the works: local educators leery, fear effect it might have on students. Saukvalley.com, Retrieved from http://www.saukvalley.com/articles/2010/03/24/66081096/index.xml

Courier, J. (2010). Saving money is key in four-day school week debate. My Journal Courier.com, Retrieved from http://www.myjournalcourier.com/articles/school-26052-week-key.html

Brandi. (2009, March 12). Obama proposes longer school days, extended school year. Retrieved from http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2009/03/obama-proposes-longer-school-days-extended-school-year/

Foster, J. (2008, October 21). Res's 4-day-school-week idea. Retrieved from http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/10/rexs-4-day-scho.html

Dam, A. (Ed.). (2006). The 4 day school week. Denver, Colorado: Colorado Department of Education.

Yarbrough, R, & Gilman, D.A. (2006). From Five days to four. Educational Leadership, 64(n2), 80-85.

Reeves. K. (1999. March). The four-day school week. School Administrator, 56(3), 30-33.

Sagness, R.L., & Salzman, S.A. (1994). Evaluation of the four-day school week in Idaho suburban schools. Research Paper, (RIEMAR1994), 01-34.

Yarbrough, R., & Gilman, D.A. (2006). From Five days to four. Educational leadership, 64(n2), 80-65.

Reinke, J. (1987). More with Four: a look at the four-day week in Oregon's small schools. Research Paper, 01-21.

Sims, G. (2008). Maccray school district 4 day school week presentation. Power Point Presentation, 01-23.

Gilmore, J. (2010). Facts on a four-day school week. e-How blog, Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/facts_6153762_four-day-school-week.html

The responses and correspondence that follows is between Thomas Townsend and these members of the CMS Board of Education:


“Coach” Joe White:

-----Original Message-----
From: coachjoew
To: tmtcontractor1@xxxx
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 10:53 am
Subject: RE: Message from Online Feedback Form
Thanks for you thoughts and concerns. Four day week might be great if you have someone to care for your kids on friday. Would be a disaster for working people, the community, and police in my opinion. "Coach"

From: tmtcontractor1@xxxx
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 11:11 AM
To: coachjoew
Subject: Re: Message from Online Feedback Form
Well at least you responded. Thank you for that, but what research do you base your opinion on? I cannot find any research to support your concerns, and the research from states that have been doing this for many years have found that your concerns are in fact not correct, both the community and the schools have been overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the four day week once it was put into place. It is much better than increasing class size and further deteriorating the ability of teachers to do an effective job.
By the way many businesses also use the four day week and I have been on both sides of this issue.
Thank you for your time and thoughtful response.

-----Original Message-----
From: coachjoew
To: tmtcontractor1@xxxx
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 11:17 am
Subject: RE: Message from Online Feedback Form
There is no state and I know of no school system that uses a four days week when kids are in school. CMS does it in the summer time. I don't want to be trite, but businesses are what got us into this budget mess!! Thanks. "Coach"

-----Original Message-----
From: tmtcontractor1@xxxx
To: coachjoew@cms.k12.nc.us
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 11:46 am
Subject: Re: Message from Online Feedback Form
Coach,
Please take the time to at least read the article before making such statements. There are many states that have districts using the four day week and have been since the 80s. I know you mean well, but I don't want you to look like you do not know what you are talking about. Please, at least for your own information, do a little research before making statements that might cause you to lose all of your creditability. The board needs someone that is outspoken and not afraid to speak out on issues, but you must have your facts correct or you will hurt your cause.


Tom Tate, Vice-Chairman, CMS Board of Education:

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Tate
To:
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 1:35 pm
Subject: Re: Message from Online Feedback Form
Thanks for the lengthy email and all the ideas. For some years the Board has been trying to get relief from the state of North Carolina regarding the calendar for schools. For the four plus years I've been on the Board it has been a main part of our Legislative Agenda. We have not gotten anywhere, however. In brief we have to provide 180 days of schooling between August 25 and June 10, no matter what days of the week those days fall on. We have been unsuccessful in getting any flexibility in the calendar. When you add on the required holidays and teacher workdays and seek to have a nearly equal number of days in each quarter and semester the puzzle becomes harder to put together. We have been seeking the flexibility you indicate would be good to have. We simply have not received it yet.

Again, thanks.
Tom


Eric Davis, Chairman, CMS Board of Education:

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric C. Davis
To: tmtcontractor1@xxxx
Sent: Sun, May 16, 2010 2:48 pm
Subject: Re: Message from Online Feedback Form


Mr. Townsend,
I support relief from the current state law that mandates a 180 day school year. To change that law and gain the benefits that you describe here requires state legislation and is not within the Board of Education's authority. We have expressed our desire for changing the calendar law. Please join us by sharing with our state legislators your perspective on why they should grant school districts like ours the authority to set the school calendar.

Best wishes
Eric

-----------------------------------------------------

And there you have it: responses that range from blatant ignorance of the facts of the proposal through educated awareness and outright support for the proposal, but the fact remains that at the local level, the School Boards' hands are tied. If there is to be flexibility in the calendar of local school systems, it has to begin with the blessing of the state legislature. And that brings me to my final point, which is simply that we, the taxpayers, the voters, the citizens of this state, will have to take this matter into our own hands. Mr. Davis asked Mr. Townsend to "join us" by voicing his opinion to the NC State Assembly; I ask each and every one of you who read these words to please do the same. The four-day week does not have to be the end result; there are other options, also, but none of them will have a chance if the local school systems are bound by the obsolete and restrictive calendar requirements that currently block innovative and imaginative change. Together, we can raise a call loud enough to wake the sleeping giants in Raleigh, but only our united voices will achieve that. Furthermore, only if we can bring our legislators out of their comfortable slumber can we manage to make way for the changes that will put the details of the school calendar back into the hands of the local school boards. This is necessary for the continued competitiveness of our students in today's world, and it is only sensible. Take a stand, and make a lasting, positive difference for the young people of our state. If we can achieve this, NC can once again lead by example in the field of education... wouldn't that be something to be proud of?

The Dividing Line

Very commonly, Americans hold the opinion that if a political candidate wants to stand a chance at election – and this holds true at all levels of government in this country – he (or she) simply must submit to run under the banner of one or the other of the two major political parties. Aspiring politicians who choose to run as third party or independent candidates have deliberately and consciously chosen the hard road to their intended destination, and there are many reasons for this fact. Some of these reasons we will touch upon here, but there arises a question from this situation that should disturb us all, namely, what does this fact say about the health and viability of our political system – about the adequacy of our representative government?

The criteria that should be used as an index of our local, state and federal governments’ viability and integrity are few and clearly defined. Chief among them are these two considerations: first, are the policies issuing from any given segment of government Constitutional, both in their effectual scope and subject matter (jurisdiction), and, equally, with regard to the manner in which they were enacted (due process of law)? Secondly, are the legislators and executives at any given level of government acting ethically, prudently, and are they faithfully representing the wishes and interests of their constituents, within the bounds of the former consideration? When a governmental body fails to meet these simple standards, the system has broken down and is in dire need of an overhaul. This, in many people’s opinions, is what we have come to see, at least with regard to the Federal level of American government.1 This dysfunction, which has been metastasizing for decades, crosses party lines – in fact, its continued exacerbation is reliant on the self-serving, system-gaming behavior of both major parties, Democrats as well as Republicans, and the back-and-forth oscillations of each party’s power and control over Congress and the Executive branches has not mitigated the deterioration of our nation’s political system in the least – quite the contrary, it is symptomatic of the very problem of which we speak.

Symptomatic, meaning that the oscillations of power which we see every one or two election cycles are the direct result of the problem: a ubiquitous and profound failure of government to live up to the standards set forth above. Americans see the failures of government, regardless of which party is in the majority, and those angered and disillusioned citizens pour out their hearts at the poles when the next election comes around. If the Democrats control Congress, they vote Republican, in the vain hope that doing so will get the incompetent Democrats out of power and replace them with someone who can finally do something right. If the Republicans are in, the process is reversed, but the effect is always the same: we replace one panel of self-interested, hypocritical career politicians with another. Regardless of what they preach in the campaign, irrespective of which cloak, banner, aegis, or guise they run under, they are all more or less operating under the same fundamental philosophy: Progressive Statism, more often than not tainted by the human propensity toward egotistical greed and avarice. And because they are not so different beneath their skins, we get political animals that behave with the same unethical, imprudent characteristics, and policy that eats like an acid at the foundations of our Constitution and our liberties as American citizens, regardless of the party brand they sport.

To understand this phenomenon, one must understand a basic fact about Washington politics, something Drew Ryun has referred to as “The Swamp,” and I believe that designation is revealing. A first-term politician goes to Washington with the best of intentions, to change the system, to change the world, bring peace and prosperity and freedom to as many of his constituents as possible, but upon arrival he finds, to his great dismay, that he is a freshman and freshmen don’t have much influence over the course of Congressional affairs. That privilege belongs to senior Congressmen that have years of experience under their belt. His grand hopes are dashed – for the time being – but he sees a way to realize his dreams: re-election. He waits it out for his first term, playing nice with the senior members and the party leadership, voting the way they urge him to vote and not rocking the boat too much, and all this for a simple reward of party support, PAC money, and endorsements for his next campaign, which he wins as a result. Finally, he’s a second-term member and he can start to change the system from the inside, right? Well, not exactly. More often than not, he’s got the bug by now – remember, it’s a swamp, and now he’s waist-deep in it. By that point it’s hard to find solid ground again. The lure of more power and influence - the result of ever more seniority – is the perpetual siren call that keeps younger members towing the party line and playing nice. Even if they still cling to those renegade hopes of reform, the better chance to make that happen is always just beyond the next election, just through the door to that next big committee appointment… and they never quite seem to get there.

It’s like waiting until you have enough time and money to have kids – it never happens; you’ll die of old age first. And many of them do just that, spending their entire lives building report, influence and seniority, amassing power and control over the legislative process, and saying to themselves, “Just one more term, then I’ll bring the roof down on this place.” But it never goes any further, and most of them, after the first few terms, get used to the system as it is and lose the real desire to change it at all. Why should they? It works for them, and their constituents are apparently satisfied or they wouldn’t vote them back into office.
Of course, the gross inequity of their campaign budgets against those of first-time challengers couldn’t have anything to do with why incumbents win re-election more than 98% of the time. It’s not like they spend fully half of their time in office raising funds to finance their next campaign! They were doing an important public service for their district, staying focused on the priorities of public office and government, and spending every spare moment keeping in touch with the regular working people that sent them to Washington to represent their interests. Hogwash! That beautiful dream couldn’t be further from the truth, which is that incumbent politicians spend over half of their time in office securing their next election; that they get massive amounts of funding from their parties (more if they’re good team players) and from special interest contributors who get legislative kickbacks; that they are privileged to flood their district with millions of dollars worth of campaign propaganda on the taxpayer’s dime; and that they get free air time just for being in office whenever they can attach their name to anything “newsworthy.”

The whole process is self-perpetuating, a reinforcing feedback loop that stacks the cards heavily in favor of the incumbent politician and makes the challenger’s fight an uphill battle. And that’s why the wheel keeps turning just the same no matter who’s sitting in the Speaker’s chair or in the Oval Office. They all play the game by the same rules, and we get the same results, year after year.

So, how can Americans break the cycle? Well, there are some options, and one of the most straightforward ways would be to fracture the ideological stranglehold that the two major parties have on government by injecting third-party candidates into the equation. By and large, third party candidates – such as Libertarians or Greens – are staunch ideologues, not nearly as easily corrupted by the enticements of the job. For one thing, the possibility of major-party financial support is never a temptation for them. If they wanted that, they wouldn’t belong to the ‘poor’ marginalized parties in the first place. Second, they usually go to D.C. (if they ever make it there at all) with the notion that they stand for something, and they take that platform very seriously from the start. Their cause is a large part of their fundamental identity, and they would be hard pressed to give that up, regardless of the deal offered. And lastly, as a result of the first two factors, they tend to take the wishes and concerns of their constituents very seriously, also; after all, those are the real people who put them in office, and they have to rely on their grassroots base more heavily and more intimately than candidates from the major parties have had to for nearly a century. As a consequence, it would seem, intuitively, that real change should start with the marginalized candidates from the ‘alternative’ parties, but year after year they get beaten out by the contenders with major-party backing. Why?

Well, partly because most of those contenders are incumbents and enjoy the benefits of the financial-political-media machine that were described above. But even in races where the seat is open to a full slate of newcomers, the races all too often favor victory for the mainstream party candidate. In large part, this is due simply to a few predictable factors, among which are big-name party affiliation, the financial support that comes with that association, and the media preference for keeping things simple and dichotomous – good vs. evil, Democrat vs. Republican, etc. But that’s not the only factor that plays into the outcome of these elections; one other major facet that needs to be considered is hidden away in the minds of the voters themselves, and it harkens back to the opening paragraph of this paper. That factor is the common belief that third-party candidates can’t win an election, and that belief is driven by the common knowledge that they are fighting an uphill battle and their chances are slim to none for success.

Voters consider this when they decide for whom to cast their ballot. They make an understandable attempt to predict the outcome of the contest they are in part deciding, and based on their prediction (really their assumption of who other voters will vote for) they decide which candidate to mark as their own choice. We, as voters, are really almost too smart for our own good; we are attempting to play our corner of the system in much the same way as the politicians we elect play their corner of it, and the results are a disaster. What happens is that we doom the candidates we would most like to see win simply because we choose to believe that they can’t win no matter how we vote, and in a vain and futile attempt not to ‘waste’ our vote we vote for a candidate that has only his or her self interest in mind. That’s a terrible way to secure a representative government, but it’s a perfect recipe for totalitarianism, or some other perverted form of autocratic and oppressive regime, and we’ve come a long way down that road already. Turning it around now will take a lot of guts, some lost elections and ‘wasted votes,’ and a lot of tenacity and perseverance. But it must be done.

Votes… it seems a shame to waste them, they’re so precious and valuable. Really, they are, but they are tools with more than one application. Like so many things, they can have both long- and short-term effects. In the short term, one might hope to see their vote put their chosen candidate in office that next January, and that is the most obvious objective of the franchise. However, when that objective is a non-solution to the greater problems of our government, voting takes on another, more subtle objective. The results will not be headline news at the end of that November, but the effects of voting your conscience are quite real, nonetheless.

The proportion of votes a third-party candidate gets in any election is an important and concrete indication of the proportion of public support that candidate – and that party – have obtained, and when people see the strength of these candidates growing, their feeling that the third-party candidates can’t win fades away, and they become interested and emboldened to consider casting their own vote along those lines the next time around. Fundraising gets a boost – who wants to give their money to a lost cause? But to the next up-and-coming state representative or Senator in D.C. – that’s a different story. The strong attract the support of the masses, and when the masses are dissatisfied with the status quo they are ready to turn to any viable alternative that they believe will do a better job. A percentage increase in the votes a marginalized candidate gets in one election cycle translates, in the next election or two, into a snowball effect: those who wouldn’t ‘waste’ their vote before begin to see casting their vote for that candidate as less of a ‘throwaway’ and more of a ‘long shot,’ and eventually long shots morph into ‘strong showings’ at the poles, then into ‘neck-and-neck’ races. Finally, there’s a breaking point and that candidate has a clear lead, strong backing from the people, and when the checkered flag drops the competition is nowhere in sight.

Then, and only then, will Americans get the change they vote for. But it takes time and persistence – and the uncompromising determination for each and every one of us to vote our conscience on matters that matter. The Constitution is one such matter, and to get it back we’ll need to let go of our fear of losing the battle and take hold of the opportunity to win the war.


References:
1. Klein, Ezra. “What Happens When Congress Fails to Do Its Job?” Newsweek. March 27, 2010. URL:

Rare Metals & Alternative Energy

I just read some news articles about the "hybrid revolution." Ah, what a relief that we have finally found a way to cut our consumption of fossil fuels! Just when we thought all hope was lost, along came Toyota and Chevy with their hybrid fuel-electric cars, and the day was saved! I mean, who can argue with 85 miles to the gallon, right?

Well, someone once told me that there's a cost to everything, and I think we might have finally run face-first into the hidden cost of hybrid cars: rare earth metals. For every hybrid manufactured approximately 2 lbs of rare metals are used in the magnets of the electric engine, and approximately 15-20 lbs of rare metals are required for the batteries. In all, there are 15 metals at issue, and the production of hybrid cars uses nearly 40,000 tons of these metals annually. So, what's the problem?

Well, quite simply rare metals are, well, rare. And expensive. Especially when the world's primary producer of these metals - China - is restricting exports of these elements to retain them for their own manufacturing needs. So, in "several years," whatever that means, you can expect shortages in the amount of these metals available to manufacturers of hybrid cars. Concordantly, you can expect the price of hybrid cars to go up and, if it gets tight enough, the number of hybrids produced each year to go down. So much for the hybrid revolution.

Allow me to suggest something that I may have said before - and forgive me if I am repeating myself, but a good idea should be shouted to the heavens until someone listens and takes action. ETHANOL! For God's sake, people, it's clean, it's renewable, and it's easy to make - cheap. If you're reading this, stop for a moment and Google "Coskata." Go to their web site and read about their process... Ok, so you did that? Now that we're on the same page, I'll continue. Three simple steps, right? Virtually unlimited sources from any kind of biomass imaginable, including garbage, tires, switch grass, wood chippings and mulch, underbrush and grass clippings. I mean, where in America do we not have these things? They're everywhere! And this process could be everywhere, but for the financial roadblocks that the company has encountered since its inception.

Coskata obtained much of its start-up funding from General Motors, which has recently filed bankruptcy and morphed into Government Motors. I'm sure this has hampered Coskata's efforts to get their plants operational. But the sooner they get established, the sooner this country can reap the benefits of a truly sustainable alternative energy.

The advantages of ethanol are tremendous, especially in the realm of transportation. Just consider, rather than sending millions of dollars to overseas car makers who produce new cars which run on completely new technology, we would have the preferable option of simply converting, at a much lower cost, the cars now on the road to run on the slightly different combustible fuel available in the form of ethanol. We already have internal combustion engines in all our vehicles; the means and materials to convert them to run on ethanol are simple, cheap and readily available. Made-in-the-USA manufacturing gets a boost from the conversions; the domestic auto mechanics' industry gets a boost from the conversion; everyone benefits, and the benefits stay in our economy, not China's. We become eco-friendly and self-sufficient, at least with respect to our fuel consumption, and we do it at far less cost to Americans than a full-fleet conversion to hybrid or electric cars. It's a win-win - for the economy, for the environment, and for national security. And no rare earth metals need be involved. So, we had the "Cash for Clunkers" program; now, Washington, may I suggest a real solution: A subsidy for Coskata and the rest of the struggling and neglected ethanol industry, coupled with a government program for Americans to convert their cars to ethanol. We could even call it "Cash for Conversions."

Until next time,

Discere Aude!

-Hephaestus

It's been too long, old friend...

Ok, so I haven't shown my face around these parts in a while. It's true, I got you all worked up, expecting to hear something extraordinary about our country's educational future, and then I didn't deliver. Well, I apologize, but before you write me off as not keeping my word, let me explain.

Here's the deal: Our country has one F***ked-up educational system; we all know this without any argument. But this fact begs a few questions, the first of which is, why? Option #1: Lack of better ideas.
Well, that's what I thought, too. I figured that if we could just devise a better system, we could fix the problems with the current one by replacing it. Then I did a bit of research - remember, I was going to write a book? And in my reading, I realized a frustrating truth: a thousand people have devised better systems, some of which have actually been put into practice in select schools around the country with great success. However, none of these bright hopes have been copied by state-wide education programs, and none of them have received Federal recognition or support. So the problem isn't a lack of better ideas, and we find ourselves back at square one: why? Why are these new and better programs not being implemented on a large scale?
It isn't lack of funding; we have spent FAR greater sums on projects of far less value and importance for decades. It isn't an inability on the part of legislators to reform the cumbersome, ensconced system of education as we know it; we changed the whole organization of national intelligence with just two acts of Congress - the PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act - and we could do likewise with education... if we wanted to. And that's the point.
While many Americans - parents, teachers, school administrators - might hold true educational reform dear to their hearts, there is, in fact, a narrow class of people in this country who stand to lose a great deal in the wake of such revamping of our schools: politicians. Indeed, the very people who hold the power to reform our educational system have been benefiting from its dysfunction for generations. An educated civic body is a vigilant, involved civic body, and no politician can expect to advance an agenda of personal gain when he (or she) has to answer to a sharp, interested constituency. Voter fraud, gerrymandering, pork legislation, and any plethora of other ill-advised policy simply would not go over in that environment. Furthermore, the very prevalent "politics of fear" that has found such frequent use this past decade would be, to an educated public, little more than a hollow shill - which is, for the most part, exactly what it is. On the other hand, these underhanded political tactics and rancid policy decisions go over without a hitch with a public that is ignorant, distracted and struggling to keep their heads above water. As long as the people of this country have it hard, the politicians have an easy time getting by with whatever seems most politically expedient to them. I don't have to spell it out any more, it's an easy picture to get. Dumb people are suckers, and if the politicians can let our broken educational system turn out ten thousand undereducated, unenlightened suckers a year, that's ten thousand less people that those politicians will have to seriously answer to in the next election. It's that simple, and that's why educational reform isn't seriously pushed in the marble halls of government.
Now, I know all of this is "mere speculation," backed up by little more than circumstantial evidence and a logical analysis of the history of powerful people and the corruption of governments, but the real story isn't in the ways that we could make our educational system better. For more than sixty years bright minds, both academic and professional, have been offering us alternative methods for better educating our youth; we have a veritable cornucopia of "new" and better ideas at our fingertips. The real story is in the truth about the roadblocks to reform - about the political expediency of letting America's educational system fail year after year; about the backroom politics that whitewash every renewed attempt to institute genuine change in education; about the benefit of an uneducated public for those who hold power in our country.
I say all of this in an attempt to justify why I never posted the remaining installments in the series of blog entries that I set out at the beginning. Maybe my reasoning is nothing more to you, my readers, than an excuse for my laziness or apathy. If that is how you see it, then so be it, that's your prerogative. I know, however, the general bent of the evidence that I encountered in my research, and I wish only that I had the resources and time to devote to proving my suspicions. Unfortunately, I do not. I can only hope that my brief exposition here will pique the interest of some who, unlike myself, do have the time and resources to invest in such an investigation. In the meantime, I will devote myself to other endeavors which I find my personal attributes more keenly aligned toward.

For now, it's good to be back.

Discere Aude,

Hephaestus

Teaching As A Subversive Activity: Part One

The Elephant In The Room

As promised, the subject of this essay is the book Teaching As a Subversive Activity, by Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner. I would like to begin by saying that I will not be able to cover the entire book, chapter for chapter, in the space available; rather, I will touch upon what I believe to be the key points that the authors make on the state of our educational system, their diagnosis of the problems, and their prescription, if you will, for reforming education.

Let’s begin on a point I think we can all agree upon: our schools, as they are currently formulated and administered, are a disastrous failure. Ok, maybe this isn’t the best starting point, after all, because before we can say anything about the success or failure of an institution, we must clarify the purpose for which it was intended. In this case, there are a number of possible ends for which our schools might have been instituted. For instance, we might have built and staffed schools with the sole intention of providing publicly-funded daycare, or alternatively, the institution of the public schools might be imposed upon our impressionable children with the aim of indoctrinating them in the propaganda of the state, the conformist expectations of a consumerist society, and the docile subservience of good corporate wage-slaves. Without being paranoid, I would invite you to consider these options for a few moments. Honestly, though, there is no good reason for schools to exist aside from their publicly stated purpose: to educate our children, to give them the means to learn and to participate in the marketplace of ideas, so that they might more fully realize their potential as both citizens of our republican democracy, and as human beings in general. And, regardless of how well our schools might have achieved any of our other hypothetical ends, they have not succeeded in this legitimate purpose for many, many years now.

Mark Twain said that there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Books, reports and scholarly articles abound which could enlighten us as to the statistical failures of our schools, but I will not reprint them here. If we disagree at this early point, let me just say that only one who has been living with his head in a hole for the last quarter century could honestly declare that our educational system is living up to its name. The failure of our schools at their job of educating our youth is a given that, by now, should be beyond debate. In light of this state of affairs, we can now turn to our evaluation of Postman & Weingartner’s thesis.

Teaching the Process

Learning does not occur like filling a bathtub. Often, young people are thought of as empty vessels, into which a learned and sagacious teacher pours forth his wealth of knowledge, thus filling the student’s mind with facts and figures that will inevitably make him an educated person. Unfortunately, the metaphor is crucially flawed. One cannot teach in this way, for the underlying assumption is that the student, in his learning, is playing a passive role; the bathtub does nothing, while the water-bearer works hard to fill it. Such an arrangement ignores the vitality of the student, their interests and concerns, their aptitudes and abilities, as well as their character flaws and deficiencies. In short, the traditional metaphor neglects one of the most important facets of the learner: his humanity.

The truth is learning is an active process, a process of investigation and discovery, and the teacher is not an answer bank, he is a guide. Learning depends upon two basic skills: knowing how to ask the right questions, and being able to find the answers to them. And if schools are instituted among men to provide an education to the youth, then it is proficiency in these skills that they must impart to the students.

Of course, the logical prerequisite of asking questions is, naturally, interest. Engaging students’ natural curiosity in a subject is not such an easy thing to do, but without an interest in the question, a student will not willingly pursue the answer. Obviously, then, it is an exercise in futility to frame questions which fail to pique a student’s curiosity. The whole point is to teach them to pursue knowledge of their own volition, since the exuberance and fulfillment of the quest is as much a part of the lesson as is the process of finding out the answers. It is this thrill of the chase that will fuel their drive, their thirst for knowledge, once they have been cut loose as adults, and if there is no fulfillment in the task, they will loath to expend the effort. So the question arises, how does one engage a student’s curiosity?

The answer is that it is already engaged in something. Everyone is interested in something, whether it be astrophysics or astrology, mathematics or music, the silver screen or surfing, or anything else. Once again, the key is to recognize and account for the individual’s humanity, then to use that to break the ice. The truth is that every conceivable “subject” of study has some relation to everything else, so that even scuba diving can be used as the jumping off point for a discussion of fluid mechanics, marine biology, evolutionary and geological history, applied mathematics of a thousand varieties, and even poetry and literature. You just have to know what questions to ask to get the conversation started. The point is that students are not bathtubs, they are people, and like all people they have individual quirks and nuances which make them unlike any other person. If you want them to seek out knowledge, you have to meet them on their own turf, then you have to know how to lead them away from what’s familiar so that they will learn how to discover things they didn’t know before. Ironically, the hard part is figuring out what their home turf actually is.

One of the primary reasons for our schools’ monumental failure is that their design is a product of the industrial revolution, and though the prevailing philosophy of the time period in which they were conceived is now obsolete, the institution has failed to evolve. Specifically, our schools are guilty of treating students as shapeless masses of raw material, and mirroring the paradigms of the time of their inception, they were designed to take those raw masses and stamp out a series of homogeneous representations of the ideal “Educated Man.” Our schools are cast in the image of mass-production factories of such dehumanized products, and they have failed to produce educated people because they have failed to account for the very humanity of the ‘raw materials’ with which they are provided.

If meaningful education reform is to be achieved, then, we must begin with a complete reevaluation of the basic principles of the educational process. We must accept the organic nature of the student, with all that that entails, including the individual and unique characteristics that he brings to the classroom, his educational needs and desires as a growing, changing human being, his interests, concerns and aptitudes, and an understanding of the very human process of learning and discovering. Real learning takes place only when the student takes control of his own destiny, and if our schools cannot guide students through that process, if they cannot foster that interest and desire and provide the resources to satisfy the inquiring minds that develop, then what business have they got with our children?

______________________________________________________________________________

Discere Aude,

Hephaestus

Inauguration

To those of you who choose to peruse my meandering verbiage, I extend my sincere thanks. I hope that you will find here something of value, something that will push the limits of your consciousness and understanding. I can tell you beforehand that my writings will extend across a wide range of topics, from my views on political and social issues relevant to our time and condition, to less grandiose ponderings on the topics of my personal hobbies, to my more intimate introspections regarding such subjects as science, spiritualty, history, and anything else that seems to me worthy of being cast in print. I heartily invite my readers to respond to my posts, but... there is a catch:

I insist that on my blog, civility and courtesy must be respected at all times. While we must resign ourselves to the inevitability of disagreement, I will not allow comments that do not further the aim of civilized dialogue. If the issue be serious enough, and the feelings run so hot that conversation must be abandoned, then the time has surely come when we must resort to violence and bloodshed, and under such circumstances there would no longer be any need of blogging. So, while our debate remains here, it shall remain clean, rational and respectful. No exceptions.

As I am new to this endeavor, I reserve the right to expand upon my guidelines for participation in the future, but barring any extraordinary circumstances, that's it, there are no other rules or restrictions. I want those who comment to feel free to express themselves honestly no matter what they may feel or think.

Now then, let's get on with it...

Greetings & Salutations, as the small spider once said. I would like to take a moment to preface my next entry for you.

I have been working on a project with my father, who is a teacher, on the crisis of the American educational system. In the end, our work will take the form of a published book on the subject - a book that we have every hope of successfully spurring sorely needed and widely controversial changes in the way Americans understand, conceive of, and implement the educational process from K thru 12th grade. We are not the first to have such hopes, and we are only the latest in a long line of "educationalists" who hold such radical and unconventional visions of how our country's educational institutions might be improved. But I did not intend to spend my time today talking about our book; I want to limit the scope of my focus to the thesis of a different book, one that I have read in the course of my research. The book of which I am speaking is not new - in fact, I was astonished to find how relevant and contemproary are its diagnoses and prescriptions given that it was written forty years ago! Nevertheless, it cuts right to the heart of our educational trainwreck. The authors, Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner, published Teaching As A Subversive Activity in 1969, and subsequently the book was lost to the twilight zone. You don't believe me? How else does one explain the fact that every problem they addressed then still exists - in spades - in our schools today? Obviously, the trucks that carried the freshly printed copies from the press were beamed up by alien spaceships and cast into that great fireball in the sky, because no one on this planet seems to have ever read a page of it. If they had, something would surely have been different by now. But I digress. So, to return to the subject at hand, let me declare here and now that this - our educational trainwreck, as I will call it - will be the topic of our first several posts, and Postman & Weingartner's book will be our jumping-off point. In my next post, I intend to outline the main thesis laid out in Teaching As A Subversive Activity, and to show why the book is more relevant now than ever. Concurrently, we will investigate potential solutions to our educational crisis, both those offered by Postman & Weingartner as well as those suggested by others who have made it their business to try to fix this problem. In the succeeding posts, I may diverge more and more from the book specifically in an effort to ferret out the real reasons why drastic change in our educational system, despite being critically necessary, has been so elusive for more than a generation. So, happy reading! I hope that you are looking forward to this as much as I am. I beseech your patience, as I have not already written any of what I have promised to you, but I will work diligently to deliver. I hope you will check back over the next few weeks for updates and comments.

Discere Aude,

Hephaestus