Dumbing us Down

John Taylor Gatto was the 1991 New York State teacher of the year. He is also a confirmed critic of the education system and efforts to reform it. His book, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education, is a series of essays on the matter. He idealizes the self-education found in this country through its early years. They are, in his view the foundation of democracy and progress.  The republication of his 1992 classic highlights the challenges of public education and proposed the elimination of it as the only solution the challenges of poverty, teen suicide, drug addiction and illiteracy.

His essay entitled “We Need Less Schooling Not More” was the one that struck me most profoundly. He epitomizes the family as the ultimate learning machine, the community as the fertile ground in which learning grows and networks as the downfall of society. In his view communities are small groups that regulate their participants and look after themselves. They are small, deeply knit groups that work together for a common cause. Networks, on the other hand are liable to be large, like schools, all-inclusive and thrive on the lack of individualism and holistic nature of humankind. Networks dehumanize people, reducing them to limited bites whose sole interest is what you can do for me (p. 53). While the book contains an introduction and afterward written for the modern reader, this essay is not based in modern times in which our virtual networks and social media have further isolated us and our interactions. One only has to go to a restaurant, public event or grocery store to see the fodder that would support Gatto’s assertions here. People do not talk to those they are with, they text and surf their cell phones. They may be with people, like their children, spouses or friends, but their attention is elsewhere. Networks have become substitutions for deep friendships and relationships.

Gatto asserts that teacher unions are trying to persuade the business community to hire and promote based on grades (p.60). Today we see this as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) includes a statement that students who pass the high school exams will be required to be exempt from remedial classes in college. Since these tests will be required to graduate, the conclusion is that all students will be ready for college upon graduation- something that is not true today. Currently we Estimate between 20% for private four year schools to 60% for community colleges of students take remedial classes. If our graduates are going to meet the bar of being ready for college one of a few things must happen:

·         Fewer students will graduate- the bar is raised, students incapable of meeting the current bar will not be able to jump over a raised one and they will leave school without a diploma.

·         New diploma tracks will be developed- passed the CCSS test and graduate verses some form of a not yet there but has attended school and is on track to eventually get there.

·         Colleges will reduce standards and require passing a higher level course that students may need to take repeatedly to pass.

·         Fewer students will attend college.

These selections are all incompatible with the Common Core standards. While the business community is unlikely to buy into the grades= money phenomena, colleges might be mandated to do so.

Gatto sees schools as agents that divide and classify “people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other, and publicly labels the losers by literally degrading them, identifying them as ‘low class’ losers”(p. 61). Clearly he sees the worst of school and society. I wonder, however, how he reconciles this concept with his model Puritan village. They were quick to degrade nonconformists, often embarrassing, killing or exiling those who were different and thus “losers.” Even the Puritans competed with each other; there was a hierarchy that was based in the quality of your family, the frequency of your church going and the fiscal success of your enterprises.

He contrasts this modern vision of schooling with what sees as the purpose of education, “discovering meaning for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself” (p. 62). While self-discovery was important for some of our early pioneer learners like Franklin and Lincoln, they had access to books that had great storehouses of information. They had mentors who helped them in their “self-discovery.” Teachers are our modern day mentors. We will discount the many individuals throughout our early years that were illiterate and poorly educated. Families that are supported by either two working parents or single family households where the sole supporter is working are not available for the omnipresent family development and support that Gatto envisions as critical to self-discovery. Schools fill an interaction void that modern life has created. The advent of constant electronic communication has magnified this void since the largest periods of time kids spend face to face talking is in schools. Some proponents of technology are advocating for limiting this interaction by implementing increased amounts of screen time in school. Will this lead to self-discovery and purpose- unlikely. Although some of the CCSS methodologies emphasize self-discovery, there is a huge challenge in this idea. Only so many hours are available for school to teach. In the historic past of Gatto’s ideal, there was less to learn, and students did not experience self-discovery in their one room school house epitomized by rote learning.

Gatto effectively points out the contradictions of schools in relation to families. He states that “schools stifle families” (p. 67). I have seen this over and over as my children have marched through school. Most recently at the high school midterm test schedules were emailed to students, not their families. Students were expected to only be in school during their exams, and were not to be present if they had no tests. I do believe a consequence of this idea is that families need to help out with transporting their darlings, even if they do not have the schedule that came out a full week before the testing was to begin. We do not live in a community where kids walk to school or where public transportation exists. Parents were required to struggle to provide supervision of their children who were prohibited from being in school if they had no exams. Although most high schoolers can spend time on their own, we know that doing so results in an increase in vandalism, self-destructive behavior like drug-use and screen time which results in increased violence and obesity. Schools that want parents to be involved invite them into school and education meaningfully. Our current system falls far short of this. I do not, however, see the down time kids have as being used in a journey of self-discovery. I think that perhaps this vision that Gatto has is just that, a vision or ideal, much like the creators of the CCSS have toward the standards- lightly based in reality but lacking the solid foundation of the real world.

Gatto’s writing has become a cornerstone of homeschooling proponents who are looking for deep values and limited exposure to perceived “deviant” influences. I understand that there are many unsavory things that children are exposed to in schools. I would have been grateful if my son did not pick up some of his colorful vocabulary there. If I do not want my children to live in an isolsate environment and want them to engage in the wonderful, rich experiences the world has to offer, however, they need to figure out how to navigate these unsavory elements. It is my job to teach the values. I know that many parents have abdicated that role, knowingly or unknowingly, but that is not an excuse to decry public education. Families need to use the local control we have and fight for the righting of school policies and “norms” that are in the best interests of children and families. This decision is a local one, that will be encased in debate, but that is the essence of democracy.

This book is a philosophical examination of schooling that is not for everyone. The writing is pedantic. The ideas challenging to those involved in public education. The implications intriguing especially in light of the CCSS.

Helping your child with selective mutism

When my son was about 3 we went to the dentist. Knowing his proclivity for anxiety and tantrums, I went to the library and took out every picture book about going to the dentist I could find. (My graduate program included a class that emphasized bibliotheraphy for children, a fact for which I am ever so grateful.) For four weeks we read stories about the dentist every day. There was a wonderful Mr. Rodgers one that had photos of the chair and equipment. There was Dr. Seuss' Tooth Book, H.A. Rey's Curious George Goes to the Dentist and I think a William Steig one, too. He still had to have his first and second visits done while sitting in my lap. There were tears and not a lot of dental work. At the end of the second visit, I brought my camera and we took pictures of him in the chair, waiting room, and on the walk going into the building- no not three pictures, probably about 15 as we went through all the stages of the physical environment. After that, the dentist became no big deal. We looked at the pictures before the visit, read one story and that was enough. Angela E. McHolm, Charles Cunningham, and Melanie K. Vanier's book, Helping Your Child with Selective Mutism: Practice Steps to Overcome a Fear of Speaking, shares that photos are a useful way to help children with selective mutism deal with anxiety related to new places or events as well.

One thing I liked about this book is chapter 11: Factors that may influence progress. They indicate that shy or anxious temperament, duration of the mutism, severity of the mutism, poor peer connections between school and home, challenges related to maintaining momentum, age and developmental level all will influence progress. So my homeschooled teenage student who has not spoken a word in nearly three years, interacts with no peers and has anxiety issues, will be extremely difficult to break out of the mutism cycle. Unfortunately, they do not offer tips on how to deal with a confluence of features that make the disorder difficult to treat.

The point I do think the book offers as a critical take away is the maintenance of a journal for the parents. If parents are the key to getting over mutism, they need their role acknowledged and reinforced. A notebook offers them the opportunity to record progress, set backs and thoughts. It enables them to keep a record of what is going on. This could be especially useful for those dark moments when it seems like the tunnel is a bottomless pit and you are not getting anywhere but the center of the earth. It also allows for a set record of interventions, especially when providers change. The notebook or record file is an essential piece of any parent's special education file, it is doubly true if parents are directing the treatment plan.

Similar to Helping Your Anxious Child, the authors describe creating a ladder of progressively difficult steps for the child to master. These steps must address the people, location and activity involved and only one must be changed at a time. They emphasize the importance of creating achievable challenges in which children are unlikely to fail to communicate because failure is likely to result in  backsliding not perseverance at a difficult skill. I liked the idea of creating situations where a reward can be given, not for speaking, but for a task in which the child speaks. For example, reward for reading out loud not for speaking or play a game of TV tag where the child must say a TV show to be unfrozen. The event includes speaking, but it is not the speaking that receives the reward, but the reading or the game play. Crafting situations that are authentic and are not seen as rewarding communication per say may take some thought, but it can be done. In my math instruction, I am not getting excited about communication, but I do reward pointing to a yes or no icon after a
question is asked with support in solving the problem the child is flummoxed by.

I am increasingly amazed at the complexity of this disorder and the apparent lack of professional medical support available to this family. Actual centers exist for the treatment of selective mutism. Sadly, there is not one here locally.

Helping your anxious child

Anxiety and autism spectrum disorders go hand in hand as it does selective mutism. Since these are two of my current research areas, when I found Ronald M. Rapee, Ann Wignall, Susan H. Spence, Vanessa Cobham and Heidi Lyneham's book, Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents, Second Edition, I was intrigued with how it might be useful in my practice. The book is aimed at helping parents help their children. For children reluctant to work with service providers, this program could be remarkably helpful.

The book focuses on a couple of strategies:

• Identifying anxious feelings with words and the strength of them
• Linking feelings with thoughts and actions
• Detective thinking to identify unrealistic thinking.
• Assertiveness and social skills training for children lacking in these skills
• Step ladders to plan desensitization
• Relaxation training

Before teaching children how to engage in these activities, the authors propose that the parents engage in them, especially if they have anxiety issues themselves. This gives parents insights to the challenge of resetting behavior and helps them develop skills that they will be teaching their children. Worksheets to supplement the activities are available both in the book and online.

One of the pieces that I thought was particularly helpful was the section on parental reaction to anxious behavior. The authors identify excessive reassurance, being too directive, permitting or encouraging avoidance and becoming impatient as normal but not helpful reactions. They recognize rewarding brave, non-anxious behavior, ignoring unwanted behavior, prompting constructive coping and modeling brave non-anxious behavior as productive reactions. They also caution that consistency, emotional control and distinguishing between anxious and naughty behavior as essential to productive action.

I think the concept of distinguishing between anxious and naughty behavior is perhaps the most challenging. When is my teenage son acting like a typical teenager, pushing limits and resisting parental input and when is he acting like an anxious aspie? I know that I get this wrong sometimes, but I also recognize how critical this is. As a parent I need to set limits and have expectations. I also need to recognize that inappropriate behavior is sometimes caused by his disability. For him, tears are an indicator that this an aspie moment, but I do not want to push him to tears to check what we are dealing with on a consistent basis. Detective work on my part is important to know what typically is a challenge for him because of his disability and what is a challenge for him because of his teenagerness. I suppose one of the key features is to give myself permission to get it wrong sometimes because I will.

Why "A" students work for "C" Students

Robert T. Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame wrote a book for parents, Why "A" students work for "C" Students and "B" Students Work for the Government. Warning: if you are liberal in your political leaning, you may find many issues with his premise. He believes that schools fail to provide a sound financial education to students because a) they don't know how and b) they are incented to keep students ignorant of financial education so that the government can benefit from their ignorance. He describes this book as a manual for financial education for parents to help them teach their children. Individuals with a sound basic financial education, he proposes, have an unfair advantage over those who do not.

Kiyosaki points out that the top 1% of income earners pay nearly 40% of all income taxes and the bottom 50% pay only about 3% of all income taxes. That leaves the majority of the tax burden (approximately 57%) to fall on the middle class. Both Democrats and Republicans, he asserts, want to save the middle class because they pay the taxes that support the hulking governmental machines that compose these groups.

Kiyosaki divides earnings into four quadrants: E- employees; S- self employed; I- investment; and B- business owners. Taxes are highest in the E and S quadrants. Government need highly capable people to put money into investments and it needs people to start and own those large corporations to hire the other people and house their populace. That is why large business owners do not pay high taxes- the alleged "loop holes" people complain of. They are doing the work that the government wants done, so they are rewarded. The author assert the unfair advantage starts with understanding this concept and going from there.

I listened to the audio version of this book. It is particularly suited to an audio format because the pace is slow, the content not dense and the book includes lots of repetition. It almost seems as if the book was meant to be read out loud rather than read silently.

While you may not agree with many of his theories, the book does offer some thoughts on how to look at financial education and understand that schools do not offer this concept. At our district they instituted a Finance Tech class which appeared to be light on finance and high on tech- how to use Excel, Publisher and Word. (Fortunately we only offer a one semester computers class in middle school to teach the Microsoft suite, so the kids cannot possibly be expected to have learned them.)  They did not teach about insurance or debt, but did make a poster that used a list of Word special features for an activity of interest. If we truly want to avoid another financial meltdown we need to teach kids about debt, assets and liabilities, not how to make pretty posters with curved text, multiple text effects, and pretty pictures.

We need to teach them about college education being something that enhances your lifetime earnings only if you have a skill associated with it. Expensive college degrees in liberal arts can result in significantly lower lifetime earnings than a two year associates degree. All college debt is not created equal. If a child needs to take remedial classes because he did not apply himself in high school or the standards at the school were too low, the courses should not be taken at a four year institution. Parents who carry debt or pay for such things are not helping their kids, they are perpetuating the problem.

Kiyosaki does not see the picture as impossible. He believes that people with the unfair advantage of a financial education can be successful and should be more successful than those who do not have such an advantage. He argues that schools should change, but that the rate of bureaucratic change is slow and teaching your children ahead of the curve will give them the unfair advantage that may enable them to become truly rich. Mostly, he argues, that if we do not begin the path to change, our country will farther and farther away from capitalism and closer and closer to socialism and economic ruin.

Having a disability and having money

As a mom of a child with a disability, I am currently looking at how to help my child transition to the adult world. Unfortunately, his school has not risen to the challenge of teaching him the emotional-social skills he needs to be a productive adult. He has been allowed to put in minimum input so long as he does not tantrum. School work and requirements have been modified so that he is not stressed. Now as he nears graduation, he does not handle stress any better than he did five years ago. He will need the benefits of public support for at least some time. Current guidelines for assets while receiving disability payments are capped at $2000. That includes a car. If he earns money, that will come out of his payments which are capped at $1200 per month for the most disabled. They stopped even telling parents that this amount was to cover clothes- just food and housing. Well-intentioned people leaving money to these individuals have it all going to the state rather than paying for extras like clothes and transportation. Finally a new bill is before Congress to change this; to allow some savings and assets so that the choices are available. My son has been deprived of learning how to be independent at school. We should not deprive him of an opportunity to learn how to work and earn at least some of a living. Read about the bill.

Supporting struggling readers and writers

So much of the job of the resource room teacher is supporting struggling readers and writers. The advent of the Common Core has just increased this emphasis. Dorothy S. Strickland, Kathy Ganske, and Joanne K. Monroe's book Supporting Struggling Readers and Writers: Strategies for Classroom Interventions 3-6 is designed to help teachers meet the needs of these students. The book has two parts. Part one consists of 9 chapters addressing two categories- general student populations (learners and contexts, motivation, ELL, and instructional intervention frameworks) and literacy topics (words, fluency, comprehension, and writing). The second part is a strategy bank. This structure is carefully developed, eminently readable and useful.

The authors call out whole class instruction as a method of reading instruction. "Whole class instruction is generally aimed at teaching subject matter rather than teaching students how to read" (p. 57). When I think about much of the common core instruction I have heard of and observed, it has involved an increase in whole class techniques and a reduction in small group and differentiated approaches. While this might be useful for covering subject matter, it tends to be less effective for improving the reading instruction of the class. Teaching reading as a whole class generally involves leaving the struggling learners behind, boring the highest students and targeting the middle. Their recommendation is to have ELA classes use small group instruction. Large group mini-lessons can be pared with small group instruction in reading. If we want to improve reading skills, we need to teach reading skills within a student's zone of proximal development.

When we think of comprehension skills one of the critical components is the monitoring of the skill. As the authors observe, our struggling readers are least likely to recognize when comprehension breaks down and consequently, least likely to apply fix-up strategies (p. 71). I have included a graphic for comprehension monitoring strategies here. I am afraid that if we put all students into one learning group, our struggling learners will not even try. I have worked with students who decode beautifully. The problem is that they have no idea what they read. Language and/or memory issues interfere, our pushes for reading more words per minute deny the import of comprehension, and boldface terms and markers highlight the area of the text to copy so that comprehension is not a concern. Small group instruction helps target this need and teach self-monitoring. There is movement within the CCSS initiatives to address this concern and refocus on comprehension, but whether underlying issues will be addressed remains in the air.

One of the strategies suggested for developing the strength and quality of mental representations is sorts. I have used sorts in Wilson Reading System lessons with the word cards- find me the words with a long e sound or the words which end with a vowel consonant e syllable. I have also used sorts in vocabulary building- separate the words into poetry sound devices (ex. rhyme, onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance) and literary devices (ex. allusion, metaphor, personification) or terms related to  the separate branches of government (ex. legislators, senators, president, executive, Chief Justice, Supreme Court, Congress, make laws, enforce laws and impeach) or terms related to triangles (isosceles, right, equilateral, scalene, obtuse, acute, 180 degrees) and those related to quadrilaterals (square, right angle, trapezoid, kite, rectangle, rhombus, 360 degrees). They have worked well and students enjoy them. The most important part, however, the debrief, is often skipped. Students need to justify their sort. Sometimes they identify unique features that teachers did not foresee and sometimes they use misinformation that leads to correct sorting. Discussion in small groups is easy. If a whole class is working on sorts, justifications may need to be written or shared with partners.

This book offers an easily accessible source of ideas that can easily be adapted up throughout secondary instruction. Teachers need to have firmly in hand their objectives. If they are teaching reading or reading strategies, materials need to be accessible to each child, low level reading materials need to be available as well as more challenging above grade level works so that students can practice on comprehendible materials, materials at their independent reading level, where they read 90% of the words correctly and have 90% comprehension. If they are teaching content, strategies for reading are not the focus. Such strategies need to have been taught so they can be used on materials that may be more challenging for many students. If we co-mingle, lost looks are sure to be found on our struggling learners and bored to tears ones will be found on students who did not need the strategy to approach the material in the first place.

Standards of Practice for autism guide

Fred Volkmar, Matthew Siegel, Marc Woodbury-Smith, Bryan King, James McCracken, and Matthew State, the doctors who compose the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology Committee on Quality Issues, created a new edition of the Practice Parameter for the Assessment and Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in February 2014. Two of the major reasons for the revision is the new diagnostic criteria of the DSM- IV-TR and the copious quantity of research undertaken within the field.

They examined the etiology of the disorder, particularly the neurobiological and familial/genetic factors. They found a high rate of epilepsy  and some support for neurological issues, including limbic system abnormalities and neurotransmitter elevations. They confirmed a lack of support for vaccine related causes, but leave the door open for immune system concerns in some cases. They highlight risk factors of close spacing of pregnancies, advanced maternal and paternal age, and extreme prematurity. They also confirmed the evidence for multiple genes to be involved in the disorder.

Under the section related to differential diagnosis, the authors identify many assessment tools. they then go on to identify common comorbid conditions such as intellectual disabilities in 80% of all cases, behavior difficulties (ex. hyperactivity, OCD, self-injury, tics, anxiety and depression), often defined by age, and attentional difficulties.

From there they make seven recommendations:

1. early screening of all children
2. diagnostic evaluations on children who are identified in the screenings
3. multidisciplinary assessments
4. support for families to obtain appropriate, evidence-based, structured educational and behavioral interventions
5. pharmacotherapy targeting specific symptoms
6. long-term support for the family and individual for treatment
7. specific inquiries regarding alternative treatments, especially in light of the limited evidence supporting many of them

They offer an extensive listing of social-pragmatic programs and medications that have evidence to support their use. A teacher might be well served to have access to the medications listing to better understand the intention of the medications and side effects. I was pleased that sleep disturbances were identified as a concern. Many individuals and their families endure chronic sleep deprivation that must be addressed in order to improve their quality of life. Further there is support for combining medicine and parent training.

Of particular note is the multiple places where support for the family is indicated. Since autism is a disorder that has significant impact on the family especially stress levels which have been compared to soldiers in combat, professional support for families to thrive is essential. Providing wrap around services to families seems the gist.