21st Century Upton Sinclairs

 

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity. -Tom Peters
 

 

Scott McLeod's post, Cell phone cameras in the K-12 classroom: Punishable offenses or student-citizen journalism? on LeaderTalk is well worth spending some time reading, viewing and contemplating. On the post he has embedded seven videos taken covertly by students in classrooms when teachers are, to put it mildly, behaving badly. Scott poses the questions:

Do we want students bringing to public attention these types of classroom incidents? Should students be punished or applauded for filming and posting these?

These are great questions. While plenty of Scott's readers felt otherwise (read the comments!), my first thought was that this just may be the 21st century equivalent of muckraking. Upton Sinclair cleaned up the meat packing industry with the publication of The Jungle in the early 20th century. Is this the classroom's version of The Jungle? Might such citizen journalism result in educational reform?

(And no, I am not so naive to think these students are consciously emulating Ida Tarbell. My guess is that they are just being little buttheads. I see any positive fallout as being more in the realm of unintended consequences.)

However, as a result of enough student-produced hard evidence of teacher incompetence, might we see:

• Anger management classes for teachers who need it?
• An increased emphasis in staff development on creating engaging classrooms and using better classroom management techniques?
  
• Alternative placements for students who are chronically disruptive or non-productive? (Let's let the cameras roll on the other students too.)
  
• More empowered principals who can remove or take steps to improve incompetent teachers?
  

My thoughts on this are colored by some very personal considerations:

1. As a student, I got more than one teacher and administrator to lose his/her cool. And thought it was pretty funny watching some old person turn red and bellow.
   
2. As a young teacher, I had classroom moments similar to what I saw in these videos when the kids got to me. (It's tough to look in the mirror at times.) I needed and should have received help in keeping this from happening. I still feel I need to offer apologies to those poor students I had in my classes early in my teaching career.
3. I do NOT want my grandsons experiencing moments in the classroom like those shown in the videos.

Yes, students have been driving teachers nuts and teachers have been losing their cool since... well, probably since there have been students and teachers. But are we now ready to actually DO something about it?

________________________ 

In terms of the issues raised about teacher privacy rights: I am guessing the meat packing plants, insane asylums and other targets of the 20th century muckrakers all shouted "This is private!" as well. I think one could argue that classrooms are public, not private spaces. (We put cameras on school buses, yes?)  I would hope students take any evidence of teacher malfeasance to their parents and principals first,  and use YouTube only as a last resort for publicizing - and ending - the problem.

That tabloid journalism

I suppose I am the only person who missed this when it was published by The Onion back in January:

Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/area_eccentric_reads_entire_book

GREENWOOD, IN—Sitting in a quiet downtown diner, local hospital administrator Philip Meyer looks as normal and well-adjusted as can be. Yet, there's more to this 27-year-old than first meets the eye: Meyer has recently finished reading a book.

Yes, the whole thing.

"It was great," said the peculiar Indiana native, who, despite owning a television set and having an active social life, read every single page of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. "Especially the way things came together for Scout in the end. Very good."

Meyer, who never once jumped ahead to see what would happen and avoided skimming large passages of text in search of pictures, first began his oddball feat a week ago. Three days later, the eccentric Midwesterner was still at it, completing chapter after chapter, seemingly of his own free will.

"The whole thing was really engrossing," said Meyer, referring not to a movie, video game, or competitive sports match, but rather a full-length, 288-page novel filled entirely with words. "There were days when I had a hard time putting it down."

Even more bizarre, Meyer is believed to have done most of his reading during his spare time—time when the outwardly healthy and stable resident could have literally been doing anything else, be it aimlessly surfing the Internet, taking a nap, or simply just staring at his bedroom wall.

"It'd be nice to read it again at some point," Meyer continued, as if that were a perfectly natural thing to say. (Continued online at The Onion)

 

What is the real crisis in manufacturing in the USA?

The factory of the future will have only two employees: a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. Warren Bennis

According to a Minnesota Public Radio story that aired this morning, our state lost 3,800 manufacturing jobs last year - 55,000 jobs in the past  eight years. So what do manufacturers say their biggest problem is?

A lack of workers!

But not just any workers - skilled workers.

...[Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Dan] McElroy said Minnesota manufacturers tell him they're looking for workers, but not for the low skilled manufacturing jobs of the past.

"Trades like machinist, plant electricians, welders ... engineers, skilled draftsman, the technical professions," McElroy said were some of the jobs manufacturers needed to fill.

McElroy said Minnesota isn't training it's workforce at a fast enough rate to fill those jobs. He said Minnesota manufacturers should work closely with high schools, technical colleges and universities to make sure students know those jobs are available and are trained to fill them.

Is NAFTA really the problem? Or is it the inability or unwillingness for our secondary schools to offer more than just college prep programs to their students?

How do school libraries and technology departments serve kids wanting careers in the skilled trades? Do today's workers in factories need to be able to "use information and technology in order to solve problems and answer questions?"

If so, why is information and technology literacy a higher legislative priority?