Why I Teach for America

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Friday January 20, 2012 · 8:02 AM PST

2012/01/20 · 08:02

...and why you should too.

First of all I am not talking about the highly profitable non-profit known as “Teach for America” or TFA, an organization which sends “corps members” (their words) into poor schools doing very little for children (as demonstrated by peer-reviewed research) but definitely making the executive board very, very rich...using your tax dollars to boot!

Corps members, no matter how good their intentions may be, are not teachers any more than an undergraduate with 5 weeks of training is a doctor or a lawyer or a masseuse, all of which require some sort of extended period of training before earning a license.

I’m not talking about that TFA because I’ve already problematized it here, and here, and too many to count have done stellar jobs debunking the organization’s claims of success.

Rather, I’m talking about why I teach for the United States of America, flawed as it is with its inequitable distribution of wealth, with its war on women, with its states that engage in a white-washed ethnic cleansing that is reminiscent of the late 1600’s when it was widely acknowledged that most Americans should be kept stupid, and you could be put in jail for teaching a slave to read and write.

Why teach for such a place, and why ask others to do the same?

I teach for America because this country was made, and as it was made it can be remade, so let me stress the FOR because the America I live in today is ground zero FOR becoming the place we read about when we are children, but it won’t be that place without people such as yourself teaching it into existence.

DeweyCounts

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Sunday November 07, 2010 · 5:42 AM PST

2010/11/07 · 05:42

Dear Democratic Leadership and supporters of Democratic principles,

You want me back? You want me to phone bank? You want me to engage my neighbors in intelligent, vote-changing debate? You want me to passionately defend democratic principles and ideals?

Then increase our Social Security.

Defending Social Security, not running from it, wins the next election. A huge claim, but follow me below the fold for a novel frame-work for winning in 2012.

For more information on the importance of frames to winning elections, please read here and here.

DeweyCounts

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Wednesday April 02, 2008 · 6:07 AM PDT

2008/04/02 · 06:07

Howdee.

My name is Philip Kovacs, and I am a former teacher who teaches teachers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Inspired by this community, and with the help of one of its most prominent members, I helped start an organization dedicated to dismantling the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which has been a boon for corporate America, and continues to harm students, teachers, and schools.

You may have seen our petition, which now has 34,000 signatures. That may not seem like many, but if we could all gather in your front yard, you’d take notice.

Please jump with us, we have something we’d like to share with you.

DeweyCounts

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Thursday December 06, 2007 · 9:32 AM PST

2007/12/06 · 09:32

As I have written elsewhere, children must be prepared to become individuals who can realize and then maintain a participatory democratic social order.

Below the fold, you’ll find our 15 point plan for realizing a system of "public" education that has the potential to help communities implement curricula more favorable to life, liberty, community, and happiness.

I’d love to hear how this plan complements the work of your preferred candidate.

DeweyCounts

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Thursday April 26, 2007 · 10:51 AM PDT

2007/04/26 · 10:51

From Wikipedia:

Propaganda is a type of message aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of people. Often, instead of impartially providing information, propaganda can be deliberately misleading, or using fallacies, which, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid. Propaganda techniques include: patriotic flag-waving, glittering generalities, intentional vagueness, oversimplification of complex issues, rationalization, introducing unrelated red herring issues, using appealing, simple slogans, stereotyping, testimonials from authority figures or celebrities, unstated assumptions, and encouraging readers or viewers to "jump on the bandwagon" of a particular point of view.

DeweyCounts

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Saturday March 31, 2007 · 5:53 AM PDT

2007/03/31 · 05:53

This Diary will attempt to flesh out the first five tenets of a democratic education as called for last Saturday. If you want a much more detailed explanation (and sources for all of the quotes), you can download and read the third chapter of this document.

The first five tenets:

Authority for shaping goals lies in the hands of the people.

Education is political.

Democratic participation requires a specific type of voice and literacy.

Justice, while elusive, is worth striving for; injustice, when discovered,requires action.

Education is more than job training.

DeweyCounts

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Tuesday March 27, 2007 · 9:54 AM PDT

2007/03/27 · 09:54

Your op/ed in yesterday's Washington Post indicates a serious misreading of what is going on in America's classrooms. While your goal of helping all children is noble, the way you have chosen to go about doing so harms children of all races and socio-economic levels. For example, over the past five years dropouts have increased and segregation approaches pre-1954 levels.

Testing will not solve these problems.

The increased testing you call for rests on misguided assumptions (at best) and will only create more problems for our schools, as we've shown here.

DeweyCounts

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Saturday March 24, 2007 · 6:00 AM PDT

2007/03/24 · 06:00

xposted at educatorroundtable.net

During my first year of graduate school I read 2 books that changed my life forever: John Dewey's Democracy and Education and George Counts' The Education of Free Men in American Democracy.

For those of you who don't have the time to read both, I can soundbyte them for you: if we don’t educate with democracy in mind, we’ll never have democracy.

If we wish to have perpetual terror, perpetual fear, perpetual rat-racing towards faster cars, thinner women, longer/harder erections, less respect for the elderly, less respect for children, less-competent representatives, fewer rights, fewer freedoms, and genuinely more of what the Bush administration gives us, then our schools are doing fine.

If we want something much different for our children, for our communities, and for the world, then it is time to do as teacherken suggests and realize a radical different approach to how we teach, how we learn, and who we trust to help us with both...

DeweyCounts

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Monday February 26, 2007 · 6:02 AM PST

2007/02/26 · 06:02

Free and in the south on March 17th?

We have invited educators from across the country to join us in discussing how to free schools from a myopic focus on testing and data, replacing a standardized model with one that allows for the diversity and innovation that this country once valued.

Towards that end, we’ll be asking:

What would our schools look like if we listened more to students and teachers?

Where do we draw the line between responsibility and accountability?

How do we reconnect schooling with our communities?

Why should we have public schools in the first place?

Can there be "public" schools without private schools?

Why, exactly, can’t we have vouchers?

If not NCLB, then what?

How do we make that happen?

DeweyCounts

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Wednesday February 21, 2007 · 9:20 AM PST

2007/02/21 · 09:20

Last week the Aspen Institute issued a report suggesting that what the country needs is more of the same: tougher standards, harsher penalties, more private ownership of public schools. No major publication questioned whether or not tougher standards have been scientifically proven to raise test scores.

They haven’t.

No major publication questioned whether or not scientific studies show that tougher sanctions for failing schools helps those schools improve.

They don’t.

No major publication questioned the science behind the Aspen report's call for "failing" public schools to house private tutoring firms.

There isn't any.

No major publication questioned the Aspen report’s attack on teachers, as if teachers are the only problem in America’s schools.

They aren’t.

DeweyCounts

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Tuesday January 16, 2007 · 3:34 PM PST

2007/01/16 · 15:34

My dream school sits at the headwaters to the Tennessee River. It’s called the Downstream Academy.

Or better yet...my dream school sits on the seventh story of a building in the middle of downtown Atlanta. Perhaps above a restaurant or an auto mechanics shop.

The "school" on top of the "restaurant."

DeweyCounts

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Saturday December 16, 2006 · 5:42 AM PST

2006/12/16 · 05:42

In 3 weeks the Educator Roundtable has collected over 20,000 signatures on its petition to end No Child Left Behind. We are extremely grateful to this community for its support in our endeavor. Our organization continues to gain support and to make progress.

Today I want to extend my last diary entry, which focused on one teacher’s story about the conditions of her school. I want to argue that the architects and supporters of this legislation intended to drive teachers such as her out of schools. In case you missed that: NCLB was crafted to drive certain types of teachers, such as those willing to complain about corporate dictates, out of schools.

I hope you will stick with me, as we cannot have anything remotely resembling a participatory democracy without citizens prepared to maintain it, and we will not have citizens capable of maintaining this country in a state of integrity and usefulness if we don’t have highly-qualified, critical, passionate, and engaged teachers raising them to do so.

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Why I Teach for America

Run on "Social Security"

Mrs./Mr. President

On the Reformation of Public Education

Broad, Gates, and Propaganda

A Democratic Education Pt 2 (YKos Ed/Up)

Senator Kennedy: You Are Wrong

Yearly Kos: Education for Democracy

Help us end NCLB

Start Helping Children

My School

NCLB: Working Just Fine Thank You Very Much