I can’t think of a word that combines the concept of disappointment and fear—unsettling, perhaps? In any case, the Wikileaks story unfolding recently has created an uneasy feeling for me. And, it isn’t Julian Assange that concerns me.
I have been appalled at the reaction of federal officials and elected representatives to the story. Instead of coming down hard on their own people and systems that apparently allowed a 23 year old Army private to have access to a trove of diplomatic information, congressman and officials like Attorney General Eric Holder are attacking Assange. One Senator, Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, went further and included the venerable NY Times with Assange and the Wikileaks organization in his verbal attacks. He condemns both for doing what a free press is supposed to do.
An Army private easily pokes a hole in the system under which he works and finds it easy to remove just about anything he wants. That’s a decision he made, and his rear-end is rightly on the line for violating an agreement he made with his employer and government. The bigger question, though, is why the vast resources available to our federal government are not enough to protect this information it wants private. Any business over 50 employees in this country has better systems and protective software and hardware in place for its data—the tools are all available, it’s just a matter of having the wherewithal to use them.
The scary part is how our federal government is threatening Assange and Wikileaks, and, by extension, the free press and our constitutional rights. Holder and his gang are pushing for legal action against Assange. Private companies like Amazon, Paypal, Mastercard/Visa and certain internet companies are being pressured by government authorities to cease doing business with Wikileaks. It even appears as though efforts were made by our government to build cyber-attacks against Wikileaks webservers. Whether actions like this are coordinated across the federal government or not, it is frightening to realize how many people in our government are willing to trample our constitutional rights in order to protect their own interests.
Our press is not much better. Though newspapers like the NY Times have done a tremendous job disseminating the Wikileaks information and delving into the deeper meaning of the data, the majority of network and cable television news programs have instead focused entirely on the sound bites and drama from Washington. There have been cyber-attacks by third party hackers associated with the “Anonymous” group against private businesses who abandoned Wikileaks. Yet, many of these news programs equated the third party hackers with Wikileaks, implying that it was Wikileaks doing the hacking. So, our free press is most loudly supporting our government’s view of the story, rather than doing its own investigation or seeking depth and detail. If not for our print media this story would be entirely about Assange as outlaw.
Going mostly unnoticed is the information that has come out of these leaks. Anyone reading in the NY Times and other papers what has been exposed about government actions documented in these leaks should be taken aback. The money trails, the secrets that shouldn’t be secrets, the public lies, and all the diplomatic and military shenanigans documented in these leaks show a federal government consumed by its own power and influence.
Where is the outrage against those government officials and elected representatives who are so eager to push aside constitutional rights for their own interests? Why is the press so incapable, excepting a few heroic efforts, of correctly telling a story that threatens to shake the foundation on which they stand? How is it that in this country, of all places, our government can go to such extremes to protect its own power and so many of the public are blissfully unaware of the significance?
A recent article in the NY Times about college fees and federal aid for students caught my eye. One problem with the press is that they are apparently no longer capable of questioning even the most basic assumptions. When we frame an issue in limited terms or we use inexact or undefined language the result is often a poor understanding of the reality we are discussing. This article is a good example.
A breakout box in the printed version on October 28, 2010 declares: “Increased federal spending on education has helped keep costs down.” Really? I would argue the exact opposite. What the writer meant is that the amount of federal aid for students has maintained an even higher pace than the ever-increasing costs of college. What I would point out is that we have confused cause and effect. It isn’t that college fees are rising and the federal government is responding with higher aid assistance. Rather, it is that college fees are following the higher aid amounts.
This isn’t difficult to comprehend. Prices rise in response to demand. Increasing government aid for students has created far more demand than would exist in an unmolested market. Just imagine how many students would drop out of their courses if the federal money stopped flowing. Without the federal aid, thousands upon thousands of college students could not afford to be where they are. Don’t you think the following year there would be more competition among colleges for a shrinking pool of students? Don’t you think that the competition would manifest itself in lower prices or higher tuition aid from the colleges themselves?
College costs have been rising far above the rate of inflation for years and years. The schools have little incentive to do otherwise, since, as this Times article points out, federal aid has increased even more dramatically and the pool of students who can pay the higher prices remains strong. Colleges charge higher prices because they can. The enabler is not a suddenly wealthy customer base or a sudden increase in qualified students. The enabler is federal aid that flows from a government ignorant of the effects of its own policies.
The times article notes that over the last five years tuition and fees at public four year colleges has increased 24% and at private four year colleges 17% , yet with federal aid the net price to students has actually decreased. There are complicating factors, of course, but the prime mover here is federal aid that has enabled colleges to ignore market pressures that would otherwise exist. The breakout box should read: Increased federal spending leads to ever-increasing college fees. Whether or not an individual student has an easier time paying for his or her tuition, the bottom line is that overall college costs are rising and so is federal spending in this area. That money comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, which was not covered in this article.
I’ve got to beat this dead horse some more. An excellent article in the New York Times by Randall Stross: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality reviews some recent studies on technology and learning in children. Though some of these studies were about the use of home computers, the results are applicable to technology in schools as well. This is especially true of the “technology immersion” study out of Texas.
Some ideas in education simply won’t die, even when they are demonstrably wrong. The supposed benefit of homework for younger students is one example. Another is the runaway obsession with technology in well-off school districts based on the notion that it improves learning, usually measured by test scores. Based on the studies covered in this Times article, not only does authentic learning drop by the wayside, but test scores drop too! I find the high stakes test scores irrelevant and detrimental anyway, but the technology lust in public schools is helping to crowd out the former emphasis on reading for depth and meaning, writing that is original and persuasive, and other fundamental skills. That I do find deeply troubling.
Two recent New York Times articles discussed the ways in which addiction to electronic communication is altering how children and parents interact. [See here and also here.] The general press has not covered these ideas in any great depth so I was heartened to see these articles.
Certainly there is a very good argument to be made that children are getting shorted by parents who are consumed with their electronic gadgets. Another good argument can be made that children are missing opportunities to develop the habits and means of thinking and communicating in depth and with clarity when they are, themselves, consumed with texting and similar forms of electronic communication. What disturbs me even more, though, is the reaction of educators to these recent trends.
We’ve seen this all before, of course, when, for example, television became the norm in American households and educators claimed that they could not compete for attention with this exciting media. Now, with distractions of high-end video games, internet, cell phones, and various hand-held electronics, educators again say that they cannot compete. The answer, they claim, is to fortify schools with the same technology and to use it to replace the former means of learning that now bore students to tears.
I think that is a cop-out for educators and a damned shame for students. While I have nothing against using tools of technology to enhance learning where it truly does that, I find that many educators are simply flailing about with little direction when it comes to technology. You want to use student-written blog entries to encourage stronger writing through public dissemination and peer review? Great. The focus is on the writing and the internet based blog is merely a means to that end. However, when schools are installing tablet computers, Smartboards, Ipods, and anything else they can get their hands on without any forethought as to integration into the learning process, they are putting the cart before the horse.
Educators are more often than not so anxious about being left behind, so concerned about competing with other school districts and so insecure in their own competence that they forget their professional purpose. Instead of planning how to teach students how to read dense material for meaning, or how to orchestrate comprehensive research, or how to write in a manner that is persuasive and factual, educators panic and flit about wondering how they will hold the attention of students distracted by modern life. They convince themselves that the only way to compete for student attention is to jump on the same bandwagon and fill the classroom with the electronics and shallow, short-term processes, as if somehow it will magically work itself out.
If educators would put aside their insecurities they might recognize that learning in depth and communicating with meaning still holds intrinsic promise and reward. Students can still be interested and even entertained in work and learning that includes quality, profundity and longer term challenge. The whole point of a professional educator is to instill these sorts of habits in young students. Yet, many educators today seem bent on ignoring that promise and challenge in favor of a string of sugar-highs in their classrooms.
My local K-8 public school district, like many others, has students and parents sign a contract of sorts for “acceptable use” of district computer resources. This contract, loosely modeled after similar documents familiar to new employees at larger businesses, is sent home for students as young as first and second grade to sign. The very idea is laughable and sums up the kind of twisted thinking common to educators in our public schools. My local school district’s version is viewable here.
Before we even look at the specifics of this document, consider the big picture here. My local school district is asking elementary students to sign a binding contract for use of district “computing resources” and yet these students have no concept of what a contract is, the younger students cannot read all or even any of the contract, they cannot understand many of the concepts and words even if the contract is read to them by an adult; an fact, many of the younger students have not ever had occasion to sign their names yet! To call a written contract for elementary students developmentally inappropriate is the understatement of the year. Author Chip Wood in his excellent book Yardsticks notes that cognitive development allowing for an interest in rules and rulemaking tends to begin developing around age eleven. So, it isn’t until middle school that a student could really grasp the implication of a contract, and, as we will discuss below, that doesn’t mean that a contract is a good idea even at that age.
Parents are also asked to sign this contract, and yet the parents are not in the schools to enforce the rules in the document. Presumably the intent is to force parents to explain to their children the rules in the contract and to serve as some kind of legal notice:
“Ultimately, parents and guardians of minors are responsible for setting and conveying the standards that their children should follow when using media and information resources.”
In another part of the document it states that, other than “clarifying” standards, the district is “not responsible for restricting, monitoring or controlling the communications of individuals utilizing the network.”
In other words, the district believes it is covering its collective rear-end by having parents sign this contract. The district will open up this can of worms, but will take no responsibility for what happens next. In the classrooms parents will have no means of observing the use of these so-called “resources” and no opportunity to prevent misuse (however that is defined) by their children. Yet, the parents will be considered ultimately responsible? What, then, is the function of the educator in the classroom standing over the child?
Before we have even looked at the specific language of this document it is clear that the thinking of the educators who thrust this contract onto students and parents is heavy with self-protection and light with the purpose of educating children on a developmentally appropriate level. Glancing through some of the language in this document reveals just how utterly stupid is the thought processes of these educators.
Sprinkled throughout the contract is the idea that computer and internet access is a “privilege” and not a right. Huh? Public schools are financed by taxpayers who expect that the schools will be doing their best to educate students by whatever means is necessary and efficient. If that means the use of computers, internet access or similar tools, then so be it—but this isn’t some kind of gift to students. The students in all but the poorest areas have their own internet access, not to mention a smartphone, a computer, and all sorts of other devices. They don’t need the “privilege,” thank you anyway. More to the point, what is the basis behind the idea that a public school is bestowing a privilege or gift to students through the use of “district resources”? Those are taxpayer resources and public education is not a gift, it is required by law.
More of this contract is comical. Is a parent supposed to explain to his or her third grader what “defamatory” or “obscene” means? For that matter, do most parents know what a “proxy server” is and what it does? One section explains that student work will be published to the district’s website with a copyright notice that prohibits copying of such work without express written permission. This is irony in the extreme, considering that both students and teachers routinely copy—steal—text, images, music and sound files from internet sites for use in their Powerpoint presentations and other school work.
Let’s cut to the chase. This contract typifies the way in which public education has been poisoned by so-called educators who have anything but the education of children in their tiny little minds. You want to introduce computers and internet tools into the workflow of students? Great. These are children, not yet fully developed, so you will need to teach them the pros and cons of using such tools. They will not need assistance in the mechanics of using the software and hardware—their natural curiosity alone will do that. What they will need assistance with is determining what is true and what is not true in what they discover on the net. They will need to be taught the meaning of copyright material and the ownership of intellectual property. They will need teacher guidance on the ramifications of publishing their personal thoughts in public forums, on the analysis of information by date, accuracy and expert corroboration, and on the limitations of technology tools due to legal and physical parameters. These and similar things must be the responsibility of the professional educators who want to use these technology tools. Yes, limits are needed for children learning these tools—but those limits must be taught in formal processes and in teachable moments in the classroom not referenced in a meaningless contract and forgotten shortly thereafter.
What is happening in many public school districts like mine can be traced back three decades. As technologies become useful in the adult world of business and personal life, there is a mad rush in the schools to install the same physical infrastructure. However, it is a checkmark in a checkbox, not an educational strand with forethought and integration into curriculum. Computers? Check. Internet? Check. Email and distance learning? Check and check. Just because you give a person a complete set of the latest power tools doesn’t make him or her carpenter. And that is the trouble with these contracts. The school districts have installed tremendous amounts of power tools for use by the children but the children are not carpenters, there is little or no guidance on becoming carpenters and there is great opportunity to lose a finger or two as a result. This contract says, essentially: we are making these power tools available to students whether you like it or not, we will show them where the power buttons are located, and it will be the responsibility of parents and students to watch for their fingers, not ours. I simply wish that educators would stop thinking of children as short adults and engage in the profession they supposedly embraced.