Greg Runs the Gauntlet of the Spa Castle, Uniforms Vs. Au Natural: Fight!, To Every Horde, Turn, Turn, Turn, The Horror of Red Bumperman, The Joy of Having One’s Skin Ripped Off, and Zombie Kings.

Download Mep Report #125

Teachers are used to working with less.  Primary school teachers are used to buying basic classroom supplies out of their own salaries; secondary school teachers are used to teaching with classrooms at double or more capacity; post secondary teachers at all levels are used to ever increasing demands from multiple masters (publish now, do committee work now, teach now, advise now…everything now, or preferably yesterday).  I’ve taught at all these levels, and most of the teachers I know accept their respective situations with a shrug and a sense of humor (there’s a reason the teachers’ lounge is the most important room in any school building for the people to whom it caters).

Very few of these circumstances have changed over the years.  When my father began his teaching career in the 1950s he was confronted with the same lack of resources as teachers half a century later, faced the same questions from people outside the profession who couldn’t understand why someone with intelligence and ability would want to use it in fighting a seemingly relentless tide of ignorance and misunderstanding.  His answer was always the same: if not me, who?  That reply, and the attitude it demonstrates, has sustained the entire educational system for literally centuries.

What has changed over the past twenty years, the last eighteen of which I’ve spent teaching in some capacity or another, is the increasing hostility to those within the profession who are responsible for sustaining it…not “educators,” which is often a code for people who took business and administration courses in college and didn’t set foot in a classroom until they were somehow expected to be responsible for assessing how it was run, but teachers, the ones on the front lines.  Teachers, we have been told, are an increasingly outdated class, a group of lazy ne’er do wells who get holidays and summers off and—if given that favorite whipping boy of the anti-education right, tenure—can teach their radical political positions (what those positions are is never explained, except it’s always part of the vast left wing conspiracy) with impunity.  That these criticisms come largely from people in business, who know as little about teaching as I do about profit and loss statements, or people whose own educational experiences wouldn’t exactly prepare them to make informed comments (like half term Alaska governors whose knowledge of geography begins and ends with Google Maps, for instance), is immaterial.  The fading educational system is the fault of those damned shiftless teachers, the ones indoctrinating our youth into further lazy habits.

Blame the teachers, goes the logic, and you’ll create accountability.  Demand higher test scores—which, against all evidence to the contrary, are apparently perfect indicators of the quality of a student’s education—and berate, harass and fire the teachers whose classes don’t perform, and you’ll see a change.  Stop coddling the unionized elite, who sip tea and sneer at the unwashed masses desiring only a chance at a better life, and you’ll have a leaner, more responsive work force, grateful for employment and willing to work any amount of hours to get the job done right.  It’s a compelling narrative, made more effective by the anti-intellectual sentiment which has always circulated in America.  It’s aggressive, and forceful, and satisfying.

It’s unfortunate that it’s utterly wrong.

First of all, solutions like the ones described above—test more and if the scores don’t get better, throw the bums out—oversimplify things to an incredible degree, a common tactic of right wing critics who don’t do nuance.  You’re either with us or against us, right?  Either students are good or bad.  There’s no in-between, no gray area, no difficult territory to navigate.  They need to test better.

But there are literally hundreds of problems with this argument—here are two:

1.  Students aren’t “good or bad,” if we even know what that means.  Students are good at different things, to begin with, and many of those things aren’t measurable in a strict academic sense.  How do you assess a student who can’t solve algebraic equations to save his life but is a natural leader, who is drawn to protecting those weaker than himself and whose presence entirely eliminates the problem of bullying in a classroom?  How about an exceptionally gifted writer whose physical skills—like not being hit in the face with a volleyball in gym class—seriously leave something to be desired?  Or an extraordinary musician who loves math and science, but left interest in English and history behind with her sixth grade graduation?

2.  Tests teach NOTHING.  They are useless for everything but a very specific form of assessment, determining how well a student performs on that particular kind of exam.  Of all the tools in a teacher’s arsenal, they are the least valuable in any real educational sense.  They serve a very, very limited pedagogical purpose.  Yet they have now become the mantra from business executives used to performance reviews and evaluations who need more data, more information points, more reasons to yell at, demean and threaten the teachers on whose shoulders rests the survival of education at all.  This creates an environment in which teaching to the test becomes the order of the day, and other far more important educational outcomes—like fostering creativity, intellectual curiosity and a desire to learn and grow—are cast aside as too “vague” and “untestable.”  Perhaps the greatest irony of this statement is that it never questions the sanctity of the assessment itself; the fault must be with the things being assessed.  This is wagging the dog with a vengeance.

But beyond the issues of oversimplification and the utter inability of tests to magically solve the problems of education, what is so galling about the new attack against the teaching profession is how it takes those most important to (simultaneously most ignored by) the system and demonizes them as a class…with literally no evidence to support the position beyond unproven and easily refuted anecdotes about the teacher who never comes to work and doesn’t treat Billy like he’s special.  This for a group of people whose qualifications put them on a par with educated people in any profession, but whose salaries put them on a lower middle class / high poverty track at best.  It would hardly be surprising if this relentless attack did drive away the most able into other jobs where respect is the rule, not the exception; it’s a testament to the passion and drive of most teachers that this hasn’t yet happened, but it’s foolish to believe things can continue this way without consequences.

What, then, can be done?  A few suggestions:

1.  Stop the attack on the front lines of education.  Develop a system of teacher evaluation based on scientific study and pedagogically sound practice—and incorporate teachers, who have been willing for decades to do this, into the process.  Get rid of the few bad apples, which certainly exist, but focus the effort on teacher development and support rather than enhancing mutual suspicion between teachers and the surrounding community.  (And stop the attack on unions, which is neither accurate nor related to the larger problems facing education.)  Think outside the box, and while you’re at it abandon the principles which may be applicable to profit-driven business but have nothing to do with a system which is about shaping human beings, not number crunching for the sake of a bottom line.  There’s plenty of that latter kind of thinking in every other walk of modern American life.

2.  Start thinking about how to make education more effective for students, not parents, teachers, administrators, or the rest of the peanut gallery.  Start by rejecting the “test everything” mentality and relegate it to where it belongs—a very limited, specific purpose in educational pedagogy.  Think about assessment in much broader terms—terms which consider students as the individuals they are rather than the categories modern education is all too eager to name them.  Bring teachers and parents together in the common service of the child, rather than the adversarial purposes of a political class which feeds on division and discord for its own ambitious purposes.

3.  Decrease class sizes.

4.  Have administrators come from the ranks of teachers again, rather than pursuing a separate track in which classroom experience is minimized and theoretical devotion lionized.

5.  Increase teacher salaries, from the embarrassing level at which they currently sit to the professional level which is appropriate.

6.  Most of all, tone down the rhetoric.  Tough talk is cheap, and in easy supply these days.  But when the microphone is shut off and the cameras stop rolling, the fundamental issues facing the modern student and teacher remain, and no amount of red-faced yelling and fist pounding will correct them.  If we all strive for the humility to know how and what we can do, and think of education as a collaborative effort rather than a large scale game of passing the buck, we might be able to start addressing the problems we face at their core.

Those core problems have never been the teachers, in the 1550s, the 1950s, or now.  It’s high time we stopped treating them that way.

(Cross posted from www.gregoryawilson.com)

Lecturing Prison Gangs, Michael Richards Riot Redux, Fantasy Theater of the Abhorrent, Know Your Audience, Don’t Celebrate Mediocrity; Celebrate the Jersey Shore, Malnourished Pet Superheroes, And the Legend of Ten Fists and the Lost Soul Fragments.

Download Mep Report #122

Okay, so little babies like to take their socks off….and that is just so annoying because who wants a sock-less baby? That’s about as bad as a baseball player without a codpiece.  So we gotta do something about that–and now we can, thanks, again, to our friends at One Step Ahead (those friends who are always…one step ahead of us…).

We can buy straps that will keep those suckers on.  No matter how those little rascals pull, their socks aren’t coming off!

…Er…

Okay, I’ll say it.  What’s the over/under on how long it would take for a baby to become clinically insane from the intense frustration of not being able to remove their socks?  Am I the only one that doesn’t have a baby that would just say, “Oh! It appears that these things don’t seem to come off…oh well, I guess I’ll just continue to stare at the ceiling.”

Okay, so your son is a bed wetter…my condolences…so you make him wear underwear that has a “comfortable” sensor pad that connects to a “tiny” alarm that you can clip to his pajama top.  Any time he has an accident during the night, the alarm will be triggered and will let out a “distinctive warbling sound” that will get his attention.  Um.  As a parent, who has survived the first two years of having a baby (a time period where you are kicked headlong into the depths of sleep deprivation), I would like to recommend that you don’t wake your sleeping child up with a loud warbling sound.  I want to save you from wasting your time and money, because unfortunately “due to health reasons” One Step Ahead cannot accept returns of this product.

In a recent episode of Handy Manny titled “Home Sweet Home,” a neighborhood child plays a dangerous game of duck, duck, goose called “nut, nut, bolt” with the tools (click on the episode title, watch or skip intro, and then click the scroll bar to -03:22 to see the abhorrent scene).

For too long babies who had plagiocephaly were the only ones who had to wear headgear.  They were “special” babies who needed to have a little help to make sure their head shape turned out normal as they grew.

Now, thanks to a new product on the market, “special” parents can put their babies in headgear too.  The Thudguard ensures that their babies will not lose brain cells bumping their heads against furniture like everyone elses babies; in a sense leveling the future playing field one fall at a time.

They say it trains boys up to “two months faster.”  I think I’d rather take the two months, but I’ve never potty-trained a boy before, so what do I know.

We have a problem people.  Babies like to show-off their bellies.  Well, we can’t stand for it anymore and OneStepAhead is helping us end it.  Let me introduce you to “Sta-tuct” and the end of baby shirts going above your baby’s belly.

Well, they’ve done it.  Bach, the makers of “Rescue Remedy,” have solved the problem of kids’ fear of failure.  Meet “Confidence Remedy”

the new addition to the Bach Kids line.  It can give your kids that “natural boost to aid in overcoming frustrating obstacles of self-doubt.”

So, to all those parents afraid of following in your parent’s footsteps by verbally abusing your child and shattering their self-esteem…Worry No More!  Just add a drop of this alcohol-free formula to their morning cereal and you’re good to go!

Also available, “Daydream Remedy,” for those neglected children who spend their whole day dreaming of what it would be like to have a caring, supportive family with whom they could spend quality time.

In other news, spanking is remarkably ineffective at changing the behavior of baby lab rats.

Here’s the thing – most children don’t understand what it is about their behavior that is incurring the wrath of their parent(s). Children embrace the world and do whatever it is that they think is interesting, usually changing their mind every seven seconds. To sprinkle this exploration with periodic rhythmic beatings only aids their perception that the world is random and cruel.

I’m never the biggest fan of watching parental discipline in a grocery store or other public setting, but watching someone actually hit their child who is younger than five is one of the most shocking things I’ve actually witnessed. And yet many people think it’s just part of the show.

My favorite quote in this article, though, has to be this:
“Some remain unconvinced that parents should never spank their children. Robert Larzelere, associate professor of human development and family science at Oklahoma State University, conducted a meta-analysis of 26 studies on the subject, and found that, overall, spanking seemed more effective than 10 of 13 alternative disciplinary methods for getting a child to behave or do as asked.”

I just love that “more effective” is the rubric prescribed. I wonder what if the three more effective methods included threatening to kill the child or depriving them of sustenance. After all, we all know that implementing the death penalty for shoplifting would be “effective” at reducing incidents of the crime.

I’m willing to guess, though, that the #1 effective method, even in that study, was having a detailed conversation with the child about the nature of their misdeed. If only we started applying our more enlightened parenting methods to criminal “justice”.

Great story from the Consumerist about a New England Mom who feeds an entire family of children, dogs, and birds for less than $10 a week.

FYI, she does not accomplish this feat by slowly feeding the bird to the dog while slowly feeding the dog to the children. Apparently, Kathy Spencer is a coupon savant, and has fine tuned the art of discount shopping into something more akin to Subversive Promotional Manipulation.

This is a worthwhile skill set to have.

Fun fact I learned is that dimples are a dominant gene.  If one parent has a dimple, they say its guaranteed that the child will have a dimple.  So, just think…some time in the future…almost all of us will have dimples and then smooth cheeks will be considered cute and worthy of a cheek pinch!

Well, it inspired me to find out what else is dominant and I don’t understand what mother nature has in mind for the future of appendages.

Check it out!

MEP Report photographers have acquired this exclusive photo.

To confirm the reports, prior to posting this blog entry, MEP analysts compared the photo to a series of recent photos of Jon.

The resemblance is clear, says Dr. Russell Gooberman, MEP Report face analyzer.  “To see the resemblance,” explained Dr. Gooberman on a 4^th of July phone call from the south of France, “focus your attention on the nose and how it curves into the cheeks.  It has a 9 resemblance rating.  Then the jaw line and shape of the mouth, it goes without saying.  I would add, noting first that this isn’t my field, that the microphone technique is even spot on.  Although you’d have to speak to Dr. Storey Clayton, MEP Report microphone technique analyzer, to confirm that.”

“Definitely, the same,” said Dr. Clayton via email from the south of Iceland, “as a rough estimate, please don’t quote me, I’d say a 97.5% spot-on rating.”  “It is definitely closer than the microphone technique of any of the other pipsqueaks.”  (Icelandic children are often referred to as pipsqueaks.)

A Cracked contributor really let Carlos Mencia have it in this in-depth analysis of Mecia’s Twittering habits…

Poor guy. No one wants to mock his unjustified celebrity anymore. What did he ever do to deserve this? I mean, other than riding on the coattalis of his famous mother, and stealing other comics’ material…

This low-budget ridiculousness brought to you by crap purveyor, Everything is Terrible.

Senavene April 2008

A year ago, I took Senavene to the post office.  She was strapped to my front wearing all pink, half covered in a pink blanket, with a pink pacifier in her mouth.  Why?  We were given LOTS of pink, I swear.  I put “yellow please” on the registry, but I don’t think anyone paid attention.

Anyways, what did the teller ask me?  “How old is he?”  How old is HE?

After 14 months of this, I can honestly say I don’t care that people continue to call her a boy.  I’m told it’s common for babies with very little hair.  Most moms tape a bow to their daughter’s bare heads.  But honestly I don’t care.  I simply respond by telling them how old she is.  I’m more fascinated by how someone’s brain would ignore all the social clues in the form of pink paraphernalia and use the male pronoun.  Not only that, they quite often also say that “he is really beautiful.”  I can’t blame them.  I mean she is gorgeous.

Sent image to Wilhelmina kids, but no response...sigh, there's goes her College Fund

But again, I digress.  My question is: are most people stupid or are their brains on auto-pilot and make errors because there is no gender neutral pronoun?  People can’t say “how old is it?”  That would piss any parent off.  So, they either need a gender neutral pronoun or come up with some convoluted phrasing that sounds weird — “how old is your baby?”  “Pardon me, have you any Grey Poupon?”

So to continue the sexism, SNL came up with a skit focusing on MALE bald babies.  Because don’t we all feel bad for the bald male babies?

Pay no mind to creating something for the poor, misunderstood FEMALE bald babies.  Well not any more, thanks to the mental prowess of the fine people at Baby Bangs.  So, which one do you think we should get?  We’re taking votes.  I think I’m liking “Fairy Tale Flowers.”

Many other shows, on the other hand, do not, and this makes for either annoying or embarrassingly funny moments. Hence, this post thanks to the show “My Friend Rabbit” that our Tivo recorded thinking we might like it and that I watched, then deleted before showing Senavene because it’s retarded and stupid. But before deleting it, I made you a little edited clip. I hope you enjoy. Whether you see what I see and giggle your *&$% off…or you don’t see what I see and enjoy the educational cartoon…either way…enjoy. Please note, that if you are one of those that sees what I see, I highly recommend watching it again and again, each time catching more little silly moments fitting the theme.

I’ve heard there’s an uproar about Nadya Suleman having octuplets.  So, as the resident MEP mother I thought I should weigh in and risk putting my hugely opinionated, extremely feathery opinion out there.  However, I don’t want to single out Suleman.  Yes I know she’s mentally unbalanced and will soon channel all of Storey’s and Russ’ tax money into more Angelina Jolie lip implants (this should be reason enough to dispise her for ruining my bisexual Jolie fantasies).  However, that’s not why we should be alarmed and therefore we should not only focus on her.

I would like to speak about all parents that have more than four children…on purpose.  Everyone from Suleman to my neighbor with his seven kids and five babies’ mommas.  Now, I say four with the assumption that there are two parents: mom/dad, mom/mom, dad/dad, cheech/chong.  Since Suleman demonstrates that even single parents can be irresponsible, I will say two children per parent.  Think of it as the “holding the hands” theory (copyright pending).  You can only have one child for each hand.  Please note that I am still in negotiations with the Amputee Coalition to see how best to integrate their members into my theory.

Moving on.  Why do I feel this way?

1) Because as a mother of one, I can tell you that if you have too many children, you cannot give each of them the amount of time and attention that they require.

2) Because as a former child of two neglectful parents, I can tell you that if you cannot give each of them the amount of time and attention they require, then you are neglecting them.

3) Because as a former social worker and mandated reporter, I can tell you that if you neglect your children, you are abusing them.

During a “Today” interview last december, the mother from “17 (no wait 18) and counting” said the following idiotic statement: “saying there’s too many children is like saying there are too many flowers. You just can’t have too many.”  She then finished with a plug for their forthcoming episode airing that evening.  Well, to Michelle, I would like to respond.  Yes…Yes, there can be too many flowers.

1) Yes, flowers are precious and therefore deserve as much attention as we can give them.  Since there are only 24 hours in the day, mathematics tell me that more flowers=less time with each flower.  Please note that gardeners also need time for themselves and time with other gardeners so that they can continue to grow as gardeners and ensure that their gardening relationship continues to grow.  This metaphor might be getting away from me.  Therefore I must give a reference.

2) You know what else is precious?  Animals, humans, trees, oceans, hot tubs…oh my, how I could go on.  Anyway, guess what?  If you have too many flowers, the earth can’t sustain all those other forms of life/joy.  An all-flower covered earth might make a nice tree ornament (yes, oh yes they exist), but I wouldn’t want the real thing.

3) You know what else we can have too many of?  Parents that have more children than they can take care of.  I don’t think TLC and the viewing audience can feed them all.  Nor can the donations of strangers or the tax dollars of your neighbors.

So a suggestion to all those considering having your fifth, six, or nineteenth child: there’s a nursery (no, not that kind) right down your street.  Buy some flowers, plant them, and spend your “extra” time with them…when you’re not attending to the children you already have.  An overburdened health care system thanks you.

“The worst thing you can do for your baby is let the symptoms of WET-D go unchecked. If your baby continues to cry repeatedly, it’s a sign that more medication is required.”

(Cross-posted at StoreyTelling.)

I guess these days it would more likely go by something like the No-Shit Show, but I didn’t swear at that point in my high school career. The swearing would come later, with the jading experiences and the pathological liar and the hey-hey-hey.

So my own submission to the Bureau today is this stunning study:
Apparently, misbehaving teens may be at risk for major adulthood problems.

Really?

Why would people who tend to have trouble continue to tend to have trouble? Isn’t it more likely that their trouble would suddenly vanish for no reason? Wouldn’t their magical conversion to the age of majority instantly convey a restart of all past indiscretions?

I’m glad people spent the money it costs to track 3,500 people for 40 years to give us this scintillating information. Much better than trying to cure cancer or something inane.

So now I’m left having to try to meet moms at the park.  I feel like I’m trying to pick them up:

“You live around here?”

“Come here often?”

“Know of any fun things to do around here?”

“So, can I have your number?”

Sigh…I need to start a dating service for stay-at-home moms.  Ewomb.com