And the sad fact is that this is all about people’s property values and the careerism of the administrators who pretend to “save” public education by destroying actual education in the name of better test scores. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. You want this URL instead: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/whatever_you_do-or_dream_you_can-begin_it/13527.html. Wordly and wise readers, please tell Matt exactly why he as a tenured History professor has no right to express an opinion unless and until he’s worked at South Central State Technical College as a dean. My guess is that the higher ed folks who read this blog will be flabbergasted by the crudeness of the management’s anti-intellectualism. He continued to pontificate that we are here to raise our test scores and that is to be my only focus. This wasn’t a full “home-school” program; they went to regular public school until around 2:30 and then spent a couple hours doing extra work (in addition to whatever minimal homework assignments from school-school) but he had lesson plans, workbooks, additional enrichment activities, etc. Plus advice & links on job searches, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/whatever_you_do-or_dream_you_can-begin_it/13527.html, Is there a Whole Foods in Lowell yet? (I think somebody studied this in relation to administrators in the new Jersey public schools. A man of realities. If you college instructors are wondering why your students seem so afraid of ideas and fearful of writing anything longer than a formulaic 5-paragrah essay, don’t look any futher than the Gradgrinds of the nation who are hired not to oversee the education of students, but rather to raise standardized test scores. My colleagues in Econ and Psych want all FTE allocations based on enrollments. What a jerk-bunny! Charles Dickens, wrote many memorable stories like A Christmas Carol. We have a new principal who came in for an informal eval the day I had this quote on the board. note:  Does anyone else detect a mockery or slighting of philosophy in that comment? Then he’ll have to pay more to get the same quality teachers. The time-obligation is intensive, but less so than many people who are unfamilar with unschooling imagine. But these study guides were the same as the test…. Now, even though many generalizations about homeschoolers drive me batty, one thing you *can* say about homeschooling is that it’d be a terrible solution to national educational problems- it doesn’t scale, and the people who most need things to change are also not going to be able to do homeschooling. Latin is hard, and you can’t learn it if you’re constantly being pulled out of class to review algebra or how to write a five paragraph essay. One of the many “elephants in the room” (the other is that Rhee and her ilk are corporate-backed) in the War On Teachers is that the panacea of “evaluation” is merely a way of subjecting teachers even more to the bizarre off-center education-irrelevant egomaniacal bullying of administrators. Maybe the guy didn’t get that particular memo? Teacher Hits Student in the Head With a Hammer: All righty, it is up, FWIW. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”  This quote was put on my white board for the daily “Do Now” which is a warm up  activity for students while I take roll. seq).”. (And I’ll say up front that I don’t currently teach and I live in greater Los Angeles, so even digging around for the real me won’t lead anyone to the school where this happened.) Actually, I think this guy is not modeled on Tom Gradgrind (who I always had somewhat of a perverse, contrarian regard for) as much as on Principal Poop of More Science High School in the sketch “High School Madness” on the Firesign Theatre’s iconic album _Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers_. There was an old joke in the Soviet Union that went “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”. In my place, it’s n ot dean vs. faculty, it’s faculty vs. faculty — the dean is always saying “I have to see the whole picture”. Performance & security by Cloudflare. I suppose the day is coming when high school will be taught by computers, and teachers will just be roving security guards, making sure the kids stay in their seats and do what the X-1000 tells them. Psst, your quotation URL is kind of broken, having been washed through an email server. Maybe it won’t be so controversial after all. Nobody’s paying him for THAT! Make it into a pinto bean business and try to sell as many as you can. Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it. At least people who say “Just lecture, and teach more students” recognize a relationship between cause and effect. Pingback: Is there a Whole Foods in Lowell yet? People with tenure are trading a greater measure of job security for a smaller salary. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. Sometimes the conditions of schooling are so bad that teachers who want to care and students who want to be cared for cannot form the kind of relations we would properly label caring. Subsequently when Gradgrind asks Bitzer for his definition of a horse, after Sissy cannot, he refers to Bitzer as his name and not a number like Sissy previously. For Dickens he embodies the unsympathetic qualities of the utilitarian social philosophy prevalent in Victorian But it’s just not feasible for them, and probably won’t be ever. It’s a reasonably popular solution for kids who were bullied or otherwise had a hard time in the environment of a huge public high school, for example. But we were also the kind who had no affordable suitable private school option (despite a plethora of superb independent schools in a nearby major city… that were simply financially impossible at our near-national-median family income). You and your friend should write this up and send it to History News Network.I’ll only add that this kind of craziness begins way before high school. I wish I could say something smart about it, but I can’t! Dickens says that he might have been a better teacher had he known less. [ed. I want my students to be excited to learn and to look forward to coming to class. He always, along with his teachers, used to taught the lessons about facts. I mean, it was said indirectly, but still said, and the clear implication was that I would be the one giving up the job. This principal strikes me as the kind of person who wants to come into a classroom to see teachers handing out review sheets for tests, reading notes aloud for students to copy that goes over exactly what “facts” make up the text and, if the teacher can be expected to get away with it, giving the students the answers FOR the tests. I wonder if we will lose any of our home schooling readers…, http://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/this-thread-depresses-me/, Pingback: Link love « Grumpy rumblings of the untenured. (The mindboggling part is that they did *not* all get 100%!). @Historiann,your response to Matt L. is brilliant. In fact, it was Charles Dickens who described it best. That’s where this whole braindead testing charade is headed. What a classic CYA move–how very manly, Mr. Gradgrind! Family, tradition, love, beauty were all gone in a Gradgrind world. And naturally, it’s *women* who are pressured – internally or externally – to stay home and homeschool. “I still think homeschooling is a crappy deal for everyone. In the final kicker, Bitzer, the model student, refuses every appeal for mercy and gratitude from his old headmaster. Mrs. Pegler is the mysterious woman who shows great interest in Mr. Bounderby. I am no longer angry. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers. ( Log Out /  win!. ‘She kept a chandler’s shop,’ pursued Bounderby, ‘and kept me in an egg-box. The Lancastrian System. reasonably and thoughtfully stated “Dean Historiann.” I will go perform my foucauldian/maoist self criticism at the next faculty senate meeting. My business is rather specified I shall be knowledgeable many fresh goods proper the following! Plus advice & links on job searches : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present. Excellence without money. That document’s de-mented carving of the educated imagination into the domains of “intentional learners,” “empowered learners” “informed learners” (you can’t make this stuff up) and “responsible learners” became the brainless template for our impending new general ed. That and having to take bogus ed. Losing none of his bluster, Bounderby then demands of Mr. Gradgrind an explanation for his daughter's behavior. Now that he has a full-time day job again, he’s cut back somewhat; he often says if they could afford to live on just one salary, he’d home-school them full time. What’s the world going to look like when all this test-based ignorance gets out into it and tries to work? His/her students got consistently high scores. However, reformist, Charles Dickens challenged schooling in the text Hard Times. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Gradgrind, fictional character, the proprietor of an experimental school where only facts are taught, in Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times (1854). Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a horse-riding circus entertainer, is unable to answer, but a pale young man called Bitzer gives a cut-and-dried definition that pleases Gradgrind. Also look into once more here frequently of what I want my students to be Gradgrinds require! T wait until dead dad gets his wish bean business and try to sell as many as you can with. Ve been told that history shouldn ’ t get any more lines until our. So the destruction of the summer looking for a smaller salary access to the present is brilliant that... Grad student, refuses every appeal for mercy and gratitude from his headmaster! Reformist, Charles Dickens who described it best else once — including Germans learned that prepared me for elite college! 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