20.
I want to figure out how to integrate my current thinking about schools into this narrative, but for now, I will just jump cut.
It is now February 2010. In the past month, I must have interviewed 50 people to work as tutors in the Oakland Parents Together tutoring program, funded by No Child Left Behind. Since we don’t have much of a training budget, I use these interviews to do some training. I talk about the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky). I say, “This is a fancy way of saying, if you give a students work that is too easy, they won’t learn anything new. If you give students work that is too hard, they will become frustrated and won’t learn anything new. The art of teaching is in finding this zone for each student.”
I continue: “Sadly, the schools have stopped utilizing this concept and now teach standards instead of students. Every teacher at every grade level (at least K-5) is required to be on the same page of the reading program” (I know this is true of Oakland; I don’t know about other districts). “Interestingly, this practice does increase test scores by targeting instruction to those mid-level students who score at the 45th percentile or so, and moving them up past 50, which is considered ‘proficient’ – students for whom the standards are actually in their zone of proximal development (ZPD). But it also leaves the vast majority of students in Oakland who are below basic or far below basic way behind, scratching their heads. This is where we (OPT tutoring) comes in.”
After about the 40th time repeating this spiel to my prospective tutors, a light bulb went off. Why do we tolerate this? This is a ridiculous way to teach. It’s essentially triage, sifting through the wreckage of the school system for the few who might have a decent chance of “surviving,” writing off the rest.
When I shared this story, a friend of mine reminded me that the scripted reading programs were introduced for three half-way decent reasons. One, so that the large number of students in Oakland who moved from school to school would not be lost; two, to make sure that flatland (poorer) students were exposed to the same standards as hill (richer) students; and three, to compensate for the fact that students in the flatlands tended to be served by more inexperienced teachers, who would be helped by the script.
I should also add that there are a handful of superteachers who can teach the standards and at the same time differentiate instruction for those who are not yet ready for standards level work. But, from what I understand, the differentiation happens rarely.
One thing I like about the concept of the ZPD is that it can be applied to almost any situation. It implies that in every situation, there is always an optimal way forward based on understanding what we know and what’s the next thing we need to know. In particular it can be applied to the situation in the schools. We know that the 70s and 80s tried many innovations collectively described as “individualized instruction.” Many children were left behind, so the system shifted focusto the point of obsession on the standards. Individualization tended to give too many students work that was too easy; standards obsession gives too many students work that is too hard. The new ZPD would include standards instruction along with a massive effort to reach students where they are. Tutoring can do this, though it often doesn’t. Tutoring programs need to develop best practices and agree to follow them, rather than rely on the haphazard approaches presently operating. Bringing back teacher aides would be another helpful approach with the additional benefit of providing parents with employment in the schools.
The vision we have for schools is that the K-12 program will embrace the most significant reform program that came out of the Civil Rights Movement: namely, Head Start: (1) Small adult-student ratios, (2) Hands-on, constructivist learning, (3) Collegial, friendly relationships between teachers and parents. We will expound further on this vision later.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
White Knight
19.
The true test of my political mettle as an independent activist was not long in coming. In November 1978, the voters of California passed Proposition 13. I campaigned against it, but once Governor Jerry Brown saw the writing on the wall and came out in favor of it, I knew our goose was cooked as far as school funding went. Little did I know how cooked, that 30 years later, we’d still be struggling just to keep our position as 49th out of 50 in per pupil spending.
Geneva Towers Children’s Center had been open for 3 years, and by the spring of 1979, it was on the chopping block as one of the cuts mandated by the new Prop. 13 fiscal environment.
Just a year earlier, Children’s Center teachers had won salary parity with elementary school teachers, a tremendous victory, sullied only slightly by the fact that it was done in order to transfer “surplus” elementary school teachers into the Children’s Centers. Finally, Early Childhood Education was being treated with the respect it deserved.
Earldean and I swung into action around this struggle. I had persuaded her awhile back to get a job in Children’s Centers herself. She was a natural for the job. It had bothered me that she was essentially a maid for a liberal doctor. “They treat me like an equal,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? What do they call you?”
“They call me Earldean”
“And what do you call them?”
She got quiet. “Dr. So-and so. Mrs. So-and-so.”
“My point exactly.”
It didn’t make sense for her to quit after 20 years, since they had provided her with medical insurance and a generous retirement plan. But she did adjust her hours so that she could work in Children’s Centers part time.
We called a meeting of the parents to discuss the closing. I had chosen a woman, Tessie Ester, to be the parent chair, I suppose in all honesty because I was attracted to her. She had creamy caramel skin, a fine thin body, and wore her hair with a Donna Summer “fall,” a wig-like thing that hung halfway down her back. She came to the meeting high as anything, and the other parents had to take over for her.
But we, Earldean and I, developed a team of parents willing to fight for the center.
Over the summer, we put together a coalition to keep our center open, Parents for Quality Education. We have a founding meeting in the Towers rec room with Rev. Cecil Williams speaking. We develop a resolution for the school board to exclude Geneva Towers from the school closings. We find sponsors on the board. We call for a rally at the board. Much of this struggle I’ve already written about in my novel, White Knight, or How I Came to Believe that I was the One Who Caused the San Francisco City Hall Killings and the Jonestown Massacre. Obviously, the “I” in the title wasn’t me, but a character, Barney Blatz, based on me. But the school board meeting was true to life. Here is how the novel portrayed it:
The evening of the rally, the fog fails to come in, and the mid July dusk is balmy. The rally is huge, wildly exceeding my expectations, and I'm giddy with excitement. I am the Leader. I can't believe this. I have always wanted to be popular, and now it seems I can do no wrong.
[Earldean] tries to warn me. "It's just a rally, [Henry]. It's not the revolution," she says as she sees me flitting about the various constituencies like a mad general.
We form a long picket line in front the decaying old school building that houses the administration offices and the auditorium where the board meets. "Building does not meet earthquake safety standards," says a sign on the door.
Our center has turned out in force. Latricia, our spokesperson before the board, her natural cut sharply, styled so it sits on her head like a helmet, is ecstatic. "We've won, [Henry!]” she beams at me.
It does feel like we've won. We've been spending the weeks before this meeting lobbying board members, and we have assurances from four out of the seven that they will vote to keep our center open.
Alice, the deep voiced militant, overweight,sloppy, rough, and irrepressible, is leading the chants with her baby in a stroller. Her twins, along with the other Towers' children are upstairs in the childcare arrangement we organized in a room next to the auditorium. "Keep the center open!" she shouts into the bullhorn, a device I "liberated" from the Party in the course of the split.
Sue Ann, from the South, slow and solid, light skinned with reddish permed hair, and [Tessie 's] buddy Charlene, dark, with a permanent scowl, are also taking leading roles, passing out fliers and picket signs, many of which were painted by the children in the school during the previous week.
We march up the stairs and into the board room singing "We Shall Not Be Moved." We sing it over and over again, in defiance of the board president's gavel. Finally we decide to let them conduct their business. It's a reflection of our power and our imminent victory that they vote immediately to hear our motion first, put forward by the one black board member, to exclude Pacific Towers Children's Center from a previously adopted resolution calling for the closure of several sites.
Our first speaker is [Henry, Tessie's] son, probably the youngest person to ever address the board. "Don't close our school because I like to play in the doll corner," he says to wild applause.
We rehearsed each of our three child speakers to say something different, but in the heat of the TV lights, Clarisse and Ronnie get nervous and just repeat what [Henry] has said, "I like to play in the doll corner."
Then Latricia speaks, graciously thanking the board in advance for its rational approach to the problem.
[Tessie] informs them in no uncertain terms, that "our center will not close."
I speak next, delivering what I consider the piece de resistance: "Members of the Board of Education, I am pleased to inform you that we have met with the management of Pacific Towers Apartments, and they have agreed, in writing, to waive all rent for the facility, and to provide maintenance free of charge." We have kept this nugget secret to enhance the effect of the surprise. The crowd, our crowd, cheers tumultuously.
Following our presentation, the board's legal adviser, a black man who talks as though his mouth were full of gravel, speaks. "It is not possible to reconsider this motion at this time. The resolution which this present motion seeks to amend was a subsection of the resolution which passed the budget for the entire school district. The only way to consider such a motion would be to rescind the vote on the budget resolution and that would be illegal because the deadline for approving the budget has already passed."
The board acts as if nothing has happened and moves onto the next agenda item, a surprise resolution to send emergency layoff notices to about 200 teachers.
"What happened?" [Tessie] asks me frantically.
"I think we just got shafted." I run up to talk to our staunchest ally, the black woman on the board. She tells me she's sorry, but she has done all she can.
My spirits suddenly plummet from stratosphere to substrata. By the time I figure out that the only thing for us to do is to disrupt the meeting, the union president is making his own urgent plea for the board not to lay anybody off. It's too late to do anything. We all trickle out of the meeting so disconsolate that no one notices that my name is among the list of those to be laid off, even though I have nine years seniority with the district.
The true test of my political mettle as an independent activist was not long in coming. In November 1978, the voters of California passed Proposition 13. I campaigned against it, but once Governor Jerry Brown saw the writing on the wall and came out in favor of it, I knew our goose was cooked as far as school funding went. Little did I know how cooked, that 30 years later, we’d still be struggling just to keep our position as 49th out of 50 in per pupil spending.
Geneva Towers Children’s Center had been open for 3 years, and by the spring of 1979, it was on the chopping block as one of the cuts mandated by the new Prop. 13 fiscal environment.
Just a year earlier, Children’s Center teachers had won salary parity with elementary school teachers, a tremendous victory, sullied only slightly by the fact that it was done in order to transfer “surplus” elementary school teachers into the Children’s Centers. Finally, Early Childhood Education was being treated with the respect it deserved.
Earldean and I swung into action around this struggle. I had persuaded her awhile back to get a job in Children’s Centers herself. She was a natural for the job. It had bothered me that she was essentially a maid for a liberal doctor. “They treat me like an equal,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? What do they call you?”
“They call me Earldean”
“And what do you call them?”
She got quiet. “Dr. So-and so. Mrs. So-and-so.”
“My point exactly.”
It didn’t make sense for her to quit after 20 years, since they had provided her with medical insurance and a generous retirement plan. But she did adjust her hours so that she could work in Children’s Centers part time.
We called a meeting of the parents to discuss the closing. I had chosen a woman, Tessie Ester, to be the parent chair, I suppose in all honesty because I was attracted to her. She had creamy caramel skin, a fine thin body, and wore her hair with a Donna Summer “fall,” a wig-like thing that hung halfway down her back. She came to the meeting high as anything, and the other parents had to take over for her.
But we, Earldean and I, developed a team of parents willing to fight for the center.
Over the summer, we put together a coalition to keep our center open, Parents for Quality Education. We have a founding meeting in the Towers rec room with Rev. Cecil Williams speaking. We develop a resolution for the school board to exclude Geneva Towers from the school closings. We find sponsors on the board. We call for a rally at the board. Much of this struggle I’ve already written about in my novel, White Knight, or How I Came to Believe that I was the One Who Caused the San Francisco City Hall Killings and the Jonestown Massacre. Obviously, the “I” in the title wasn’t me, but a character, Barney Blatz, based on me. But the school board meeting was true to life. Here is how the novel portrayed it:
The evening of the rally, the fog fails to come in, and the mid July dusk is balmy. The rally is huge, wildly exceeding my expectations, and I'm giddy with excitement. I am the Leader. I can't believe this. I have always wanted to be popular, and now it seems I can do no wrong.
[Earldean] tries to warn me. "It's just a rally, [Henry]. It's not the revolution," she says as she sees me flitting about the various constituencies like a mad general.
We form a long picket line in front the decaying old school building that houses the administration offices and the auditorium where the board meets. "Building does not meet earthquake safety standards," says a sign on the door.
Our center has turned out in force. Latricia, our spokesperson before the board, her natural cut sharply, styled so it sits on her head like a helmet, is ecstatic. "We've won, [Henry!]” she beams at me.
It does feel like we've won. We've been spending the weeks before this meeting lobbying board members, and we have assurances from four out of the seven that they will vote to keep our center open.
Alice, the deep voiced militant, overweight,sloppy, rough, and irrepressible, is leading the chants with her baby in a stroller. Her twins, along with the other Towers' children are upstairs in the childcare arrangement we organized in a room next to the auditorium. "Keep the center open!" she shouts into the bullhorn, a device I "liberated" from the Party in the course of the split.
Sue Ann, from the South, slow and solid, light skinned with reddish permed hair, and [Tessie 's] buddy Charlene, dark, with a permanent scowl, are also taking leading roles, passing out fliers and picket signs, many of which were painted by the children in the school during the previous week.
We march up the stairs and into the board room singing "We Shall Not Be Moved." We sing it over and over again, in defiance of the board president's gavel. Finally we decide to let them conduct their business. It's a reflection of our power and our imminent victory that they vote immediately to hear our motion first, put forward by the one black board member, to exclude Pacific Towers Children's Center from a previously adopted resolution calling for the closure of several sites.
Our first speaker is [Henry, Tessie's] son, probably the youngest person to ever address the board. "Don't close our school because I like to play in the doll corner," he says to wild applause.
We rehearsed each of our three child speakers to say something different, but in the heat of the TV lights, Clarisse and Ronnie get nervous and just repeat what [Henry] has said, "I like to play in the doll corner."
Then Latricia speaks, graciously thanking the board in advance for its rational approach to the problem.
[Tessie] informs them in no uncertain terms, that "our center will not close."
I speak next, delivering what I consider the piece de resistance: "Members of the Board of Education, I am pleased to inform you that we have met with the management of Pacific Towers Apartments, and they have agreed, in writing, to waive all rent for the facility, and to provide maintenance free of charge." We have kept this nugget secret to enhance the effect of the surprise. The crowd, our crowd, cheers tumultuously.
Following our presentation, the board's legal adviser, a black man who talks as though his mouth were full of gravel, speaks. "It is not possible to reconsider this motion at this time. The resolution which this present motion seeks to amend was a subsection of the resolution which passed the budget for the entire school district. The only way to consider such a motion would be to rescind the vote on the budget resolution and that would be illegal because the deadline for approving the budget has already passed."
The board acts as if nothing has happened and moves onto the next agenda item, a surprise resolution to send emergency layoff notices to about 200 teachers.
"What happened?" [Tessie] asks me frantically.
"I think we just got shafted." I run up to talk to our staunchest ally, the black woman on the board. She tells me she's sorry, but she has done all she can.
My spirits suddenly plummet from stratosphere to substrata. By the time I figure out that the only thing for us to do is to disrupt the meeting, the union president is making his own urgent plea for the board not to lay anybody off. It's too late to do anything. We all trickle out of the meeting so disconsolate that no one notices that my name is among the list of those to be laid off, even though I have nine years seniority with the district.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Break-up 2
18.
In late 1976, 14 black Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego allegedly attacked a group of white Marines who were allegedly a part of the Ku Klux Klan. They were in the process of being railroaded into prison when the PLP began developing a campaign to free them. “Free the Camp Pendleton 14” became a major party initiative, and we did a creditable job of building a coalition with such rival groups as the National Lawyer’s Guild, the NAACP, and People’s Temple. We organized a sizable march in the town of Oceanside, on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego where the base was located, bussing people in from the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
“Roots” made its television debut about this time. Our newspaper,Challenge, led an attack against it for preparing middle class, nationalistic blacks to be the new “Judenrat,” referring to the council of Jews who ruled such places as the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of us had a tough time stomaching this line. The word “Judenrat” itself sounded viciously anti-Semitic to me, though it was being put forth by Jews in the PLP leadership. It occurs to me now that people with a familiarity with Yiddish might hear the word differently.
I wrote a response to the review, declaring that the showing of “Roots” with its unstinting portrayal of slavery and resistance actually represented a reform of the media, but that the ruling class still determined the parameters of debate: militancy along black nationalist lines was now considered “safe” by the rulers because it represented no real threat, while militancy along multiracial class lines was still simply not discussed.
The Camp Pendleton 14 Coalition even managed to get the endorsement of “Roots” author Alex Haley, but that sort of breadth of the coalition was too much for the national leadership of the PLP, and they accused us of “uniting with the enemy.” They insisted that we disband the coalition. The west coast leaders, Hari and Jim D., refused, and were forthwith expelled from the party.
The Party chairman, Milt Rosen, flew out to San Francisco and there was a large meeting of the party and its friends. Our side defended its united front approach by reading from Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” The other side attacked us for bringing a couple members of the Camp Pendleton 14 to the meeting, about which Milt said something like, “It’s a shame to use these ‘chaps’ this way,” which had our side calling him racist. Within a week, about 70 PLP members – about ¾ of the total membership in the Bay Area (probably about 15% of the national membership) – submitted letters of resignation.
So began another phase our lives. The split was heart-wrenching in some ways. Former friends were on the other side of the line. But it was enlightening, too. For the first time in a long time, I found it necessary to think for myself politically.
As happens in splits of this kind, some people dropped out of politics all together. But some of us kept meeting in a loose network of study groups. I think we called ourselves "the process." I was in a study group that actually read Das Kapital, and even understood some of it, enough so that when the leader stepped down, he asked me to lead it. I managed to do this through the first volume, even though the material was above my head. What I got from the book was a profound sense of how capitalism was completely disconnected from the commodities it produced, being focused only on the surplus value – profit – the commodity produced in the market. Meaning that this was an essential component of capitalism, that the entire endeavor of capitalism existed only to create surplus value. In other words, it ultimately couldn’t be reformed: trying to get capitalism to serve the needs of people was a futile exercise, though through continuous struggle, you could soften the blows of exploitation.
You could see this clearly in the crisis of 2008, in which we are still wallowing. In order for the entire system not to collapse, the banks and financial sector had to be bailed out before anything else. If Obama or whoever had failed to bail out Wall Street, I’m convinced that the US would have quickly descended to the level of Germany after World War I, and the capitalists would have been pretty much forced to find their Hitler in order to survive.
As in the 30s, the current depression-like conditions are precipitating a polarization between those forces who will fight to save capitalism at all costs, and those beginning to realize that for people to flourish once more, we need to build an alternative to capitalism.
In late 1976, 14 black Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego allegedly attacked a group of white Marines who were allegedly a part of the Ku Klux Klan. They were in the process of being railroaded into prison when the PLP began developing a campaign to free them. “Free the Camp Pendleton 14” became a major party initiative, and we did a creditable job of building a coalition with such rival groups as the National Lawyer’s Guild, the NAACP, and People’s Temple. We organized a sizable march in the town of Oceanside, on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego where the base was located, bussing people in from the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
“Roots” made its television debut about this time. Our newspaper,Challenge, led an attack against it for preparing middle class, nationalistic blacks to be the new “Judenrat,” referring to the council of Jews who ruled such places as the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of us had a tough time stomaching this line. The word “Judenrat” itself sounded viciously anti-Semitic to me, though it was being put forth by Jews in the PLP leadership. It occurs to me now that people with a familiarity with Yiddish might hear the word differently.
I wrote a response to the review, declaring that the showing of “Roots” with its unstinting portrayal of slavery and resistance actually represented a reform of the media, but that the ruling class still determined the parameters of debate: militancy along black nationalist lines was now considered “safe” by the rulers because it represented no real threat, while militancy along multiracial class lines was still simply not discussed.
The Camp Pendleton 14 Coalition even managed to get the endorsement of “Roots” author Alex Haley, but that sort of breadth of the coalition was too much for the national leadership of the PLP, and they accused us of “uniting with the enemy.” They insisted that we disband the coalition. The west coast leaders, Hari and Jim D., refused, and were forthwith expelled from the party.
The Party chairman, Milt Rosen, flew out to San Francisco and there was a large meeting of the party and its friends. Our side defended its united front approach by reading from Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” The other side attacked us for bringing a couple members of the Camp Pendleton 14 to the meeting, about which Milt said something like, “It’s a shame to use these ‘chaps’ this way,” which had our side calling him racist. Within a week, about 70 PLP members – about ¾ of the total membership in the Bay Area (probably about 15% of the national membership) – submitted letters of resignation.
So began another phase our lives. The split was heart-wrenching in some ways. Former friends were on the other side of the line. But it was enlightening, too. For the first time in a long time, I found it necessary to think for myself politically.
As happens in splits of this kind, some people dropped out of politics all together. But some of us kept meeting in a loose network of study groups. I think we called ourselves "the process." I was in a study group that actually read Das Kapital, and even understood some of it, enough so that when the leader stepped down, he asked me to lead it. I managed to do this through the first volume, even though the material was above my head. What I got from the book was a profound sense of how capitalism was completely disconnected from the commodities it produced, being focused only on the surplus value – profit – the commodity produced in the market. Meaning that this was an essential component of capitalism, that the entire endeavor of capitalism existed only to create surplus value. In other words, it ultimately couldn’t be reformed: trying to get capitalism to serve the needs of people was a futile exercise, though through continuous struggle, you could soften the blows of exploitation.
You could see this clearly in the crisis of 2008, in which we are still wallowing. In order for the entire system not to collapse, the banks and financial sector had to be bailed out before anything else. If Obama or whoever had failed to bail out Wall Street, I’m convinced that the US would have quickly descended to the level of Germany after World War I, and the capitalists would have been pretty much forced to find their Hitler in order to survive.
As in the 30s, the current depression-like conditions are precipitating a polarization between those forces who will fight to save capitalism at all costs, and those beginning to realize that for people to flourish once more, we need to build an alternative to capitalism.
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