The title of the piece is “Valuing Teachers” and a brilliantly disingenuous title it is. Rather than using the word as we might use it (placing a high value on teachers), he is using it as an economist might (assessing the value of teachers). He is measuring how much teachers are worth. According to Hanushek, better teachers result in higher incomes for their students later in life. To make his case, he uses a series of unscientific leaps of logic that will yield easily to a few moments of rationality.

He notes that “a student with achievement (as measured by test performance in high school) that is one standard deviation above average can later in life expect to take in 10 to 15 percent higher earnings per year.” I have no reason to doubt his numbers.

But Hanushek is making the classic blunder of confusing correlation with causation. Do higher test scores in school directly cause higher incomes? Or is it possible that they may have common contributing factors? What about factors that the student brings in, such as intelligence, stamina, and motivation? Is it possible that parental income can be a factor in both standardized testing scores and future income? Hanushek’s famous value-added study attempted to isolate these factors, but he seems content to ignore them when citing this achievement/income connection.

And, as Diana Senechal points out, “there is no evidence (as far as I know) that students in the highest percentiles in high school are those who made the greatest gains on their standardized tests over the years. In fact, I suspect that most of them did pretty well on those tests all along.”

Using future income as a measure of teacher quality is even more outrageous than using test scores. How much does a Stanford professor make compared to a Wall Street hedge fund manager? Is that a function of the quality of education they received? In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I make significantly less than LeBron James. Did he have better teachers?

Hanushek’s solution is to “contemplate asking 5 to 10 percent of teachers to find a job at which they are more effective so they can be replaced by teachers of average productivity.” (Note to my boss: if it should ever become necessary to fire me, I would request that you instead contemplate asking me to find a job at which I am more effective.)

Hanushek’s solution – fire the bad teachers – is very simple, but it requires several assumptions that I don’t think we should be so quick to grant.

Assumptions

1. Standardized tests accurately measure student achievement.
2. The teachers whose students don’t make progress on the tests are the bad teachers.
3. There is a line of average teachers at the door waiting to be hired.
4. No factors other than teacher quality are significant.

Peruse this list, and note that Hanushek’s plan falls apart if even one of these assumptions is false. In fact, they all are.

Assumption: Standardized tests accurately measure student achievement.

False. The tests that students are given are deeply flawed indeed. Many of the questions do not test what they purport to test, and test-taking itself has become it’s own skill set that schools ignore at their own peril. If we’re careful, we can use some the results to identify areas in need of improvement. But the tests on the whole are way too idiosyncratic to use the overall scores as a basis for high-stakes decision making.

Assumption: The teachers whose students don’t make progress on the tests are the bad teachers.

False. In an August 2010 paper for the Economic Policy Institute, a team of highly distinguished education researchers laid out the case against the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. Bottom line: It doesn’t work. Test scores are simply an ineffective statistical measure for identifying bad teachers. If you don’t find twenty pages of research from a panel of experts compelling, then you can read about this well-respected hard-working teacher who got slammed by a statistical formula.

Assumption: There is a line of average teachers at the door waiting to be hired.

False. In fact, teacher recruitment and retention is becoming a serious problem. A McKinsey study, Closing the Talent Gap, describes the decline in the teaching profession’s ability to compete in the labor market.

However, I suspect there is a bit of condescension towards the profession of teaching when we assume we can just go out and hire average teachers. The implication is that the average person would make an average teacher, rather than acknowledging that teaching requires a particular set of qualities (e.g., diligence, patience, intelligence, and a calling to want to do it) for someone to even be an average teacher. To glibly say that we can just fire the bad teachers and hire average ones is unintentionally insulting.

Assumption: No factors other than teacher quality are significant.

False. Hanushek anticipates this rebuttal, and is kind enough to provide examples of other factors that are not significant:

The initiatives we have emphasized in policy discussions—class-size reduction, curriculum revamping, reorganization of school schedule, investment in technology—all fall far short of the impact that good teachers can have in the classroom. Moreover, many of these interventions can be very costly.

Costly? I thought we were discussing what is most effective. Aren’t we having a national education crisis? Hanushek has moved past his role as researcher and now is making policy judgements. Danny Westneat argues effectively against the idea that class size is irrelevant, so I don’t have to. Teachers already know the importance of class size, and I suspect that the Reformers do as well. Similarly, other initiatives we take to improve education, costly or no, are based on research and accumulation of best practices. Even if we let Hanushek fire all of the bad teachers, we would still want to implement successful education initiatives. Sorry.

Neither side is happy with our current educational system. But Reformers seem to offer nothing but slapdash solutions that keep expenses low but ignore the facts on the ground. It seems, then, we have a choice to make. Do we want to have a public education system in this country? Many do not, and would rather see the free market take over education. Charter schools seem to be a first step in that direction, and I think the Reformers who tout them have become, wittingly or unwittingly, somewhat of a stalking horse for the movement against public education. Diane Ravitch, in her eloquent response to Waiting for Superman, discusses why charter schools aren’t the panacea they’re often held up as. She also discusses the impact of poverty on student achievement, and the dangers of ignoring it in the national discussion. Paying teachers more? Keeping class size down? Addressing the needs of high-poverty schools? It all seems so… costly.

That’s what it’s going to take, though. If we want a high-quality public education system, we’re going to have to pay for it. These may be troubled economic times, but really it’s just a question of priorities. If we’re going to have public education at all, we need to increase, not decrease, funding for it. We need to increase it by a lot. Reformer “solutions” only distract from the real issue. They want us to look at charter schools, but if we look closely enough, we’ll see that the most successful charter schools are able to spend much more per student than the public schools who are expected to emulate them.

And so, we must choose between abolishing public education and funding it adequately. Abolishing it is not really a choice at all, and would lead to an even worse crisis than we have now. But, if we can adjust our priorities and give our students the schools they deserve, then, as Dan Quayle said, “We are going to have the best educated American people in the world.” (Should we be blaming his teachers?)

A public union employee, a tea party activist and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.”

And while this might easily refer to any number of anti-labor sentiments, it seems most appropriate as a reaction to the current – inexplicable – War on Teachers that has been raging in the media lately.

If you haven’t seen last Thursday’s Daily Show, you really need to go watch it. In a brilliant piece at the top of the show, Jon Stewart demonstrates the hypocrisy of the right-wing talking heads when talking about teachers. Later, he interviews education truth-teller Diane Ravitch, who lays out the rest of the argument.

If you want to understand the conversations surrounding education reform, then – as Tom Tomorrow says in this week’s strip – that’s all you need to know.

Robert Benchley famously said “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.” I will put myself in the former category when I say that, generally, there are two kinds of people who talk about standards and accountability.

The first believes that anything worth doing is worth doing well. In order to make sure we’re doing the best job we can, it’s important to measure our results, so we can identify areas for potential improvement and apply strategies for intervention where they will do the most good.

The second believes that taxpayer-funded education is one of the evils of socialism and must be eradicated. In order to make the necessary changes, evidence must be gathered that the public education system is a failure, so that arguments to turn education over to the free market will be more persuasive.

And my point was that, when you hear someone talking about standards and accountability, it’s important to know which of these two groups that person is in.

From Antony and Cleopatra:

Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.
Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures
Turn all to serpents!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Men end hell. Constant protesting stunts turn Hosni Mubarak to non-entity. People elect leaders directly.

This isn’t about ideology or politics. It’s frightening to me that a member of the United States House of Representatives, of either party, could be so dangerously unaware (deliberately or no) of the history of our nation. But the fact that she is considered a thought leader by so many on the other side gives me ideological concerns as well.

The most likely consequences of climate change will be severe impacts on food production in the developing world. We can worry about urban heat waves, polar bears, and forest fires, but the worst effects are almost certainly going to be on food production in the poor countries, where half or more of the population depends on growing its own food.

Estimates of lost world product due to climate change are moderate because the poor have so little to lose. More than a billion people, maybe 2 billion, are estimated to live on less than the equivalent of $2 per day. If a billion of those poorest people lost half their income, it would be an overwhelming tragedy, a true catastrophe, worse than all the earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, landslides, and fires of the past decade happening every year. But those billion people together would lose only $365 billion per year. That is less than 1 percent of world income! They have so little to begin with that what they can lose doesn’t amount to much of a statistic. But they can lose tragically.

It’s not a long article, so click here to read the whole thing.

Antony and Cleopatra takes place in the first century B.C., a time when there was one global superpower in the world. By the time of the play’s opening scene, the Romans had scooped up most of the Hellenistic nations; only Egypt remained independent. However, both Romans and Egyptians were well aware that Egypt was living in Rome’s shadow. Philo has the opening speech of the play, and his racism and entitlement are readily on display:

Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows the measure; those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front; his captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy’s lust. Look! where they come.
Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transform’d
Into a strumpet’s fool; behold and see.

For a rank and file Roman soldier to speak of the Egyptian queen as “tawny” and a “strumpet” sets the tone for a world where there is an unequal balance of power.

Today, there is once again a single global superpower in the world, but that has only been true for the past twenty years. In fact, there have only been a handful of unchallenged superpowers in world history. (The Macedonians and the Mongols are the other two that come to mind. Others?) Therefore, this play offers a unique opportunity to explore power dynamics in our present world community.

How does it affect the world when there is one dominant superpower? What opportunities does that country have? What are its responsibilities in the world? How did Rome handle its power? How does the United States handle its power?

We had a fantastic conversation, and I think the students have a new lens for viewing both the play and world affairs.

There is only one posting to the message board, but I’m patient. And it looks like I am going to be working with an eighth-grade class on As You Like It asynchronously. I’ll be meeting with them the week after next, but most of our interactions will be online. Watch this space for updates!

UPDATE (That was fast): I’ve just added an Antony and Cleopatra category, so you can follow along with the project.

The gentleman is learn’d, and a most rare speaker;
To nature none more bound; his training such,
That he may furnish and instruct great teachers,
And never seek for aid out of himself. Yet see,
When these so noble benefits shall prove
Not well disposed, the mind growing once corrupt,
They turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly
Than ever they were fair.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

The director of An Inconvenient Truth lent aid to ruthless enemies of government-funded education.

Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman should seek to learn the inherently right way: reform relentless poverty.

Instead, it prefers to foment barbed attacks on unions as anathemas. Why? Why?

Remember, the real superheroes teach in our schools.

More on Waiting for Superman here.

Waiting for “Superman” follows the journey of five students, and their individual quests to improve their educational opportunities. I’d say the movie gets about 75% of it right: the system is failing these students, and millions like them. But while it might make a good movie narrative to divide the issue into good guys (charter schools) and bad guys (teachers unions), the real issues surrounding education in this country are much more complicated than Guggenheim suggests.

I came out of the movie disappointed about many of the factual inaccuracies and glaring omissions that Guggenheim uses to make his case, but I found that these were well addressed by this piece in the Washington Post. Even better is this excellent article in The Nation, which digs much deeper into the issues surrounding the debate. I strongly recommend these two articles, as they cover a lot of ground that I consequently won’t need to cover.

I do believe that Guggenheim is sincere in his desire to reform education, and that’s important to say, because many participants in this discussion are not. Their goal is to end taxpayer-funded education entirely, and they tend to support measures that move the nation closer to this ultimate goal. The problem with this is that the free market will do an excellent job of educating some of our students, while a great number of children in this country will be starkly left behind. So I’m on my guard when I hear arguments about how charter schools have solved all of the problems faced by public education. But despite some of the darker connections behind Waiting for “Superman”, I do believe that the filmmaker is earnest and I can counter his points secure in the belief that we share the common goal of educating all of our students.

Not only does Guggenheim omit important details, but he often doesn’t even draw the correct conclusions from the evidence actually presented in the movie. What was most striking to me was how powerfully the film showed how the lack of economic opportunities for parents in these inner-city communities directly impacts the education of their children. That alone was worth the price of the surprisingly expensive ticket. But then, we’re told that “many experts” (who?) now believe that failing schools are responsible for failing communities, not the other way around.

Each of the five children depicted has a parent or guardian who is hell-bent on making sure the child has the best education possible. They enter their children into a lottery for the local high-performing charter schools. Presumably, all of the children in the lottery have similarly committed parents. That makes for a pretty good head start for the charter school. Public schools tend to have a more varied range of parent commitment. Also, did you notice how few students are accepted each year? What does that do for class size? And I have to mention, even though it’s well covered in the articles linked above, the large amounts of private funding that the high-performing charter schools depicted in the movie enjoy.

So yes, the charter schools in the film are doing very well, and that’s great news for the students who attend them. But if, as it is admitted in the movie, only one in five charter schools are showing results, that’s a dismal record indeed. And despite the emotionally manipulative scenes where each student’s “fate” was decided by random lottery, I felt myself more concerned for the students who were never in the lottery.

So perhaps the real lesson we can learn from the successful charter schools is that, if the school has a clear and progressive vision, then increased funding can actually make a difference in student achievement. And if we take a closer look at what Geoffrey Canada is really doing for the students in the Harlem Children’s Zone, we might realize that student achievement isn’t only impacted within the school building. He may have even created a microcosm of the society we would have if we could make the connection between our nation’s social fabric and the way our children are educated.

But “firing all the bad teachers” is a much more digestible solution.

And yes, there are bad teachers, and I agree that it should be easier to get rid of them. But in truth, this represents a very small part of the problem, and blaming teachers unions for the decline in educational quality is seriously misguided. Teachers unions have been and should be a partner in education reform, but they also have the task of protecting the rights of their members. Teachers have the same rights to collective bargaining as any other labor force in the country. To frame the issue as children vs. adults is a dangerous distraction, especially when our goal should be to attract the very best people to the profession, and retain them once they’re in. The movie makes the point that great schools start with great teachers. I agree! So let’s make teaching the most desirable profession in America. You can read more about teacher recruitment and retention issues in this Washington Post article. Because once we’ve fired all the bad teachers, who will we get to replace them?

By the way, nobody is actually waiting for Superman to come and save our children. It’s a classic rhetorical trick to frame the sides of the debate as the people who agree with the solutions provided and the people who would rather do nothing. But smart and passionate people are already implementing solutions within public education that resonate with the solutions presented by Guggenheim. Here in New York City, we’ve increased educational accountability enormously, and with the cooperation of the teachers union. Nationally, we’re moving towards Common Core Standards for student achievement. We’re not there yet, not by a longshot, but nobody in the system is complacent about that.

Still, despite all the movie gets wrong, it should be praised for shining a spotlight on issues that have been festering in the darkness. This movie has the potential to spark a national conversation about the problems in American education, and how we can best address them. If it does that, despite the film’s flaws, its ultimate effect will be a net positive. If it does that, it will be my very favorite of all of the Superman films.

UPDATE: An anagram review.

Unlike this blog, the book chapter is actually about teaching Shakespeare! No riddles. No anagrams. No politics. (Well, maybe a little bit of politics.)

Here is the basic idea. I begin by citing experts who are skeptical of the ability of elementary school students to do Shakespeare. Specifically, I discuss the Dramatic Age Stages chart created by Richard Courtney.

Courtney describes “The Role Stage” as lasting from ages twelve to eighteen, at which point students are capable of a number of new skills that I would consider essential for understanding Shakespeare in a meaningful way. These skills include the ability to think abstractly, to understand causality, to interpret symbols, to articulate moral decisions, and to understand how a character relates to the rest of the play. So based on this chart, I would have to conclude that a student younger than twelve would not be ready to appreciate Shakespeare in these ways.

But Courtney bases his chart on the framework of developmental phases of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. These phases describe what a lone child can demonstrate under testing conditions. A more accurate and nuanced way of looking at development is provided in the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who described a “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD), which is a range between what a child can demonstrate in isolation, and what the same child can do under more social conditions.

So I wondered if fifth-grade students (aged 10) would have some of the skills associated with “The Role Stage” somewhere in their ZPD. If so, a collaborative class project should provide enough scaffolding to develop those skills and allow ten-year-old students to understand and appreciate Shakespeare on that level.

So I developed and implemented a unit to teach Macbeth to a fifth-grade class in the South Bronx, using process-based dramatic activities, a stage production of the play performed for their school, and a web-based study guide to apply what they had learned. The idea was to use collaborative projects to get the kids to work together to make collective sense of the play. I then examined their written work for evidence that they had displayed the skills associated with “The Role Stage” in Courtney’s chart, and I was able to find a great deal of it.

I also create a three-dimensional rubric to assess the students’ work over the course of the unit. I say a three-dimensional rubric because I use the same eight categories in all three rubrics, but they develop over time to reflect the increased sophistication that I expect the students to demonstrate. I then compare the students’ performance-based rubric scores to their reading test scores to demonstrate that standardized testing paints only a very limited picture of what a student can achieve. (I did say that it had a little bit of politics.)

Anyway, that’s what my chapter was about. I just saved you $180! And I’m hoping to return to a regular blogging schedule soon, so more content is hopefully on the way.

I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valour.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

The hateful ire run for the proposed Manhattan mosque is, sadly, a lie to provoke hurt voters.

This is a school in Brooklyn.

This is a student out in the yard
Who needs his Student Metrocard
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

These are the books that are much too hard
For the struggling student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is a principal with budget cut short
Who is forced to scale back and is needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the curious student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is the yearly progress report
For the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the sleeping student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is the panel that serves as a Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the hard-working student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is the Mayor who’s closing the schools
And like it or not we must follow his rules
For he chooses eight of thirteen on the Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the faceless student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is a city in fiscal dismay
That inflated its scores for Election Day
To support the Mayor who picks the Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the hungry student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is a state that pulls funds away
From its largest city in fiscal dismay
That elects the Mayor who picks the Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the creative student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is the Congress with heavy mandate
That sends rules but not money to the crowded state
That diverts precious funds away
From its largest city in fiscal dismay
That elects the Mayor who picks the Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the failing student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

This is a country that lives only to borrow
And spend money on yesterday, not on tomorrow,
With the help of the Congress with heavy mandate
That sends rules but not money to the crowded state
That diverts precious funds away
From its largest city in fiscal dismay
That elects the Mayor who picks the Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the brilliant student who needs a card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

These are the teachers who catch the blame,
Year after year it is always the same,
In a country so broke it must constantly borrow
And spend money on yesterday, not on tomorrow,
With the help of the Congress with heavy mandate
That sends rules but not money to the crowded state
That diverts precious funds away
From its largest city in fiscal dismay
That elects the Mayor who picks the Board
That looks at the tests to see how we scored
To issue a yearly progress report
To the desperate principal needing support
To replace the books that are much too hard
For the innocent student who’s losing his card
To get to his school in Brooklyn.

“My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

“Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can ’see’ history from the standpoint of others.

“My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

“Still, understanding the complexities, this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don’t want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: ‘The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.’

“I don’t want to invent victories for people’s movements. But to think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.

“That, being as blunt as I can, is my approach to the history of the United States. The reader may as well know that before going on.”

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1922 – 2010)

Gold were as good as twenty orators,
And will, no doubt, tempt him to any thing.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Do limit ad moneys industry gets to allot. We’re wrong to hop that bandwagon.

I will list ten sources that a high school student might encounter, and I’d like you to consider their relative reliability on the topic of, let’s say, the American civil rights movement. That is, if a high school student received conflicting information from two of these sources, which source should be given the greater weight?

A. A 2010 high-school American history textbook.

B. A book on the American civil rights movement from the public library, published in 1991.

C. A high-school commencement speech, given by a well-known community activist.

D. A high-school English teacher who has been teaching American literature for twenty years.

E. A high-school social studies teacher who has been teaching American history for six years.

F. A television interview with a university history professor, who specializes in European history from 1700 to the present.

G. A website on American history maintained by a college junior majoring in American history, with a professional-looking design, well-organized information, and a straightforward writing style.

H. A website on American history maintained by a graduate student majoring in American history, with little in the way of graphic design or organization, but with well-written and insightful text.

I. A website on civil rights maintained by a well-known citizen activist organization.

J. A Wikipedia entry with no controversy alerts.

Once again, I have lettered them instead of numbering them because you may wish to rank some or all of these ten sources in order from most reliable to least reliable.

And I do realize that it may not even be possible to definitively rank these sources (especially since my sources are much vaguer than they were last time), but the exercise might help structure your thinking about what reliability means to a teenager, who may not always be encouraged to question what has been presented as authority. Whether you post your rankings or not, your contribution to the discussion is welcome.

And I’ll get the ball rolling by saying that I think Wikipedia gets a bad rap. Yes, you can certainly list incorrect information that has been found on the website, either through honest mistakes or the deliberate promoting of an agenda. But can you show me which of the other nine items on the list above doesn’t suffer from the same problem? With that said…

Where can high school students find reliable information?

As an example, I mentioned that it was a popular myth that Columbus proved the earth was round. This time, it was one of the other adults in the room who challenged me on this. I told the students that they didn’t have to believe anything was true, just because I said it was. They could put it on their Google List.

When I visit this class, the teachers asks me if the students should take notes. I encourage the students to keep a Google List. If we broach a topic we don’t have time to cover fully, you put it on the Google List. If there are questions I didn’t have time to answer, or didn’t know the answer, you put it on the Google List. If something I say doesn’t ring true, or contradicts what you already believe, you put it on the Google List. In the Information Age, there’s no reason that learning needs to be completely guided by the teacher, or that it needs to stop when the bell rings.

When I was in graduate school, I kept a “Library List” with me during my classes, so when a professor brought up a reference I didn’t know, I could go to the library and look it up. For me, that’s who these questions were addressed Before Google. What a difference the Internet has made! Today, I’m all over Google (and Wikipedia, actually), expanding my knowledge and filling in gaps on a daily basis. These are real 21st century skills. We should be encouraging our students to develop them.

Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power,
Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Al’s worthwhile reform appears in law one hour after a pathetic thirty have voted No.

Context here.

President Obama is doing the right thing by closing the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. In some cases, this will mean a transfer of prisoners, while in other cases, it will lead to a trial. But there is one group that has triggered a serious policy discussion that has challenged the President to demonstrate how he will keep us safe while upholding the ideals that are fundamental to our nation.

What do we do with foreign nationals whom we do have a credible reason to believe are intent on doing harm to Americans, but whom we are not able to prosecute because they were tortured under the Bush administration and would therefore have to be released?

President Obama’s solution is “prolonged detention,” which means that they will be held without trial indefinitely. This is a preventative measure, intended to protect potential victims of future terrorist attacks. But many believe that holding suspects indefinitely, even suspects who openly declare their desire to harm Americans, crosses a line that America ought not cross.

Some would brand them as Prisoners of War, but that doesn’t quite work, since we are in a conceptual war with no conceivable end. Others would suggest bringing them to trial anyway, but we then risk setting them free. That doesn’t seem like such a great idea either. That may very well be the worst possible option, except for all of the others.

And you may be comfortable with President Obama having the right to decide who should be held in “prolonged detention” in 2009. But would you feel just as comfortable with President Cheney having that power in 2013? What we do now sets a precedent, and sends a powerful message about who we are as a nation. We can’t take that lightly.

But some of these prisoners, if released, could pose a serious threat. That can’t be taken lightly either.

What should we do?

Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Obama’s Cardholder’s Bill of Rights may hamper undue predatory lending.

It won’t cap interest rates, but may end each hidden fee or a funny (or unfunny!) practice to rake your income.

And less opaque info may open the noose of those who offer money at usurious rates.

But it’s still a hoax. Pay them off.

There are many places on the Internet to learn about Boal, so there’s no need for an obituary from me, but I did want to say a few words about how Boal has impacted my life and my work. I can easily say that Boal’s writings have had a greater influence on me than any other author’s. (Shakespeare doesn’t really count as an influence.) I apologize in advance if this post seems indulgent, but I could think of no better place to record my thoughts about the man whose work has meant so much to me over the years.

In 1993, as a young graduate student, I read Theatre of the Oppressed for a class, and it blew my mind. Boal examines the conception of theatre from Aristotelian, Hegelian, and Brechtian standpoints, and redefines the theatrical event as a political act. Aristotle’s concept of a catharsis, explains Boal, purges the audience of the impulse to act and to make a change in society. The spectator gives away the right to act to another person, who is even referred to as the actor. Just as Paolo Freire before him had demonstrated the need for teachers to learn from their students, breaking down the artificial barrier between them, Boal calls for a new theatre, one where the barrier between actor and spectator is broken down, and the theatrical event increases the impulse to act instead of purging it.

My interest stimulated, I sought out Boal’s other key work, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, which contained a wealth of activities I’ve been able to draw from for the past 15 years. In 1996, I had the opportunity to take a class with Boal himself at the Brecht Forum here in New York City. The class was on the then-new techniques he had developed for using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques for therapeutic purposes. It was an incredible experience. I had read Boal’s book on the subject, The Rainbow of Desire, but wasn’t able to make any sense of it. Actually getting a chance to use the techniques under Boal’s guidance was an invaluable experience I’ll never forget.

Boal was not like I thought he would be. I was expecting him to be a serious revolutionary type, but he had a jovial, even avuncular, demeanor. Even when telling a story about how he was tortured in Brazil, he had such a positive energy and good humour that you’d think he was talking about riding his bicycle in the park. (The punchline was that he was being tortured for going to other countries and saying that Brazil used torture.) He also told us about his recent experiment in what he called legislative theatre. He returned to Brazil (many years after his torture experience) and successfully ran for public office. As an elected official, he had his theatre group conduct Theatre of the Oppressed workshops with the people to learn what they needed, and then he would introduce the ideas into legislation. The experience is chronicled in an entertaining and enlightening way in Boal’s book Legislative Theatre.

In 1997, I started using Boal’s Forum Theatre technique as a staff development activity within the organization where I work. I have since used it in a variety of settings and it remains the sharpest tool in my kit. For a while, it looked like I might do my doctoral dissertation on Boal, though I ended up returning to Shakespeare in the end. But while I was doing my coursework, I was planning to write about Boal, so a great deal of my graduate studies focused on his work.

For the past twelve years, I’ve been teaching a graduate class at NYU on using drama as a teaching tool in the English classroom, and Boal’s influence is ubiquitous. Not only do I devote an entire class session to using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques in the classroom, but a major theme of the course is taken directly from a speech that Boal gave when Paulo Freire died, which I read during the second session of class each year. (The speech can be found in Legislative Theatre.) Boal describes how power relationships too often create a monologue, where only one party has the right to speak. Freire’s insight, according to Boal, is that education is much more effective when it becomes a dialogue between teacher and student. This forms one of the core philosophical principles of my course. The theatrical metaphor is significant, as dramatic activities can empower students to find their voice, drawing upon their prior experience and cultural values. This makes the learning experience more relevant to them.

You may have noticed this blog is more interactive than most. I certainly share my own opinions about the matters at hand, but almost all of my regular features are interactive. This blog is nothing without you. That’s because I believe that the power of Web 2.0 tools is that they break down the barrier between writer and reader. This is a philosophy I may not have embraced if it weren’t for Boal and Freire.

We lost a giant this weekend. But his legacy lives on in me, and the many, many others who have been influenced by his work and his writings. And I invite here all of them who wish to say along with me what Boal said upon Freire’s passing:

I am very sad. I have lost my last father. Now all I have are brothers and sisters.