The Education Wonks
You really don't want to get me started on this topic. Seriously, you don't.
Because I would never stop.
Working at a university where the administration would sooner abolish the English & History departments than cut a dollar of athletic spending, I can tell you that Mr. Phi*sh has relatives in higher ed.
Wow. You are joking, right?
At least they haven't come up with a little fun tradition at my University called "the Naked Mile" when student run nude down the main street the day classes end for fall term--in about December.
There is a connection here that I can't quite pull together...a school named in honor of Howard Taft...the same president whose 300 pound frame became lodged in a bath tub at Nashville's Belle Meade Mansion and required several people to extract him. So, in honor of that model of citizenry/leadership we have Mr. Phi*sh's list of round-peg-in-a-square-hole list of activities. No, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Schools are some of the most anti-intellectual places. The dumbing-down impulse is very powerful. Educationsists reflexively characterize academic standards by the dread word "elitist".
See: http://instructivist.blogspot.co...tualism-
in.html
My God. It's sad, but I'm so much happier about my principal right now.
Good luck this year, Wonk.
My son participated in Academic Decathelon and it did wonders for him. It was WOW these kids really want to learn: they are starving to learn -- what a wonderful competition. I feel that unless a high school doesn't have an academic decathelon team it shouldn't have a football team. If legislators were really interested in education instead of bullshit they would pass a law to that affect.
I don't see how I can ever complain again about anything that happens at my younger son's academic magnet middle school where they have school and after-school activities/clubs for all -- athlethes, artist, chess, debate, soon a program with Nasa, drama, film making and the list goes on.
Uh...wow. Just wow. Academic Decathlon-a program that *requires* you to use C students-is "elitist?" That makes me want to cry. Staying eligible for Octathlon and Decathlon was the biggest incentive I had to do any schoolwork in high school, where I was profoundly bored and none-too-popular. I was hoping to help coach when I get my teaching cert in 2007.
Just remember, everyone. It's okay to make people feel like they suck because they're not athletically gifted, but making them feel like they need to work harder at learning is the Eighth Deadly Sin!
What's so tough about the word "decathlon?"
Thanks for pointing that out. What can I say? Spellings happens. 
I added you guys to my prayer list some time ago because it's the only thing that gives me the courage to come over here and read your posts.
Who knows if prayer does anything? One function it has is that it gives me something to do while I wait for our "school" "system" to implode.
When you think about it, it's amazing that homeschooling ever managed an end run around the entrenched powers. The only reason there aren't more of them is that we've ratcheted up the economy so far that two people have to work to support one family. Otherwise, think of how empty the schools would be...
Many of the activities that the school takes on should be left to the community. Such as athletics, most field trips and charactar development, to name a few. Put simply, schools try to do too much.
This kind of crap is going on everywhere, and there is no end in sight. This is why, after 17 1/2 years of teaching Junior HS, I am giving up on education altogether.
I think the most useful thing I can do now is dedicate myself to talking sense into ed school students...
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