Matt Schonert

An anti-authoritarian take on matters affecting Michigan

Archive for the ‘education’ tag

When education isn’t about education

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Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy wants to improve the relationship between parents and schools in Detroit. Her answer: Jail sentences for parents who fail to attend parent-teacher conferences. Local officials correlate truancy with juvenile crime and say the proposed ordinance will hold parents accountable.

Instead, they should acknowledge that truancy and violence are crimes in their own right, and that the inability of police and schools to enforce existing laws is not an imperative to define apathy as a new crime and declare open season on non-compliant parents.

Lawmakers should also acknowledge that youth violence is not confined to the realm of truants. In their crusade to rid “the streets” of youth violence and truancy, they may only succeed in relocating that violence to school campuses.

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A leap backward?

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The Houston Chronicle reports that Neil Armstrong is missing from the Texas State Board of Education’s proposed social studies standards. When contacted by science blogger Eric Berger, a board spokesperson said the reason was that Armstrong is “not a scientist”.

The former astronaut and professor of engineering at least merits a mention as an explorer, if not a scientist.

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Written by mattschonert

September 19th, 2009 at 9:01 am

The smallest things are most important

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A thought for the back-to-school season:

The real intellectual life of a body of undergraduates, if there be any, manifests itself, not in the classroom, but in what they do and talk of and set before themselves as their favorite objects between classes and lectures. You will see the true life of a college…where youths get together and let themselves go upon their favorite themes–in the effect their studies have upon them when no compulsion of any kind is on them, and they are not thinking to be called to a reckoning of what they know.

— Woodrow Wilson

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Written by mattschonert

September 1st, 2009 at 1:25 pm

Penny protest

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New Jersey’s Readington Middle School pardoned 29 students who were suspended for using legal tender in a protest against their too-short (30-minute) lunch break. Paying their $2 lunches entirely with pennies (5,800 of them total), the students brought the cafeteria line to a standstill and earned themselves a two-day suspension. Some of the non-suspended students expressed support for the “Readington 29” by abstaining from hot lunch later that week and having a packed lunch instead.

I think they deserve an “A” for creativity, at least.

In 2004, this guy tried to get rid of one million pennies.

In 2001, another guy tried to get rid of all the pennies.

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Written by mattschonert

March 5th, 2008 at 11:44 am