Jingoist Jingle

I have no idea what reminded of this today, but I've felt for a long time that the U.S. ought to change its national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." A song about bombs and war doesn't seem like the best way to celebrate national spirit or start a baseball game.

I've always preferred the song "America the Beautiful." It was one of the songs we sang along with our teacher's guitar in kindergarten, so I suppose it's got a nostalgic air for me, but it also focuses on things that I think are better to be proud of. Instead of bombs, wheat fields and high mountains. Instead of victory in war, spacious skies and two vast oceans. It's a theme not unlike that of the Swedish national anthem, "Du Gamla Du Fria". Though there are apparently a lot of people who would like to change the Swedish national anthem to Ulf Lundell's "Öppna landskap," the theme is basically the same: focus on Sweden's natural beauty. (Since "Öppna landskap" mentions moonshining, though, I don't know if that change would jive with the officials...)

But whatever it was that reminded me of my distaste for "The Star-Spangled Banner" today, I decided to search Facebook to see if anyone agreed with me. There's always a group for these things, right? I can't say I put a huge amount of effort into finding a group, but nothing came up on the obvious search terms (except groups calling to change the U.K. and Canadian national anthems). I looked at the Wikipedia page for the national anthem and saw nothing mentioning a movement or campaign to get it changed. After a Google search, though, I did find this blog post by Amanda Marcotte. She argues that "America the Beautiful" is just as bombastic (pun intended, certainly) as "The Star-Spangled Banner," but personally I'm not PC enough to think a "hey, we're awesome!" attitude in a national anthem is wrong. She also says that it would be just as difficult to translate into Spanish as the current anthem -- translation into Spanish is the context in which she's brought up the issue -- but besides not agreeing with that (nothing says that the language in the Spanish version of either has to be as advanced as in the original in order to be beautiful), translatability is not necessarily my first priority here.

However, the suggestion that Amanda makes for our new national anthem, "This Land is Your Land," certainly has its appeal. Aside from echoing "America the Beautiful"'s spirit of America having a huge and varied landscape, by mentioning California, New York, the squares of the city, the shadow of the steeple -- I like the fact that it makes America not just a landscape, but a landscape with people in it. The main theme, "This land was made for you and me," a theme of inclusion that reminds us that we all came from other places, is much more worthy of celebration than superiorly bombing your enemy to smithereens. Just like with Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," there's a risk of feeling sarcastic when singing this song of inclusion and welcoming. But like Amanda mentions in her blog post, the last lines of "This Land is Your Land" are:

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.

As Amanda writes, "Best part is the implied challenge at the end for this country to actually live up to its promise." At any rate, I'd rather sing "America the Beautiful" and feel a bit ashamed about us not quite living up to the spirit of caring for America's landscape, or sing "This Land is Your Land" and feel a bit ashamed about us not quite living up to the spirit of welcoming all types of people in our country, than to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and feel ashamed that my country doesn't even strive towards these priorities and focuses pretty exclusively on "bombs are kewl."

My Name is Lori - Karma Lite

Tonight I managed to commit an act of charity, and also to lose my bank card.

About 13 years ago I had a summer job at the 3M tape factory. I worked the graveyard shift, 10 pm to 6 am, so my days were naturally turned around. Personally, I thought it was ideal; you get to sleep as late as you want and still have your evenings free. Can't they open a graveyard shift high school that I can work at? I doubt the students would complain...

One weekend morning at about 2 am I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods and was approached by a petite Hispanic girl in a Taco Bell uniform. She probably weighed 50 pounds soaking wet. She'd just finished work and was supposed to be picked up by a family member, but the family member never showed. She wondered if I could give her a ride home. I took a quick look around while the gears were whirring in my head -- what the hell, why are there so many elderly people shopping at Cub at 2 in the blinking morning -- and decided that the quotient of possible danger to logical explanation for why she asked specifically me multiplied by the unlikelihood of someone dressing up in a Taco Bell uniform in order to kidnap me seemed pretty okay. Her house was on my way home anyway, so I told her to hop in.

When we pulled up to her house, she pulled out a Taco Bell-stamped envelope of money (it was apparently payday, and I totally wondered at the time why Taco Bell paid her in cash) and gave me a $5 bill. I most certainly did not want her money and very much wanted to refuse it and explain that I was glad I could help her get home safe, but I've always had a shyness of the "avoid ANY kind of conflict AT ALL COSTS" type (don't worry, I'm mostly over that now), so I thanked her and took the money and went on my way.

And that bugs me to this day. I was actually thinking about it earlier today. I'm excellent at holding a grudge, especially against myself.

Now, 13 years later, I'd just put Benjamin to bed here at my parents' house and headed out to pick up some milk and OJ. I took a drive over to Byerly's, just because the place gives me the super warm fuzzies. When I was putting my groceries in the car, I remembered that I wanted to take out some cash, and while I was looking back at the store to see if they had an ATM, a woman approached me and asked for help.

She wasn't a tiny Hispanic girl, but rather, a kind-sounding middle-aged lady that happened to be missing a few teeth and was on the brink of tears.

Her explanation of what she needed was a bit fuzzy to me, given that she was visibly shaken and speaking quietly, but the gist of it seemed to be: she was visiting someone at St. John's hospital, her wallet was either lost or stolen, she needed to get home to Stillwater, and wondered if I had a few dollars for gas.

I answered, quite honestly, that I didn't have any cash.

Before I had even finished saying so, she excused herself for bothering me and walked away.

This is where I go back into the store to get the cash I needed anyway, and lose my bank card.

See, American cash machines have the unfortunate routine of spitting out your cash and THEN your card. I'd forgotten this and am once again grateful that Swedish cash machines work the other way around. I grabbed my cash from the machine, went over to a cashier to ask her to break up the bill for me, and walked back past the cash machine in time to wonder why it was beeping so loudly. Then I swore pretty loudly and lunged at the machine a split second too late to save my card from being sucked back in and shredded, and was greeted by the message "Your card has been destroyed for security purposes, please contact your financial institution." (And you have to admit that you, too, would have stood there pressing buttons and hoping to magically reverse that process, yes?)

Anyway, whatever.

I went back into the parking lot and saw the dejected lady sitting in a rather vintage-and-not-in-a-good-way vehicle with two equally dejected looking men. The window was down, and as I approached I could see that she was crying. When I asked if she was alright, she tried to brighten herself up and say that she was fine. I asked about who she'd been visiting -- her dad had had a heart attack but he was doing alright now -- and saw that her gas gauge read bone dry. I gave her $5 and said that I hope her dad will be alright. She thanked me and said she was going to sit and compose herself for a while, but as I buckled up and started my car, I saw one of her male companions on his way to the 76 station with a gas can in hand.

I hope 2 gallons of gas was enough to get that clunker home to Stillwater. Perhaps now I will let myself off the hook for not refusing that other girl's money. But mostly, I just think it's funny that I've added to the list of times that my mother thinks I've narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt outside of a St. Paul grocery store.

Klyftpotatis

The gap between poor children and rich children is up for discussion again, this time in regards to the grades they get in school: Choice in School Widens the Grade Gap .

I'd like to provide an alternative analysis.

There is indisputably a positive correlation between having well-to-do parents and performing well in school. Therefore, I don't find it inappropriate for me to exchange the concept of well-to-do kids for the concept of talented kids.

We see on the graph that grades for all 4 categories -- what has been labeled high, fairly high, fairly low, and low income kids -- have gone up since 1990.

Parents being given the opportunity to choose an alternative to mediocre public schools has therefore, according to my analysis, not brought down the lower income children. Rather, it has helped put an end to the holding back of children who are more talented at traditional schoolwork. It has even, perhaps, created the desired effect of causing the public schools to get their butts in gear and improve themselves -- thereof the rise in grades for all categories of children.

I do believe that we need to make sure everyone can choose a better school and that income, which is only symptomatically related to success in school (but, once again, undeniably related nonetheless) is a barrier that we should make efforts to break. But there would be little point to having grades if everyone got the same, wouldn't there? If anything, I think the real story in this graph is "what's up with the general grade inflation going on here??" I don't doubt Fjelkner's analysis (she is the head of my teachers' union) about returning the responsibility for schools to the national level -- I have yet to form an opinion on that subject, and frankly think it would be 12 of one, a dozen of the other -- but I appreciate Margareta Pålsson (schools spokesperson for the ruling conservative party) saying that choice in school is critical and what we need to do is make sure that those choices are open to everyone. I'm also pleased to see that even Ylva Johansson (schools spokesperson for the socialist party) sees school choice as a part of Sweden now, and that solutions to both problems and "problems" must be found in other areas.

Either way, I don't see the benefit to Sweden of making sure everyone is equally poorly educated. But, with a bit of deja vu from the earlier article I blogged about on the subject of the growing number of "rich" children, it appears that I'm surrounded by people who feel that everyone getting the same grades is an obvious end unto itself.

Lasse

I'm sitting here wondering if it's kosher for a teacher to blog about her political views. Mja. Let's say that it is.

Today is the first day of my summer vacation. My school has been open since 2006, so it was our second class of high school graduates that entered real life last Friday. Work wasn't quite over for us teachers though, as we still had our company's yearly conference/meeting to attend. The question was, what was I looking forward to more: seeing my colleagues in party mode or listening to the one speaker on the lecture list that made me drop my jaw, Lars Ohly?

Here comes the obligatory explanation of Swedish politics and whatnot. In Sweden, there are public schools (in the American meaning of the word; school that are financed by and run by the government) and there are "friskolor," which most closely resemble the American concept of "charter schools". They are financed by public funds (they receive a certain amount of money per student that attends the school) and, with a few exceptions, they must follow the same rules as any other school. The important difference is that they are run by a private company, which like all other companies wants to make some kind of a profit.

Lars Ohly is the head of Sweden's Vänsterpartiet -- the "left party". It used to be called "the left party communists," and though they've removed the communist bit from their names, it gives you an idea of where they stand politically. Of the 7 parties that make up Sweden's parliament, Vänster is most strongly opposed to charter schools.

This, and the fact that teachers are known to lean very strongly towards Folkpartiet (the Liberals, on the other side of the political spectrum), meant that I giggled when I saw that Lars Ohly would be speaking at our conference. A conference for Baggium Utbildning AB, operator of 41 charter high schools. Lars Ohly's audience would consist of 700 men and women whose monthly paycheck comes from a system that he thinks should not exist.

Oh, and it's an election year.

Ohly opened his speech by telling us that he believes it's important that there's a school out there for everyone. He worked on a government initiative which had as its goal that 50% of all Swedes would continue on in higher education after high school, but he understands that not everyone -- heck, not even 50%, he says -- should be an academic. There have to be "practical" schools, schools for people who want to be carpenters and plumbers and hairdressers and everything else that society needs but that often gets looked down upon in relation to fancy degrees and university pedigrees. But, he continued, we're making a mistake if we give these more hands-on students an education that is devoid of the theoretical; of math and English and civics and everything other kind of knowledge that may not seem important in a car mechanic's or an assistant nurse's working life but which is important for every individual citizen in their everyday, private lives and for their participation in a democratic society.

This, according to Ohly, is where the current conservative government is going wrong with education. And this, according to me, is about where his audience started to squirm in their seats.

It's not that we didn't agree with him. Well, I suppose I can't speak for the other 699, but I CAN say what our company's vision is: educate the future plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, florists, painters, and all other kinds of hands-on workers of tomorrow, in an apprenticeship-based format where they spend about 50% of their high school hours working at an honest-to-goodness company. "Everything that can be learned on the job should be learned on the job." But we also think it's important that all of our students become well-rounded and prepared for real life, not just working life. Future voters and law abiders need to know civics. Future homeowners and wage earners need to know math. And future members of a rather small European country in a quickly shrinking world need to know English. Our students study the same core subjects as all other high school students and are qualified for university studies when they graduate.

We agree, in other words, with Lars Ohly. Is that what made us uncomfortable? No, rather, it was merely the fact that he talked to us as though we didn't. Or, perhaps, as though WE did, but worked for a company that didn't. Was it the case that he wasn't entirely up to speed about our company, or was it all the OTHER schools he was talking about ("NOT you guys, you guys are good.")?

He continued by talking about how it's important to provide for those who make the wrong choice or who change their minds after choosing a certain program. Students in Sweden are forced to choose a specific educational program when they apply for high school, and that's a rather heavy burden we put on the shoulders of our 15-year olds. But what about those who discover "too late" that they've made the wrong choice? What if they finish high school, start working, and then discover that the job that they've trained for is really not their thing?

Then he came to the meat of the speech, the bit that we were all waiting for. "I can't come and talk to Baggium Utbildning without talking about charter schools." In short, Lars Ohly is sceptical to a profit motive in a system financied with public funds and which has a mission as important as educating our children. It leads to charter schools hiring unqualified teachers, skimping on the teacher-student ratio, and cutting corners wherever possible in terms of materials, school nurses, libraries, and all other forms of things that make an education richer but a school's wallet emptier.

His central critique of our concept -- yes, now he was getting personal -- is that we ought to have our students out at a workplace less often. "It's important not to abdicate responsibility for the student's education. Sometimes it works well, but sometimes it works really poorly."

Of course, I have translated his comments into English and shortened them, but I do not feel that I have paraphrased too brutally or corrupted the tone.

After his speech, Ohly took questions. I was hoping the microphone might come my way before time ran out. I was calculating our teacher-student ratio in my head and thinking about which of my colleagues were qualified. I was trying to piece together what he said at the beginning of his speech with the seemingly conflicting remarks he made at the end. But I didn't have to worry that his comments would go without opposition. I felt that the best comments came from the leaders of the company, perhaps because they took the words out of my mouth. But since this is my blog, I'll let myself get a bit more wordy and put it my way.

Charter schools are not subject to the same laws that require public schools to hire qualified teachers as often as possible. That doesn't mean that we don't. Baggium's goal is prioritize qualified teachers. When a qualified teacher isn't available, we prioritize highly skilled professionals with experience in their fields (that is, experience as plumbers, small business owners, etc.) with the good communication skills it requires to instruct young people and keep up a good relationship with the companies out students are placed at. Our hiring processes are, in other words, the same as at a public school. It's not an easy task finding a person who is both a plumber and has a teaching degree, no matter if the employee is a private or a public institution. In my eyes, a plumber with 30 years of experience and an open and pedagogical attitude is preferable to a person who's never held a wrench (or, for that matter, much better than no teacher at all). In the case of core subjects, 80% of Sweden's working teachers are qualified. At my school, that number is 100%. Perhaps because our school doesn't hire unemployed civil engineers to be math teachers and then work around Sweden's school laws to avoid having to fire them when a slightly more expensive qualified teacher comes along -- a practice not at all unheard of at public schools.

But our core teachers are not "just" qualified. I have a Swedish teaching degree in mathematics and English, but I also have a master's in math, English is my native language, and my education in computer science and art make me a valuable asset at a workplace where students have to be taught to use our intranet, computers often have to be fixed up after our students have used them, a website has to be administrated and a whole mountain of addresses, grades, and schedules has to be databased with pedantic precision. None of these things are necessary in order for me to count as an officially qualified teacher, but they make me a better teacher and a better employee. They are valued by my employer, both figuratively and literally: I command a salary more than 10% above what I would receive at a public school, where my age and number of years of experience would have been plugged into a formula and my "extra" merits would be verbally praised once or twice but otherwise ignored. The story is much the same for my colleagues in our core subject department. Add to the fact that our employer provides salary bonuses after 5 and 8 years of experience or after we've done something "above an beyond" our everyday duties that benefits our students, as well as the fact that they help our unqualified teachers become qualified by providing classes or time off of work for studies, and many of Ohly's criticisms fall flat on their face.

So we clearly don't skimp on our teachers, whether we're talking qualifications or purely in dollars, so what do we skimp on? Surely something has to give if the company is going to make a profit? We don't have the money to buy all the equipment we would need to train a mechanic, a plumber, or a groom. We can't have a state-of-the-art workshop on site or a fully functional stall with 5 horses. But we don't have to. We put our students where those things already exist, where they get to learn by doing instead of just reading, and that gives us more freedom to invest in textbooks, a school library, healthy school lunches instead of re-heated, transported, mass-produced food-like substances. Ohly's main critique of our schools is that our students are too often at a workplace and too seldom at school, but aside from "learning by doing" being the core idea of our company it's also what allows us to have the resources to build a better school and gives our students the ability to discover "hey, this job really isn't for me" long before they graduate. It doesn't mean we abdicate responsibility for our student's education -- a theory that our work subject teachers can disprove by showing how many miles they drive every week to visit and evaluate our students at work.

Pure numbers can say a lot. Ohly mentioned that the teacher-student ratio in Swedish schools has dropped from 9.1 teacher per 100 students to 8.3 to 100 in recent years. At Baggium's schools the average is 10.3 and at my school it's 12. And that's not counting the mentors at our student's work placements. In core subjects, our students are in groups of about 16 -- about half the size of groups at the public schools. In their work subjects, the groups are even smaller. I know the name of every student at my school and have had all but a handful in some subject. Since we tend to get kids who don't think school is fun, this level of attention is incredibly important. So Ohly? We're not skimping.

You can tell that I really believe in what we're doing at my place of work. I don't believe it's a concept that would have developed or survived in the public school system. And after my company has been doing it for 11 years, we've been noticed by the current government and been made a "model school" for the high school reforms being planned for next year. And I believe in the concept of charter schools and choice in education enough that my son will be starting at one this fall. "Sometimes it works really well, but sometimes it works really poorly." Ohly's words apply very well to the public school system.

I don't have much hope that Ohly's opinions would change after standing in front of 700 teachers (representing 5000 students) that prove the opposite. But I think something he mentioned at the beginning of his speech says a lot. His son is a student at one of our schools. I guess he doesn't think we're so bad after all!