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Katy Citizen Watchdog$ |
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We’re Taxpayers. It’s Our Money. |
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A Watchdog Speaks At Fort Bend Event |
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Back To “Watchdog Archives (“In The News”)” NOTE TO OUR READERS: The following is a speech that was given by Mary McGarr at a recent meeting of the Fort Bend Republicans. Our legislature will be meeting this month to consider various aspects of school tax reform. Rather than just sticking to the subject of taxes, there are those who know that bills passed in a hurry are good places to stick in things that might not fly when there is time for legislators to study the bill and for those opposed to included items to become organized with their opposition, and unfortunately, some of these folks are running the show in Austin on this tax reform bill. One of those things that was inserted into the last effort for school tax reform was the issue of supplying Texas students with electronic textbooks--computers if you will. The bill proposed had matters in it that caused those who figured out the agenda to shudder in dismay. Who led this effort? None other than State Representative Kent Grusendorf, conservative Republican from Arlington. Perhaps Representative Grusendorf’s agenda was a bit too aggressive, for in the primary election last month, he was soundly defeated by a much less conservative opponent. Did his constituency become less conservative in the last two years? I think not! The issue causing his downfall at the polls emanated from his insistence that every Texas public school student have a computer purchased for his desk top. Representative Grusendorf’s constituents didn’t believe he was sincere in wanting to cut taxes and fix the tax cap when he was suggesting that 11+billion dollars be spent on computers over the next two years and that the money come from the Permanent School Fund. There appear to be a lot of people, including me, who do not believe that computers will improve student learning if they become the primary tool for delivering the curriculum in students’ classrooms. So why should you believe someone standing before you who’s “just a mother” who says computers are not a good thing for students? Let me explain. I’ve had three jobs in my life, teacher, mother, and school board member, and I’ve worked really hard at all of them. As a mother, I stayed home with my children as soon as I could, and I did all those volunteer things that mothers do when they have the opportunity to become “just a mother.” I made sure my two sons were nice kids, that they did well in school, and that they went to college. They both graduated from Rice University with degrees in electrical engineering. I’m proud of my children and their accomplishments. And they do reflect a lot of effort on the part of both of their parents along the way. Besides being a parent, I’ve also been a public school teacher in several different high school settings. In El Paso, my students were mostly the children of non-commissioned Army personnel. In Houston I was a crossover teacher when Houston’s public school faculties were integrated, and I taught at Booker T. Washington High School. I later taught at Waltrip High School which was a school in transition at the time. My experience has been that no matter the student’s level of intelligence or socio-economic background, if I tried really hard, I could teach that student what he needed to know to satisfy the requirements of my class. My former students are professors, and Colonels, and a CEO of Pepsico/Frito Lay, teachers, engineers, principals, Commanders in the Navy and one has been the head of Information Technology for the Federal Government. They find me on the Internet and are proud to tell me of their accomplishments. As a school board member in Katy ISD, I heard and watched as one instructional element after another was dumbed down and changed by our superintendents in order to make our schools less accountable. It was clear to me that students were not being taught in the manner that they should have been. Some years I had support from other board members when I tried to effect change, but I never achieved a majority of support, and so mostly I just stopped things. While on the board, I also discovered the reasons for those dumbing down actions. Perhaps you ask yourself from time to time, why did they change schools from the way they were when I grew up? What was so wrong with them? What have they done to make them better? There are simple answers to these questions. There was not anything wrong with your school when you grew up. If you attended a Texas public school and graduated before 1975, you received one of the finest public educations ever. And all the things they’ve done to “improve and restructure and reform” public schools since 1975 have not done one thing to make them better. There is no proof --or any kind of empirical evidence that schools have improved, so that nagging little voice that keeps asking you those questions is on to something. My topic today, electronic textbooks, is concerned with one of hundreds of things that are symptoms of a major disease. Electronic textbooks are just the latest in a long line of tools, devices, strategies, methods, and so on that are used to keep the public from focusing on the real problem--the disease if you will. In order to understand the push for electronic textbooks, one has to understand the reason behind wanting them. If the government’s agenda is to dumb down 80% of our students so they will be complacent, malleable workers who will know how to read and write just enough to function in a menial job, if the government is creating people for the work we have instead of creating work for the people we have, if the hands of big business are in one’s pockets so far that a legislator can’t make a decision based upon what’s best for students instead of what’s best for Apple Computers, then one can easily see why we “need” electronic textbooks. The tool in this case becomes the deliverer of the message from the Federal government. A computer on every desk will become the means by which to manipulate eager and impressionable minds, and with no teacher in charge of and delivering the curriculum at the local level, we will not even know what they are being taught. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Computers are not the villain; it’s what they are used for that is of concern. Schools already have classroom sets of computers so students can learn how to use them, and every classroom has at least one computer if not two or three for research purposes, and libraries are now called media centers because they also are full of computers and other electronic equipment. I think that use of the technology is appropriate. I believe that most importantly there is the curriculum --the course of study for each subject or content area. There is a great deal of evidence, that, although our Constitution forbids it, our Federal Government is controlling the curriculum in each state through each states’ central education agency. Proof of that fact was gathered fifteen years ago by Anita Hogue in her home state of Pennsylvania. Even though she proved it was happening, disinterested media and lack of interest by just about everyone meant no one cared what the Feds were and are doing. But I care, and I cannot understand why everyone else doesn’t care. If there is a computer on every desk being used as the textbook, then teachers, real books, and interaction with other students disappear. Our students become sponge robots. When I was a teacher, on the first day of my first year of teaching, I was handed these books as well as some others. I went home and decided for myself what I was going to teach. No one had to tell me; it was very apparent from the text what I should do. My course of study for my students was unique. For nine years not one administrator ever darkened my door. I was allowed to do what needed to be done, and obviously someone thought I was smart enough to do it by myself. I can assure you that I did a good job. The principal thought well enough of me to make me, the second year that I taught and at the tender age of 22, the Chairman of the English Department in the largest high school in Texas. I loved the daily discussions with my students about Lady Macbeth’s ambition or Hester Prynne’s dilemma, or how one can figure out what an objective complement is, how it’s used and how to diagram it in a sentence. I could make those subjects relevant in a way that no electronic device ever could.. Perhaps you are old enough to remember these texts if you attended Texas schools in the 1960’s. They were great textbooks. They are the bedrock of a fine public education. I could wax poetic for hours about the impact of these books on my students. On the other hand, here’s a computer we had lying about at my house. It’s hard drive just crashed one day not long ago. I told my husband to save it for me to bring to this meeting as a prop, but when I get home it will go on top of the trash heap of computers that is growing in my garage. Which fact brings to mind the hidden cost of this tool. The initial charge to Texas taxpayers for putting electronic textbooks on every desk was first announced to be 450 million dollars, then it became $700 million, and now it is predicted that the cost will be about 11.5 billion through a two year span, but the expense of buying the software to put on it, the repair and replacing of a technology that becomes obsolescent in three to five years combined with intentional damage and the theft that will occur, is more than we can even imagine. It will at least triple the initial cost of this computer. This book lasts six or seven years. It could last even longer if we didn’t just change things for the sake of change. Also of concern is the fact that it was implied that these computers would only be for high school students, but a closer reading of the proposed bill suggests that the intent is for EVERY STUDENT to have one!! If there is one of these on every child’s desk, is it not obvious to everyone that one more piece of the personal nature of education in our classrooms will be lost? Do you think the teacher will grab the attention of her students when they have this thing in front of their faces? Do you really want the Texas Education Agency, or even worse, some free lancing retired public school administrator who needs money for a bigger house designing the curriculum for your children? Wouldn’t you prefer an academically educated teacher deciding what to teach your child? Do you think the teacher will still be the authority figure in the classroom if her students do not even know her very well? Will classrooms turn into chaos when there’s no interaction between the teacher and his students? I predict that the discipline problems will be uncontrollable in such a scenario. So who is it that wants these things? In the last legislative session the push was led by Reprentative Grusendorf. And even though he is now a lame duck legislator, as chairman of the Education Committee he will be leading this effort in the upcoming special session later this month on School Tax Reform. And as someone else has pointed out, this will be his swan song. There are also lots of computer company owners and software company owners and computer technicians and computer repairmen who would like to see these computers on every student’s desk. One of the reasons the bill didn’t get passed the last time was that some caring legislators prodded by interested citizens had reservations about the computers when they realized that Apple Computer employee Tom Burnett of Austin had been allowed to write much of the tax reform bill and that efforts were embedded in the legislation that forced the acceptance of these computers. To get rid of what was put in about computers would have been like trying to get rid of a yard of dirt without disturbing the grass growing in it. Grusendorf reportedly drafted his bill from a Texas E-Learning initiative report written by representatives of computer and software companies. Also during this special session of the Legislature there were 57 lobbyists for Dell computers and 30 for Apple computers roaming the floor. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who is going to benefit from the purchase of 11.5 billion dollars worth of computers. Is there any empirical research that says computers help student learning in the classroom? There is not. There’s research, but those who conduct it have vested interests and are therefore not credible. This effort is ignoring such problems as the teaching of languages, cheating on tests, handwriting, spelling, the use of recitation as a means of learning, relying on computers instead of learning skills and abilities in a basic context, causing the demise of the State Board of Education’s oversight of textbook content when software is constantly updated, and so on. And lest you think I’m just anti-technology, let me assure you that my husband’s work in the computer industry working for Silicon Valley companies puts bread on my table and clothes on my back. My husband was employee number 20 at Atheros Communications which is a leading wifi technology company world wide. I LOVE computers, but this is one application for them that just doesn’t work. Teachers should be up in arms about the prospect of being replaced by a machine., but in order to silence them, Grusendorf threw in a teacher pay raise as part of the bill. I used to jokingly say, “Before long all they’ll need is the custodian to turn on the computers in the morning and turn them off in the afternoon.” I no longer joke about the matter. Sixty years ago, I was in the first grade at Rusk Elementary in El Paso, Texas where I began my fine Texas public education. My teacher was Rebecca Wormen. She was a first year teacher, and she has been blessed with a long life. She keeps up with her former students, and over the years I was always impressed when I would get a graduation card or a wedding gift as well as the handwritten Christmas letters each year. When I visited her a few years ago, she handed me this card, written in her clear printing. It is a list of the 45 students in my first grade class. When I remarked as to the size, her eyes glistened as she said, “Yes, and I made certain that all of them could read by the end of the year.” I have fond memories of this teacher who was part of my life so many years ago, and I can recite for you the names of every single teacher I had at that elementary school. Coppedge, Wormen, Bridgers, Tiller, Bailey, Armstrong, Estes, Tombs, Whiteside, Gorton, Kelso, Foote, and Blanchard. Do you think I would have all those fond memories, do you really think I would be standing here bragging about my fine Texas public school education that has served me so well for 60 years, if I had had THIS for my teacher? Please do what you can to stop them and don’t let them take the heart out of teaching because when the textbooks go, so does the teacher as we know her. It does matter what happens.
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Mary McGarr, Katy Citizen Watchdog$ |
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Date: 04/05/2006 |
