{from Joel Judd 950302.0745 CST}
For general consumption:
While news surfing last night I caught the last story on the NBC Nightly
News with Tom Brokaw. Seems a philanthropist in Colorado deceided that
the best way to motivate poor, low-performing kids in school is to pay
them for attending and getting good grades. So a select group is
getting 50 cents a day to attend, and up to $25 for an A, and so on.
According to teachers and students, attendance is markedly improved and
so are the grades.
Now if we can just balance the Federal budget, both our economic and
social problems will be solved.
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TO: CSG-L INTERNET Any user on the Internet, not at DESE Proj. Box
FROM: JUDDJ DESEINST Joel Judd - DESE - Division of Instruction
DATE: March 2, 1995
SUBJECT: When all else fails...
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The February 1 _Education Week_ has a little report on a
Dewey-influenced school in the hills of West Virginia. A couple set it
up on their own in the early eighties and cater to local children as
well as some "problem" children from as far away as New York and
Washington, D.C. They finance the school from his natural gas business
and the $60 a month they charge for tuition. Some of the author's
(David Ruenzel) remarks on the seeming lack of formal organization and
traditional relationships among students and teachers are:
But here a question arises: If Dewey has given teachers an
opportunity to liberate themselves from the narrow conceptions of
the child and school, then why have so few taken advantage of it? .
. . as Matthews illustrates in his book {_The Philosophy of
Childhood_} most teachers have good reason for not wanting to
suurender their preconceived notions of "the child." Dewey's
observation-first principle demands that the teacher, regardless of
how experienced, must more or less start over and over from
scratch. Unable to talk of the child generically, the teacher is
stuck with the perplexing work of getting to know each child. Talk
of the "middle school child" or the typical "hyperactive child"
will not suffice. . .
For Dewey, {starting from scratch} means having the will to
turn a school into a laboratory where experimentation is the order
of the day, everyday. The absence of hard and fast answers means
that teachers have little choice but to try this and that, knowing
all the while that they may fail. This, Landvoight pointed out,
makes teaching a humbling experience.