Embracing Ebooks? The Parent Trigger? Education Challenged!

Unlike most teachers who have a snow day today (I blame global warming), I'm busy teaching, but during my prep hour as I wandered around the internet looking for current news stories to link to concepts my students study in class, my eye did stop on a couple stories about education. Both of these links are originally via Conservative Hideout 2.0.

The first story is from Conservatives on Fire, and prompts an interesting question- exactly how far do we go in creating the schools of the 21st century?

I find books to be something almost sacred. So when I read this article in “The American Spectator”, which was based on this article in “Houston Press Blogs” I was dumbfounded. This story takes place in Houston, Texas.

Principal James McSwain of Lamar High School….has thrown out nearly all the books and filled the space they were unnecessarily taking up with couches and coffee and food and told his students that they can access the exciting world of reading through e-books! And if they don’t have a laptop of their own and Internet access to do so, they can use one of the laptop computers in the library coffeeshop!

He’s even expanded the library coffeeshop hours to 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. which works great if you’re one of those kids with your own transportation and not one who is too young, too poor or with rotten parents who won’t let you drive to school yourself rather than riding the bus. And he’s bought 35 new laptops! For a Houston ISD flagship school with more than 3,000 students in it.

Now let me be clear. I think the internet is the greatest educational tool ever. I love it. But come on! I’ve read many books on-line and I’m sorry but I find the experience a far second best to reading a real book. To hold in your hands the thoughts and visions of another person is just not the same thing as reading on-line. And for a highschool to literally throw away the books from their library is utter foolishness, a sacrilege. So am I an old fuddy duddy that has fallen behind the times? What do you think?

This is a great question- how hard do we fight to hold on to the time-honored learning styles and technology of the past? I'm sure there is some research out there about ebooks, but myself, I'm still holding off on buying one- not only can I not afford one (as a struggling teacher whose readers don't donate any money to nor buy books from amazon.com through my name) but I still think there is something to holding that book in your hands and flipping those pages as you read. I'm moving closer towards ebooks- after all, I get the news now online, and once upon a time I couldn't imagine not getting it in a nice crisp paper- but I'm still not sure if I'm ready to embrace it in schools.

The second story is from Maggie's Notebook, and is about an initiative that I am unfamiliar with called 'The Parent Trigger':

A new California law known as “The Parent Trigger” allows parents to take over failing schools and oust the teachers and their unions. Governor Arnold Schwartzeneger is praising the movement spurred by Parent Revolution, an organization based in Los Angeles.

Targeted is the city of Compton’s Compton Unified School District and specifically McKinley Elementary. The Los Angeles Times says school officials and “powerful teacher union leaders detest the Parent Trigger.” Parent Revolution was required to collect the signatures of at least 51% of the parents of the children at McKinley Elementary. A small group of parents gathered signatures in excess of 60%

One family reports that after signing the petition that will hopefully give their son an opportunity for a better life than they had, he was harassed on school grounds. Others were allegedly “threatened with deportation,” and “traumatized”  by teachers. Parent Revolution expects a lawsuit (to challenge their efforts or the law).

Now this is interesting, and really calls to question the education system- it is shocking that 60% of parents, who are the customers of the educational system, believe that the product that they are being forced to buy (educational services) because it has a government-sponsored monopoly is so bad that they should fire the entire management and employees and start over. Wow. That says something. The union should be shaking in their books and upset- they should be pissed at themselves and making changes faster than the parents can.
 
Unions are there to protect the quality of education and to supervise their own so that the government doesn't have to get involved, and in this case, the union let down their members and the parents of the district and deserves some sort of message sent.