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Stand and Deliver Teacher Jaime Escalante Dies
DesScorp writes "Jaime Escalante, the math teacher portrayed in the hit '80s movie Stand and Deliver, has died of cancer at age 79. Escalante is legendary for creating the advanced math 'pipeline' program at Garfield High in East Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s, an area populated mostly by poorer Hispanic families. Escalante's students eventually outpaced even richer schools in advanced placement tests for calculus. Escalante refused to accept excuses from his students or community about why they couldn't succeed, and demanded a standard of excellence from them, defying the notion that poor Hispanic kids just weren't capable of advanced work. While Escalante became a celebrity because of the hit movie about his efforts, jealousy from other teachers ... as well as red tape from teacher's unions and the public school bureaucracy, resulted in Escalante and his hand-picked teachers leaving Garfield. Since his departure, Garfield has never replicated Escalante's success with math students, and Reason Magazine reported on the shameful way in which others tore down what Escalante and his teachers worked so hard to build."
Yes, my cousin Juana was one of his students, indirectly. She went on to major in math at Cal and ended up graduating magna cum laude. Whenever you ask her about her academic career, the first person she points to is Escalante.
One would think so. But if you read the fine article from Reason magazine, you'll see why that will never happen - at least not the public schools. In fact, the school he transformed worked very hard to undo all of his good works. Quite successfully too. Apparently, all evidence of math and calculus prowess and teacher competence have been eradicated at Garfield since he was pushed out.
His case is an interesting one in the Nature vs. Nurture argument. He showed that, by nature, inner city hispanic kids were just as capable at advanced studies as anyone else -- it simply required a mixture of blasting the old nurture ("You'll never be good enough to be something like an engineer, so why don't you just open a restaurant, work construction, or run a shop?") with discipline, attention, expectation, and teaching.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
one thing that caught by eye:
Open Enrollment. Escalante did not approve of programs for the gifted, academic tracking, or even qualifying examinations. If students wanted to take his classes, he let them.
His open-door policy bore fruit. Students who would never have been selected for honors classes or programs for the gifted chose to enroll in Escalante's math enrichment classes and succeeded there.
it hints perhaps that the drive to try is far more important than natural ability.
So true. And it's sad your post got modded down as Troll, since you are 100% right on, and whoever did that is probably caught up in the ideology behind monstrosity that is modern schooling (of course, most private schools are little better). Escalante failed to make large changes and was taken down by the institution because, ultimately, he was doing what should not be done in schools -- get poor people to think and climb out of their assigned class in life. More supportive links:
Gatto:
"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/086571231X
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
"""
Illich:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm
http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
John Holt:
http://www.holtgws.com/
Collections of links by me on this:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html
Why not just give the school money directly to the parents as they see fit to take care of their children? One proposal (by me):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
As a leftist extremist, I've never been able to understand it either.
When I was volunteering at the Obama campaign office, this was probably my second biggest argument with most of my fellow workers, after nuclear power.
There have been some very bad voucher schemes proposed, which amount to nothing more than yet another tax break for wealthy people while shifting the burden to the poor.
But there have also been some good voucher schemes proposed. Something that would let parents send their children to any school, public or private, that they wanted, would be awesome. Something that would actually reduce the cost of expensive private schools for those who can't afford it would be great.
Getting the fundamentalist nutjobs out of the public schools and into their own little inbred communities where they can't do any harm to the rest of society would just be a bonus, as far as I'm concerned.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
... it takes a moderate or right-wing news source to critically look at public education, the Unions and administration. Reason will look at it, so might the Atlantic but the New York Times sure isn't going to.
The Washington Post can be rather left leaning, but the education columnist, Jay Mathews, wrote a book on Jamie Escalante and often refers to his methods in his column. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/30/AR2010033003629.html?sid=ST2010033003904
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
some students will be forced to attend those schools caught in that downward spiral
It's not like these schools are so great, some of them in the inner city have pretty much hit the bottom of the downward spiral, they really can't get much worse. The kids are already forced into those kinds of schools, with the system as it is now they have no real option to go somewhere else. At least with vouchers they will have the choice to attend a different school if they want to. Besides, if a school is really that bad, it should be shut down, and something else put in its place.
I'll tell you the real reason Democrats are against vouchers, and to find out, you have to follow the money. Teachers unions are big donors to democrats, and teachers unions are opposed to voucher systems. The problem with teachers unions is that they are mostly interested in making life as good as possible for the teachers (as a union should), but they shouldn't be driving policy because school policy should be driven by what is best for the students.
Qxe4
Let's just give the school money directly to the parents instead of schools, as I suggest here in some detail: :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities.
"Towards a Post-Scarcity New York State of Mind (through homeschooling)"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
"""
New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
"""
We should also implement a basic income (social security and medicare for all, without age limits or a means test) for everyone as a human right, while we are at it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
If every person got a basic income, everyone could afford to purchase the education they wanted from the market.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I can't speak for the magazine in general, but this article seemed fairly balanced. It did leave some blame on the doorstep of the teacher's union
Well, it tried to leave some blame, as it was being written for a stridently anti-union publication, but all I see the writer saying is that the union wouldn't allow Escalante's successor to jam more than 35 students into his classes. Which I think is a good thing.
Oh no! He's getting input from more than one side of an issue! That actually sounds fair and balanced.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
If anyone working for Bill could actually think for themselves, they wouldn't be working for Bill.
I guess everyone who thinks for themselves thinks the same as you.
Of course not, but if they could think for themselves, they would see they are getting reamed working for a sociopath who produces inferior products and survives by being the most brutal, underhanded, and duplicitous fucker in the business. If his workers could think for themselves, they would see that they could do better NOT working for such a sociopath. But our public schools teach kids to kowtow to authority, not to question their 'betters,' and not to rock the boat.
But more importantly, people who can actually think for themselves (and are not sociopaths) participate as little as possible in a system that debases the working class who actually create all value, while raising the owning class up to the level of near godhood. Why would anyone work against their own interests participating in a system that enslaves them to owning class sociopaths?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton