INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Follow best practices

David Hoppe’s (“Schools Are Different But the Kids Are the Same,” Aug. 25-Sept. 1; Mail, Sept. 1-8) commentary on charter schools begs more information about the best practices of education that any school, regular or charter, must consider if our public schools are to fulfill their promise of helping our children and youth develop their talents, use their abilities and reach their full potential.

• School size. For many, small is better. One thing charters have going for them is school size. Indianapolis Public Schools is now emphasizing schools as learning communities — humanizing its large high schools. Yet if teachers don’t get what this is all about: relationships — thus personalization, acceptance and working together in a warm family-like atmosphere, size won’t matter. As well, educators must leave the isolation of the traditional classroom and work together to form a cross-disciplinary self-critical community of teachers.

• The school experience. The major factor in students’ lives that leads to depression, dropping out, drugs, jail and suicide appears to be the school experience: ability groups, grade retention, college pressures, working alone, denial of strengths and focus on weaknesses, learning that is information-rich and experience poor, and a boring irrelevant curriculum that students must endure and frequently ignore.

• The Information Generation. All public educators must understand that technology is youth culture. It is integrated into their lives. By incorporating technology into all aspects of teaching, learning and assessment we expand a student’s learning options inside and outside the classroom.

• Culturally relevant education. U.S. schools stress individualism and independence. However, some groups/cultures see learning as a group matter. Educators must recognize the role of culture in schooling and the relationship between home cultural views and those of the school.

• Schooling vs. education. For many students, if schooling is seen as assimilation or conformity and not educating for self-discovery, self-determination (the practice of freedom) or becoming critical thinkers; if students do not see themselves reflected in the staff; if they see teachers as agents of social control; if they have to choose between the school culture and their culture, school will become the enemy. Teachers must use the student’s culture in order to maintain it and to transcend any negative affects of the dominant culture.

• Modeling democracy. What happens in the classroom will, in the end, reveal how deep are the roots of our democratic commitment. We must abandon the contradictions in our culture that embrace democratic ends for its schools, but resist the practice of the democratic means from which the ends cannot be separated. Teachers and students must be a part of the classroom and school decisions that affect them. Students are less likely to break rules they helped create; they are more likely to respect the authority of school security when they have a say in who that person is. These are basic democratic ideas. We must realize that democratic classrooms and schools offer the best hope for support of our public schools. Class morning meetings and all-school town hall meetings are examples many schools now use.

• One-size-fits-all? Public schools must abandon this concept and the Bell Curve mentality by customizing learning. Weave learning-styles, multiple intelligences and brain-based education with flexible scheduling into the needs and interests of students to create personalized education plans (PEPs) for each student. This will expand what it means to be intelligent. When we expand the range of abilities we test for, we also expand the range of students we identify as smart. Consider the Seven Ability Plan: not one, but seven Bell Curves for each student. Many students do poorly because school only regards academics and does not recognize and test for hidden abilities such as creativity, dexterity, personality, judgment, empathy or motivation.

• Democratizing intelligence. Taking the above ideas into account will democratize our concept of intelligence because when we value all abilities, talents and intelligences, not just the academic (analytic/memory IQ), we will find thousands of kids are smarter then we think.

John Loflin
PRESTO (Parents, Residents, Educators, & Students for Type I Options)

Alright, I confess, you suckered me in (Hammer, “Christians Worried About Bush,” Aug. 25-Sept. 1). Yes, I did read your article and that’s what it’s all about. Readership, poll numbers, job security, etc. The only thing most Christians are upset with Bush is that he doesn’t take a stronger stance on gay issues. Other than that I think he’s pretty much a favorite. Mitch Daniels was caught and arrested for drugs. (Public record).

I didn’t hear much more of this after the two accusers and Kernan admitted they too had partaken. I realize you want to be a pied piper to a younger generation and you like to fire them up while you bask in all your glory. I read their material on different sites and your name has been mentioned a few times (“Godlike”; that should boost your ego if there’s room). All I see is that you are producing an angry young following of which may come back and bite you in the ass one of these days. (Don’t ask me how.) You’ll get old soon. I

have spent eight years dealing with these kids not by expressing my one-sided opinion but that there are usually two sides to every story. You and people like you (Democratic Party and media in general) are trying to keep people from making their own choices so that you can create dependency, thus maintaining power. Why is it that you cannot publish both sides of an issue? (Other than your complete hatred of Bush, which seems to suffice as the only answer.)

I have to think that you may be more of a conservative than I give you credit for. I think, correct me if I’m wrong, that you have written about Bush’s stupidity and ignorance. It’s a fact that he has supposedly come out ahead on most if not all political debates in his career.

I think you have written many times about how he has misled everyone. People like Kerry, Gore, Kennedy, Dean, Daschle, Biden, etc., you get the point. If in fact he is the imbecile you credit him to be, then what does it say about the intelligence of the people he duped. Hmmmmm! But wait a minute, I see you are using similar tactics towards your readers. I just now figured it out that you must be a closet conservative. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Mike Neville
Indianapolis

A torture exhibit held on Aug. 7 outside the Washington, D.C., Convention Center depicting the Chinese government’s mistreatment of people who practice Falun Gong was very shocking. More shocking than the real life actors appearing bruised and bloodied is the fact that the U.S. State Department and human rights organizations documented this cruel punishment of the spiritual group yet it is not in the news.

Nearly all Americans are familiar with the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, yet the media seems to have turned a blind eye to an even larger population being persecuted to death today. One-hundred thousand people who practice Falun Gong are in forced-labor camps in China. Women have been raped by Chinese policemen or they are thrown naked into jail cells with criminals sometimes resulting in unwanted pregnancies. Children, including honors students, are thrown out of school. Further, many children become orphans when their parents are arrested or beaten to death by the Chinese government.

What is their crime? It is simply their belief. These people are harmless yet they are treated worse than dogs.

While I understand that not all media cover China in great detail, I am surprised that I haven’t heard more reports about a U.S. congressional resolution (H Con Res 304 with 74 co-sponsors) urging the Chinese government to stop harassing and intimidating people who practice Falun Gong right here in the United States!

Chinese, who come here to avoid persecution in China, have been subject to Chinese government surveillance, death threats, break-ins to their homes and even a car was set on fire. To top it off an American is imprisoned in China for attempting to reveal the human rights abuses to the Chinese public.

Kery Nunez
Annandale, Va.