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

Follow best practices

David Hoppe’s Aug. 25 column “Schools Are Different But Kids Are the Same” continues to necessitate more explanations of contemporary education’s best practices, powerful research both regular and charter schools must consider if they are to successfully educate not some, but all students.

• Successful Intelligence (SI). SI differs from IQ and maintains that the best predictors of success in the real world are social, creative and practical intelligences. These individuals may not do well on tests, but are “smart” at achieving. They know how to work with others, make the most of what they do well and find ways to work around their limitations. It is the effective domain, not the cognitive, that will determine our future.

• Reinvent special education. Educators must review traditional concepts of learning disabilities that limit intelligence to academic success. Why are so many of our children seen as psycho-biologically impaired or diseased? Also, a moratorium must be placed on assigning black males to special education classes unless they have a physical disability. Too many are placed there due to behavior, not learning problems, and most never get out. Educators must create alternative learning environments that provide options to medications for students with ADHD.

• Create powerful learning experiences. This type of learning connects to students because it allows them to apply what they are learning in hands-on situations with real-world outcomes by creating a product or solving a problem. This is authentic learning and assessment that tests can’t measure. These creative and service learning experiences, each school course needs, often require imaginative thinking, complex reasoning and a discovering of course objectives rather than passively going through textbooks and filling out worksheets. Powerful learning is complete and total emotional, physical and intellectual involvement in what you’re doing. It’s launching yourself fearlessly into risk taking because it’s OK to try and perhaps fail. And it’s lasting, because it affects every fiber of your being and changes your perceptions forever. No wonder traditional schooling is boring!

• Provide both traditional and non-traditional assessments. By providing a variety of options for student success through non-traditional assessments, educators and parents can measure how a student thinks about and applies acquired knowledge and skills over and above the ability to recall facts. Authentic assessment must be used to improve, not just grade, learning. Along with traditional classroom exams and standardized tests, multimedia projects, performance-based presentations, portfolios and graduation by exhibition are some examples of alternatives.

• The arts as the fourth R. Stress media literacy along with the visual and performing arts. In an era when students design Web sites for projects and integrate video, graphics and animation into their presentations, art is fast becoming the new literacy of our times. The arts are invaluable classroom tools for reaching a wide variety of learners and they are a powerful assessment option. They also help learning by developing a student’s integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional and motor capacities. The arts teach discipline and self-expression. We become more fully human, because the arts help us represent what we cannot express in other forms.

The traditional definition of education was narrow. We believed that everyone learned in the same way and should be taught in the same way using a common curriculum and assessment method. We thought all schools should be alike. We thought that children and their parents were incapable of making decisions about what and how they learned. We now know that we were wrong, there is no single best type of school, best way for all to learn or show learning.

Traditional education has brought the United States this far. Yet, characteristically, it was limited and exclusive. Now American education must be inclusive. American education must embrace diversity. It must respect and nurture variety. It must bring its promised equity to education. And it will.

John Loflin
PRESTO (Parents, Residents, Educators & Students for Type 1 Options)

The Honored Andy Jacobs Jr. is without doubt a faithful friend. He will almost certainly endorse my opponent, his old employee, 7th District U.S. Rep. Julia Carson. That’s sad only because I agree with almost every word of Jacobs’ Sept. 1 NUVO column (First Person, “War on Terrorism”), while the woman he’s always endorsed personifies his opposition in spirit, word and action. Congressman Jacobs was a thrifty and accountable representative of the people. He was outspoken on serious issues, and acted in accordance with his words. His last column speaks to his personal values of public service in a way that I applaud, support and want to bring back to Washington, D.C. I’d need to bring those values back because they’re not at all espoused by his protégé, Ms. Carson. I know Mr. Jacobs is aware of this dilemma of conviction and friendship, and I hope he finds a way to deal with it in peace. But Jacobs’ beliefs and past work are greater than he is. If Jacobs the man stumbles in his support the proven practice of governed government, then I intend to pick up, dust off and carry on his mission.

Andrew Horning
Republican for 7th district U.S. Congress

The Labor Day weekend has traditionally marked the beginning of the fall general election. Candidates’ behaviors tell a different story. At all levels, candidates have been immersed in the campaign for months. The lesson is that political traditions are not what they used to be.

Our changing political traditions would be less worrisome if they did not signal a potential decline in our democracy. Voter turnout is low. Citizens increasingly feel they cannot make a difference. Cynicism and distrust of the political process is profound.

Some people dismiss growing political and civic disengagement as irrelevant to what is important to them. But the crisis of our democracy is a crisis of citizenship. Citizenship has become optional. If citizenship was a sport, many of us would be spectators.

The decline of citizen engagement has not gone unnoticed by educators around the country. Leaders on campuses of Indiana University are taking action to transform how we prepare our students for their roles as citizens. We have joined peers nationally in consortia like Campus Compact and the American Democracy Project. The goal of these initiatives rests on a core belief that civic engagement — working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities — is critical for the vitality of American democracy.

IUPUI is working on many fronts to educate future citizens. Undergraduates have created a Democracy Plaza where candidates, students, faculty and staff will come together to express views, debate and learn about the perspectives of others. Rock the Vote, the MTV music tour seeking to raise the political awareness of youth, visited the campus Sept. 14. The campus is also engaged in on-going conversations with members of the community about how IUPUI can play its role as citizen. Benjamin Franklin reminded us at America’s founding of democracy’s fragility. Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

For many Americans, the lesson of Sept. 11, 2001, is that our way of life is both precious and at risk. It would be ironic if we were to win both the war in Iraq and the fight for Iraq’s democracy at the same time democracy at home becomes meaningless — but we face that very prospect in the gradual erosion of our obligations as citizens. IUPUI is working daily to assure we keep our republic.

James L. Perry
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Let me get this straight: John Kerry voted for the Iraqi invasion, then says the operation was a mistake. Mainstream Media Verdict (MMV): flip-flopper.

George W. Bush says the war on terrorism will be won, then says he doesn’t think you can win it, then it’s “we are winning, and we will win.” MMV: clarification.

Ah, yes, it’s oh so clear now! Wait, let me clarify: It’s not! I’m thinking about sending some see-through sandals to the White House. Hey, they’re flip-flops, but at least they’re clear. As for the copy-cramming mainstream media, they can go and get stuffed. Keep up the good fight, NUVO.

Ted J. Schrader
Indianapolis