My parents only knew what outhouses were from camping trips. It’s difficult for me to realize that thousands of Wichitans living today grew up without toilets.

I never knew life without television. LA, like New York, had television during the Dust Bowl years. CBS began building a network of TV stations in 1943. NBC and ABC were broadcasting nationally in 1949.

Even by Mid-Continent standards, Wichita has always been small-town-laggardly. Chicago started broadcasting TV in 1930 (NY/NJ 1928, LA 1930). Kansas City and Iowa City started broadcasting TV programs in 1933. Fort-Worth, St. Louis and Albuqueque got TV in 1948, rapidly followed by Omaha, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa in 1949. These stations opened in response to AT&T’s laying coaxial cable enabling real-time broadcasts of NYC network shows.

One city in Nebraska, two cities in Missouri and two cities in Oklahoma broadcast Truman’s second presidential term, the Eisenhower-Stevenson contest and the Korean War. Wichitans could only see these things delayed, in movie-house newsreels, because Kansas’s largest city did not get television until 1953.

One can ballyhoo Wichita being a “modern city”, but when you’re 12 years behind Iowa and Kansas City, 5 years behind Albuquerque, 4 years behind Birmingham, Alabama, Huntington, West Virginia, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and tied with Macon, Georgia, how “modern” is that, really?

Why does being a late-adopter matter?Kansans have their own pace. Slow. They’re not interested in the outside world. But they have to learn to be. Globalization is reality. Kansas has been shaped by globalization since Coronado explored in 1541. It has been owned by three nations, Spain, France and the United States.

Because of limited resources, Kansas cannot be self-sufficient, it can only exist via extensive trade with the outside world, essentially to this point exporting a far smaller range of products than it imports. Many of Kansas’s economically vital industries are vulnerable to offshoring.

Family farming, so central to many Kansans’ self-identity, doesn’t work here, but must be propped up with federal subsidies that will have to be terminated if the U.S. is to maintain and extend its world trade under the terms of WTO and GATT. Water supplies are diminishing rapidly as well. So how do you develop sustainable alternatives for rural Kansans? Or will they just have to move out, and let the bison return to forage?

Kansas exists because of technology. It is no accident that Kansas’s post-Civil War settlement coincided with the establishment of railroad service, versus other states that were able to be founded and survive before railroads arrived. It was economically infeasible to transport grain 200+ miles by oxen-drawn wagons to the Missouri River for barge transport, or for farmers to obtain farm equipment, building supplies, clothing/textiles, and other essential goods by such conveyances.

Kansans have always been in a depedency situation, unable to achieve autonomy or peer-level interdependence with advanced economies.

For example, the California Gold Rush attracted people from all around the world. They were hearty, adventurous go-getters. Wealthy easterners had visions of controlling this newly-acquired massively-resource-rich territory. But the new residents had other ideas. By brash fiat they drafted their own constitution and proposal for statehood in 1849, only a year after the U.S. acquired California. Delegates confidently went to Congress and let the government know that it could either admit California immediately, or the people would create (recreate actually) their own independent republic. Congress acquiesced. It had no good options. Californians took command of their land, and their own futures.

In stark contrast, the Great Plains states represent planned development conceived by, and largely controlled by the Eastern Establishment. A group of Boston investors sent an exploration party out to the Kansas Territory in 1854, and envisioned getting ownership of large land tracts, recruiting farmers from Europe who would purchase this land from the investors, to the investors’ profit, produce grain for Eastern mills to the investors’ profit, and buy Eastern-made industrial products, to the investors’ profit. And their scheme worked out very well, for them, albeit without much financial prosperity accruing to the Euro-Kansas farmer immigrants.

In essence the Eastern Establishment had the same dream for developing and controlling both California and Kansas. But they only succeeded in the latter state.

Why? To get to California between 1849 and 1869, people had to travel overland 2000 miles by wagon, horseback and walking, cross two major mountain ranges, and make it across several hundred miles of desert. That was a three month ordeal.

Or, they had to take a 15,000 mile journey around the sub-Antarctic Cape Horn, an extremely treacherous proposition.

Or they could take a shorter route with a Panama isthmus crossing, and risk tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever. And contend with ruthless bandits. Another dangerous proposition.

Eventually, the transcontinental railroad obviated these harrowing routes, but by then California was already 19 years old with a population of a half-million, the adult portion of whom were these intrepid, life-risk-taking souls.

Kansas settlement was entirely different. Anyone who could afford coach and rail fare in the late 1850’s could travel from Lawrence to St. Louis by stagecoach in four days, and from there to New York by rail in four days. With stayovers, the walking part was less than a half-mile.

Of course Kansas-bound farmers took slower routes with wagons, but even then, there were towns all along the way, and there were only rare occurrences of not passing through at least one town daily, where food, blacksmith services, oxen, horses and wagon repair parts were sold.

Of course, Kansans suffered great hardships AFTER getting here, mostly because they gullibly believed landshark-hype “Garden of Eden” pitches. Some concluded, “I’ve been deceived, I’m leaving.” Others, however felt, “Our ancestors toiled for centuries on others’ land. We get to own this land. It may not be great, but its ours.”

We now know that the Dust Bowl was a tragedy, in the Greek sense, because it was largely avoidable. Oil seekers had found water underground. Had Western Kansans tapped it, they could have kept their fields growing, as California farmers did to weather drought cycles. Had they practiced sound tillage, wind erosion could have been greatly mitigated.

We still see land use mismanagement here. Three years ago, driving through eastern Colorado and Nebraska during the drought, I saw fields left with stubble. The earth was protected. When I hit Kansas the landscape suddenly changed to dried-and-cracked mudscape. It was like, “You didn’t study, and learn your lesson, did you?”

Unfortunately foresight isn’t Kansans’ forte. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But if something is wearing thin, intervention is called for. In other words, why wait until something breaks, and then scamble to fix it in crisis? Kansans never did recover from the Great Depression on their own initiative. The Eastern Establishment, led by the patrician FDR, rescued them.

After WWII, Kansas colleges and universities massively expanded to provide tertiary education to ex-GI’s, most of whose fathers made livings with their hands and arms. As this wave petered out, in order to avoid shrinking, the institutions opened themselves to thousands of young non-GI men and women. This was a national phenomenon, and fundamentally changed America.

Two extraordinary chancellors at KU, Dean Malott and Frank Murphy, proposed going beyond this, and transforming KU into a first-tier research university, as the Universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and California already were, and as the Universities of Texas and Colorado were attempting to become (ultimately successfully).

Their compelling arguments fell on deaf legislators’ ears. “We have the best economy we’ve ever experienced without no dad-gummed REE-search university. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Too bad for Kansas. Jack Kilby had to go to Illinois to study electrical engineering. Then to Texas to apply his knowledge and creativity. Where he invented the integrated circuit, which now is calculated to generate $3 trillion annually to the world economy. Kansas could have had a fat piece of that. If you don’t think that could have been monumental, go down to Austin, where Mr. Kilby worked (at Texas Instruments) or to the Silicon Valley, where Iowa-native Robert Noyce, who independently invented the integrated circuit–on a silicon chip– co-founded Intel.

In Western Kansas, some crops are amenable to drip irrigation. It should have been implemented in the 1980’s, as in Israel earlier and California. Ultimately the water of the Ogallala Aquifer will be extremely valuable for urban/suburban uses. For example, the Imperial Irrigation District in the California desert is selling former farm irrigation water to San Diego.

So, the Ogallala resource should be preserved for the future. It took millions of years to accumulate. Using it up in several decades is unwise policy, particularly when, in the absence of a federal farm-welfare program, the current use is a money-losing proposition.

It may be time to begin working to convert from water-wasting cheap commodity grain production to water-conserving greenhouse production of high-value fresh produce. I can see the end of subsidies forcing farmers to sell their land and water rights to multinational corporations and billionaires who will then sell the water to cities, and/or supply Wal-Mart’s organics initiative with greenhouse produce.

To add to their profits, they’ll likely also develop windmill farms.

I think we need schools to be transformed, so that Kansas kids can think about things like this, and learn to control Kansas’s resources, and profit from them. If the big-money interests do this, will they provide jobs to Kansans, to tend the greenhouses and windmills? Perhaps. Or perhaps they’ll find it more profitable to hire low-wage immigrants.

gee……….now heartlander is getting downright nasty. Me, dishonest? You again have no PROOF of that. What you do have proof about is that I find you a phony and a public education basher. You label me and other education professionals as horrible people because WE DO NOT FOLLOW WHAT YOU THINK EDUCATION SHOULD BE IN THE 21ST CENTURY. YOU label teachers as second class citizens who are only minimally prepared to educate today’s children, tomorrow’s leaders. You brag and gloat about claims that you cannot substantiate.

heartlander…………..you are acting like a child who does not get there own way. Of course, that is a trait of the RW. You are a typical fundamentalist who wants only to make the lives of themselves and their children better, to hell with the rest of society. Talk about being someone in denial heartlander.

We know that it requires teachers to submit portfolios including videos of their classroom presentations, and it requires them to take tests that are reportedly harder than Praxis II and other generic multiple-choice exams used by the states.

In my profession, medicine, a lot of doctors said, four decades ago that board certification was no measure of competence. But malpractice insurers had top-notch statisticians who found that non-board-certified doctors cost their companies a lot more money than board-certified doctors.

Board-certified doctors were imperfect performers, but they were statistically demonstrated to be better performers, as a group, than their non-BC counterparts, as a group, with respect to doing things that resulted in malpractice lawsuits leading to insurance payouts to injured plaintiffs. Both board-certified and non-board-certified doctors made mistakes, but non-board-certified doctors made mistakes statistically significantly more often.

This isn’t hard to understand: tests requiring demonstration of board-certifiable expertise go beyond tests required for basic state licensure. More-conscientious and studious professionals are more willing to be tested, and are more willing to study to pass board tests.

Let’s look at the NBPTS website for current numbers of board-certified teachers. My previous post was based on older information.

http://www.nbpts.org/nbct/nbctdir_bystate.cfm

Kansas has approximately 1% of the nation’s teachers. Nationally, there are 47513 board-certified teachers. So, if all things were equal, Kansas should have 475 board-certified teachers. Instead, it has 207. North Carolina has about twice as many teachers as Kansas. Does it have 400 board-certified teachers? No, North Carolina has 9809.Oklahoma doesn’t have 300% more board-certified teachers than Kansas, as my old research indicated, it now has 500% more.

These growing disparities are due to FACTS. Such as the fact that in 2004 & 2005, 58 teachers in Kansas were newly certified, versus 442 in Oklahoma.

Wichita has approximately 1% of Kansas’s teachers. Therefore, if all things were uniform, Wichita should have had 5-7 of Kansas’s 2004-2005 newly certified teachers. It had 3, one of whom was a PE teacher, and one of whom was a special-ed teacher. A lone middle-school English teacher received certification.

Aophis has trapped himself between a rock and a hard place. If he says that NBPTS certification has no proof of efficacy, he’s trapped himself, because NBPTS is A PUBLIC TEACHER’s CREATION. So he is saying, “We public teachers don’t know how to create a sound teacher-evaluation system.”

If he alternatively accepts that NBPTS, a product of public educators, is sound, then Kansas teachers are failing, according to standards established by the American public teaching profession.

Apophis is trapped. He’s like George Bush and company, who created specious arguments for invading Iraq, when the truth was, GWB’s masters wanted to control Middle East Oil. Apophis does not want a NEW EDUCATION PARADIGM for the 21st century. He just wants to milk the 19th-20th-century industrial age paradigm as long as he can. He has no interest in children’s futures. i.e. their 21st century adult lives.

Apophis is basically a dishonest individual. Have I ever given you any reason to believe I probably don’t have a doctor of medicine degree, as Apophis claims? Yeah, I do. So does my wife. We had to take RISKS in college, such as Get a 4.0 and there is no guarantee you will get into med school, even if you want to go to med school. (

I didn’t get a 4.0, but my wife did, and was rejected by 70% of the med schools she applied to.

I got a 3.5 and had to spend 2 years after college inventing a new blood substitute to get enthusiastic recs. from two surgical professors, during the peak of the Baby Boom generation, when 80% of pre-med-hopeful college freshmen were culled out in first-year chemistry, and 75% of the ones who made it through this gauntlet and were well-qualified, got rejected by med schools. I beat the odds.

Becoming a K-12 teacher isn’t like this. If you get a 2.75, and want to become a K-12 teacher YOU ARE IN. Guaranteed. The pathway is trivial.

Apophis has a trivial mind. He cannot comprehend that THE WORLD HAS CHANGED, and the things schools have taught and still teach are not going to produce a middle-class blue-collar workforce. Or maybe he realizes it, but doesn’t give a whit. He is going to have a nice retirement; the welfare of tomorrow’s generation is not his problem. Except he is partially responsible for creating this problem. He didn’t create it, but he dubmly bought into it. So he is in denial, because he doesn’t want to pay the consequences of his misguided actions imposed on other people’s kids.

I have given you all you need to know. Act with reason and wisdom. Good luck and God bless. If you have kids, figure out what THEY need. If you have nieces and nephews, or granchildren, think about THEM.

Your debate has gotten a little heated at times so I hope you can get past this if you should meet at the bloggers’ get-together this coming Thursday, presuming you will be attending, and I hope you both do.

I am very interested in your discussion points and I am trying to follow it fairly closely. I hope to re-read it this evening or later in the week, whenever time permits. I have hesitated to enter into the fray because I am more interested in the points and counter-points of your debate.

Education of Kansas students is vital and there are no easy answers in this effort. I don’t claim to know the answers but I do recognize a multitude of problems do exist in our education process.

Some schools have gone to a type of schedule that gives a “double-block” for Math. There are pretty conclusive results that the attention span of adolescents doesn’t stay focused over that long a period of time. This not the “Lexington Magnet” here in Wichita. Before trying to impose a system on Wichita students, let’s look at a real comparison of the student demographics. and is there significant data to prove your point.

I guess the same thing can be said about your idea of a pay differential for National Board Certification. Right now, there is a stipend for those of us that have passed this process. I will not support anything else until conclusive, significant data shows that these teachers are truly superior. And…………I don’t think we (teachers) have any obligation whatsoever to achieve what YOU think is any level of “professionalism” Your opinion is moot. Our profession is regulated by the State of Kansas in a licensing process. As far as I know, YOU are not actually a part of that process.

The point teachers have made is that they fear “good” students will flee public schools if someone else subsidizes free-choice education. You have to figure out the reason for this fear. We could speculate that it is unfounded hysteria, or a contrived false argument, but I have a feeling that the teachers are being honest on this matter: the loss of a few good students would be trivial, but the loss of a large number would inflict crisis in public schools, and the latter is believed by most teachers to be a likely outcome.

I have given you numerous suggestions to get public education moving. Go to 2-hour math classes for all students, using American and Filipina teachers. It’s worked in Lexington Magnet to generate superb math performance. Math mastery can carry over to improve student performance in other subjects.

Support differential pay for NBPTS-certified teachers, and encourage ALL teachers to try to get board certified, in staged progression. The more teachers you certify, demonstrating a strong commitment to professionalism, the more credibility you will gain.

Teachers are against vouchers and charter schools because they just aren’t what they are cracked up to be. Hard data shows no improvement in student learning at Charter Schools and the use of public tax dollars to fund religious schools borders on unconstitutional. You also know as well as I do that private schools will NEVER take students with behavioral problems or those with special needs (SPED). Stop layering blame on public education and look at reality, PUBLIC EDUCATION IS HERE TO STAY.

The truth is, I am only forwarding what students think. Unlike many teachers I talk to students about how THEY feel about school.

We should also consider the public educators’ prediction of good-student flight in another light. If they are aware that their good students don’t like being in public schools, which is to say in environments they would like to escape, why haven’t educators changed this environment?

Apophis says public education professionals will lead change. We can be reasonably certain that they won’t do this because they haven’t, despite being given decades of opportunity to do so. Moreover, most K-12 teachers are in the last third of their careers, and senior educators hold leadership positions. Change is never lead by middle-aged bureaucratic-institution fixtures who are inured to and invested in the old status quo.

They see it as a threat. They have consistently made the argument that given vouchers or charters, these would only be “fair” IF voucher-receiving schools and charters ACCEPT ANY AND ALL STUDENTS, as “public” schools must do.

The anti-voucher, anti-charter partisans have stated that absent this “fair” requirement, the voucher and charter schools would take away the “public” schools’ well-behaving, studious and otherwise desirable children and teenagers.

If this theory is true, it means that the very students that the “public” schools covet,WANT TO FLEE, if given a FREE CHOICE.

I am not being polemic here, I am being analytical. The public educators have let the cat out of the bag in specifying their primary objections to free educational choice.

The one thing they have not done, or encouraged the public to do is ask the $64 question, WHY would the students that the public educators covet, flee the public schools if given a choice?

Let’s dissect this. Suppose, hypothetically that ALL students want to leave. This would demonstrates a broad revulsion of public schools by students. Hence, we as a society better start talking with our young, listening to them and finding out why public schools revulse them. We fail to do so to their, and our society’s injury.

Now, suppose that charters and vouchers were to cherry pick the “good” students and send the undesirables back to the publics, which is what public educators have expressed fear of. Would this make it understandable why the public educators loath free-choice? Yes. They don’t want to be saddled with the hard-to-teach students exclusively.

But we still have to understand WHY the good students want to leave, and then stay in the free-choice schools as the public educators have told us (unwittingly) the students want to do. There is a powerful message here. It must not be ignored.

Although the public educators would directly deny that public schools do a poor job of educating good students, they’ve proven through their own statements that they recognize the good students view them to be doing a lousy job. Aha! These are vital witnesses.

So what is the public educators’ response? Is it, “These kids are dumb. They may be our brightest students, but they don’t have critical-reasoning skills. They can’t make rational judgments. They are incapable of making choices for themselves, as to where to attend school. Only we public educators have the wisdom and knowledge to make these choices for them. We want their head-count money from the state coffers.”?

We don’t know what the response is. We only know that the public educators have told us they harbor a strong belief that their good students want out of public education, and will flee IF GIVEN A FREE CHOICE. Maybe not all of them, but such a huge percentage that it will drastically alter the student-body makeup to overwhelmingly consist of hard-to-teach students.

The public educators’ theory deserves public attention. If it is correct–and we have no reason to believe that it isn’t–then parents and kids should confer not just individually, but in large-attendance conferences to let kids explain why they would leave public schools, if given a free choice, let adults listen to these young voices, and then collectively devise courses of action.

It is not the public educators’ prerogative to say, “You’re our slaves. You can’t leave, taking taxpayer money, even if the taxpayers are willing to pay for you to be educated elsewhere. It isn’t taxpayers’ choice to decide how to spend their own money. We public educators are authorized to use taxpayers’ money as WE see fit.”

This is mentally deranged thinking. No wonder good students want out.

2. Katie Haycock is on the Board of the RNC and therefore has no credibility.

3. I doubt if you actually have an MD as you claim and if you have published, prove it.

4. I doubt if too many people care of an old definition of “professional”. I do not.

5. There is a plan to offer incentives for teachers to become National Board Certified as I am.

6. I’d love to have all my students keep their textbooks every year, but administration pretty much frowns on that.

7. You are in no position to determine what an “effective” teacher is.

8. Do not presume that today’s educators are ignorant of our evolving global economy and the changes necessary to prepare our students to be competitive.

9. I do not need you to “educate” me about things you perceive I need to be educated about.

10. Don’t you have anything else to do? You sure seem to expend an enormous amount of energy trying to best me.

Give it your best shot heartlander.

2. Katie Haycock is on the Board of the RNC and therefore has no credibility.

3. I doubt if you actually have an MD as you claim and if you have published, prove it.

4. I doubt if too many people care of an old definition of “professional”. I do not.

5. There is a plan to offer incentives for teachers to become National Board Certified as I am.

6. I’d love to have all my students keep their textbooks every year, but administration pretty much frowns on that.

7. You are in no position to determine what an “effective” teacher is.

8. Do not presume that today’s educators are ignorant of our evolving global economy and the changes necessary to prepare our students to be competitive.

9. I do not need you to “educate” me about things you perceive I need to be educated about.

10. Don’t you have anything else to do? You sure seem to expend an enormous amount of energy trying to best me.

Give it your best shot heartlander.

One of the things I loved about home-education was NEGOTIATION. Last year my son was applying to college. I wanted him to study linear algebra. We were used to a morning math routine. He said, “Dad, I need to work on my college essays.” So, I said, “Okay, so figure out when you can study math.” And he did.

He got into the University of Colorado in November, the University of Washington in December, Washington University St. Louis in late March, and Dartmouth on April 1st. He got wait-listed at Harvey Mudd. He was rejected by Harvard, MIT, Duke, Princeton and Brown, but really enjoyed his interviews.

So, I’m proud of him, because he knew how to navigate, including devising his ownsenior year schedule, when his school peers were being subjected to OTHER PEOPLE’s imposed schedules. And he did very well in this, by any reasonable measure.

If you make a discovery, share it.

If you ask a question that I cannot answer, I’ll try to guide you to a source to find it. If I can’t do this, I’ll advise you to look on your own. Then report back what you have found.

What makes an effective teacher is someone who can look inside himself or herself, and say,

I know some things that people of past generations didn’t, I don’t know some things that they did know. You, my students, are going to learn things I cannot conceive of. Your knowledge will go beyond mine. But you will not know some things that I learned, either. Some things have greater lasting value than others. Some things are products of specific periods in history, and can be forgotten without ill effects.

The world is changing fast. You’re going to have to figure things out as individuals, and as members of humanity. I can give you some advisement, and I hope it is good, but you’ll confront things that I cannot predict or even understand. I wish I could give you all the answers you will ever need, but I can’t. I don’t even have all the answers that I need. Nobody does.

Always ask questions. There is no such thing as a stupid question, if you want to learn something.

There is no such thing as fixed knowledge in any field. When I went to med school, a wise Australian professor told us on our first day of class, “Half of what we are going to teach you is wrong. Unfortunately, we don’t know which half that is.” What he meant was that much of our current belief will be proved wrong in the future. So be skeptical, and keep an open mind. Evaluate evidence for yourselves. Use current knowledge if it works. If something more effective comes along, be willing to discard what you learned in the past.

In mathematics and science, you will read, and say, “I don’t get this.” Reread the text, and reread it again. You will have epiphanies: “Oh, NOW I get it.” This is part of the learning process.

When you write an essay, I will suggest corrections and have you rewrite it. This doesn’t mean you failed the first time. All writers have to rewrite. Over time, you will learn to read your first drafts, find things you want to change and rewrite your essays on your own.

I am ANTI -INDUSTRIAL-FACTORY-EMULATING PUBLIC EDUCATION because it was extremely well designed for the Industrial Age, but is now obsolete. I wish young men with high school diplomas could go into the military, come back and get $25/hour jobs (that’s what they got in the 1950’s at the aircraft plants, in today’s dollars) and buy new homes in their 20’s–and their wives didn’t even have to work, but could, if the family wanted “extras”. I’m not sexist, but what I mean is, I’d love to return to an era in which homeownership could be achieved by even one parent working, with a high school education.

But this isn’t going to happen. After WWII, Europe and Japan’s industrial base was decimated, not just factories, but their working-age male populaces. We won the war and commanded the world’s natural resources, making them cheap for industries to obtain. Our returning vets were battle-hardened. They forced the capitalists to give them a working-partnership relationship. Otherwise all hell could break loose. These crucial factors no longer exist. So a return to blue-collar middle-classdom is dead. I wish this were not so, but it is.

Most average Americans were not informed that in the wake of the Bretton Woods meeting, the World Bank was specifically created to foster industrial capacity development in the Third World. In the 1950’s, economists made a long term forecast that industrial jobs in America would diminish greatly in the last half of the 20th century. These things have come to pass.

Today’s children are not going to have lifetime job security. After WWII, employers and employees had a social contract. That’s been dissolved. So kids must undertake a fundamentally different kind of education than their parents and grandparents. I think that most can do this.

We need to train leadership that realizes, “I was given things by my community to enable me to succeed. I have an obligation to continue this process.”

I don’t believe in education “reform”, I believe in education reinvention. Mass public education was a novel invention. We can create a new education invention. We must do so, unless we want under-educated Americans to live at Third World levels, which wouldn’t bother many capitalists who would be happy living behind high walls, riding in chauffer-driven limos with bulletproof windows, and taking helicopters to work to protect themselves.

If we want to preserve a functioning middle class, which is not to say maintain its past employment venues, but a large majority of citizens that has a decent standard of living, and believes that America works for its benefit, education is a key matter. If we want to honor the elderly, and provide for their needs, American working-age people will have to earn sufficient incomes to support the retired generation. If we want a true democracy, we need to inspire children to believe in it, which does not occur when authoritarianism is drummed into their heads every day.

If you say, “Well Oklahoma provides greater financial incentives to encourage board certification than Kansas, and our teachers don’t get a sufficient financial reward to make it worthwhile,” that’s an ANTI-PROFESSIONAL attitude. But if money is what it takes to convince teachers to take up the hard work required to get board certified, how about lobbying Topeka and USD 259 administration to PAY the money?

Do you have a plan to get 50% of Wichita teachers under the age of 45 board certified by 2015, and 100% of teachers of all ages certified by 2025? If not, why not?

If you are afraid that too many would be feared to fail, that’s not good news for children, is it? Go to North Carolina and find out how they have been able to get more than 7000 teachers board certified, versus Kansas’s less than 200. This isn’t rocket science. If you are as smart as you want readers here to think you are, this is eminently doable.

The vast majority of doctors (doctor means “teacher” in Latin) are American Board of Medical Specialties certified. Are you National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certified? If not, why not? Oklahoma has ca. 30% more teachers than Kansas. But it has ca. 300% more NBPTS-certified teachers. That’s a problem for Kansas.

If your advanced degree is an M.Ed. that represents less academic knowledge than a KU cum laude CLAS bachelor’s recipient has.

You started out way behind the curve, as a confused high school student. That’s why you didn’t earn a traditional university degree.

You also work with adolescents all day, so you lack adult-adult communication skills. I learned to communicate with people of ages ranging from 2 to 90, of many ethnicities and cultures, levels of education ranging from high school dropouts to Ph.D.’s, and occupations ranging from tugboat drivers to FBI agents, as part of my professional life.

You haven’t had these experiences. You said I hadn’t made any constructive comments. I said secondary teachers need to earn 6-year dual bachelor’s degrees, in their academic field, and in education. If you want, substitute an academic field bachelor’s and an M.A.T.

Katie Haycock, a former teacher, and leader of the Education Trust, has said that when most teachers were asked in the ’60’s , “What percentage of students do you think are college material?” The answer was, “about 30%”. When the same question was asked in the late ’90’s the answer was “about 30%”.

You implied that I was anti-science education. Wrong. I had to learn and practice advanced science. Otherwise I would have injured and killed my patients. Moreover, I couldn’t have published research in the scientific literature if I didn’t understand science.

Now, when you can figure out how to make that answer “50%” or “60%”, then come back with some constructive suggestions. Otherwise you’re obsolete, but unfortunately you are taking kids down with you in your obsoleteness–you are forcing them to be obsolete.

It is clear that you suffer from linear thinking. That’s not linear-logical thinking. But it’s unidirectional. You obviously don’t know anything about science, because you don’t say anything that a scientifically-knowledgeable person would, unlike, say Ben Huie, who has many times.

You have a large knowledge base. But your knowledge base is becoming increasingly useless, just as the best warrior minds of the Persian army could not overcome the invasion of Alexander because what they knew, which had served them well for centuries, did not work against innovative fighting strategies and tactics they had never encountered. Their thinking was too rigid, fixated on old-style battlefield rules, which they were masters of. Uselessly.

Here is an example: do you let students keep their textbooks at the end of the year, or do you collect them. Good textbooks should serve as references for students to peruse to refresh their memories.

Wichita has been given many opportunities to revamp its education system. It has squandered them. Time is running out, and now change must proceed much more rapidly than if educators had made progressive changes earlier. For example, it was apparent to a few people in the 1970’s that personal computers would someday become household items and be highly useful in education. It was apparent to many people in the 1980’s that this was true. By that time small businesses were snapping them up. Educators here didn’t figure this out until the 1990’s and even then most teachers were technophobes. Every student today should have a personal computer, and Internet access at home. The public should pay for it.

Why? For many reasons. One in particular is that student-edition textbooks omit vital information contained in teacher-edition textbooks. That shaves textbook costs. But it prevents effective after-school study. So provide the information in computer form. That’s cheap. Teachers’ lectures can be recorded, and replayed by students to refresh themselves. BTW, if you want to propose these as your own ideas to other teachers and administrators, go for it. I didn’t invent them, but I recognize them to be outstanding ideas.

You can’t build a successful education system if you are far behind the curve. The future, i.e. the globalizing economy, has to be addressed by public schools, if they want to exist in the future.How many in-services or workshops have you taken on economic globalization? What have you read, and how are you applying it in your classroom? What courses are being taught to ed students on globalization, and its implications for American public education?

What ed school courses, inservices and workshops are being offered on the rapidly expanding frontiers of human knowledge, and measures in schools to address them?

These things may overwhelm you, but they are happening, and have to be dealt with.