I Speak of Dreams

A Problem Or Whiney Parents?

The story starts in the fall of 1998, when a child named Michael Lubin enrolled at a boarding school,  Milton Academy, which is a prestigious, 200-year-old boarding school.    The enrollment is about 665, about 49% women, and about 30% "students of color".  About 45% of the students are boarders, the rest are day students.

Each of the boarding students is assigned an advisor.  Michael Lubin's was Eduardo Villavicencio, a Latino teacher (possibly of computer science).   Evidently there was some problem early on, as Richard Lubin, Michael's father, requested a change in advisers late in 1998 or early in 1999.  These requests for change are not lightly granted, and after extensive discussion, it was decided that Michael would remain Mr. Villavicencio's advisee.

The next year (Sept. 1999-2000), Michael Lubin behaved badly: he was brought before the academy's disciplinary committee for leaving  a long, harassing, name-calling, message, including racial epithets on the voice mail of a black male student.  (If Lubin was 14 in the fall of 1998, he was either 15 or 16 at the time of this lapse of civility.)  He was suspended from Milton for six months.  When he returned, he moved to a different dormitory, and therefore had a different advisor.

So let's recap:  Michael Lubin had Eduardo Villavicencio as an advisor for his freshman year, and a few weeks of his sophomore year, until Lubin behaved badly toward another student and was suspended.  That's it, that is the end of his advisory relationship with Villavicencio.  The parents sue, four years later?

Lubin's junior year (2000-2001) passed uneventfully.  We don't know what kind of effort Lubin made, or what kind of grades he earned.  Lubin's senior year (2001-2002) was marred by another expulsion--it isn't reported for what actions, or how long. 

We don't know where Lubin was for the next academic year (2002-2003),  but he is now (2003-2004) a freshman studying business at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.  Chapman is not a particularly selective institution.  There are still spaces available in the freshman class forming this fall.

OK, Michael Lubin had nothing to do with Eduardo Villavicencio after 2000. How did having a Latino as an advisor (whose "offenses" in the suit are so trivial I'm not even putting them in there) make Michael behave in a manner--leaving a racial-slur message--that should make his parents writhe with embarassment?  How did having a Latino advisor two years previously cause Michael to behave so badly he was suspended a second time? 

Why are the Lubins suing now?  Is it because sending  Michael to Milton didn't get him into an Ivy League, or even a second-tier institution?  Is it because Chapman is the best he can do?

Oh, and Michael's younger brother is due to graduate soon...from Milton Academy.

Why is this even an issue?  One is I bet it will be picked up by the right wing and ballyhoo'ed around as an example of the evilness of diversity/cultural competence training.  Two is that independent schools don't have endless resources.  Every dollar that goes to a frivolous suit like this means that there's less money for the important stuff....such as scholarships.

Sources: Washington Times, Boston Globe

Improving School Communities

Attention, independent school parents (and adminstrators, but you probably know this already): do you want your school to be more diverse?  Do you want to include children from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds?  Well, if you do, admitting one or two and offering scholarships probably will not have the effect you hope.  You need a "critical mass" of kids from the various backgrounds* so that the kids feel safe.  You also need to reach out to families in new ways.

The May issue of Educational Leadership  (May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8)  has  a good article, Partnering with Families and Communities, by Joyce L. Epstein and Karen Clark Salinas on how to build programs that are effective.

One component of a school learning community is an organized program of school, family, and community partnerships with activities linked to school goals. Research and fieldwork show that such programs improve schools, strengthen families, invigorate community support, and increase student achievement and success

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*This includes making some hard, and possibly politically insensitive choices.  I freely admit that, and will write about it another time.

Boys' Schools, Girls' Schools

From their founding until the mid- to late-seventies, most independent schools were single sex.  That is one of the things that distinguished independent education, especially day schools, from public schools.  Then, with the great social shift that we callThe Sixties, but really mostly happened in the 1970s, many many schools went co-ed.

Looks like the tide is running the other way, a little.  (I don't think that historically single-sex schools such as Cate or Andover, which converted to co-ed,  will go back.)  Rather, the existing single-sex schools are strengthened, and a few new single-sex schools will open.  The difference in the current episode is that boys are talking openly about the advantage of single-sex education for themselves in high school.

Landover Baptist

For those of you seeking enlightenment, please read the latest newsletter from Landover Baptist. Be aware that the next Harry Potter movie will demonically posssess be released to a cineplex near you soon. Protect your children from the Potter Menace!

All True Christians™ believe that Harry Potter books challenge both saved and unsaved children to create demonically inspired worlds in their innocent little heads.

bookburning film at 11:00.

Mandatory Community Service=Indentured Servitude

Many private and public schools have instituted mandatory community service hours as a graduation requirement.  I am very much in favor of community service--a value I learned from my parents and grandparents, who where world-class volunteers--but I am adamantly opposed to mandatory community service.

Unfortunatley, Al's school has mandatory service.  I'm not going to fight with them--it is not worth it--but I am going to keep on saying, "voluntary service, yes; involuntary is neither good for the student nor for the service.

Well, the province of Ontario instituted mandatory service as a graduation requirement last year, and a respected educator agrees with me (I added the emphasis).

But critics wonder how meaningful the experience can be when it is shoehorned into busy senior year schedules that include part-time jobs and cramming for grades to get into university and college.

Equity is also an issue. Since the requirement is extracurricular, it falls on parents and the students themselves to arrange their volunteer hours.

Mandatory volunteering is unfair to students from low-income and immigrant families who may need to work part-time or who lack community connections to find something truly worth while to do, they argue.  "The majority of teenagers are strapped for time. They are stressed out and they don't need something else like this tacked on to their high school requirements," says York University sociology professor Noreen Pupo.

Pupo supports youth volunteerism. But she believes the government policy is seriously flawed and should be changed.  "It reinforces divisions of class, opportunity, privilege and access," says Pupo, who as director of York's Centre for Research on Work and Society wrote a stinging critique of the policy in the centre's recent newsletter. (The website is creaky--kept getting stuck on pages; couldn't find the newsletter; most recent archived was 2001.

Moreover, the policy's coercive nature — students can't graduate without it — contradicts the notion of volunteering and could turn students off community service for life, she adds.

More Spam Follies

My ISP runs Postini, which catches spam AND virii. There have been more false negatives (spam slipping though to my inbox) than false positives (a bona vide message being held up in the Postini queue.) Postini caught the latest virus-infected message:

Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 13:46:35 -0700
From: affray@aol.com
To: ponytrax@batnet.com
Subject: approved details

Your details.

++++ Attachment: No Virus found
++++ Norman AntiVirus - www.norman.com

Attachments:
application/octet-stream

.

The attachment is the virus, of course, and we are meant to read Norton for Norman. Sneaky.

Memorial Day

I am observing Memorial Day by:

Reading Maddog's Ode to His Coastie Boots

Packing up books and writing letters to service people over seas.

Jessa June

Jessa June is a student at a private university in Santa Clara county. She's going to be in a play. She's a FOAF--Scott and Ellen.

Funny or creepy?

I can't decide if this is funny or creepy.

So what can be done? ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives exist, but we are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.

The candidate states are Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.  These states were chosen because of their relatively small populations, their coastal access and their Christian-conservative citizenry.

Hmmn. This sounds like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. It also sounds like the founding of Liberia. The good news is that there are only about 550 members. The bad news is this could be a populist wave of Christian Reconstructionism, or Biblical America

Commercialization of Practically Everything

Big Arm Woman is on a rant

Thanks, Hollywood, for participating in the commercialization of an aspect of a religion you know nothing about! Perhaps they could print up some trucker caps with this slogan: Kabbalaism - Like Scientology, only cheaper to join. That seems to sum up the Hollywood understanding of it, anyway.