The Week In Review

A few things on the Internet caught my interest this week and spawned a few personal comments.

"Education Next" in the "Lights, Camera, Action" article discussed using surveillance video cameras in classrooms as a way of conducting teacher evaluations. My comments at the bottom of the article were posted as "MisterRog" and included a link to another article on videotaping teachers from the Washington Post.

Politicians and so-called education reformers have the sirens blaring over the latest international test results from the "Programme of International Student Assessment".  However, a piece in "Bloomberg Businessweek" had a nice response to the panic, "U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead - Way Ahead".

Personally, I take issue with the popular notion "The United States is rapidly falling behind the rest of the industrial world".  Like the concept of the movie "Inception­" this notion that "The United States is rapidly falling behind" has been repeated over and over that it has grown within peoples' minds so much it has become accepted as their own idea and as the truth.

Also, Gregory Michie had a fabulous, spot-on piece this past week with "How to Be Taken Seriously as a Reformer (Don't Be an Educator).

One line from his article regarding the so-called reformers particularly struck a chord with me "... "But their arrogance is astounding­, and their lack of interest in the wisdom of those who spend their days in classrooms speaks volumes."

And a related "MUST-READ­" to Gregory Michie's piece is  "Teachers Should be Seen and Not Heard" by the 2009 National Teacher of the Year, Anthony Mullen.