French vs. One-of-those-hyphenated-Americans

The following came from a friend:

“But being a French citizen means you?re not categorized as African French or Southeast Asian French or West Indian French; you?re just plain French. That?s the republican ideal, citizenship bestowing theoretical equality, belying the reality of racism. French schoolchildren are steeped in the concept of a single France. The law actually forbids taking a census according to ethnic or racial categories.” – The New York Times, Oct. 17, ‘07

Why does it happen here in the United States then? When you become a citizen here, would you (i.e., me) prefer to be called just American or Asian American?

Do you think people like the connection they have to have with their ethnicity?

—–
Now me: At a recent conference I attended in Boston, I was part of an affinity group for international students and faculty. One of the members made an excellent point, one that I have adapted here. In the United States, we prize diversity, differences, individual cultures and traditions (or at least we say we do and then try to show it), whereas in France the culture seeks to suppress individual differences as the only way to achieve unity. Recent racial and ethnic riots in France tell us that theirs is a flawed model, and while ours has many problems too, at least we strive for our motto E Pluribus Unum.

The VA Tech Massacre and one news editor’s erroneous conclusion

clipped from mail.google.com However it is dressed up, the Virginia campus massacre was only possible because the killer, Cho Seung-hui, had access to a gun. Remove the access to guns and some of the threat disappears too. Of course serious criminals will always be able to lay their hands on weapons. Criminals don’t pay attention to bans, but many of these youngsters responsible for the 19 shootings in the last decade have not been from criminal backgrounds. If guns weren’t so freely accessible, some of them at least would not have been able to carry out the atrocities that they did. Guns need to be removed from society entirely, not, as Mr Pratt suggests, integrated into all parts of it. Even if a ban on guns had prevented just one of those shooting incidents in the last 10 years, then surely it would have been worth it, as the community at Virginia Tech would no doubt agree.

The above clip is taken from an article posted on April 17th on the http://uk.msn.com website and is written by their news editor, Tom Reed. What follows below is my response.

With yesterday’s VA Tech Massacre, lots of blogs and newspapers will renew the call for a ban on guns, or at least a more stringent background check before guns are issued. As the MSN News Editor concludes above, the “Virginia campus massacre was only possible because the killer…had access to a gun.” In my opinion, that’s completely missing the point here – all of the emerging news reports are talking about how friends, family, acquaintances, and the VA Tech community missed warning signs and the opportunity to help Cho Seung-hui when complaints were registered against him.

Let me be very clear here: I’m not advocating for or against guns here. I’m simply refuting the MSN News Editor’s argument above that it’s the access to guns that caused the massacre. Again, what caused the massacre is that many people who had the power – the chance – to help Mr. Cho Seung-hui ignored his troubles. As an educator, I’d argue that ignoring warning signs in a student such as the one Mr. Cho Seung-hui has been described is failing one’s primary professional responsibility.

We need to be more proactive, not reactive, and that means helping our students not just with their academic needs but also their emotional and psychological needs.

Why I’m happy without my millions

clipped from www.nytimes.com THE other day at a Los Angeles race track, a comedian named Eddie Griffin took a meeting with a concrete barrier and left a borrowed bright-red $1.5 million Ferrari Enzo looking like bad origami. Just to be clear, this was a different bright-red $1.5 million Ferrari Enzo from the one a Swedish businessman crumpled up and threw away last year on the Pacific Coast Highway. So what exactly constitutes a bad day in this rarefied little world? Did the casino owner Steve Wynn cross the mark when he put his elbow through a Picasso he was about to sell for $139 million? Did Mel (“I Own Malibu”) Gibson sense bad-day emanations when he started on a bigoted tirade while seated drunk in the back of a sheriff’s car? And if dumb stuff like this comes so easy to these people, how is it that they’re the ones with all the money?

As this op-ed in The New York Times goes on to conclude, the rich and famous become “disinhibited”. Scientists at the Univ. of California at Berkeley have conducted experiments that suggest that with power, people tend to forget social norms (“the rules don’t apply to me”) and live a rather large and reckless life, while the lack of power tends to make people play it safe. In other words, the powerless become less inhibited and more frightful of consequences of their actions while the powerful becomes less so.

But what if, one day, I do get my millions and become one of the powerful? The article has advice for that too – I’ll just hire one of the powerless!

Record numbers of college applicants get turned down by Ivy League Schools

clipped from www.nytimes.com Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages. Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen. It was the most selective spring in modern memory at America’s elite schools, according to college admissions officers. More applications poured into top schools this admissions cycle than in any previous year on record. Schools have been sending decision letters to student applicants in recent days, and rejection letters have overwhelmingly outnumbered the acceptances.

As an educator who has dealt with the “Harvard Effect” where parents want to know how their 18 month-old infant can get into Harvard, this news is bad news. Blood pressure will soar, hair lines will recede quicker, aspirin sales will skyrocket, and the school counselor’s office will be flooded with phone calls for new appointments.

So what can you do to keep your hair from falling? Well, first, get Rogaine or a competing product, and then remember: it’s not just about the school, but whether the school’s a good fit for you (or your child). The same thing applies to college admissions as well.

So what’s all this on either side of the page (and what can YOU do with it)?

I just realized that while you must have obviously noticed the new page design, I haven’t explained any of the new features in the sidebars. So here’s a quick note about each one starting with the left sidebar:
- First, you’ll see a search bar that acts like any search engine
- Below the search bar, you’ll see this month’s calendar with some dates hyperlinked in red. These are basically links to the posts written and posted on those dates. Again, simple and direct…
- The archives links let you pull up the entire listing of my posts by month and year
- The RSS link My Pictures takes you to an external page where all my photo albums are stored. The feed on this page pulls up the three most recent albums.
- The next column down contains links to current news articles I’ve enjoyed reading. Most articles I share with you here will be from the The New York Times website.
- Finally, the recent posts column is pretty self-explanatory.

The right sidebar:
- The first widget is by Meebo, which allows you to see my online status and either chat with me if I’m online, or leave me a message if I’m offline
- Next up is a map widget which, for now, has been customized to show you where all I’ve lived so far. If you click on the diamond-shaped placeholders, a bigger map showing more detail will pull up with notes left by me about my connection to that city/town. I’m thinking of other cooler ways to use this widget, so if you have any ideas, leave me a comment!
- The VodPod widget allows me to share my personal videos as well as others I find on the net (like YouTube) with you
- And last, the hit-o-meter lists the number of page hits since this new design went public.

That’s it with the stuff on the new page for now… happy exploring!

Mandarin in schools?

On January 31st, the Palo Alto School District rejected a plan to immerse forty kindergarten to first grade students in Mandarin language instruction. However, due to concerns that the program would give a small percentage of students – those learning the language – an unfair advantage over those who are not, a narrow vote of 3 to 2 rejected the proposal.

Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world – nearly one billion Chinese across the world – and with the Chinese economy growing at breakneck speeds and predicted to surpass the U.S. economy in a few years (the actual decade is disputable but safe to say it will happen in my lifetime), more and more schools are planning on introducing the study of Mandarin as an option besides the usual Spanish and French.

However, the decision to introduce Mandarin is not yet a no-brainer. Those in favor cite current global economic trends, while those against it flounder between “it’s the latest fad and will die out after its 15 minutes of fame” to the Palo Alto argument that it will give a small number a leg up in the college admissions process.

What I don’t understand is why Palo Alto did not float a proposal to offer the language immersion as an option to all its elementary students. One parent who voted against the plan said giving special access to certain students is “undemocratic” and against the idea of what makes a public school a ‘public’ school.

On a personal note, my former employer in Dallas made a special trip to China last year to hire a Mandarin language instructor to teach in our school. I commend the decision, and would encourage more schools to look at Mandarin (and Hindi) as an option in their curriculum.

A word of caution though: As the Palo Alto SD episode suggests, the decision is not for every school (not yet, at least) and will not happen without debate and adequate preparation for change.

Accountability in private schools?

The other day in our Leadership of Private Schools class, we had visitors from a nearby charter school in New Jersey. Charter schools are held accountable to arguably higher standards when compared to public schools in exchange for the autonomy of structuring their schools and mission in their own unique way. Charter schools also face the threat of non-renewal due to not meeting the student achievement (and other) goals outlined in their charter.

This particular charter school has wowed the NJ state as well as federal officials, and is touted in news and other forms of print media as a model for others to follow. However, this charter school, as do others, adopts a no-nonsense approach to education with both faculty and students that, I think, would be almost impossible to implement in private schools.

Private schools are more loosey-goosey in structure and implementation, and the family structure of these schools also prevents the private school leadership from taking on a tougher stance with its faculty. For example, firing somebody for non-delivery of results, or overall ineffectiveness in the classroom, or simply because the person is not a good fit is much easier in a charter school than in a private school. Now that may seem like an over-the-top example, but the most cynical (yet so true!) statement I’ve ever heard is, “Nishant, if you ever want to keep any job for a long time, then strive for mediocrity.”

It is and should be extremely difficult to fire anybody, and for-profit businesses have an easier time doing so than schools because businesses are generally seen as without emotion, whereas the persons working in schools with children can be, and usually are, very emotional and sensitive. Plus, children form relationships with their teachers that are broken when a teacher is let go.

However, because of the results-oriented approach of charter schools, it’s essential that these schools don’t let ineffectiveness continue on for too long. After all, they’re doing this job primarily for the kids, and it’s in nobody’s best interest – not even the teacher’s – to put up with anything less than good. But what do you do in a private school where results are important but are not the only measure of a school, teacher, or student’s success? How do or should schools measure some of these intangibles (character development, developing healthy relationships with one’s peers and adults, building empathy, taking responsibility for one’s actions and attitude, etc.) that private schools emphasize in their mission, and what sets them apart in many ways from charter and public schools? And finally, how do we hold teachers accountable for teaching these intangibles?

Academic achievement or teaching how to care?

In my Dialogue and Difference class yesterday, we read the philosopher Nel Noddings’ perspective on the true goal of education. According to Noddings, the current educational emphasis on academic achievement is misplaced and flawed; schools should be teaching their students an “ethic of care”. In other words, Noddings believes that the true goal of education should be developing and teaching students how to develop caring relations, and then giving them the tools to sustain those caring relations, be it with other humans, non-humans (pets, the environment), ideas (such as mathematics, historical figures/concepts, science), and/or objects.

What do you think? Does it have to be “either/or” or can it be “both/and”?

I’ve been remiss…

I moved my website a couple days ago because the last design was becoming unwieldy and rigid to manage, and plus I wanted to focus more on blogging, something I’ve been remiss about in the last year or so since I moved to New York City for grad school. I hope y’all like the new look of the website and will encourage me (and gently push me) in my blogging efforts.

So what have I been up to? What classes am I taking? Etc. etc.

Well, I graduate this May with a Master’s in Private School Leadership from the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. Since Tia’s also getting her Master’s here and will finish next May, I’m currently looking for jobs within commuting distance of Manhattan. Will try and keep you posted on that, especially when I’m offered a contract and I accept!

As for classes, the Klingenstein program is extremely structured with only 31 students (30 full-time and 1 part-time) in the cohort. We move together as a group in most of our classes, and are allowed to take 3 electives outside our core curriculum in the span of the two-semester program. Some of the classes I’ve been taking are:
1. Resource Allocation for Non-Profit Organizations (basic accounting and budgeting class, and one of my favorites!)
2. Ethical Issues in Educational Leadership
3. Intro. to Research
4. Law and Education
5. How People Learn
6. Internship at a Public School
7. Supervision of Teaching and Learning
8. Supporting Teaching and Learning
9. Private School Leadership (how to design your own school)
10. Conflict Resolution
11. Strategic Marketing
12. Internship at an independent school

The classes are a good mix and the Klingenstein program is recognized, essentially, as the equivalent of an MBA for education.

In my next few posts, I will try and expose you briefly to some of the questions that I’ve been struggling with in my mind as a result of these classes. There’ll also be a place at the end of each post for you to add comments and give me your response/thoughts to those questions. I hope you’ll consider it…

Cheers,
Nishant!

Recent updates…

    As many of you know by now, although I had proposed to Tia in September of 2006, according to our customs/traditions, we have to have a full-on engagement ceremony and celebration in which the guy also gets an engagement ring that he wears until the wedding, when both he and the bride get their wedding bands/rings. Anyway, the ceremony took place on January 6, 2007 in Mumbai (Bombay) in front of approximately 340 of our family’s closest relatives and friends. We returned to the United States on January 11th, and within a couple days, set upon a road trip from Dallas to New York in a 12 ft. yellow Penske truck with all of our belongings. It didn’t help that we were being chased by the storm that hit the South (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee) that same weekend. We made the approximately 1,800 mile journey across 8 states in good time arriving into the city on the morning of January 17th. Tia is now here in NYC studying for her Master’s program in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).

Note: You can access pics of the engagement by clicking here.