Category / Curriculum

by nflanagan

It’s Not about Cheating

Recent conversation with a contemporary (a man who worked in sales all his life, and whose grandchildren attend a Christian school):

Him: So what do you think about AI? How will your public schools deal with the fact that AI is going to control all jobs in the future?

Me: AI will certainly have an impact on the job market, but I don’t think the future of work is written in stone. As with all technologies, experience will tell us whether AI is actually useful in enhancing learning in any way. Lots of things that sound good in education turn out to be oversold or hype. Or even counterproductive.

Him: But isn’t AI going to make it impossible to tell who’s cheating? That’s what I’d be worried about if I was a teacher.

Me: What do you mean by cheating?

Him: Well, kids will get AI to write their papers and do their assignments. And teachers won’t know who wrote the paper and will be forced to give it a good grade. And if everyone gets good grades, there will be grade inflation, so it will be hard to pick out the really smart students for the top colleges.

Me: It’s not about cheating. It’s about actual learning. Students learn by doing the work, including making mistakes—whether that work is putting two blocks with three blocks to make five blocks, or testing pond water samples, producing an original haiku in class–or writing a research paper. When people talk about AI and cheating, they’re usually thinking about writing assignments—but there are many more paths to learning, K-12, than writing a paper or answering questions on a worksheet. Besides, teachers who know their students well, and have seen their skills in action, will understand how an AI-constructed response would compare to an actual response.

Him: (dubious) I suppose sharp teachers can catch them that way. Besides, you’ll have more time to ferret out cheaters when AI starts grading student work and writing your lesson plans.

Me: Only someone who knows the students and knows the usual flow of content and skills at that level can write useful lesson plans. And assessing student work is how teachers observe what their students have learned, and what they need next. I personally don’t see AI as being particularly useful in developing instructional materials, either. It certainly can’t develop relationships with kids or inspire them.

Him: Of course, this would all be different for you, as a band director—AI will change everything for regular teachers but maybe not for you. If band even exists as a class any more.

———–

Sigh. This conversation actually happened. And the man I was talking to was not an idiot. He had some magazine-article background knowledge about AI, saw its impact as inevitable and teachers as unfortunately unionized Luddites, unwilling to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

He was also right about musical performing groups—as a K-12 musical specialist, I have been having these conversations about electronic alternatives to learning to play an instrument or sing for three decades. Who would want to go to the trouble, a well-meaning friend who teaches English asked me, to learn to play the bassoon? Or even worry about singing in tune, now that auto-tune is available to fix hot musical stars’ vocal uncertainties?Why not grab a bunch of keyboards and software? Isn’t that all the instruction musicians need to, you know, put out musical content?  

The great danger of using the range of AI products in the classroom has nothing to do with cheating, per se. Fact is, students have been cheating—in the ways we usually perceive as academic cheating—forever.

From writing dates on a shirt cuff to paying someone to take your SATs, cheating is deeply embedded in academic practice. If there is a potentially positive outcome here, it might be disconnecting old ideas about plagiarism and cheating. Instead, we might be teaching our students to assess information they are presented with, comparing it to different analyses, perhaps rooting out alternative facts that aren’t really factual.

Fact is: plagiarism is ill-defined, in an era when students have access to the Library of Congress in their raggedy jeans pockets: “Anybody who embarks on a study of plagiarism hoping for bright lines is in for a foggy shock. One of the pleasing facets of plagiarism is that it doesn’t exist—not in the eyes of the law, that is, and especially not if those eyes are American. There is intellectual-property law, and a law that prohibits the trafficking of counterfeit goods. There are laws against copyright infringement. If plagiarists are sent to prison, however, it will not be because they have filched a slice of poetry, or half a juicy ballad, and passed it off as their own. Plagiarism is not a crime. It is a sin.’”

Here’s another fact: Large language models that support the kinds of AI K-12 teachers and students are being urged to adopt are constructed of plagiarized, if you will, content. Speaking of cheating.

But it’s the original point that matters most here: AI in its various platforms robs students of doing the actual work of learning: absorbing, comprehending, analyzing, synthesizing and so on. I would like to think that this is the reason that states and school districts are banning the use of cellphones in the classroom—to prevent students from believing that graded products represent actual learning.

I would also assert that learn-by-doing classes that require groups of learners (like band and choir, debate, drama and so many others) reward students for all the right habits: working together, interdependence, ongoing skill building toward a clear goal, aesthetic pleasure. Creativity, the antithesis of AI use.

Philosophy professor Kate Manne wrote a terrific piece about preventing her university students from using AI, and how it all worked out:  “I feel strongly, as I explained, that their AI use will prevent me from doing my job in helping them to grow as thinkers and writers.” Spoiler alert: students produced such superior work and thinking that she cancelled the final exam. Read the piece. It’s solid evidence.

Pushback against AI is not and never has been about cheating. It’s about genuine learning.

by nflanagan

Hate Definitely Has a Home Here

If there’s one question on the minds of my friend group these days—old friends, fellow teachers, new acquaintances, anyone paying attention—it’s this: How can anyone, let alone a third of the population, look at current events in the United States in the past year, and believe that we are on the right track, doing OK, making our people and nation stronger?

I don’t really have to spell it out, although I am mindful of Rachel Bitecofer’s principle: repeated negative messaging works in elections—because voters will  only be mad about what we tell them to be mad about.

So here’s the bottom line: we are in real trouble, as a nation, on dozens of fronts, beginning with the fact that we are being lied to—vicious lies, filthy lies, heedless lies—on the regular. Even teaching the truth about history and science in ordinary classrooms, museums and national parks has been explicitly forbidden, plaques removed, educators silenced.

Teaching has never been easy, but it’s really a miracle that so many fine teachers are still in the classroom and finding some satisfaction in their work there. According to an EdWeek Research Center survey on teacher morale, teachers described their feelings about teaching as a very lukewarm positive—a +13 on a 200-point scale, ranging from -100 to +100.

Last year, teachers were slightly more positive, at +18, but that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the world’s most important and rewarding profession. Interesting nugget: teachers in Arkansas reported the highest morale (+24); Pennsylvania, the lowest (+1). Make of that what you will.

Which is why I loved reading Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy.  Macy, who also wrote Dopesick, a book that helped me understand opioid addiction, travels to her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, once a thriving town with good schools and a solid middle class. She was looking for reasons that people there voted—three-quarters of them—for Trump.

Among her heroes, the people who are still seeking to preserve what’s good and healthy in a failing Midwestern town, are teachers. The teachers she interviews, and whose work with and dedication to Urbana’s public school students is fierce and clear-eyed, are one of the last walls between kids making headway in life, and disaster. 

Macy also remembers the teachers who helped her get away from a working-class background with the help of Pell grants, talent and a lot of luck. Her siblings were not so lucky—one of the most painful parts of her narrative are conversations with her brother and sisters, and her niece who suffered from a stepparent’s abuse.

It is through these conversations and seeing how despair and the empty promises of preachers and politicians impact the down and out, that I began to understand who votes for powerful liars, and why.

It also helps explain why Americans hate each other:
The Pew Research Center finds that 53% of American adults describe the morality and ethics of our fellow citizens as “bad” (ranging from “somewhat bad” to “very bad”). In the 24 other countries polled by Pew, most people called their fellow citizens somewhat good or very good. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States is Canada, where 92% say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7% say they’re bad.

Macy does a superb job of weaving anecdotes and memoir about growing up in a town that feels very familiar to me, also a Midwestern girl. She analyzes just what went wrong, much of it having to do with international trade, the dangerous equity gap, decades of negative political messaging about welfare queens. The demise of empathy, and the rise of right-wing pole-barn churches with fundamentalist men at the pulpit. Greed. Racism. Sexism.

Although the book won a number of awards (and was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books in 2025), I found the comments from readers enlightening. Either people loved it, finding that it deepened their understanding of just what is happening in the forgotten little towns across the country—or they hated it, believing Macy is encouraging people to talk to the enemy.

Which is a strategy that has not worked, commenters say. Unless we fight back—the “pound the negative message” model—we keep losing ground. Forget people in your past, your family. They’re the ones who voted him in. The enemy.

Who’s right?

I looked for a photo of Beth Macy and discovered she’s running for Congress in a ruby-red district in Virginia. It’s apparent to me (if not to her readers) that she’s willing to fight hard against the damage to our democracy.

She’s also right about teachers—especially those with the courage to stand up for truth, for the kids they serve, no matter their prospects. Donation sent.

Here in northern Michigan, an elderly gentleman who’s spent his life working for progressive causes was so upset about seeing Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as apes that he called his neighbor, offering to fund signs to place around our small county, saying HATE HAS NO HOME HERE. She honored his request, designing and ordering signs.

During this process, the gentleman died. The signs will be ready next week, and planting one at the end of my driveway will be both advocacy and memorial. What I’d really like to see is a couple of those signs posted around our local school. Because that’s one of the few places where hate speech and hate actions are actively discouraged and prohibited.

Read Paper Girl.  If you’re like me, you’ll love it.

by nflanagan

Gifted and Talented Redux

I got my master’s degree in gifted education—actually, a master’s in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis on identifying and serving gifted students, but whatever. At the time—the 1980s—I was focused on the ‘talented’ part, as a music teacher.

What could I do, I wondered, to better understand and challenge the exceptionally proficient students who showed up in my band room? There had only been a handful, at that time, students who leapt over my pedestrian instruction, right into credible Mozart concertos in the 6th grade, relying on recordings and (this sounds so quaint) library books about the great composers and their style characteristics.

I had many thoughtful conversations with people in my master’s classes, in my building, and fellow band directors (whose advice was generally directed toward private lessons and summer camps–the ‘better teacher/better cohort’ theory). But overall, takeaways on who was gifted and what to do about it were murky.

One person’s budding genius was another teacher’s ho-hum. A lot of it had to do with perceived student effort, and very little was about digging gifts and talents or even preferences and goals out of kids who were content to skate by.

Also, lots of kids who had exceptional natural talent in playing instruments were not so gifted in other areas, and therefore not interesting to the guy teaching Algebra II to 7th graders. Just because you can flawlessly pick up salsa rhythms with all four of your limbs or produce a crystalline high C on the trumpet doesn’t mean you’re… gifted. Or so it seemed.

I’ve written many pieces—here, here, here, here and here, for example—about giftedness. Invariably, they draw nasty comments. It’s very much a tender spot for parents of bright children who worry that their children are not being adequately challenged. Or are ignored by their teachers because so many other kids are struggling or misbehaving. I get it.

But I also know that talents and gifts are randomly distributed across school populations and have to be developed over time, with the cooperation of the identified GT student. I was struck by this quote from a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, reflecting on the mayoral decision not to test kindergarteners to determine who’s gifted:

This administration does not believe in G. & T. evaluation for kindergartners. But that’s not the same as eliminating advanced opportunities across all grades. 

My thoughts, precisely.

I recognize that NY City is unique—such a diverse population, so many school options, such hot politicking and parent-pleasing—but I fully agree with the mayor (or his advisor, more likely): Testing five-year olds for giftedness is ridiculous and bound to siphon off disadvantaged kids before they’ve really had a chance to, you know, go to school and learn stuff.

It’s the ultimate, rigged-end game: the outcomes of inequality, right out of the chute. Dividing the herd, yet again. Why? How does that help us?

If I had faith in any test to identify extraordinary, socially useful intelligence, skills, or creativity, I might feel differently. But I don’t. What I do believe is that all children deserve a rich and challenging education, whether a test identifies them as potentially brainy or sub-par. You just never know what role they might play, eventually, in making the world better.

Since more than half of American teens now admit to using chatbots to do “research” that they may not be able to evaluate for veracity, to write and calculate for them, it’s going to get harder and harder to distinguish students who produce genuinely brilliant work from those who are merely good at disguising where that work product originated.

We still need brilliant original work—not to feed the AI maw, but to enlighten ourselves, cure diseases, prevent wars, create peace, to explore, entertain and inspire. We need the indisputably brilliant kid who plays salsa rhythms but forgets to turn in his social studies worksheets for some reason. Because he has gifts to share.

We need a new definition of ‘gifted’—and maybe one for ‘talented’ as well. We need to stop accepting the assertion that machines are helping students learn better than human interaction and judgment. And most of all—we need to stop cutting kids off at the pass, sorting and labeling them when they’re in kindergarten.

Photo:sanbeiji (Creative Commons)

by nflanagan

Sex Education, v. 2026.0

The Michigan State Board of Education approved a new set of guidelines for sex education in Michigan public schools late last year. They heard copious commentary from the public, worked with experts, teachers and parents, and settled on a revision that included informing students—just the facts—about varying ways that humans express their sexuality and gender.

As a parent and veteran teacher, I’ve been through many iterations of sex ed curricula, local and state, decades’ worth of changes and hot issues, explosive board meetings and muttered accusations. I’ve heard many parents express worry that their precious children—no snark—might be learning something that they don’t talk about at home.

They don’t express it like that, of course, but that’s what it usually comes down to—fear. Fear of other peoples’ values, fear of change, fear that their own child will not follow a single, approved track into adulthood. As if avoiding exposure to things we don’t approve of will mean our children won’t be tempted by them. (Snorting.)

Speaking personally, I was always grateful that my kids had a no-nonsense health and sex education teacher. I was glad that they discussed embarrassing things, boys and girls together, in a factual way. And that their teacher had a sense of humor in addition to good information.

IMHO, sex ed is one of those “takes a village” things, especially when kids are utterly surrounded by—even drowning in—graphic sexual images, language and concepts, many of them inappropriate, to use a teacher word. What is appropriate is bringing these ideas up in a classroom full of other 7th graders and dispassionately telling kids the truth.

I read through the revised version—skimmed it, noting the places where the language I was familiar with from back when my kids were in 7th grade had changed (this was the first revision in over 20 years). It all seemed pretty normal, developmentally appropriate, and so on. What hadn’t changed was the parental right to opt students out of all sex education lessons—guaranteed. In addition, every school district needs a parent advisory committee to tailor the curriculum or address questions.

What’s different in 2026? Sex education has become partisan. It’s always been politicized, with opinions across the spectrum on the value of reproductive health and sexual hygiene as school subjects vs. family prerogatives. But now, there’s a Republican POV and a Democratic perspective:

At an Oversight Committee meeting, House Republicans questioned Interim State Superintendent Sue Carnell about how many genders there are and the reasoning behind the department’s proposal [to update sex education guidelines]. 

This time-wasting challenge to a standard policy revision all seems to be rolled into a right-wing pushback on what they call ‘woke’– the US Department of Education’s proscription on ending anything to do with diversity via “Dear Colleague”  letter, for example, or FL Governor Ron Desantis vacating the Board at New College. The new MI sex ed guidelines passed 6-2, on party lines, as MI State Board members are elected rather than appointed—an option that Republicans (perhaps too optimistically) have endorsed in the past.

 But wait! you might be saying—didn’t that letter threatening schools (and, natch, school administrators) with funding cuts if DEI programs (to be defined by ED) were discovered on campus get struck down? Here’s one take on that:

Trump’s Department of Education conceded defeat on its unconstitutional directive to cut federal funding from any school with DEI programs. After the National Education Association and the ACLU sued, a federal court permanently invalidated the order—it can’t be enforced against anyone, anywhere, ever again.

As a lifelong educator, however, I agree with Peter Greene—this is a minor setback for the anti-woke Russ Vought types, perhaps, but there are many more ways for the feds (and compliant states) to stick their lily white fingers into the running of our nation’s schools. So many things to mess with, flooding zone after zone, dividing the resistance, blurring lines.

You could require Bible readings in public schools, for instance.

You could gut decades of work from actual K-12 history teachers by creating a junky, misleading History Rocks curriculum. From the NYT’s Jessica Grose:

I spent the last week talking to public school parents who were not excited to hear that the Secretary [Linda McMahon] was coming to Alabama, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut because of the extremely conservative, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and Christian makeup of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition. They were concerned that this tour was part of a larger Trumpian effort to whitewash American history.

Bingo. But it’s just one large drop in the anti-woke bucket.

This week, they came after Michigan’s new sex-ed guidelines:

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into three Michigan public school districts — Detroit Public Schools, Lansing Public Schools and Godfrey-Lee Public Schools, a small district in Kent County — for inclusion of “sexual orientation and gender ideology” content in the districts’ K-12 curricula. 

Here’s the letter they sent to these districts. It’s filled with lofty language about parental rights, vague but intimidating threats—we’re launching a federal investigation into your school!—and pages of demands for a truckload of specific documents and verifications, all due in six weeks.

I can’t figure out how ED (what remains of it) chose these districts to torment. Detroit and Lansing are large, urban districts where a diligent attempt to meet the federal investigation requirements would be incredibly onerous, to say the least. Godfrey-Lee is a small district (1700 students) in a suburb southwest of Grand Rapids. Ninety percent of its students are minorities; most of its students are living in poverty.

The superintendent told the press that there have been no charges, and they’ll cooperate fully—but what the hell? Was there a complaint? Is it just random harassment? Or perhaps their state legislators were the real target, since the feds couldn’t get to the State Board of Education and punish them for doing what they were elected to do: revise policy.

Bottom line: this is none of the US Dept of Education’s business.

Sex education—the reality of teaching it, not what pages of policy prescribe—is always going to happen in classrooms, shaped by teacher discretion and students’ questions. The best we can hope for is a no-nonsense, caring teacher with a sense of humor and good information.   

by nflanagan

The Fault Line in American politics?

I’ve spent a lot of time considering this graphic.

IS education the fault line in American politics?

First shock: There are 33 states with more-educated people than (purple) Michigan, where there are world-class colleges and universities. What makes us an under-achiever?

2nd: Consider Trump’s mouth-blabber remark: “I love the poorly educated.” As well he should. They’re his base.

Digging deeper– what makes someone with a college degree more likely to vote Democratic? Does a college education make someone more broad-minded, more aware of the social and political factors influencing their well-being? Or is this all just about economics– being able to afford a college degree?

And personally–something I have been wrestling with since 2016–is there something I could have done, as a teacher, to model that broad-mindedness to my students?

by nflanagan

Put Teachers in Charge of Their Own PD?

It feels weird to be opining about professional development when teachers in Minnesota are dealing with the effects of mayhem in the street, poisoning the normal ebb and flow of public schooling.

Is it exam week in the Minneapolis Public Schools, I find myself wondering—how will they handle that on-line, with a significant chunk of kids missing? Friends who teach in Minnesota share heartbreaking stories or ask me to donate $10 toward a project their students put together: getting food to families too frightened to shop. Incredible stressors for educators and also retired educators—thank you for all you are doing to keep schooling as safe as possible.

Coincidentally, it was a group of dynamic teachers in the Twin Cities area who first showed me what it really could look like to be in charge of their own professional learning. More on that later.

First, let me say the obvious. Teachers actually are, and always will be, in charge of whatever they decide they need to improve their teaching. For some, it will be a career-long quest to learn and try new things, building a practice with what works best. Others might be less enthused about the latest mandated program. You can lead a teacher to PD, but you can’t make them believe it’s useful.

The question is not what teachers need and want, to grow. It’s what administrators think they need, in the time set aside for professional development.

When principals and central office leaders are making the decisions (and hiring outside consultants)? EdWeek Research Center found that almost half of the respondents said the PD they are required to take is irrelevant. By contrast, 41% of the more than 650 school leaders surveyed at the same time said the PD they provided was “very relevant.”

This is an evergreen issue, of course. My district dabbled in a ‘choose your own PD’ model for a few years, giving teachers the choice to work in their own rooms or attend planned presentations. The lure of hours of uninterrupted time to plan lessons, run copies, review new materials, catch up on grading or chat with a partner teacher was irresistible.

Going home without a tote bag full of work? Priceless. But when only a handful of people showed up for the paid presenter? Embarrassing for the administrator who did the hiring. I say this having been one of those presenters once, setting up for 35 attendees and then having only four show up for a half-day workshop on National Board Certification.

In fact, it was a group of National Board Certified Teachers from a public high school in Minneapolis who proved to me that teacher-led professional development could be incredibly exciting and precisely targeted to the work of teaching specific students.

The name of the HS is not important—but it was a school with a high percentage of immigrant students, so there were ESL issues and poverty issues and old-building facility issues. Sometimes the assigned curricula just did not work for the students they had.

A progressive principal bought into the idea of genuine teacher leadership and re-arranged the classic HS schedule so that he was teaching classes daily, opening up time for teachers to take on traditional administrative tasks. Like professional development.

Teachers surveyed their colleagues—What do you need to know to teach your students well? What issues do you want to talk about?—and set up weekly brown-bag lunch chats and after-school gatherings at a local restaurant, with snacks paid by the school budget. There was intensive mentoring for new teachers and regular time set aside for teachers to tweak curriculum, as they were teaching it. Peer observations and conversations were built into daily practice.

A lot of what they were doing was around the use of time, shaving it off here and adding it there—only an experienced teacher can understand the difference adding 20 minutes to lunch makes, where some of the best professional development happens spontaneously.

The most impressive thing was not that teachers were ‘in charge of their own PD’—but that teachers were collaborating to build professional learning and conversations that made sense to them, on the fly.

The first question from the audience (of teachers): Did everyone in your building buy into this new, ongoing PD model? Answer: No. A couple left the building for what they saw as greener pastures. But several skeptics stayed and eventually became converts. And now, they said, when we hire, we let new teachers know they will be surrounded by support in that first year. It’s who we are—a team.

I’ve been thinking about that school, a lot, as we watch Trump’s quasi-militia wreak havoc on blue cities. Is there such a thing as professional preparation for having your teachers and students harassed? Are there materials that might help explain the chaos to kids? Will there someday be ed-conference sessions on the intersection of civic education and government coercion?

We didn’t start this fire. But teachers—beaten down and dissed by our own government—will have a role to play in rebuilding the idea of representative democracy. Right now, that’s our best hope.

by nflanagan

Where Do Kids Get Their Information?

Their music and media tell them individualism will pull them out of squalor. The people behind those messages shove the economic ladders from underneath them.   (Jose Vilson)

One of the most stunning bits of clarifying data I’ve seen in the past few weeks is this chart from Media Matters, with data from February 2025:

It’s a graphic of most listened-to online news and commentary shows, color-coded and sized to represent the magnitude and political leanings of the American audience. It’s year-old data, remember—but it goes some way toward answering the question I’ve spent the past year obsessing over: Who ARE these people and how could they have re-elected the corrupt man who led the insurrection against their pretty-good government?

I’m old enough to remember 2008, when Barack Obama’s online media savvy and fund-raising prowess was attracting voters and the envy of the other party, stuck in Walter-Cronkite land. Kids who were primary consumers of social media then, are in their 30s now, and apparently have shifted to eating up Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes.

But what are kids listening to in 2026?  I think the JLV, in two sentences, above, sums up what I’m thinking: They’re young. They’re being bamboozled by glitzy media and music, convinced that their own swagger will save them. And then it doesn’t. In fact, they’re a generation that almost certainly will experience less prosperity and fewer prospects than their parents’ generation.

I volunteer in an after-school program for middle-schoolers, usually on afternoons dedicated to homework (or missing assignments). It’s no secret to any teacher that a lot of incomplete and missing work happens because the students don’t know how to do it. They will finally tell you—I don’t get this—after making excuses and going to their locker or the bathroom three times. This happens a lot with math, but also with conventional Q & A, end-of-chapter reviews and short writing assignments.

Our kids have their own Chromebooks and most of the teachers provide several vetted information sources beyond the textbook, which is great. But only if students go there, and wade around. Unfortunately, chatbots have now given them a get-out-of-jail quick option.

These students are—I emphasize—not dumb (or any similar but less insulting word). After homework is completed, we often play board games or cards. They understand and can negotiate things that the games require—similes and other wordplay, strategy and logic, memory. Some are also readers (passing around personally owned books that I never ask to see). There are conversations full of humor and current music and YouTube video references.

But at age twelve or so—where are they getting their information about the world at large? On the day after the 2024 election, our coordinator stopped by to remind volunteers NOT to speak about the election. Not that any of the kids mentioned it. It was as if it hadn’t happened.

A couple of days ago, there was a local protest in town about the Venezuelan invasion, and Indivisible posted photos on their Facebook page. This drew a flood of bot comments and an irritated response from protest organizers. Bots have taken over the normal give-and-take on many social media advocacy platforms. We are no longer getting honest news from legacy sites, and right-wing frat-boy videographers get millions of eyeballs on their dishonest grift.

If we can’t count on legacy media, who’s going to sort through those red and blue bubbles of independent media? It’s going to take more than hope and good will to teach kids to be critical consumers of media and music, to discern the difference between glittering generalities and sometimes unpleasant truth.

Somebody needs to clue them in to the fact that not all elected and appointed leaders can be trusted, and actors and musicians run the gamut from good guys to sleaze . There are malignant forces in the world,  people who are capable of extreme evil, which, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is typically characterized by mediocrity. 

Of course, teachers are proscribed from sharing their opinions on the best sources of accurate and unbiased information, lest they be labeled DEI or woke. Makes you wonder how the public opinion on DEI and woke, two ideas that were once debatable if not accepted, solidified into broadly understood negative concepts. Where did that “information” come from?

Because I hang out with middle schoolers on the regular, I don’t think it’s too late to take a stand for discretion around the truthfulness of media sources. But simply letting the red bubbles win is a mistake.

by nflanagan

Are Schools the Problem?

I was somewhere between irritated and curious when I saw the headline: America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? The subhead: From A.D.H.D. to anxiety, disorders have risen as the expectations of childhood have changed.

Well, yeah. A.D.H.D. is now better defined and diagnosed. And I certainly believe that anxiety is on the rise with our youngest people—their world came crashing down five years ago with a global pandemic.

Although I don’t think the subhead writers were thinking of this, anxiety must be through the roof for children of the undocumented, attending school while praying that their mom will come home after work and that they will still be citizens after the Supreme Court gets another whack at the Fourteenth amendment.

But have our expectations of children really changed? And are schools at fault?

Annoying headline aside, there’s a lot of alarming data in the article:

‘One million more children were diagnosed with A.D.H.D. in 2022 than in 2016. The numbers on autism are so shocking that they are worth repeating. In the early 1980s, one in 2,500 children had an autism diagnosis. That figure is now one in 31. Nearly 32 percent of adolescents have been diagnosed at some point with anxiety; the median age of “onset” is 6 years old. More than one in 10 adolescents have experienced a major depressive disorder, according to some estimates.’

It’s actually an informative read. Diane Ravitch deftly reviewed the piece in a blog post entitled Our Pressure Cooker Schools Are Destroying Children and Childhood. In fact, people have been writing about the ever-growing pressure on kids to excel for decades (especially those in high schools where getting into the Ivies or considering a gap year is common).

A couple of decades ago, ironically, we were talking about high-pressure Asian schools and why Singapore topped the international test scores. Was that what our kids needed—a literal kick in the pants? More competition? And why wasn’t the school providing that?

Here’s the thing: Schools in general—more about that word in a minute—aren’t the cause of students’ mental health issues. Schools do what they can with what they’re given, and what they are directed to do, for the most part.

First, a “school” is not precisely defined. Let’s say a good school has competent teachers, capable and cooperative support staff, thoughtful administrators, a clean and safe facility and enough resources to serve the kids assigned there. Those features can all be undone by bad policies and the social factors surrounding the school.

When the halls are lined with buckets catching snowmelt, when there is no library or science equipment, when one of the children hid a gun in his backpack—where do we place blame? On voters who turned down the school bond issue? On the beleaguered principal? The careless parents who set a bad example? State legislatures that take money away from high-poverty public schools and give it to those who can afford private schools?

To say that “schools” are responsible for an uptick in mental health issues for students is not only unfair—it’s not accurate. The world—especially in 2025—is a scary place. For many (not all, but many) kids, school is the safest place for them to be, and I include in that number children who live in nice houses and have plenty to eat.

Have our expectations for children changed? Yes, and often in damaging ways.

Just talk to teachers. They’ll tell you that kindergarten is the new first grade. They’ll share stories of kids whose behavior is driven by shame and frustration. They’ll tell you that 15 minutes of outdoor play is a benefit, not a waste of time better used on worksheets. They’ll testify that building a cooperative community is always the first step toward learning, in pre-school and in chemistry class. They can tell stories about seeing kids work through an academic roadblock, with patience and humor—not shaming and blaming.

Veteran teachers will also pinpoint the time at which screen time and access to inappropriate, even dangerous, content began to change the way kids talk to and about each other.

Maybe we start addressing mental health issues by understanding just what it is that is making children anxious and distracted, and putting our attention and resources there.

 Don’t misunderstand—I’m not saying that schools (in addition to all the other jobs they’re expected to do) can “fix” a child with failing mental health. But schools can be a significant factor in contributing to a child’s sense of security, belonging and worth.

by nflanagan

Teachers are Patriots! Who Knew?

The world of education research is replete with studies that feel… unnecessary to folks who have spent their careers in front of K-12 classrooms. Primarily because so much good research is ignored in practice, and so much bad research becomes conventional wisdom.

For example—scientific inquiries  affirm that the best age to begin formal reading instruction would be about seven years old. Ask any early childhood teacher what our literacy success rate would be were we to initiate two-hour formal reading blocks in second grade, leaving room in kindergarten and first grade for lots of read-alouds, rhyming, picture books, letter-sound correspondence activities and development of oral language.

It’s more than that. Teachers with a few years under their belt have well-developed opinions about the best special education placements, the benefits of free play, and why taking your students outdoors yields physical and intellectual growth. Teachers can speak articulately about the post-pandemic changes in student behaviors.

How do they know about these things? Experience. Paying attention to what happens in their daily practice.

You might say that teachers’ observations and informal experiments—Teach it this way? Or that?—are the most valuable action research data to build a successful practice. But don’t say it too loud, because research is tied tightly to the source of the money that funds it—and the commercial products and politics that drive educational change.

There are lots of reasons why education research is suspect—or products are published to great fanfare, then sink like an oversized silver bullet:  An analysis of 30 years of educational research by scholars at Johns Hopkins University found that when a maker of an educational intervention conducted its own research or paid someone to do the research, the results commonly showed greater benefits for students than when the research was independent. On average, the developer research showed benefits — usually improvements in test scores —  that were 70 percent greater than what independent studies found.

Hmmm. I’d put my money on teacher perspectives about instructional strategies and materials, especially if teachers were in charge of their own professional work and offered ongoing opportunities to assess worthy curricula and teaching techniques.

Keeping the problems with ed research in mind (a book-length topic), I was amused to see this headline in Education Week this morning: Teachers Value ‘Patriotic’ Education More than Most Americans.

(Dangerous but brave) subheading: The findings stand in contrast to conservative rhetoric about ‘indoctrination’ in the social studies. And surprise! The polls themselves were conducted by EdChoice, a nonprofit advocacy organization supporting school choice, and the Morning Consult Public Opinion Tracker.

‘More than 80% of K-12 teachers thought it was “very” or “extremely” important to teach students about the Constitution’s core values, and 62% found it similarly crucial to teach that America is a fundamentally good country. In both cases, teachers were more likely than parents or the public at large to favor teaching these concepts.’

Least surprising education research result, ever. Kind of shoots holes in the ‘teachers practice leftist brainwashing’ theory that the privatizers and public school vandals keep advancing. The study showed that 57 percent of parents thought schools should overtly teach patriotism and loyalty to the United State—the exact same percentage as teachers.

There’s more: ‘Both Democratic and Republican teachers were less likely than similarly affiliated members of the public to think it important to teach students to question government actions and policies.’

Again—totally predictable. Schools are inherently moderate and cautious, politically. Your teenager is far more likely to become radicalized—in either direction—via their online presence. Online—where there isn’t a caring and educated adult moderating the decontextualized content they are reading.

I am a retired teacher, but I spent more than three decades explicitly teaching my students about being an engaged citizen, and appreciating the cultural mix that is America. I am a patriot.

Like most teachers, I am grateful to be an American. I didn’t need research to tell me so.

by nflanagan

Who ARE these people? Part II

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about people whose core political beliefs represented the sincere hope that the country would radically improve under the second Trump term. It was titled Who ARE These People?

It represented a sentiment I hear all the time: I can’t believe there are people who think Trump is the second coming. Who in their right mind could see him as a transformative leader? Who does not perceive the grifting, the rank incompetence, the prejudice, the lies—and the danger to a functioning democracy?

Companion questions: What percentage of the population understands and genuinely embraces Trump and the cadre of people surrounding him, currently disassembling our government? Who ARE the people who think it is Trump’s right to tear down the East Wing of the White House? Who ARE the people who believe that dangerous crime is surging, that food prices are dropping, that cutting SNAP benefits and Medicaid will teach those lazy slackers a lesson? Oh—and don’t use Tylenol!

And—key point—where are those folks getting their information? How do we counter obvious lies? Including lies published on official government websites and broadcast in airports?

Yeah—I know. You read this stuff, too—eye-popping, outrageous stories—and ask the same questions.

Maybe you’re wondering if teachers—underpaid and overworked—could have done more to establish the habit of questioning authority, discerning which evidence and rhetoric are reliable. Examining biases, looking at turning points in history, and so on.

Where were the people that Lucian Truscott calls yabbos educated? Who suggested to them that racism, sexism, and deceit were OK, if they were means to an end?

It’s exhausting.

This week Jonathon Last wrote this on The Bulwark:

‘Some large portion of voters do not appear to understand elementary, objective aspects of reality. We have jobs and lives, too. If we can understand reality, then they should be able to as well.

It does seem as though the last Democratic administration focused like a laser on economic issues. It managed the economy well, avoiding a recession and achieving a soft landing. It passed major, bipartisan legislation around Kitchen Table Issues like infrastructure spending. It kept the economy strong, with historically low unemployment and real-wage growth. It did not try to ban assault weapons but instead passed a gun-reform bill so sensible that it received bipartisan support. It successfully negotiated the most hawkish immigration reform bill in American history, only to have it sabotaged at the last minute by Donald Trump. These are actual things that happened in the real world over the course of 48 months.

Yet somehow all of this activity was invisible to voters? While these same people were highly attuned to the number of times LGBTQ appeared in the Democratic platform?

Which is it? Are the voters oblivious? Or are they discerning? Or does it depend on the situation: Willfully blind to some facts, but hyper-attuned to others?

Another theory is that voters are largely incapable of discerning reality, so expressed policy preferences matter much less than atmospherics and vibes. This theory holds that voters will respond more to entertainment or projections of strength than to a policy-based focus on the Real Issues.’

Whew. But probably—yes. Incapable of distinguishing reality from wish fulfillment. Rumor from news. Fool me once, twice, keep on fooling me, but it’s easy to vote (if you vote at all) by habit, not by analysis:

‘In fact, research into voting patterns in America suggests that it honestly doesn’t matter that much who or what a candidate looks like. When people go into the voting booth, they vote Republican or Democrat. When push comes to the ballot box, that little R and D matter more than all the Bud Light in the world.’

So. Here’s the real nub. If a third of American voters can’t tell fact from ugly fiction, or actually prefer to be governed by racists, quacks and the mentally diminished, if they are Republicans, what are we to do? Is this a permanent shift in American politics? Or are there ways to rebuild trust in our neighbors, our institutions, our national pride?

We can’t turn away if we want a just society. We can’t rely on the hope that seven million citizens singin’ songs and carryin’ signs will be enough. Because the destruction is too speeded up and too dangerous.  Rachel Bitecofer reminds us of a single line from a Warsaw Ghetto diary:

‘The writer had already lost his home, his livelihood, and most of his family. Rumors were spreading that deportations east meant death, and he wrote “We hear that being deported East means they are going to kill us, but there’s just no way the Germans would do that.”’

Lately, I have tried to focus on ways to reconnect with those who might regret their vote, or whose habitual partisan roots might finally seem like a bad habit. People who are becoming increasingly alarmed at seeing Bad Things happen, even though they remain safe and unharmed. Two thoughts:

(from Colorado organizer Pete Kolbenschlag):

‘This is the Ditch Principle: Your ditch neighbor may disagree with you about everything except keeping the water running —  so you start there. The neighbor who might pull you out of a snowbank doesn’t stop being your neighbor when you disagree about politics. Rural communities practice interdependence because isolation kills.’

(from Philosophy Professor Kate Manne):

‘How has Mamdani, an unapologetic socialist—and progressive Muslim and advocate for Palestinian rights—pulled off the feat of likely winning against the odds, against the tide, and against all early predictions? In part, I think, by calling forth the best from voters, rather than kowtowing to existing polling data.’

As a veteran educator, I hate saying this—but I don’t think this is something learned in required coursework, no matter how great your Civics curriculum is. Schools are a kind of stage, where society plays out its biases and beliefs, bad and good. Incorporating content standards into becoming a more responsible and caring human is something that can be modeled—but not tested and ranked.

There is no class syllabus that prescribes pulling your neighbor out of a snowbank—but if your dad pulls over on a snowy day to get a speeding classmate out of the ditch, you’ve learned an important lesson in interdependence. Likewise, there are teachers who call forth the best from students, by integrating facts and skills with compassion and curiosity.

I wish I had answers for these questions. What do YOU think?