Department of Education-Clueless

[Annie]

Yeah, an oxymoron I know.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050704ta_talk_collins

DEPT. OF EDUCATION
DON’T LAUGH
Issue of 2005-07-04
Posted 2005-06-27

The problem of antisocial behavior among the young has become so prevalent in Britain that a Blair official recently proposed forcing miscreants to wear bright-orange jumpsuits. New York City, on the other hand, seems to prefer, in these post-Giuliani years, to be an avatar of positive reinforcement: the esteem-affirming Athens to London’s hard-nosed Sparta. Over the course of the next year, the Department of Education will introduce into all of its elementary and middle schools “Operation Respect: Don’t Laugh at Me,” an intensive curriculum in character development. The program, which is the brainchild and heart’s desire of Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul & Mary, aims to combat bullying by emphasizing the moral lessons of folk music.

“Don’t Laugh at Me” (or dlam) was born when Yarrow—a veteran of the civil-rights, gender-equality, nucleardisarmament, peace, and Amtrak-subsidization movements—heard a country ballad of that name at the Kerrville Folk Festival, in the summer of 1999. Moved to tears by its swelling harmonies and first-person testaments to the effects of ridicule—“I’m a little boy with glasses, the one they call a geek / A little girl who never smiles ’cause I’ve got braces on my teeth”—he decided to incorporate the tune into Peter, Paul & Mary’s repertoire. At a gig with the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the group played the song. “The principals gave a tremendous response to it, and said, ‘We need this in our schools,’ ” Chic Dambach, Operation Respect’s president and C.E.O., said the other day. “And Peter, being the activist and the organizer that he is, said, ‘You won’t just have a song but a whole program.’ ” dlam is now used in at least twelve thousand American schools and camps.

A couple of Tuesdays ago, at a fusty Department of Education building in Brooklyn, Lynne Hurdle-Price and Mark Weiss, conflict-resolution experts, led a dlam training session for about two dozen middle-school teachers, whom they divided into five groups. “I want you all to share a time in your career as an educator where someone did or said something that made you feel like you were not cared for or respected,”...

it goes on and on...

 

[dmp]

I'd say the best way to combat bullying is to edcuate parents on how to beat their kids, if the kids get caught being a bully.

(shrug).

But what do I know? I don't have even a YEAR of college.

 

[GotZoom]

You know...back in the 50's and 60's, when a kid bullied another kid, he either got the snot beat out of him by his parents or was in trouble with the principal.

What happened?

Oh...never mind.

I know.