Head of the Detroit Board of Education is a Functioning Illiterate

[LuckyStrykes]

The president of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is waging a legal battle to steer the academic future of 90,000 children, in the nation's lowest-achieving big city district.

He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence.


From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100304/OPINION03/3040437/Does-DPS-leader-s-writing-send-wrong-message?#ixzz0hEyD5iQk

[WriteDown]

1. You've got to be kidding. nt

[niyad]

2. PLEASE, dear goddess, tell us this is actually from the Onion

[WriteDown]

3. The onion couldn't even make this up. nt

[donco6]

4. Depressing.

Wow.

[WriteDown]

5. I am amazed how these people seem to excel at life. nt.

[rfranklin]

6. Nothing succeeds like excess...

Too much is not enough.

[WriteDown]

7. Haha, I meant excel. Shows you what skipping lunch will do. nt

[LuckyStrykes]

8. The Detroit Board of Education needs to be dismantled.

The ranks are filled with incompetent teachers, incoherent administrators, massive corruption, and until recently even provided benefits to the dead. http://michiganmessenger.com/24759/dps-in-the-news-five-suspects-named-in-first-wave-of-charges-school-board-still-plans-to-sue-bobb

[damntexdem]

9. At least he's functioning --

unlike the recent head of the TX State BOE.

[hughee99]

10. I'm not sure how "functioning" he really is.

If I remember right, Detroit had the worst graduation rate of the country's largest school districts.

[radical noodle]

11. This is a surprise?

I'm sure this isn't an isolated case. We have had similar people on our local school board. Voters don't necessarily pick the best people for the job, they often just pick the one whose name they know. Besides, there's nothing to running a school but picking basketball uniforms, right?

:sarcasm:

[justinaforjustice]

12. Grammar and Spelling are Mechanical Skills, Thinking Takes Intelligence.

I graduated from Wayne State University and its law school in the 1970's. One of the most intelligent men I knew there was a 60-something year old black auto worker named Charles Denby. Mr. Denby was born in Alabama and had about six years of formal education, but he read extensively and was the editor in chief of "News & Letters" a small progressive newspaper there. Denby, who frequently worked 12 hour days in an auto plant, wrote a pamphlet called "Worker's Battle Automation" and a monthly column on civil rights and labor issues. His writing was checked for spelling and grammar by a newspaper secretary. Today he could simply use a spell and grammar checker on a word processor. Denby was stunningly insightful about political realities and an inspiring speaker.

Given sufficient time, anyone can learn to spell and write a grammatically correct sentence, but not everyone can be taught to think and to inspire others. Like Denby, Detroit school board president, Otis Mathis, obviously is highly intelligent and inspires confidence and trust in those around him.

Our appointed president, George W. Bush, had degrees from Yale and Harvard, but could neither think nor inspire. He was emotionally and morally defective. We'd all be better off if we had elected an Otis Mathis instead.

There is a simply reason Detroit's school system is failing, and it has nothing to do with Otis Mathis; it has to do with the fact that there is so damn little money for education in our country.

Had the money wasted on President Bush's wars been used instead to improve our nation's schools and the economic lives of our citizens, we would have a highly educated population. Unfortunately, our trillion-dollar military budget keeps being increased while our funding for education gets smaller and smaller.

We are on a path to become a nation of illiterates unless we organize and demand that our political leaders make fulfilling human needs, including the need for education, our top priority, not war profits for our defense industries.

[Fire1]

13. And just think, the likes of Broad and Duncan want to eliminate

"CRITICAL THINKING," in favor of rote memorization! Just enough content to pass the damn TEST! Assembly line production of the working masses. :puke:

[justinaforjustice]

14. U.S.Removes Critical Thinking, Venezuela Mandates It.

I'm living in Venezuela and was extremely impressed to read Venezuela's new education law, which mandates the teaching of critical thinking. I posted the following at dailykos last August:

Venezuela Seeks Critically Thinking Media Consumers.
by Justina

(www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/15/767375/-Venezuela-Seeks-Critically-Thinking-Media-Consumers]
Sat Aug 15, 2009 at 06:42:43 PM AST

Venezuela’s new educational reform law, passed by the National Assembly yesterday and signed today, August 15, 2009, will require, among other measures, that schools educate students in critical thinking, and specifically that they be educated to critically analyze the content of information provided by the media. (Projecto de Ley Orgánica De Education, Chapter 1, Article 9,”Educación y Responsabilidad Social de los Medios de Comunicación - Education and Social Responsibility in the Communication Media). The proposed law was published in full in Panorama/, a Spanish language newspaper from Maracaibo, Zulia state, Ve. August 9, 2009.

Why is Education in Critical Thinking Needed, Not Only in Venezuela, But in the United States?

These Republican-owned media make sure that information they distribute favors their politics and their profit interests. Concentration of ownership into a few corporate owners has drastically suppressed factual, objective reporting and turned our media into info-tainment with a pervasive, barely cloaked, right wing bias.

(more at link)

[Fire1]

15. I envy you fellow Alum! It USED to be essential here, too! n/t

[Tutankhamun]

16. I am a teacher in the American public school system, and what Venezuela

is doing is PRECISELY, for years, what I've wished American schools would be required to do. The only thing I would add is an education in media ownership and media sponsorship and the way they affect content.