Tag: lausd
School Paperwork: LAUSD is Clueless
This evening, I’m filling out the usual passle of paperwork from my daughter’s school. One of the forms is for health insurance, and has a check box at the top:
No. My child already has health insurance.
The next line on the form says: “Only complete this form if your child does not have health insurance. Now, if I don’t need to complete the form if she has health insurance, why have the silly check box!
[End Edit]
And why, oh why, can’t the emergency information form have space for cell phone #s and email! Perhaps give us a print out of last year’s form, and ask for corrections? That would be too easy.
Back to the paperwork…
Schools and Food
This morning, I read an interesting article in yesterday’s Daily News (the San Fernando Valleys’ paper, once called the “Green Sheet”). I found an online copy in this article from the Monterey County Herald. The article was about Alice Waters, who regularly offers this challenge: ”Give me any kid. In six weeks, they’ll be eating chard.” There’s some more information in the original San Francisco Chronicle article.
Basically (if I read the article right), her plan is to incorporate school food as part of the curriculum, not just have it be lunch. That is, the students will grow the food, cook the food, and harvest it. This will be more than simple cooking skills. Quoting from one of the articles I found:
Students might learn math by laying out the garden plots. Biology and earth science lessons can be taught as students prepare soil, gauge the weather and harvest food. Grinding corn can be the basis for a lesson on pre- Columbian civilizations. Recipe writing can become an English lesson. Digging weeds might count as physical education.
I think this is a fascinating idea. Far too much today we lose our students by having them focus on standardize tests and standardized knowledge. As such, we teach them facts, not something useful. Open the brain, shovel it in.
We need to teach useful stuff. I’ve always believed we should have a “Real Life Skills” course for both sexes that is a combination of shop and home ec. Teach people the skills they need to live on their own: Buy and cook their food. Balance their checkbook and understand loans and credit. Rewire an electrical outlet or fix the plumbing under a sink. Stop a door from sticking. These are life skills that all of us need (and I’m sure everyone knows people who are incapable of these simple things). What we must also teach is that these esoteric things and facts we shovel in do have application.
Example: How many of us think about geometry on a daily basis. Yet, if we go order pizza, we need to know which feeds more: an 8″ diameter pizza or a 12″ diameter pizza. How much more pizza is there? It’s not just 4″.
I guess we need to teach people to think!