OH: Is A District Firing A Teacher Because He's Gay?

Tiny South Central School District in Greenwich, Ohio, is stirring controversy by canning its choir director, and it doesn't appear to have anything to do with his job performance. I will warn you ahead of time-- yes, this is a thing that is happening in 2025. 

Decades ago, a district in my neighborhood fired a gym teacher for being gay. They didn't hide it behind any kind of vague language; they just said they wanted to fire her because she was gay. So they did. And she sued their asses off and won. 

Since those days, uber-conservative districts have learned a lesson. Unfortunately, the lesson was not "Don't discriminate against people because of sexual orientation," but was instead "Don't say out loud that you are firing people because they are gay."

The crowd turns out for the March meeting.
  Terry Burton/Norwalk Reflector   

Greenwich, Ohio is a tiny place; fewer than 1,500 citizens located smack in the middle of Central Ohio's Big Flat Nothing. The district is the result of Greenwich's consolidation with North Fairfield schools back in 1960. The high school has around 200 students in grades 9-12. 

The district hired Alex Kuhn last year to handle the choir, and by accounts, he did a good job with his chorus getting high scores in district contests and advancing to states. But apparently word got out soon that is gay and in a committed relationship with a partner (it's not clear from what I've read whether or not they are married). And that has become a point of controversy. 

By mid-March, the region was worked up over the issue. The culture panic crowd was agitating for Kuhn's contract to be non-renewed for next year. The school board meeting drew a crowd that would be large for a school board meeting in a town with more than 1500 people. The board responded by refusing to expand public comment time (15 minutes with 3 minutes per speaker) and refusing to let anyone who hadn't signed up ahead of time to speak. Also, they announced that anyone who tried to make a public complaint against a board member or employee would be shut off. 

One 2019 graduate spoke in favor of diversity and tolerance, and also pointed out the hypocrisy that heterosexual staff can speak openly about their families and personal lives, but Kuhn is (allegedly) denied the same freedom. 

But another community member rose to express his "disappointment" over the hiring practices, and his hope that an unnamed staff member would not be rehired.

Another audience member expressed a concern that Kuhn's "values are inconsistent with the values of the community and district. The district "can't allow this to take root and snowball" and that "God will not honor this path unless we choose to alter the path." He asked four questions:

1. Was the board aware of Mr. Kuhn's lifestyle?
2. Can his contract be rescinded?
3. Can the district buy out his contract?
4. What can the board and administration do to insure this will never happen again?

 The board appears to have been split, with two members unwilling to go on record one way or the other. As a result, the vote to renew Kuhn's contract failed. 

Those opposed were remarkably coy about the actual issue. The one newspaper that covered the meeting (Terry Burton for the Tandem Network) couldn't get anyone to comment on exactly what policy the board was reviewing, nor was anyone apparently explicit about the "this" in the "this will never happen again." Disappointed? About what.

But Kuhn's defenders seem to have no doubt about what they're defending him from. A petition at change.org supporting Kuhn has 1,294 signatures and numerous comments praising the teacher and condemning the attempt to end his employment over homophobia on the board and in the community. 

What's the fear? Students will learn that LGBTQ persons exist in the world, leading perfectly ordinary lives? Is this that same old notion that nobody is born LGBTQ and therefor every LGBTQ person is probably a recruiter? Are people just freaking out about LGBTQ persons for no particular reason beyond vague moral panic? I suppose one is entitled to disapprove of LGBRQ persons (though it strikes me like disapproving of blondes), but why should that disapproval require stripping a young man of his job?

I wish I could provide more detail, but there's very little real media coverage of rural Ohio, so this is pulled from the one press account about the March 17 meeting and a plethora of online comments that center on the April meeting, which appears to be the one at which the board failed to hire Kuhn for next year. One commenter noted that the board opened the meeting with a prayer. Several others suggest he may have cause for a lawsuit, and that certainly seems possible, though what young teacher would want to go through that. This is an ugly chapter for the district, but time will tell if there is more of this story ahead. 

How Schools Can Push Back Against Christian Nationalism

Christian Nationalism is neither Christian nor nationalism, but it is currently inescapable in this country. It presents a challenge for schools and educators-- how do you educate students in a climate of culture panic that demands adherence to a list of ever-shifting beliefs?

Katherine Stewart is an exceptional chronicler of christian nationalism, and is particularly good at framing what's really happening. A hugely valuable insight from her most recent work, Money, Lies and God, is that christian nationalism can be understood not as a particular set of policy goals, but as a particular mindset, a view of the world described by four beliefs.

First is the belief that the country is going straight to hell. Think Trump's many dark descriptions of the many ways that America is no longer great. Education has been captured by Marxist radical leftists who have installed groomers and pedophiles in every room. Any minute now they're going to lure your sons into the guidance office to get their penis chopped off during study hall. 

Second is the persecution complex. One survey shows that christian nationalists believe discrimination against white folks is at least as big a problem as discrimination against minorities. Trump's creation of the anti-christian bias task force is an expression of this view. Stewart points out that surveys show fear about the loss of status is a driver of Trump support. 

Third is the insistence that christian nationalists have a "unique and privileged connection to this land." Stewart has elsewhere made the point that for these folks, government derives legitimacy not from the "consent of the governed," but from alignment with proper christian values. Here that extends to individuals-- people who are aligned to the correct christian values created this country (hence our favored "exceptional" status), and such people are also entitled to privilege and position that others are not. (When those Others are given that undeserved privilege that should belong to the Right People--well, see the second item on the list).

Fourth, is the mindset that "Jesus may have great plans for us, but the reality is that this is a cruel place in which only the cruel survive." Yes, cruelty is the point of many christian nationalist policies and actions, but the point they want to make is that this is what the world is like--cruel and hard and a constant battle that you can only win by being hard and cruel and allied with Jesus, and if that sounds like a bizarre contradiction, well, there's a reason I don't capitalize the "christian" in "christian nationalism."

This mindset is also wrapped in a layer of anti-curiosity about other views. As one gifted student at my school years ago said when offered a unit about comparative religions, "Why would I study those other religions? They're all wrong." People with different views are evil or stupid or both; we can see this in action with the Trump regime, which never ever admits that reasonable people might have a view different from theirs. 

So what can schools and classroom teachers do in response?

The short answer is to develop a school culture that reflects and demonstrates a different view of the world.

The notion that the country is going to hell? Ironically, this MAGA linchpin is profoundly unpatriotic, and the counterpoint is actual patriotism. That's patriotism rooted in an honest story of our successes and failings, and the steps we have taken to live up to our principles in a long arc that speaks to the rising and advancing of the nation.

The persecution complex? Run a school in which dignity, respect, and quality instruction are not zero-sum qualities that are only available to a few students. Challenge every attempt to give some students less respect and dignity and education. 

The privileged position? Okay, this is honestly the hard one, because some students being deprived of their "rightful" position as the Most Special Boys and Girls are going to kick hard. But other students will see how you react to that. Students know whether rules and privileges are fairly handled or not. Students know whether some people in your school are valued more than other.

A cruel world? The school and classroom can provide a strong, living argument against this mindset, and all they have to do is value something other than cruelty. Schools and classroom management can be based on trust and support rather than threats and punishment. If your school's message is "Life sucks and you'd better toughen up," you are underscoring the christian nationalist message and all that's left is working out how to be the most cruel. 

And finally, recognize that ideas can be debated, discussed, and dissected, but to simply impose ideas on others through blunt power and rough cruelty is no way to grow in mind and character. Teachers especially have to remember this. 

None of this means a school culture of fluffy bunnies and warm fuzzy unicorns, and it certainly doesn't require the suppression of honest conflict or the erasure of consequences for bad choices. Nor does it require actual active dialog with christian nationalists.

All it requires is schools and classrooms based on grace and generosity, respect and recognized human worth for all students. It requires a school that recognizes and celebrates the rich beautiful diversity of human ways to be in the world, not some tiny cramped meager vision of a world of grey scarcity where some humans are worth more than others from the moment they walk in the door. This is how we do the best job of delivering a quality education to all students, and if that also shows them that there is a way to see the world other than in dark grasping angry paranoia--well, that would be a benefit to society as well.

It's worthwhile for US citizens, especially those of us who think of ourselves as Christians, to check ourselves for markers if these christian nationalist mindset characteristics. It's easy enough to fall into the idea that the country is going to hell, that some people matter more than others, that life is a bitch and the only way to win is to be the biggest bitch on the block. But if you agree with MAGA and your only beef is about which people are the most valuable, you've already handed them the win. There is no profit in replacing one dark vision of humanity with another just as dark.

Education is about helping young humans uncover and grow to be fully themselves, to grasp what it means to be fully human in the world. The christian nationalists of MAGA world have little interest in any part of that; that's why, though they wash up on our spiritual and intellectual shores time after time, they always fade back into their own dark depths. No reason that schools cannot be part of the resistance. 

UT: Court Strikes Down Voucher Program

Utah privateers were pretty excited about getting a taxpayer-funded school voucher program through the legislature. HB 215 pulled off that trick in part by bundling teacher salary boosts with an education savings account program. But now they're back to square one, because Judge Laura Scott of the Third Judicial District Couty in Salt Lake has found the whole thing unconstitutional.

In 2023, the legislature (swiftly) created Utah Fits All (curious name, suggesting one size does fit all, I guess). It was supposed to be universal (maybe that's the "all" part), with wealthy families who had never set foot in public schools eligible. That's standard these days-- taxpayer funded vouchers have pretty much left behind the old "for poor children trapped in failing schools" rhetoric. 

The bill was passed with a GOP super-majority, avoiding a repeat of 2007, when lawmakers passed a voucher bill, voters forced a referendum, and vouchers were then repealed by 62% of Utah voters. The legislature in 2023 appropriated $42.5 million from the Income Tax Fund to finance the vouchers (with a slice, of course, for ClassWallet, the voucher management company). Then in 2024 they threw in another $40 million.

Utah Fits All has most of the usual features, like voucher money being spent on any education-flavored expense of the family's choice, and some unusual ones, like mandating that nobody but the family can see inside the student "portfolio"-- in other words, nobody is allowed to know how the money was actually spent. And critically, as always, the schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers are not state actors and may discriminate on many bases, including LGBTQ status, disability, or religion. 

Utah's teacher union challenged the new law, thus beginning the trek to this month's decision.

As happened in South Carolina and Kentucky, the voucher fans found themselves facing a court that can read the plain language of the state constitution. The decision cites key parts of the Utah constitution, like this one:

The Legislature shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of the state's education systems including: (a) a public education which shall be open to all children of the state' and (b) a higher education system. Both systems shall be free from sectarian control.

The court also cites the part of the constitution that delineate the state's responsibility to establish and manage the education system. Does the state, asked the court, have the authority to "create an education program that is not part of the public education system." 

In what may seem like a tasty twist for court watchers, the Utah court notes that while there's an argument that some of the language of the constitution may be ambiguous or subject to interpretation of modern legislative intent, the US Supreme Court has been big on the "original public meaning: and tradition argument for reading constitutions. 

The court decision finds a couple of problems with the taxpayer-funded voucher program. 

First, the state tried to lean on a 1986 Proposition claiming that it gives the state the authority to designate schools that aren't onside the public system and are sectarian. The court agrees that there's no way that voters of 1986 would have understood the amendment to empower the legislature "to create a constitution-free zone where publicly funded education programs could operate in violation of constitutional requirements." So, the state doesn't have the authority. 

There's a similar argument with a 2020 action known as Amendment G, meant to alter the constitutional rules for using tax revenue. The discussion of the bill (by which the court judges intent) never mentions school choice, nor did the publicity surrounding it. Once again, the court determines that a taxpayer-funded voucher was not part of the intent of the bill at all.

In addition, the court finds that the proposed system is not open to all children of the state. Public schools must take the students that land on their doorstep; voucher schools don't.

Judge Scott's ruling is just short of 60 pages, much of it highly detailed and dizzying legal argument, but the bottom line is clear-- Utah privateers have to go back to the drawing board or to a higher court. She deliberately avoided a debate about the merits of choice, but instead focused on the constitutional violations-- most especially the state's argument that some taxpayer-funded schools should still get to discriminate as they see fit. 

Does this have any far-reaching implications. Unlikely. As Chris Lubienski, ed policy professor at Indiana University, told Education Week, the rulings tend to come down to “variation in how the state constitutions are written,” rather than to a verdict on private school choice as a concept. These battles will be fought state by state. And I expect we haven't heard the last from Utah.

Moms For Liberty University

Moms For Liberty has a university! Sort of. If you use a really broad definition of "university." Like even broader than the definition used by Prager University.

M4LU wants to "inform-equip-empower." They call themselves "an academic approach to educating, equipping, and empowering parents to fight for their children."

Moms for Liberty, through M4LU seeks to be the go-to resource for parents to learn more about the issues and ideologies facing their children in the classroom, and to gain practical tools to navigate those issues.

Punctuation errors in the original.

The program director is Melissa Karwowski. She is touted as having "a diverse background in marketing, operations, data analytics, and tech consulting." Her sister-in-law started the M4L chapter in Washington County, PA (southwest of Pittsburgh) where Karwowski lives. 

She appears to be the same Melissa Karwowski whose LIinkedIn profile shows her working the tech side of multiple industries, most recently working as Director of Operations for IndeVets, an outfit that appears to provide floating employment for veterinarians. It appears that she was also a Mary Kay lady at one point. She's a military spouse (there's a nice piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about her welcoming her husband home in 2018). They have three children. She has a couple of degrees from Robert Morris University--one in business administration, and one in data analytics, both from 2021.

While this very much appears to be the same woman who is program director, her LinkedIn does not mention the M4LU job at all.

So the program director seems a bit more qualified to manage digital resources than an actual university, which seems about right. But she also doesn't appear to have been the first person in the job. January and February lecture videos are hosted by Robin Steenman, who introduces herself as M4LU director. Steenman may be familiar as the M4L leader in Tennessee who led the book banning charge there. 

The "university" launched in January. As Jennifer Vilcarino noted at Ed Week, M4LU is not actually accredited. Karwowski describes the goal a little more specifically:

Radical ideologies that have been building for decades are being daily inculcated in our children’s minds. What are the seeds being sown in our children today in America? If we as parents are to combat these efforts, we must understand the ideology. We must become experts ourselves. That is the goal of M4LU.

The website lists two "semesters" for 2025, but the format seems much more like a "topic of the month" structure. January-- Social Emotional Learning. February-- Critical Race Theory. March-- Restorative Justice. April-- Gender Ideology. May-- Comprehensive Sex Ed. In the fall, things get a bit more esoteric. August-- Generative Curriculum. September-- Graphic Content in Libraries. October-- Ethnic Studies. November-- Marxism.

For each topic, there's a group of resources. There's a "smart book" that provides a history and background of the topic from the far right perspective. This includes talking points arranges according to the points to which one is responding. The resources include presentation slides, and a set of videos. There is also a set of "white papers" and some books for recommended reading, plus a whole laundry list of related links (CRT gives links to videos that Williamson County M4L created when they were trying to ban the Wit and Wisdom books series, including a Riby Bridges bio-- that was three years ago).

The "experts" cites are the usual crew. James Lindsay, Chris Rufo, Parents Defending Education, the American Enterprise Institute, and plenty of Heritage Foundation stuff. There are also "watch parties for films every month or so.

As mentioned, there's a live lecture with each month, apparently filmed at a studio in Nashville (for $25 you can be part of the studio audience)

I could get into the specifics, but-- okay, just one. To respond to the argument that restorative justice is a good idea because children who commit offenses do so because of social factors beyond their control and punishing them just makes matters worse, the resources suggests you say that "Bad social circumstances caused by government policy make it more likely that members of certain groups will commit crimes."

The newly made materials for this endeavor are slick and professional looking, the website also slick and easily navigated. However, you can't squint hard enough in a million years to make this look like a university. What it is is a deep resource library being rolled out a month at a time. It is a library of all the usual complaints and grievances of the culture panic crowd, presented in an academic-looking form that should be welcome by the "I'm not trying to stir up trouble, I just want to answer some questions" crowd.

M4LU told EdWeek that it includes counter perspectives, and that's true, though it's also clear that those perspectives are there in a Know Your Enemy function and not to be engaged as ideas that reasonable people might hold. M4LU frequently credits itself with an "academic" approach, but I'm not sure that they know what that means. Granted, it's a vague sort of term, but I've never understood it to mean "we have already decided the conclusion and we will now just build a scaffold to support it and discredit all others." I think maybe they think "academic" means "not screaming," and M4LU does seem to clear that floor-level bar. 

M4L remains far more interested in using culture panic to stir up political activism than it is interested in actual education or, for that matter, liberty. M4LU is one more aspect of that mission to outrage and agitate MAGA ladies. If you want to get a picture of what the current talking points and arguments are, this website is just the thing. But a university it is not. 

ICYMI: Easter 2025 Edition (4/20)

It's a beloved holiday here at the institute, so if you celebrate Easter, a happy day to you. And if you do not, also a happy day to you, because we can all use some happy days. It's been kind of a scrambly week here, so here's your scrambly reading list.

Yet another expensive high-tech school opening in NYC - now with the promise of AI learning

The Prices have brought their Two Hour Learning model to the Big Apple as a private school with Big Tuition (just two hours of computerized learning a day gets you a full education). Leonie Haimson is here to remind you of the many failures of the education-via-screens model in the past.

It Ain't Over in Texas

Greg Abbott finally threw enough money at vouchers to drag them through the legislature. Jennifer Berkshire says he hasn't even begun to pay the cost for that victory.

Children Are the Future: Authoritarianism, Culture War, and Making Model Citizens

Alan Elrod at Liberal Currents looks at the MAGA goal of remaking a new generation in their own image.

The Seamy Side of CTE

Nancy Bailey looks at some of the problematic applications of CTE.

The controversial anti-poverty solution coming to public schools

The oft-debunked "success sequence" is popular again, and some right wing folks would like to make every teen learn it. Rachel Cohen at Vox.

Piercing the Propaganda

John Warner talks to Mary Anne Franks about how to get past bad faith propaganda in arguments about higher ed and academic freedom.

Opting Out

Adrian Neibauer offers a nuanced and honest look at the issue of opting out of the Big Standardized Test when you are a parent and a teacher.

Teachers, parents give West Ada school board an earful over classroom sign

The Idaho Statesman and Rose Evans continue to follow the story of West Ada, the district where a teacher got in trouble for a "Everyone is welcome here" poster. The story is both encouraging and depressing-- some folks are quite direct about supporting a message of diversity and inclusion and some... aren't.

Military Brats Slap Pete Hegseth With a Lawsuit Over Book Removals

From the Daily Beast, so it lacks a little balance, but here's an account of the students fighting back against the order to banish books from DOD schools.

The Biggest Threat to Public Education Is Coming From an Unexpected Place

Politico looks at two upcoming SCOTUS cases that threaten to blast public education as we know it.

Schools Are Already Seeing Higher Prices Due to Trump’s Tariffs

At EdWeek, Mark Lieberman and Caitlynn Peetz note one side effect of the Trump tariffs-- higher prices for school supplies.

Who’s In and Who’s Out at the Naval Academy’s Library?

The list of books purged from the Naval Academy was alarming enough, but someone at the New York Times had John Ismay compare that list to the list of books still in the library, and yikes! I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is out, and Mein Kampf is in. 

How to Control the Electorate 101

Dan Rather and his crew take a look at Greg Abbott's steamrolling of Texas on vouchers.

Failing Charter School Will Continue To Operate

Carl Petersen with a case study of a Los Angeles charter that should have been closed-- and wasn't. Petersen has the receipts.

The South's Long War on Black Literacy

You should have picked up a copy of Derek Black's Dangerous Learning by now, but if you need more convincing, here's a look by Thomas Ultican.

A Veteran Teacher’s Thoughts about ADHD

Nancy Flanagan was a band director, and that for a different set of interactions with ADHD students.

Lawsuit to Deny Federal Funding to Maine Public Schools in Transgender Athlete Case Tests President Trump’s Definition of Civil Rights

Maine's lady governor hurt Trump's tender feelings, so of course he sicced the Attorney General on the state. Now we'll see how well his upside-down version of civil rights plays out. Jan Resseger explains.

Cold As Ice: Update #3, The Posse

Gregory Sampson continues to look at the details of Florida's ICE-friendly student-unfriendly initiatives.

What to Know About Head Start, the Early Childhood Education Program the Trump Administration Is Proposing to Eliminate

Yes, Trump's proposed budget apparently axes Head Start. Here is some information about Head Start from Chad de Guzman at Time-- you can use it when you call your Congressperson to say, "What the hell!?"

Two-Sigma Tutoring: Separating Science Fiction from Science Fact

I covered this article in a post this week, but I want to make sure you don't miss it, because it contains most of what you need to enter a conversation about Two Sigma tutoring and why claims that AI can provide it are bunk. Paul T. von Hippel at Education Next.

The AI vicious cycle

Scott McLeod illustrates the AI circle for education. Short but bittersweet.

As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond

In a fun new scam, community colleges are being swarmed with AI bots masquerading as students just long enough to score some student aid dollars. It's creative. Jakob McWhinney reports for the Voice of San Diego.

A Scanning Error Created a Fake Science Term—Now AI Won’t Let It Die

And here's one of the deep questions of the AI age-- once something that's just wrong gets folded into the sludge of AI product, can anyone get it out?

Have some Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire

This week at Forbes.com I ran a piece about a new survey of attitudes about civics education.

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The AI Used By Privatizers

Here at the institute, we often wonder what would happen if we could just press a button and churn out more research, more postings across social media, and more emails to a vast mailing list of possibly-interested readers.

Of course, AI could do that, and so, of course, AI is doing that. At least, for one chosen sector of clients.

Meet Technology for Freedom. 

T4G can "supercharge your intel & influence" and their promise is simple and clear. 

We help MAGA advocates, think tanks, and influencers dominate the battlefield with AI that delivers real results.

Discover your next secret weapon.

The company appears to have been founded in March of 2024 by founder Daniel Poynter. Poynter is a 2008 graduate of Purdue (Philosophy) with a MacArthur Young Innovator award. Since 2004 he's been a busy guy; he has 18 jobs on his LinkedIn profile, including gigs like web developing, IT stuff, digital literacy, coaching for social entrepreneurs, and founding/running Carbon Neutral Indiana ("fun and effective climate action") an outfit that seems to deal with educating ordinary folks and brokering carbon credits for other folks. 

His head of engineering is John Bohlmann, a top-of-class computer grad from Purdue (2011) who has done a mountain of tech work. 

If "you're a think tank or advocacy organization, fighting for the spirit of 1776," T4F offers three main services--

AI-powered research, AI-powered advocacy, and AI training.

This breaks down to "value" services like AI-compiled contact lists. For example, they helped the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (the pro-privatization pressure group) "get contact information, even once unavailable residential mailing addresses, of thousands of elected officials in Michigan." They helped School Boards for Academic Excellence (the anti-woke school board association) find thousands of school board members in 19 states.

They can automate workflows:

Free up time, cut costs, and scale faster with AI-powered automation. 

Your team is wasting hours on manual, repetitive tasks - hours that could be spent growing your movement, winning more fights, and driving real impact.

 For example, they helped EdChoice data mine public comments at public school board meetings and "uncover a new source of public sentiment." They helped the team of  Heritage Foundation and EdChoice "find and analyze media coverage of school choice debates."

They can offer this creepy service:

Increase Your Influence with AI-Powered Social Network Analysis 

Power isn't just about what you know - it’s about who you know. 

Our AI-powered Social Network Analysis (SNA) helps you map relationships, uncover hidden influencers, and identify leverage points to maximize your reach and impact. Whether you’re engaging donors, studying the opposition, or finding ins to key decision-makers, SNA gives you a strategic advantage. 

Real Results

Increase meetings with high-net-worth donors 

Identify key decision-makers and their trusted connections 

Map opposition networks and uncover their coordination strategies

They can also provide AI guidance on demand, including strategizing and leadership advice The specifics here are particularly alarming:

We advised a Governor’s Office on how AI can uncover regulatory overreach by comparing agency rules to the original laws passed by elected representatives. 

We identified how a national non-profit can automate the monitoring of hundreds of university websites, saving over $1.5 million.

The website includes some chirpy endorsements, including kudos from Paul DiPerna of EdChoice, Jason Bedrick of The Heritage Foundation , and Jarrett Skorup of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Bedrick's endorsement includes 

I strongly recommend Technology for Freedom to any think tank or advocacy organization looking to enhance their research capabilities through AI while maintaining academic rigor...

So if you've been up late thinking about all the scary ways AI can be used, add outfits like this (I'm betting this isn't the only one). Let's salute the brave new world where political advocacy is an arms race between competing bots. Should be delightful. Also, folks who keep insisting that AI will be objective and fair and unbiased really, really don't get it. Don't think of AI as a dispassionately objective arbiter; think of it as a for-hire creature that will do whatever it is hired to do, dispassionately freed from any conscience or scruples. AI is not Spock; it is Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, or Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator. And some folks have already hired it and put it to use.

Yes, Middle Schoolers Are Hard To Teach, and Nobody Is Really Lazy

Stop me if you've heard this one-- primary grade students love to learn, and middle school students do not.

I could hear my joints crusting over while reading a new piece about disengaged teens in The Atlantic, by a pair of writers who are apparently experts. This is, I guess, one of those features of age-- young folks earnestly explaining to you things that you thought conscious human beings already knew.

"The Teen Disengagement Crisis" is by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, a journalist-educator team that have written a whole book about this (which I have not read yet). 

Some of their observations are not news to anyone who has taught, ever. "By middle school, many kids’ interest in learning falls off a cliff." Well, yeah. When you are a little, the world is exciting, learning stuff is as easy as breathing, and you are both receiving and exuding glorious, unconditional love (as long as you don't have lousy parents, and sometimes even then, depending on what other people are in your world). You are crackling with energy. 

Then you turn 11 or 12 or 13 and it all turns to hell. Your body turns on you, growing into some gangly thing you can't quite control, as well as producing all sorts of foreign effects that can be alarming. You are suddenly at the mercy of hormone-induced emotions that you can't manage. You are simultaneously and painfully aware that 1) your life is largely leashed and restrained by a bunch of outside powers that you can't overcome and 2) that having the freedom to operate without those chafing restraints is absolutely terrifying. 

You used to do stuff and sometimes you'd win and sometimes you'd fail and it's not that you didn't have feelings about it, but now you have FEELINGS!!!! about it. 

And learning is hard. Somehow the machine in your head that just automatically picked stuff up is now broken. Well, at least it seems that way to you but that kid in the next desk in math seems to pick stuff up just fine and ace every test without even trying and who the hell does he think he is and why are you struggling so much oh my god is there something wrong with you and why didn't Pat say hi at lockers this morning and what's for lunch today shit is there a zit on my nose now??!! What was the assignment again?

Anderson and Winthrop write about "Passenger Mode" which I think is a good way to describe the mode some students settle into. They aren't super engaged, and they aren't totally checked out. Sometimes folks stick passenger mode students with the L word-- lazy-- and the writers are on point here as well. Anderson and Winthrop point at painfully unengaging school work as a big part of the problem, but I think it's both more complicated and simpler than that. 

I taught 39 years, and I never met a lazy student in my entire life. What I met were students who were making choices about their own agency.

I could learn to speak conversational Chinese or work with Linux. But I've made a cost-benefits analysis and determined that the usefulness I'd get from the learning compared to the time and effort I'd have to put in means I'm just going to say, "No, thank you." Nobody calls me lazy or, worse yet, learning disabled because I make that choice. Adults make choices like that all the time. So do students.

I've shared that thought with my students. Particularly in the second half of my career, I was very explicit about respecting their right to make that decision, even if there are consequences ("I respect your right to skip all the assignments, that will still work out to a failing grade.")

Students can conduct the cost-benefits analysis, but they're not always good at it. They may not be great at assessing the benefits (my informal assessment is that roughly 98% of teens think learning history has no benefits). They may also be bad at estimating the costs, particularly if they have been ill-used by the system and beaten into a low estimate of their own skills. As the writers point out, treating students as if they are incompetent and have to be nagged into compliance does not help. It just increases their estimate of what compliance is going to cost (a chunk of their self-esteem). 

So the teacher's role is to help students with that cost-benefits analysis. Part of the job is to sell the material; what do they get out of complying with the lesson? In an earlier age, this was where the teacher was encouraged to "make the lesson relevant," which is truly terrible advice. If the lesson is relevant, explain why. If it isn't, don't teach it. And if you have to make it appear to be relevant, that's an admission that it isn't, so see the above. Benefits include practical items (communication skills are job skills) and broader items (I told my students for years, "The more education you have, the more jokes you get"). 

The cost side is where teachers have some control. The cost of the learning can be endless tedious drill or not. Teacher-as-coach work is about convincing students, one way or another, that this won't take all that much out of them. We've always known that little success points along the way boost confidence; ime, the main cost barrier for students tends to be that the task just seems too huge. 

Cost is also where the system figures in-- if it has been set up to convince students that Passenger Mode is the low-cost way to get through school, they will gravitate toward that mode. Again--this is not because they are lazy. It's a basic human approach-- would you be more likely to buy a pizza for $5 or essentially the same pizza for $150?

The cost side in school is also a two-part computation-- what is the cost of doing this compared to the cost of not doing this? This is where we get the adult approach of trying to jack up the price of non-compliance. I'm not going to say this is never productive ever, but I will say it's pretty close to never ever. For one thing, you're creating a lose-lose for the student, with two unpleasantly high-cost choices. For another, you are conditioning the student to run away from things rather than towards them, to practice building their life around avoiding unpleasant things rather than moving towards good stuff. And the worst part of both-- a teen will tend to blame anything sucky in their lives on themselves. 

I have ordered the book on the strength of this article, though I fear that the authors are far too ready to throw schools under the bus. But the board of directors are approaching these years, and it's been a couple of decades since the last time I was the parent of teens, and it won't cost this old fart much to read what these two have to say. I'll get back to you later.