Did you know that Lincoln has been organizing student participation in a different kind of high school activity than we regularly find in a high school: “Debate.” The
L.A. TIMES published an article last week on this topic, featuring LHS as one of the high schools where this is happening,
"No argument: High school debate is popular once again," http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-debate20-2009jan20,0,1406037.story It’s good to see that amid the trend of reduced activities in
LAUSD schools over the years due to decreased interest and funds, that is worsening now even more with tight budgets all around, that there is something that can be both helpful academically to an individual student, and operate to represent a school’s program.
You can read the article for some insight into the high school setting that some of you might recall, and if you have been out of school for a number of years, then don’t really bother to recall since those times are very different from what’s happening in the high school experience today. If you compare your experiences to those of current students, there’s a lot that doesn’t match. That might be because of changes that happen due to technology and social views, as well as the management of school funding.
WHAT WAS YOUR SCHOOL EXPERIENCE?
The different experience brought out in this story is a vivid example of how we former students at Lincoln had limited and lesser ranges of experience in our school life as a general condition. Having less exposure to what’s out there in the world doesn't help the learning process nor does it get the students prepared in the best way for handling future situations. Some other high schools were able to provide students a wider scope of experiences that helped them to be better students. A lot of this happens, too, because of what is done by parents who work on doing more for their children's education, since you can’t expect the school to be any substitute for what parents can do. It just shows how important it is for parents to work with educating their children, and not to expect everything is a teacher’s job to do. Reasons for this can be varied, but for education to happen, it has to be done consciously, not accidentally, for the best effect.
DEBATE- A TIME FOR A CHANGE, A GOOD CHANGE.
But this topic, “Debate,” is really one developed in the school setting that is different from most sports by the simple reason that most equipment for needed, besides the teachers and students, is already there to start.
By now, you might still wonder, “What is debate about anyway? What does it do for students or anyone?” I pulled out some selections from Wikipedia, presenting a few interpretations on what I see can be a very broad area.
Here is how it’s defined: “Debate (
American English) or debating (
British English) is a formal method of interactive and position representational
argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than
logical argument, which only examine the consistency from
axiom, and factual argument, which only examine what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is technique of persuasion.”
And the special skill that this brings out is “argument” and they don’t mean the kind you might expect when two people become angry. What happens is what we in a school setting prefer, discussion, and it happens in a special way.
Continuing with another very brief part taken from that Wikipedia section, the part that we have in the high school program is the competitive aspect of applying the learned skills so that we have something to judge:
“A rule-based competitive debate is often encouraged in high schools and
colleges. Often, it takes the form of a contest with explicit rules. It may be
presided over by one or more judges. Each side seeks to win, by
following the rules, and even by using some rules to break other rules, within
limits. Each side is either in favor ("for, 'Affirmative' "), or opposed to
("against, 'Negative' "), a statement (proposition or Resolution)
which if adopted would change something with the exception of some high school
and college debate where moots may hold no outcome, i.e., the moot "ignorance is
bliss".” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate
As I mentioned before, among the memories as a student in high school, having any debate competiton or real training about that in class was not part of the picture. I don’t remember calculators, computers or cell phones in school either, but here we are. I am glad for the changes, generally, and this is one where “better late than never” applies in seeing it at
Lincoln.WHAT DOES THIS BRING OUT IN STUDENT PERFORMANCE?
While I am glad to see that change here now, the ones who can participate really are fortunate they are equipped to do so, both in terms of their own hard work and study, their own natural ability, and the assistance along the way from parents, friends and teachers. In the bigger picture, we still don’t have enough progress by so many other students to be able to expect participation from that greater group.
IS SCHOOL ATTENTION BEING MISDIRECTED OR NEGLECTFUL AS TO SOME STUDENTS?That’s just the way it is. Briefly, you can look to the
Magnet Program at LHS involving the
Science department and you will have something roughly, by my estimate, about a fifth of the school population of around 2700 or 2800, qualified for participation. That means that the
Magnet Program has an actual pool of about 500-plus who can benefit from participation in the program. The majority of the school is excluded as a result. You wouldn't think that was the case, as my recollection of all the P.A. daily announcements of the
"Magnet Programs" plans, meetings or other activities came across very loud, but not clear, over the school P.A. system installed during or before the "modernization" a few years back.
P.A. volume levels at Lincoln seemed to be well over the OSHA safety limits for preservation of our sense of hearing but complaints literally were made on deaf ears. We had no control over the volume in our rooms, and it must have had a setting in the main office as "FULL BLAST', so a lot was garbled when people spoke too loud. If you were a community neighbor to
Lincoln, you had a better knowledge of what's going on than the students in school who covered their ears or talked over the intrusive announcements. When you happened to be walking out in the campus during the "bulletin" announcements, it sounded more like echoes across a prison yard- I could never ignore that impression every time it happened. That's a complete aside and something that goes into the "I don't miss that part" bin. I do think that this daily delivery to the small target audience made the rest of the students suffe in more than just the aural overload sense, and needlessly so.
The daily bombardment of irrelevant items was not a positive event for the students or the other teachers with decibel-resistant speakers. All it ever did was to get a lot of students either more resentful of, or more oblivious to, that program itself, as well as to all the other announcements coming across the P.A. system that should have been submitted for the printed daily bulleting, which instruction to teachers and administrators was perpetually ingnored during the few years I was at LHS, leaving that handout with virtually no changing news to break up the boilerplates paragraphs inserted throughout.
Of course, the Magnet program is not able to handle that many students at one time and all those students are being kept out by their own choice since a big part may have little or no interest in becoming involved. Reasons for students lacking interest in further achievement is something that deserves it’s own discussion, and that will be left for another time.
But what seems to happen in many school settings, Lincoln included, is that the “good” students or “high performers” will be what carries the rest of the school in any given assessment category, and a result, will get the better attention and benefits while in school, perhaps being considered as “favored treatment.” This turned out to be one of those "unintended consequences" when it came to state tests and dealing with
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND standards of the
API ratings, while very low average scores were avoided by the good results of many "high" performing students. Leaving the consideration of fairness aside, you will often, if not always, find that the students who are performing well will turn out to be the ones that will succeed under any set of circumstances, even without any extra training or programs. Was that Darwinism at work? I don't know, it just works out like that.
The real problem in high schools are at the other end of the spectrum, those that don’t get good report cards, and those that don’t have a good handle on English skills or math, who become moody, withdrawn, passive, boistrous, inattentive or defiant and who have to be unhappy with the high school experience when it comes to successfully accomplishing any studying or testing.
THE WAY THAT THINGS WORK OUT LEAVE WEAK PERFORMERS LESS SUPPORTED.
And that job of preparing these underperforming students to handle work at their grade level with some proficiency is what remains the daunting task for LHS and other
LAUSD schools from K through 12. Everyone wants to teach the high performers since, among other things, they allow a teacher to move through planned lessons at a consistent pace and you see home work coming in from everyone, with pretty good level of classroom behavior, too. The also serve to make the teacher look good as a teacher. There’s always a few students who will cause assorted conflict, but not consistently or characteristically so, I’d say.
We get back to he other students who are more challenged, more rebellious, more distracted, and who are less prepared and less supported by family, friends and teachers in getting the most from attending school will be the real concerns of the educational system. Here is where you might find that part of any school’s problem that still has no solutions for improvement.
It is nothing new, and the results don’t really change from year to year, but we continue to have more dropouts, those being the ones who don’t get to graduate either “on time” or ever. Some will manage later to earn a
GED, but others will not and won’t care to. This is where I see we are now. Solutions come and solutions go, but unless you have students WANTING to get through school WITH some achievement, it’s going to be a losing proposition.
DID BRINGING THE "ALL COLLEGE PREP" NO-CHOICE TRACK HURT STUDENTS?Our vocational training is now almost all gone from the campus site, with Skills Centers off-site as the available-but-not-quite-equivalent alternative. We have an
"A to G" track that is a college prep program for everyone in high school, as if everyone is going to go to college. It winds up just pushing more to drop out. Very talented students drop out, too, not just the the "troublemakers." Many are just bored with what they are presented with. Of course, a student may be bored by having missed lots of school or not doing the class work and home work assignments. Then besides just being bored, he or she is then mystified by the discussions and assignments, becoming more and more detached from the subject, left further and further behind. Leaving school under those circumstances begins to sound like a reasonable choice.
WHAT "LEADERS" DO DOES NOT REALLY APPEAR TO HELPThe dropout problem is addressed unrealistically by LAUSD leadership. The "A-G" track is still part of the council re-election campaign boast of
FORMER LAUSD President JOSE HUIZAR (Now the
Council Member for Council District-14), although it's not "a positive" change as I contend here, but a negative one, not even harmless enough to be a neutral value.
HUIZAR'S place on the
LAUSD Board was filled by his former aide, now the
Board President,
MONICA GARCIA.
GARCIA is fooling no one with her absurd "100% graduation goal." She needs to start beating a different drum.
Ms. GARCIA, who announced that it was not until she attended
U.C. Berkeley that she really learned about the
Chicano struggle and needs and the social injustice. In this case, maybe it was not "better late than never" in getting involved with social change. Trying to revive the
60's style of activism is long past and,
Ms. GARCIA, sorry you missed it, but move on. I am glad that you made it to
U.C. which was probably a big part of it's effect on her education and attitude.
What Ms. GARCIA needs is to sit in on some classes and see that we would be
lucky if everyone would be able to write a simple declarative sentence or have an ability to read books, standard classics of a high school curriculum level. For the record,
LAUSD has
never had a "100% graduation rate." Even at the grad school level, not everyone who begins a program is able to finish it. All this unrealistic boasting does not do much for
MS. GARCIA'S credibility nor her ability to assess the problem.
WHAT DOES "NO VOCATIONAL EDUCATION" DO FOR STUDENTS?This part of the educational component now missing is that part where many students find they can flourish and apply their talents, developing their skills and satisfying their needs that in turn allows them to “tolerate” the academic side of school that is not so interesting to them. THAT is the part of the day that lets students have their time in vocational training that is comparable to the arts programs as being something special to each student and a time when they work to be able to enjoy the results of what they learn and put them to use.
If the powers that be would take a breath and look at what you have, it might help them find solutions or improvements. Let's look at this situation regarding the trend for "healthy living" that is becoming more popular, whether we want to hear it or not from our politicians. Aside from eating habits and choices,
EXERCISE is important.
Many people have the benefit of working at jobs where a lot of physical energy is not needed, but then, avoiding weight gains and keeping the circulatory and other body systems has been attended to, for many, by lunchtime walking. Other choices include joining groups for sports or outdoor activity for exercise needs and then theres's the gym membership and putting hours of time for that activity to burn calories. Lots of people wind up feeling and looking better from all this.
Exercise works for improving physical health and for our mental health, too. "Endorphins" produced during strenous exercise make us FEEL better, almost drug-like in their effect. So you see, to be healthy, it's not all sitting just still and working quietly, but mixing some activity to use up the rest of your body's parts so it stays in working order. Physically and mentally, there's a greater feeling of well-being.
"ONE SIZE" DOES NOT FIT ALL.NOW, getting to my point, putting a student in only classes for math, English language (reading, writing and literature), science and very little else is done without much to differentiate the time and activity in any part of a school day from any other part. We don't even have
P.E. to use for an outlet for physical activity, having been cut from a
P.E. class as a
requirement every semester, down to only two years out of four now, a 50% cut in that area. Taking out the vocational classes from a student's choices is what leaves students without their "reward", "highlight", "creative outlet", "physical break" or "favorite" time, or any other label attached to that different kind of needed activity is, simply stated, a functional mistake.
I nearly forgot about the female students' side of things as electives went. They had the "homemaking" style of vocational opportunies in education. "Cooking" "Sewing" "Typing" and so on, were what you found in the
500 building- and the sinks of old still are there, with the old wall mounted ironing boards to be found in some rooms before the "modernizaton" took the reminders of the "past" out of the school. Those classes permitted boys to enroll, but there weren't many. I was in a typing class with one or two other guys, and that turned out to be the most practical one I ever took at Lincoln, using the skills in college and later, almost a necessity for students today with computer work.
The variety for the mind and the physical interaction makes for a different and enhanced learning experience. We might not be able to continue in the vocational field in a career sense, but the experience helps in other ways and any practice in the learning process is of benefit in improving learning skills that can be applied for other subjects. A shortsighted
LAUSD is what we have by their idea of clearing out all the shops since some, mainly Latinos exerting their influence, thought that if you eliminated vocational ed, everyone would HAVE TO GO TO COLLEGE (and I think this might be what justified such change for
CM JOSE HUIZAR) and not, I suppose, be headed for a job as some lowly worker, as they saw it. They did not consider the "dropout" option taken so often by so many in response to these curriculum changes.
The school district needs to use better strategy and to look back to what was taught in the times when I and many others were able to stick it out, not drop out and learn a few things. My parents would have had a big part of that decision if I ever tried to consider it. These days, too many
parents are isolated from the schools and, unfortunately, their children, so like the "Las Vegas" motto, they treat it all like, "What happens at school stays at school." Involved parents can be so helpful to their child's improvement or good performance without having to be college educated or even without having English language or math skill. Parents need to keep their children on the right path by showing they care. Single parent families and a high divorce rate don't help things, neither does having babies from teen mothers. "An uphill struggle" is what you have there from the beginning. But let's look again to the school district's side of action.
VOCATIONAL CLASSES WERE SUPPORTIVE OF A SUCCESSFUL EDUCATIONAL PROCESSDropouts decide at some time not to come back to school, and making the choice to remain in school is not helped when you take away those elements where students find they achieve success and satisfaction. I recall my own time at
LHS with auto shop and drafting being among the best classes for my enjoyment in a different way than just doing well in the purely "academic" side. Some students were able to actually begin to head toward their career activity by our school's print, metal, wood, auto and other shop classes available. Low pay is certainly not the characteristic of most trades now, and a society without such skills will leave us to turn to what, China, for filling that need like it does for most manufacturing formerly done in the U.S.?
STUDENT ACTIVITY SHOULD BE AVAILABLE IN WIDER RANGES OF TOPICS AND AREAS.The students who are able to participate in the debate program should be congratulated for applying themselves here. It may not be as glamous as catching a touchdown pass, putting the ball in the hoop with a 3-point shot, or hitting a bases-loaded home run, but it’s something worthwhile that gets into a style of thinking for continued benefit since you will always have to think while awake. Well, I suppose it's your choice there It’s exercise for your brain. And for more exercise, you still can try out for school sports to do those other things, too. At least as long as there is funding and as long as there are sponsors who can provide the time and energy to help, it's all there for you. Did you know that golf was another area for
LHS student activity these days? It's a different LHS from before.
On the negative side, we don’t have a tennis team- or even tennis courts.
Franklin High has lots of them, and nice ones, too. We have a conversion fom tennis to basketball courts there now. THAT is a sport that we DID have in my time, and I remember seeing
Rudy and Steve Salas of the band,
TIERRA, in the school yearbook as members of the varsity tennis team. And don’t forget about 10 years later that
Rudy Moreno, comedian and actor, was a baseball team player for
LHS. I remember
Louis "Benny" Torres of Cl. of S'68, who was on the journalism path early when he worked on the "
Railsplitter" school newspaper before we had an internet. He went on to win awards as a journalist while working for
KNX-RADIO 1070-am. A variety of experience benefits students.Let’s hope that our debate team members can be remembered in years to come for their work on the present debate team activity, and that we see more of these and other students in this activity given the recognition deserved while they are still students here. Getting due credit and support for such things is necesary to sustain movement in that positive direction.
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