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High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

washingtonpost.com

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Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#91

Post by and0 »

daemin wrote: post #44
mschuster91 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice narrative, and especially the "bend and break the kids to conform with mainstream" rings a bell. Yet I don't believe the major driving force is to free up women as laborers - schools have been existing way before women had the right to work or vote. In my opinion schools and universities rather serve to breed out worker drones and the curriculums are based on corporate needs, not society's. And this has, especia…

Schools were around before washing machines. So just because a woman didn't have a job at an office or other place of employment, she did have a lot of work to do around the home.

Robert Caro's first LBJ book has a great (harrowing) passage on how hard it was in rural Texas for mothers, who often didn't have electricity up until the 30's. It was backbreaking, constant labor to keep everything in working order and preserve enough food for winter.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#93

Post by Cyph0n »

jrs235 wrote: post #88
Cyph0n wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He earned that title, and he was your teacher (a superior), so I don't understand why you were annoyed. Most importantly, it was the first day! Think of an interview for example: would it be polite to address your interviewer using his/her first name? No, unless the interviewer gives you permission to do so. Edit: It seems like a lot of HN users have a severe aversion to authority, so I guess I've learned something n…

He earned the title, not respect. Yes, we should be respectful of everyone, but just because you have a title doesn't mean you can go around demanding to be respected [if you're also being a pompous ass]. Edit: Well, you can go around demanding it but you're delusional if you think people actually respect you.

It was in a classroom setting on the first day... Of course you don't go around on the street asking people to call you "doctor"!

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#94

Post by Cyph0n »

maxerickson wrote: post #87
Cyph0n wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He earned that title, and he was your teacher (a superior), so I don't understand why you were annoyed. Most importantly, it was the first day! Think of an interview for example: would it be polite to address your interviewer using his/her first name? No, unless the interviewer gives you permission to do so. Edit: It seems like a lot of HN users have a severe aversion to authority, so I guess I've learned something n…

teacher (a superior) Because that's stupid. Provisional respect, sure. Continued respect after acting like a buffoon? Nah. Of course, it might be pragmatic to continue the expected ceremonies of respect, but that ain't respect.

How is asking your students to call you Dr. X on your first day of teaching "acting like a buffoon"? What a strange conclusion man.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#95

Post by icantdrive55 »

jrs235 wrote: post #45
nkurz wrote: post #29

I don't know how common falsified credentials are in school administration, but I'll mention a parallel experience that was a formative part of my upbringing. While I was in high school, my father taught at a small private college in Wisconsin, where he was on the hiring committee for the new college president. After being hired, the chosen candidate's behavior was surprisingly erratic, prompting my my father to cont…

This is a story about a teacher near where I live who only got outted for a fake degree when he ran for a school board. And from stories I have heard from his students, he got the fake doctorate degree because he wanted to be called doctor. In fact if students in high school called him Mr. Kulas he would correct them (sometimes chew them out) that he is to be referred to as Dr. Kulas. Use imcognito mode to open this…

The author John Grey, who, wrote Men are from Mars, and Women from Venus got his doctorate from Columbia College, in San Rafael CA, 94901.

I would really like to see an end to the PhD. Hell--I would like to see medical doctors drop the title. It just seems to go straight to the ego, and doesn't help anyone.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#96

Post by leephillips »

throwaway729 wrote: post #68
nkurz wrote: post #29

I don't know how common falsified credentials are in school administration, but I'll mention a parallel experience that was a formative part of my upbringing. While I was in high school, my father taught at a small private college in Wisconsin, where he was on the hiring committee for the new college president. After being hired, the chosen candidate's behavior was surprisingly erratic, prompting my my father to cont…

Fascinating. To this day, it's nearly impossible to find any account of these events. It's really hard to imagine that someone could commit such outright blatant theft and get away without so much as a hit on Google. Was the con artist ever tracked down?

Fascinating indeed: the notion that a college president would hold title to the school's buildings. Etc.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#97

Post by noxToken »

cwingrav wrote: post #85
ryanmarsh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US I feel like the primary education system is simply childcare for the working class. My experience with teacher quality was just like yours.

We don't pay them well so we get what we pay for. The exceptions are those that love to teach and love students. You can't run an organization via exceptions however. It's really a shame we don't value education more.

> It's really a shame we don't value education more.

This might sound nit-picky but I think we all (Americans) value education as a whole. We just don't care (as a whole) about education for others outside of our sphere.

When you have the ability to move to better school system or to pay for private school attendance, you have no need to improve public schools. Not all public school systems are bad. I image that everyone can think of one relatively close school that they can unequivocally call a good/great school system where they expect most student to exceed by some set of positive metrics

As long as the people who can fix it (no matter if its more staff, better pay, better resources or whatever change necessary) can place their children into C-Level Preparatory Academy, Dumpster Fire High School probably won't see much improvement.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#98

Post by dkersten »

Cyph0n wrote: post #86
pavel_lishin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a high school teacher who demanded that we address them as Dr. Whozits on the first day, and would correct us. They learned that you can demand respect all you want, but if you actually want to get respect, you have to earn it from the people you're expecting it from.

He earned that title, and he was your teacher (a superior), so I don't understand why you were annoyed. Most importantly, it was the first day! Think of an interview for example: would it be polite to address your interviewer using his/her first name? No, unless the interviewer gives you permission to do so. Edit: It seems like a lot of HN users have a severe aversion to authority, so I guess I've learned something n…

Because I don't care what qualifications you have. If you want me to respect you and call you by some honorific name, you have to make me respect you enough to do so, otherwise I don't care what some piece of paper says you should be called.

I don't call English "knights" Sir either, because fuck that.

Note that none of this means I'd be rude, I just wouldn't afford them any more respect than anybody else.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#99

Post by maxerickson »

Cyph0n wrote: post #94
maxerickson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

teacher (a superior) Because that's stupid. Provisional respect, sure. Continued respect after acting like a buffoon? Nah. Of course, it might be pragmatic to continue the expected ceremonies of respect, but that ain't respect.

How is asking your students to call you Dr. X on your first day of teaching "acting like a buffoon"? What a strange conclusion man.

I'm not necessarily drawing that conclusion.

I've certainly had the experience of dealing with poor teachers obsessed with the ceremonies of respect though.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#100

Post by SilasX »

blowski wrote: post #21
paulftw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part 2 of this investigation should be "whose job it was to check new principal's credentials and and how they profited from looking the other way" Edit: was that person the only applicant? If not why did the process identify them as the most suitable candidate?

If you're doing root cause analysis of a system failure, you're not looking to blame an individual. If you find something malicious then, sure, deal with it. But assume good faith in all parties from the outset and you're more likely to succeed in fixing the problem.

True, the postmortem should not be focused on blaming any one person. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't ignore the presence of such crimes or prosecute them!
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