Re: retention and

Phillip White (Phillip_White who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu)
Sun, 26 Sep 1999 10:12:45 -0600

Mike writes:
xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>
>
>In Fresno where I work with people the kids are being kept until 6pm
>and the local teachers are pressed to work longer hours and there is
>no real budget to feed the kids. So school personel and local merchants
>team up to see that the kids are fed, with principals and vice principals
>acting as cooks and bus drivers and and...... 5 days a week.
>
>Its not a pretty site, although I tremendously admire the people who are
>breaking their hearts and bodies trying to make a differences for the
>kids.

in my experience, about 85% of this labor is being provided for by women
- who are already poorly paid, and over extended not just in their
professional lives, but in their personal lives. and even worse, they are
casually denigrated as being slackers and educationally inept.

what i keep on wondering is - what's the value to the culture at large
that this is the case? why this story from Fresno? i do think that
activity theory has the theoretical tools to explication this question
ethnographically - but, it would also demand lots of money to do so.
>
>
>20+ years of undersupporting teachers, families and kids around education
>is not an easy trend to reverse. Maybe an omlette is being made. What
>I see are a lot of cracked and gooey eggs!

agreed! something we on xmca seem to have in common - a passion for
education. which is sometimes messy.

phillip
>