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Suburban Equalizer
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The National Academies report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," warns that unless we do something about our children's deteriorating international standings in math and science, America's going to lose what's left of its technological edge. Only one-third of fourth and eighth graders in the United States, and less than twenty percent of twelfth graders, reached proficiency in math and science in 2005. It seems the No Child Left Behind Act forgot a few kids along the way.
Blame goes around easily enough, but solutions lag behind a lap or two. Parents blame the teachers; teachers blame home lives; many just blame the system itself. Our public educational facilities are out-of-date, overcrowded, and rampant with financial favoritism. Part of the problem is uneven taxation: a percentage of public school funding is sourced from local property taxes. What happens, then, to schools supported by neighborhoods with low property values? This issue jumps in and out of the media spotlight, but in all actuality, it's a chronic problem. Innumerable inner-city schools really are criminally, persistently deprived, while many suburban facilities are equipped with the latest and greatest. The questions surrounding racial bias, then, are only a short sidestep away. Areas of low property value are often inhabited by minorities, who, in turn, receive less school funding and suffer higher dropout rates. Those who complete fewer years of schooling tend to get stuck in lower income jobs, are unable to purchase higher priced properties, send their kids to the neighborhood (lower income) schools - and so the merry-go-round spins again.
Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of the Indiana University School of Education, and a minority himself, believes educational equality is at the very foundation of today's civil rights' debates. Gonzalez heads a program that provides the largest number of teachers for Indiana schools and is the third largest provider of teachers for the United States.
"Education is the great equalizer in a democratic society, and if people are not given access to quality education, then what we are doing is creating an underclass of people who will ultimately challenge our very way of life," said Gonzalez. "...I think the civil rights question of our nation today is that of access to a quality education. The lower class - many of whom are people of color - are disproportionately represented among drop-outs and...other social pathologies. The means by which those populations can have a chance to be successful and address some of their problems is through education. So we are talking about ensuring access to a quality education for all children."
Declining mathematics scores are the ever-present culprits in the majority of these educational issues. America's international academic standing is in jeopardy, in part, because of our children's lack of understanding of what has been dubbed the "universal language" - yet another language, it seems, in which Americans aren't even conversational.
Scoring low on a few math tests is just the beginning, however, for many of these children. Research conducted in 2005 by Johns Hopkins University and the Philadelphia Education Fund revealed that as many as half of all Philadelphia high school dropouts showed signs predicting their early departure from school as early as the sixth grade. Four factors were essential in forecasting these AWOL students: low attendance, poor behavior, failing math, and failing English grades. Other studies reveal that parents' anxiety about math can dramatically affect their children's success in the subject. Perhaps math homework should be mandated for everyone, of all ages, just to make sure we get back on par. Maybe, then, our grades would improve.
So if higher marks on the global school scale mean serious math homework, then it should also mean (Dare I say it?) more math help! Schools, parents, and the media are continually blasted for our children's lackluster performances, but little in the way of practical solutions - or the funding to back them - are actually offered. Go on, Senator, kiss the babies, but what are you going to do when that kid fails his basic subjects because Congress didn't pay enough attention to the parents' groups? Classroom teachers can offer their assistance to a certain extent, but they have dozens, if not hundreds, to teach and many pupils find little help at home.
Professional math tutors need to be more readily available -- so do those offering calculus help, geometry help, and algebra help, for that matter. College preparatory courses require students to master at least the basic concepts of all of these. Online tutoring systems are great options for students who need more flexible schedules, and for school boards that need sound, one-time investments. If America really wants to see better test results, then they should demand more assistance in, and out of, the classroom.
Benjamin Franklin considered the definition of insanity to be "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." We can be disgusted by our nation's comparably poor global academic standing, but we can't be that surprised; the educational system has been doing the same things, teaching with the same methods for years. It's the adults who are failing; it's the adults who are crazy to think this can all be fixed by watching the passive passage of time, but doing little in the way of revamping. Deconstruct it, I say! Tear the issue apart and start finding radical solutions! Because the kids keep coming, in greater and greater numbers, the funding keeps declining, and, before we can blink one lazy eye, they're going to be running the world.
Math Made Easy provides Math help for Algebra help, Geometry help, math homework help using math online tutorial services and math tutorial cd so you can watch your math scores soar.
United States of Tara and Its Equally Dysfunctional Cable Neighbors
United States of Tara recently started its second season on Showtime. Toni Collette plays the title character, who is the mother and wife of a seemingly typical suburban family. Except that she suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Tara is sometimes teenager T, perfect housewife Alice, redneck trucker guy Buck, therapist Shoshanna, and a weird subhuman creature that likes to pee on people. In Collette's hands, this surprisingly all works—I have never had a moment watching the show where I did not believe in Tara's transformations.
The supporting cast is also excellent. John Corbett plays Tara's husband. He's one of those actors who I always like to watch. Ever since Northern Exposure, he's made everything he's in better—see My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Sex and the City for examples. Rosemarie Dewitt steals all her scenes as Tara's long-suffering sister. Keir Gilchrist and Brie Larson are the teenagers in the household who each are perpetually on the edge of their own meltdowns. (And I also enjoy occasional walk-on Patton Oswalt as Corbett's buddy and Dewitt's once and future love.)
Season one focused on Tara's multiple personalities and their effect on the family. Everyone seemed resigned to having four or five mommies, depending on how you count, but they handled it with good humor and fun. There was a bit of a mystery as to whether a pivotal event in Tara's past had led to her disorder, but really it was an extended character study of a family dealing with the disease. Sure, there was the requisite bad language, sex, drug use and black humor—this is pay cable after all—but the overall tone was a sympathetic portrait of people I grew to like.
And right there is the problem with Taraand all the other wildly dysfunctional families on cable TV these days. Each of these shows sets up doomed character, convinces viewers to like him or her, then starts the inevitable march toward that character's destruction. I know that some level of discomfort is intentional on these shows, but I find that there is a general sense of dread about the future in their storylines. (Of course, the other common factor is great, innovative writing, which is what keeps me watching.)
I get that dysfunction is conflict and conflict sustains shows, but it can be exhausting for the viewer. Two other prime examples are Big Love and Weeds, both of which I watch and enjoy. Like Tara, these can both be described with the same simple mad-lib of a pitch:
(Name of character) is a typical suburban (mother/father) … and a (socially unacceptable profession/lifestyle/disorder).
For Big Love, fill in Bill Hedrikson and polygamist. For Weeds, Nancy Botwin and drug dealer. (Those of you who are playing at home, try this out for other favorite shows such as Breaking Bad, Nip/Tuck, Dexter, Mad Men and so on.)
All these shows start from debilitating dysfunction and there's nowhere to go but down. Nancy will get caught eventually by some law enforcement agency unless the various Mexican drug lords she hangs with kill her first. Bill will be exposed and shunned by an unforgiving public unless the polygamist cult leaders he's pissed off kill him first. Tara will go back down the rabbit hole and nobody really knows who will come back out. And in each case there is a whole cast of supporting family members that are going to go down hard with them.
(For the record, the main reason that I haven't picked up well-regarded shows like Dexter and Breaking Bad is that my quota is filled for getting invested in characters I know are going down in flames.)
These shows are perfect for cable where the seasons are shorter, typically 13 episodes rather than 22. So, even though the viewer has been watching for two seasons, the writers have only had to come up with the same number of plots and twists as a single network season. For shows like Weeds and Tara that are only half-hours, four seasons equals the time commitment of a single network year. This is crucial for sustaining these premises which would flame out if so many episodes had to be produced that quickly. You can really only take these shows in small highly combustible bursts.
This is all The Sopranos fault. It is the original dysfunctional cable family that all the others are modeled after. (The key mad-lib terms for those who don't already know—Tony Soprano and mob boss.)
Maybe that's why the end of The Sopranos was actually brilliant. The cut to black at the close of the final episode was seen by many as a cop-out. However, maybe it was just an admission that in the real world these extreme characters would either meet tragic or unredeemable ends, and the audience does not really want to see that. That leaves the ambiguous series end as the only believable way to let the character live on as the dysfunctional companion the audience has grown to love.
Back to United States of Tara. The beginning of season two has made it clear that her disorder will continue to slowly tear the family apart. The brief period of recovery that closed out season one has ended. Tara's personalities are stronger than ever. And this is going to put unbearable strain on all the supporting cast. There is hope, however. At least in this show, there is a possibility of controlling the disorder and having a somewhat normal life. Imagine that. A family-based show with hope for a happy ending.
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