I like to call out and celebrate instances in our various institutions and practices where we take a step in that direction. Religion and education tend to be two of the “lagging” institutions in terms of adapting partnership practice, so that made the “unveiling” ceremony I attended Sunday, a breath of fresh air and a joy to participate in.

This was a service for the “unveiling” of the marker on my partner Sally’s Uncle Joe’s crypt at the Culver City, CA cemetery where he is interred. In the Jewish tradition, this event usually happens no later than one year after the death and funeral, the previous event that I wrote about in my June 26, 2009 post “On the Occasion of the Passing of Uncle Joe”.

There was no rabbi present or other “memorial service professional” to create and lead the service. Instead, Joe’s daughter Judy put the service together, consulting with a rabbi to get some ideas and recommendations. It was short but powerful, and at times provoking tears and sobs, which I always feel is a key indicator that a worship service has been effective in its intent. In this case it was memorializing a person who had lived 82 years, been a husband and parent of five kids (all in attendance) for six of decades, served in World War II and Korea, and adored his seven grandchildren as well. (more…)

Robin Edgar, responded to my previous “Cadillac & Power-Over Sexuality” post with a heads up on another ad from the Super Bowl that illustrates the whole “power-over” thing to a tee. I found the ad on YouTube…


Truly worthy of a Ms Magazine “no comment” this is illustrative of the subtle perpetuation of patriarchal principles through, in this case, (attempts at) humor. Did you ever have someone say something nasty to you, and when you call them on it, they say, “I’m only kidding”. Maybe so… but it’s a time-honored tactic to deliver a message without taking responsibility for it. And everyone knows that feminists have no sense of humor right? (more…)

For a year or two Cadillac had an ad campaign featuring their sleek new black models being driven by very attractive forty-something people (I recall one ad with a man and another with a woman). The tagline of the commercials was a question, “When you turn your car on does it return the favor?” As I suggested to my kids when they got old enough to watch television, and also applicable here, watch the programs you like but pay particular attention to the commercials. They often say more about our culture and its messages and appeals to us than the programs do.
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Starting in third grade with learning the multiplication tables, our son Eric started having a problem with school. By seventh grade he would not do any homework, had been diagnosed with ADD, was taking Aderall, had been through an IEP, and had had a number of sessions with an educational therapist. When he got to the point in eighth grade of writing “F**k Math” on his standardized math test, we pulled him out of school. (more…)

Teacher magazine published the results of a survey of 40,090 K-12 teachers, possibly the largest national survey of teachers ever completed and including the opinions of teachers in every grade and every state. The survey, “Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s School,” was conducted by Harris Interactive and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic Inc. You can download the full report at: www.scholastic.com/primarysources/pdfs/100646_ScholasticGates.pdf.

Here are some of the results I found most interesting… (more…)

I saw in the most recent Public Education Network “NewsBlast” that Part 1 of the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2009: Collaborating for Student Success” has been published, this part focused on “Effective Teaching and Leadership”. It reminds me once again of the issues faced by our democratic system of governance and whether our public school systems promote or run counter to the ideals of democratic governance.

To set the context (and as I have said repeatedly in other posts) we are in a historic transition in the world and its institutions from patriarchy to partnership, from hierarchical pecking orders to circles of equals. In a patriarchy, the governance model exists within a hierarchy of “superiors” and “inferiors”. At the top of that hierarchy are the people considered to be “leaders”, below them are the rest as “followers”. The “leaders” are charged with making the important decisions and exercising control over (and have responsibility for) all the “followers” below them. (more…)

I ran across a summary of a report from a Los Angeles based non-profit group called the Advancement Project (www.advancementproject.org/) on the Public Education Network (PEN) “NewsBlast” (for February 26, 2010) that comes out every several days. Their white paper is titled “Intertwined policies cause widespread alienation & worse” and can be viewed and or downloaded at www.advancementproject.org/digital-library/publications/test-punish-and-push-out-how-zero-tolerance-and-high-stakes-testing-fu. (more…)

For her graduate school thesis, our friend Brenda opened an alternative charter school in the fall of 2000 which our daughter Emma attended for her three middle school years.   Emma’s mom worked as the school counselor for four years, the first two as an unpaid intern, the last two as a paid staff member, and also served for a time on the school’s Board of Directors.  The school was launched with about 120 students, offering kindergarten through sixth grade, which grew to include seventh and eighth by the third year.

As a person who believes that our education system is way too “One size fits all”, from the beginning I applauded this experiment to create a school on a different model than the conventional instructional school.  In fact, many people can’t even conceive that there could be any other sort of school than ones that focus on… (more…)

Just a quick note that I have had a really good couple weeks of recovery and am back to writing and typing reasonably well. I am right now working on completing my “Confessions of a Lefty Parent” book proposal that I plan to send to a literary agent that my brother Peter has a connection with. I hope to be posting pieces on my blog again by the end of this week.

I appreciate all of you checking in presumably to see if I am posting again.

Cooper Zale… aka Leftyparent

FYI… I am recuperating well this week from my surgery Feb 1 to remove a 3 centimeter hematoma (blood clot) from my brain caused presumably by my bicycle accident last November. I am off work and my other normal volunteer activities until my neurosurgeon sees a CAT scan that shows my brain has returned to its proper position inside my skull from where it was displaced by the blood clot. But one of my yearly efforts is too critical to let even this stop me…

It’s nearly March again, and the one time in the year I pitch my circle of family and friends for a donation to a worthy cause… (more…)