David Scannell - an Educator showing & confirming that our perceptions are well grounded - Granite Grok

David Scannell – an Educator showing & confirming that our perceptions are well grounded

In the Union Leader a few days ago, they printed an Op-Ed by David Scannell that bit me the wrong way (The complete Op-Ed (for context) is after the jump; emphasis mine in the parts that highlight my points).  In toto, it is obvious that he expresses what I have seen over the last few years – a growing disdain for parents and a disregard of the relationship of government and the citizens that give it its legitimacy by their consent.  Certainly in this piece it is clear that citizens have been withdrawing their consent by withdrawing their kids in participating in “mandatory” testing and surveys.  Oh, how DARE these parents get in the way of us (in the government school system)  doing what WE believe needs be done for “our” children (yeah, that’s the increasingly evident groupthink and outlook being displayed – not YOUR children but OUR children).

So here’s a couple of those snippets:

THIS JUST IN from the don’t-we-have-enough-to-worry-about-already department: the perennially put upon, overextended and tapped out Manchester School District — currently dealing with looming cuts in state funding, manufactured outrage about standardized tests, and a federal civil rights inquiry — is confronting two additional heaping helpings of trouble recently placed on its plate: sex and drugs.

Oh woe is us; everyone and everything is stacked against us!  We stand alone, undermanned, underfunded, and under appreciated at every turn.  Ever think that maybe the “manufactured outrage” isn’t so manufactured – it just seems that way because your worldview (we are the experts and we know more than you do) won’t allow it?  And this is just setting the stage for the rest of the Op-Ed; to me, this is just playing the victim card.

And sometimes, this “trouble” is brought on by a bureaucracy that decides, bit by bit, to take on more and more – and then feels slighted when others dissent and say “too much”.  And then they get a hair across. And yes, I have heard “well, if the PARENTS would do their jobs, we wouldn’t have to do this”.

The other one that grabbed my eye was this:

One individual’s Victorian view of propriety — even if that individual is the mayorshould not be allowed to imperil the pursuit of legitimate and laudable public health goals that can be achieved only if data exist to point policymakers in the right direction.

Gosh, once again, we see the same attitude that we saw from the Gilford School Board that landed them into international scorn.  Victorian, Mr. Scannell?  Is it YOUR place, as an educational “profession” to lambast the public’s sense of propriety?  Certainly the educational professionals in Gilford did – they had little to no thought as to “gee, would this be contrary to what parents are teaching them at home for morality” when an assignment of reading a graphic section of underage teen rape was given to impressionable freshmen?  All I got from that episode from the Gilford Educational-Industrial Complex was “ain’t no big deal to us – AND IT SHOULDN’T BE TO YOU, PARENTS!” to the point of having a taxpayer arrested and brought up on trial.  He was forced to pay a goodly sum of money just to hear a judge lambast said School Board for THEIR attitude.

Congratulations, Mr. Scannell – with this Op-Ed you have confirmed, once again, our attitude that our government (that once was viewed as public servants) is now manifesting itself as the Public Masters.  Question for ya, dude – who ELSE, if not the Mayor, to question and have an opinion and show his dissent?  He IS, after all, the elected representative of the People in Manchester – he IS supposed to represent the taxpayers, citizens, and parents of Manchester, is he not?  He was duly elected to be the City’s leader – and not merely an appointed flunky official.  And as an appointed flunky official (since you found fit to give your official bona fides), is it your perch to tell the rest of us to sit down and shut up and let you “get on with your job”?

Or, once again, did you forget that little tag line of “you work for US” and the relationship that portrays?

Oh, and one last thing that I found to be dripping with disdain – and not a small amount of contempt:

Manchester is not Brigadoon, a place untouched by the passage of time

Lovely – he DOES believe we are all redneck idiots, untouched by any intelligence or awareness at all with that bit of condescension.  Thanks, good to know and thanks for the confirmation.

*****

Another View — David Scannell: Manchester parents have nothing to fear from the schools’ youth survey

DAVID SCANNELL

THIS JUST IN from the don’t-we-have-enough-to-worry-about-already department: the perennially put upon, overextended and tapped out Manchester School District — currently dealing with looming cuts in state funding, manufactured outrage about standardized tests, and a federal civil rights inquiry — is confronting two additional heaping helpings of trouble recently placed on its plate: sex and drugs.

Specifically, the Manchester Board of School Committee was asked at its March 23 meeting to review the New Hampshire Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). The request to have board members look at the survey came from Mayor Ted Gatsas, who, in the midst of a discussion about the Smarter Balance assessment, suddenly changed the subject to express horror at the questions high school students were asked to answer about sexual activity and drug and alcohol use.

Administered biannually for more than 20 years to randomly selected high school classes across the country, the YRBS is prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and is provided to local schools by the New Hampshire Department of Education. The survey is designed to be anonymous and voluntary, and it is administered in accord with local parental permission procedures.

A notice on Central High School’s website last week, for instance, warned parents who objected to its administration to notify school administrators.

The survey measures behaviors in various categories, including smoking habits, unintentional injury, physical behavior and, yes, drug use and sexual activity. I am familiar with the survey because I have administered it as a teacher, worked with the Manchester Health Department to summarize its results when I was the district’s community relations coordinator, analyzed its findings as a member of a community foundation that offered grants to youth-serving agencies, and applied its conclusions to a 2007 presentation from the now-moribund Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and the Board of School Committee.

That presentation, by the way, concluded that “drug and alcohol abuse among adolescents is one of the most important factors that limits a student’s potential to graduate” high school.

The mayor’s remarks at the meeting and his subsequent comments over local airwaves were vague regarding specific objections to the survey. In a radio interview, he volunteered (again, curiously, without having been asked about the survey) that he was “appalled” by the questions and predicted uproar once survey questions were made public. “Wait until people see this survey,” he said. However, his reluctance to cite the specific questions he found appalling creates the impression that those questions must be, if not obscene, then certainly shocking to the conscience of a vast majority of the community.

The questions, out of necessity, are frank and do refer in a clinical way to sex and drugs. That anyone could truly regard them as obscene (or even shocking) in the 21st century is disheartening. Potter Stewart, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice whose grandson sits on the city school board, once famously said he could not define obscenity but he could recognize it. “I know it when I see it,” he said. Well, this ain’t it.

The 2013 survey is readily available and easily accessible on the state Department of Education’s website. Only eight questions of the 99 pertain to sex, and none of those questions would be inappropriate to read aloud in polite company or print in a family newspaper.

One individual’s Victorian view of propriety — even if that individual is the mayor — should not be allowed to imperil the pursuit of legitimate and laudable public health goals that can be achieved only if data exist to point policymakers in the right direction.

Data-driven decision making (that phrase has become a mantra in the field of public education) is all the rage for a reason: using information to craft decisions promotes effectiveness and efficiency. If teachers, guidance counselors and student assistance personnel can head off certain destructive behaviors at the pass, shouldn’t they avail themselves of information that provides a roadmap to the pass?

Public officials who bemoan government’s impotence when it comes to combating the region’s deadly heroin epidemic or who express surprise at the emergence of trends like last year’s spice overdoses should welcome the collection of information that can be used to prevent or mitigate such happenings.

Manchester is not Brigadoon, a place untouched by the passage of time. All students in Manchester’s schools will confront the temptations of sexual activity and drug use. Some will resist, and some will succumb. For more than two decades, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey has provided community leaders charged with keeping kids drug free and sexually inactive with tools that enable them to do their jobs. Allowing the mayor to shut the toolbox on their fingers would be a truly unfortunate outcome in a city that has historically done its utmost to safeguard its children.

David Scannell is a former coordinator of school and community relations for the Manchester School District and a former adviser to the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council. 

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