GAMBLING AND EDUCATION

For at least the last twenty-five years I joked with my colleagues about setting up a new visions school that would teach the art and science of gaming. After all, the proliferation of casinos, lotteries, OTB parlors and other forms of legalized gambling enhanced city and state revenues across the nation. There are now more jobs available shuffling and dealing cards than working machinery. I described in mock serious tones the burgeoning job market of the future with a need for croupiers, pit bosses, oddsmakers and card dealers. Since this was an expanding emplolyment field why not found an educational venue to train kids for these jobs. When I taught social studies at Hillcrst High School I even garnered some laughs as I told my kids about a gaming preparatory academy, where students could even figure their odds of graduating on time.
Eureeka, my prayers have been answered. Andrew Wolf reported in the July 9, 2007 New York Sun that a new secondary school will open in September, 2009 "that will use game-inspired methods to teach critical 21st-century skills and literacies." The school has no official name as yet (and which Wolf dubs the "Fun and Games School") is sponsered by an allegedy non-proifit group, the Gamelab Insitute of Play.
Gamelab's brief and skimpy web cite informs us that, "The school will explore new ways of thinking and speaking through playing and making games..." The Institute refers to the pupils as "gamers." The gamers "will explore the learning space of games and game inspired materials, learn about the history and culture of games and play and produce knowledge around the materials and relationships that result. Such an approach allows young people to explore the learning space of games and game driven pedagogy...while promoting GAMING LITERACY." Gamelab somehow secured a $1.1 million grant from the John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation for "planning and development."
The cite lures interested viewers in with the logos: "WANT TO PLAY WITH US?" and "BUILD NEW DOMAINS OF KNOWLEDGE CONNECTED TO GAMES." The Insitute mentions that Gamelab develops and markets new web games but provides no details as to even the names of the games. Many doctors and the AMA are concerned about the health of kids indulging in internet video games. Numerous physicians believe video games to be addictive. While Klein axes music and arts programs he sets up an academy to promote video game addiction and "gaming literacy." Maybe down the road we can look forward to new monthly tests in gaming literacy. Would anyone care to wager a bet on the success or failure of our new Fun and Games School? The school of games will join other illustrious schools such as the Urban Peace Academy, El Puente Academy for Peace, School of the Future and Justice and the High School of Peace and Diversity.
New YOrk, and most other states promote the propaganda that gambling is a savior for our cash starved public schools. Most states, including our own, spend millions aattempting to addict their citizens to gambling. "Hey, you never know." "All you need is a dollar and a dream." They even set up Keno games (nicknamed "video crack") in bars to take the citizens' dough while they are inebriated. Millions are budgeted for marketing research to design new more expensive games; allegedly with bigger prizes. Texas, Kansas and Michigan now have instituted a $50 scratch-off ticket. All this is blessed by the state under the rubric that the rent money you lose to gambling helps impoverished innocent rustic waifs receive an education.
In actuality only a small percentage of gambling money trickles down to the states, with the average take here in New York amounting to a paultry 5.3 per-cent. IN other states thte total is sometimes less than one per-cent. Often the money simply replaces funds already set aside for education; and where the profits go is anybody's guess. Most of the lotto profits actually flow to the companies that run and market the games themselves, paying for marketing, prizes and vendor commissions. Only a few dollars flow down the trough into general state revenue coffers.
Gambling is of course a regressive tax on the poor and middle class, with these two groups losing a larger percentage of their income on gaming than the upper class. We have all by now seen the lines of hardly well off citizens lining up at candy stores to bet sixty, seventy or eighty dollars a day on the opportunity of striking it rich. Your odds of being struck by lightning are superior to winning a top prize. While New Yorkers cut back on food and medicine they can take pride in knowing they are helping fund Joel Klein's education system. Of course how much, if any, of the lotto revenue, makes its way into the classrooms is anybody's guess. What gambling is really about is entertaining the population while stripping them of their money.
Amazingly many teachers buy in to the propaganda of more gambling equals more dollars for the classroom. The March 16 Washington Post reported that the Maryland State Teachers Association endorsed legalizing slot machines throughtout the state .

PS YOU NOW HAVE TO WRITE A PARAGRAPH TO SECURE A JOB

In an amazing change of policy Uncle Joel will now require that new teaching candidates must write a paragraph prior to being hired. The February 7th Daily News shed more light on this major upgrade in teaching standards. We may in the future acutally have teachers who can write a sentence! Wow! It certainly makes you wonder what caliber of teacher we are hiring at the moment. After all, how are you supposed to mark tests, homeworks, Regents and standardized tests if you are illiterate? How do you write your power aim on the board? How do your kids legitimately pass the exams if you can't pass them? Oh well, maybe I'm just being too logical

The February 12th New York Sun reports that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants to give $10,000 yearly bonuses to teachers in low-performing schools. "If we are going to convince our best teachers to go thre ...we will have to compensate them." This emulates the policy of super-principals receiving bonuses by moving to in-needs schools. A parent advocate for the city, Zakiyah Ansari laments that, "Our schools are plagued with unqualified teachers and overloaded classes." This bonus will certainly turn things around as teachers leave in droves from solidly academic miliues such as Stuy, Midwood and Bronx Science to transfer to Boys and Girls or Lafayette. Even if no trekking occurs the new teachers at hard-to-staff schools will now be well qualifed, since they must write a paragraph prior to entering the classroom