Author: murrayof

On the Recent Executive Order Regarding Education

murrayof

I have read the January 29th, 2025 executive order titled “Ending Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.”

It prints out at 10 pages. The image that comes to mind when I recall reading it is a firehose of mud. It is a mess that provides something for people supportive of the president’s agenda to work with, and therefore advances their cause. 

When people stand up to it in the courts, some judges might be sympathetic to the president’s assertions. 

Many judges will not be. 

It’s hot garbage. But that doesn’t mean it is unimportant or ineffective in advancing the admistration’s goals. It gives their odious ideas some foothold within the government. And even more significantly, it frightens a group of people who generally trend toward a rule-bound relationship with authority: teachers and administrators.

The executive order is filled with vague concepts. Here’s a snippet: “‘Patriotic education’ means a presentation of the history of America grounded in: an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles.” Most people capable of a little bit of thought would concede that there are aspects of the history of the U.S. and its founding that reflect these positive qualities, and aspects that most certainly do not. And therefore, there is no way to be accurate and honest without including the less ennobling parts of the United States’ history and founding. 

Furthermore, at what point could anyone determine with clarity that an educational approach is not sufficiently “grounded” in accuracy, honesty, unification, inspiration, and ennobling characterization, all at the same time? It would be nearly impossible to make such a determination. 

And this is but a snippet. When you analyze the text, it starts to make zero sense very quickly. 

The president’s power to declare these rules is very unclear. The proclamations are largely impossible to understand or implement. And, they likely run afoul of teachers’ and students’ First Amendment protections.

Adding yet another layer to the nonsense, the president’s administration is trying to simultaneously increase and decrease federal control of education. -One one hand insisting on these proclamations, on the other hand seeking to dismantle the very federal agency that exerts influence on education in the U.S.

I am firmly in the “do not comply in advance” camp, as recommended by Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny (2017).

This can be hard for some teachers, who run classrooms where rules and authority play a central role. What I say to teachers and administrators is: The president is not your supervisor. There may come a time when your actual supervisor gives you instructions that you don’t want to follow. At that point you will need to decide whether you will comply. That might be very difficult. You will confront that moment if it arrives. But again, I ask you not to comply with your anticipated ideas about what will be asked of you, in advance of that moment.

Anxiety is anticipation, and our power to anticipate is one of our great strengths as humans. But we start to lock ourselves in a miserable position when we behave as if events we anticipate with anxiety are already occurring. We must not do this to ourselves or our schools. And, if we are opposed to this attempt to limit the freedom and efficacy of teachers, we must not cede ground so easily.

References

Snyder, T. (2017). On tyranny: Twenty lessons from the twentieth century. Crown

Launching Parent Group: Wednesdays 9:00am – 10:15am

murrayof

I’m launching a weekly parent group on March 12th. The group will meet in Porter Square on Wednesdays from 9:00am to 10:15am.

When I say parents, I’m including anyone in a role where they are doing the work people mean when they say “parenting.”

I’ve co-led parent groups previously at Parenting Journey and Community Therapeutic Day School.

It’s a psychotherapy group where the members will be parents, with a shared interest in using the group to discuss their parenting experience. Discussion will range from practical plans to explorations of how our life experiences have informed our parenting.

The fee will be $100/session, or I will accept MassHealth insurances.

Please contact me if you are interested or have questions.

Special Education Staffing Shortage Featured on Morning Edition Today

murrayof

A first step to increasing staff retention is simply keeping data regarding injuries and dangerous and destructive episodes.

Here’s the special education hiring pitch: The job pays poorly, is dangerous in many cases, you will be under intense scrutiny, with the specter of legal complications always hovering.

Especially given that unemployment levels are generally low, you can see why it is nearly impossible to staff a school appropriately. In the big picture, this all reflects badly on our values as a society

This report out of Texas on Morning Edition today is about staff injuries in special education. The consequences of the report’s central story are extreme, but the circumstances and the state of special education programming described are very familiar here in Massachusetts and across the country.

What I usually find in special education programs serving students with significant social, emotional, and behavioral challenges is that the school does not keep information on staff injuries.

There are several disincentives for keeping information about staff injuries. Administration is not well-motivated because any record of injuries doesn’t look good for them. -Similar for special education teachers in leadership positions. At the bottom of the staff power structure, the teaching assistants most frequently getting injured are often in a situation where it feels as if getting injured is their own fault, and/or their job.

It takes leadership willing to forcefully buck these trends and disincentives, and establish data tracking for staff injuries as well as dangerous and destructive episodes. It’s so important to keep this data, for reasons beyond the obvious benefits of having the information. What is even more directly helpful about tracking staff injuries and dangerous and destructive episodes is it goes a long way toward preventing a program culture where injuries and dangerous and destructive episodes become normalized. This normalization should never occur but often does, and it is very harmful to the education and development of the students being served, as well as everyone in the program community.

Also complicating matters are the poorly understood and sometimes incoherent laws and regulations regarding how to respond to students posing a safety threat to themselves or others. I have tried and failed to engage the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to understand their process for updating the laws and regulations.

I have written about safety concerns quite a bit in my blog, and in my book with Laura Balogh, The Therapeutic Inclusion Program.

Breakthrough Article in The Boston Globe About Inequality in Special Education Services in Massachusetts

murrayof

I just read the extraordinary article in the Boston Globe from yesterday.

The less money a family has, the less likely their child is to receive appropriate special education services. And the greater the level of services needed, the greater the impact of this inequality.

School districts are spending massive amounts of money on out-of-district placements. Some of these agreements for out-of-district placement tuition are public, while others are secret.

Here is a quote from the article:

“The staggering amount being spent to outsource special education in Massachusetts, and the even greater sum that would be required to fully meet demand, reflects the need for schools to provide better and earlier services to students with disabilities, advocates said. While some students, such as those who are medically fragile, will always require specialized settings, children with less intensive disabilities should be properly served at their home schools, they say.”

This is one of the major reasons why Laura Balogh and I wrote The Therapeutic Inclusion Program: Establishment and Maintenance in Public Schools (Routledge).

It looks like The Globe has some more reporting on the topic, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say…

‘Seven Brief Lessons On Physics’ and One Brief Lesson on Psychotherapy

murrayof

Recently I read a short book called Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. Rovelli describes two great theories of physics: general relativity and quantum mechanics. Both theories go a very long way to describe and predict the nature of the universe, but the theories do not agree with each other. As both theories describe the same universe, it stands to reason that in some way we don’t now understand, these theories can be integrated into a unified theory. But for the time being, they are distinctly different ways of understanding.

These theories have often been developed through predictions about phenomena that were not observable but could be inferred. Scientists, sometimes decades later, devise methods to test these theories. Both theories have periodically been strengthened by confirmation of these predictions.

I use this as inspiration in my psychotherapeutic work. The unconscious is unknowable, yet we accept that it exists and that its impact on our experience and behavior is significant. We can make inferences about the content and action of an individual’s unconscious through indirect observation. But unlike physics, in psychotherapy we do not have any ability to test our hypotheses empirically, so the satisfaction of definitive confirmation is not available for us. 

Despite this perhaps discouraging obstacle, we will not get far in our understanding of people, and their feelings, thoughts, and behavior, without considering the unconscious. We are foolish to ignore it.

I find these facts to be humbling, and I find the humility liberating. In short: 1. The unconscious is a significant factor in the human experience and we must consider its role in any individual, relationship, or group. 2. Our hypotheses regarding the content and action of the unconscious are impossible to confirm. 

This understanding can really help get one’s ego out of the way. As far as the contents and action of my unconscious for example, fundamentally your guess is as good as mine. In therapeutic relationships, this understanding encourages collaborative wondering, challenging, and co-creating of hypotheses regarding the unconscious’s contributions to our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and motivations. -All the while holding the humility that we don’t know, and nor will we know. 

We can use this understanding to deepen the work together. And while we can’t directly test our hypotheses, we can observe whether their consideration provides relief to the patient.

References 
Rovelli, C. (2016). Seven brief lessons on physics (S. Carnell & E. Segre, Trans.). Riverhead Books. (Original work published 2014)