AssortedStuff

In his weekly Post column, I actually agree with Jay Mathews’ assessment of the campaign promises on education issues being tossed around by the two candidates for Virginia governor:  Pleasant sound bites with little substance.

Whichever Virginia candidate wins will do his best for kids, even if much of what is being proposed is standard American campaign pap. Both want to raise teachers salaries, a wonderful idea, but neither presents a realistic plan to pay for that. Both support school-business partnerships to prepare students for the real world but don’t say how they are going to solve the old problem that neither business executives nor educators have the time or energy to make such plans work. Both want to reduce dropout rates but cite no examples of this happening recently in any significant way, given the drag of poverty on many children’s lives.

I have to admit that Mathews is also right when he says that Virginia already does a pretty good job of supporting public schools.

Unfortunately, that support is almost entirely in the context of the traditional educational structure.

Neither of the people running for governor, much less anyone else in the state political or educational administrative structure, is proposing anything that would substantially move teaching and learning beyond the process familiar to anyone attending school in the last half of the 20th century.

Charter schools don’t do it – the vast majority are just private schools being run with public money using the same curriculum and pedagogy.

AP and IB classes don’t do it – they still lock schools into a college-is-the-only-goal mentality using programs written by the even more tradition-bound university system.

Improving teacher quality is certainly a good idea but not if the plans are centered around enhancing teaching methods designed for students from 1965.

More standardized testing?  More crap is not better crap!

Yes, voters should feel good “about the great job Virginia educators have done” in the past.

But that’s no reason to keep doing the same thing, only more of it, and assuming that every other factor outside the school will remain static.

Oh, and paying for it with leftover small change.

election, jay mathews, school reform, virginia, washington post

I bet a lot of people bought a newspaper this morning. Even those who haven’t paid for a paper version of the news in years (if ever). [Update: evidence]

Buying and putting away a print version of the headline from a major event is traditionally how many have personally preserved a piece of history.

So how does that happen in a digital age, one in which dead-tree publications are disappearing or cutting back?

I suppose you could take a screen shot of your favorite news outlet’s web site. Or wait to get the commemorative issue of Time that’s undoubtably coming soon.

But one page (digital or otherwise) really doesn’t capture the memory anymore. Neither does a single edition of a daily newspaper.

For me, and I suspect others who live in the online echo chamber, the story of this election was made of lots of little bits that went beyond what was recorded in the traditional news media.

Like Twitter discussions during debates. Multiple blog posts written by amateur and professional observers alike. Conversations in the comments sections of those blogs. Sharing YouTube videos created by non-professionals with creative ideas.

I hope that someone with far more resources than I have (Internet Archive? Library of Congress?) was capturing a large chunk of the online stream during the past two years.

The many, many digital pieces flowing on the net have now become as much a part of the archive of history as the products of relatively few print and broadcast media outlets were for the previous century.

Of course, not everything uploaded to the web is worth keeping (although some of David Jakes’ Twitter rants are priceless :-).

However, all those small elements added up to a larger story, one that was largely ignored or missed by the high profile media outlets.

To me, it’s pretty clear that this was the first US national election in which various online communities had a major, perhaps a decisive, impact on the outcome.

In the past we might say that it will be left to historians to decide if that statement is valid and what the impact was.

I’m not so sure the extremely impatient world of the web will stand still waiting for their judgement.

election, history, media, politics

Back in the middle 90′s, Don Tapscott wrote a book called Growing Up Digital in which he discussed the “net generation”, kids who have been immersed in the web and other new technologies for their whole lives.

While it was an interesting read, I thought Tapscott did a lot of stretching to arrive at his conclusions, largely based on his interaction with a small, relatively unique group of young people.

At the time, it was difficult to see how his ideas could be applied to a majority of the kids in the age group.

That was twelve years ago. Much has changed.

In a recent article Tapscott returns the topic, predicting the net generation will have a major impact on next week’s presidential election and American government beyond November 4th.

And they won’t settle for politics as usual. Having grown up digital, they will want to be involved in the act of governing — by contributing ideas before decisions are made. What’s more, they’ll insist on integrity from politicians; if politicians say one thing and do another, young Americans will use their digital tools to find out, and spread the news.

Ok, I’ve lived through more than a few election cycles in which the same prediction was made.

I certainly hope he’s right and millions of young voters will show up at the polls (or will have early voted) and, more importantly, continue to be actively involved in the civic life of this country.

We’ll see.

election, government, politics, students

I wonder if having an intellectually curious president who accepts the evidence of science will help to reverse this kind of crap.

Some students burst into tears when a high school biology [teacher] told them they’d be studying evolution. Another teacher said some students repeatedly screamed “no” when he began talking about it.

Other teachers said students demanded to know whether they pray and questioned why the had to learn about evolution if it was just a theory.

“I’ve seen churches train students to come to school with specific questions to ask to sabotage my lessons,” said Bonnie Pratt, a biology teacher at Northview High in north Fulton County. “We need parents and the community to understand why and how we teach evolution.”

Probably not.

But at least it will be wonderful not having the leaders of the federal government trying to write “intelligent” design into public policy.

creationism, election, evolution, science, stupidity

The Seattle Times endorses Obama for president.

Obama should be the next president of the United States because he is the most qualified change agent. Obama is a little young, but also brilliant. If he sometimes seems brainy and professorial, that’s OK. We need the leader of the free world to think things through, carefully. We have seen the sorry results of shooting from the hip.

Is it possible we might elect someone to lead the country who’s smart, thoughtful, and considers multiple perspectives before acting?

election, future, obama, politics

According to Thomas Friedman, writing in the editorial section of today’s New York Times, that’s exactly what the “debate” in this presidential campaign is doing.

Sometimes Friedman can be pretty full of himself (ok, most of the time), but in this case, he get’s it exactly right.

Who cares how much steel John McCain has in his gut when the steel that today holds up our bridges, railroads, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure is rusting? McCain talks about how he would build dozens of nuclear power plants. Oh, really? They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money going to come from? From lowering taxes? From banning abortions? From borrowing more from China? From having Sarah Palin “reform” Washington — as if she has any more clue how to do that than the first 100 names in the D.C. phonebook?

Sorry, but there is no sustainable political/military power without economic power, and talking about one without the other is nonsense. Unless we make America the country most able to innovate, compete and win in the age of globalization, our leverage in the world will continue to slowly erode. Those are the issues this election needs to be about, because that is what the next four years need to be about.

There is no strong leader without a strong country. And posing as one, to use the current vernacular, is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.

It’s the economy, stupid.

economy, election, politics, stupidity, thomas friedman

Here in the overly-large school district the school board has a policy which says “School buildings and grounds may not be used for campaign activities during school hours”.

So why are McCain and Palin holding a campain rally at one of our high schools tomorrow morning during school hours?

According to our superintendent, “We are not participating in a political rally.”

Ok.  What do you call it?  “We are letting our kids have new educational opportunities.”

This rantfest is rated PG so I have no comment.

election, politics, stupidity

I’ve spent way too much attention on politics over the last two weeks. It’s time to scale back and concentrate on things that are more immediately important.

But there are a couple of points I’d like to toss into the mix concerning the recent back-to-back week-long infomercials.

First, almost all the politicians and talking heads appearing on my screen seem to think that every problem has a true or false answer. Possibly multiple choice.

I understand that political conventions are not the place for discussing policy nuances, but when does that conversation start. There wasn’t much of it during the two year primary process either.

And then there were the many speech writers and talking heads who make loud calls to improve K12 education and to make it possible for everyone to go to college.

However, far too many speakers also went on to denigrate those who had already earned their education. Get a good education but don’t expect us to use any of that knowledge.

We can’t accept the word of so-called experts. They’re nothing but over-educated intellectuals. Research, experimentation, experience – all of that stuff doesn’t matter.

Instead, policy will set by polls and feelings. If a majority of Americans believe something is true, it must be true. If the decider’s gut feels it’s right then that’s what we should do.

That attitude was largely on display at the Republican meeting.

But too many representatives from both parties also offered loud calls to “fix” No Child Left Behind, as if a minor tune up for that mess of a law would bring us “world class” schools.

Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of the aisle believe that solutions to our problems, including education, come in the form of a multiple choice test.

education, election, politics, reform

When it comes to elections in this country, the philosophy is supposed to be “every vote counts”, right?

Well, maybe not.

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

A logic bug that’s been around for ten years?  Even the Big Monopoly of Redmond pushes out fixes for their crappy software faster than that.

But it gets worse.  When the problem was discovered, the company blamed it on third party anti-virus software.

Which brings up the question of why it’s necessary to protect against viruses on a system that by all rights should be closed to any outside network?

Supposedly there are “crosscheck procedures” election officials can use when they certify the results.

However, and correct me if I’m wrong, wasn’t electronic voting supposed to make counting the ballots more accurate and fair after the 2000 disaster in Florida?

Or am I just being paranoid and/or naive?

bugs, election, paranoia, software

Craig Newmark, the Founder and Customer Service Rep (that’s his official title!) of Craigslist knows something about creating communities on the web.

And he offers the presidential candidates some wisdom on the relationship between the internet and the federal government that should exist.

– the Internet gives everyone a potentially equal voice, as long as no special privileges are extended to anyone

– listening to the voice of Americans via the Internet is the best way for a President to stay in touch with America

– the Internet is the best way to show Americans what’s happening in Washington by publishing how government works, good and bad, like the influence of big money. That is, government operations should normally be “transparent”

– the Internet should be a level playing field for everyone; no more special privileges for the already privileged. Telecom companies make huge profits using public resources, and we should expect that they treat everyone equally. No real regulation is needed to keep the Net neutral, just a few guidelines to preserve the level playing field.

So, according to Newmark, how do the major candidates compare in terms of their web policies?

Both campaigns have now staked out positions on the democratizing value of the Internet and on American values. Obama embraces the Internet as a means of cleaning Washington up, but McCain/Bush sees it as a threat which might make them accountable.

What do you prefer?

Using the web to make our government more transparent will make it easier for everyone to understand what’s going on behind those closed doors.

Which is exactly why making it happen will be a difficult process no matter who is elected.

election, government, internet, politics