Provocations

David Simon's 'The Wire' lays it bare

Still think there might be some value to "the war on drugs"? I challenge you to watch this video and still have some justification for that thought.

Think the war on drugs is BS but can't articulate very clearly why? Watch this video.

Wonder why inner-city stuff seems predictable and stuck? Wonder what's going on in the "world's most livable city" - Vancouver - where every few days a gang member is killed?  How will that end up?

Who really cares?

Sick of reading stats and hearing platitudes?

Watch this video. It's well-presented.

Then, you may well decide to watch the second half.

"When television history is written," one critic says, "Little else will rival 'The Wire.'"And when historians come to tell the story of America in our time, I'll wager they will not be able to ignore this remarkable and compelling portrayal of life in our cities.  - Bill Moyers.

OK. Enough said.

Carl Honoré on his new book on parenting, Under Pressure

I heard an interview with Carl Honoré about his new book on contemporary parenting, Under Pressure".  It makes a natural follow-up to the consideration of the success of the Finnish school system.  Here's Carl introducing himself and his new book:

Why Finnish students rate the best

Finns came out on top in a recent study on performance in science education. Educators are wondering why.  In a Washington Post article, there are some interesting clues. For starters, they "rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7."  More features:

Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.

About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.

Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finland's high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts.

College is free. There is competition for college based on academic specialties - medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don't have the elite status of a Harvard. Taking away the competition of getting into the "right schools" allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S. parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in academically oriented preschools, the Finns don't begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.

. . . young Finns do much more on their own.  At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.

Read the complete article

UPDATE March 13 /08: Tom Hanson of Open Education (see his comment below) expands on this article. He says:

After examining the Finnish school system, there are at least three items that could be easily applied to American schools despite the cultural and economic differences. Each of these three also address the differing socioeconomic status in our country, providing a helping hand for those with a desire to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps:

1. Quality Pre-School for All
2. Delineated High School
3. Free Higher Education

He expands on these in Several Lessons to Be Learned from the Finnish School System

US education system churning out a generation of ignorant and intellectually incapable teens

U.S. culture is an easy target - it's failings are so apparent. Paradoxically, it can also be a hard target because, aside from materialism, there is so little of it. However, because it is so attractive to so many in the USA and beyond, it's easy to get numbed to it. 

The US education system, by most accounts, is poor and getting worse. There is an understandable reluctance in such a a corporate-dominated country to spend more on education.  How bad is it? Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle reports on the experience and perspective of "a longtime Oakland high school teacher".

My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.

Read the rest of this tale, alarming for those living with the system and seriously cautionary for those of us heading in that direction.

Schooling: Time for change?

Seeing the panic among parents when there is a teachers' strike, one can be forgiven for thinking that the most important function of school - at least to adults - is as a "baby"-sitting service - a place to park the kids while mom and dad (usually both if they're still around) are off trying to earn enough to pay for everything we're supposed to have these days. I have a long-standing interest in education and a long-standing skepticism about the value of conventional schooling. I think I come by this reasonably honestly, having done very well at school and gone on to a university degree followed by an education diploma. It's easy to find fault with our school system as a whole but I don't say much because talk is cheap and many fine people are doing wonderful work with educating our children - in my opinion, largely in spite of the system.

My ears did prick up today when I heard a radio interview with Australian Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg. Here are some of his suggestions that resonated with me, based on schools in Australia that are putting these ideas to the test:

Homework:
Has been found to have no measurable benefit on academic performance at the elementary level. Schools in Australia that have dropped homework have found an improvement in attendance

Adolescents:
The adolescent brain requires 8-9 hours of sleep and works better later in the day. Some Australian schools have changed their hours to accommodate this and with good results. e.g. reduction in  truancy and depression.

Differences between boys and girls:
There are significant differences between the typical boy and girl brain
Boys benefit from having their own "territory" - a little space in the school that's theirs.
The most successful setup is a co-ed school with single-gender classes.

Given all the changes since the Victorian era, has our approach to schooling kept pace?

Reconstructed Victorian era school house at 108 Mile Ranch Heritage Site

Hans Rosling: A perspective on global development

If you're groggy from all the preaching about "third world poverty" and what you can do; what your government can do - and perhaps even more grinding, the guilt-driven statements about what you and we should do . . .  but, through all of this, you still care, then this presentation is for you.  Facts, perspective, solutions presented graphically (probably the most effective public presentation of graphs I've seen), dramatically and entertainingly. 

Hans Rosling is a doctor and researcher but I doubt if you'd feel impelled to check his credentials. His kind of authority, much of it gained in 20 years of working directly in various parts of Africa, cannot be faked. 

I've noticed that I tend not to watch movies or read books that a lot of people rave about, I think because I know I'll be disappointed, so, at this point I will shut up. Enjoy the video:

Hans Rosling bio

Where young US liberals get their news

Quote for the Easter weekend:

Surveys show that 77% of all persons under 35 defining themselves as "liberals" say The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is their primary news source. Which probably makes Jon Stewart happy as hell but doesn't bode well for what little remains of our republic.

- Joe Bageant, public talk, April 2007

Oil is history, our planet is warming - a brief and funny perspective

The context is British - but really global. And the presenter witty, funny and sharp - speaking many truths that even Al Gore would find inconvenient. I had the full video here but unfortunately it is no longer available. While missing some of the more pointed and funniest bits, this extract is still worth watching.

Rites of passage for boys into manhood

The transition from boyhood to being a man was/is taken very seriously by most pre-industrial societies. Boys have something to prove and they usually have the strength and means to do it. However, in our western societies, there is rarely the understanding, support and surround - the "road map" -  for this transition or rite of passage to happen in a safe and meaningful way. So, often, that longing to "prove myself" takes destructive forms - destructive to the society and to the young person.

Fro some years now, a number of organizations and groups, in North America and beyond, have been deliberately providing opportunity for boys of all ages to have an experience of a meaningful rite of passage into manhood.

Two significant passages for me were my time at Twin Valleys Community in Ontario in the mid '70s and my New Warrior weekend in the early '90s.  I guess I'm a slow learner. It's a lot easier to "get it" when you're still an actual boy and that's what Boys to Men does.  This video gives some idea of what they do and how it works.

Canadian universities avoid US web servers because of Patriot Act

As I look around for good-quality web site hosting, I start local and then look beyond to the rest of the country - but I prefer to avoid servers based in the USA because of the country's intrusive Patriot Act laws. Like most people, I have nothing to hide but I prefer not to support - or recommend my clients expose themselves to - this undemocratic law.  In this I know I'm not alone, so wasn't surprised to come across this in Canada's Globe and Mail.

Concerned about the U.S. government's prying eyes, a number of Canadian universities are changing the way their professors and students conduct online research.

Many university libraries subscribe to RefWorks, a popular U.S.-based Internet tool that allows academics and students to create personal accounts and store research information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

But the Patriot Act - which grew out of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and which potentially allows U.S. authorities to sweep through databases such as RefWorks - has prompted Canadian postsecondary institutions to abandon the American server for one housed at the University of Toronto.

Read on