tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89086932024-03-05T09:14:55.051-08:00Learning by Heart<i>This Open Source Learning Community is created by educators for educators. Open Source Learning is the new name for Progressive Education.</i>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comBlogger141125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-82075832392083469002012-12-30T21:52:00.002-08:002012-12-30T22:15:03.346-08:00KEEPING SCHOOLI just finished reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YCQC0I?_encoding=UTF8&camp=15041&creative=373501&linkCode=as3&tag=achildsbookcom"><i>Keeping School</i> </a>written by Deb Meier, Nancy Faust Sizer, and the late, great Ted Sizer. Although the book is nearly nine years old, I found the discussion on community, standards vs. standardization, and school authority (whose school is it anyway?) to be even more timely and illuminating. Folks know the Sizers and Meier from the Ed Reform wars. To have a conversation in the form of letters (epistles) to their respective school communities (Mission Hill School and Francis W. Parker Charter School) made the reading riveting. In fact, it had me thinking about the form that my first book might take. The epistolary book may be maddening to some, especially without the right context, but it's also is like reading a conversation in real time.<br />
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Money's Worth: I was intrigued by Ted and Nancy Sizer's description of the "gateway" projects that their students at Francis W. Parker Charter School in Massachusetts could take at anytime. It means that if a student completed or mastered some level within a given subject (even before the end of a given school year!) that the student could petition to move on to the next level. That means that a student could stay in Geometry until they were prepared to test out of it to go on to the Algebra II. In addition, for those people who needed a good comeback to why standardization and standardized testing do not work, you must read <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YCQC0I?_encoding=UTF8&camp=15041&creative=373501&linkCode=as3&tag=achildsbookcom">Keeping School</a></i>.
Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-42679084764063249802011-10-02T22:56:00.000-07:002011-10-02T23:21:52.901-07:00DOCUMENTARIES ON TEACHING AND LEARNING: "AMERICAN TEACHER" AND "WAITING FOR SUPERMAN"I have not seen "Waiting for Superman" or the newly released Dave Eggers and Matt Damon film called "American Teacher: A Documentary." It breaks my heart to see the continued downward spiral of the American public education. Yet, I do believe that we are approaching a critical time in our nation's history where something's got to give.<br /><br />Education is about creating positive communities and having high standards. It's about saving as many students as you possibly can and giving a damn in the face of the brutal facts. <br /><br />How can we continue to be one of the most innovative countries on the planet that dismisses the vast majority of our students and our teachers. Over the next several weeks, I'll explore what our current popular culture and media has to say about teaching and learning. Are we stuck with outmoded ways of how we do education? Can teachers achieve the kind of support from the public that other professions enjoy or have unions and the Republicans and Democrats overly politicized their plight? Over the course of the next several weeks we'll explore these questions and more.<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xUZppsUm8-M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-46699367852902211332011-09-19T10:08:00.000-07:002011-09-19T10:08:50.553-07:00The Pacific garbage patch comes home | Marketplace From American Public MediaI'm not sure if you heard this story the other week on American Public Media's show called "Marketplace." I'm a pretty devoted listener to "Marketplace" and haven't missed an episode (they come daily) in over a year. This one got me thinking, so what <span style="font-weight:bold;">are </span>we going to do with all that garbage that's floating around in a big patch as big as the State of Texas. It seems like someone is trying to make money off of it. If this sounds far fetched, it is.<br /><br /><a href="http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/09/16/pm-the-pacific-garbage-patch-comes-home/#.Tnd0d4qie4M.blogger">The Pacific garbage patch comes home | Marketplace From American Public Media</a>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-84890821555239388182010-04-11T19:18:00.000-07:002010-04-11T19:43:42.541-07:00Strivers, All--Teaching School from K-12I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about educational reform over the years. Although I am a product of public schools and have been a principal/leader in public schools, I don’t pretend to be an expert on all things public or educational. What I do know is that the federal government’s attempt to compare apples to apples with state testing is a good thing. However, state or national tests are not nearly enough. We have nearly twenty-five years of bad governance to begin to dismantle. <br /><br />What I’d like to see? More reporting on what’s actually being taught in K-12 schools rather than the cases of bullying and harassment that people seem to be enthralled by. I’m not saying that those issues are not important. Indeed, they are critical to maintain healthy and safe schools. Yet, I’d like to see more coverage on innovation and on the development of what makes great teachers great.<br /><br />I stumbled across a Facebook page for my old K-8 school in Harvey, Illinois: Carl Sandburg Elementary and Junior High Schools. I started at Sandburg in 5th Grade—Mrs. Delaney’s classroom. Even though we were in the midst of some pretty aggressive white flight at that time, those teachers—mostly white women and men—were committed to educating all of the children they had in front of them. I was impressed by their encouragement, support, and no-nonsense way of promoting what they loved and what they had to teach. My sixth grade teacher Mrs. Mullins used her famous “Mullins Bucks” to tempt us all to do better and try harder. Although I am not a firm believer in rewards as motivators—grades or scip systems—I do believe that those candy bars, pencils, and books that we bought in sixth grade had many of us trying harder. On the other hand, Mr. Love, the science teacher and basketball coach, quite literarily kicked us in the ass when we were messing up. I do remember banging hard on the door to get in after one lunch period. Mr. Love opened the door and hauled us in and said, “What and the hell are you doing?” He pulled two of us in the resource room, closed the door, and prominently kicked us in the posteriors. Talk about corporal punishment. I remember being shocked and amazed that he would do something like that. But I never told my folks. I guess I thought I deserved the swift kick for being so obnoxious. By eighth grade, Anne K. Bentley inspired me after I finished with all of my SRA independent reading cards. I could boast that I was reading at a 12th grade level—according to the cards. Indeed, I did love to read. She put me into my own independent reading group, handing me Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “House of the Seven Gables.” I’m not sure if I was the best independent learner, but I felt special and different. I was ready to learn.<br /><br />So, what does all of this memoir stuff have to do with reforming the educational system of this country? If you put good teachers who can think and reason for themselves in front of the children of other strivers, you get magic. It’s all about fearlessness, trying something new, being aware of the cultural landscape (even as the ground is shifting), and doing a good and credible job. Did I get everything that I needed then? Perhaps not. Yet, I loved those men and women who tried to do their best at Carl Sandburg Elementary and Junior High School. I wish them eternal peace and give them my promise that I’ll try to continue the work that they began.Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-52505233427320852712009-12-26T00:33:00.000-08:002009-12-26T00:49:37.563-08:00EDUCATION: FRONT AND CENTER FOR 2010If you thought that LEARNING BY HEART took a holiday over the last 12 months, you would be correct. Future blog posts on this site will continue to cover news stories, events, and media analysis dealing with the world of K-16 education. <br /><br />The news of the last year was dominated by the economy and healthcare. Issues of the day tend to push the business of tomorrow off the front burner. The business of tomorrow should be our children as learners; those who will inherit what we leave them. In baseball this back burner report is typically called the hot stove league, which is where news items are placed to simmer for a while. Consider these news items and analysis the simmering pot of our educational democracy.<br /><br />Named after Roland Barth's extraordinary book, LEARNING BY HEART, the thoughts written on these pages are mine and mine alone. <br /><br />Instructions: Please feel free to post comments and commentary about what may be important to you, too. I'll also plug blogs and reports of educational news that may be relevant to this audience. Make suggestions, connections, and introduce yourself to the world or educational ideas.Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-18134234216603235102009-04-15T21:17:00.000-07:002009-04-15T22:36:30.868-07:00Lifelong Learning: Financial MattersCan you speak mortgage-backed securities?<br /><br />I've been stretching myself over the last year and a half, learning all that I can about the economy. I did not take Economics in college or high school, so this study is definitely self-directed and personally generated. <br /><br />Understanding about "toxic assets," "shadow banks," "credit default swaps," and the US Government's "TARP" plan has been pulling me in directions that I could have never imagined more than eighteen months ago. Every night I put on my iPod Classic, drifting off to sleep listening to <a href="http://marketplace.publicradio.org/about/cast_crew/ryssdal.html">American Public Media's "Marketplace" with Kai Ryssdal</a>. <br /><br />What I have learned relates directly to Chaos Theory and how our world is truly interconnected now. When George H.W. Bush described his New World Order, perhaps he meant this world that we are in right now where when a folks in a neighborhood in Las Vegas default on their risky loans, then workers in Finland might find themselves out of a job. <br /><br />Our world, this brave new world, is so woven together that we must figure it out fast, or get left behind. <br /><br />What are ways that you are stretching yourself beyond what you know?<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KhI5qy-L4cc&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KhI5qy-L4cc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Paddy Hirsch--"leaves all of us badly needing a drink."</span>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-10299025871084570502009-04-14T19:51:00.002-07:002009-04-14T19:54:14.742-07:00What We Learned from the Somali Pirates?Absolutely nothing...<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lrBe09SIENA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lrBe09SIENA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-88681677412519745472009-04-13T20:14:00.000-07:002009-04-13T23:25:14.194-07:00Can't Stop the Tide: Same Sex Marriages and Gay Vice SquadsThe culture wars dictate that there must be losers. <br /><br />In the battle over same sex marriages, the losers try to dictate what others must do. In this case, those folks who love each other and who want to solidify lives together. We're not talking civil unions here, we are talking equals before and under God.<br /><br />I, like most of us who grew up in the Black Church, was taught to fear what I really didn't know. For many of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, growing up in a small town African American community outside of Chicago--Southern Baptist inflected--in the tumultuous 1960s and '70s and being a man in love with another man or a woman who adored another woman was tantamount to existing as a social pariah, or worse. One false move, like a side-long glance at a bar or showing affection for a beloved in the privacy of your own backyard, might mean certain death. <br /><br />Forty years later what has changed? Not much, really. This past fall the New York City Police Department, posing as gay men, harassed and shut down gay hang-outs.<br /><br />NOW FOR THE TRIUMPH: On the other hand, Sean Penn, 'a courageous heterosexual American,' brought life and hope to his portrayal of Harvey Milk in "Milk." <br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/unu-9vM9VZw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/unu-9vM9VZw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />So, why all the fuss about same-sex marriage? Back in my youth, the lives of the "losers" could be erased in the blink of an eye because of the people they loved--just like the lives of black people during the early part of the Twentieth Century or Jews in Nazi Germany. <br /><br />Those of us who moved and escaped the "programming" of those years can claim to be more enlightened, but where are my other heterosexual brothers and sisters who are standing up against the bigotry in our time. The Prop 8s or hate ministers in the Mega-churches?<br /><br />Humanity dictates that lives are sacred: all lives, all the time. No matter how bleak, no matter how black, no matter...<br /><br />Today the culture wars rage on Fox News while people are huddling under viaducts with not enough to eat, sleeping in tents year 'round. W-villes. With the race-baiting, gay-hating, loser-rama's on parade, the Anne Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, and anybody that dares to take on the toxic asset that is the Republican Party circa 2009, the flood waters of history are beating against the levees of those who want to deny equality--again. Can you hear me Michael Steele? Even the extreme religious far right is beginning to moderate. They don't want to be on the wrong side of history for eternity. WWJD?<br /><br />We can no longer tolerate the bigotry of those who wish to stop Humanity's rushing tide. This is not agitprop or an Obamatron talking here. It's hard to respect people who get into office by becoming turtles when the world needs giraffes, especially when all are not considered full members of the human race.<br /><br />Water's rising. Can't stop, can't stop, can't hold back that rising tide.Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-55537644690376677802009-04-11T14:58:00.000-07:002009-04-12T14:06:29.904-07:00The Threshold: College Admissions<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM6PFexjK4MOpxW7-0v0LRy-y18wKuuzrOFveZsqcsdowAltTXZlXUxNJGexPn-kJcyrv4Y9JLrnfYmFG7EMACCeoqPXlEHSQs0g-r-yq6yVpxr4B669bx902Eo_598Vwxagirg/s1600-h/harkness_fall.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 192px; height: 310px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM6PFexjK4MOpxW7-0v0LRy-y18wKuuzrOFveZsqcsdowAltTXZlXUxNJGexPn-kJcyrv4Y9JLrnfYmFG7EMACCeoqPXlEHSQs0g-r-yq6yVpxr4B669bx902Eo_598Vwxagirg/s320/harkness_fall.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323559174864076274" /></a><br />So, the most competitive college admissions season is nearly behind us. <br /><br />What have we learned? <br /><br />What has been seen by students (and families) applying this year to college is that there is no way to know for sure how colleges make admissions' decisions or who will get into what schools, or why. Neither grades, nor test scores, or even a great non-academic profile will assure students the ability to get into the more so-called elite schools. <br /><br />The great counsel that I can still give students and their parents is to follow their passions regardless of the name of a specific school or schools. Don't worry about getting into one of those named brand colleges or universities because you can't predict with any certainty what colleges may want in a particular applicant or in a class that they are trying to build. <br /><br />The brutal fact is that the more elite schools are only admitting about 5% of those that apply. <br /><br />In his book <i>Outliers</i>, Malcolm Gladwell posits that the so-called elite schools like Harvard, Stanford, Brown, etc. would do just as well to have a lottery to get in once students have reached a certain acceptable admissions threshold.<br /><br />Perhaps schools should stop with this crazy admissions process and go to Gladwell's lottery. In fact, perhaps that's what they should call it "Gladwell's lottery." So, I can hear it now in the halls at Princeton, "We went to a Gladwellian situation." Or, "How did your Gladwell turn out this year? Did you get that squash player you wanted?" <br /><br />I poke a little fun perhaps, but it is ridiculous how these "elite" colleges are dictating what the less competitive colleges must do in order to be deemed successful. <br /><br />From enrollment management to endowment creation to student selection, colleges will have to become more transparent. I tell students all the time that there is "a college out there that is just right for you."<br /><br />I hope they believe it.Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-38801173427913450642009-04-04T01:29:00.000-07:002009-04-04T01:32:01.838-07:00WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT--Open Source: Narrowing the Divide between Education, Business, and Community© 2009 Jim Whitehurst. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License <br />(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ ).<br /><br />EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 44, no. 1 (January/February 2009): 70–71.<br /><br />BY JIM WHITEHURST<br /><br />Jim Whitehurst is President and CEO of Red Hat.<br /><br />Comments on this article can be sent to the author at <press@redhat.com > and/or can be posted to the web via the link at the bottom of this page.<br /><br />Open source is now recognized in institutions of higher education as a viable technology solution that provides superior value at a fraction of the cost of proprietary applications. That's a good thing—but that's not all it can do. Open source can be a transformative force in education. In particular, it can transform computer science curricula. Academic institutions that are consumers of open source need to reverse roles and shift gears to “preach what they practice” and place higher emphasis on integrating open source into the classroom.<br /><br />Open source is an increasingly important skill set that many of today's computer science graduates are lacking. This is not because students aren't interested in open source, but because very few colleges and universities currently offer open-source classes. In addition to eager students, there are many professors who are very interested in teaching open source in their classrooms and labs.<br /><br />What Is Open Source?<br />Open source is a collaborative software-development method that harnesses the power of peer review and transparency of process to develop code that is freely accessible. Open source draws on an ecosystem of thousands of developers and customers all over the world to drive innovation. Traditional software companies provide only binary code and withhold source code, so users can run the software but cannot study, modify, or improve it. In contrast to these proprietary models, open-source software is distributed under nonrestrictive licensing terms that generally include access to the source code.<br /><br />Why Open Source?<br />We live in an increasingly global community. Gone are the days when working for a company in an office meant serving a small geographic area from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Today’s graduates will work in a matrix environment where projects cut across organizational and geographic boundaries, requiring cooperation and communication. Open source uses the power of collaboration to provide students with hands-on learning and to equip students with an expanded skill set that is very attractive to businesses.<br /><br />Open source better prepares students for the business world by exposing them to real-world problems and encouraging learning through the completion of real tasks. Open source amplifies a “hands-on” approach to learning by connecting students to a community of users in an effort to solve problems. Open-source developers don’t rely on textbooks; they rely on the knowledge base of other developers with whom they connect through community forums, building off of one another’s ideas to create a solution that is eventually shared with all. To this extent, open source better prepares students for future job experiences and allows them to complete, while they're still in school, work that's being used by the global open-source community.<br /><br />Open source also teaches students useful skills that can be applied across other coursework and classes. Students have the opportunity to work with many more code bases in open source than are found in traditional student projects. This strengthens skills in collaboration, project management, and testing and encourages a well-rounded computer science education, making students more marketable in the business world.<br /><br />It is widely accepted (though the point is impossible to prove) that many of the most gifted programmers in the world participate in open-source projects. Those projects provide a platform for them to display their achievements and for others to learn from them. This learning process happens naturally in open-source projects, but it can be encouraged by colleges and universities. The quality of the student's educational experience will be enhanced by learning from masters of the art.<br /><br />Thus it is not just higher education institutions and the business community that benefit from open source in the classroom. As students sharpen their skills, they are able to drive increased innovation across open-source communities and projects. Working on open-source projects in school can serve as a gateway for students to continue to contribute after graduation. Projects have a longer shelf life and don't end when the semester ends. Students can continue to contribute long after they finish their coursework, graduate, and move into the working world.<br /><br />Open source drives innovation faster due to its collaborative nature and community-backed effort. Teaching open source encourages better communication among students and prevents them from working in a vacuum, void of input or teamwork. Classrooms become smaller communities within the larger open-source community. This benefits students by teaching collaboration with classmates, and with others from across the globe, on how to resolve issues such as bug fixes.<br /><br />Open source also allows students to leverage existing software for their own research purposes, and any code they contribute will find a much larger audience within the community. Students are a welcome addition to open-source projects, since they bring a fresh perspective—one that those already working in the project might miss. Working every day in a project can desensitize people to the pain points of new contributors, a fact that students can effectively point out when they are new to a project. This input allows the open-source project to create a better experience for its current and future contributors.<br /><br />Who Are the Leaders?<br />Some pioneers in the academic world are serving as models for success. For example, open source has become a fundamental part of the curriculum in the School of Computer Studies at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada. The school has partnered with open-source projects such as Mozilla and the Fedora Project to expose its students to the growing opportunities that open source presents. Seneca students work within the Fedora Project, a Red Hat-sponsored and community-supported open-source collaboration, while learning open-source development and administration. This proven model was developed at Seneca and will be incorporated into several programs beginning with its Linux/Unix System Administration (LUX) program, an intense one-year graduate certificate.<br /><br />Other higher education institutions that have distinguished themselves as leaders in the open-source world include Oregon State University (OSU) and North Carolina State University (NCSU). The OSU Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open-source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, the Drupal content management system, and more than fifty other leading open-source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. And right here in my home state, NCSU has created the Center for Open Software Engineering, which performs basic research, education, and outreach to enable software technology gains and to bridge the gap between the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice of commercial software engineering.<br /><br />Google's Summer of Code (GSoC) program, although not affiliated with any education system, has also been a huge success in introducing students to open source. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open-source projects. It kicked off in 2005 and has historically connected more than 1,500 students with over 130 open-source projects to create millions of lines of code. Most of the students who participate in GSoC are enrolled in college or university computer science and computer engineering programs, but many of those participants have never worked in an open-source project before their experience with GSoC. If Google can achieve these dramatic results with a three-month-long program, imagine the innovation that can take place if academic institutions across the globe bring open source into the classroom.<br /><br />Government as a Facilitator?<br />In many parts of the world, governments have been early adopters and heavy users of open-source technologies. Governments also provide significant funding for public higher education institutions. Many governments, having understood from a user perspective the benefits of open-source technologies, play an important role by encouraging their public colleges and universities to create open-source curricula to meet the marketplace demands for well-trained students of open source. From a government funding perspective, the use of open-source technologies will help to reduce college/university IT costs, saving money that can be used to meet more critical needs of students. Governments should also encourage the use of open IT standards, which will lead to more competition in the marketplace, more opportunities for open source, and even greater reductions in IT costs at colleges and universities.<br /><br />What's Next?<br />Today’s students live in a world of openness, transparency, and collaboration. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia are students' top websites, all of them populated by user-generated content. Open source is driven by this generation and the values they hold dear. Users can see the code, change it, learn from it, share it. And that’s exactly what we should be teaching on our college and university campuses to give this generation of workers the skills they need to succeed in a global economy.<br /><br />One of my colleagues from the open-source world, Tim O'Reilly, says it best: “Innovation is no longer about who has the most gifted scientists or best equipped labs. It's about who has the best architecture of participation.” Open source is the most viable means through which a higher education institution can create this “architecture of participation.”<br /><br />So, let's work together to help our colleges and universities arm students with the knowledge of open source to continue to drive innovation across the industry. If you're a professor, start a dialogue with administration about the importance of open source, and rally your colleagues around that effort. If you're a student, demand that your institution take a closer look at open source. If you're an IT administrator at an academic institution, integrate open-source technologies into IT infrastructures and share your knowledge with professors, students, and other administrators. It will take a collaborative effort, but we can make change happen and cross the chasms between open source, education, and business.<br /><br />http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume44/OpenSourceNarrowingtheDividebe/163586Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-26313324195839533972009-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:002009-01-06T21:02:32.969-08:00The Big Cram for Hunter High School By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZReprinted from<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/education/03cram.html?_r=1">The New York Times, January 2, 2009</a><br /><br />While their friends played video games in pajamas or vacationed in the tropics, a dozen sixth graders spent winter break at Elite Academy in Flushing, Queens, memorizing word roots. Time was ticking as they prepared to face the thing they had talked about, dreamed about and lost sleep over for much of the past year: the Hunter College High School admissions exam, a strenuous three-hour test that weeds out about 90 percent of those who take it.<br /><br />On Wednesday, the final day of test-prep boot camp before the Jan. 9 exam, there seemed to be nothing more terrifying to these 11-year-olds than the risk of failure.<br /><br />Some had taken up coffee; others, crossword puzzles and cable news shows to glean vocabulary words. A few of their parents had hired private tutors and imposed strict study hours, and several had paid up to $3,000 for a few months of English and math classes at Elite, a regimen modeled on the cram schools of South Korea, China and Japan.<br /><br />The five girls and seven boys at Elite on Wednesday seemed to delight in their onerous routine, unwilling or unable to imagine life any other way.<br /><br />“My friends think it’s wacko to do so much preparation,” said Akira Taniguchi, an aspiring F.B.I. agent who attends the honors program at Junior High School 54 on the Upper West Side. “But now I feel I’m really focused, thanks to this academy, and way more confident than I was when I first came here.”<br /><br />Patryk Wadolowski, the brown-haired, blue-eyed president of his sixth-grade class at Public School 58, chimed in: “It just prepares us for life. Any obstacle we face we’ll be able to conquer.”<br /><br />In a classroom decorated with maps and illustrations of vocabulary words (a string of z’s for “dormant,” a serene plateau for “salubrious”), the squad of high-achievers spent 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. dissecting English and math questions. As they progressed from sentence completion to reading comprehension, nearly every question posed by the teacher, Elisabeth Stuveras, elicited a garden of eager hands.<br /><br />The puzzle of the moment was the word “resentment.” Some students had been stumped by it on the practice test, and Ms. Stuveras asked if anyone could offer a definition.<br /><br />“Like, you resent having a fight with people?” Patryk hypothesized.<br /><br />No, that was “regret,” Ms. Stuveras explained. She searched for an example that might ring true for the students.<br /><br />“Pretend your friends are applying to Hunter,” she said. “There’s a chance that the person who didn’t get in might feel a little resentment they didn’t get in. They are upset the other people got in, with a little jealousy.”<br /><br />“ ‘Resent’ is a good word to add to your vocabulary,” Ms. Stuveras concluded. The students nodded in understanding, highlighting the word in unison.<br /><br />At 1:15, they took a break, throwing aside lofty vocabulary to chat around the vending machines about their favorite rappers (Jay-Z and Kanye West) and coming school dances.<br /><br />When prompted, they took a moment to reflect on why they wanted to get into Hunter. Some said it was an urge to become better students and be surrounded by bright peers; others said they had been told Hunter was a vital steppingstone to elite colleges and a successful career.<br /><br />“Ever since I was in second grade, I always wanted to go to Hunter,” Patryk said. “I’ve always strived to achieve everything in every test.”<br /><br />Most of the students came to the five-day winter break program at Elite after attending Saturday prep classes at the academy through the fall. Elite, which opened in 1986, is one of several cram schools in New York that has imported the year-round enrichment programs of the Far East, giving students the chance to forfeit evenings, weekends, summer break and winter vacation for test preparation.<br /><br />While Elite limits advertising to Asian-language newspapers, about 50 percent of its students are non-Asian. (Asian students still predominate in the city’s top public high schools, including Hunter.)<br /><br />Many of the students in the winter break program were children of immigrants — from South Korea, Japan, Poland — and most attend city schools. Few things are kept private. Scores on practice tests are posted in the front lobby, and students freely share their homework scores and edit each other’s essays. It is the first time many of them have received letter grades on assignments.<br /><br />When it was time to hand back essays, Ms. Stuveras announced that four students had earned high-passes. “Ah, yes!” Patryk exclaimed.<br /><br />Did anyone fail? “Well, yes,” Ms. Stuveras explained. “You guys did pretty well, though; there were a lot of high-fails.”<br /><br />Joanna Cohen, a student at the School at Columbia University who peppers her sentences with words like “amiable” and “headway” and spits out math formulas faster than the teacher can write on the board, sipped on mint tea at her desk (most of her classmates preferred Pepsi or Mountain Dew). She smiled as she looked at her high score on the practice exam.<br /><br />After class, she passed around her blue grammar book and asked some classmates to write their phone numbers in the front.<br /><br />Outside, in the lobby, the students exchanged study tactics and traded recommendations on dictionaries and vocabulary books. (Joanna recommends “Webster’s.”)<br /><br />A few said they were going to devote their free time to the thesaurus, looking for ways to spruce up ho-hum sentences. (“Our teacher said using high-level vocab will increase your chance of passing,” Akira explained.)<br /><br />And what if they were not among the fewer than 200 students who gain seats out of a pool of up to 2,000 test-takers?<br /><br />“I’ll be sad,” said James Lee, a student at Intermediate School 119 in Glendale, Queens, “but there’s still Stuyvesant.”<br /><br /><br />Copyright 2009 The New York Times CompanyBrian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-79332306327375058192009-01-04T13:23:00.000-08:002009-01-04T13:30:39.248-08:00ROLAND BURRIS: THE POST-CIVIL RIGHTS BLACK MAN BLUESBurris is no idiot. In fact, he's crazy like a fox. <br /><br />Roland Burris is right in line with the other "grabbers" in Chicago and Illinois politics. Burris sees an opportunity and he's going for it. What else would a 71 year old man want from a political career that was the envy of many but also dull, dull, dull. <br /><br />Roland Burris is acting out a REVENGE OF THE NERDS psychology that will have people talking about him long after this end game has played out. Burris never had that as Illinois Attorney General or as Illinois Comptroller. This is his moment in the national spotlight, his fifteen minutes of fame in DC. It must have burned his hide to see an uppity upstart like Barack Obama become a US Senator and then President-elect of the United States. <br /><br />Like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights era Black men, Burris sees what was denied him rather than what he effectively laid the groundwork for by being the first African American elected to statewide office.<br /><br />Burris is through with playing the good Negro and now is going after what is "rightfully" his. <br /><br />Is he deluded in accepting Blagojevich's offer? Absolutely! <br /><br />Will he back down now that he has the national spotlight? Hell No!<br /><br />Get the popcorn ready, Marge. This week is going to be good watching.Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-51136850314827109212009-01-02T00:32:00.000-08:002009-01-02T01:38:08.276-08:00BLAGOJEVICH AND BURRIS: WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?This past week I tuned into the press conference given by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois when he named Roland Burris to be his choice to fill President-elect Barack Obama's recently vacated U.S. Senate seat. <br /><br />The scene played out like a comic opera. Blagojevich looked shifty and like the canary who ate the catbird. Yep, that odd. <br /><br />Even though it seems like everybody except the Pope has asked Blago to re-sign for trying to sell that very same senate seat in question, the Illinois Governor is within his right to appoint a successor to Obama before next Tuesday when the other U.S. Senators are seated--representative Bobby Rush's feeble race politics comments aside.<br /><br />I have one word: Unbelievable.<br /><br />I must admit, I miss watching the drama that is Chicago and Illinois politics. This is proving to be a tremendous boon for bystanders, Republicans, and people who love politics as theater. It shows how broken our political system is. <br /><br />The long and short of it is: Roland Burris should be seated. Not because he is Black. That would be ridiculous, like seating someone because they are white or male or have a pulse (anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?). <br /><br />Roland Burris should be allowed to take the seat that Governor Rod Balgojevich is appointing him to because Blagojevich is a sitting governor of the state within the fifty United States of America (that would be Illinois) and it is in his US Constitutional rights to be able to appoint a person of his choice to the vacated seat. He has not been convicted or impeached of anything.<br /><br />Now, I'm no Blago fan nor do I fault Burris' for accepting the nomination from the disgraced governor; however, the rule of law is the most important part of this scenario. <br /><br />Therefore, it does not matter what the fifty senators want that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid claims will be against any choice of Governor Blagojevich or even what a popular President-elect wants. Actually, it doesn't actually matter what the people or legislature from the State of Illinois wants. The legislature should have moved to impeach Blagojevich before they left for their Christmas Break. Now they must deal with the consequences of their hesitation. <br /><br />Governor Rod Blagojevich is in his right to appoint and the Illinois Secretary of State, who is against the appointment, must certify Burris's nomination. Ironically, the Secretary of State is also another well-respected African American politician. <br /><br />It's a brilliant in your face, F**K YOU to the people of Illinois from their governor, but it is legal and perfectly Illinois. It's Chicago politics at its theatrical best. Happy New Year, Land of Lincoln!<br /><br />So, what are we teaching our children? <br /><br />The rule of law and process.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MRXXXtRQnS8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MRXXXtRQnS8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-15940973226519810962008-12-31T23:54:00.000-08:002009-01-01T00:02:00.068-08:00HAPPY NEW YEAR!</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI">2009, WHAT'S OLD IS STILL NEW AGAIN</a>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-31120138692285382232008-12-28T22:24:00.000-08:002008-12-29T00:09:19.975-08:00How long will the recession last?The recession is effecting everyone and everything from the banking and credit industry to auto and manufacturing concerns. The gloom and doom is thick in the streets like one of those fogs in the Central Valley that rear ends semis, jack knifes fifth wheels, and upends mini-vans and cars alike. We're in for quite a dense and protracted foggy economic picture. <br /><br />This current economic debacle has more to do with the lack of trust in the entire global system and the collapse in confidence that people and institutions are basically good and trustworthy. As a wise man once told me, it's like turbulence in an airplane. Turbulence just is. When you're sitting in your over-priced row 12, seat F and the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and buck as if you're on a cheap carnival ride, most people who have flown don't start swearing at their pilot or flight attendants. They know that it is just turbulence. The bucking dip is neither good nor bad; it just is. That's where we are now. Billions of people around the world are fearing a calamitous airplane ride like people sealed in a financial flying tube. Now the pilot could make it worse by continuing to fly at the same altitude, neither asking for permission to go higher or lower, but staunchly staying the course. Those are our current pilots in Washington, New York, Detroit, Beijing, Mumbai, Islamabad, etc.<br /><br />Getting back to my question: Just how long will this recession be? <br /><br />Most experts agree, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's something we know for certain. In fact, most economists now believe that we began our turbulent recession starting in December of 2007, although most of these experts announced this month what the rest of us knew last year. That's some lag time. <br /><br />What we know for sure is that people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate; some analysts put the jobs lost at a half a million every month. <br /><br />Also, retailers are just counting their receipts from the holidays. I visited a Northern California Target Store three days before Christmas of 2008 and a Costco the day before that. There was so much inventory on the shelves that you would have thought that we were at the beginning of the shopping season rather than at its end. <br /><br />This signals that we won't be able to buy our way out of this crisis. When President George W. Bush urged people to "buy and shop" after September 11, 2001, we should have known our own misguided patriotism brought us to this place. <br /><br /><blockquote><p>The healing process of a deeply wounded banking system, that has already led to nearly $1 trillion of write-downs, will act as a weight around the neck of any economic recovery in the latter part of 2009. Banks will likely continue the slow process of recapitalization and cleaning up the mountains of toxic assets on their balance sheets for a period longer than just the next few quarters. <em>CNN-Money.com</em>.</p></blockquote><br /><br />We'll be in it for the better part of the next eighteen months before we see the glimpses of some sort of recovery. That's June of 2010. What has to happen is we'll need to restore some trust in the system that has been badly damaged. If anyone did not believe in Chaos Theory, these last eight to twelve years should be proof that it does exist. That goes for global warming, too.<br /><br />Not only should we be cleaning up toxic assets, we should also have the faith that the whole of our government and economy are out to help us rather than throwing us to the wolves. Unions, business people, government officials, bureaucrats, and NGOs must work together to restore and build our confidence and savings back up. I'm not talking about the halcyon Clinton or Reagan years but to a place that has never existed in American society. We all must come together, red states and blue states, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and Whites. It's not "Kumbaya" that we should be holding hands and singing but "how can I help you because I can't do this without you."<br /><br />People must save money and spend realistically rather than create a system (the economy, the environment, schools, etc.) that is leveraged to the hilt. It's not just financial literacy, but financial reality. <br /><br />The reason why it will take 18 months to get ourselves out of this mess is because we need to have the courage to save and save ourselves rather than just spend ourselves silly--downsize rather than super-size--making sure that the courage of our convictions leads to a better and more hopeful world. <br /><br />It's not just Barack Obama that believes in hope. We all must be a part of this solution. This <b>IS</b> our time. <br /><br />Now comes gravity and our own brand new reality.Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-54952364569413443582008-12-24T15:30:00.000-08:002008-12-24T16:07:20.247-08:00INTO THE WILD: AT THE EDGE OF THE AMERICAN WILDERNESSWhat's the most revealing movie of the past two years? It's not about high flying special effects, Brad Pit getting old, or Sean Penn playing a gay rights hero. It's not any of these, however, Penn is a part of what I found affecting about movies over the last two years. One movie in particular I dug, which represents the Thoreauvian dystopia that is America now. <i>Into the Wild</i> is Penn's take on John Krakauer's non-fiction book recounting the tale of Christopher McCandless. McCandless leaves his comfortable life and heads off to find himself in the wilds of Alaska. Just like Thoreau did around Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days, McCandless discovers the essence of an uniquely American philosophy: one's self versus community. <br /><br />The trailer from "Into the Wild" reveals this most distinct of national traits--Horatio Alger, Abraham Lincoln, George Bailey, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, et. al. The American mythos is about humble beginnings, big visions, and open hearts. It's about crackpots and loopy, devoted followers: Log Cabin Republicans, Reagan Democrats, Mr. Martini, Obama Mamas, etc. Who will be following Christopher McCandless into the wild?<br /><br />Along with his role in the movie "Milk," Sean Penn creates two memorable characters on the edge of society, much in the same way that Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese did in the '70s and '80s. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2LAuzT_x8Ek&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2LAuzT_x8Ek&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-48821385918951891322008-12-23T22:39:00.000-08:002008-12-23T22:41:12.294-08:00Teacher sorry for binding girls in slavery lesson: White teacher taped hands and feet of two black girls to enliven discussionFrom the AP Wire: updated 4:34 p.m. PT, Mon., Dec. 8, 2008<br /><br />WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - A white social studies teacher attempted to enliven a seventh-grade discussion of slavery by binding the hands and feet of two black girls, prompting outrage from one girl's mother and the local chapter of the NAACP.<br /><br />After the mother complained to Haverstraw Middle School, the superintendent said he was having "conversations with our staff on how to deliver effective lessons."<br /><br />"If a student was upset, then it was a bad idea," said Superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District in New York City's northern suburbs.<br /><br />The teacher apologized to the mother who complained and her 13-year-old daughter during a meeting Thursday that also included a representative of the local NAACP. But the mother, Christine Shand of Haverstraw, said Friday she thinks the teacher should be removed from the class.<br /><br />"I think the teacher should have gotten some discipline," Shand said. "I know if that was me, I would be uncomfortable going back to that class. Why should my daughter have to switch?"<br /><br />Monahan refused to say what, if any, measures were taken against the teacher, Eileen Bernstein, who was still working on Friday. The school district said she was not available for comment.<br /><br />"We encourage our teachers to deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways, to go beyond just reading the textbook," the superintendent said. "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset."<br /><br />On Nov. 18, Bernstein was discussing the conditions under which African captives were taken to America in slave ships. She bound the two students' hands and feet with tape and had them crawl under a desk to simulate the experience, Monahan and Shand said. Monahan said the girls were not the only blacks in the class.<br /><br />Gabrielle Shand burst into tears at home, her mother said.<br /><br />"There are other ways to demonstrate slavery," Christine Shand said Friday. "It doesn't matter the color of the kids, it's just not right to tie them up. My daughter is still upset, still embarrassed. She didn't go to school today."Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-61122775971422935122008-12-22T14:58:00.000-08:002008-12-22T15:16:24.594-08:00CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE HUMANE SOCIETYIt's Day III: What's more humane than the National Humane Society. With YouTube's Project for Awesome to reduce the world suck, you can get involved at the local level. </p><p><a href="http://www.greenpeople.org/humanesociety.htm">You can view and later donate to your local humane society or animal rescue agency:</a><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gQQOeT6ld3A&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gQQOeT6ld3A&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-24350676207510717552008-12-21T22:41:00.000-08:002008-12-21T22:53:19.437-08:00CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE LUPUS FOUNDATIONDay II: It's one of those diseases that gets the spit end of the stick--lupus. Let's wipe it out! </p><p><a href="http://donate.lupus.org/site/PageServer">Visit the Lupus Foundation</a><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/s1obmK84uvI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s1obmK84uvI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-25324054231353558422008-12-20T15:30:00.000-08:002008-12-20T15:39:59.721-08:00CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE HEIFER PROJECT'Tis the Season: We want to recommend some charities to our readers so that you might share the gift of life and love during this season of giving. </p><p><a href="http://www.heifer.org">The Heifer Project</a> is number one on our list.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JoTKhbtIflE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JoTKhbtIflE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-59396342182010121612008-12-19T23:04:00.000-08:002008-12-19T23:37:39.937-08:00WILL THE REAL SECRETARY OF EDUCATION PLEASE STAND-UP?<p>So, what will Arne Duncan do as President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of Education? Like Obama, Duncan has been known to straddle the middle of the road.</p><p><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/arne-duncan-education-secretary?gclid=CNC10N_OzpcCFRsRagodRAO_DQ">George Lucas's Edutopia proclaims:</a>:</p><blockquote><p><br />Arne Duncan has a type of personality that Obama seems to prefer, which is a pragmatist who will bring about change, but he'll do it in a way that will minimize confrontation in conflict," says Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy. "He's brought about change in Chicago, but it hasn't been a head-on clash with the teachers' union. He's done it in a way that they all walk away from the table congratulating each other."</p></blockquote><p>Even though the Progressives have claimed Obama as their own, Obama's true colors are beginning to slowly seep out. In actuality, Obama is as a hard driving pragmatist. I'm not sure what others will say about him, but the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. said, "He's (Obama) a politician and I'm a minister. He is anaswerable to the people while I am answerable to God." Perhaps the real world needs a realist these days. In fact, it would be great to have access to Obama as he shifts and changes into Bill Clinton--with or without the libido--who needs to stay firmly left of center, rather than far left, to get his policies past.</p>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-955279870810107422008-12-17T18:38:00.000-08:002008-12-17T18:40:46.870-08:00What is the Combination to the Lock: Jack Canfield--The Success Principles<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gOKEYhyUE2k&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gOKEYhyUE2k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-54058394830531012812008-12-16T23:15:00.000-08:002008-12-16T23:16:55.719-08:00Lost in the Crowd--By David Brooksfrom the New York Times--December 16, 2008--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16brooks.html<br /><br />All day long, you are affected by large forces. Genes influence your intelligence and willingness to take risks. Social dynamics unconsciously shape your choices. Instantaneous perceptions set off neural reactions in your head without you even being aware of them.<br /><br />Over the past few years, scientists have made a series of exciting discoveries about how these deep patterns influence daily life. Nobody has done more to bring these discoveries to public attention than Malcolm Gladwell.<br /><br />Gladwell’s important new book, “Outliers,” seems at first glance to be a description of exceptionally talented individuals. But in fact, it’s another book about deep patterns. Exceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.<br /><br />As Gladwell told Jason Zengerle of New York magazine: “The book’s saying, ‘Great people aren’t so great. Their own greatness is not the salient fact about them. It’s the kind of fortunate mix of opportunities they’ve been given.’ ”<br /><br />Gladwell’s noncontroversial claim is that some people have more opportunities than other people. Bill Gates was lucky to go to a great private school with its own computer at the dawn of the information revolution. Gladwell’s more interesting claim is that social forces largely explain why some people work harder when presented with those opportunities.<br /><br />Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness. Many upper-middle-class American kids are raised in an atmosphere of “concerted cultivation,” which inculcates a fanatical devotion to meritocratic striving.<br /><br />In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. As he told Zengerle, “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”<br /><br />As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that people are coldly rational utility-maximizing individuals. It could cause them to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement.<br /><br />Yet, I can’t help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are getting swept away by the coolness of the new discoveries. They’ve lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.<br /><br />Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. They were often showered by good fortune, but relied at crucial moments upon achievements of individual will.<br /><br />Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains.<br /><br />Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.<br /><br />It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.<br /><br />It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.<br /><br />Gladwell’s social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature. It’s also pleasantly egalitarian. The less successful are not less worthy, they’re just less lucky. But it slights the centrality of individual character and individual creativity. And it doesn’t fully explain the genuine greatness of humanity’s outliers. As the classical philosophers understood, examples of individual greatness inspire achievement more reliably than any other form of education. If Gladwell can reduce William Shakespeare to a mere product of social forces, I’ll buy 25 more copies of “Outliers” and give them away in Times Square.<br /><br /><br />Copyright 2008 The New York Times CompanyBrian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-25100910372899001792008-12-16T08:41:00.000-08:002008-12-16T08:43:04.226-08:00Improving Public Schools Hearing: Arne Duncan Part 1Arne Duncan, unvarnished, talking about improving public schools in the City of Chicago, known as the city that works.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_5k_4yOMKrI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_5k_4yOMKrI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Brian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908693.post-65525999302288449502008-12-16T08:39:00.000-08:002008-12-16T08:40:30.559-08:00Chicago Schools Chief Is Obama’s Education Pick--By SAM DILLONDecember 16, 2008--from the New York Times--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16educ.html?_r=1&hp<br /><br /><br />Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.<br /><br />Mr. Duncan, a 44-year-old Harvard graduate, has raised achievement in the nation’s third-largest school district and often faced the ticklish challenge of shuttering failing schools and replacing ineffective teachers, usually with improved results.<br /><br />He represents a compromise choice in the debate that has divided Democrats in recent months over the proper course for public-school policy after the Bush years.<br /><br />In June, rival nationwide groups of educators circulated competing educational manifestos, with one group espousing a get-tough policy based on pushing teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement, and another arguing that schools alone could not close the racial achievement gap and urging new investments in school-based health clinics and other social programs to help poor students learn.<br /><br />Mr. Duncan was the only big-city superintendent to sign both manifestos.<br /><br />He argued that the nation’s schools needed to be held accountable for student progress, but also needed major new investments, new talent and new teacher-training efforts.<br /><br />In straddling the two camps, Mr. Duncan seemed to reflect Mr. Obama’s own impatience with what he has called “tired educational debates.”<br /><br />In his last major educational speech of the campaign, Mr. Obama said: “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but no understanding that both sides have good ideas.”<br /><br />The rival educational camps swamped the Obama transition in recent weeks with recommendations for the post. The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union, pressed for several current and former governors who had made schools a priority in their states.<br /><br />Many former members of Teach for America, the program that sends elite-college graduates to teach in low-income schools, weighed in on behalf of Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, and Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, both of whom have clashed with the teachers’ unions.<br /><br />“Obama found the sweet spot with Arne Duncan,” said Susan Traiman, director of educational policy at the Business Roundtable. “Both camps will be O.K. with the pick!”<br /><br />Mr. Duncan’s acquaintance with Mr. Obama began on the basketball court nearly two decades ago but has flowered since he became the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools in 2001, and Mr. Obama has used him as a frequent sounding board in discussions of education policy.<br /><br />The two men have visited a number of Chicago schools together. In October 2005, they visited the Dodge Renaissance Academy, a once-failing elementary school that Mr. Duncan closed and reopened, with a new staff, as a working public school and a teacher training academy.<br /><br />During the visit, Mr. Obama sat down with school staff members in the library for more than an hour and questioned them at length about arcane instructional issues, Mr. Duncan said in an interview.<br /><br />“I’ve taken lots of political leaders on school visits, and nobody spends the amount of time, asks the depth of questions, or is more engaged and curious than Barack,” Mr. Duncan said in an August interview.<br /><br />The Obama transition team has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday at the Dodge Renaissance school.<br /><br />Mr. Duncan’s background includes playing professional basketball in Australia and intermittently tutoring urban youth, but no formal teaching experience. He helped draft Mr. Obama’s extensive education platform, which called for recruiting thousands of new teachers, encouraging local school districts to adopt performance-based teacher pay initiatives, recruiting and training effective principals, and placing new emphasis on science and mathematics education.<br /><br />The platform also calls for making major federal investments in early childhood education, which Mr. Obama believes is a more effective use of educational dollars than spending them on remedial programs later.<br /><br />Mr. Duncan has been working for several years to expand the early childhood opportunities in the Chicago Public Schools, increasing enrollment opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds by 1,000 places or more each year. Mr. Duncan has worked closely in that effort with Barbara T. Bowman, the Chicago Public Schools’ chief officer for early childhood education, who is the mother of Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett.<br /><br />Allan R. Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, heads a project that is studying how school districts recruit, assign and train their principals and teachers. He said Chicago had made considerable progress under Mr. Duncan.<br /><br />“He’s gotten the job done in Chicago,” Dr. Odden said. “There’s more to be done, but he’s done a great job of reaching out and recruiting and improving the talent of both teachers and principals.”<br /><br />During Mr. Duncan’s tenure, the Chicago schools, which in the 1970s and 1980s experienced nine teachers’ strikes in 17 years, has had labor stability, and last week, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, praised Mr. Duncan.<br /><br />As secretary of education, one of Mr. Duncan’s major challenges will be to rebuild the bipartisan consensus that helped President Bush win passage of his No Child Left Behind law in 2001.<br /><br />An effort to rewrite the law, the most important statement of federal policy toward public schools, collapsed last year in the face of opposition from conservative Republicans angered over the law’s intrusion onto states’ educational prerogatives and Democrats upset with the law’s emphasis on standardized testing.<br /><br />Mr. Obama has called for a thorough rewrite, but has pledged to defend the accountability provisions in the law that require schools to improve.<br /><br />Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, said last week that his group would be delighted to see Mr. Klein or Ms. Rhee appointed, but had sent to the transition team a memorandum recommending Mr. Duncan.<br /><br />“He is the kind of guy who can work with all sorts of people with different viewpoints, and we like his work in Chicago with charter schools,” Mr. Williams said.<br /><br />Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who as the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee will lead any reauthorization effort, called Mr. Duncan “a good choice for school reform and our schoolchildren.”<br /><br />“He is an experienced and accomplished leader who is open to new ideas for improving our schools,” Mr. Miller said.<br /><br /><br />Copyright 2008 The New York Times CompanyBrian W. Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265857429772764389noreply@blogger.com