Interversity.Org

Tragedy is a shortcut that sells, and the particular tragedy of being an Indian has an amazing ability to make readers lose their capacities to discern good writing from bad, interesting ideas from vapid ones.

The headline on CNN's website the past couple of days:

Bush: NCLB not meant to punish schools, but to help them

Er, I wonder. If punishment was not the intent, why is the law more punitive than supportive?

"It is important for all of us to make it clear that accountability is not a way to punish anybody," Bush told supporters of the law in a meeting at the White House. "It's an essential component to making sure that our system, our education system, frankly is not discriminatory."

NYC schools' cell phone ban earns parents' ire

NEW YORK (AP) -- Parents who oppose the cell phone ban in New York's public schools are ranting in e-mails to the city's government that the policy is unreasonable, irresponsible, and hints at "thoughtless fascism."

Here's a tricky issue, one that will have various strong but opposing arguments and no clearly satisfactory solution, I humbly predict. For cell phones ain't going away. They may change, but if anything they will only become smaller and more thoroughly integrated in the usual human accessories — there's been talk for years about "wearable" computers, for instance, so it's easy to imagine cell phone technology woven into fabrics, built into eyeglasses, attached to caps, maybe someday surgically imbricated into the human body.

CNN.com has a story up now, Most states fall short on testing, government says about how a number of states still aren't toeing the NCLB line, failing to do some things that really ought to be done if you're going to fashion an education system around standardized testing, like making sure students are tested over what they've actually been given an opportunity to learn, etc.

But of course the means of bringing states up to standard is, er, problematic. They get docked pay. Fix your tests or lose part of your funding, is the message from feds to states.

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10 things the ALIENS do NOT want YOU to KNOW!
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Written by Tracy J. Crockett
January 18, 2006

When I say "Aliens" know that I am referring to all of the humans who are cooperating with them as well.

10 things the ALIENS do NOT want YOU to KNOW!

1-The Aliens have spread out a darkening agent, over Earth's
populated cities(through the means of "jet" contrails)which

[This is the text of a brief speech I gave at the Talkies Roundtable, aka "Collaboration as Common Ground: Transforming Professional Growth Through Online Inquiry," at the NCTE Convention in Pittsburgh, 19 November 2005.]

My task: To provide some general context for the specific conversations at this session. I won't talk long. I was recently reminded while trying to introduce my rhetoric and composition students to logical fallacies, which I think are fascinating, that I'm not exactly an inspiring and riveting speaker. Did you know that if twenty-five pairs of eyelids close at the exact same time they actually make a sound? It's like this: WHUMP! There's a bit of breeze, too. In any case, it's early and sleep still beckons some of us. There are too many good conversations to be had with some very interesting folks, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone sleeping through the event.

I read the info on the Eng-Teach listserv about kids of poverty and the clientel they become and what happens to what they learn within their own heads.  I thought instantly of the first year of being 'out'.  I took a Class at the University of UMSL in St. Louis.  At that time it was the first month I was 'out'.  School was always an equalizer for me so I took a geology class.  But somehow, someway, nothing made sense to me.  I didn't want to ask questions anymore.  If felt different.  I was afraid.  I didn't want anyone to make friends with me.  I didn't want to have to explain anything.  I didnt' want anyone to feel sorry for me.

Just got a notice for a Retreat held by those of us in the MidWest Province who are part of the FDCs--Former Daughters of Charity.  There's less of us in the group than when we started in 1987.  Just 99 of us now.  Once we were 250 strong.  But, we each go our way over time.  Yet, we never forget.  I remember that first reunion.  Geez, there must have been 300, maybe 500 of us come home.  Back to the MotherHouse, back to the Marillac, back to our training grounds.  Each of us had spent 5 years there and we were tight as ticks with each other.  I left in '72, and it could as well have been yesterday.  Oh, sure we were older, some married, some married with kids, some single, one of us is a DA in Dallas...and on and on it went.  Time had not killed the comraderie we had.

Design for learning:
Today's educational facilities -- not your parents' schools anymore

By Lisa Porterfield
CNN
Friday, August 12, 2005; Posted: 4:15 p.m. EDT (20:15 GMT)

story.workstations.jpg
Open-office "advisory" workstations at the Avalon School.

Avalon Schools
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• Timeline: Five decades of trends
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This is cool! I always thought Bush was a bit of a dogmatist (and one backing the wrong dog at that), but here he comes right out and says it's good to teach kids various alternative ideas:

EDUCATION -- BUSH HAS DESIGNS FOR AMERICA'S SCHOOLS: At a roundtable interview with five Texas reporters yesterday, President Bush threw his support behind teaching intelligent design, or ID, a controversial theory which maintains that life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and suggests that higher powers must have played a role.