An Unbelievable Shining Moment

Supreme Court upholds Obamacare: The Affordable Care Act is constitutional - 2012-Jun-28 - CultureMap Austin.

There are times when people surprise you. I was surprised twice in this decision. First, that Justice Kennedy went to the right, towing the party line. It seemed conscience and deep thought would lead him elsewhere. Second, I'm surprised that Justice Roberts sided with a "bunch of damn liberals," as my family up north would call them.

Healthy kids learn better. That's why we feed them and have school nurses on campuses. We have Medicaid programs for them at the federal level, forcing politicians in states like Texas to allow children to see physicians. We work to make and keep them healthy, to the point of limiting any "Foods of Minimal Nutritional Value" in schools.

What doesn't get pointed out quite as much is that healthy parents tend to be better parents. I know that personally. The Henley family has two parents struggling with their health. Our kids have paid the price for that in terms of grades, accomplishments, and stress levels. It's not that they aren't doing well, by objective standards. But I remain a man that lives his life cursed by the words of Charles Schulz: "I carry the burden of a great potential."

As usual, a lot of my writing goes back to Benjamin Bloom. If you aren't healthy, you can't do your work--learning, teaching, writing blogs, whatever--to the best of your ability. This ruling allows the will of the people, the will to live to move forward.

It turns out the government can tax. It turns out, working Americans get to keep the protections (or what David Frum called "goodies"), despite the best efforts of those who typically don't have to deal with the outcome.

I do, though. Teachers do, too. This decision will lead to a healthier America. It will also lead to a smarter America. One that shines, like a city on a hill.

via An Unbelievable Shining Moment.

Ahead and Behind

Here are two things I say quite often these days:

1. I used to be somebody.


2. The older I get, the better I used to be.

I've managed to end up in the recesses of the public eye (comparatively), choosing to foster the genius of this world rather than try to be that genius. That genius comes from my work, from my marriage, and from my kids.

When I was building my reputation about a decade and a half ago, I used technology heavily. There are people now being paid handsomely and lauded for things I was doing in 1999. These people are "visionaries." I was just creative...with the exception that I never capitalized and created "Henley University" or anything. I was isolated. Technology helped. Some kids in Singapore are probably still mad at the way I judged their website, but looking back, I may have saved some future developers' careers. Now, that contest is being judged by multi-millionaires with names I recognize.

The fact was that in 1999, I was overwhelmed by the possibilities of technology...and more than a little frustrated with some of the boneheads in it. To this day, I do not understand how some people in technology continue to make a living, knowing less than my kids do. Still, I directed my focus elsewhere--choosing to focus on people and only using that technology which was necessary at the time to help them. That effort landed me at a job where I didn't need technology so much.

Then, I got a little behind. It's not that bad, really. Still, I'm frustrated that I have failed to harness the power of technology by getting bogged down in the stupid (keep reading--not sure I've improved anything). In my work to "keep up" with events of importance, I've made too many things important (and forgotten a password or two). That means that when one of my very favorite authors tweets that he will be in the Austin area, I may miss it while focusing on other things. That just happened. Justin Halpern ("Sh*t My Dad Says") came to promote his new book. Let me just say that readers of this blog may want to hit that link and read the opening chapter on Scribd (see? not that far behind).

Getting in trouble for laughing too hard is kind of a goal, right?

Here was a tool (Twitter) that was trying to tell me how to really, really enjoy a night two weeks ago. I was busy doing something less meaningful. Probably playing Bejewelled. I've also missed Austin City Limits taping announcements and other "important" events through this "other" focus.

Bummed that I missed out, I decided to try to keep up with YouTube. A guy should know about things like the Honey Badger--you know, for conversation and all. That's when I realized that I may be alright.

Getting stuck in the political world is a good reason to leave a job. I don't miss that. My life was stuck in this mire in 2008, when Barack Obama harnessed youth and technology to out-fundraise everyone from Hillary Clinton to the entire Republican Party. The messages got annoying, and I'm ready to block texts from "622-62" from my iPhone. Still, I do scan headlines online and at the convenience store. Also, I am surrounded by "illegals," including friends and friends of my kids. Apparently, it is time for Barack Obama to shore up the Hispanic vote. He's starting to act like Candidate Obama again.

During his announcement in the Rose Garden, a reporter blurted out an attack question. The "liberal media" never seemed to do this 5 years ago. Except for some guy in Iraq who was throwing shoes at our president. Ugh. It was one of the most watched videos of the day. What was more interesting to me was the trail of comments, which is crossing the 7000 mark as I write this. A few examples:

and this is what we get for letting a monkey become president.....

codyyy1997

Voluminous and powerful insight came from my new political guru, GOP 2010. The Republican Party must be so proud:

OBAMA = ANTI-AMERICAN PIECE OF SHIT

Obama plops 800K illegals in the system while unemp for minority teen citizens: Hispanic 30.5%, Black 40.5%

Obama joins Mexican Govt criticizing our own state, AZ

Obama raises Military h/c premiums 345% by year 5 but builds Gitmo detainees $750K soccer field

Obama promotes taxpayer-susdzd branch of ACORN, Project Vote, yet sues FL for purging illegal voters

Obama denied FEMA $ to CT flood victims then sends Muslim nations billions to "enhance technology"

2010GOP

--and a caveat comment from this same commenter:

If you ever want to succeed in life, you may want to learn what punctuation is, dipshit. 2010GOP

And let's not miss the other meaningful side of the discussion:

I bet Mexican would take over off all u motherfuckers white people for being bitchass rasist FifaBeast247

--and

Fuck whoever is against Obama you racist, eloquent, ignorant fucks. I'm voting for Obama again :) chingas49 *[Note the smiley!]

Guess I'm not so far off the curve.

Wait. These people don't actually vote, do they?

If You're Betting the Farm, You'd Better Have Another Career in Mind

Wisconsin recall election hands nations unions a staggering loss - TwinCities.com.

via Wisconsin recall election hands nations unions a staggering loss - TwinCities.com.

Musings of a Father, Elementary and Secondary

[Image from "The Heart & Mind of Victor", a blog by Victor L. Stanley]

Not to brag, or anything, but my son just received a Mathematics Award at his middle school. My loving wife received an email notification, and we juggled things around to make sure we were there to see him receive it. Nobody wants to get a math award...at least that's how I gauged the situation. Standing in front of the entire 7th grade class, holding a certificate, waiting to be allowed to just sit back down on the bleachers. His joy was...subdued. Polite clapping by everyone (meaning parents, teachers, and 7th graders forced to watch).

I was excited, though. Math is a good thing to "win" these days.

Perfect attendance awards were given. One student hasn't missed a day in 7 years! I know of one district that gives a Rolex to anyone with perfect attendance K-12.

Most students received no award.

The middle school is large, about a thousand students in three "grades." It feels like thousands more. I grew up in South Dakota and attended (arguably) the largest high school in the state--about 1000 students in 3 "classes."

Don't ask my why they started high school in 10th grade there. I don't know. That's important to consider, though. Today's ceremony follows another from yesterday at my daughter's elementary school. It was an awards ceremony for fifth grade.

My daughter called it "graduation." She has "graduated" three times so far--preschool, kindergarten, and now this. She received a medal and a pile of certificates. Everybody received recognitions. They have a bilingual class, which announced their awards in Spanish. To me it was "[NAME] blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...y programa DARE."

Everybody graduated from D.A.R.E., it seems. I guess that means the War on Drugs is over. Unless...

Among the other awards issued by classroom teachers were the "Tells the Truth Award," the "Neatest Worker in the Whole Wide World Award," and in one heart-wrenching story, a "Most Improved Award" was given.

This was followed by a slide show of pictures set to the music of Rent (Seasons of the Love--The "525,600 Minutes" Song). Here are fifth graders standing. Here are some other fifth graders being wacky. Here are some other fifth graders...

Yesterday, students were honored with the "A-B Honor Roll." Today, at the middle school, you needed all A's to get a certificate...and the accompanying humiliation.

It's amazing to me how we treat students--so similar in age--so differently. We do this in schools, but we also do it in society, and we also do it personally. I noticed while typing this that my son is in 7th grade, while my daughter is in fifth grade. Just instinctual typing indicates how differently we view things once the kid turns, say, 11.5 years old.

There isn't enough room to discuss the actual work of God who just became a high school junior today. She's hanging out with friends, frustrated that she doesn't speak Spanish better, and quick to worry about things before celebrating her Academic Award, a spot on the varsity tennis team, that she has friends like hers. Or just the fact that she wears my nose and her mother's hair so as to embody parental pride with every move she makes--how special it felt yesterday in the doctor's office each time I got to write the word, "Father" in the blank for "Relationship to Patient."

...It terrifies me to think we may have "taught" her that kind of focus.

We are shocked if gang violence, drugs, bullying, or other "adult" issues end up in the elementary schools, and we should be. We work to protect them. They are children, for Pete's sake.

Then June 1 rolls around, and they're suddenly thrust into a world where they are mini-adults. Rules seem to assume they're going to be broken. Crowd control is an obvious goal. Praise, motivation, and awards become more "internal." Preparation for high school--which is focused on preparation for college--becomes the focus. Suddenly, a child is supposed to think about 11 or 12 years in the future, even though they've only lived 11 or 12 so far.

Today is the last day of school for the first-ever kindergarten class at my daughter's elementary school; this is the first group to go through the entire K-5 years in this building. For those teachers who witnessed the school's opening in 2006, today is part of history. Tears of joy and sadness were shed by children and the adults that work to love and try to teach them. My daughter walked out of her childhood under a sea of balloons--courtesy of a PTO that also has kids' carnivals, sock hops, and all kinds of fun things that will now disappear from her life as she moves from fifth grade to 6th grade.

My son, well, he got a ride home from somebody. I know that because he's downstairs playing video games, unaware of how proud he should be of himself.

Until I get down there...

Seed Corn and Payday Loans

Daily Kos: Cuts to Higher Ed Funding: Were Eating Our Seed Corn.

Together with:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-stafford-20120428,0,1118808.story

Education is one of those things that tends to get shoved under the carpet in politics. A conservative president (George W. Bush) increased funding to schools immensely. The only catch: public schools now focus a large portion of their energy on high-stakes standardized tests. At every turn, we see "limited government" radicals joining "social justice" radicals to make such tests the most important thing to a school. So much so that children are no longer so much human as numeric. For an utterly disturbing article on this phenomenon, click here. The video is here.

The goal is to make students "college and career ready." I've already covered the idea of career training in a previous blog. As far as college readiness, I'm dealing with a state that is not requiring handwriting, keyboarding (typing), public speaking, or even health. Here are four things that our district doesn't require. Why? The state doesn't require them. Everything is at a minimum...running on the least common denominator.

In general, I think it comes to this: education should make kids smart. These days a really good education is designed to make kids rich. That distinction plays out over time, I think. Your first job is one thing...your last job is the most important one. One colleague of mine is giving a commencement speech this month. One of this person's "first" jobs was managing a used bookstore. According to present policy, the college education was a failure. According to reality, such an education was wildly successful.

Today, Americans owe more in student loans than they do in car loans. Want to increase automobile sales? Perhaps lessening the student loan burden would help. But that could lead to higher taxes, and that is unthinkable in this day and age. Well...

Educated people tend to pay more taxes. Want to lower the tax rate in 10 years? Fund education, legitimately. Teach students what they need to know to be successful--you can't write programming code very well from the world of single-finger typing or dual-thumb texting work. Forget interest, altogether. Give all students the chance to choose their schools based on fit and merit, not money. Antioch is taking a chance by completely waiving tuition. Their tuition-free plan could make them a leading institution in the nation. Quickly. And think of how much those students will cling to Antioch as alumni.

It's a brave move, but we see how timid Congress is in an election year. Lack of action leads to disruptive change--disruptive, negative change.

LACs, public schools, and many other social systems in America need to embrace such disruptive change...and control it. Otherwise, they will become victims of outside forces with little or no interest in long-term success...or even viability.

The Hard Is What Makes It Beautiful

 

I went to USD. Of course, that's usually called "South Dakota" on the sports tickers. That's because there's another USD: The University of San Diego. It's a Jesuit school, and it's in the middle of a controversy.

A group on campus is putting on a drag show Wednesday. The question becomes this: does a Catholic campus allow it?

The discussion goes deep. Nobody's having sex. Not all drag queens are gay. Not all drag kings are gay, for that matter. Many people attending drag shows are straight and love the spectacle of the whole thing.

But the connection to homosexuality is there. Now, it becomes a question of whether or not cross-dressing for performance is something the Catholic institution should allow on campus. The president supports the students' right to express themselves. Donors have threatened to quit contributing to the school. Groups have formed. Some are calling on USD to strenuously promote "Catholic values" by forbidding the show's production. Others have rallied around the "anti-hate" aspect of this issue.

It's a mess. A strange, confusing, beautiful mess. Bet it sells out, though! That's life on a liberal arts campus. Ideas fly everywhere. Disagreement abounds. It gets ugly sometimes. It's beautifully ugly.

--

Meanwhile, at UC-Davis, they finally got the official report from the Reynoso Task Force, or what could aptly be named, "The Committee of the Obvious."

Their conclusion? “Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”

Then follows wording about campus culture--debate and dissent being important. Then there's the whole idea of better communication before you pepper spray unarmed college kids in front of hundreds of people.

--

No matter what happens in San Diego, I can assume everybody is safe for having different opinions. Most times, such differences of opinions dissipate and get forgotten. Sometimes, though, those opinion clashes can result in great things. USD attracted $25 million and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. I wish the people at UC-Davis felt the same way.

One of the hardest jobs in higher education right now? The Admissions Director at UC-D.

Business Surpassing Education...Again?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/09/opinion/wilkinson-jobs-act/index.html?eref=rss_latest&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Most+Recent%29

Here's the quote that caught my attention:

We must enhance commercialization of research out of U.S. universities. One way to do this is to adopt a standardized licensing agreement for spinoffs. Another way is to make open-technology licensing a condition for universities to receive federal research dollars. Currently, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 requires faculty innovators to work through their own university technology licensing offices. This creates significant delays.

It seems as though crowdsourcing is a rough parallel to much of the work happening in academia. Of course, in the business world, such efforts involve money, not just ideas. The trouble facing academic circles is that ideas are cheap, and many are flat-out free.

In public education, things have changed to some extent. Used to be, when a teacher (say, 3rd grade) had a great idea, it would be passed informally around the campus. District meetings would result in sharing among campuses. Soon, "best practice" was in place by word of mouth. At some point, the term best practices became formalized. Suddenly, a good idea was a way to make money, especially if the idea could be linked to test scores in some way. Now we see entire careers launched over a good idea in public education.

It seems higher education is still in the informal stage, regarding new information. Wiki's are not money-making ideas. Collaboration tends to result in better teaching or learning or scholarship; however, it often has no direct monetary value attached to it. Faculty make their salary, and little else. Their work is documented in their dossiers, and it may lead to tenure or promotion. Other than that, this kind of work is expected. Great ideas are supposed to come from campuses.

The business world may change that.