Education has been on everyone's mind lately, especially in lieu of unionized teachers in Wisconsin having to "justify" their "immense" pensions and wealth-killing benefits, like health care and the right to see an optometrist or dentist once a year. I believe teachers should be held accountable to standards of efficiency, but the way they are being demonized leads me to believe that the powers that be are drawing focus from the real problem: namely that we don't want to recognize that our models might be out of whack. In other words, what if what used to be taught, pre-Internet era, is not good enough anymore?
To be fair school districts are making some changes with respect to the Internet and technology. High schools and even grade schools are now using new online-based courses that have been adopted from online university programs
and distance learning courses. This teaching format utilizes the web and tools like social media, but online k-12 classes have significant drawbacks. In general, it is simply taking the same school models, curriculums and criteria from the classroom to the online setting. It is more of a cost-cutting facelift than a true reform of the education model.
It is no coincidence Robert Logan's book starts with a section titled, "Why Our Schools Don't Work." In this section, Logan presents his main argument while highlighting the failures inherent in the history of our public education system, "Our schools are based on an industrial model, with a delivery system patterned on the factory. Millions of schoolchildren are taught the same content in the same linear sequential order, guided by a uniform curriculum dated by a centralized bureaucracy at a municipal school board or state department of education." (8) While broken, the system does work for a select few, "Many students endure. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, and accountants continue to be trained. The success of our schools is limted, however" (8).
Our schools have not kept up with the body of knowledge that needs to get know, "it is not so much that the content of the curriculum is out of date as that the style of education is not suited to contemporary needs and challenges." (9)
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
CAJON PASS
Interstate 15 in Califas
northeast through Saguaro timpano
and flinthead basalt wrinkles
galore in the gore of gigaclouds
botched cottonous affairs
fingerbanging the stratosphere
four thousand feet from measly sea level
sticking it in third to ascend or else-up
facade start slowly slimeing back
banks de viento, wind flanks, drizzledslush
embankments of crushed glass and trapos
channels in the eyeballs, the remote
eighteenwheelers used as rotting billboards
and booster bulleting boards for Ron Paul
northeast through Saguaro timpano
and flinthead basalt wrinkles
galore in the gore of gigaclouds
botched cottonous affairs
fingerbanging the stratosphere
four thousand feet from measly sea level
sticking it in third to ascend or else-up
facade start slowly slimeing back
banks de viento, wind flanks, drizzledslush
embankments of crushed glass and trapos
channels in the eyeballs, the remote
eighteenwheelers used as rotting billboards
and booster bulleting boards for Ron Paul
Thursday, March 17, 2011
NEW LOOK FOR ISSUE NUMBER FOUR...
My Tia Martha has this little gem of a book, aside from other great cultural talismans. From the title we get that this book is a Civic Calendar published by the National Indigenous Institute. The information inside describes key events in Mexican history, so in a sense the book is a primer on Mexican citizenship. I am certain that other countries invested in these publications; regardless, the book is a gem and a master work of mechanized printing, as it must have had the colors run seperately, one at a time.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
INTRO FOR POSTCARD FEAT WITH JIM HEAVILY
Why send a letter when you can jettison an electronic mail down the backbone of the Internet? Sending an e-mail instead of dispatching a letter through the U.S.P.S. saves you time and effort; and, there is little chance that your email is going to be displaced, or flat-out lost; there is no Bureau of Dead E-mails because that type of anomaly is not built into the system. An electronic mail can not not reach it's destination (despite being imploded as a packet or getting re-arranged in "flight").
Maybe, the best part about pushing the "send" button is not having to interact with the surly clerk behind the plexiglass. The only real advantage the U.S.P.S. has over e-mail is that when you patronize the U.S.P.S. you are patronizing an institution that has been refining its "game" since 1775 when Ben Franklin was appointed the nation's first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress. By all means, the U.S.P.S. is a tight ship, but even tight ships spring leaks. Is the U.S.P.S. an ironside whose time has come? Are there other institutions out there that seem to be in as much flux as the postal service?
The idea we have outgrown libraries dovetails with the idea that the U.S.P.S. is a relic of a Norman Rockwell era in America, where John Wayne was God, Ike was Buddha, and Ed Sullivan a Cathode-Ray Jesus. Both institutions symbolize the United States in a way that little things do, and yet both are rushing headlong into obsolescence. This may or may not be saying something about Americans are evolving as a people. Technology has given us the mode to render both useless and almost beyond salvage. The electronic book has killed the print book as the electronic mail has killed the parcel affixed with postage. Perhaps, the only interesting question is how long can these institutions hemorrhage money? In other words, at what point does nostalgia become an impediment?
I read Adam Gopnik’s article, “The Information” in the New Yorker magazine recently. Stylistically, Gopnik’s writing is fluid and without frills, almost primitive, which is a ridiculously difficult bit of artifice; in Gopnik's article there are turns of sleight, sprinkles of “print” history, and a more-than-thorough assessment of where media is going vis-a-vis where it's been. And, Gopnik provides a classification of the three major media factions that have evolved: "the Never-Better, the Better-Nevers, and the Ever-Wasers." It is this last faction that caught my interest the most; the Ever-Wasers believe that "at any moment in modernity something like this is going on, and that a new way of organizing data and connecting users is always thrilling to some and chilling to other." I am hoping that both the U.S.P.S. and the Public Library system in the U.S. can stay clear of the "Better-Nevers" and make their way to the "Ever-Wasers" and hit on a way to remain relevant.
Jim Heavily is a poet Hinchas de Poesia published in its third issue. He lives in North Carolina, and has time enough to correspond with me via email and Facebook. Those are pretty much the three things I knew about him when I decided to engage in a postcard feat with him. I also knew that we shared a nostalgia for the United States Postal Service, and a preoccupation for how electronic mail was affecting the work horse of through-sleet-and-snow. And now I think that I know something else about Jim Heavily; of the three factions, he is most likely to belong to the Better-Nevers because while he enjoys the bells and whistles of an interface or platform, the analog will always feel like a more authentic experience to him. I agree with the way Jim sees it, but I have no qualms about buying stamps online.
Maybe, the best part about pushing the "send" button is not having to interact with the surly clerk behind the plexiglass. The only real advantage the U.S.P.S. has over e-mail is that when you patronize the U.S.P.S. you are patronizing an institution that has been refining its "game" since 1775 when Ben Franklin was appointed the nation's first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress. By all means, the U.S.P.S. is a tight ship, but even tight ships spring leaks. Is the U.S.P.S. an ironside whose time has come? Are there other institutions out there that seem to be in as much flux as the postal service?
The idea we have outgrown libraries dovetails with the idea that the U.S.P.S. is a relic of a Norman Rockwell era in America, where John Wayne was God, Ike was Buddha, and Ed Sullivan a Cathode-Ray Jesus. Both institutions symbolize the United States in a way that little things do, and yet both are rushing headlong into obsolescence. This may or may not be saying something about Americans are evolving as a people. Technology has given us the mode to render both useless and almost beyond salvage. The electronic book has killed the print book as the electronic mail has killed the parcel affixed with postage. Perhaps, the only interesting question is how long can these institutions hemorrhage money? In other words, at what point does nostalgia become an impediment?
I read Adam Gopnik’s article, “The Information” in the New Yorker magazine recently. Stylistically, Gopnik’s writing is fluid and without frills, almost primitive, which is a ridiculously difficult bit of artifice; in Gopnik's article there are turns of sleight, sprinkles of “print” history, and a more-than-thorough assessment of where media is going vis-a-vis where it's been. And, Gopnik provides a classification of the three major media factions that have evolved: "the Never-Better, the Better-Nevers, and the Ever-Wasers." It is this last faction that caught my interest the most; the Ever-Wasers believe that "at any moment in modernity something like this is going on, and that a new way of organizing data and connecting users is always thrilling to some and chilling to other." I am hoping that both the U.S.P.S. and the Public Library system in the U.S. can stay clear of the "Better-Nevers" and make their way to the "Ever-Wasers" and hit on a way to remain relevant.
Jim Heavily is a poet Hinchas de Poesia published in its third issue. He lives in North Carolina, and has time enough to correspond with me via email and Facebook. Those are pretty much the three things I knew about him when I decided to engage in a postcard feat with him. I also knew that we shared a nostalgia for the United States Postal Service, and a preoccupation for how electronic mail was affecting the work horse of through-sleet-and-snow. And now I think that I know something else about Jim Heavily; of the three factions, he is most likely to belong to the Better-Nevers because while he enjoys the bells and whistles of an interface or platform, the analog will always feel like a more authentic experience to him. I agree with the way Jim sees it, but I have no qualms about buying stamps online.
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