Every fifth- and sixth-grader at Johnson Elementary will receive a $1,350 IBM ThinkPad computer loaded with digital versions of state-approved textbooks and 2,000 works of literature. If the experiment works, the program will be expanded to other grades.
In Henrico County, Va., where schools give laptops to all high schoolers, Apple Computer Inc. replaced pop-out CD-ROM trays with slides on its iBook laptops when students kept breaking off the trays after forgetting to close them.
“They get heavy use, and occasionally they drop them,” said Cathy Fisher, Henrico’s director of high school education. Still, she said breakage, as well as thefts, are rare.
The Henrico school board will decide next year whether to renew the deal with Apple, which cost the school district $18.5 million over four years. Fisher said the district can’t prove that computers raise test scores, but she said they make learning more interesting.
Smith, whose program serves up to 150 students, doesn’t know what he’ll do after the experiment with textbook-loaded laptops next year. It all depends on the price, he said.
Establishment Media + Establishment Politicians = Degraded Democracy
Jason Van Beck continues to stir things up in South Dakota. Van Beck has more on long time political writer Dave Kranz’s close ties to incumbent Senator Tom Daschle.
Pamela Bone on Women’s Rights in South Asia
Osama, the first film to come out of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, is about a 12-year-old girl who must shave her head and dress like a boy so she can work to support her widowed mother and grandmother. It is not about Osama bin Laden; “Osama” is the boy’s name the girl adopts.
I am sent a newsletter from a women’s rights group in Pakistan, which lists items from Pakistani newspapers. The following is a recent selection (I checked the items on the newspapers’ websites):
Lahore: A girl, Kauser, 17, was strangled by her elder brother because she had married of her own will. She returned home and asked her family to forgive her but her brother strangled her with a piece of cloth. – The Daily Times.
Ghotki district: Two women were killed over Karo-Kari (honour killing). One Nihar Jatoi tied his wife to a bed and electrocuted her. One Bachal axed his wife Salma to death and fled. No arrests were reported. – The News.
Sargodha: A woman is in hospital after having both legs amputated because of severe injuries inflicted by her brother-in-law and mother-in-law, who clubbed her for her alleged illicit affairs. The woman, who was fighting for life, said the real reason was that her brother-in-law was trying to force her to arrange his marriage to her younger sister, but her sister had instead eloped with her paramour. – Dawn.
What chance of this woman becoming an international symbol, as has the boy who so tragically lost his arms during the invasion of Iraq?
Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies? Why is it easier for millions of people around the world to see America as the great evil, rather than the countries in which governments ignore such horrific abuses of women?
via instapundit.
Milwaukee’s School Budget
Its name remains unchanged: Elm Creative Arts Elementary School. Young students still walk the halls, with violins and saxophones swinging at their sides.
At first glance, it looks very much the art school its name reflects. Colorful papier-mache and art projects of all kinds decorate the hallway walls and dangle from the ceilings.
But ask the principal and parents what’s going on here, and the story is anything but joyous. Some parents cry as they talk about it.
Students at this specialty art school on Walnut St. risk losing their art teachers. Budgetary woes have already claimed three art specialists in the last few years. The remaining four are in jeopardy.
Interestingly, she includes some other viewpoints on school spending:
Rep. Luther Olsen (R-Berlin): “Look at the amount of money spent per student. “Wisconsin is number eight in the country. . . . The answer is not dumping more money in because we don’t have the money.”
Mike Birkley, of the lobbying group Wisconsin Property Taxpayers Inc.: “Our tests scores are going up. Our SAT scores continue to be among the highest in the nation. Our dropout rates are down. The quality of education has not suffered.”
Madison Schools Budget Update
Madison School District 2004-2005 $310+m budget discussions continue:
- Barb Schrank posts three documents:
- 2004/2005 MMSD Budget Process
- Current MMSD Numbers
- A Proposed 2004/2005 Budget
- Ruth Robarts posts a process for a Priority Driven Budget (rather than the current process where cuts are discussed prior to a full budget disclosure) Ruth’s thoughts are based on a book and information from the National School Boards Association and the American Association of School Administrators
Compulsory Training in Subordination
1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto wrote this fascinating article in the Whole Earth Review:
Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.
“School” is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. “School” is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.
The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I’ve told you about and a few more I’ve spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.
None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no “international competition” that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located — in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy — then we would be truly self-sufficient.
The Power of One
Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle mentioned repeatedly during her recent UW talk that we must never underestimate the power of one. Jeff Jarvis writes today that Kerry DuPont has “done something wonderful in the cause of freedom: She just sent laptops, scanners, cameras and more equipment of citizens’ media to Iraqi bloggers, including Zeyad and Omar and Ays.”
So many opportunities….
Tribal Casinos Should Pay More, CA voters say
Dan Morain [reg req’d] has an interesting article on California Indian gambling:
A strong majority of Californians believes Indian tribes that own casinos should pay more of their gambling revenue to the state, and does not want card rooms and horse tracks to gain slot machines, a Los Angeles Times poll shows.
The findings come four years after voters overwhelmingly approved gambling on Indian reservations. Now, gambling interests are preparing for an initiative war that could break the tribes’ monopoly on Nevada-style casinos. In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is negotiating with tribes to get heftier payments for the state in exchange for the right to obtain more slot machines.
Dan Gillmor constructively comments on the LA Times proper use of “gambling” rather than the PR oriented term “gaming”. Such marketing wordsmithing is more commonplace than ever.
Homeless Students
Meg Kissinger writes about the challenge Milwaukee Public Schools face educating homeless children:
Like about 1,400 other Milwaukee schoolchildren on any given day, and more than 13,000 a year, Kenesha has no home to call her own. The challenge of educating her and the others is staggering for school administrators as the children move from one place to another, often without notice.
Phy Ed Cuts?
Activity levels of students drops from years ago according to Nicole Sweeney:
“We want the kids to be smart academically,” said Otha Frazier, a physical education teacher at Racine’s Case High School. “Well, it’s not showing too much intelligence if you’re going to destroy the body to prepare the mind.”