Posted today on The Atlantic’s site, an awesome collection of syllabi from David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, W.H. Auden, and this one from Lynda Berry’s “The Unthinkable Mind” class at University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Month: February 2013
Kerry Says Americans have the right to be stupid, MI GOP Lawmaker Proves Kerry’s Point
Secretary of State John Kerry told a group of German students that the First Amendment protects all speech, no matter how vitriolic or inane. Today, Michissippi State Representative Tom Casperson (R, Escanaba, eh) provided us with an example, questioning President Obama’s birth certificate:
Tom, you have the right to be stupid, you have the right to your own opinion, but you don’t have the right to your own facts.
Study Break: Josh Ritter Edition
Josh Ritter is arguably the most under-appreciated singer-songwriter of the past decade. His new CD, “Beast In Its Tracks,” drops next Tuesday. Listen to it on NPR right now, then start a petition to get this guy in front of a crowd at the Meijer Gardens Amphitheater.
Big Brother/Mosaica to install classroom cameras in Muskegon Heights
Because the privatization is going so well in Muskegon Heights (huge turnover, teachers lacking certification), Mosaica decided, “Hey! Let’s record everything going on in every classroom! Not to evaluate teachers. No, not for that.”
Why, then? Michigan Radio (the only media outlet offering quality MI education coverage) asked Mosaica’s VP/Superintendent, Alena Zachary-Ross:
“The purpose is, number one, for safety, and then with the model, sometimes there are conversations about behavior in the classroom or the educational plans.” (emphasis mine)
Not that classroom behavior or educational plans have anything to do with evaluating a teacher’s performance.
What a nightmare. But if it saves Muskegon Heights money, you’d better believe it’s coming soon to a district near you.
What’s better than giving away books on World Book Night?
I’m giving away twenty copies of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale on World Book Night.
And what’s better than that? Getting this:
@mitspelczech @wbnamerica: Thank you!
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) February 26, 2013
If Captain Renault Had Been a Teacher
He’d be “Shocked! Shocked!” to find that teacher job satisfaction is at a 25-year low.
Extra! Extra! One MI Newspaper Gets It
Check out this editorial that argues AGAINST high-stakes tests in our schools. Here’s a taste:
We have monumental problems in our schools, and testing kids more and blaming teachers when they fail won’t help us solve any of them. Indeed, it will likely make them worse.
High-stakes testing may be the ultimate expression of what’s wrong with education in America, a system that’s been in steady decline for the past four decades, a period that roughly coincides with the rise of standardized testing.
So, who’s responsible for this common sense op-ed? No, not one of the MLive papers.
It’s The Battle Creek Enquirer.
Remember, if it doesn’t come from the Mackinac Center, it doesn’t make it in MLive.
News that isn’t news: Superintendent Salaries Edition
UPDATE: Now WOOD, WZZM, and WXMI have picked up on this nothingburger of a story.
Thank goodness for The Mackinac Center and MLive! Why, without the dogged determination of the former to dig up information available on ANY public school website, the latter might not have been able to publish this earth-shattering, pot-stirring “article.” To make sure they get as many page clicks (and comments) as possible, The GR Press put its link at the top of its homepage.
What’s wrong with this? First, the salaries are reported as part of what’s called “total compensation,” a relatively new trick that adds the cost of pension and health care benefits to one’s salary. In some cases, like Rockford’s Dr. Shibler, he pays 18% of his insurance (not figured into the salary, but at least the Devos GR Press let him defend his earnings).
The main reason this isn’t news is because anyone of us could do what the Mackinac Center for Destroying Public Schools Policy did: visit the website of every district in the state. This, according to multiple MLive articles, is considered “compiling a database.” They also consider it news whenever the Mackinac Center farts in its general direction emails a press release.
That’s the state of journalism in Michissippi, my friends. And our state of education is headed in that direction, too, if the Mackinac Center and MLive have their way.
Hate to burst your cosmic bubble, but. . .
Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire,/Some say in ice.” But, according to the Higgs Boson, it might not be that nice:
“If you use all the physics that we know now and you do what you think is a straightforward calculation, it’s bad news,” Joseph Lykken said at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Monday. “It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it’s all going to get wiped out. This has to do with the Higgs energy field itself.”
That’s right. One cosmic belch and it’s all over.
Rejoice! ELO is back!
Well, almost. Jeff Lynne has three remastered ELO/solo CDs to share with us April 23. Remastered versions of Zoom and Armchair Theatre (his simply awesome solo album), and a live concert recorded before the Zoom tour that never happened. Awesome. 
tspelczech 