(7) Back to the Curious Case of Kelsey Alexander

Not Kelsey Alexander

Department Of Education Hires Art Teacher To Spread Evenly Across All U.S. Public Schools is evidently a satire, and if so, it's directed at the beleaguered Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. These art lessons for students at 98,000 schools across the US are a sham, and this particular Kelsey Alexander probably doesn't exist.
 

(6) Comedy of Err ... Comedy of The Onion

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Now I see that there was reason why I rarely read "The Onion." To wit:

The Onion is an American digital media company and news satire organization. The publication's origins are rooted in its distribution as a weekly college print publication beginning in 1988, but in the spring of 1996 The Onion put its content online in the form of a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news. Starting in 2007, the organization began publishing satirical news audio and video online, as the Onion News Network. In 2013, the publication ceased publishing the print edition and launched Onion Labs, an advertising agency.

The Onion‍ '​s articles satirically comment on current events, both real and fictional. It satirizes the tone and format of traditional news organizations with stories, editorials, op-ed pieces, and man-in-the-street interviews using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press. The publication's humor often depends on presenting mundane, everyday events as newsworthy, surreal or alarming. Comedian Bob Odenkirk has praised the publication stating, "It's the best comedy writing in the country, and it has been since it started."

Reference: The Onion.

BTW: The "Fake news sites" list in the image is from Facebook “satire” tag could wipe out the Internet’s terrible hoax-news industry.
  

(5) What about The Onion?

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I've read The Onion only a few times over the years, and it describes itself as such:

The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1765, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.

In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more than 350,000 full- and part-time journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world, and members of its editorial board have served with distinction in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria, Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.

The Onion is now available exclusively online without charge in order to take advantage of various charity tax benefits.

Reference: About The Onion
  

(4) How many handcuffs on Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan

“The question is not whether we’re going to put handcuffs on Arne Duncan,” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky of Third Way, a centrist think tank. “The question is how many handcuffs.”

Reference: Even as Congress moves to strip his power, Arne Duncan holds his ground
 

(3) More on the Curious Case of Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan

Salon writer Diane Ravitch:

"It will take years to recover from the damage that Arne Duncan’s policies have inflicted on public education. He exceeded the authority of his office to promote a failed agenda, one that had no evidence behind it. The next president and the next Secretary of Education will have an enormous job to do to restore our nation’s public education system from the damage done by Race to the Top. We need leadership that believes in the joy of learning and in equality of educational opportunity. We have not had either for 15 years."

Reference: Diane Ravitch’s devastating Arne Duncan critique: The education secretary earned his F.

You see, friends, education matters a lot to me. I agree with a lot of advocates that it's the royal road out of dire circumstances: poverty, crime, and violence. But if delivered incompetently or corruptly, then that very same "education" becomes a farce at best and a disaster at worst.

The following are three of the "accomplishments" in Duncan's Secretary of Education resume, which Ravitch lists:

(1) He used his control of billions of dollars to promote a dual school system of privately managed charter schools operating alongside public schools;

(2) He has done nothing to call attention to the fraud and corruption in the charter sector or to curb charters run by non-educators for profit or to insist on charter school accountability or to require charters to enroll the neediest children;

(3) He pushed to require states to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, which has caused massive demoralization among teachers, raised the stakes attached to testing, and produced no positive results.

Very unfortunate, indeed.
 

(2) The Curious Case of Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan with Jon Stewart

"The subject of [Washington Post education journalist Lindsey] Layton’s reporting, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was the bipartisan stud when the Obama administration debuted but has now devolved into the bipartisan flop as new bills in Congress seek to do all they can to neuter the secretary [yikes!] and make sure future secretaries never do what he did ever again [whoa!]."

Reference: Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point 

It was Secretary Duncan who hired the curious Kelsey Alexander, whom I was curious about in my previous post. Apparently the Secretary has been a colossal flop!
 

(1) The Curious Case of Kelsey Alexander

Kelsey Alexander (?)

So I read this short article - Department Of Education Hires Art Teacher To Spread Evenly Across All U.S. Public Schools, in The Onion - and on first blush I really liked it. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised the recent hiring of art teacher Kelsey Alexander. She is tasked with promoting art for all students across all public schools in the US.

If you're scratching your head, and wondering what is wrong with this story, then you're in the same boat as I am:

(a) There 98,000 schools for Ms. Alexander to visit, and she is slated to teach at every single one (hmm). She will cycle through these schools, and when she's finished, she will cycle again.

(b) “An education in the visual arts is a vital part of every child’s education, and with Ms. Alexander’s hiring, we can now guarantee that each student in America will have an art class at some point during their K-through-12 years. We know she will make a wonderful addition to every single school district in the country," says Secretary Duncan.

I thought: Wouldn't it make more sense to craft a strategic plan to engage current art teachers, train and hire more of them, and fund their curriculum and materials? This way, students actually get a program, as opposed to one-off, "40-minute art course."

(c) Speaking of "fund," apparently the 26-year old art teacher has already spent about $3.2 million on art supplies out of pocket for her cross-country lessons. $3.2 million (huh), an art teacher has this sort of wealth (huh)?

(d) Who is Kelsey Alexander anyway? Here is a Kelsey Alexander who's a dancer, choreographer and director.  Here is another Kelsey Alexander who's an art teacher at Asheland Studios.
 

Limitless Unknown, Infinite Learning

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It was very insightful of my then 12-year old daughter to say that over time, the unknown gets bigger.  I was walking her through my Theory of Everything, particularly the equation I had drawn up, where I posit that ToE must account both for all theories known to humankind and also all theories we have yet to formulate (unknown).  What Eva said echoes this post on Google+ perfectly.  Over time, assuming we ease our illusion and arrogance about how much we know, we come to realize more and more how little we truly know.  We come to realize that learning opens our minds and our horizons, and it brings even more of the world to learn about.  Because the unknown is essentially limitless, the things we as humankind have to learn, or want to learn, must be positively infinite.

`Schooling the World, the World Schooling Us

`American Progress, painted by John Gast, in 1872

A lady I met at a networking event in Dubai invited me and several friends to a showing of `Schooling the World: The White Man's Last Burden.  Disturbing was one of my first reactions.

An ancient culture is an ecosystem, a complex web of relationships, between human beings and the land they live on.  As in any ecosystem, every element is intertwined with all the others.  And as in any ecosystem, sudden changes have unpredictable effects.

Among the most pernicious ways of oppressing a people, I suggested to friends years ago, are to school their mind with your way of thinking, to inculcate their spirit with your religion, and to put your toothpaste in their mouth.  We were talking about how the Spanish, Chinese and Americans colonized the Philippines for centuries.  

The traditional forms of knowledge fostered sustainability.  All of these cultures were not perfect.  But they did know about their own specific climate, soil, water, and they did manage to survive, independently, in charge of their own lives, for generation after generation. 

In Part 2 of The Core Algorithm - Making the Future, I argued that Ptolemy’s geocentric view persists in modern-day. That many of us think and act as if the world still revolved around us, somehow.  The industrialized, the wealthy, and the powerful have the privilege of a geocentric view on the world.

The stated mission of the World Bank is "to reduce global poverty." But many have come to question whose interests the Bank really serves.  Who really benefits when every child on the planet is educated in the same way?

How does the biggest economy in the world, among the most educated nations in the world, come to harbor 13,247,845 children living in poverty?

What is amazing is that people who are claiming to be concerned with social justice cannot see the huge kind of social hierarchy and inequity that is created through modern education.  Mind-boggling for me how people don't see that.

Well-meaning people like Heidi are moved by the local culture and are keen to help, such as collecting money to build a hostel, where school children who have left their families can board.  But sometimes our efforts to help may not be so helpful, especially when we don't connect the dots and we don't see the overall impact of our efforts.

A language isn't just grammar or vocabulary.  A language is a flash issuance of spirit, its a vehicle through which the soul of every culture comes in the world.  Every language is like an old growth forest of the mind, an ecosystem of thought, a watershed of social and spiritual possibilities.

I am privileged to have traveled from Europe to the Middle East and from Asia to Africa, and honestly I appreciate that people across the globe speak English.  But English as a form of cultural hegemony is not good, so I also appreciate that countries like France and Belgium challenge English as an international language.  However, children cannot readily challenge or rebuff that, and are subject to punishment if they do.

Education is a compulsory, forcible action of one person upon another... Culture is the free relation of people... The difference between education and culture lies only in the compulsion, which education deems itself in the right to exert.  Education is culture under restraint.  Culture is free.  ~Leo Tolstoy.

Mahatma Gandhi echoes these words by speaking specifically about the domination of Western culture and consequently the lack of freedom of Indian people.  To his and Tolstoy's points, the Spanish, Chinese and Americans may no longer be in control of the Philippines, but their longstanding history of oppression remains formidable albeit invisible shackles around the ankles of Filipinos.

There is an assumption that Western education, Western knowledge is universally applicable, is something that is superior.  There is a sense that we have evolved into a higher level of being, and that these people, however lovely they are, are going to benefit from this superior knowledge.

Whether in the Philippines where I was born and where I attended school until 3rd grade, or whether in the US where I grew up, attended universities, and nailed down an advanced degree, I am a product of Western education and culture.  I happen to love what I've learned and how I've learned it.  So there isn't anything innately wrong with Western education or culture itself.  It is as much ours as local education or culture is to local people and communities.  But to use that as an imperialist bully pulpit is arguably immoral and irresponsible.

If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? 

You would change the way it educates its children. 

The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a ‘better’ life for indigenous children. 

But is this true? What really happens when we replace a traditional culture’s way of learning and understanding the world with our own? SCHOOLING THE WORLD takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply disturbing look at the effects of modern education on the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures. 

Beautifully shot on location in the Buddhist culture of Ladakh in the northern Indian Himalayas, the film weaves the voices of Ladakhi people through a conversation between four carefully chosen original thinkers; anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence; Helena Norberg-Hodge and Vandana Shiva, both recipients of the Right Livelihood Award for their work with traditional peoples in India; and Manish Jain, a former architect of education programs with UNESCO, USAID, and the World Bank. 

The film examines the hidden assumption of cultural superiority behind education aid projects, which overtly aim to help children “escape” to a “better life” – despite mounting evidence of the environmental, social, and mental health costs of our own modern consumer lifestyles, from epidemic rates of childhood depression and substance abuse to pollution and climate change. 

It looks at the failure of institutional education to deliver on its promise of a way out of poverty – here in the United States as well as in the so-called “developing” world. 

And it questions our very definitions of wealth and poverty – and of knowledge and ignorance – as it uncovers the role of schools in the destruction of traditional sustainable agricultural and ecological knowledge, in the breakup of extended families and communities, and in the devaluation of elders and ancient spiritual traditions. 

Finally, SCHOOLING THE WORLD calls for a “deeper dialogue” between cultures, suggesting that we have at least as much to learn as we have to teach, and that these ancient sustainable societies may harbor knowledge which is vital for our own survival in the coming millennia.

Reference: `Schooling the World.

To forge that dialogue between Western and local cultures is to require a common language.  But that common language comes best when both cultures are willing to listen earnestly, to learn openly, and to understand as holistically as possible.  Westerners have as much to teach, and to learn from, local people.

The fundamental message of `Schooling the World is at the heart of what I wrote in Part 1 - A Beautiful Matter, as an introduction to my conceptual framework:

In brief, then, Theory of Algorithms encourages us to (1) look at everything as is, keeping in mind that human reality is part of reality. It also encourages us to (2) avoid preconceived notions about things and (3) avoid sweeping generalizations about people. Finally it encourages us to (4) understand others and their situation first, as best as we can, before making judgments or drawing conclusions.

Bill Clinton on Paying Attention and Listening

I grew up in an oral culture of storytelling and I was raised by highly intelligent people, most of whom had very limited formal education but they were highly intelligent. And I was taught to listen and to observe and to pay attention and to listen to other people's stories. I was taught that everybody's got a story. I was taught that every life had some inherently interesting part of it but that most people can't get it out.

I really like the idea of making sure children hear and understand others' stories, before they get a chance to tell their own stories. Remember one of the habits of highly effective people: Seek first to understand, before being understood. It is the essence of working with others and forging meaningful relationships with them.

Andreas Schleicher on Research on Education

We also see that that parental involvement isn't about having an academic degree as a parent or spending hours of time on homework. It's really the interest parents show for the education of their children. For example, when parents regularly ask their children, you know, "How was school today? What did go wrong?" We can see those kids actually having a significantly higher performance at school than kids -- even kids from wealthy neighborhoods where parents do not show that level of engagement.

So if you have children, or nieces and nephews, ask them, for example: How was school today? What did you learn? How did you do on your test? What did you see on your field trip? How were the other kids in the class?

Salil Shetty on the Right to Education

From an Amnesty International perspective I would say the biggest dream that we would have for education is to actually make the right to education a reality for every single child and adult in the world.

We mustn't think of education, though, as exclusively the sort of education we Westerners have come to know. The education that people from different cultures, communities or villages need may be something unique - that is, in terms of content, language, platform, forum and delivery.

Irina Bokova on Education as Means to an End

I do believe in the first place that education is one of the best investments in order to achieve sustainability in any development but particularly girls. Because in many parts of the world girls are a synonym with poverty in the rural areas. Girls are the marginalized communities in the communities. There are still a lot of stereotypes and because poverty has sometimes a women's face.

Bokova also suggests that education ought to be based on values, or, as in The Core Algorithm, it must have an end in mind.

Bill Clinton on Essence of Meta-Learning

The most important thing I learned is that it's important to keep on learning.

Meta-learning - learning how to learn, learning something about learning - is a crucial skill, value and habit to nurture.