Having read The Road last year, and having just finished Far North, I’ve been increasingly fearful as I read Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future . While McKibben does try and point out some of the ways that the world is not ending, the combination of globalization and agricultural specialization highlights the tenuous nature of our so-called advanced civilization…if the food in most American houses has traveled 1,500 miles to get there, what happens if this distribution network breaks? Maybe it’ll be less about 28 Days or the Machines than a Grapes of Wrath Style Dustbowl.

Happy thoughts on the night before everyone goes back to school.

I watched these books fly off the shelves at Colin’s book fair but hadn’t had a chance to read them yet. My nephew had two of them that I read in rapid succession this week…awesome stuff. Reminded me of this New Yorker article about the purpose of children’s literature, where Elizabeth Kolbert offers a split between permissive vs. protectionist visions of children’s literature. These books are on the far side of permissive — not unlike Calvin and Hobbes — I feel like I’d have to read them with my kids to ensure that some of the jokes or activities weren’t attempted.

(How do you acknowledge the hilarity of your kids’ comments without encouraging inappropriate language?)

So there’s a great article in Sunday’s Times about how the new brain research is influencing early childhood education. I’m fascinated by this process, and not just because my son is in kindergarten.
One striking thing, though: each researcher has their own curriculum attached to their research. So…what’s the sequence? Do research, assess results, develop curriculum, sell it? Develop curriculum, do research, tweak curriculum, sell it? Even assuming that every researcher described here approaches each step with integrity, it just seems troubling that the end result of the research is a product that can be sold. I know that no one is getting rich here — or maybe they are — but in a world where “research-based” has become a selling point, how do we make sure that the “product” is free of commercial considerations?

On the other hand, I’d rather it was a researcher trying to bring their studies into a classroom then a textbook company…

Reminds of the time a vice principal came into my room and asked me where she could order the curriculum I was using. I snorted… she couldn’t understand that I spent much of my free time designing that curriculum, with my own skills and my own knowledge of my students, and with the help of feedback offered by my students. Isn’t that the best part of teaching?

I’m reading Nelson Lichtenstein’s new book on the impact of Walmart on American life. One development he stresses throughout is the shift from manufacturers having all the data about customer habits — they know what’s selling where based on orders and such — to retailers, particularly Walmart.

Last week, while searching for the new Bob Dylan Christmas record at Best Buy, I asked an “associate” where to find it. She pulled up the screen for this album and this long list of data emerged: which store was selling the most copies, how many copies were selling each week and each day, how many copies were in the store and available in the warehouse…I only get a few second glance at this screen but it was amazing just how much information they had about EVERY SINGLE product in their store.

Powerful little film. The crazy part: apart from one minor, peripheral reference to a cell phone, it was hard to locate this movie in time, which was definitely part of its appeal.

I pride myself on being an internet dork, but this hoax got me. Guess I really want a dog.

Another solid article about auto. Best part (for me) was hearing this student’s voice:

As student Azeem Hill told me this week:

“People talk about school-reform strategies in Philly. Our car club is a reform strategy.”

Donate here.

From this exchange:

What I fear most is that education research will come to be done primarily by social science specialists prepared in academic disciplines who know little about everyday life in schools and thus are unable to pursue questions of genuine educational imagination. I fear that they would act as social science mandarins with the power to dictate detailed behaviors to teachers, further constraining the professional discretionary authority of frontline school practitioners—teachers and principals—rather than supporting that authority and informing everyday practice in ways that make sense to practitioners. Given the extremely regressive relationship between management and frontline service provision in schools—as I will describe in my second-round comments—I see the trend toward outsourcing education research to a social scientific mandarinate as elitist, dangerous, and wrong.

Spending the morning with an old friend — The One Best System by David Tyack — and (re) found this quote from John Dewey regarding the use of intelligence tests:

“Our mechanical, industrialized civilization is concerned with averages, not percents. The mental habit which reflects this social scene subordinates education and social arrangements based on averaged gross inferiorities and superiorities….the schools apparently “welcome a procedure which under the title of science sinks the individual in a numerical class…”

Tyack, David. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. 198.

Dewey, John. “Indidviduality, Equality, and Superiority.” New Republic, 33 (Dec. 13, 1922), 61-63.