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Written by Chris Whitside
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Monday, 11 February 2008 |
Growing Up Online: Documentary Broadcast on PBS January 23, 2008
Available for viewing and discussion online at PBS.org.
As with everything else on TV, while
documentaries may educate, their first job is to entertain. That requires
drama, heroes, villains, and a story with a beginning, middle and neatly-wrapped-up
ending. Growing Up Online teases its audience with a number of ostensible
villains – insolent teens, online predators and an immoral cyber culture that
distracts teens from the straight and narrow of homework, family and community
life. We are provided with lots of hand-wringing material as we learn about the
interminable hours adolescents spend online in social networks, chat rooms,
vanity web sites and playing online games. We hear about the threats of sexual
predators online and about the dangers to personal privacy.
In the end, the villains, if not exactly defeated,
are at least contained and understood: teens need respect before they’ll give
it; children are not stupid about predators; and cyber culture is seen as a
threat to morality mostly because it’s new to parents – like rock and roll to
the grandparents of today’s kids.
Growing Up Online is definitely a valuable
documentary but anyone invested in holistic education reform will be struck by its
status quo conceits about child socialization, families, community and schools.
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Written by Chris Whitside
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Saturday, 02 February 2008 |
Garrison Keillor added his two cents to the No Child Left Behind debate with his editorial "We're Failing Our Kids." The tagline is "No Child Left Behind has plenty of flaws, but throwing it out because it's a Republican plan is morally disgusting." Read his editorial at Salon.com.
I was appalled. The bard of Lake Woebegone siding with George Bush? It can't be.
I've long enjoyed the wit and wisdom of The Prairie Home Companion where Keillor displays a rustic kind of homespun wisdom in his monologues and songs. He calls himself a democrat and his writing is flavored with small town, common sense liberalism. So to hear him suggest even the slightest support for Bush's education agenda hit like a punch in the gut. I immediately thought "He doesn't know what's going on. He needs to be taught a lesson." I felt betrayed.
Those primal feelings of defensiveness, however, are exactly at the heart of his message. We've failed our children because we haven't helped them learn how to rise above those feelings. We haven't taught them the value of listening closely and with compassion to opponents so that common ground for negotiation can be found. Instead, liberals and conservatives alike, dismiss the concerns of their opponents with utter contempt. Keillor points out that liberals in the U.S. have done exactly that with No Child Left Behind. The result is no genuine discussion, no compromise, no progress and the children lose.
This is behavior that may have had value for our most primitive ancestors but it certainly does more harm than good today. We as a society and as a species are tragically stuck - making little progress on issues like poverty, pollution, oil, etc. - because our primitive inclination is to fight, not to negotiate. And every time we snear in contempt at those with whom we disagree, we model that way of thinking to our children.
It's particularly reprehensible because we know better. Conflict resolution and negotiating skills are long studied arts that can be learned easily by children. But we have to get it through our heads that they will never learn these lessons from lectures when what they see and hear is so different.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 02 February 2008 )
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Written by Chris Whitside
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Wednesday, 24 October 2007 |
The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin
I’m still reeling after reading this book by Keith E. Stanovich –
just as I did more than twenty years ago after reading its seminal predecessor,
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins . The first clue of its importance to
holistic educators is in the subtitle, “finding meaning." After all, that’s a
guiding principle for student motivation and effective learning. And where does
meaning start if not in knowing who I am? The staggering idea suggested by this
book, however, is that you and I (and our children) have little idea who we are while
corporate and political predators do
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 October 2007 )
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Written by Chris Whitside
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 |
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Oops! I wrote Our Children and the Bear, THEN immediately started to read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. Ouch, bad timing. I'm feeling a little silly for exposing my ignorance about economics but I guess that's what makes blogging so educational. In my personal explorations of spirituality, I came across Abundance Theory but I never really understood it. Like most knuckle-draggers I was still operating under the impression that economics is a zero sum game. That is, in order to have winners, you must have losers.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 October 2007 )
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Written by Chris Whitside
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Friday, 03 August 2007 |
Who are we kidding besides ourselves? If the U.S., Canada and other so-called first world countries are going to compete in a global economy, I can see no hope of maintaining our (relatively) luxurious living standards. Whatever advantages we had are slipping away, perhaps faster than we think. Competitors are catching up in technology, education, and even in mastery of the dominant language. What's left? The resilience and flexibility of free enterprise? That's going too with the resurrection of post-communist free economies. Not only that, newly industrialized countries have newer, more efficient infrastructures and are increasingly stable.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 October 2007 )
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Written by Chris Whitside
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Thursday, 28 June 2007 |
It struck me while listening to Stephen Downes sum up his lecture in Taipei that this man might be asking for a stoning or crucifixion. Considering our massive investment in the education industry, many people will certainly think his prescriptions dangerously heretical. Like the ancient gnostic Christians who wanted a direct connection with God, Stephen Downes is an advocate for a direct connection with learning.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 23 October 2007 )
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