“What is Dialogue” video series: part 3

Today we release part 3 of our video series on dialogue.  Xenia dialogue fellows, community leaders, and friends of Xenia take up the question: what is dialogue, and how can it change the way we interact with each other?

Second podcast features law professor and former domestic violence prosecutor

Today we introduce our second audio interview in our continuing series related to “When It Hits Home: An Evening Concerning Intimate Partner Violence.”

In this interview, Clint Williams asks Connie Smothermon, OU professor of law and former domestic violence prosecutor, questions about Oklahoma’s domestic violence laws, questions about how to get involved, and discusses a domestic violence safety plan.

Connie Smothermon Podcast

Spanish Language Program in Puebla MX

OU students have the rare opportunity to fulfill their Spanish requirements during a five-week (May 23 – June 25) or six-week (May 23 – July 2) Study Abroad program in Puebla, Mexico, at a cost equivalent to taking five hours of Spanish while living on the Norman campus. In addition to studying Spanish, you will be immersed in Mexican history, culture, arts, architecture and family life. One of Mexico’s most beautiful cities, Puebla brings prehispanic and viceroyal heritage together with modern industry and a business influence.

The summer program is approved for Span 1115, 1225, 2113, 2223. Higher levels must be pre-approved through Shawn Gralla. The six-week program includes a one-week education or health professions emphasis. The immersion experience gained by students during the five/six week summer program is invaluable for any college major. The College of Education has worked with Education Abroad, and Puebla faculty to develop the Summer Immersion course in Puebla. The immersion experience gained by students during the six week summer program is invaluable for any college major.

If you’d like to learn more about getting outside the traditional classroom and into the global classroom, please plan on attending a formal information session being offered by the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education. This session is scheduled for:

Thursday, February 18, 2010

5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Cate Center – Building 4 • Room 351

FREE PIZZA WILL BE SERVED

Any questions can be directed to Sherry Cox, Assistant Dean Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, scox@ou.edu.

Study Shows That Abstinence Only…Works?

Analysis…

A study just released has reinvigorated the right in the debate over sexual education.  The study shows that a form of abstinence education was successful in delaying initial sexual encounter, although it did not show std or pregnancy rate.  As President Obama cuts out money for abstinence only programs, what will this mean for sex ed?  More research is needed.

Feministing | But here’s the thing: not all abstinence-only programs are created equal. And this program – which showed success in very young students (the average age was 12) delaying sex for up to two years – is nothing like the abstinence-only programs that were widespread under the Bush administration. This program didn’t lie, shame, or even tell students to wait until marriage to have sex.

In fact, this program that abstinence proponents are falling all over themselves to tout, wouldn’t have been eligible for funding under the Bush administration.

Change.org | The key point in the recent study is that the program under evaluation is not your typical inaccuracy-ridden, condoms-bashing, slut-shaming, gender stereotyping abstinence education. Instead, the program encourages abstinence-until-ready — a message I can definitely get behind. It’s vital that young people understand that they control their own bodies, and that nobody else has the right to pressure them into having sex too early. But it’s also unrealistic to expect that the majority of American students will share the moral condemnation abstinence-until-marriage programs dish against premarital sex.

The Sexademic | I teach my high school students that there are only two ways to absolutely prevent pregnancy and STIs. Abstinence and Masturbation. I tell them repeatedly not to have sex unless they want to take that step. We talk about the emotional complications and physical dangers of sex. We also talk about the immense potential physical pleasure and connection.

The media doesn’t care about the complicated conversations going on inside of classrooms. They want to prop the combative debates with their headlines even if they misrepresent the data.

Dr. Petra | This is a useful paper and a fair piece of research. It has limitations which means it can’t reliably be used to inform sex educational policy, but it would certainly benefit from adaption and replication and a longer follow up. Unfortunately the problem is less about the study (which is clearly discussed by the researchers) and more about how the media has misreported it and how politicians and faith based groups are misrepresenting the findings to suit sex-negative abstinence programmes.

Rather than falling into that trap we should take this research as further evidence that sex education is effective when it is tailored to the individual needs of different children; builds confidence; resists peer pressure; addresses feelings and emotions as well as infections and contraception; promotes delay until a young person is ready for intimacy (see also here and here); and prepares them for positive relationships when they are older.

Best on the Web…

Urban Outfitters Now Has an Obama/Black T-Shirt | Womanist Musings

To me the shirt looks grey but apparently it is “Obama/Black”.  Isn’t it refreshingly hipster? Let’s just turn a human being into a colour ‘cause it is ketchy and might just sell a few t-shirts. What I want to know is when are they coming out with a David Duke White?…Oooops that probably isn’t hipster enough right?  The whole purpose is to appropriate marginalized bodies because people are so cool now that it doesn’t really matter and therefore because Duke is White he won’t get a shirt named after him.

“Million Dollar Blocks” : Incarceration as the New Jim Crow | Racism Review

Currently, the U.S. has more than 2 million people incarcerated in jails and prisons. A disproportionate of these come from a handful of neighborhoods, and in many places the concentration of incarceration rates is so dense that some states are spending in excess of a million dollars a year to lock up the residents of single city blocks.  A lack of opportunity in the legitimate economic structure, combined with more opportunities in the unofficial economy, and the aggressive police state practices that Joe mentioned yesterday, fairly guarantees high reincarceration rates.   In fact, roughly forty percent of those who are released and reenter their communities do not stay more than three years before they are reincarcerated.   These “million dollar blocks” are almost exclusively also blocks where African American and Latino people live.

Miami Beach Police Harass Gay Witness to Their Brutality | Box Turtle Bulletin

Miami Beach Officers Frankly Forte and Elliot Hazzi were going about their business of kicking an unarmed man in the head when they realized that they were being observed. By a gay man, of all people.

So they approached Harold Strickland, pushed him to the ground, tied his hands behind his back and screamed homophobic slurs at him. They said they were sick of the f**ing f**gots in the neighborhood so they decided to arrest him for “attempting to break into cars”.

Unfortunately for Forte and Hazzi, Strickland was on the phone with a 911 operator reporting the beating he was witnessing when they decided that he would be target number two. And the tape of the call corroborates Strickland’s call up until the point where the officers demanded to know who he was and what he was doing there. At the time they “observed him” breaking the law, he was face down in their custody being subjected to police brutality.

Hijacking History, Part 3: Educating Ideologies

This post is the third in a series of blogs of I’ve written following the actions of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) at their January meetings to approve revisions to the state’s K-12 social studies curriculum.  Known as TEKS, these standards will determine the learning goals for Texas students for the next decade and will also impact the publication of textbooks that will be used nationwide.  (I cover this more in the previous blogs, Hijacking History and Hijacking History, Part 2.)  This post will cover the final two days of the meeting where elected members of the SBOE went through the proposed curriculum revisions and voted on changes of their own.  Ultimately, the proceedings exhausted the time allotted for discussion and approval of the revisions, postponing the final vote to the May meeting of the SBOE.

The SBOE is composed of 15 members who are elected from districts based on equal population representation.  Elections to the board are conducted on a partisan basis, and the recent meetings demonstrated just how detrimental this can be to the educational process.  Brian Thevenot of the Texas Tribune has provided excellent coverage of these meetings, and his description of the approval process is no exception:

Debates leading up to the board’s consideration of social studies standards often pitted typically conservative “pro-America” dogma against more typically liberal explorations of women and minority leaders. Yet in the nitty-gritty of at-times testy negotiations, a spirit of mostly polite horse-trading predominated, and most members seemed to get most of what they wanted. And though an eight-member majority block dominated by conservatives often controls the board, votes over specific amendments seldom broke so neatly.

Yet at the end of the day, the approved revisions still took what Terrence Stutz of the Dallas Morning News described as a “tilt to [the] right.” This was highlighted by the inclusion of Phyllis Schafly and the Eagle Forum, the National Rifle Association, the Moral Majority, and the Heritage Foundation to a list of people and groups that student must learn.  The amendment passed on a 7-6 vote, but the comments surrounding it prove just as enlightening:

Board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, offered the amendment requiring coverage of “key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” McLeroy said he offered the proposal because the history standards were already “rife with leftist political periods and events – the populists, the progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society.”

If the current standards are “rife with leftist” ideals, then the approved changes and rhetoric of the board perhaps indicate a marked shift to the right, rather than just a tilt.  Derogatory remarks such as the following one reported following the meetings show not only a preference against multiculturalism, but an outright disregard for the ethnic diversity of our nation:

David Bradley, R-Beaumont Buna, also seemed upset by efforts of fellow board member Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, to include the names of more Latinos in the standards. “If Ms. Berlanga, whose only criteria is skin color, had the votes, she would name us ‘the Hispanic Education Agency,’” he told one reporter.

The circumstances surrounding these meetings mark an unfortunate turn.  Instead of a focus on providing the best education for students, the curriculum process in the state of Texas has become the battle ground for the alleged “culture wars” that ultra conservative voices have been attempting to proclaim since the rise of the Moral Majority in the 1980’s.  And while I doubt that any protest I raise will ultimately be heard, I’ll close with these words from the SBOE History and Duties page on the Texas Education Agency website (emphasis mine):

As part of its efforts to provide the best possible education to public school students, the Board designates and mandates instruction in the knowledge and skills that are essential to a well-balanced curriculum.

I can only hope that the wisdom on which this board was founded will ultimately prevail.

————

Some highlights from the Proceedings of the SBOE on Curriculum Approval:

• A proposal is debated to change the definition of good citizenship for first-graders to include “holding public officials to their word.”
• The deletion of Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers because she was a socialist.
• A requirement that eight grade students analyze ideas in Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address as president of the Confederacy.
• An attempt to change all mentions of U.S. “imperialism” to “expansionism.”
• Deletion of Margaret Sanger, a leading voice for contraception and relationship counseling, and founder of the organization that ultimately became Planned Parenthood.
• Removal of the words “from racial, ethnic, gender, and religious groups” from the existing standard: “Explain actions taken by people from racial, ethnic, gender, and religious groups to expand economic opportunities and political rights in American society.”

These highlights were gathered from live blog coverage of the meetings on January 14 and 15 provided by the Texas Freedom Network:

Live-Blogging the Social Studies Debate

Live-Blogging the Social Studies Debate II

Live-Blogging the Social Studies Debate III

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• Related link: Hijacking History
• Related link: Hijacking History, Part 2: The Texas Curriculum Hearings

Hijacking History, Part 2: The Texas Curriculum Hearings

In a previous blog, “Hijacking History,” I took on the subject of the Texas state curriculum for K-12 education (known as TEKS) and the implications of the proposed revisions to the curriculum that was to be presented to the State Board of Education (SBOE).  This new curriculum will not only determine what will be taught in Texas’ many public schools, but will also likely determine what is seen in new history textbooks throughout the nation.  (I explain this in more depth in my previous post.)

However, it is not just the revised curriculum that raises concern, but the highly pitched partisan battles that are taking place on the SBOE.  Various media outlets have covered the push by an ideologically conservative segment of the board to include standards that appear to better exemplify political and ideological positions than actual learning goals.  This January meeting was no exception, with the opening day hearings marked by controversy.  Brian Thevenot of the Texas Tribune describes the hearings:

As the State Board of Education grinded through testimony on Wednesday over its controversial social studies standards, much of the debate teetered on two basic fulcrums: teaching vs. indoctrination and patriotism vs. realism.

Scores of speakers, many affiliated with political organizations, ran complex issues of race and religion largely through those two filters for hours.

The importance of the curriculum decisions is evidenced by the sheer numbers of people arriving to testify before the SBOE.  Counts put the total near 130 speakers, far too many to be heard before the scheduled 6 pm adjournment.  Yet instead of extending the time for public comments, the board moved to adjourn for the evening anyway.  The Texas Freedom Network’s live blog reports on the events surrounding the close of the meeting:

6:13 – The board is getting angry comments from people who waited all day to testify. They’re demanding that the board continue hearing testimony. (We sympathize. After all, the board isn’t often asked to listen to their constituents on these issues.) A motion to extend the hearing fails on a tie vote. In the chaos, it’s hard to tell how all of the board members voted. But most of the “no” votes appear to have come from the board’s far-right faction…

6:18 – Now would-be testifiers are shouting in anger. More chaos. The chair, Gail Lowe, has to break a tie on a motion to adjourn the meeting. Could there be a clearer representation of the indifference some board members have for the concerns of their constituents? …

UPDATE: After adjournment, the state board’s five Democrats remained to continue listening to testimony from those who were unable to speak before the hearing ended. Many of the remaining testifiers were Latinos, some of whom had traveled from across the state to the hearing.

This crass indifference to the voices of many unheard witnesses is a testimony to the composition of the Texas SBOE.  Dominated by ultra-conservative ideologues who promote an ethnic insensitivity that is overtly racist, even if not overtly bigoted, a harrowingly nationalistic American exceptionalism that remains blinded to our history of injustice, inequity, and imperialism, and an unabashed Christian exclusivism, it should come as no surprise that they would have no compunction for those unfortunate enough to have been too far back in the witness line to speak before 6:00 pm.  While those members who continued to hear the testimony of the remaining witnesses are a credit to their elected office, the SBOE as a whole clearly turned its back on the democratic ideals its most hardened conservatives purport to defend.

Sadly, this is just another symptom of not only a failure of civility, but an utter lack of respect that appears to dominate our political landscape.  Sadder yet, this was only the first day of the meetings.

————

The Texas Freedom Network offered live blog coverage of the events of the January 13 hearings that you can find at the following:

Live-Blogging the Social Studies Hearing

Live-Blogging the Social Studies Hearing II

• Related link: Hijacking History

Reader Madness!

I am continuously amazed by the lengths the public school system takes in order  to sanitize its curriculum of any “inappropriate” or “offensive” material (i.e. anything that upsets or embarrasses parents to discus with their children), but this latest act of censorship really made me blink: schools in the Southern Californian school district of Menifee have banned the Merriam-Weber Dictionary due to its containing a definition of “oral sex”.  The definition given by the dictionary is as follows: “oral stimulation of the genitalia: Cunnilingus, Fellatio”. This is hardly a graphic definition of the term, especially as compared to what can be found on UrbanDictionary.com or anywhere else online. However a parent complained and the dictionary was thus removed from all schools in the district. According to the Menifee local news:

School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the “sexually graphic” entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. The dictionaries were initially purchased a few years ago for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms districtwide, according to a memo to the superintendent.

“It’s just not age appropriate,” said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district.

Now, I find it an interesting concept that the written word, ideas captured in symbols, can somehow be “age inappropriate”–or “age appropriate” for that matter.

What exactly does this mean? Is it that certain words should not be mentioned to those under, or perhaps over, a particular age? Or does it mean that there are some words that you simply can not understand based solely on your biological age–and that once you hit a certain age *ping!* you suddenly know what they mean? One of these is based on social taboos the other deals with physiological development. What makes the the concept of age appropriateness, as applied to writing, so confusing is that it contains elements of both.

Another issue that often overlooked in this debate is the difference between intellectual knowledge and visceral knowledge and how our understanding changes depending on the media through which we are exposed to information. There is a huge difference between reading a definition of oral sex in a dictionary versus seeing images, hearing a recording, or experiencing such an act first hand. In regards to writing, since it is a symbolic system, one must already possess some sort of context in which to interpret the information being presented–else it is nothing but meaningless words. Thus I would argue that banning a book because it is “age inappropriate” is unnecessary. Our understanding of a written work is dependent on the information we already possess before reading it. If a child is able to look up the definition of oral sex in the dictionary and understand what is being said, then they already had a context for understanding the topic (and instead of banning the dictionary the parents should be having a sit down talk with their child…). The fact that the child was curious enough about the topic to go and do research means that it is “age appropriate” for them to learn about to an extent–just not socially appropriate.

Building upon this last point I would also argue that our understanding of information is not dependent of age, rather it changes with age. If you watch young children playing you will quickly see that they understand  ”difficult” concepts such as life, death, sex, etc., for example when a kid yells “bang! I shot you with my laser so now you’re dead!”. They simply have a different level of awareness of such ideas than, say, a 30 year old. And this continues throughout life–how you understand something today will be different from how you understand it 10 years from now.

To return to our discussion of the California case, to say that the children can not be allowed to even learn about certain words (even through their own initiative) until their parents are ready seems a sure way to stifle curiosity, comprehension, awareness, and all those other wonderful things that make us human. And the simple fact is that the children are going to learn about the dirty facts of life, no matter how much their parents try to protect them from the world. This is especially true in regards to instinctively driven behavior, such as sex, where to deliberately try and keep someone in a state of ignorance will only cause them harm.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter.

Hijacking History

I’d like to dedicate this blog post to Bobbie Tetley, my high school AP American History teacher who instilled in me a love of history, and even though I am on the eve of completing graduate school, she remains one of the most challenging, demanding, and respected voices not only of my educational career, but of my life.  Thank you, Mrs. Tetley.  – cwc

————

This first came to my attention through an action alert from the United Farm Workers, an organization I’ve become connected to through my denomination’s participation in the National Farm Worker Ministry.  I received an email asking me to “Stop Texas from erasing Cesar Chavez and Hispanics from school books.”  It provided information about an upcoming session of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) that will be voting on new curriculum standards for social studies for the state of Texas.  UFW asked me to compose an email to Gail Lowe, the chair of the Texas SBOE demanding that they not further marginalize the voices of Latina/os within the history curriculum.

This call to action is one that I’m only too happy to answer.  In case you weren’t aware, as the Texas curriculum goes (which is known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS), so goes the textbook publishers.  As the textbook publishers go, too often, so goes the nation.  Brian Thevenot offers his insights as to the importance:

Hijacking History  |  Texas Tribune

Following earlier clashes over curricula in other disciplines, the social studies debate will test whether the SBOE can cut through the fog of extremism and find a neutral mainstream. Though its appointees spent countless hours drafting the new standards, the board can toss or overhaul portions at any point, as it did with English standards in 2008 and science standards last year. And so a fifteen-member elected board dominated by social conservatives, few of them educators, will once again decide what will and won’t be taught in Texas public schools. Their influence will be magnified exponentially, as usual, because the content of textbooks in the lucrative Texas market drives what publishers peddle in other states.

Thevenot’s implication is clear: there’s even more at stake than the representation of Latina/os in the history curriculum.

The threat to Chavez’s inclusion in the curriculum is only one of many minority names that may be removed or downgraded to “recommendation” status in the curriculum.  Notable among the list of figures targeted for removal is Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice and lawyer who successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education before that same court.

Lowe to guide education board through hot issues  |  AP

Two experts on a board-appointed advisory panel say Chavez, a civil rights activist who supporters say greatly improved conditions for Hispanic farm workers, and Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in racial desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, receive too much attention.

Panelist David Barton, an evangelical Republican activist who was appointed by Lowe, said Chavez “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others.”

Social Studies “Experts” Don’t Know Much About History  |  Austin Chronicle

In another section on history studies, Peter Marshall downplays Thurgood Marshall as not being a “strong enough [example] in light of the multiplicity of persons who have impacted American history.”

…

“This has all been grossly misconstrued,” replied Peter Marshall in an interview with the Chronicle. “My point … is simply one of comparison. … If you’re trying to adduce examples for these guidelines of famous Ameri­cans that ought to be included in the teaching of American history, to pair those two men is silly. Chavez doesn’t begin to compare in terms of his impact on American history with Ben Franklin.” But he made it clear that his objections are also political. “My own personal guess is that the reason he was included in that is that it reflects the leftist bias of the people who wrote the guidelines last time. I don’t know; I don’t know who wrote them. But I’m suspicious of that. … In comparison with [other figures], Chavez doesn’t warrant much attention. … He’s just not real high on my list.”

In their criticisms, both Barton and Marshall along with fellow expert panelist Daniel Dreisbach argue in favor of focusing more on the “Founding Fathers,” and specifically, their religious convictions.  This turn toward what I can only politely describe as a pernicious blending of American civil religion with a particularly aggressive form of evangelical Christianity presents a threat to our national history of religious tolerance and the growing pluralism of this nation of immigrants.  The opinions of the alleged experts are basically echoed by the current chairperson of the Texas SBOE, Gail Lowe:

Lowe to guide education board through hot issues  |  AP

“This country was founded on Judeo Christian principles and to say otherwise is to deny what is very unique about our country.”

Hijacking History  |  Texas Tribune

The question of American superiority likely will come up again at next week’s SBOE meetings, Lowe said. “The state board members had given them (committee members) clear direction in the spring that we wanted that concept included, so it’s surprising they voted it down,” she said. “We don’t have to tell students what to think, but any educated person should have learned about American exceptionalism.”

These attitudes of American exceptionalism, along with its silent partner Christian exceptionalism, are simply inconsistent with our history.  Advocates of this misconception that the “Founding Fathers” were all Christian conveniently forget that many of them were Deists, a theological proposition that evangelical Christians roundly deny.  I doubt that either of the aforementioned religious leaders on the panel would subscribe to the tenets of deism. (David Barton is the founder of WallBuilders and Peter Marshall is founder of Peter Marshall Ministries.)  Yet beyond the religious realm, we often fail to see that American exceptionalism extends benefits to Americans who are white.  The exclusion of Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall in favor of James Madison or Andrew Jackson is obvious on its face: the replacement of two figures of color by two white figures.  Yet in Oklahoma the racial implications of featuring Andrew Jackson in favor of a person of color should become even clearer, as we cannot forget the man who defied the Supreme Court and unconstitutionally uprooted Native Americans in a forced march across the country to their “reservations.” We have to be reminded that “American exceptionalism” all too easily morphs into “white exceptionalism,” the apathetic and unthinking accomplice of white supremacism.

This curriculum meeting should present as a moment for pause.  Yes, we may soon see a flood of deficient U.S. history textbooks that represent a narrow, rather sectarian point of view.  However, as a barometer of attitudes and currents within our nation, it indicates the presence of religious supremacy, structural racism, ethnic bigotry, and international indifference.  To make matters worse, groups and individuals exhibiting these attitudes are often belligerent, self-confident, and self-righteous; offering an understanding of dialogue that looks more like the evangelism of conversion than the engagement of conversation.  If the Texas SBOE approves these very narrow and ahistorical changes to the social studies curriculum in their meeting tomorrow, it will be a travesty on history.  The fact that so many people continue to hold to these inaccurate and dehumanizing ideals right now is a travesty on humanity.

————

As a note of gratitude, I am indebted to the Texas Freedom Network for their extensive coverage of the curriculum changes in their state.  Hats off to them for all of the good work they do on behalf of not only Texans, but the rest of us as well.  I also want to extend my thanks to Brian Thevenot for his article of the same name, whose title I have selfishly co-opted as my own.

Also, if you’d like to send in your comments at the last moment, you can still link here to the United Farm Workers advocacy page and email your comments to SBOE chair, Gail Lowe.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies?

Analysis …

U.S. security officials spent the weekend scrambling to assure the airline-flying public that security measures are in place after a Nigerian man was arrested in a Christmas Day, botched attempt to detonate explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight. According to the Associated Press, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who was arrested this weekend in the alleged plot, has claimed to have received training from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, a U.S. law enforcement official said. Bloggers wondered after the incident whether increased security would make fliers safer or just more stressed, while others began connecting dots between the political situations of Nigeria and Yemen, and al-Qaida’s presence there.

Tech Crunch |  “Before I begin, let me just state that TSA has yet to confirm any of this on its website, so the details aren’t entirely clear at the moment. That said, there are several indications that orders have been issued to cease the use of electronics during international flights. Yes, that means no laptops, no iPods, no Kindles, no CD players, no portable DVD players, no Nintendo DSes — nothing that requires any sort of power on these flights. If this is true, it’s absolutely awful news. … the simple fact is that if the TSA was really this seriously worried about electronic devices, they could have banned them anytime since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Instead, they’re doing it more than 8 years later after a man apparently lit some sort of mixture of powder and liquid in his lap. How that relates to electronics, I’m not sure. This just reeks of a “well, we have to do something” move.”

Alas, a Blog |  “So the guy got some chemicals on that could have maybe started a fire, but weren’t explosive. That’s not particularly scary. Oh, sure, it would be frightening in the moment. But you can’t bring a plane down with an incendiary device. Not even close. In a way, this is the sort of “attack” that proves that terror countermeasures are working. If this is the best al Qaeda and its sympathizers1 can do…well, it’s pretty pathetic. Basically, they’re as frightening as your high school friend who discovered you can set hair spray on fire. Both could hurt someone, other than themselves. But that would be more by chance than by design.”

Hillbilly Report |  “Despite what the final truth may be of the man’s motives and whether he acted alone or not a couple of things immediately jump out at me about this attack. Number one, this shows that sending our troops to Afghanistan and Iraq supposedly to “fight them there so we do not have to fight them here” is obviously playing out a flawed policy by the previous chickenhawks to go to war at all costs and even to a certain extent the current leadership. Their prescence there did nothing to stop this man from boarding plane and trying to blow it up. Perhaps it is better to have our troops here in America to protect the American people.”

Hot Air |  “The priority for this administration should not be “emptying out” Gitmo. It should be securing the US and defeating our enemy.  Our enemy now operates with near-impunity from Yemen and has already conducted two attacks on the US, one of which resulted in 14 deaths and the other could have killed hundreds in the air and others on the ground.  Allowing 95 of their allies to run back to Yemen now would demonstrate the victory of political expediency over national security.  It’s time to close the revolving door on Gitmo and keep the terrorists where we can make sure they don’t attack Americans again.”

• Related link: Bomb Complicates Gitmo Plan  |  Politico

The Agitator |  “If you’re really cynical, you could make a good argument that they’re really only interested in the appearance of safety. They’ve simply concluded that the more difficult they make your flight, the safer you’ll feel. Never mind if any of the theatrics actually work.”

Best of the Web …

Don’t Tread on Me: I Homeschool  |  Miller-McCune

While many of the old arguments against homeschooling have corroded (namely that certified teachers, in the majority of cases, can educate better than parents and that homeschooled children will grow up bewilderingly sheltered from the “real” world), there always seems to be new fronts in this distinctly American culture war.

Culture war. That’s really what homeschooling signifies circa 2009: a sound rejection of the splintering mainstream (and, perhaps now, the perceived heavy hand of an Obama nanny-state) out of deep ideological or personal convictions. Roughly half, and perhaps more, of these homeschoolers are drawn from an evangelical Christian subculture that’s more than wary of encroaching secularism. For these parents, there’s no more pronounced statement than this: “I’ll educate my children however I please — and don’t stand in my way.”

But as the practice rapidly grows — it has seen more than 74 percent increase since 1999 and estimates peg the current number of those homeschooled between 1.5 and 2 million students — it might be time to consider some sensible oversight.

The Blind Side’s Blind Spot  |  GOOD Magazine

Many have poked fun at President Obama’s oft-repeated campaign line, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” but it actually carries a positive and true message that applies here. We can’t sit around and hope that a wealthy family like the Tuohys will step up and help a child in need. The rest of us can do it, too. Of course, not everyone can take a child into their home and provide food, clothing, and a private tutor. But most adults can volunteer to tutor a struggling elementary school student after school, or mentor a middle schooler as she deals with the challenges of adolescence, or help a high school junior prepare for the SAT and the college admissions process. Regularly spending time with a student, especially over an extended period of time, can make a profound impact on her or his life.

Rethinking Work: How About We Take Activism Seriously  |  Global Comment

A government that doesn’t provide for its people, after all, depends on charities—nonprofits–to do its work for it. And nonprofit work requires an acknowledgment that you’re not in it for the money. Especially for those of us in left causes, we are pressured constantly to work harderfastermore! “for the cause,” and we’re not supposed to care about money. At least, I presume, at right-wing think tanks and organizations, they openly worship the Dollar and wouldn’t dream of working for less than bloated compensation packages. But do we have to think that money is the only incentive to work hard in order to be treated fairly?

Activism is often an extracurricular activity—we have day jobs, sometimes more than one, and then we work overtime and weekends volunteering for causes that matter. And to some degree the work keeps us alive and going. It is fulfilling and refreshing in a way that our day job is not.

But it is also work.

The Death — or Rebirth — of Journalism

Analysis …

A few weeks ago, former Republican presidential candidate, Arkansas governor and Chuck Norris fan Mike Huckabee reported on his Fox News program that journalism — the Fourth Estate and the watchdog of society — had met an untimely end, reduced at its death to “ink-stained drivel that smeared the pages of paper and the people who attempted to read it.” While Huckabee was mostly referring to his comments on various subjects that he claimed journalists had mangled, other bloggers and media observers have noted the decline of U.S. newspapers, which is one of the foundations of U.S. news. Can the newspaper industry be saved? Or is journalism growing beyond the ink-and-paper method of news delivery?

Mint.com |  “The newspapers used to make the news, now they are the news. Reports of their death may indeed be premature but there is no question they are dying. The recession hasn’t helped but the real story is a shift in the habits of American consumers and the emergence of a new generation that gets most of its news online and for free. Newspapers are struggling for both relevancy and revenue in every major US market (although some are certainly making valid efforts to compete and innovate in the digital world).”

Clay Shirkey |  “I think a bad thing is going to happen, right? And it’s amazing to me how much, in a conversation conducted by adults, the possibility that maybe things are just going to get a lot worse for a while does not seem to be something people are taking seriously. But I think this falling into relative corruption of moderate-sized cities and towns — I think that’s baked into the current environment. I don’t think there’s any way we can get out of that kind of thing. So I think we are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism, because the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place.”

Ethan Zuckerman |  “When the Rocky Mountain News folded, they sought support from their readers to continue with an online newsroom. Only 6% of readers said they’d pay to support that work, which the Rocky staffers took as a signal that their work was unappreciated. But that figure wouldn’t have shocked anyone in public radio. In that space, 6% support is quite good, not evidence that a model needs to be abandoned. We may need to reconsider how to support news around such models.”

Paul Graham |  “There have always been people in the business of selling information, but that has historically been a distinct business from publishing. And the business of selling information to consumers has always been a marginal one. When I was a kid there were people who used to sell newsletters containing stock tips, printed on colored paper that made them hard for the copiers of the day to reproduce. That is a different world, both culturally and economically, from the one publishers currently inhabit. People will pay for information they think they can make money from. That’s why they paid for those stock tip newsletters, and why companies pay now for Bloomberg terminals and Economist Intelligence Unit reports. But will people pay for information otherwise? History offers little encouragement.”

MoJo Blogs |  “Warren Hellman, the patron saint of the Best. Festival. In. San Francisco. Ever. is plunking down $5 million to seed the creation of what’s being called the Bay Area News Project, a journalism outfit that’ll be linked with KQED public radio and television, UC Berkeley’s J-School, and it looks like The New York Times.  Alan Mutter has the best summary of the deal, and Dave Cohn just put up a smart post about what he hopes Hellman’s project does. Lots of details still to be worked out, so I think it’s way too early to say much more than that I’m really hoping this works out.”

News …

• How investing in universal education around the world benefits the U.S. (Read more).
• The politics of the computer keyboard (Read more).
• Are Muslim women oppressed? Ask one! (Read more).
• Watch below: Jonathan Zittrain on how the Internet is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust (More info).

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