digital guerrilla

Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and corporate leaders, plans to announce Sunday that roughly 12 states are committing to raise high school rigor and align their graduation requirements with skills demanded in college or work”The fucking problem highlighted so well here is that teaching is headed in the wrong direction and it’s the politicians and business men chasing it that way like the bulls in pamplona. Instead of teaching kids how to think education is becoming about teaching them what to think and how to work.A little further down in the article, it describes what the governors and corporate leaders want as “requiring tougher courses for all students”…. Whether high school courses are too easy or not is not the problem. Before I get more specific, here’s a quote from your friend and mine, Bill Gates:”By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they’re working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.”I agree with our once but-not-future overlord about that…. No, the politicians and business men want to teach kids the skills they need to be drones and uninformed voters.What we need is a required course on critical thinking, a course on research, a course on speaking.

Kris Kristofferson’s song “To Beat the Devil” popped up on the iPod the other day and the lyrics really struck me, particularly the partAnd you still can hear me singing to the people who don’t listenTo the things that I am saying, praying someone’s going to hear;And I guess I’ll die explaining how the things that they complain aboutAre things they could be changing, hoping someone’s goin’ to care.I was born a lonely singer and I’m bound to die the sameBut I’ve got to feed the hunger in my soul;And if I never have a nickel I won’t ever die of shame’cause I don’t believe that no-one wants to know!