Category Archives: Education

The Rise of Pandemic Pod Schooling

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“These families are pooling resources together to pay for private teachers responsible for a handful of students, and even physical learning spaces. While that may sound like a safe alternative to in-person learning, critics suggest it’s likely to increase the already stark inequalities in our education system.”

Learn more here.

The Good Wife astutely speculated on the probable drama that will ensue. “Why weren’t we included in that pod? Aren’t we good enough? Do we really want that family in our pod? Their kids smart enough?”

In Hollywood, television writers perking up.

Many of these parents are no doubt liberals known to talk the talk of equality. Walking it. Not as much.

 

I Can See The Future

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Sometimes I amaze myself.

In April 2016, before the tournament began, I picked a no-name European player to win the Masters, the first of professional golf’s annual four major championships.* When I was at a professional conference in Las Vegas in March I shoulda, coulda, woulda made some serious cash money if I had the courage of my conviction because Danny Willett shocked almost everyone with his win.

Last Saturday night I picked Collin Morikawa to win the first major championship of 2020, the PGA at Harding Park in San Fransisco. At the time, Morikawa was in a 7 person tie for the lead, so not quite as impressive. The youngest of the seven, he shot 64 and won by 2.

All of which prompted this text from a friend:

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Now for better or worse, I feel like a shorter, whiter Steph Curry Devin Booker crossing the half-court line. I know I can jack it up from anywhere and hit nothing but net. So to save you lots of time and nervous energy, I’m calling Biden-Harris the winners in the 2020 Presidential Election. I’d also like to predict one of the November 4th headlines, but a FiveThirtyEight podcast I just listened to convinced me that a clear outcome is likely to take all of November. I’ll predict this though. Whenever Biden-Harris’s victory is official, some headline writers will refer to a “new dawn in America”.

Which will be pretty damn funny given the fact the President-elect will be 78 years old.

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* Watched Willet in a few tournaments in the preceding months. He was playing great golf, even won, but more importantly, his body language conveyed supreme confidence, as in, “No one can touch me.” I took a flyer on that continuing. Golf is a cruel mistress though, 39th in the world, he’s grinding to regain some of that magic. Bonus prediction—President Biden will play considerably less golf than Trump.

Byedon-Harris

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From FiveThirtyEight.

“Harris’s selection is the latest sign of the increasing diversity of the Democratic Party. Democrats last had an all-white, all-male ticket in 2004, with then Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards. This vice presidential process, with Biden committing to choosing a woman fairly early on and then choosing a Black woman, suggests the Democrats may rarely in the future have a ticket of two white men. They may also rarely in the future have a ticket of two white people (as in 2016 with Clinton and Tim Kaine) or two men (as in 2012, with Obama and Biden).”

“May rarely” is the cautious, prudent phrase. I’m throwing caution and prudence to the wind, and saying again, I do not expect to ever see two white men on a Demo ticket. That ship has sailed.

Tuesday Required Reading

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1. What if Some Kids Are Better Off at Home? Some will criticize this as an out-of-touch example of privilege, but that would be a mistake. Every educator should reflect on the “silent misery” of which Schroeder writes. More broadly, there’s a “less is more” outline for meaningful educational reform in her stories.

2. Watch Olympian Katie Ledecky swim with full glass of milk on her head. Hard to find a more dominant athlete in any sport. If I tried it there’d be broken glass on the bottom of the pool.

3. I’m Traveling, Even Though I’m Stuck at Home. What happens when Rick Steves is grounded?

“Travel teaches us that there’s more to life than increasing its speed.”

4. Money, Morality and What Religion Has to Do With It.*

“Some of the most interesting variations emerged when divinity and morality were juxtaposed with wealth. As the chart below illustrates, those living in advanced economies were less likely to link morality with divinity than those in emerging or developing economies. For instance, in Kenya — which had a gross domestic product per capita of $4,509 in 2019 — 95% said that belief in God was integral to being moral; in Sweden, where the GDP figure was $55,815, only 9% felt the same.”

I dig Kenya, but I’m siding with Sweden on this one.

5. Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny Explain QAnon. I cycled with Ben and Brandy Sunday evening. I dare anyone to listen to them and then argue the (dis)United States is not in decline. Are we even trying anymore?

6. Extra credit vid on epistemic trust. For the educators among us. And parents. And anyone that seeks to help others. I use “perspective taking” for “mentalizing”.

Thanks to DB and LG for #4 and #6.

A Glimmer of Hope at (Anti)Liberty University

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Calum Best, 22, who graduated from Liberty in May and who has spoken out against Mr. Falwell’s political activity, called the move ‘a victory.’

‘It feels like they did it more because they were embarrassed, more than because it was the correct thing to do,’ he said. But, he said, ‘it’s great that he is gone.’

‘He is the one who holds up Liberty’s culture of focus on money, material well-being, political nationalism,’ he said. ‘Without Falwell gone, we can’t really change any of that.’

Ruth Graham’s last piece for Slate, Why That Falwell Jr. Yacht Photo Was the Final Straw before she moves to the New York Times. Graham quotes Marybeth Davis Bagget who taught English at Liberty for 17 years and resigned this spring after publishing an op-ed calling for Falwell Jr.’s removal based on his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

“One man cannot act this way without many enablers, and any meaningful reform of the school will require a thorough and brutally honest inquiry into the LU culture.”

Amen to that.

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Wednesday Required Reading

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1. Canceled Races Aren’t Stopping Endurance Athletes From Setting Wild New Records. I’ve been lethargic lately, postponing and/or bagging workouts altogether. Maybe I should try to take one of these records down, but which one? Wonderland in 18 hours? With the help of an electric mtb.

2. Is Your Blood Sugar Undermining Your Workouts? Uh, maybe that’s my problem seeing that I’ve been hitting Costco’s cakes hard all summer.

3. Garmin reportedly paid multimillion-dollar ransom after suffering cyberattack.

4A. Liberty University Poured Millions Into Sports. Now Its Black Athletes Are Leaving. 4B. Photo appears to show Jerry Falwell Jr. with zipper down and arm around a woman. I recommend college presidents, to the best of their abilities, keep their zippers out of the news.

5. Shira Haas of ‘Unorthodox’ on Sharing the Joys of Her First Emmy Nod. I dare you to try to watch Unorthodox’s four episodes over four days.

6. Make Pizza … On Your Grill. Then invite me over.

Just Shut Up and Run, Pass, and Kick

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That’s the sentiment of Mark Zeigler of The San Diego Union in “It’s time for college sports to tell athletes take it or leave it”.

Did Zeigler major in cynicism in college?

“Many of the 17 demands involve COVID-19 and racial equality, the summer’s two hottest topics and no doubt a way to exert leverage with a sympathetic public ear.”

Some of Zeigler’s criticisms of the players efforts to improve their young adult lives are fair, but here he is at his worst:

“Is enough ever going to be enough? Because apparently college athletes – or at least college football players – aren’t going to stop asking for more even as they receive concession after concession. The latest group with its hand out is Pac-12 football players, who issued a lengthy list of “demands” Sunday with the threat of boycotting the season. Here’s a suggestion: Go ahead, boycott away. Your loss.”

There’s a glaring internal inconsistency to his argument. He points out the players are getting a tremendous education for no cost and then implies student-athletes are in reality just athletes who don’t care about school. So, which is it?

For the life of me, I don’t understand anyone that criticizes young people for standing up for what they think is right, especially when most people are apathetic, just going along to get along.

I say right on to the players for imperfectly jabbing at the status quo.

Those who benefit most from the status quo are often the most offended— administrators, coaches, journalists, fans who want to be entertained every fall Saturday afternoon. How dare any players not gratefully accept what they are generously offered. How dare they think for themselves. How dare they agitate for change. Who do they think they are, citizens in a democracy?

I hope the players stick it to the whole, damn, NCAA sports industrial complex.

 

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”

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Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair.

In early April:

“. . . the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.

On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states.”

When “effective political strategizing” substitutes for human decency.