Parents ‘n Schools

There was a meeting of parents at my children’s school the other night to discuss the “challenges and opportunities” regarding a certain program offered at the school.
I (like I expect 8 out of 10 parents) did not go. Everybody has reasons, and mine were twofold. First, I’d spent 4.5 hours in a dentist’s chair that […]

[Read more →]

(GLO — January 2009 — I was very pleased with this entry when I wrote it, and remain so still. I like it. I like what it says, and I like what it prompts. I am still waiting for your comments about the things YOU wonder about. I’m sure we could make a nice list.)
In […]

[Read more →]

The folks at IDEO (creative labs) in working for a health care provider had the notion of visiting an emergency ward as a “pretend” patient and taking a video camera along to record everything that “patient” saw during his time there. The video, when brought back to the office, was very powerful. Memorably, it included […]

[Read more →]

(GLO — January 2009 — We gave our 10-year-old son an iPod Touch for Christmas. I had bought one for myself earlier in the year. If you have not seen one, or do not own one, you should have a look. What it is, basically, is almost literally anything you want it to be. It […]

[Read more →]

The difference between meaningful parent involvement as co-educators of their children, and mere lip service to that ideal, is the difference between “we’re here to help” and “we’ll take it from here”.
The overwhelming message of government schooling and professional schoolers is “we’ll take it from here”.
Just give us another [insert number as sustains labour costs] […]

[Read more →]

As James Surowiecki reminds in his www.TED.com talk, optimum wisdom in any group setting requires working to maintain and facilitate optimum independence of the group members.
In my experience, government school mechanisms for bringing parents and teachers together toward assisting in guiding or participating in government schooling are not designed with such “independence maintaining” in mind, […]

[Read more →]

The human animal is not, by nature, a meeting-goer. It does not spring from the womb crying “have your people call my people”, or draft agendas for fun or art form.
The human parent — while it may develop a craving for meetings as an excuse to get out of the house — is by necessity […]

[Read more →]

(GLO — January 2009 — I very much believe government schooling would greatly benefit from the coming on the scene of a “Ralph Nader”, and that there is little within government schooling that could not be improved by a couple dozen “consumer actions” sprinkled here and there. It’s as much a legal one-way-street as ski […]

[Read more →]

I’ve likened government schooling to Detroit automakers before, in the manner of illustrating what I believe the likely future will be for government schooling from its similar unsustainable labour costs (particularly pension entitlements), inability to address its labour dependence and tendency to fight competition with monopolistic “holding-your-breath-until-you-turn-purple” techniques. But let’s consider the comparison in another […]

[Read more →]

(GLO — January 2009 — I’ve always enjoyed a good science fiction story (or “speculative fiction”, as Robert A. Heinlein used to sometimes prefer), and this is an attempt at that from me. A lot of the stuff that was speculative and outlandish in R.A.H.’s fiction written in the first half of the last century […]

[Read more →]