Beyond School

Even if my recent “Politics Around the Web” posts have turned you off, I hope you noticed that they are a model of a very simple activity for any number of classes – current events, politics, science and math news, more – that want students to read and exhibit critical thinking about what they read. I say “simple” because all it takes is a Google News account, a Diigo account, and a blog.

This screencast shows you how it works, compliments of screencast-o-matic and Blip.tv:

This is just hilarious, and a brilliant idea at the same time: taking the Wasilla Town Meeting minutes (Sarah Palin presiding), and turning them into a one-man drama performance. Do yourself a favor and laugh as you learn about the extent of this woman’s experience, and worse yet, her leadership style.

Oh yes.

Thomas Friedman, author and saint of the edublogosphere¹ for his book, The World is Flat, now flattens shameless dimwit and aspiring 2012 Cheerleader-in-Chief Sarah Palin with this steamroller of an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times.

A taste:

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic. [read on]

You have to wonder how Palin will react to this. She distorted the NYTimes non-smear piece on Obama and Ayres’ superficial connection, after all, to smear Obama to the degree that McCain/Palin crowds are yelling “treason,” “kill him,” “off with his head,” and hurling the N-word in right-wing racist hate-fests.

But now that the Times is openly smearing her, she’ll surely dismiss it as that gosh-darned mainstream media filter playing “gotcha journalism.”

Don’t miss Friedman’s comparison of Palin’s “energy expertise” with that of the King of Saudi Arabia at the end of the column. Priceless honesty.

1. though, because of Friedman’s “Hey Iraq: Suck. On. This.” stupidity – never mind that Iraq was not Al Qaeda – I’ll worship elsewhere, thanks [↩]

Nothing sadder than a sick joke that’s true. Adennack’s brilliant flowchart below is not an exaggeration of Palin’s approach when non-answering Gwen Ifill’s debate questions:¹

If you’re as disgusted as I am that the media is calling this insult to democracy and intelligence a “passed test” on Palin’s part (and Ifill miserably failed my test for quality debate questions), post it, spread it, make it viral.

No, wait. I changed my mind. I want a Vice President who blows kisses to world audiences at grave political moments like she did before the debate. I want sage political wisdom from the bleachers of the hockey rink.

I suspect living in Rome c. 425 must have felt like this. Uncanny.

1. here’s hoping Katie Couric, the only interviewer with the guts to ask a follow-up, moderates in 2012 [↩]

Call me crazy. I care that science not be confused with superstition in schools.

That’s why I like this riposte to Sarah Palin’s “teach them both theories” nonsense about creationism/intelligent design in science classrooms:

[N]ext time you hear this innocent sounding, ever so reasonable, “teach both sides” proposition . . . from . . . Sarah (did she really think her father had his own theories of evolution?), ask yourself where you would draw the line. Where would they draw the line? Either kids learn the results of the scientific understanding of the world, or we turn all schools into “madrassas”, differing only in the brand of religion with which the students are being indoctrinated. And we head back to medieval times, the monks running the schools, needing a whole new scientific revolution to repeat history, and get us back to where we were before this religious insanity re-emerged in the late twentieth century. [emphasis added]

You can read the rest, including a very nice catalogue of other discredited religious teachings about science we may as well resurrect along with Genesisology, in the nicely titled “Geology. Palinology.”

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Of related interest, see here for a good digest of Palin’s record and positions. All supported with links/references.

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of America, where do they go? It's Alaska!" Palin CBS interview, Sep. 2008

Test-Making 101: A Teacher’s Take

Most teachers know that multiple choice tests focusing on facts only are easier for their students to ace than essay tests requiring students to use those facts to analyze a problem and reason their way to a solution. A concrete example would be a map test requiring students to merely identify countries and geographic features of central Europe during World War II, versus an essay test requiring students to argue which side of the warring alliances, the Allied or Axis powers, had the geographic advantage during that war.

Know-nothing students can easily cram to memorize the map of Europe at that time and score an A on the first test. But to score an A on the second test would require an intelligence orders of magnitude higher. Requiring students to demonstrate an understanding of such things as the significance of the easily traversed plains of Poland and the limited coastlines of Germany in the context of the war, the second test would expose which students really deserved an A, and which knew how to cover their shallowness by excelling at rote memorization.

This puts me in mind of Sarah Palin right now, whom I picture desperately cramming with her debate coaches in McCain’s estate in Sedona for the Big Test on Thursday: the Vice Presidential debates.

With even the conservative punditry now conceding Palin is an “embarrassment” who is “not ready” to assume the presidency in the not-unlikely event of the death or disability of the oldest – and either the most politically reckless or medically clueless – presidential candidate in the history of the United States, Thursday’s debate, offering us a glimpse at the most sequestered vice presidential candidate in living memory, looms larger as a serious moment for the fate of the nation because, quite simply, it’s one of the only chances we’ll have to see the candidate think and talk on her feet, live and unscripted.

Palin’s Report Card So Far

Student Palin’s grade point average started with a sterling 100% for her public speaking assessment at the Republican National Convention. She turned in a gifted performance there, reading someone else’s speech off a teleprompter. A+.

But since then, in her three subsequent assessments – a number about which classmate Joe Biden, who has had almost daily assessments in the media and on the campaign trail, should complain to the principal, since the teacher is clearly showing favoritism to Palin by excusing her from all these tests – Palin’s g.p.a. has crashed and burned. She scored a C in her softball interview with Charles Gibson, a C in her love-fest with FOX’s Sean Hannity, and an F (a “Z-” grade being unavailable) in her debacle with Katie Couric.

What We Learn from Student Councils

Watching the former beauty queen and high school track star eat crow on the national stage is an experience not unfamiliar to that of many high school teachers who watch that painful annual ritual in high schools around the world called the Student Council elections. They always involve the popular kid – the cheerleader or football star with ill-starred academic records – deciding, due to ill-advised assurances that popularity is all that matters to win an election, to enter the race. Then on speech day, the cafeteria kings and queens face off against the Math Club and Literary Magazine whizzes, and the former show their stuff while the latter show their lack of stuff.

It often ends in tears on stage, pity in the crowd, and teachers afterwards trying to help the unfit student draw some wisdom from the experience about the difference between confidence and ability, and between sound advice and bad.

The McCain campaign gave Palin bad advice here. No mayor of a town smaller than many big-city high schools (only 6,000 residents) not yet through her second year as governor of a state whose population is smaller than all but North Dakota and Vermont should be expected to ace a test designed to assess the next president of the nation with the world’s largest economy and military. And that the McCain campaign didn’t foresee this blinding reality when they urged her to join the ticket speaks volumes about either its staggeringly bad judgment or, to go Rorschach on you, its withering cynicism regarding the intelligence of the American electorate.

And as a result, the good cheerleader is undergoing a public humiliation that pulls at the heart-strings of any caring teacher. “Whoever put her up to this,” the teacher thinks, “should be ashamed.”

The Most Important Test in American History? A Plea to Gwen Ifill

But Palin rose to the bait, and the debate is set. She’s cramming in Sedona for a test any good teacher who knows this student knows she cannot ace – if the test is a form of assessment for thinking instead of memorizing.

And that’s what makes me think the most important person in this debate in not Palin, and not Biden. It’s the assessor – the person who creates the test questions.

So to PBS moderator Gwen Ifill, I can only offer this advice: give an assessment that will show the electorate not who can memorize the most facts. That kind of test leads to a class with all A’s. Instead, give a test that will show us how these candidates will use their knowledge-base to solve problems.

A very perceptive commenter on the Chicago Tribune’s blog says as much in the below:

The key to the debate will be for either the moderator or Biden to dig beneath the thin veneer of rote memorization that will be the basis of her performance. She has had plenty of time to memorize some statistics and talking points to certain questions she knows will be on the test, and even someone with her intellectual paucity can do that somewhat convincingly.

It’s when you dig slightly beneath the surface that she implodes. As anyone who has ever B.S.ed their way through anything knows, your goose is cooked when you’re asked to explain the basis of your statements. Being able to give simple, concise answers to complicated questions is way harder than it looks. You need to have a deep understanding of what you’re talking about – an understanding of international and domestic affairs that are the result of years and years of study and analysis, not just a few weeks of cramming.

If Ifill’s debate questions follow those guidelines, the nation benefits. If not, it may fall victim to the most fateful and disastrous consequences of grade inflation due to lack of assessment rigor in the history of the United States.

Palin is clearly likable, her policies and beliefs notwithstanding. But by putting herself in line for the Oval Office, we can’t let our sympathy for her soften our assessment of her. She’s not running for student council or small-town mayor. She’s running for 76-year-old-heartbeat-away-from-president. It shouldn’t be an easy test to pass.

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Image: BoingBoing

A little ice-breaker after my fear-frozen last post: CollegeHumor.com also found noteworthy Matt Damon’s comments about Palin leading the US government and military. But they had fun with it, bless ‘em. Enjoy (and h/t to Crooks and Liars).

(And on an educational note, if any of you have student films that so creatively comment on history or current affairs, feel free to drop a link to them in the comment thread. I’d love to see students given the freedom to make this kind of commentary in the classroom.)

[Update: To learn more about Palin's ties to a disturbingly extreme, theocratic wing of Christianity, see these articles from the Christian website, "Talk to Action: Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith." They substantiate all claims with sources, and are very fair. This article is a good, comprehensive start.]

From CNN: A Feature on Palin’s Church:

From MSNBC: A Feature on Palin’s Witch-Hunting Guest Pastor:

From Palin’s Church in 2005, the Witch-Hunter’s Theocratic Sermon, Followed by His Blessing of Front-and-Center Sarah Palin:

Speaking in tongues is not gibberish; it is talking to God. Bush knew that was true, that God’s hand directed him to invade Iraq and otherwise lead the United States. Bin Laden is equally certain he knows God Allah. Faith healing works. Witches and demons exist in our world and we must engage in magical warfare against them. Creationism is truer than evolution, and should be taught in science classes. Dinosaurs roamed the world 6,000 years ago, at the same time Adam and Eve did. Books should be banned, and librarians that don’t want to ban books should be fired. God wants oil pipelines in Alaska. God supports American wars. Women impregnated by rape or incest should not be allowed to terminate the pregnancy. Alaska is a refuge for the Tribulation during the End Times prophecied in the book of Revelation. People voting for Kerry in ‘04 would go to hell. A witch-hunter’s prayer to a Roman Empire god will influence democratic elections in the 21st Century Space Age.

It’s good to see CNN give scrutiny to this, though it’s far less of a media issue than Obama’s pastor Wright. Why? Wright was criticizing America’s history of racism and imperialism, which are issues reasonable people can disagree on. Palin’s 2005 preacher¹ believes in – and hunts – witches, the existence of which reasonable people, by definition, should agree is not supported by any solid evidence.

Does anybody else find it weird that a Hollywood actor – Matt Damon – offers more relevant questions about all of this than the mainstream media does? (h/t to Undiplomatic)

And does anybody find it equally weird that Rolling Stone Magazine, as far as I’ve been able to see, has best expressed the outrage any sensible person should feel? Here’s a clip:

Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night [that Palin addressed the Republican National Convention], I was convinced that John McCain had made one of the all-time campaign season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway Park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from a tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman — reportedly his real preference — by picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here, I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

But watching Palin’s speech, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be the innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. It was a virtuoso performance. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

– and here’s the rest – well worth the read for both its writing and its diagnosis of a super-power become hellishly frightening.

Don’t believe me? Look at what many parents are doing to their children before they ever enter school:

And America wonders why it has fallen behind the world in science.

What do you think: will this topic be addressed at the VP debate this Thursday? Should it be?

1. and yes, he was a regular guest preacher, but we don’t invite unwelcome guests to speak to us [↩]