Monday, October 20, 2008

Why is this so difficult to understand?

I'm really irritated by all of the focus on higher education, both in the US and abroad. They all wonder why enrollment is down, why students don't do well, why it takes five and six years to get a bachelor's. I don't know if they've figured it out, but the longer you're trying to change the trajectory of a child's education, the more of a chance you have to get them to succeed. So no, stepping in during their freshman year of college isn't the best use of my money or your time.

How many children are in high school and can't read? How many children in the third grade can't write their own names? The number of functionally illiterate people in a place that touts itself as a land of opportunity is astounding. Imagine what would happen if states actually took control of their own destinies and enacted education reform that meant something. What would that even look like?

Sunday, October 5, 2008

She says she went to grad school, but I won't bat an eye when she ends up working at Fast Eddie's...

Laughed out loud. Posting this to read and laugh out loud in the future.

Xiao-bo:
oh man so i went to the craziest talk to a professor here

me:
tell me

Xiao-bo:
you know when profs get to a certain tenured age, they are just allowed to be as crazy as they feel like? only a certain adherence to societal norms prevents them from going pantless around campus. anyway, this one very old, very eminent native americans scholar gave all of us first-years a talk supposedly about his research on animal symbolism, instead, he told us all these stories about him hunting possums in west virginia he may also have claimed that he once fought a bear. at the climax of the story, he paused like he was going to say somethig important
we all leaned in, riveted

me: i love where this is going

Xiao-bo: then, he busted open the front of his snap-button shirt and inside he was wearing this t-shirt with a picture of a possum, and the words, "possums: the other white meat"
and that was the end of his lecture. AMAZING.