Testing Requires More Testing

The Tennessee Legislature deploys some logic - because so much time in public school is spent on increasing testing scores in science and math and technology, other classes, such as in civics and social studies and history have been hampered. So, now students will have to take a citizenship test to graduate.

Too many tests, it seems, denotes a vital need for more tests. Of course, the new law says a student can take the test as many times as needed in order to pass it. 

The legislation is created by a the Joe Foss Institute.

Maybe students should be directed to learn how lobbying by large national foundations is so effective.

Banning Tablets And Phones in the Classroom

NYU professor Clay Shirky teaches theory and practice of social media and has now decided he must ban the use of laptops, tablets and phones in his class - they are beyond distracting, they are barriers to learning.

He writes of his reluctant decision to ban the devices in an essay at Medium, and has some fascinating science to back his decision.

"A study from Stanford reports that heavy multi-taskers are worse at choosing which task to focus on. (“They are suckers for irrelevancy”, as Cliff Nass, one of the researchers put it.) Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.
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"Humans are incapable of ignoring surprising new information in our visual field, an effect that is strongest when the visual cue is slightly above and beside the area we’re focusing on. (Does that sound like the upper-right corner of a screen near you?)

The form and content of a Facebook update may be almost irresistible, but when combined with a visual alert in your immediate peripheral vision, it is—really, actually, biologically—impossible to resist.

"I’m coming to see student focus as a collaborative process. It’s me and them working to create a classroom where the students who want to focus have the best shot at it, in a world increasingly hostile to that goal."

The idea of being unavoidably distracted gets a thorough investigation in the new book "A Deadly Wandering" by Matt Richtel. The book, based on a fatal texting and driving incident, is reviewed here.

High Schoolers Use 3-D Printer and Pythagoras to Solve Ketchup Mystery

Yeah, what goof off thing is this? It's a by-product of American education reform, STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And two Missouri boys puzzled out why that first blotch of ketchup out of a container is always watery. Then they used a 3-D printer to fabricate a doo-hickey to prevent it from happening. That's Science!!!

All snark aside - consider this a crystal clear notice: all the good jobs in the next 30 years? STEM, people, STEM.

Now,  the story:


"The prompt was that they had to come up with something that was relevant to them. So we always start with the phrase, ‘it really bugs me when.’'"

"It is based on the pythagorean cup idea .."

So some teenagers using STEM methods and tech, use an idea from 500 BC. to solve a modern complaint. That sure sounds rather like Education.

Public Education Getting Hijacked?

Talking with friends recently I was reminded again that I'm all alone when it comes to following the actions of the state legislators in Nashville. Not surprising when in years past thousands of bills are introduced. Efforts are underway to limit each member to 15 bills seems to hit their goal, with less than 1500 introduced this session.

But awareness of those 1500 is mighty small outside of political junkies such as I. And what I'm seeing is quite perplexing - actions to privatize public education alone should be getting attention statewide but the actions are swaddled in language that defies simple explanations. The rapid changes of recent years are also seldom understood by residents in general despite the massive alterations to how education systems work in the state.

One major change getting pushed is the "voucher" program, which aims to steadily allow education tax funds to get shifted to private schools though these schools ultimately will decide which students to take in.

A stark and plain rebuke of this plan was made recently by Rep. Joe Pitts, which you can see here.

He also speaks plainly in a recent interview:

"If you think about it, we made significant changes to public policy in education in 2010 as a part of our First to the Top agenda proposed by Gov Bredesen – a Democrat, followed by nightmarish changes to the teachers’ environment in 2011 by eliminating collective bargaining, tenure, and removing TEA from their seat at the table, all in the name of “reform.”

"On top of all that we approved virtual schools, unlimited charter schools, put undue pressure on teachers and principals by adopting an assessment tool that is unnecessarily bureaucratic, adopted the Common Core, and are preparing to implement a new assessment called PARRC. Now, we are attacking our teacher preparation programs by looking at putting artificial thresholds on ACT and SAT scores for students who wish to go through their respective College of Education. I’ve said it before; we are giving our education system whiplash with these rapid-fire changes and creating massive confusion. Who can blame more seasoned teachers from deciding to retire instead of continuing in a system that does not appreciate their significant achievement and experience in the classroom and will subject them to the latest reform experiment?

"Perhaps the corporate robber barons of the reform movement need to be asked to leave the room and let the education professionals do their jobs. I have complete faith in our school districts across our state if we can offer our help instead of the cram down policies that have little to no basis in fact or success."

Vouchers for Public School: Who Benefits?

Taking Tennessee taxpayer funds away from public schools and giving those funds to private schools - whether you call it "vouchers" or Opportunity Scholarships" - doesn't add up.

A good overview of the plans can be found here at Metropulse.

Other phrases being used in debates include "reform" and "choice" but the bottom line is - does this voucher plan aid students or private schools most?

State Democrats, via Roy Herron, offered the following this week:

"Tennessee is making gains in graduating high school students. Between 2002 and 2010, the state graduation rate went from 59.6 to 80.4 percent, gaining an average of 2.45 percent a year between 2006 and 2010. [Commercial Appeal, 2/25/13]

"And what are these “good schools” they’re talking about giving (with our tax dollars) “scholarships” to? They are private schools.

"Now, if it’s “school choice” you want, we’ve already got that in Tennessee. Nancy and I had the “choice” to send our children to any number of schools, including any number of public and private schools. That’s legal in Tennessee right now.

"We’ve got Governor’s Schools, Magnet Schools, STEM schools, public charters, private schools, and regular public schools like our three sons attended. And I know something about the quality of education they got—and so do their college professors."

TN Legislature on the Border of Insanity?

The tragic shooting in Newtown, CT provides at the least an opportunity for discussion and debate about common sense gun laws, mental health issues, and more. Sadly, the talk has drifted into arenas of pop culture, blaming video games and/or movies as some Universal Cause. Or worse, we give serious thought to transforming all that teaching and education have historically meant into a twisted-up worldview of weaponized teaching.

Others in the state are writing and talking about the upcoming legislative "ideas" as several East Tennessee lawmakers are promoting weaponized teachers - a discussion one security expert calls "borderline insanity". More informed education leaders  point out the grave errors in such debate:

"Bowman and Summerford are calling for federal and state dollars to better fund security measures and also for funds for more school counselors, who might help prevent school shootings by recognizing emotional problems in students before they bubble over into violence.

“National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel supports the idea of trained officers in schools, but not arming teachers.

"In a statement from his office, Van Roekel said “haphazardly putting more guns into our schools is the last thing we should be doing to ensure the safety of our students.”

Here's a few other terrible ideas to ponder since terrible ideas are gaining steam:

- Encourage more students to drop out of school. If fewer kids are in school, fewer could be hurt. Or, just eradicate all public education and instead require each child be home-schooled by a heavily armed parent/guardian.

- Require all schools to provide Ninja training for students from Head Start thru college, establishing dojos in every school.

-  Convert all public buildings into underground bunkers, accessible only through a single entrance, which is guarded by robotic machine guns and bio-metric locks.

Bad ideas arrive too easily for some legislators, drown out reasonable discussion and serve no useful function. However, unless we halt the promotion of bad thinking, bad outcomes will flourish.

Sen. Niceley Wants Secret Armed Guards In TN Schools

Worst idea I've heard yet (and there is no shortage of bad ideas) in response to the massacre in Newtown, CT is from Tennessee Senator Frank Niceley, who wants to create secretly armed staffers and teachers in public schools. Worse, Governor Haslam seems to think this wackadoodle notion is worthy of consideration.

"Say some madman comes in. The first person he would probably try to take out was the resource officer. But if he doesn’t know which teacher has training, then he wouldn’t know which one had [a gun],” Niceley said by phone. “These guys are obviously cowards anyway and if someone starts shooting back, they’re going to take cover, maybe go ahead and commit suicide like most of them have.”

"Tennessee’s governor told reporters Monday that he’s open to including it on the agenda for a January conference to discuss school safety. Nicely said he expect the governor “to be receptive” to his plan to use tax money to arm and train teachers."

SEE ALSO: Newscoma points out that TN Senator Lamar Alexander says video games are to blame for the massacre in Newtown and former TN legislator Debra Maggert dared to oppose a NRA-supported gun-totin' bill and was quickly ousted from office.

Dangerous Dumbing Down - The Fatal Flaw in Gov. Haslam's Education Policies

Is the process of getting an education merely a system designed get a job and to create a workforce? I wrote about this topic in August, noting Gov. Haslam's push to steer education into job training. As he said at the meeting with business leaders:

"The state that's going to win is going to be the state that figures out how to understand market demand, then define that back to...middle schoolers and high schoolers in terms of what do they need to be doing to prepare, and then funds that appropriately," Haslam told the group. "So what I'm trying to do is figure out how do we tie that loop together?"

This idea isn't a new creation, it dates back to the early 1900s, as noted in an editorial by Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, in today's NYTimes. And Roth points out the idea was challenged then by John Dewey, calling out such efforts as an attempt to reduce humans to mere tools of industry:

"Who wants to attend school to learn to be “human capital”? Who aspires for their children to become economic or military resources? Dewey had a different vision. Given the pace of change, it is impossible (he noted in 1897) to know what the world will be like in a couple of decades, so schools first and foremost should teach us habits of learning.

"For Dewey, these habits included awareness of our interdependence; nobody is an expert on everything. He emphasized “plasticity,” an openness to being shaped by experience: “The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.” 

"The inclination to learn from life can be taught in a liberal arts curriculum, but also in schools that focus on real-world skills, from engineering to nursing. The key is to develop habits of mind that allow students to keep learning, even as they acquire skills to get things done. This combination will serve students as individuals, family members and citizens — not just as employees and managers."

Gov. Haslam has already said he plans to introduce legislation to tailor education to the needs of business and industry. While I see the value of having higher employment rates, it's a critical error to sacrifice education in order to fulfill an industrial business plan. The discussion and debate about education must include more than their desire for faithful employees - smart, broadly-educated populations can accomplish so much more.

Does Gov. Haslam Want Dumb Workers or An Educated Society?

In recent days our esteemed Governor Bill Haslam has been holding meetings with folks from a wide range of business and university officials to talk about education with a particular goal in mind - that higher education must work harder to train people for jobs.

An article in today's KnoxNewsSentinel begins:

"Tennessee does not have enough qualified workers with specific skills, a high work ethic and critical thinking abilities, local business leaders told Gov. Bill Haslam on Tuesday.

College and university leaders, meanwhile, said they need more resources to adequately educate and graduate more students to fill those jobs.

"We're trying to have those conversations around the state to make certain we're providing positions that will train people for the jobs that are there today."

And while I certainly agree our state and community needs critical thinking skills, I read no mention of just what "specific skills" are being cited here, other than mentions of welding and engineering. And we certainly need to discuss and debate the role and the enormous impact which education has on our world at nearly every level.

The optimist in me wants to believe the driving forces for these Haslam-led meetings will lead to a better understanding of what the functions higher education should serve.

The pessimist, however, sees a day when higher education is either about technical services or football and other sports.

Reading the comments to the KNS story (often a grueling descent into nonsense) I noted the following one:

"We don't need any more fluff degrees.

No more philosophy, theatre, arts, sculpting, dead languages, mythology, psychology, library science, interpretive dance, music, music history, Greek literature, roman literature, American literature type degrees.
I could go on but why the state continues to fund universities that pump out not only worthless degrees but degrees that put their constituents into crushing debt with no real hope of finding a decent job in their field is beyond me.
If someone wants to get a degree in one of these areas its fine but why encourage it by offering scholarships to it?
China does it right. Scholarships and state funding only in areas that produce jobs in fields of study."

What kind of world will we have should we remove knowledge of history, science, the arts, language, libraries, music, literature, etc etc. Is emulating the nation of China our best option?

Is the sole purpose of attaining a college degree merely to obtain a high-paid job? Is there no value left in education if it does not lead to a giant paycheck?

Once we eliminate the areas of study the commenter suggests - critical thinking skills will likewise vanish. Absent ethics, philosophy, communication skills, understanding of history, the ability to express ourselves and our thoughts about our world, ignoring the past or ridiculing those who excel in all these areas - what kind of world would we have?

Humans are not meant to simply serve a machine of industry ... are they? 

Governor Haslam OKs Dress Code for Pants In Schools Which Already Have Dress Codes For Pants

Our state will now police your pants - and pretty much all clothes worn by students in Tennessee thanks to a new law our governor has signed.

See, even though every school in the state has dress code policies, now the state is ordering them to have - you guessed it - dress code policies.

Our ever-watchful state officials this year have decided junk science must be allowed in schools and that hand-holding leads to making babies, not to mention that boys and girls making eye contact might need to be banned as well.

Schools Reforms: No Science, No Baggy Pants

via The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Gov. Haslam says he'll sign into law a bill about how science is taught in Tennessee ... even though it "changes nothing" about how science is taught in Tennessee.

What??

As reported by Andy Sher:

"Haslam said he has had discussions with State Board of Education officials on “does this affect our curriculum and what we teach regarding evolution in the schools and the answer is no. Does it change the scientific standards that are the ruling criteria for what we teach in schools and the answer is no.”

So what in the heck is this law anyway?

Only one thing is certain - supporters of this law deny it has anything to do with allowing religious and political views to be presented in science classes, even though that is exactly what this law allows:

"These bills misdescribe evolution as scientifically controversial,” the statement says. “ As scientists whose research involves and is based upon evolution, we affirm — along with the nation’s leading scientific organizations ... that evolution is a central, unifying, and accepted area of science. 

“The evidence for evolution is overwhelming,” the statement continues. “There is no scientific evidence for its supposed rivals (‘creation science’ and ‘intelligent design’) and there is no scientific evidence against it.”

Yes, the legislature is deeply concerned with education - at least when it comes to devaluing science and with whether or not students wear baggy pants. That's because a new law about school dress codes apparently was needed even though every school already has dress codes and policies on what is acceptable and what is not. The aim though, is for a State Dress Code:

"The only bit of discussion before the vote last night came from another Memphis Democrat, Rep. Antonio Parkinson, who applauded Towns for bringing the bill, but lamented its narrow scope. He said the prohibition should be statewide and vowed to join Towns in working toward that end next year."

Schools Want Some Words Banned From Tests

Sticks and stones may hurt your bones but words cause permanent damage.

 -- from Talk Radio

The NYC school systems issued a memo to the makers of standardized tests for students in which they urge the banning of some 50 words deemed potentially offensive/distracting to students.

Words and phrases can be both intense and meaningless depending on usage, and surely one could find an enormous amount of variance if the public at large were asked to define the word "education" or to assess the quality of 'standardized testing".

The Staten Island Online notes: "... certain words can elicit unpleasant feelings on the part of students. "Dinosaur," for example, would suggest evolution -- offensive to creationists. even "birthday" doesn't make the cut because Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate them."

The list: 

• Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological)
• Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs
• Birthday celebrations (and birthdays)
• Bodily functions
• Cancer (and other diseases)
• Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes)
• Celebrities
• Children dealing with serious issues
• Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia)
• Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting)
• Crime
• Death and disease
• Divorce
• Evolution
• Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes
• Gambling involving money
• Halloween
• Homelessness
• Homes with swimming pools
• Hunting
• Junk food
• In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge
• Loss of employment
• Nuclear weapons
• Occult topics (i.e. fortune-telling)
• Parapsychology
• Politics
• Pornography
• Poverty
• Rap Music
• Religion
• Religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan)
• Rock-and-Roll music
• Running away
• Sex
• Slavery
• Terrorism
• Television and video games (excessive use)
• Traumatic material (including material that may be particularly upsetting such as animal shelters)
• Vermin (rats and roaches)
• Violence
• War and bloodshed
• Weapons (guns, knives, etc.)
• Witchcraft, sorcery, etc.


Fun Assignment: make a 'test question' using as many of the words on this list as you can!! Share it in the comments section!!

UPDATE: Phantom has the winning entry in  the comments below:

"If a train loaded with weapons, pornography, and a group of Wiccans celebrating Halloween by drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes is going east at 50 mph, and it passes another train loaded with vermin, junk food, and nuclear weapons going west at 65 mph, how many homes with swimming pools will the trains pass before the Jewish engineer and the Baptist brakeman on the first train turn on some rap music and have sex while talking dirty about evolution, and the former NFL Hall of Fame lineman on the second train starts telling fortunes and predicting which passengers on the train are going to die in a natural disaster?

Please show your work."

An Open Letter to Gov. Haslam and the Tennessee Legislature

An Open Letter to Gov. Haslam and the Tennessee Legislature:

As a lifelong resident of the state of Tennessee, educated in public school as well as at a private Baptist college, I am compelled to write and express my deep disappointment and grave concerns over pending legislation, Senate Bill 893, regarding how Science is to be taught and not taught in our state.

Since it was brought forward in 2011, the aims of this law are crystal clear - it seeks to add room in our Science programs for non-scientific information. Our education system - and our young students - requires the strongest support from our Governor, our Legislature, and our communities, but this legislation instead claims that Biology and Science are flawed and mistaken at every level. It assumes controversies exist at their very foundations. It devalues Education itself.

If the state demands we "teach the controversies" regarding Science, then why not demand that the clergy preach about the controversies of their Religion? That would be ridiculous for the state to mandate, wouldn't it? This proposed law is equally ridiculous.

Holding Science accountable to Religious or Social systems will not encourage or nurture Education. 

It's worth noting that educators and scientists or biologists across the state did not propose nor support this legislation. Certainly, all our educational curriculums should - and for the most part already do - encourage critical thinking and respectful debate. Do you, Governor Haslam, believe otherwise or have any such proof of a dire lack in our schools? Or do you work instead to increase the level of skill and understanding demanded today in Science, Math, and Technology?

I understand and accept that political landscapes are constantly changing - allowing the ebb and flow of politics to override our Education system can only create errors in critical thinking.

So I encourage you to defeat this measure and to provide a stronger voice for Education and Science in Tennessee. 

This legislation stands in stark opposition to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Programs your office has been actively supporting. I feel you have to make a choice, sir, as to which educational approach you support.

Sincerely,

Joe Powell

State Pushes Anti-Science Laws To Governor Haslam

Grade school and high school are the academic locations Tennesseee's politicians want to use to determine the value of science and that of religion too. Yep. Science is some dubious scheme to make you doubt Jesus, according to the state legislature.

Nearly one year after this ridiculous idea first shambled into the legislature, the bill to order teachers to say science is a controversial topic is waiting for Gov. Haslam to sign it. Knox Rep. Bill Dunn has allowed Hixson Senator Bo Watson to run the legislation through this time. 

"The idea behind this bill is that students should be encouraged to challenge current scientific thought and theory,” said state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson."

Yeah, forget education about the value of science or math or biology - let kids decide classroom by classroom if they believe any of it.

So, from last year, this original coverage via your Cup o' Joe post:

"Knoxville Rep. Bill Dunn was very careful in presenting HB 368 so it hides the anti-science goals, but the result is clear - science classes must present science itself as controversial and the bill promotes a deep lack of understanding of what "scientific theory" means. As for who should help create these low standards - not scientists, of course - but administrators. The bill only defines as "controversial" a select set of areas: "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." And, as noted below, Rep. Dunn's legislation is the creation of evangelical Christians.Rep. Dunn's aim of injecting politics into school science classes is a dangerous act. And his proposed new state law is a part of a nationwide effort to use the schoolroom as a political tool to promote political agendas. These bogus ideas are labeled "Academic Freedom" bills, which sounds nice, but really point to a desire to eliminate critical study and reject the history of scientific investigation, and the legislation is drafted by evangelical organizations:

"... 'academic freedom' bills that are being introduced by state lawmakers around the country instruct educators to teach students about “both sides” of controversial issues—most notably on evolution. The Seattle-based, pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute is behind efforts to introduce many of these bills and has proposed sample legislation for lawmakers to follow.

Since the Louisiana bill was passed (making it the only state to have actually passed an academic freedom bill into law), proposed bills have included global warming and human cloning on the list of “controversial topics,” as they encourage “thinking critically” about the “relationships between explanations and evidence.”

More recently, in Kentucky, a bill was introduced in the Legislature that would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Other troubling aspects of this dumbed-down educational law includes the following confusions for teachers:

"Some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects."

Whose expectations? Those of the uneducated and misinformed? The really loud folks who think science is a colossal hoax?

Schools must also insure " ...respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues."
Respect for the scientific method, peer review, and the actual scientific meaning of the concepts of "theory" and "experimentation" .... well, let's just push that aside. Since new data and observations are made in most scientific fields of study as a result of the work of scientists, then, yes, concepts and theories are often revised. But it's a huge leap in thinking to claim that science is mostly mistaken guesswork and inherently controversial."

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And Haslam thinks he'll sign the bill unless the school boards of the state (schools is evil, ya know, full of unions and commies) tell him not to sign it. And he may just sign it anyway.

Meanwhile, from the  actual scientific community which works in the fields now labeled controversial ....

Among those expressing opposition to the bill are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, and the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, whose president Becky Ashe described (PDF) the legislation as "unnecessary, anti-scientific, and very likely unconstitutional."

Push To Rewrite History: Comedy or Tragedy?

I look forward to the day when news about politics in Tennessee is not simply easy material  for comedy shows. But that day is not today.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Some background on how the state 'tea party' wants to improve/re-write history.

I Could Have Been A Potash Tycoon

It really is annoying how I learn more and more as I get older that I don't know diddly-squat about what I thought I knew, and that there are indeed a mere handful of people who control even the basic elements found on the periodic chart and are bajillionaires who live in ways I cannot imagine. On the plus side, at least I can still learn new things about this world. On the downside, at my age, I am unlikely to corner the market of a necessary global commodity and thus will never, ever, ever live for one moment like a bajillionaire.

And these thoughts were instigated by one thing - potash.

I recall learning about potash when I was a young schoolboy - it was an ancient creation, made by burning plants and trees and mixing the resulting ashes into a field where one wanted to grow food. The ashes were loaded with potassium, but we have since found that there are massive sources of potassium already in existence underground, so it is mined and sold worldwide for everything from fertilizer to plastics to textiles and much, much more.

(A side note here - my high school chemistry teacher really did not open up much of an exploration of chemistry as such. She was in the midst of a divorce and was realizing she was a lesbian and was concerned with the daily issues of running a small donut shop with her husband when she taught my class. On the plus side: we had hot fresh donuts every day, usually kept warm in a rather expensive incubator in the chemistry classroom. But I digress.)

As I said, the word potash came up when I read a report yesterday about a 22-year-old Russian lady who just paid the most ever recorded for an apartment - $88 million for a ten-room flat in Manhattan, about $13,000-plus per square foot. She is Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the heir of Potash Tycoon Dmitry Rybolovleva, who last year sold his share of the Russian potash company Uralkali for $6.5 billion. (His Wikipedia page is an oddly translated tale of fabulous wealth and personal strife, including a murder charge for which he was ultimately acquitted. ) Ekatrina is apparently only going to use the apartment when she 'visits' Manhattan.

There are really only a few companies controlling the potassium market - the Potash Corp. of Canada, Uralkali and Belaruskali, and another North American company called Mosaic. But we're not done yet - "The global trade in potash is even more concentrated, with just two syndicates dominant: Canpotex managing sales of the three North American majors, Potash Corp, Mosaic and Agrium; and BPC, a joint venture combining Uralkali and Belaruskali."

According to the report cited above, the price is expected to surge in the next decade, from around $400 a ton to $1500 a ton. Of course, like most items traded on the global markets, the economic collapse in 2008 dropped the price, but it is on the rise again - potash is vital for bio-fuels and for growing more and more food for folks who live in India and China and Brazil and everywhere else. And it's a vital manufacturing component for just about everything.

Potash is Big Business.

And never once did anyone tell me, "Son, invest in potash". And what I thought I knew about potash and potassium turned out to be damned little. And I learned just a wee bit more about the faceless and nameless few who control patents on chemical elements and the global economy.

And like Billy Pilgrim, I sit here all old and stuff, my feet turning blue in the cold, pecking away at a keyboard and being a curmudgeon. "Potash," I mutter to no one. "Potash."

Scooby Doo Battles Liars, Not Monsters

Stories for children have a raw power which can cripple hypocrisies and hatreds and which often celebrates the best qualities of humans - even a seemingly innocuous cartoon like that which gave the world Scooby Doo and Mystery Incorporated.

Doubtful gibberish, you say? Then consider the following insights from Chris Sims' recent article about why the cartoon has endured:

" ... that's the thing about Scooby-Doo: The bad guys in every episode aren't monsters, they're liars.

 "The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it's up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn't through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think.

Read the whole article, 'Scooby Doo and Secular Humanism'.

TN Moves To Ban Teachers Union

Pretty much as expected and predicted, the state of Tennessee is following up on their plan do ban unions in Tennessee, starting with teachers, for now.

Never mind those comments from legislators recently that they were NOT going to create anti-union legislation, see, because they are just repealing the law that makes unions for teachers legal. How is that anti-union? We love teachers. We are reforming education!

"House Speaker Beth Harwell and key lawmakers have agreed to completely repeal the 1978 law that gave teachers the ability to unionize, casting aside an earlier compromise that would have let them continue to negotiate with school boards over a few issues.

They now plan to accept a Senate measure that would ban contracts negotiated by teachers unions and replace them with employee handbooks written by local school boards." (via the Tennessean)

Yes, all this economic turmoil was caused by those ultra-rich teachers in Tennessee. Problem solved! What's next? Looking for work? Your local school is probably going to hire folks ....

Stimulus Grant Gets ETSU New Film/TV Production Studio

Thanks to a $1.2 million stimulus grant, students at East Tennessee State University has a state-of-the-art facility for radio/TV/and film production. (via)



This program is one of many which grows robust educational and financial opportunities for success headed by the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission which makes Tennessee a top destination for all types of entertainment production.

America's Education Meltdown

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" -- former president George Bush

You can get all A's and still flunk life. -- Walker Percy

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Now that Wisconsin has moved ahead with the elimination of collective bargaining practices for teachers as a new state policy and not as a means of cutting spending, WI Republicans also admit their motivation is a nationwide political tactic against Democrats -- and the pawns in their game are your schools.

Tennessee - "We will bend public education to our awe, or break it all to pieces."


Indiana - "The fight over these bills is why House Democrats are, in essence, on strike. They remain in an Urbana, Ill., hotel, refusing to give Republicans the quorum they need."

Idaho - “Good teachers do not need tenure.”

Michigan - "Gov. Snyder's budget plan amounts to a $470-per-pupil cut in state aid that will cause financial upheaval in some school districts."

Florida - "The proposal would scrap the traditional model that bases teacher salaries and firing decisions on seniority. At least half of teachers’ pay would be tied to student performance, and all teachers would receive annual instead of continuing contracts.

Worth noting too -- the constant push for schools to achieve high scores on standardized tests in order to receive funding and evaluate students and teachers has created a system where the test scorers are told to make sure and give schools higher scores:

"The legitimacy of testing is being taken for granted," he says. "It's a farce."

"Though the efficacy of standardized testing has been hotly debated for decades, one thing has become crystal clear: It's big business. ... In 2009, K-12 testing was estimated to be a $2.7 billion industry."

See Also: A look at states and their current legislative agendas on Education policies.