I'm really quite shocked that David Brauer doesn't seem to REALIZE that in an open society, he may have the power to broadcast his version of the world to many, but we who don't LIKE his way of filtering reality have the right and power to fire back without velvet gloves. That's the heat in this kitchen, and his obvious decision to be in it includes decision to deal with that heat. I call the piece a fluff piece, and slanted piece, a piece of distortion. He tries to call the criticisms "political correctness", which is what people with no REAL rejoinder usually say. I see no real redeeming social value in the piece, but then that could apply to a good percentage of stuff in the Skyway News. I don't suppose the paper is often on the short list for prestigious awards. It is a pickup that exists to spread ads to downtowners, and the content is consistent with that. If he is proud of that piece of writing, he needs to aspire more.
Learning Gap
The learning gap has many fathers. The one that gets harangued is "school failure". I suppose because the discussion is so often driven by people who wish to win an election. But most discussion that is politically driven is unreliable. I come from a long line of educators, stretching back to the middle of the 19th century when my ancestors conducted classes in people's living rooms. I'm very interested, and I know that there's far more involved in learning and not learning than what goes on in classrooms. There's family stability. There's cultural values. There's nutrition. There's the ability to be calm and concentrate. Aggregate statistics will tell you about how much of the various requirements the various groups have. Asians have stable families, high expectations, and conditions where they are able to concentrate. Caucasians are all over the map, with the group average being below Asians and above some others. Any group that is poor, with disrupted family life, low expectations, and lots of distractions, will come out lower, as a group. And no solution really offers the entire group a way out, so it can't really address the low average. If we had economic equality and employment security, if we didn't insist on winners and losers in the economic game, in time you might see the averages converging. But that is not in prospect. So the best educational reform can do is prevent the gap from becoming too extreme. Our inequality of educational outcome is really just the inescapable product of the society we've decided to have.
Buddhism and Policing
What an odd coincidence. After writing that achieving mastery of one's own emotiona was probably more important to good policing than mastery of civilians, I was thinking "Too bad there isn't a Zen for police." Now I read that someon IS trying to help cops get emotionally centered. Right on!
________________________________________ Jim Mork Cooper Neighborhood Longfellow Community Minneapolis, MN We think. You'll like it here. And we're more fun than a barrel of Norwegians
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