school's out for the weekend

While digging around TED.com on an assignment, I came across this gem from Salman Khan. I have issues with schools, which is well tracked somewhere in all this blather, and this is one of the best ideas I’ve ever seen. If nothing else, the idea of flipping the classroom is simply genius. If we took the opportunity to seize this ideal, and implement it, I think we’d see a marked improvement in learning. The more you roll this around in your brain after watching the video, the more the puzzle seems to fit together.

I finally saw Waiting for Superman the other day, speaking of education, and it provided what I expected: a dim view of how we educate, or spend money to educate kids; and, a dramatic ending that brought home just how lost we are. It’s been out long enough so I won’t worry about spoiler alerts: you are hoping against hope that the kids in the movie, who are involved in lotteries to attend better public/charter schools, hear their name called. We aren’t talking about acceptance to private schools, money, loans, grants, and etc.: lotteries that we support for kids to attend public schools. Better public schools. If that isn’t the definition of a lost system, I don’t know what is…

The weekend has been packed and is sitting by the front door. The clans (minus Corey and the two smallest) are all going to see Finn McCool, performed by Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue, at Woolly Mammoth tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a gig as a parent tour guide for the open house L.’s school on Sunday afternoon, the North Park clan needs foods since the hunter/gather is gone this weekend, and I suspect there’s more spring cleaning on-deck for the house. I’ll settle for a Caps’ game on TV tonight as my peace before the rush.

Let me close with this about unions and the uproar heard far-and-wide: There isn’t actually a positions that unions are good or unions are bad. Each of the unions has its own purpose, and to intimate either extreme is shallow. That’s that.