Category: teaching

I’m an AP teacher and have been my entire career, and I think the program can add tremendous value. But the entrenched resistance to transparency makes the College Board look extremely sketchy. They like to make sweeping statements about data-driven policy making — but then tell you that the actual data is proprietary and private. In a lot of ways they still embody the “Trust us, we know best” paternalism of the elite colleges that formed the original core group of AP schools way back in the 1950s.

The most important role that AP serves in education might be to offer a patina of objective scientific backing that gives permission to school administrators to dedicate resources to rigorous courses. Does a class HAVE to be AP to be advanced? Certainly not. Is a school more likely to create and support an advanced course if it can stick the AP(R) tag on it? Sadly, yes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/us/college-board-ap-exams-courses.html

I’ve had a surreal experience with Facebook today, specifically, Facebook moderation. I made up a funny meme (well, at least I think it’s funny):

and posted it to Facebook. (Yes, I really really dislike Star Trek: First Contact).

Within minutes, I received a notice:

 In case the image gets lost, the note says “It looks like you shared symbols, praise or support of people and organizations we define as dangerous, or followed them”. As far as I can tell, the people or organization so referenced is … the Borg from Star Trek.

I can’t tell if Facebook feels the Borg are a put-upon population and I’m attacking them, or if Facebook feels that the Borg are menace to the Alpha Quadrant and I’m a fellow traveler. The process is, to say the least, opaque.

Also, while writing this, I had restrictions on my posting placed on my account — oh, no, no live Feeds for me! — apparently because I had the temerity to request a review.

Still no word on what dangerous organizations I am supporting … Starfleet, I guess? Is Zuckerberg really, say, a Klingon? That might explain some things.

{rescued from the drafts folder, many many years late.}

[I just noticed that this is the first I’ve written since the night of Trump’s victory in the election.  There’s something in that.]

A few days ago I came across an article (I’ve since lost the link  😐 ) saying that the Left will continue losing until it learns to tell better stories.  That resonated with me, pro and con.  It’s hard to argue that, for the past three decades or so, the Right has told a reasonably consistent and electorally effective story: America is mankind’s last, best hope (they would say) but it’s imperiled by enemies foreign (first the Soviets, then briefly drug kingpins, now comfortably Islamic terrorists) and domestic (globalist patronizing elites boosted by morally-deficient entertainment cadres).  Failure to conform risks the greatness that is America and will lead to the common man being enslaved by faceless bureaucrats who value woodland vermin over real people and who seek to tear down what is wonderful in order to hand everything over to lazy, immoral people who are not the right kind of people.

In contrast to that, the proponents of the Left offer… what?  Is there any competing narrative that can rally the troops (so to speak) and, more importantly, inspire the unaffiliated to align themselves on this side of the aisle?

I recognize that humans are story-telling creatures and that the power of a strong narrative can change the course of history, though I remain wary of the errors that befall when one mistakes “a story” for history.  (That’s a worthwhile topic for its own post, and it would consume quite some space, I suspect.)  I think I agree with the basic premise, that for 30 years or so, the conservative movement has outplayed the liberals in America in putting forth a cogent story, and that part of its unquestioned success stems from the logistic advantage of a media arm that could push a single, coherent narrative.  The Right has tapped and laid claim to charged words and hallowed themes like “patriotism”, “freedom”, and even “America” (as an ideal).

Perhaps this is unanswered because the Left, at least in this country, has almost never been other than a loose association of people pursuing ends that, while not quite in opposition, have never quite jelled.  We celebrate “diversity”, and that almost necessarily implies a certain dispersal of energy and emotion.  If your unifying factor is that people should not be boxed into set categories, than it’s hard to enforce any sort of ideological purity — and (I would argue) that’s a good thing, even if it does mean that liberals labor under a constraint not binding the other side.  (What is the antonym for “fellow traveler”, anyway?)

A screwup in migration to a new SQL database went awry in April and frakked this site. (I’m sure you all noticed the disturbance in the Force.) It took until today for me to have the time to resolve it, but now it is and I think I was able to restore the backup. So all the words should be here and accessible

Thanks for your patience and perseverance. Or, if you didn’t even know, then thanks for visiting today. 🙂

{Editor’s note: This has been sitting in my Drafts since early 2017 but seems as appropriate now.}

You want an ACTUAL political revolution? You want to take back our democracy or “make America great again”? Then here are the vitally important but unsexy changes you should be advocating:
* minimal obstacles to voting
* true, non-partisan, proportional redistricting
* adequate — no, expansive — funding of research organs of government, to give legislators advice and education independent of corporate lobbying
* meaningful enforcement of anti-monopoly and anti-monopsony laws, at all levels of the economy
* effective isolation of legislators (and aides) from lobbyists and corporate interests — no taking their money in office, no taking a cushy job after being in office.

Spoilers abound, so if you, like me, are watching this over a year late {ed. note: now more like seven years}, be warned.

(more…)

A bug hunt.  How I hate bug hunts.

Spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Episode 9 “All Those Who Wander”.

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What can I say?  They can’t all be winners…

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Still going.  I’ve been writing this blog on and off — really, mostly “off”, but hey — since this date in 2006.  That’s weird to think about.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds continues to impress. “Spock Amok” has all the ingredients for an epic disaster, yet…

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