Kierra Bell, an 8th grader at Courtis Elementary/Middle School in Detroit, is one to watch.

In a panel with Detroit City Council President pro tem Monica Conyers, who has proven herself a loudmouthed goon in recent months, Ms. Bell dressed down Ms. Conyers in a remarkable, sensible fashion.

Take a look [RSS readers, click here]:

Note Conyers’ dismissive facial expressions and eye movements as Bell discusses Conyers verbal attack on a Council member whom Conyers called “Shrek.”

Then Bell explains that Council members should be able to set an example for the young and chides Conyers for having done something childish:

Bell: “… but you’re [Conyers] an adult, we have to look up to you.”

Conyers: [condescendingly] “Absolutely.”

[snip]

Bell: “… calling another adult ‘Shrek?’ That’s something a second-grader would do.”

Conyers: “And so at school, you’ve never done that, you’ve never said anything that you shouldn’t have said inappropriately [sic]?”

Bell: “But we are kids –”

Conyers: [cutting off the student] “But that’s not my question though. Have you ever done that?”

Bell: “I said yes.”

Conyers: “Oh, ok. Alright. So, and you did it out of frustration also, right?”

Bell: “Yes.”

Conyers: “And so we’re all human, right?”

Bell: “We’re human, but you have to know your boundaries. He’s [the man called Shrek] the President –”

Conyers: [cutting off Bell] “Of what?”

Bell: “Of the City Council.”

Conyers: “And so you think that because someone is the President then they have a right not to allow other people to be heard?”

Bell: “They’re allowed to let other people be heard, but not in a disrespectful way.”

Conyers: “… to me he was being disrespectful.”

Bell: “He was, but you didn’t have to call him a name.”

Conyers: “But now you’re telling me what I should have and should not have done.”

Bell: “You’re an adult, you have that choice.”

Conyers: “I’m what?” [surprised]

Bell: “You’re an adult. You had that choice.”

Conyers: “And everybody has choices.”

Bell: “Well, sometimes people need to think before they act.”

Conyers: “Ok, well I’m not going to be combative with you, young lady.”

Too late, Ms. Conyers - you made your bed and an 8th grader put you in it.

Ms. Bell was incredibly measured and respectful throughout this exchange - thank God we have the video to prove that. Despite constant provocation and prodding by Conyers, Bell keeps her cool and sticks to the argument at hand.

Conyers should be ashamed of herself for this one. But, of course, she won’t be. I wonder if she’ll threaten to get a gun and shoot Kierra Bell like she’s allegedly done in the past?

Game, set, match to Kierra Bell.

And to Ms. Conyers, who ought to be removed from the Council post-haste:

Conyers, ya got served by an 8th grader who has likely forgotten more about being a responsible adult in public service than you’ll ever know.

Sometimes leaders lead by example; other times they give us wonderful lessons in how not to go about things. Thanks for that, Ms. Conyers. [hat tip: HotAir.com]

UPDATE:

Charlie LeDuff’s exclusive interview with Monica Conyers is here:

Detroit News’ LeDuff is hilarious, Conyers is despicable. It’s a must-watch.

My favorite part might be when LeDuff asks Conyers to give a 15-second pitch to “come live in Detroit.” Part of her answer?

“Good schools.”

LeDuff has her read through a transcript of the “Shrek” incident. She’s incredibly proud of what she said and how she said it.

Good schools? Good grief.

If you’re as busy as I’ve been for the last few days, you’ll look forward to winding down with a few education carnivals.

What It’s Like on the Inside is hosting the 169th Carnival of Education - and there are lots and lots of good entries here.

Personally, I don’t think that Carl Chew is much like John Adams, the American Revolutionaries or any other American hero, but someone does.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is over at HomeSchoolBuzz.com - I particularly liked Jacque Dixon’s post on gardening/homeschooling.

As we discuss the place of Americans in an increasingly open world - considering A Nation at Risk, how we think about teaching/education and how that fits with future our economic standing - we often hear about students in other countries who seem to be superhuman academics.

We make a serious mistake - and one that’s unkind and insulting - by portraying these kids from India, China, Korea, etc. as being one-dimensional.

But you wouldn’t know that by reading the New York Times, which continually portrays non-American students as being a kindler, gentler version of the 1970’s Soviet athlete, except that the Asian student trains 18 hours a day with calculus books and soybeans instead of freeweights and steroids.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

One of the most striking parts of the film Two Million Minutes is that it shows the remarkable similarity between high-achieving students in the United States, China and India. Socially and culturally, they really aren’t all that different, and that’s a revelation to most people.

If anything, I’d say that China, India and some others are a generation or two behind the US in a good way - that they’re more like the 1950’s/60’s hard-working American with a defined seriousness of purpose.

It’s unfair to our kids for educators and the media to present school as a zero-sum game where other portions of their lives will suffer greatly if they choose to put time into academics. ABC News has a video clip today that features Two Million Minutes’ Apoorva and Rohit, its two Indian students, visiting an American classroom to talk about their experiences. It contains this exchange:

Reporter, to an American student: “Would you want to go to school and work as hard as these young people from India did?

Student: [Pensively] “No.”

You can watch the whole 2-minute clip here.

One can only guess at the thought process of that student, but I imagine his rationale was one of sacrifice and budgeting. Had he understood that he could pursue academics without crippling the rest of his life, “No” might not have come so easily.

And, of course, the clip has the obligatory blind coddling from the American Association of School Administrators’ leading pismire:

Paul D. Houston, Exec. Director of AASA: You know, it’s like telling somebody every day, day in and day out, you’re awful, you’re a failure, you’re terrible - now go out and do better. You’re talking about motivation, that’s not a good motivator.

Houston’s got a problem: he thinks that smiles and goodwill equate to a few years of physics instruction. While there’s no reason to be cruel to our students, we can’t ignore reality, either. Dr. Houston, much of whose work rests on hugs and warm milk before bedtime to ensure academic success, would do well to read Mark Bauerlein’s piece on the state of history knowledge as he reflects on his career after his June 30th retirement.

As you think about the future of education in our country and elsewhere, watch the clip of Rohit, the resume of whom the New York Times would certainly label robotic and freakishly-overachieving, singing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I’d prefer “Thank God I’m A Country Boy,” but I’ll take what I can get.

He seems awfully relaxed, comfortable, and like he’s got a handle on more than just engineering.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com highlighted today an event so touching and so important that it’s a shame so many have forgotten it - or never heard about it in the first place.

As HA puts it, “Thirty-two years later, it’s still a great play”:

In 1976, a sense of ennui had gripped the nation. In a year-long bicentennial celebration, many wondered if the economic stagnation that had lasted all decade meant that America’s best years were in the rear-view mirror. The commercialized bicentennial festivities felt forced and false. It seemed that pride in our country had dissipated into cynicism and retreat.

During a game at Dodger Stadium, two protesters ran on the field, knelt down and poured lighter fluid on the American flag with the intention of burning it. As Monday testified, the wind blew the first match out - and as they were about to touch the second match to the flag, Monday came from behind, snatched it and ran it to safety.

Here’s a video of Monday’s rescue and interviews with Monday, Dodger Steve Garvey and Dodger Tommy Lasorda, who was LA’s Third Base Coach at the time. Lasorda was also on a mission to get the flag, but Monday got there first. [RSS readers, click here to watch the video].

The scoreboard flashed “You made a great play Rick Monday,” and the crowd of 40,000 began an unprompted rendition of God Bless America.

Rick Monday was a solid player who played almost 2,000 games over a 19-year career in Major League Baseball. He’s remembered for his iconic defense of the flag, but he should be proud of the way he played in that 1976 season, too.

I took a baseball history class with the late William Gienapp. The scope of the course was from the game’s beginnings to Flood v. Kuhn [1972] and its consequences, but Professor Gienapp took time out to touch on Rick Monday’s flag-saving.

It was the first time many in the room had heard of it.

From ED in ‘08:

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the landmark education report, A Nation at Risk, which warned that America’s weak education system was undermining American prosperity, security and society.

Their report A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students are Still at Risk is a must-read:

A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students are Still at Risk shows the lack of progress in the school reform movement since the 1983 release of the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s letter to the American people, A Nation at Risk.

ED in 08’s report card explains that key recommendations related to time, teaching and standards have yet to be realized.

• Read the executive summary.
• Read the full report.
• Read the press release.

I’m impressed - ED in ‘08 is really starting to turn things around.

The prescriptions and clarion calls sounded in A Nation at Risk have gone largely unheeded. The report wasn’t perfect, but it identified successfully many of the ills that spent 25 more years further eroding public education.

There are several reasons why Risk didn’t take root immediately - labor interests, teacher education programs, perceptions of and measures of accountability, etc. And, some would argue, a generation has been lost as a result of this failure.

That can’t be helped at this point.

But now we can look to the past, present and future - we really do have a rare opportunity to do this sensibly - and get on with things. We can think about what teaching is and what it should be; we can look at the present economy and match humanistic education with business needs; we can utilize the data/information that our best policy minds wield, mix it up with what history has shown us and work up a plan.

Or, of course, we can do nothing and embrace even more strongly the delusion that we’re doing a wonderful job simply because we’re compassionate, caring and committed to education. That’s worked poorly for 25 years, though.

For some other worthwhile takes on the 25 years since A Nation at Risk debuted, peep the following:

Newsweek: Still at Risk

Fordham’s Chester Finn

George Will: Education Lessons We Left Behind

Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey on George Will’s Commentary

Going to the Mat: A Nation at Risk Turns 25

Like every benevolent sector in the United States, the education crowd frequently aligns with the famous [and infamous] to get the job done. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but we’d do well to put a bit more thought in to who we select and why.

Occasionally we stumble on some pleasant surprises when education and celebrity overlap. A little diligence and awareness would keep us from relying on surprises, though.

Have a listen and weigh in - it’ll be the best 5 minutes of your day!

You can play this Education for the Aughts Podcast by clicking on the triangular ‘play’ button on the player below [or at the bottom of the post if you’re reading this in RSS] - it will expand and begin streaming audio. Alternatively, you can download an mp3 file of the podcast to listen in your own media player.

And, if you like what you hear, you can subscribe to Education for the Aughts Podcast.

RELEVENT LINKS:

• Global Campaign for Education
• Shakira’s Campaign for Education @ justjared
  
• Shakira @ wikipedia
• A. Russo @ This Week in Education: Singer Appears To Promote Global Education: Where’s Your Celebrity Spokesperson?
• George Clooney @ wikipedia
• ED in ‘08 Makes Strange Bedfellows [Kanye West, ED in ‘08]
• ED in ‘08
• May Installed as Uni Chancellor, BBC
• Mayim Bialik @ wikipedia
• Jeff Cohen @ wikipedia

Yesterday I posted a 42 minute podcast of William Arrowsmith’s “The Future of Teaching: The Molding of Men.” It addresses, in part, the growing trend to spend more time on the technical details of scholarship than on teaching students how to teach.

Well, Arrowsmith was pointing to that trend in 1967, but he could’ve made an even stronger case in 2008.

My alma mater, Boston University, put out a notice today about an on-campus event called “Teaching Doctoral Students How to Teach.”

Providing opportunities for doctoral students to learn and refine successful pedagogical practices has many short and long term benefits for the advisor, student, and institution. Many researchers prefer that their doctoral students do not invest the time to be effective teaching assistants due to the time it takes away from their laboratory endeavors. This self-serving philosophy does the doctoral student a disservice and is a myth. Please join Dr. Hoagland as he shares how his experience with the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate improved the focus on teaching in the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology and how this improvement led to strengthening the graduate program. [emphasis mine]

Drawing pedagogy - really, developing mastery in teaching - out of graduate students is tougher in some disciplines than in others. The history student will simply find it an easier logistical fit than the budding neuroscientist.

But I can’t help pointing out that the content of this event, hosted by the Center for Excellence in Teaching in 2008, has been covered several times before - including by the University’s own former Professor Arrowsmith in The Future of Teaching and The Shame of the Graduate Schools.

An afternoon-long event is a start and I’m pleased to see it. But can we, as a University community, look to the past to make stronger commitments in the present and future on an issue that really matters - teaching - and make the event open to more than just faculty?

I sure hope so.

You can play the Education for the Aughts Podcasts by clicking on the triangular ‘play’ button on the player below [at the bottom of the post if you’re reading this in RSS] - it will expand and begin streaming audio. Alternatively, you can download an mp3 file of the podcast to listen in your own media player. You can also download a PDF of “The Future of Teaching: The Molding of Men” for reference.

And, if you like what you hear, you can subscribe to Education for the Aughts Podcast.

I asked a simple question in late January: Do you know William Arrowsmith? Here’s a graphic of the results:

This site’s readership is largely college educated, and those who aren’t ed-school grads [or didn’t attend college at all] are still hyper-aware of education theory. They’re teachers, concerned parents and employees in K-12 and university-level institutions.

And almost none have come across William Arrowsmith, an education theorist, classicist and master teacher. To demonstrate how few educators today look to Arrowsmith’s work, Google his name. You’ll see that my poll is the 5th result and has little competition.

I decided to open my podcast series with a reading of Arrowsmith’s 1967 piece, “The Future of Teaching: The Molding of Men.” Though four decades old, it speaks to most of the issues I read about daily on both blogs and old media. He touches on many pertinent subjects including:

• Relevance - what it really means and why it matters; comparing his words to the present shows us how egregiously educators have betrayed this concept.
• The purpose of education - how seemingly irrelevant topics make our lives better.
• Technology - though implicit in his argument, Arrowsmith demonstrates the folly of focusing on empty process at the expense of content.
• Teaching and teachers - how many of our teachers both in 1967 and today are anything but.

ADDITIONAL READING:

William Arrowsmith: A Recollection, by James W. Tuttleton, The New Criterion, 1994.

William Arrowsmith, William Harris, Middlebury College.

The Myth of the Superhuman Professor, Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University.

A handful of translations/books available via Amazon.

UPDATE: Google has re-evaluated my website and removed the “may harm your computer” notice. I’d read that it takes ~5 days, but they knocked it out in about 12 hours. Thanks!

You know, when my traffic tanked in the last few days, I assumed it was because most of the problems in education had been solved. Ha!

Nope, it was a tiny piece of badware [low-risk, thankfully]. Google picked up on it quickly and started to display a handy bit of advice to Googlers encountering my website:

I dotted in red the two important points. The single red dot points to the warning Google showed potential visitors - and, unsurprisingly, they were deterred from visiting a site that Google told them was potentially harmful. The two red dots indicate AVG’s seal of approval and testify that my security/badware problem is now fixed.

So, here’s what happened, in brief, and why you should care.

WordPress had a well-documented vulnerability about two months ago. Chinese hackers exploited this vulnerability and injected a bit of code in WP sites that forced visitors to auto-download some stuff. If you’re a WP blogger with this vulnerability, take the following steps:

• Read this thread - it explains the threat and how to delete the iframe injection.
• Upgrade to WP 2.5, which has plenty of handy features and closes some security holes.

Once that’s complete, you can request that your site be reviewed by StopBadware.org, a benevolent organization that has partnered with Google to get a handle on badware across the internet. You can also log in to Google’s Webmaster Tools to request a re-review from Google. In a few days [hopefully sooner!] that ‘harmful’ tag on my site will be gone.

This is yet another reminder to keep anti-virus software active on your computer. If you don’t already have a-v software, I recommend AVG - it’s free and does a great job.

You can also scan your machine with a free online virus scanner from TrendMicro. HouseCall is wonderful - it identifies any problems and tells you how to fix them.

I invite everyone to take this opportunity to run a scan and make sure your system is secure. I suppose that reminder is the silver lining in these nasty little hacker tricks.

I don’t go crazy for the blog memes, but it’s worthwhile to relax a bit and dredge up a few memories. I was happy to be tagged by Michelle at the BearTwinsMom’s Den. It’s a brief, straightforward meme, too - I like those.

The rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Got it.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Lots and lots of woodworking - more along the lines of lutherie.

I like re-designing things to meet my needs and then making them. I wanted, in 1998, an electric guitar with a combination of features that I couldn’t find anywhere:

• A symmetrical, double-cutaway body like the Gibson ES-335, but solid wood and with a flat top.
• A fat, round, oversized neck with a Gretsch-style peghead. I had, and still have, no need for a slim, fast neck.
• Woods I liked [and from local trees], which were black walnut for the body and black cherry for the neck; Koa for the electronics cover on the back gives contrast without gaudiness.
• Moving the bridge higher up the body and putting controls on the opposite side of right-handed guitars. This freed up the lower portion of the body for additions later on and, by moving the bridge up, my arm doesn’t hit the controls accidentally.
• Green abalone peghead inlays of my last name and a lightning bolt inspired by Roy Hobbs’ patch in The Natural.

You get the idea.

Having this made would’ve cost me plenty - $2,000+ or so given the specs I wanted. I couldn’t, at that time, make the metal parts or electronics, so I had to buy the bridge, tuners, pickups, etc. But if it’s wood, bone, or plastic, I made it. Total damage? About $180, and that’s because I didn’t skimp on quality. Had I harvested used parts, it could’ve clocked in at about $50 + elbow grease.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m not a certified musician or certified luthier, I haven’t toured with a band, etc. I didn’t work at a musical instrument factory or apprentice with a guitar builder.

Makes ya think, yes?

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Install a podcast-playing plugin so it can debut today
2. Scan some old documents
3. Catch up on about 300 years of backlogged e-mails
4. Read today’s content from the 366 subscriptions I have in Google Reader
5. Write a blog post [doing that now]

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Bacon, pepperoni and cheese, beef jerky.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Return the scholarship money I was generously given by the Clark Foundation.
2. Develop a hybrid teaching academy with two components - 9-12 and post-secondary. The academy would have a business component similar to Boston’s MATCH, a humanities/classics curriculum drawing on Great Books and math done in-house with more advanced science coming through a university partnership. Post-secondary students would be actively involved in teaching the 9-12 students with a focus on their own pedagogy and scholarship. Think it’s not possible? Let’s talk it over.

5) Three of my bad habits:

1. Reading too much and not talking/writing enough.
2. Not being as politically active as I ought to be.
3. I’ll stop at two.

6) 5 places I have lived:

1. Hartwick, NY [resident of the Town of Hartwick but with a Cooperstown address/phone]
2. Western Massachusetts
3. Boston, MA
4. South Kensington, London, England
5. Sacramento, CA area

7) 5 jobs I have had:

1. Private teacher [English, history, rhetoric, algebra/geometry/trigonometry, physics, etc. to varying degrees - never Biology or a foreign language, though]
2. University-level student course evaluation editor
3. Corporate education
4. Query/result refinement for a search engine
5. Varied consulting

8) 6 peeps I wanna know more about:

First, a note - tagging is a tough business in this education blogosphere. You folks know that you can write serious policy/pedagogy/etc. pieces while still having a laugh and/or writing about something normal, yes? Actually, I remember all those posts castigating The Quick and the Ed for writing about The Wire, so I suppose they don’t realize it.

So, I’ll go beyond the education blogosphere for some of these 6 bloggers who I enjoy and want to know more about:

1. Born Again Redneck, whose blog name would beg for a tag even if his stuff wasn’t worth reading. [response]
2. WinExtra/Steve Hodson, who gives sound, insightful tech commentary without