The New York Times today has a front page story about how Arne Duncan, who now is head of federal education, kept, as head of the Chicago public schools: “a log of nearly 40 pages listing the local politicians and business people and others who sought help getting children into the city’s most selective public schools.” The articles in the NY Times, and the Chicago Tribune, where the story broke last week, conjure suspicions of pressure — which is strenuously denied. Whatever. This is 20th century government schooling as usual, as the Tribune writes:
“Competition to get into the city’s premier selective enrollment schools is fierce. Every year thousands of students apply for openings at the schools, considered the crown jewels of the city’s public school system. But parents have long complained the system is rigged, murky and unfair. They tell stories about friends and neighbors whose children were admitted through back channels.”
The larger issue is: why should parents have to push, shove — and if they do, cheat — to get good schooling for their children? Why should children who do not have influential parents who know how to pressure the system be disadvantaged in the competition for the best schools? The answer to these “whys” used to be that there were limited seats in the best locations for learning. Now the only limit is whether the new knowledge delivery is in a youngster’s hand. The kid may not get to sit next to the Mayor’s daughter, but she will be able to access the same knowledge.
Handschooling is a new means — just arriving with mobile internet broadband — for absolutely equal connectivity to the knowledge that schooling is supposed to be teaching the young generation. Even the most premier of Chicago’s schools has very limited knowledge to be learned by comparison to the marvelous emergent global commons. For example, here are acouple of new subjects for today that any handschooler can drop by to learn:
More Vitamin A from Maise? A report that describes how “Millions of people in developing countries are too poor to buy foods rich in beta-carotene, such as fruits and vegetables. This results in vitamin A deficiency, which blinds up to 500,000 children annually. . . . ” Students will learn here how maise may be a solution.
The Large Hadron Collider, to follow events at the LHC homesite as experiments. There is a LHC Milestone animation, other background and news, plus an invitation to follow developments at CERN on Twitter.
