The 5 Hour Rule
Over the last few decades, a cottage industry has sprung up that examines and dissects the habits and values of “self-made” millionaires. One of the key findings that comes up again and again is known as the “5-hour rule.” In short, this is the rule where we spend one hour a day learning, reflecting, and thinking. We do this five times a week (which makes up the “5-hour” rule). The rule dates to Benjamin Franklin, who would devote (at least) an hour each day specifically to learning something new. Franklin would rise early to read and write. He even set up his own club of artisans and experimenters.
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Homeschooling is increasingly a misnomer
An interesting article about a growing trend of "microschools" which appear to basically be daycares that facilitate online homeschooling. It calls out a company called Prenda, which looks to be the AirBnB of this by connecting "guides" with families.
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"Biden Says He’ll Try Another Way to Cancel Student Debt"
This news is significant because, for years, debt cancellation advocates have pushed the administration to use the Higher Education Act (HEA), the 1965 law that governs federal student loans, to cancel student debt. Biden's initial student debt cancellation plan relied on a different law, the George W. Bush-era HEROES Act, to issue sweeping cancellation, but Friday's Supreme Court ruling closed off that route.
As I wrote last year, some of the earliest champions for cancellation, including the Debt Collective and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have made the case that the HEA presents the best legal option for canceling debt. They've maintained that the portion of the law called "compromise and settlement authority" gives the Education Department carte blanche to tweak or even throw out its claims against borrowers. (Notably, the Debt Collective expressed skepticism on Twitter about the administration's planned use of the HEA because it doesn't implement relief automatically.)
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Washington scraps plan for all students to get free lunch
Sad to see this isn't carrying through. They are still working on expanding it for the poorest students in elementary school, but still, we should do better.
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The Swedish "Study Circle"
Folkbildningsrörelsen: that is the name we have for this movement of self-organized study groups, resource centers, maker spaces, public lectures, and free retreats for personal development.
These types of things exist in other countries too – but not at the same scale. Or even close.
An interesting look at the prevalence of social study circles including the background and how they came about.
It's a wonderful idea and I'd love to have something similar here among my friends and social group.
A few linked Wikipedia pages:
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Verifiable work & Identity in the coming era
I was thinking this morning about how the progression of AI as being "good enough" is going to force a change on homework that is AI doable. Math, writing, computer science, all of these areas are ones we're seeing AI become capable enough to solve in a way which would make it hard to identify whether the student did it on their own, or with aid.
I noted two posts by a friend of mine on Mastodon in yesterday's favs, included again below:
On the one hand, I believe many common examples of homework to be remote busywork. At best, misguided as to the efficacy, and at worst, just work to be able to feel the student put in effort. Yes, there were definitely examples that I felt helped me understand and grow in my abilities in different academic areas, but they were exceptions. As a layman with no evidence to back this up, my feeling is that there is a sizable dip in effectiveness where the earliest years of schooling benefit from the added practice, and that in the later years of schooling it has similar levels of benefit as projects become more complex and require more than the time allotted in school. Additionally, team projects which require collaboration were good practice for communicating with others, rudimentary project management concepts, and also understanding how others work (or often didn't work.)
As Adam noted, there will likely be a growing importance in these sorts of projects to provide additional resources, proof of work, research, notes, as means of helping show your process and work, and as another piece of verification for work completed by you and not an AI assistant.
Additionally, in this same vein of verification against AI, comes the concerns over deepfakes, or more subtly the impersonation of someone in text form on social media or online. How do we know our friend really said those things when AI can generate a good-enough doppelgänger in many cases?
One idea I saw floated, though I didn't flag it so it is now lost to me, was that online identity verification could be an example of a blockchain style public ledger for verification. Obviously it has numerous security, privacy, and technology concerns; but it did strike me as perhaps the most compelling use-case for blockchain style technology that I have heard in a while. I recognize that I am not well informed enough to know if it is indeed viable; but it at least got my gears going.
Anyways, AI and this new era is definitely on my mind and likely will continue to be.
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An idle thought I had: I wonder how much of America's backsliding on education bleeds over to its sports. Obviously many amazing athletes still find ways to excel and reach a global stage. But with the fewer teachers, some number of them were coaches who likely would have helped drive young people to pursue sports and excel.
Zero proof. Just a random thought as I watch the World Cup and work this morning.
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A discussion regarding Montessori education for kids
Interesting to hear stories from personal experiences with Montessori schooling. I never had an opportunity to go to one, but I find the framework and concept fascinating.
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"Teachers from Philippines help struggling U.S. schools amid teacher shortage"
I read this story over the weekend and meant to blog it. It is an eye opening look at the decimated ranks of American education and how it is in desperate need of a resurgence of national spotlight and support. Not only are these teachers coming to try and help the US, but they are also being forced into it once they discover it is not the promised paradise or opportunity they were lead to believe it to be.
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Article explains why populism has a leg up on democracy when it comes to modern politics messaging
There's a lot of good stuff in this article. Good, in the sense of quality of the analysis and writing, not so much in the tone of the future. The author Rick Shenkman writes about a paper by UC Irvine professor Shawn Rosenberg. In addition to that, there is an interview that is actually what I was initially directed to and then backtracked through the source article and then the PDF paper itself (though I haven't read the latter yet.)
I pull excerpts from both the linked article as well as the conversation further down. I pulled a lot because I struggled to find what I could cut. It all felt important.
Democracy is hard work. And as society's "elites"—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists.
His prediction? "In well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail."
[...]
He has concluded that the reason for right-wing populists' recent success is that "elites" are losing control of the institutions that have traditionally saved people from their most undemocratic impulses. When people are left to make political decisions on their own they drift toward the simple solutions right-wing populists worldwide offer: a deadly mix of xenophobia, racism and authoritarianism.
The elites, as Rosenberg defines them, are the people holding power at the top of the economic, political and intellectual pyramid who have "the motivation to support democratic culture and institutions and the power to do so effectively." In their roles as senators, journalists, professors, judges and government administrators, to name a few, the elites have traditionally held sway over public discourse and U.S. institutions—and have in that role helped the populace understand the importance democratic values. But today that is changing. Thanks to social media and new technologies, anyone with access to the Internet can publish a blog and garner attention for their cause—even if it's rooted in conspiracy and is based on a false claim, like the lie that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring from the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor, which ended in a shooting.
While the elites formerly might have successfully squashed conspiracy theories and called out populists for their inconsistencies, today fewer and fewer citizens take the elites seriously. Now that people get their news from social media rather than from established newspapers or the old three TV news networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), fake news proliferates. It's surmised that 10 million people saw on Facebook the false claim that Pope Francis came out in favor of Trump's election in 2016. Living in a news bubble of their own making many undoubtedly believed it. (This was the most-shared news story on Facebook in the three months leading up to the 2016 election, researchers report.)
The irony is that more democracy—ushered in by social media and the Internet, where information flows more freely than ever before—is what has unmoored our politics, and is leading us towards authoritarianism. Rosenberg argues that the elites have traditionally prevented society from becoming a totally unfettered democracy; their "oligarchic 'democratic' authority" or "democratic control" has until now kept the authoritarian impulses of the populace in check.
Now from the conversation / interview on Salon. The bolded text is the initiating question, and his response follows.
How are you feeling about the state of the world and the global crisis of democracy? Several years ago, you predicted how bad things would get with the rise of global fascism and right-wing populism. You were largely ignored.
To me the world is somewhere between disconcerting and scary. Look at the world more broadly, Whatever my concerns may have been back in 2019, the world has continued to evolve in a direction that I was concerned it might. In fact, the world may have even become worse in terms of the prospects for democracy than I warned about in 2019.
I argued that liberal democratic politics is complicated, and populist alternatives offer a vision that is much simpler. All that populism demands is a simple story of cause and effect. All one needs to do is act: Authoritarian power is the solution.
This populist vision also has a very simple story about society and identity. In this story, social groups are natural. We think of them categorically. They don't have lots of overlap. In-groups and out-groups are distinct. Evaluative judgments are binary, a simple black-and-white story. There is good and bad. It's not a judgment in the sense of a subjective judgment. This way of thinking offers simple understandings of what is objectively true and what is not true, and is therefore deemed to be less valuable.
Populist ways of thinking about the world are ultimately just a lot simpler than the complexities of thinking about action as having multiple causes and consequences, thinking about groups being inherently diverse and overlapping, and thinking of judgment as a subjective, tentative thing. All of that is way too complicated for populists. Most people, not all, naturally incline toward that simpler vision if it is offered to them.
We tend to think about groups in negative terms, and when you're making evaluative judgments about things, they tend to be dualistic, black-and-white and unequivocal. That type of populist thinking was marginalized for a long time. What were once unacceptable ways of talking about politics are now part of the global discourse, and people are attracted to them. Many people do not really understand what liberal democracy is and why it is important, so they ultimately end up choosing populist alternatives.
Ultimately, that outcome is an ironic result of the greater openness of the public sphere and the democratic arena of ideas, where more people are empowered to make choices on their own. The gatekeepers have lost control.
[...]
How do we create a healthier democracy in the United States? What can the average American do on a day-to-day basis?
I am optimistic. I believe that there are solutions to the problem. We need to fix a broken educational system. The average American has trouble having productive discussions with people they disagree with and who are different from them. They're also not very good at reflecting on their own values and beliefs. The average American is also not very good in terms of critical thinking and understanding general principles.
We need to create an educational system that prepares adults to effectively negotiate the complexities of democratic life. We also need to broaden our understanding of what democracy is, beyond just voting. For the most part, you vote for candidates, and most people end up voting for their candidate either on the basis of a single issue, or they really have no idea at all and they're just voting for the party or their group identity.
America needs more deliberative democracy, and institutions and structures from the local level on up that will empower citizens to become more active. In the end, the American people need to be more involved in their own self-government.
Imagine you are the doctor of democracy and America is your patient. What is your assessment?
The patient is not terminal, but the patient is not stable either. They are moving toward critical condition.
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How did Yayoi Kusama become an artist?
I only became aware of her when her show came to Seattle. Katie and I went to see it and found it very cool, loved the experiential nature of it. I also found her story very fascinating. Cool to see some more coverage of who she is and also a video about her aimed at kids and helping them see how they could also become an artist.
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School Teacher Strikes: Kent finishes, Seattle begins
The US lack of financial support for schools is shameful. The Kent teacher union struck and delayed the start of school for students a week and a half. They just reached an agreement today. Seattle school teachers are also on strike and have thus far delayed the start of Seattle schools for two days.
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On the politics of education loan forgiveness
A Facebook post from a friend, who gave permission for it to be shared without credit:
A reminder on student loans: there is a conservative media strategy to keep you fighting over making the education system accessible. Here’s why:
- Student loans were implemented by conservatives to reduce access to education in the first place; educated masses are bad for power structures
- The current loan forgiveness efforts, paltry as they may be, get a ton of coverage because they need you to fight against making education more accessible
- It’s not about taxes. Mostly millionaires got nearly two TRILLION dollars in free tax money from spending programs in the pandemic and the conservative media has said fuck all about it. Why? Because they want your tax dollars going to millionaires but NOT to people who might learn how messed up the current system is.
You’re being encouraged to turn on one another intentionally for a specific reason. Don’t fall for it.
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There are obviously a million issues to be addressed in today's world, but I can't help but feel the ongoing loss of teachers is something that is being deprioritized because it isn't the "house on fire" issues. I'd love to see a major legislation that pushes education back to the forefront, pours resources into schools and guarantees minimum pay for public school teachers on levels which drive competition with the open market, etc.
Obviously this becomes a partisan issue under the "but my freedom" resistance to nationalized public education. But, pardon my french, those people can go fuck themselves.
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California has made lunch free for all K-12 students
I am a big fan of this move and am hoping Washington follows suit soon.
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"Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls for abolishing department"
I, for one, am shocked the evil crone didn't do it during her time running the department. Oh wait, no I'm not. That would have meant she didn't have a podium of power.
Allow me to give my deeply considered and complex response to her: Fuck you.
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Technology Videos for Elders
Yesterday we bought a new iPad for my mother-in-law and she loves it, but she is also completely new to the iOS ecosystem. She's had a Macbook air as her laptop for a few years, so she understands some of the base things about Macs and the Internet, but the paradigm shift from her laptop to the iPad has thrown her for a bit of a loop.
So, over the past 18-ish hours I've been teaching her how to use it. Explaining when to use an app and when she will need to go online to find things out, etc. How to handle unexpected behaviors and notifications, etc.
This only reinforces for me that we need a good education service for the elders of the world to help them engage and understand new technologies, both in the very literal sense (how to use an iPad) but also in the more philosophical sense (Why would I use the iPad).
We did get what appears to be an excellent 'Dummies' book for the iPad directly aimed at seniors, but I worry how quickly it will become outdated as a resource for her.
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Texas Board of Education got proposal to call slavery 'involuntary relocation'
A group of educators in Texas proposed referring to slavery as “involuntary relocation” in second-grade classes — before being rebuffed by the State Board of Education.
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