Culture: June 2007 Archive Page

The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn, and it isn't supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn't made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that's where real meaning is found, that is the classroom's lesson, however indirectly delivered.

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The strongest meshes of the school net are invisible. Constant bidding for a stranger's attention creates a chemistry producing the common characteristics of modern schoolchildren: whining, dishonesty, malice, treachery, cruelty. Unceasing competition for official favor in the dramatic fish bowl of a classroom delivers cowardly children, little people sunk in chronic boredom, little people with no apparent purpose for being alive. The full significance of the classroom as a dramatic environment, as primarily a dramatic environment, has never been properly acknowledged or examined. --John Taylor Gatto --An Angry Look at Modern Schooling: An Enclosure Movement for Children (JohnTaylorGatto.com)

I'm blogging this because of Gatto's willingness to say the emperor has no clothes.

I'm not as disillusioned about public schools as Gatto seems to be, but then I've never tried to fight for reforms. We have instead quietly opted out of the factory-style education system, and we have made lifestyle choices that permit us to live modestly on one salary, in a profession that permits me to have a lot more family time during the summer, so that we can invest the time and energy doing the vitally important job of helping to prepare our children for the world.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change." --R. Timothy Patterson --Read the sunspots (Financial Post)

Because Hollywood and the mainstream press in America have pretty much decided that human activity have caused global warming, I am always interested when I come across reports of an alternative way of thinking .

Environmental reporting is an area in which journalists who are sympathetic to the agenda of environmentalists (after all, who doesn't want clean water and air?) are too quick to pass along scary statistics and predictions that have little or no basis in scientific fact.

--How children lost the right to roam in four generations (Daily Mail)

Interesting article on how over the years parents are holding onto their children more and more tightly.

See also Henry Jenkins, "Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces."

News emerged over the weekend that Church authorities have complained to Sony about the depiction of Manchester Cathedral in the game. Some reports have stated that the Church may pursue legal action against the company.

But according to Alex Chapman of Campbell Hooper solicitors,"The Church will have an uphill battle in a legal claim against Sony, and indeed it is likely that there is no basis for a claim." --Church will face ''uphill battle'' if suing Sony, says legal expert (Games Industry Biz)

I've been following this story about Resistance: The Fall of Man.

I'm reminded of when sculptor Frederick Hart was surprised to discover that that a copy of a sculpture he had created for the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. was featured for about 20 minutes in the movie Devil's Advocate, and that the filmmakers had actually animated the sculpture to turn it into what the Anglican church leaders called a distortion of a religious sculpture.

Sony was forced to re-edit the film before they could release it on DVD and video (after agreeing to put disclaimer stickers on the copies of the movie that had already been produced).

The National Cathedral case involved a living artist, who still owned the copyright to a work that was commissioned for a religious purpose. The Manchester Cathedral case probably doesn't involve much recently-produced art, and the leaders object to the fact that the digital re-creation of the church is the setting for a gunfight.

It will be interesting to see how the mainstream media represent the Manchester case, since it involves a video game. (We've already seen that even the very edgy indie Slamdance Film Festival is not a safe place for envelope-pushing videogames.)

CNN is widely credited with initiating the acceleration of the modern news cycle with the fall 2006 debut of its spin-off channel CNN:24, which provides a breaking news story, an update on that story, and a news recap all within 24 seconds. In addition to creating its groundbreaking format, CNN:24 broke many important stories with reports such as "Ford No Money Everyone Fired," "Iraq Bomb Kill Truck," "Country Hates Bush," "Dow High Now," and "Squirrel Water Skis."

"TV news reporting has always been about breaking the story down into only the barest, most salient facts, but the breakneck pace of contemporary reportage doesn't allow for that anymore," said Professor Robert Kubey, director of the Center for Media Studies at Rutgers University. "Today's ace reporter isn't the one with the best command of the language, but the one who can say 'Congress!' or 'Health care?' or 'Slam dunk!' with the most appropriate expression on his or her face." --Media Landscape Redefined By 24-Second News Cycle (The Onion (Satire))

So I pour myself a glass of red wine, settle in with a fresh pair of flannel pajamas and start channeling my inner geek with glee. Primetime or not, I love the Bee. I love it. I love the celebration of intelligence, the championing of nerd-ship, of the brotherhood of brainiac. This is why the Bee should be on primetime network television. So that the Steve Jobs in all of us gets some real screen time. So that the incredible freakiness of spelling into your hand has an audience. A chance to shine. A chance to let every kid who spends his evenings rocking back and forth in his bedroom dreading the misery of junior high see that it is going to be okay. That geekiness has a freaking point! The Bee is a nerd manifesto! WHOO-HOO! --West Coast Bee Call (Throwing Things)

Detailed commentary on last night's spelling bee championship, which I watched with the family.

A screenwriter couldn't possibly have come up with the victory interview, in which the winner says he prefers math and music to spelling because spelling is "just memorization." After the reporter invites him to give his opinion of the bee now, the kid pauses for a long, long time and says, "Does that mean I'm supposed to like it more now?"

Way to put a serrefine on that post-competition enthusiasm.