{"id":7294,"date":"2012-04-03T04:15:07","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T04:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=7294"},"modified":"2012-04-03T04:16:26","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T04:16:26","slug":"recommended-reading-106","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=7294","title":{"rendered":"Recommended Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Top Billing! \u00a0Zachary Tumin – Let’s tackle the right education crisis<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Zach Tumin, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government<\/strong> and co-author of \u00a0Collaborate or Perish!: Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World<\/a> <\/strong>is critiquing the Council of Foreign Relation’s recent report on “national security and education” that was very light on connections to national security and very heavy on recommendations for more corporate ed reform of the public school system (Largely because the task force was stacked with an excess of people who would benefit financially from such policies). \u00a0Tumin writes:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a national security crisis in U.S. education. I\u2019m no history sleuth, but it must have come on fast just after February 2010. That\u2019s when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sent the last Quadrennial Defense Review up to Capitol Hill, with no mention of U.S. education at all. Two years later, in March 2012, Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice issued a\u00a0report from the Council on Foreign Relations<\/a>\u00a0that declared American education to be so failed as to put U.S. national security at risk.<\/strong><\/p>\n

National security crises can arise suddenly. But education crises? Schooling kids is much as Max Weber once described politics \u2013 \u201ca strong and slow boring of hard boards.\u201d You can lose a school building or a teacher overnight, but you don\u2019t fall into a national-security-like crisis by mid-morning recess. You don\u2019t get out of it by homeroom the next day, either.<\/strong><\/p>\n

American education today does feel like it\u2019s in crisis. But not the one Rice and Klein would have us believe. Klein and Rice say the problem is: \u201cJohnny still can\u2019t read, \u2018rite or \u2018rithmetic.\u201d They say tests and standards are the fix. And like George Bush did down at Ground Zero after 9\/11, they\u2019ve gone to \u201cThe Pile,\u201d megaphone in hand, shouting the alarm. This time, though, it\u2019s not Saddam and WMD. It\u2019s China, Finland, Singapore and our schools.<\/strong><\/p>\n

….If we\u2019re going to war, let\u2019s get the problem right.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a crisis in American education worth going after hard. It\u2019s one we can fix, and only a fool wouldn\u2019t want to, whether its draped in the American flag or just sitting there quietly waiting to wreak havoc. Almost 1 million K-12 teachers \u2013 29 percent of U.S. public school teachers \u2013 say they plan to quit within the next five years. Two years ago it was 17 percent. For those teachers with six to 20 years on the job \u2013 the heart of the batting order \u2013 40 percent now say they plan to wave the white flag.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How do we know? Because Pew and Harris Interactive told us so last month in the\u00a028th annual MetLife \u201cSurvey of the American Teacher.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Pew famously puts out the dullest, most obvious, least controversial survey findings imaginable. No one ever accused Pew of \u201crock piling\u201d it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But this was a stunner. Pay isn\u2019t the issue. Safety is all right. Teacher-parent engagement is up. With collaboration between teachers and parents strong, teachers feel they have parents\u2019 support and involvement. These are great soft indicators. So what\u2019s the beef? Teachers feel they\u2019re being asked to take a high-speed drill to a \u201cstrong slow boring of hard boards\u201d problem just when the long, slow nurture of children has become all the more important to kids\u2019 success. America\u2019s teachers think we\u2019ve got the problem \u2013 and the solution \u2013 wrong. Here\u2019s what Pew found:<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

HG’s World<\/strong>–\u00a0Thoughts on a Maritime Nation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The maritime\u00a0theme that most often\u00a0runs through this blog, and binds it together, is the same one that for over two hundred years has bound together the United States, and led to our success as a nation and great power. Due to our ability to recognize our failings, and self correct ourselves this path\u00a0has\u00a0led to\u00a0a world more prosperous and secure, than any time since humans have existed. Our nation was\u00a0founded by people who journeyed to our shores on ships, and then when divorced from Europe, founded a navy to protect our shores and lanes of commerce.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

….The recent decision by President Obama to\u00a0commit to a\u00a0“Strategic Pivot” to reinforce our presence in the Western Pacific has left the Navy with hard choices to do more with less, as it plans to retire 16 ships and now 7 more cruisers and 2 amphibious ships next year. Some in Congress have begun to\u00a0question<\/a>\u00a0the logic and soundness of the Navy’s\u00a0decision<\/a>. This topic\u00a0has spread to the influential naval centric blog of Information Dissemination, where\u00a0this\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0generated lively debate. Amid the plans for pivoting to Asia is a rather large fly in the ointment named Iran. Reading the\u00a0“Tea Leaves”<\/a>\u00a0tends support the phrase,\u00a0plan for the worst, and hope for the best.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thomas PM Barnett – WPR’s The New Rules: In Tough Times, America’s ‘Dirty Harry’ Streak Re-Emerges\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Barack Obama has presented himself as the ender of wars. Moreover, where the preceding administration went heavy with its military power, the Obama administration goes laparoscopically light. And as if to culminate a quarter-century trend of U.S. military interventions that have all somehow devolved into manhunts of some sort, America now simply skips the intervention and gets straight to hunting down and killing bad guys. We stand our ground, as it were, on a global scale. Give us the wrong gesture, look, attitude or perceived intention, and wham! One of ours might kill one of yours — in a heartbeat. You just never know.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If that sounds like the resurrection of the \u201cDirty Harry\u201d mindset, it has a lot to do with our still-tough economic times. As a nation and society, we have a long and persistent history of adopting a decidedly illiberal attitude when income growth lags. Jostled by hard times, we feel little remorse about dispatching those who transgress, trespass, threaten or terrorize us.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nassim Nicholas Taleb –\u00a0Why We Don\u2019t Know What We Talk About When We Talk About Probability<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
I will rephrase the previous two points, as they are nonseparable.\u00a0<\/strong><\/pre>\n
Luckily, we do not use\u00a0<\/strong>probabilities\u00a0<\/strong>in daily(and less daily) decisions,<\/strong><\/pre>\n
 <\/strong>at least not in the raw form presented in\u00a0<\/strong>the literature -doing so\u00a0<\/strong><\/pre>\n
 would have made us exit the gene pool.<\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
To Be or to Do –Frederick the Great, Baron Von Steuben, and the Value of Practice, Practice, Practice<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Danger Room<\/strong>–Navy: We\u2019re 4 Years Away From Laser Guns on Ships<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0FBI: Russian Honeypot Tried To Sex Obama Cabinet Official<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Outside the Beltway (Dr. James Joyner) –Republican Stupidity Widens Gender Gap<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Chicago Boyz (David Foster) –Breaking Stalin\u2019s Nose<\/em>, by Eugene Yelchin” href=”http:\/\/chicagoboyz.net\/archives\/28955.html” rel=”bookmark”>Book Review:\u00a0Breaking Stalin\u2019s Nose<\/em>, by Eugene Yelchin<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Archaeology<\/strong><\/em> –Rogues’ Gallery: The Convicts of Early Australia<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
What kind of person keeps $ 10 million in cash at home?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Top Billing! \u00a0Zachary Tumin – Let’s tackle the right education crisis Zach Tumin, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and co-author of \u00a0Collaborate or Perish!: Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World is critiquing the Council of Foreign Relation’s recent report on “national security and education” that was very light on connections to national security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7294"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7399,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7294\/revisions\/7399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}