Florida District without TV, Newspapers, the Constitution or Common Sense

Hey, check it out!

There is a school district in Florida that has no apparent connection to the past century or common decency.

It's like finding one of those Japanese soldiers who never got the memo World War II is over, but instead of of living in the jungle he's buying 30 pounds of Twizzlers at Wal-Mart.

Read Florida town backs principal witch hunt

I don't think we are that different from a lot of districts, at least in the Panhandle, that have beliefs that maybe are different from societal changes," the schools superintendent said.

"I guess I didn't realize we were this bad," Scott (school board member) said after the district lost in court.

Others flatly hail Davis (the bigoted principal) as a hero.

At least you can count on an 11th grader to do the right thing when the educators around her have lost their minds.

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Related links:

AP Story (Girl blamed for hurting her town)

Confederate flag? Oui! Rainbow? No! (too suggestive)

Here is a blog with info about the case.

Alternate Opinion: Corporate Involvement in Schools

District Administration Magazine has a feature in its April 2008 issue about corporate involvement in schools. Inside the feature is an interview with Billionaire education philanthropist, Eli Broad. I ask some questions about turning public schools into the plaything of rich folks.

Read Public Schools? Be wary of a gift that might squash the benefits of public education.

Is Pakistan More Open than Your School Network?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's telecommunications regulator said Tuesday it has lifted restrictions on YouTube that knocked out access to the video-sharing Web site in many countries for up to two hours over the weekend.

Sure, they switched YouTube off due to an "offensive" clip, but then they reopened the system. Many school district use prior restraint and protect kids and teachers from the 21st Century.


Read the article

I Still Don't Like "The World is Flat!"

In my new column, I once again question educator's awestruck devotion to The World Is Flat and paralyzing fear of globalization. Here are a couple of excerpts from the new column.

I continue to meet colleagues who apologize for not having found time to read Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat. They long to read what they've been led to believe is the instruction manual for 21st-century living. I await the book's children's edition and the Saturday morning cartoon in which a ragtag bunch of American AP students are outsourced to India and are forced to use Microsoft Vista.

I have not moderated my 2005 appraisal that The World Is Flat is chock-full of sloppy facts, simplistic reasoning and dopey rhymes. My greatest concern is that school leaders are much more apt to quote from books written by men who have never run a business than from those written by educational innovators. An administrator's quest for a quick fix and misplaced faith in the advice of charlatans is much more alarming than Mr. Friedman's ignorance of technology, education or policy. He just wrote a book. We bought it.

Read the entire column, Lessons You Can't Learn in a Book.

Discuss it here!