Archive - 2010
February 8th
Free Speech, Good Conduct, the School to Prison Pipeline and the Educational Imperative
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 11:25Recently, there has been a fascinating discussion concerning free speech and learning going on online that I wanted to explore and comment on. Last week, David Drury wrote an article in the Hartford Courant about teens facing fines for swearing at Windsor High School.
Andy Thibault posted a letter from Jon Schoenhorn to the Hartford Courant entitled Swearing In School Is Not A Crime. Jon writes:
Once again, school officials are foolishly trying to use the police to enforce good manners …
Apparently this principal doesn't understand that constitutional free speech protects bad manners and language in criminal prosecutions, unless the intent of the speaker is to annoy and harass, or unless the language constitutes "fighting words" — that is, words likely to provoke a violent reaction.
I got to know both Andy and Jon through my coverage of the Avery Doninger case. Andy has provided great coverage on the case and Jon is the lawyer representing the Doningers. My initial reaction was to side with them on this issue.
However, going back to the Hartford Courant, it says that students "who use profanity directed toward a teacher, toward another student in class or during a verbal altercation in the hallway or cafeteria," will be ticketed. It may well be that the intent and the actual practice will be to only ticket students whose language constitutes fighting words and falls very nicely within the bounds of free speech laws.
Yet there are also deeper issues. First, how big a concern is “fighting words” at Windsor High School. According to the Courant article, there were some parents “that expressed some surprise over Sills' letter, since there had been no communication about what led up to it.” Perhaps it is not only the students who have not been communicating as effectively as they could be.
Another concern that has come up with this is that by using police, Windsor High School may be perpetuating or expanding the school to prison pipeline. Schools that use police to address behavior problems may be keeping the immediate behavior problems a little bit better under control, but may ultimately be adding to problems by causing student to think of themselves as in conflict with the legal system and not simply in conflict with their teachers. On the other hand, it may be that the best way to get students to learn more effective ways of dealing with their anger and frustration than using fighting words in school is to hit them where it hurts most, in their pocketbooks.
Yet perhaps, there are even better ways to address this. Schools are supposed to be learning environments. Fighting words can disrupt a learning environment, but they may also be opportunities for deeper learning. Should Windsor High School have a special session on Free Speech? A couple years ago, I went with Avery Doninger to Windsor High School to talk about her case. She had learned a lot from her experience. She learned that some popular colloquial words for, such as using “Douchebag” when you mean “jerk”, may hamper ones efforts to get a message across. She also learned the importance of being allowed to get ones message across and standing up for that right. She shared this learning with students at Windsor High School and I think it was a great educational event.
Likewise, should the school have classes in anger management and learning better ways of dealing with conflict than resorting to fighting words, or for that matter, resorting to $103 tickets? Perhaps such classes could be offered where students, teachers and administrators are all the learners in the class.
Ultimately, I hope that all my friends on all sides of this discussion return to the educational imperative. What are the goals of public education? What are the best means of achieving these goals? In my mind, learning about the importance of free speech, what it means, and how to stand up for it, as well as learning about better ways of dealing with anger and frustration than using fighting words are important parts of this educational imperative. They aren’t part of the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMTs), but perhaps they should be. The race to the top, and breaking the school to prison pipeline are both important goals that such learning could facilitate.
What do you think?
February 7th
Holden Caulfield and the Phonies of #PCWM
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/07/2010 - 09:53Yesterday, I drove up to Westfield State College for PodCampWesternMass2. Podcamps are open space unconferences where people interested in podcasting and often related topics like other social media, gather to talk about their interests. At PCWM, there was not an awful lot of talk about actual podcasting, and the sessions tended to be much closer to traditional speakers or panels than true open space unconference meetings, but it was a good group of people.
I’ve been doing so much with so many forms of social media for so long, that I typically don’t expect to learn a lot at these conferences, but I always hope for some good pointers here and there. More importantly, I like to share some of my own experiences and meet interesting people.
As I drove up from Connecticut, I listened to Studio 360 on public radio. For those interested, you can listen to Studio 360 as a podcast. One of the articles this week as about Joanna Smith Rakoff’s interactions with JD Salinger when she worked for the literary agency that represented him.
It seems like everyone has been talking about how JD Salinger has affected their lives. One of the best articles I found was Reflections on J.D. Salinger...Goddard College, Franny and Zoey and what an artist really is…. Nettie Hartsock wrote about how Franny and Zoey changed her life when she was starting at Goddard College.
I’ll commit heresy and admit that while I enjoyed reading Catcher In The Rye, and I’m sure I got something valuable out of it, it really didn’t have any great affect on my life, and I haven’t read any of his other books, at least as far as I can remember, although I have vague recollections of starting to read one or two of them and never finishing them.
The one word that I hear more often than any other in reflections about JD Salinger is Holden Caulfield frequent use of the word “Phony”. Greg Palast has a great essay, Kvetcher in the Rye which explores this in the political context. Ms. Rakoff talked about phonies in her show, and there was a lot of talk about Salinger’s reclusiveness.
Podcamps and social media are the other end of the spectrum from Salinger’s reclusiveness and concern about phonies. I don’t think I’ve ever met Mr. Salinger at a Podcamp or social media gathering nor have I met people channeling Mr. Caulfield. Too often, it seems, such gatherings, besides being the polar opposite of reclusive, tend to attract social media experts and other snake oil salesmen like those who talk about search engine optimization.
As I drove up, the words of Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog rang in my ears, “Everyone’s a hero in their own way…” Perhaps Holden Caulfield is right, we are all phonies in our own way. Yet we are also all catchers in the rye in our own ways as well.
We can look at the phony social media experts and search engine optimization snake oil salesmen as phonies living their lives of quiet desperation. Or, we can recognize that it is precisely this quiet desperation that can make even the most fake phonies fascinating catchers in the rye, and that is where some of the real power of social media and podcasting can come in.
When people bring a little bit of their authentic lives into their social media, they become a little less phony and a lot more interesting. Many of the people at PCWM understand that, and tried to communicate it to people learning their way around social media. It is, perhaps, the most important message that anyone can come away with from a podcamp.
With this as my framework, I was fortunate not to meet any phonies at PCWM. Instead, I reconnected with some fascinating old friends from previous podcamps and met some fascinating new friends as well. I hope others had similar experiences at PCWM.
February 6th
Dr. Horrible’s High School Musical at Amity
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/06/2010 - 08:10Can a bunch of high school students take the horribly successful Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and produce it as a high school musical? If any group could pull it off, it would be the students at Amity High School. After their great production of Rent last year, I have a lot of respect for the thespians there.
Can they take such a great show, and add nuances to it that make the show its own successful interpretation instead of simply creating a pale copy of the original? I had greater doubts about their ability to do this, but I was wrong.
Produced by Katie Errera and directed by Laureen Fox, this show was a smashing success. Things got off to a poor start because of technical difficulties with the sound system. The students struggled with the problems and eventually got the system working sufficiently enough for the show which started around fifteen minutes late.
Ted McNulty, starring in the role of Dr. Horrible did a phenomenal job. Together with Rachel Hildrich as Penny and Dan Quarequio as Captain Hammer, they added a dimension to the show that seemed to amplify the meaning of the original show. Dr. Horrible is a shy, ill adjusted young man who wishes to display his horribleness in order to win the heart of the sweet idealistic young Penny. Captain Hammer is the dashing young do-gooder who does his good through beating up people and seeks Penny as little more than an object, another sexual conquest. Seeing all of this cast in the light of high school romances with the geeks, dweebs, jocks and good kids worked incredibly well.
In addition, the casting and acting of Tess Stirling as Moist was brilliant. In the original production, Moist is a flat minor character, a villain whose super power is merely to make things moist, and a close friend of Dr. Horrible. In this production, Moist was presented as a person that had a crush on Dr. Horrible from the beginning and Tess played this incredibly well.
There were two down points about the production. First, it was not as well publicized as it should have been. I imagine many people from the Amity Region would have loved to have seen this show. The second problem was related to the first. It was a one night show. The production deserved at least a full weekend run. In the end, it did get a deserved standing ovation, and I hope that Ms. Errera and Ms. Fox also get proper recognition for a very successful independent study project.
(Originally published in the Woodbridge Citizen.)
February 5th
Bloomers and Lingerie
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 09:44Every day, I try to visit a wide variety of blogs to get a sense of what people beyond my own geographic, political, socio-economic cohort are thinking. Sometimes, it is fairly clear what people are thinking, other times, you just have to ask yourself, “What were they thinking?!”
Yesterday, I stumbled across two very different viewpoints that I thought I would juxtapose. The first is an article, Selling Sex To Little girls, Miley’s 9-year-old sister launching a lingerie line for kids. “What were they thinking?” seems to be a common response. Some have asked how this is different that little girls in tutus and leotards in their ballet classes, or three year olds in the Dora the Explorer undies. Others have said that it looks more like Jon Benet Ramsey. What were they thinking? Perhaps all that they were thinking was, “Cha-ching”
It made me think of one of the blogs I often visit. Penny Raine describes herself as a “born again, spirit filled, blood bought, Christian” and asks on her Facebook page, “Is what you are living for worth Christ dying for? While we were still sinners Jesus died for us.” This is also reflected in her status, “know that if you are a Godly parent desiring to raise Godly children that you have an enemy, he seeks to steal and destroy your children, he is a big bad, wants to eat your lunch enemy, and he will stop at nothing, but ... not to fear cause we serve a Jesus who has overcome the world and we will overcome here too!”
On her webpage, she describes herself this way:
Let me see, to introduce myself. Well obviously my name is Penny Raine, I am momma to 8 youngins, 1 with Jesus, the rest still here all in one house, that is until last year when the oldest got married. Now she has a husband and they have a home of their own and a baby on the way. I am wife to minister hubby known locally as “jumpin Jim” we have been married since ‘86, goodness how many years IS THAT? We all live on a horse farm in Mid TN where our favorite thing to do is worship the Lord.
With that, she shows a picture of her family leaning against an old blue pickup truck, with three of them wielding guitars. I suspect that Jumpin Jim puts on a real different show than Miley Cyrus does and I suspect that I probably have some strong disagreements with Penny and Jim on politics and theology. But I also suspect that Penny and Jim are much closer to being my kind of people than the Cyrus family.
One of the things that Penny promotes on her blog is Jumpin Bloomers which sells “modest clothing for girls of all ages”. The outfits are cute and remind me of the clothing some young Mennonite girls would wear to Sunday School when I visited their churches in Ohio back in my college days. It also made me think of the sort of clothing I always imagined Laura Ingalls Wilder would wear as she moved from big woods to the prairie.
One of the things that many of the bloggers do is have various contests to build traffic. Penny is having an Apron Giveaway contest to promote her blog and jumpinbloomers. I had read about the contest and initially decided not to enter. I usually don’t go for these sorts of contests. I’m not likely to write a review of a blog for a one in a hundred chance of winning an apron or some other little trinket or treasure.
However, the contrast between Jumpin Bloomers and Noah Cyrus’ lingerie was just too great to leave this without a comment. So, shake your head at the Cyrus family’s latest venture, but don’t stop there. Join with others to promote young girls clothing that glorifies childhood instead of glorifies sexuality.
February 4th
The Crowd Sourcing Winter Vacation Contest
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 09:43Fiona’s week long school vacation starts a week from tomorrow. It will include Valentine’s day, President’s day, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, and probably some other important days I am not aware of. In other years, we haven’t really done anything special during winter vacation. It has conflicted with my work or my wife’s work. However, this year, we really need a few days away.
We’ve talked about various things to do. We could go into New York City, or maybe up to Boston for a day of exploring museums. We could go Cape Cod for a few days and walk on quiet beaches. I started looking for ideas online.
One site I checked was Festivals.com. They listed Dance Flurry, the great folk dancing festival up in Saratoga Springs, NY. Last summer at Falcon Ridge, we spent a bit of time with folks from Bungieville, a group of dancers from Long Island that always camp together at Falcon Ridge, and dance together at Saratoga Springs. Unfortunately, it conflicts with a few things, so we won’t be at Dance Flurry.
Festivals.com also listed the Chainsaw Rendezvoux. This is a weeklong gathering of chainsaw artists in western Pennsylvania. It seems like a fairly long trip to see some chainsaw artists in action, but it does sound very interesting.
The State of Maine’s Festival Page for February listed a nice collection of winter festivals, and we might head up there. However, many of them are focused on snowmobile races or ice car races. Races don’t rank high on our list of interesting things, but there is also going to be ice sculptures and fireworks.
I’ve wondered if sites like Dopplr, Where Are You Now?, CouchSurfing, Yelp, 43 Places, Upcoming, Foursquare, BrightKite, or some other set of sites might be helpful in finding a special vacation.
Then, it occurred to me, why don’t I put this request out on my blog, and spread it to various social media sites? So, I open it up to friends, followers, readers, and anyone else that stumbles across this website. Share your best idea for inexpensive, interesting things to do in the North Eastern United States for a husband, wife, and eight year old girl. If I get some good ideas, I’ll recap them in a later blog post, and perhaps do some blogging and other social media activities from the event. If it comes from a blog in one of my blog networks, I’ll through a little link love in there too.
So, what do you say? What fun events are happening in mid February?
