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With Liberty and Justice for All
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/09/2007 - 09:03Tuesday, I was at the National Conference of State Legislatures listening to panelists talk about education and results based accountability. I’ve wondered about the unintended results in education. I touched on this briefly in a post about the Freedom of Information complaint filed against the Lewis S. Mills School in Burlington, CT.
Andy Thibault has been following this closely at Cool Justice and pointed me to Chris Powell’s wonderful column Inadvertently, school teaches about liberty.
Doninger and her friends also were forbidden to wear to school T-shirts with inscriptions supporting freedom of speech.
It all will be a nice counterpoint to the next recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag at Mills High School, what with its proclamation of "liberty and justice for all."
Powell’s article captures very nicely the truly teachable moment taking place at Lewis S. Mills School. Yet for teachable moments to take place, people must know about them and Thibault and Doninger are providing an important service in bringing attention to this teachable moment. I hope it spreads.
Being the instigator that I am, I hope the students and teachers at Lewis S. Mills school all return to school wearing T-shirts that simply say “Liberty and Justice for All”. Will the school, in the middle of this lawsuit send students home for wearing a quote from the Pledge of Allegiance? How will the administration treat teachers that try to use a teachable moment to encourage students to think seriously about what the Pledge of Allegiance means?
Beyond that, I do hope that the administration comes to its senses soon and settles out of court. Wise educators know not only when to take advantage of a teachable moment, but they also know when it is time to move on with the lesson plan. I hope such a settlement includes a way to bring closure to the teachable moment.
To me, the best closure would include a school assembly with Thibault, Powell and others on a panel talking about the importance of vigilantly protecting liberty and justice for all, followed by the musical event that precipitated the whole morass. I also hope college admission officers around the country take note and fight hard to recruit Avery Doninger.
I remain the optimist. I do believe in liberty and justice and all, and I salute Doninger, Thibault, Powell and everyone who is standing up it.
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What are we teaching our children?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/03/2007 - 20:14As United States citizens, we hold dear the right to vote and the promise of free and open elections. If we do not hold ourselves to these standards, and the standards of freedom of information, the U.S. Constitution and the Connecticut Constitution, what are we teaching our children?
Last night during his keynote speech at YearlyKos, Gov. Dean spoke about the importance of reaching out to the youth. As people get into the habit of voting, they stay in the habit. This afternoon, I listened to a panel about problems with voting suppression. So, when I found the above quote, it caught my attention.
However, the quote wasn’t from an article about voting machines or requirements for photo ids. It was from a Freedom of Information (FOI) complaint filed in Burlington, CT.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Avery Doninger. She was class secretary at Lewis S. Mills High School, but was not allowed to run for reelection because she had referred to the school superintendent as a “douchbag” in a blog post. Her mother is now suing the school.
The Cool Justice Report quotes a student at the school as saying,
"On the day of elections everyone (I mean everyone) wrote in the girls name next to 'Secretary' and circled it. At the end of the day when they had to tell us who won they said that the elections were so close that they were going to give kids who weren't there a chance to vote the next day. The girl who won only had like 7 votes because everyone voted for the girl who wasn't running."
Based on this, he is trying to get a copy of the ballots and there is a lot of legal wrangling back and forth. This was the context for the quote above.
Well, Andy is asking the right question. What are we teaching our children? Perhaps the folks at Lewis S. Mills High School are teaching the right message, after all, in a convoluted manner. They are teaching our children the importance of constant vigilance in defending things that keeps our country strong, like freedom of speech and free and open elections.
I wish all of the students luck in this most important lesson.
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NCSL Pregame
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/25/2007 - 18:57Last year, Bill Hobbs, who is a fellow member of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), convinced the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to cover their annual convention in Nashville. He wrote several posts, including one about a session where State Legislators explored “the role blogs and other Internet technologies have in the policymaking process”.
He included an email that he sent to the NCSL pressroom suggesting that the MBA and NCSL work together to get more bloggers covering the 2007 convention in Boston. I haven’t heard anything recently from the MBA about this, but on a mailing list of progressive bloggers interested in regional issues, one person asked if anyone was going to the convention. Since Boston isn’t far from here, I figured it would be a good trip for me. So, I signed up as a member of the press and communicated with their Public Affairs Staff to confirm my attendance.
In Bill’s post last year, he spoke about how only around 100 people showed up for the session on E-Legislatures: Technology and the Policymaking Process. A staffer for NCSL commented that with the packed agenda that NCSL has, 100 people showing up to a session is actually pretty impressive.
As I look through the agenda for the 2007 convention, I have to agree with the staffer. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading through the agenda trying to decide which sessions to attend. It is going to be very hard to choose.
I posted on a mailing list that I’m going to the convention and asked what sessions they would like to see covered, and I’m getting some suggestions there. If you have any thoughts about what sessions you would like to see me cover, please let me know.
Next week I hope to post more about the different sessions I plan on attending as well as other thoughts about the convention. Stay tuned.
Online Community Organizing
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/25/2007 - 11:13Last Thursday, Seth Godin wrote a post, Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer. It is a pretty good description some of the stuff that I’ve done for political campaigns and other organizations. One person, reading Seth’s post sent me an email suggesting that I “write to him and ask him for suggestions for who may be looking for a community organizer. perfect for you”
Apparently, the reaction was typical of reactions that Seth got. He has written subsequent post talking about the response he got and his plans to put a bunch of job leads up on Thursday. I hope he gets them up in time for me to respond before I hit the road for our annual trip to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
He describes this as a job of the future, but others write about having done online organizing for years. Seth ends his first post with, “If you were great at this, I'd imagine you'd never ever have trouble finding good work.”
The problem is, that I’ve done too much of this sort of work on a pro-bono basis. So much so, that a person well acquainted with my current situation wrote me a note starting off “Dear Mr. Pro-Bono:” Right now, it seems that the only people who really get the importance of online organizing are non-profits, a few political campaigns, and assorted under-funded startups.
So, I’ve been looking around for other places where I can work these skills into the job. I’ve heard of one organization looking for a communications director that can think out of the box. I’m actively pursuing that position, along with many other people. I’ve been talking with a few tech startups about doing IT management or engineering as part of a segue to a focus on online community organizing.
On my own blog, I’ve been contacted by two technology evangelists. Tara Anderson, from Lijit sent me an email saying that she had seen that I had signed up for Lijit and wanted to get my reactions. Then Brandon Watts from Criteo left a comment on my blog thanking me for installing and blogging about Criteo and also asking for feedback. Lijit and Criteo are doing the right sort of thing.
So, if any of you know of people looking for a social media guru, a director of technology evangelism, or some related position that gets the importance of online community organizing, please let me know.
The Cult of the Amateur and the Democratic Debates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 07/23/2007 - 17:32This evening will be the Youtube/CNN debate. The pundits are all weighing in on how important this debate will be. TechPresident has a summary of views here.
It seems as if there are two determining factors. The first is whether you are a new or old media sort of person. New media people generally think it will be important. Old media people think it won’t be. People who want to see ‘professionals’ handling our political discourse, those who like Keen’s Cult of the Amateur think it won’t be. Those who believe in Jeffersonian democracy think it will be important.
That is, of course, leads to the second factor. Will CNN gatekeep the debate too closely? That is the factor that causes some new media fans to worry that the event won’t be successful. Yet for people that want a more democratic democracy, to poke a little further fun at Mr. Keen, two candidates will open the gates a little wider, no matter how well or poorly CNN does.
Sen. Edwards and Sen. Dodd are both going to be answering questions from supporters and the Community Counts website. After the televised debate is over Sen. Edwards will answer additional questions on his website, while Sen. Dodd will do the same on his.
As an aside, I read Dodd’s email immediately after I read one of those endless spam emails telling me where I could buy medications that would make me “the most confident man in town”. Dodd’s email was entitled “Sometimes sixty seconds isn’t enough”. I almost skipped it, thinking it was more of the same.
So, is democracy something that we should leave to the professionals, or do we believe that all citizens should have a voice in the political process? After seeing the way the mainstream media is covering the election so far, with its focus on fundraising, haircuts, polls and not on issues, it will be pretty hard for the amateurs to do a worse job than we’ve seen so far.
