A comment on comments

"We're always behind metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just to feel something."

--From the movie, Crash

As a relative novice to the blogosphere, I am always amazed that someone, anyone, would take the time to read something I have written and then take the additional time to comment. After all, there are sooooo many blogs out there. By some estimates, there are between 70 and 112 million blogs currently available online and over 175,000 new blogs being created everyday. This does not include microblogs such as twitter and plurk or individual posts to social networks such as facebook or myspace.

That's a lot of content to wade through.

But as I take my first few tentative steps into what is truly the final frontier, cyberspace, I'm learning something invaluable and truly unexpected. Yes, there is merit to having something to say and then having the courage, foresight (or ego) to write it down and click "publish post" (the first time I did that I was terrified; I thought....what have I done? Can I take it back? What if this really sucks?) but I am also beginning to think the real value to blogging isn't the necessarily the addition of more content to the universe of existing content, but the opportunity to create connections and start discussions. Ultimately, a blog represents your point of view. You have a premise supported by reasoning; it's much like making a case in a court of law. But when someone adds a comment to your blog, it is, metaphorically speaking, much like an unknown hand pulling you back as you're about to walk into oncoming traffic. It's a voice, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a shout, saying "yes," "no" or "have you thought about this?" These voices, these connections, unsolicited and unexpected, are the real value because they are the building blocks of knowledge, growth and change.

In "Turning to One Another," Margaret Wheatley writes: “Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change - personal change, community and organizational change, planetary change. If we can sit together and talk about what’s important to us, we begin to come alive. For as long as we’ve been around as humans, as wandering bands of nomads or cave dwellers, we have sat together and shared experiences. We’ve painted images on rock walls, recounted dreams and visions, told stories of the day, and generally felt comforted to be in the world together. When the world became fearsome, we came together. When the world called us to explore its edges, we journeyed together. Whatever we did, we did it together.”

So thank you.

Thank you to each and every one of you who have taken time out of your undoubtedly busy day to comment on something I have written. I am truly honored. But more than that, I have learned much from you. You've pulled me back, made me think, made me question what I think I know. That's a good thing.

Because, in the end, I don't need to be right.

But those of us in the learning business, whether vendor, educator or administrator, can certainly learn from each other and collectively arrive at the right answers. Or at the very least, ask better questions.

So please keep commenting. Let's keep crashing into each other. Because these are the connections that keep us alive, allow us to change and force us to grow.

Birthday wishes....

I'd like to send out a hearty happy birthday to my very first teacher, mentor and role model.

Happy 67th birthday Mom.

Everything I am or will ever be is because of you.

Why do you teach?

It seems to me that this must be a tough time to be a teacher. You're underpaid, largely unappreciated and, as a group, teachers often bear the brunt of criticisms directed at the state of our schools. I can't imagine what it must be like to walk a mile in your shoes.

My mother was a teacher. She taught English for over 20 years at a public high school on the West side of Chicago. For 20 years, she woke up before the crack of dawn, after grading papers and preparing lesson plans into well into the evening, to drive from our home on the South side of Chicago to her school on the West side of Chicago. She never seemed discouraged or sad, yes, there were moments of frustration, but she seemed to believe in what she was doing. I know that she took pleasure in helping "her kids." I know she took genuine pleasure in their success. I know she lamented their failures. I know she cared. She never made much money, but I know her students mattered to her. One of her former students still corresponds with my mother to this day. Mom calls her "the daughter I never had."

But times have changed. Schools seem, I don't know, somehow colder....less personal. It seems to be so much harder to reach students these days. When I visited my mother's former school a few years ago, so many of the kids (if "kids" is indeed the right word) seemed, I don't know, distracted...indifferent...angry. Resources are scarce. Professional development is lacking. The "thank you's;" the pats on the back, seemed few and far between.

When I was growing up we revered our teachers. Now, we seem to revile them. I don't know why.

This morning I read a beautiful post on Terry Shaw's blog reprinting something he found in a newspaper in Galena, Illinois: "Why do you work so hard for your students."

So I'm curious. What about you?

Why do you teach?

I'd really like to know....

Why do you work so hard for your students?

My Fear? A feeding frenzy....

At what should be a time of enormous hope and optimism for schools and school districts, I find myself quietly troubled.

Why?

We have, in President Obama, a president who certainly seems to understand the varied and complex challenges facing our schools today. While stressing the need for greater accountability, he also seems to understand the importance of "21st century classrooms" and the need to develop assessment tools that measure more than just basic skills (the current thrust of NCLB) but also measure "21st century skills" such as creativity and critical thinking, communication and collaboration, technology, media and information literacy and the ability to apply information and knowledge in real world contexts. And now we have the stimulus package and approximately $100 Billion in added (and unexpected) funding for education. Funding that is earmarked, in part, to encourage reform and the creation of "21st century classrooms."

President Obama should certainly be commended for his vision, his foresight and for, quite literally, putting his money where his ideological mouth is. But I'm worried.

Sometimes scarcity and lack are a good thing. It forces you to make better decisions, to focus on what's really important and to make better use of what you have. In the case of technology, some schools and school districts are woefully underfunded and the technology just isn't there or the technology that is there is out of date and hopelessly obsolete. But in many schools and school districts, the threshold issue isn't really the absence of technology, or the amount of technology, but how the technology that is already there is being used. Is this technology being used as a 21st century learning tool to promote deeper, more meaningful interaction with the subject mater, increased classroom collaboration and communication, more student-driven, project-based learning, innovative instructional practices and more differentiated instruction? Or is the technology being used as an efficacy aid; as an electronic tool to do the same things we've been doing in our classrooms for decades, only faster?

I guess what I fear is a feeding frenzy. President Obama says "innovate," "build," "create 21st century classrooms" and what do we do? We go out and buy a bunch of stuff. We spend millions on laptops and desktops, whiteboards and document cameras. We spend, spend, spend, but we don't stop, pause, think and ask ourselves.....why is this stuff here? How does a document camera actually improve the quality of student learning? How will these tools be used to better engage and motivate our children? How will these tools improve the pedagogy? Because if that doesn't change, then all the technology in the world won't change anything.

I recently had a conversation with someone who works as a teacher in a technology-rich district about how technology was being used in the classroom. His response? "Mike, it's all bs." (His words, not mine). He pointed out that every classroom in the middle school where he works has a whiteboard. How were the whitebords being used? When they were being used at all, they were being used no differently than a teacher would use a blackboard; for back-to-the-classroom, teacher-driven, lecture-based, drill and practice instruction, only with really cool graphics and stylus pens that broke with alarming regularity. Most times, however, the whiteboards weren't really used at all because they were covered with hand written notes, post-its and other visual aids.

The use of computers in the classroom was no better. For the most part, the computers sat in the back of the room and weren't turned on. When they were used, they were often used as a disciplinary aid. "If you behave well, you'll get some time on the computer." Or, "if you misbehave, you'll lose your time on the computer." Using a $1,200.00 computer the same way you would use the promise of an extra bathroom break or a stick of gum is hardly a pedagogically sound use of technology. In fact, I think we would be better off just investing in gum. It's cheaper.

Bottom line?

Learning about technology is fundamentally different than learning about what to do with it instructionally. Teaching teachers how to create a powerpoint presentation or how to operate a whiteboard does very little, if anything, to help teachers develop the knowledge they need to use technology to teach more effectively, understand its relationship to curriculum and content, or help students use technology to meet or exceed performance-based standards, deepen comprehension and improve the depth and quality of learning.

So please...let's be careful. Please remember one critical fact before making an investment in desktops, laptops, whiteboards and document cameras. Please remember that technology is just a tool and a tool is only useful to the extent its use is organized in a productive way. Yes, the promise of technology is real but this promise depends on three important steps.

• First, there must be a well-articulated and shared vision for why technology is being used in the classroom.

• Second, there must be a comprehensive plan for how technology will be integrated into the learning environment.

• Third, the use of technology must be tied to an educational purpose: to 21st century standards and the to educational needs and goals of a school and its students.

In sum, let's remember that better educational results depend first and foremost on better pedagogy--on better teaching and more active and engaged learning--not on better technology. So moving too quickly might not be a good thing. Yes, I believe every child in every school should have ubiquitous access to technology. Yes, I believe in the transformative power of technology and its ability, when integrated in a well-planned, pedagogically sound manner, to reshape and improve the nature of teaching and learning. To that degree, it is about the technology. But I encourage each and every one of us, as we eagerly wait for billions of dollars of stimulus money to come raining down, to do something we should have learned in kindergarten.

Let's think before we act.

If we do that, then I am hopeful we will turn an important corner in the course and history of education and take a meaningful step towards preparing this and future generations of students to compete and succeed in the 21st century.

Too many notes...

One of the criticisms (or concerns might be a better word) most often raised about my written work is that it’s just too long. I’m constantly reminded that we are living in a “fast twitch” society, that people have short attention spans, and that no one will actually take actually the time to read something if, well, it has too many words. My response to that is to keep producing works of unacceptable length and to keep using no fewer words than I think necessary to make the point.

When thinking about this, the quagmire of too many words, I am sometimes reminded of one of my favorite scenes from the movie Amadeus. Joseph II, the Emperor of Austria (who, by the way, was not nearly as idiotic in real life) has commissioned a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to write an opera. Mozart eagerly accepts the commission and composes the opera Seraglio.

The scene occurs on the stage of the opera house, just after the first performance is over.

JOSEPH

Well, Herr Mozart! A good effort.
Decidedly that. An excellent effort!
You've shown us something quite new today.

Mozart bows frantically: he is over-excited.

MOZART
It is new, it is, isn't it, Sire?

JOSEPH

Yes, indeed.

MOZART
And German?

JOSEPH
Oh, yes. Absolutely. German.
Unquestionably!

MOZART
So then you like it? You really like it, Your Majesty?

JOSEPH
Of course I do. It's very good. Of course now and then - just now and then - it gets a touch elaborate.
MOZART
What do you mean, Sire?

JOSEPH
Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say (he stops in difficulty; to Orsini- Ronberg) How shall one say, Director?

ORSINI-ROSENBERG
Too many notes, Your Majesty?

JOSEPH
Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.

MOZART
I don't understand. There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less.

JOSEPH
My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening. I think I'm right in saying that, aren't I, Court Composer?

SALIERI
Yes! yes! er, on the whole, yes, Majesty

MOZART
(to Salieri)
But this is absurd!

JOSEPH
My dear, young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.

MOZART
Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

I LOVE this scene!

Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly think there is a time and a place to be quick and concise. We have a marketing department, for example, and their job is to try and say a lot as quickly and as viscerally as they can. Not an easy job. To successfully convey any sort of message with a punch line and a few images is pretty tricky. It takes skill. And for what it's worth, I think some of the best and most compelling "art" in media today can be found in television commercials. (Think about it, a good commercial really is a mini 30-second film). And is it just me or are movie trailers often far better the movies themselves?

So I certainly respect the ability to convey a compelling message in sound bite sized chunks.

But—

Maybe I’m just being old school here, maybe I’m just thinking like a crusty, out-of-date pc loving, VCR owning Digital Immigrant, but I still think there is no more compelling and powerful a method of communication than the written word—even in our fast paced, multimedia age. Talk is cheap. When you say something, it can too often be lost, forgotten or misinterpreted. But when you take the time to write it down, it elevates the discourse; it facilitates thought, it has deeper meaning, it shows that you’ve taken the time to actually think about what you have to say and that you have the courage and depth of conviction to throw it out there.

In his blog, “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education” Steve Hargadon wrote: “The answer to information overload is to produce more information.”

Yes Steve, it is.

So go ahead---write it down.

Throw it out there.

Produce more content—just produce better content.

And if you have to, use too many words.

An Investment in Education--The Ultimate Stimulus Plan (Part II)

They just don't get it!!

Leave it to our elected officials, elected ostensibly to do the will of the people, to then ignore the needs of the people, of John and Jane Q. Public, in the endless and utterly counterproductive debate about liberal vs. conservative fiscal policy and ideology. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a bold and brave economic recovery bill that allocated billions of much-needed dollars to improve and modernize our schools and foster "21st century learning environments." The bill then goes to the Senate, the political wrangling continues, and what gets cut? Much of the funding for education.

I guess an investment in education isn't "stimulating" enough.

Again, I am not an economist so I leave it to people smarter than me to determine where and how stimulus money should be spent. And I certainly acknowledge and respect our collective and individual right to agree and agree to disagree on political issues. But in one man's humble opinion, and I may be baying into the wind, I firmly believe that if we don't invest in schools and in our children, then no amount of money we spend now will save us from an economic and human catastrophe that will make the current crisis look fairly mild by comparison.

Don't the Senators who cut these education dollars understand that, by some estimates, almost 1 million children each year are dropping out of school? Don't they understand that right now less than 35% of our public school 12th grade students are proficient in reading, science and math? Don't they understand that those students who do graduate assess well behind students from other countries in virtually every statistical category? Don't they understand that in a recent study conducted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, high school graduates were deemed "deficient" in every one of the 21st century skills deemed necessary for 21st century success?"

If a company like Microsoft is laying off highly skilled employees, what chance does a high school drop out have? In an increasingly global economy where our children are no longer competing with each other but are competing with kids from Korea, China, India and Japan, what chance will they have in learning environments that are antiquated and outdated; where teachers and students are using essentially the same tools that I used when I graduated from high school over 25 years ago? I would challenge any one of the senators who cut the education funding to quit their jobs, forgo their senate salaries, and try and build a business--any business--using only the tools found in most inner city public school classrooms. I suspect most would look at me and think, "Are you insane? We won't have the tools."

Exactly.

Neither do they.

Bottom line, an investment in education is the ultimate stimulus package. It is an investment in our present and our future. It is an investment that can reap dividends for generations. It is an investment in our children that should not, that must not, be compromised.

An Investment in Education--The Ultimate Stimulus Plan

I note with some interest the ongoing debate about what should or should not be contained in a “stimulus” package. I am not an economist, so I leave it to people far smarter than me to determine what investments will or will not create jobs and stimulate our economy. But this much I know. If we don’t improve our schools, if we don’t prepare our young people to compete and succeed in the 21st century, none of this matters. We can appropriate a trillion dollars, two trillion dollars, three trillion dollars, we can improve our infrastructure, we can create tax incentives, we can spend, spend, spend…….but if we don’t adequately invest in education, the America that we know will be lost.

We will lose our status as the world leading global superpower.

Our universities will no longer be the global centers of research and innovation.

Our companies will no longer produce the goods and services that fuel the global economy.

And we will be in very real danger of creating a permanent underclass.

On what we’re now referring to as “Bloody Monday,” over 71,000 more job cuts were announced. This brings the total number of announced job cuts to over 200,000 this year. This is a stunning number. A tragic number. These are 200,000 lives that have been, or will be, irrevocably changed.

And yet…

Each year, approximately 1 million children drop out of high school. Right now, 1 child drops out of school every 26 seconds. Right now, the graduation rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50%.

Right now, there are more African-American men going to jail than to college.

What about these children? Who is fighting for them? Where will they go? If Microsoft is laying off 5000 highly skilled people, where will the young men and women who don’t even have a high school diploma work? How will they ever participate fully in the American Dream? What’s to become of them?

This is not just a problem. This is a national crisis. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be the sense of urgency about addressing these horrendous educational outcomes as there seems to be about fixing other areas of our economy. But the strength of our economy depends on the strength of our businesses, large and small, and the strength of our businesses depends, to a large extent, on the state of our schools.

Baby-boomers are retiring, taking their skills and knowledge with them. The result is a widening gap between the skills required by businesses today and the skills of new entrants in the workforce.

A recent report by The American Diploma Project states: “The [high school] diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school—either in the classroom or in the workplace. Re-establishing the value of the diploma will require the creation of an inextricable link between high school exit expectations and the intellectual challenges that graduates invariably will face in credit bearing college courses or in high-performance, high-growth jobs.”

Employers echo this sentiment. The Conference Board, the Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results from both an in-depth survey conducted during April and May 2006 and interviews with a sampling of a dozen HR and other senior executives. Respondents were asked to identify the skills they considered “very important” to success in the workplace. The skills rated as “very important” were: (1) professionalism/work ethic; (2) oral and written communications; (3) teamwork/collaboration; (4) critical thinking/problem solving; (5) reading comprehension; (6) English language (spoken); (7) ethics and social responsibility and (8) information technology application. The respondents were then asked to rate the skill level of new entrants by grade level. New entrants’ skill level could be rated as “excellent,” “adequate” or “deficient.”

Four year college graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English and leadership. Two year college graduates and technical school graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English, lifelong learning/self direction, creativity/innovation, critical thinking/problem solving, oral communications, ethics and social responsibility. However, high school graduates were deemed “deficient” in every one of the “very important” skills necessary for workforce success.

The implications are obvious. As important as job creation is, improving our schools and ensuring that current and future generations of students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy is just as important. So politics aside, President Obama is to be commended for making increased funding to education a part of the stimulus package. An investment in education is not one of those “good ideas” that has a laudable purpose, but should wait. Urgent action is needed now. Because if our schools fail, and many of them are failing, then our country will fail.

The stimulus package passed the house and is now before the Senate. The political debate is heating up about what should be in and what should be cut from the package. But we must fight for our children, for our future and for our schools. Don’t be silent. We must let our politicians and policymakers know that the money earmarked for education must not be cut. In fact, dedicated funding for modernizing our schools and creating 21st century learning environments for all of our students should be made a permanent part of our economic recovery plan.

Because an investment in education is the ultimate stimulus plan.

Charter schools--A choice or a change?

Change.

A word that is both a lightening rod and a litmus test.

We hear a lot of about “change” in education. But we need to pause, reflect and be careful. All too often, the minute something is trumpeted as the next new CHANGE in education, we jump on that bandwagon, start retrofitting our schools, change their names, slap on some new paint, invest a lot of money, wait, hold our breath, cross our fingers, hope……and nothing really changes. Then the finger pointing begins, the blame game starts and in the meantime another generation of children, children who depend on the quality of our schools for their future, have been left behind or lost.

So when we talk about “change” in education, we need to be very clear about a few things.

First, what are we changing from?

Second, what are we changing to?

Third, though we’ve changed the school name, the school structure or the focus of the curriculum, have we fundamentally changed what’s going on in the classroom?

Right now, charter schools are all the rage. But before we jump on the metaphorical charter school bandwagon, perhaps we should ask ourselves this—are the pedagogical practices in charter schools are really any different? What is the "base" curriculum? How are modern, interactive tools being integrated into the curriculum and are these tools being used to promote 21st century skills? Are the documented student outcomes from charter schools significantly different than student outcomes from well-funded, well-staffed and well-resourced public schools? Is classroom instruction primarily lecture-based or student-driven?

Is it more of the same, just done better?

I want to be clear here. I am not against charter schools. I am, in fact, personally aware of a number of charter schools that are doing some outstanding and commendable work, especially with at risk children. But we need to be careful about embracing charter schools as a panacea. Could it be that much of the success of charter schools can and should be attributed to smaller classroom sizes, increased accountability and a significantly more motivated and energetic teaching staff? Is the "better" produced by charter schools really better? Though test scores and graduation rates are generally higher, which certainly creates the appearance of progress, are we simply providing these kids more of what they should not be getting in the first place; an education that fails to adequately equip students to compete and succeed in the 21st century because it is still based primarily on pedagogical practices from the 19th century?

There is, in the end, a fundamental difference between a choice and a change.

My question to you is this—what do charter schools represent?

A choice?

Or a change?

Bailout frenzy--The REAL capital crisis

I wrote this several weeks ago, after the Wall Street bailout, but thought I'd post it anyway. Guess we know how this turned out....

***********

Something about this bailout frenzy is beginning to grate.

$700 Billion to bailout Wall Street? I certainly understand the importance of saving jobs and homes. I’m all for that. People are really suffering out there. But when I see articles like this, I wonder, what have we done?

George White writes:

Wall Street banks won't use bailout money for bonuses

After weeks of pressure from politicians about using bailout money to pay out year-end bonuses, Wall Street banks are preparing to tell Congress that they won't use the recent $125 billion government cash infusion for compensation, but only for shoring up their balance sheets and acquisitions. That, however, doesn't mean the estimated $108 billion set aside for bonuses and compensation in 2008 won't be going out though.

According to a Financial Times report the largest nine U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- will pay bonuses from company earnings and their existing cash resources, as in prior years.

Whether legislators will see the distinction remains to be seen.

Banks are slowly being put under siege over the issue of their bonus pools, with the leaders from both the House of Representatives and the Senate critical of the banks' intention to hand out billions in bonus money following the passage of the $700 billion bailout package. The FT said that lawyers from the nine banks that received the initial $125 billion of government funds are holding meeting to gameplan a response to the criticism of the bonus pool. Expect to see the financial services sector start to vigorously present its case in coming weeks as a relatively unpopular bailout package and the end of the hotly contested presidential election threatens to turn political pressure into a full-blown PR nightmare for the banks as Congress and the cable networks find themselves with plenty of free time.

Um……WHY ARE WE EVEN DEBATING THIS? If you lose BILLIONS of dollars, so much so that you require a taxpayer financed BAILOUT, why would you even THINK about a bonus?!

But here’s what really grates. Right now the biggest crisis in our country isn’t the financial capital crisis. It is the HUMAN capital crisis. It’s simmering just below the surface; hidden because we are still the wealthiest nation on the planet, but it is a crisis, if left unchecked, that could make the current crisis look relatively mild by comparison.

We have approximately 50 Million students in our schools today. It is the largest and most diverse student population in the history of our nation. But here are some statistics to consider:

For every 100 ninth grader…
68 graduate on time.

Of those, 40 enroll in college…
27 are still in college the following year.

Of those, 18 earn an Associate’s degree within 3 years…
or a Bachelor’s degree within six years.

What this means is that 8 out of 10 of our nation’s ninth grade students will NOT earn an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree.

There numbers are staggering. And just what exactly are we going to do with the 80% who do not obtain college diplomas in a value-driven, knowledge-based global economy? Who is going to hire them? GM, Chrysler or Ford? Don’t think so. They may not even be around next year, and if they are, the workforce will be very different and far more specialized.

Think Bank of America would take some of that bailout money and hire them?

We’ve got to wake up and realize that we are on the verge of creating a functionally illiterate, virtually unemployable permanent underclass. This is not speculation, this is happening right now while we focus on banks and brokerage firms.

But think about all the good we could do if we funneled $700 Billion into our schools instead? Our schools should be models of innovation and 21st century learning, not poorly funded, ill-equipped, barely functioning institutional and instructional relics. A quality education should be the right of every child in this country. But right now, that “right” is largely determined by a child’s zip code. An investment in education is an investment in our future—our collective future. It is something that could yield benefits, from Wall Street to Main Street, for generations.

So while we’re busy throwing around billions of dollars, maybe we could throw a few to our struggling public schools. I mean, God-forbid our bankers have to forego a bonus this year.

How ever would they survive?

About this blog

“If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.”
—Booker T. Washington

Dedicated in 1922, the Booker T. Washington Monument (pictured above) is commonly referred to as "Lifting the Veil." The inscription at the base of the monument reads: “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”

One of Washington’s guiding beliefs was that economic independence was earned through access to a quality education. I believe that this belief is as true now as it was then--perhaps more so. As noted by former Harvard University president and now Obama economic advisor Lawrence H. Summers, “A fair chance and an unfettered start in the race of life is at the heart of the American Dream.”

And so it is.

But what does it mean to “lift the veil” of ignorance today?

What does it mean to “progress through education” today?

These are the essential questions that I intend to explore in this blog.

Along the way, I hope to facilitate thought, ideas and discussion. I do not promise answers (in fact, I will probably ask far more questions), but I do have a point of view, a point of view that I look forward to sharing with all of you, wherever you are and whomever you are, as I explore what we must do, individually and institutionally, to lift the veil of ignorance and to prepare this and future generations of students to compete and succeed in the global economy 21st century.