The truth is that poverty, and everything connected to it, is a systemic issue, not an issue of choice. It’s a lot easier to make it to that parent-teacher conference when you have a good job with benefits and child care. And it’s a lot easier to have that good job when your parents could afford to get you into a good college, and when your family’s lived for generations in a neighborhood with access to public transportation and grocery stores — when you never had to learn about redlining. When the ground you walk on doesn’t make you or your kids sick, because your neighborhood has always had the political clout to keep that oil refinery from being built next door.

In other words: show me the school system with high test scores, and I’ll show you the neighborhood whose houses are worth enough for the resulting property taxes to pay for after-school tutoring programs.

— SC Lt. Gov. Bauer: Free School Lunches Encourage ‘Stray Animals’ to ‘Breed’ [via]

Discerning critics and avid fans have agreed that the five-season run of Ed Burns and David Simon’s The Wire was “the best TV show ever broadcast in America”—not the most popular but the best. The 60 hours that comprise this episodic series have been aptly been compared to Dickens, Balzac, Dreiser and Greek Tragedy. These comparisons attempt to get at the richly textured complexity of the work, its depth, its bleak tapestry of an American city and its diverse social stratifications. Yet none of these comparisons quite nails what it is that made this the most compelling “show” on TV and better than many of the best movies. This class will explore these comparisons, analyze episodes from the first, third, fourth and fifth seasons and try to discover what was and is so great about The Wire. We will screen as much of the series as we can during our mandatory screening sessions and approach it through the following lenses: the other writing of David Simon, including his journalism, an exemplary Greek Tragedy, Dickens’ Bleak House and/or parts of Balzac’s Human Comedy. We will also consider the formal tradition of episodic television. Please come to the first class having already viewed all of season one on your own. It is available at the MRC.

— What so great about The Wire?
Film 105
Instructor: Linda Williams
W: 3:00pm - 6:00pm, 226 Dwinelle
Enrollment limited to 20 [via]

I never get to take these ‘quirky’ and ‘timely’ courses. TOO BAD YOU REJECTED ME UC BERKELEY DON’T WORRY I AM NOT STILL IRRITATED ABOUT IT OR ANYTHING.

Then I could be taking this RIGHT NOW instead of reading Durkheim. All this semester I have been thinking “Hey, maybe instead of reading about protein energy malnutrition or whatever, I should just watch The Wire. Try incorporating that into anthropology already!” Clearly I am on the right page.

Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities.

— Seymour Papert [via]

If you are reading this article and you have family and friends in the state of Michigan, ask yourself if MSU is serving those Michiganders that you are closest to? Have you heard any stories about friends or family that were turned away by MSU recently? Have any of these stories surprised you? Few MSU grads from the past would dispute that the entrance criteria for MSU has gotten tougher. Many will tell you based upon today’s criteria that they would not have gotten into MSU. I include myself as one of these people. Has MSU denied access to those that should receive a landgrant education? Has MSU denied access to people that would stay home and reinvest their education by creating jobs that would grow Michigan communities? The answer that I receive when talking to people is overwhelmingly yes. This is not only inconsistent with our landgrant charter; it is economically bad for the future of MSU.
So while society is brainwashed into believing that higher standardized test scores and GPA’s result in a higher quality graduate, does it benefit the state of Michigan? Are MSU graduates today better prepared to deal with the problems of tomorrow more than they were ten or even twenty years ago? Are MSU grads any smarter or more capable than they were ten or twenty years ago? I don’t think so.

— MSU is Playing a Dangerous Game that is NOT Sustainable [via]

while this is totally valid, lansing/east lansing also has the problem of a glut of college educated people without the jobs to support them. How many MSU-educated Michiganders will turn right around and leave Michigan? Even as someone that loves Michigan and hates not living there, that’s what I did. MSU needs to cater to Michigan, but I don’t see how they can do that without Michigan figuring out some way to bring in new kinds of jobs. It seems as though, to the rest of the country, the Midwest is becoming more and more irrelevant.

And there’s the rub. We love learning. We hate school. What’s worse is that many of us hate school because we love learning.

— Revisiting “A Vision of Students Today”

Understand the difference between your personal work, and your classroom practice.

— 10 Ways to Survive Art School