Larry Ferlazzo warns you to be prepared to laugh with tears when watching this video. I find it frightening that someone has turned my last week into animation.
And Ken Robinson has some interesting insights into changing educational paradigms in another one of those clever RSA animations.
Chicago State Senator Ricky Hendon speaks the truth: “I’ve never served with such an idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic person in my life,” Hendon said before introducing Gov. Quinn. “If you think that the minimum wage needs to be three dollars an hour, vote for Bill Brady. If you think that women have no rights whatsoever, except to have his children, vote for Bill Brady. If you think gay and lesbian people need to be locked up and shot in the head, vote for Bill Brady.” Then Pat Quinn ran for cover.
Mike the Mad Biologist explains charters, testing and skimming.
The idea that Muslims scare people is not a complex idea, and if I’ve learned nothing else from this whole thing, its that Islamophobia is now a lucrative big business. Juan Williams got paid a $2 million contract with Fox at the end of this. And frankly, it makes me ill. Do you know that this Saturday in New York City hundreds of people are marching on Fox in New York City. There is going to be a march of hundreds of people because of the Islamophobia that Fox has come to represent and the bigotry that Fox has come to represent. And I think when it comes to Juan Williams, this is one of those cases where he had a moment of when in Rome. I mean what he said on the O’Reilly show is said on Fox shows all the time. The difference is, is that he happens to be connected to an institution in NPR which unlike Fox is an actual media organization with standards. That’s what tripped him up. Dave Zirin
Fred Klonsky 
A number of my fb friends have posted that video of the Ken Robinson talk and I have to say that something about it is bothering me. It is the part where he talks about the test of divergent thinking given to kindergarteners and how their scores dropped over time as they were in school and became “educated.” I am not convinced by this study-or at least by his explanation that education is somehow responsible for thwarting people’s capacity for thinking of multiple answers to a question. I have two questions: 1. Does Robinson think it is odd that he is criticizing standardized testing while using a standardized test to argue against standardized testing? I actually don’t know if the test is standardized, but I’m just guessing. 2. Is it possible that the reason they are scoring lower in divergent thinking because they are learning other systematic and logical methods of thinking through problems, and therefore might be score higher in other forms of thinking that are also incredibly important? I also find it incredibly frustrating when people put forward these sort of overarching critiques of the entire educational system without putting forward a single example of how things could be otherwise organized.
Good points and questions.
Of course, I didn’t post it because I bought all of it. And there is the problem of definition. When he argues that children are divergent geniuses in kindergarten and deteriorated as they became educated, we only know a little about what he means by educated. To me what is missing is the failure to distinguish among economic groups of students. He divides them between those that are considered academic and smart and those who are not. But we know that those who are considered to be academic and smart also tend to be rich, white and and more often than not, male. Students at New Trier are encouraged and rewarded for divergent thinking. Those a few miles south are not.
What I think is good in this video is the point that a free, public education was a part of the movement for greater democracy, that there is a link between ADHD and how instruction is perceived (although he avoids again making the connection between geography and race and class in this regard), of the importance of the aesthetic experience in education, and the continued existence of the factory model in the organization of schools.
I am not as bothered by his use of a standardized test to measure divergent thinking as you are. It is one thing to use a standardized test to measure something, and another to only use standardized tests to measure everything.