The results of the latest S&R poll are in. What issue will be foremost in your thoughts when you vote for a president in 2008? 1. Civil Liberties (28) 2. Economy and Class (26) 3. Iraq and Military Issues (20)
Read moreThe biggest challenge my EducationF1rst initiative faces is one of momentum: America is not, and never has been, an intellectual culture. We do not, however much we might protest, live in a nation that treasures teaching and learning. On the list of things that we care about, education falls well to the south of things like entertainment and sports. Worse,
Read moreHi. I’m Sam Smith, and I’m running for President. The discipline question is one of the most difficult ones facing this campaign, and even as we construct the strategic platform plank we’re sobered by the tactical realities that must be faced. Some schools are dangerous places. A lot more are significantly less effective than they should be because of disruptive
Read moreWell, hell. This is fun. I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at
Read moreHi. I’m Sam Smith, and I’m running for president on a platform that stresses education’s critical role in solving our nation’s problems and assuring a future of universal opportunity for all citizens. Today I’m introducing my platform plank on curriculum, a cornerstone concern for any productive educational system. One size does not fit all. It goes without saying that we
Read moreOur nation’s current teach-to-the-test pathology is strong evidence of how our educational system has failed in deep, fundamental ways. However, President Bush’s No Child Left Untested debacle is a program that benefits nobody except his friends in the educational publishing industry. It’s bad for teachers and worse for students, who wind up graduating with no critical thinking skills, no ability
Read moreAs noted yesterday, a new national intelligence report has caught the Bush White House in yet another round of warmongering lies. No real surprise there. The revelation elicited a range of replies from a variety of predictably interested parties. John Edwards opted for flat honesty: The new National Intelligence Estimate shows that George Bush and Dick Cheney’s rush to war
Read moreHi. I’m Sam Smith, and I’m running for president. Contrary to what some “reformers” seem to believe, the laws of economics apply to teaching. An extremely talented teaching candidate who’s bright enough to earn $80,000 in another field isn’t likely to settle for $25,000 to teach, especially when current policies have turned the job into a thankless slog. There are
Read moreAt present we have a public education model built on a lot of obsolete 19th Century assumptions about organization and pedagogy. In a sense, we’re trying to pound the square peg of student needs into the round hole of bureaucratic entitlement and the agrarian and industrial impulses that shaped it. This stops the day I take office. Instead, we will
Read morePut simply, education is the single most critical issue we face. Every dollar (wisely) spent today on teaching and learning is an investment in our future. While there’s no magic remedy for all our ills, education comes closest to being a panacea, because when you educate, you’re crafting the minds that will solve all other challenges. For example: a dollar
Read moreHi. I’m Sam Smith, and I’d like your vote. In January I launched Dr. Slammy in 2008, my doomed campaign for president. Then a few months later, forgetting that there are only 24 hours in a day, I got myself embroiled in this Scholars & Rogues project. Something had to give, and as a result I let the DS08 initiative
Read moreOur friend Ubertramp sent along this little video, which certainly provides food for thought: There’s much to empathize with here.
Read moreA colleague has notified me that I’m under indictment by a previously unknown blog calling itself the St. Louis Skeptical Society, a site that “was founded on October 11, 2007 by a handful of physics graduate students in order to promote skepticism and science.” These enterprising students have taken exception to my earlier thoughts on democracy in America, concluding that
Read moreI recently offended some people, quite unintentionally, with my modest suggestion that perhaps it wasn’t in the best interests of the nation to hand over so much decision-making power to people who aren’t informed about the issues and their own system of government. (Responses ranged from “thoughtful disagreement” to what I believe is referred to as a “galloping hissy fit.”)
Read moreIn my most recent post, one commenter repeatedly insisted that I offer a solution or an alternative for the problems I was pointing to. As I noted there, I never suggested that there was a problem, and even if there were, it’s hardly my job to be proposing a lot of solutions that aren’t going to be acted on. If
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