Blurts

I have visited Washington, DC, a couple of times. It has been the site of conferences I attend and we took my parents there because they wanted to visit the Capitol. There are many great attractions, but my favorite was not one maintained by the Government. The Newseum serves in recognition of the importance of the press in our democracy (freedom of the press is codified in the first amendment). I have written previously about the Newseum in recognition of its resources for educators.

The Newseum offers a display showing the front pages of multiple images of that day.

We happened to visit on the day in 2009 when the front pages all carried the news of Michael Jackson’s death. This was the paper we could locate from North Dakota. Cindy proposed that a great project for students would be to view how the same story was covered in different sources (the front pages are available online).

I remember taking this picture – it is part of the Berlin wall. The other exhibit that impressed me was the memorial to journalists who had died doing their jobs.

You may know that the Newseum was closed. Privately funded with the cost of rent in D.C., it could not meet the costs of maintaining the facility and staff. I generated this post because I read something about the Newseum and learned that it is still functional. The collections of the Newseum and some of the services are held by an organization called the Freedom Forum which is an organization championing first amendment rights. The organization hopes to be able to open a new Newseum if a less expensive and suitable site can be located. The resources created for teachers and classrooms are still available online and work for the educational mission is continuing.

Cindy and I belong to a Zoom group that meets once every two weeks. The group consists of individuals all worked in the Iowa State University hall system as students or grad students nearly 50 years ago now. Most are just now coming into retirement or are already retired (it depends on whether the participants were ungrads or grad students at the time). It is a very interesting group, accomplished as adults, with mostly all small town or farm backgrounds as kids. I am kind of an honorary member as a spouse, but I did live in the Residence Halls with Cindy because her job came with room and board. For older folks, this was the time at which there was a transition from “house mothers” to professional residence all staff – probably way before most readers’ time in higher ed to make sense.

Anyway, we take an hour or two and socialize, but also have a theme we discuss. Selecting the theme rotates. Cindy came up with asking each individual to list three things they had discovered during the pandemic. Mine were Ice Bugs, the Moka Pot, and the Brave Browser. Many folks offer television programs or movies or books.

Last night someone described the value of reading to children with many in the group having been doing this remotely during the pandemic. As part of this discussion, Storyline Online was suggested. Storyline Online streams videos of typically recognizable celebrities (e.g.. Oprah, Kevin Costner, Betty White) reading books. It is a great opportunity for kids to spend some screen time on a literacy activity.

BTW – I had nothing to do with the organization or conceptualization of this group, but it was a brilliant idea and perfect for the forced isolation we now all endure. The mix of a common origin and very different life experiences creates a remarkable experience and an ideal example of the wisdom of crowds.

Sometimes it is interesting reconsider a prediction after it becomes possible to determine whether the prediction holds or not. Tim Wu was an earlier critic of what he considered the misguided direction of social media. If you read books focused on social media, you may have consumed his Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness.

In this podcast/interview from April, 2020, Tim was asked what could change the direction of big tech in increasing the focus on information that appeals to emotional reactions and increases disagreement and radicalization. Tim, from the historical perspective he sometimes takes, proposes that a major crises may offer the event that causes people and companies to re-examine and redirect their behavior. With the polarization around the election of 2020 and the storming of Congress, perhaps we finally have our crisis.

Opening K12 schools is obviously a highly debated and complex political issue. Clearly, the economy is impacted when parents must deal with their children being at home when some parents need to be at a work site and those parents working from home must divide their attention between work, child care, and educational tutoring. The impact of this issue has an equity component as those families with more income can more easily deal with the demands of having their children at home. There is an educational issue with high numbers of students not attending online learning sessions and serious questions about the effectiveness of learning at a distance. There are added issues questioning the health issue with younger children seemingly less likely to be seriously affected by COVID.

This recent NPR article addresses health in ways I had not anticipated. For example, the question of whether children out of school are really less likely to be exposed to the virus. If children are given freedom to leave their homes, the children may be better off in a monitored school setting. The article even noted that there are long-term health problems associated with a poorer quality education assuming I guess that there are permanent consequences to the time in-school learning is not possible.

As I write this post, the Minneapolis/St. Paul suburb of Bloomington had to back away from a recent return of younger students to classroom instruction because the bus drivers responsible for getting these kids to their schools had a spike in COVID.

You have to feel sorry for the administrators and politicians trying to make decisions about in-person education. You have to be sensitive to educators and other school personnel required to return to face to face instruction when an alternative approach to instruction ideal or not is available. As is the case with all adults, any face to face activity raises the probability they will be infected.

Patience. Hopefully, within a month or so vaccines will drastically reduce the dangers of the pandemic.

Podcasting and social media in general allow most of us an opportunity to share and interact. Hence, I am generating this post. I lived most of my adult life in a region of the country that was home to more Native Americans than any other minority. My professional life brought me interaction with those of this heritage that focused on what might be described as “issues”. I was the chair of a department of psychology that had received government support to prepare Native American clinical psychologists. I spent considerable time on reservations in an effort to become better acquainted with the serious problems that must be addressed.

On a different level, Native people were my colleagues, my students, and the friends I played basketball with most noons.

I like reservation radio – usually a public radio FM channel hosted by folks with an accent different from my own, but playing mostly music I enjoyed with a small-town feel. I have discovered the podcast equivalent and it is worth an occasional listen as an opportunity to expand cultural awareness. Here is a link to Breakdances with wolves. Try a few episodes. I think you will learn a few things and also be entertained. I don’t know if “Native contemporary” is a thing, but this is how I would describe the program.