Category Archives: Writing

Ever since the Terminator movies (or, if you are old enough, Colossus: The Forbin Project, the movie from 1970) the Robot Apocalypse has been a running gag in geek circles. Paranoia is great fun sometimes. So Robert Wright’s piece, “Building a Giant Brain” fits into a familiar comedic sub-genre (meme, as the kids say). The Internet is a giant brain, we are just cogs, uh, neurons, ha, ha, ha. I don’t mind the joke but I think the meme’s getting more than a little anemic.

It’s also familiar from Dorris Lessing’s science fiction (although she favored something more organic perhaps) and, especially, from H.G. Wells’ Time Machine. Wells and Lessing, though, seemed to have an awareness of privilege in general and education in particular that is often lacking in this sort of contemporary humor. It’s not so funny if you realize that the relatively privileged may one day be running the world of the poor via cloud computing.

That’s A Modest Proposal territory, but Swift’s wit is likely too savagely class conscious for U.S. tastes. There’s lots of class vocabulary tossed around– I heard on the food channel a guy profess to be cooking “Blue Collar Dollar” but he couldn’t say what that meant– but I am not sure there’s much insight. The problem, as always, is trying to get relatively privileged people to recognize their own materiel advantages, not to eliminate them, but to make them more widely available.

Teach for America, a recent piece in the New York Times notes (A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America), has become a high-status program, due in part to the recession. It’s extremely competitive and offers a secure job in a time when there are few jobs to be had, even at the entry level. This is the sort of thing that the Obama administration ought to be putting at the center of the debate over jobs.

I think this is one of those rare opportunities to transform the professional aspirations of an entire generation; the numbers suggest that the program could be three times bigger without loosing status. Most of the problems associated with the program– especially teachers who leave education after their term is over– could be fixed by programs designed to increase teachers salaries and to reduce burnout.

If economists are correct job growth will continue to be slow over the next several years. The poorer school districts need the teachers, and education as a profession needs to be promoted as one of the central occupations of our culture. Or, to use the jargon, as an essential investment in human capital necessary in a post-industrial economy. Ignorance is so 2005.

Every time there’s a budget problem the weasels come out of the woodwork, each with a plan to gut a program they never thought should be funded in the first place. That’s how, step by step, we’ve gotten to the point where the arts in the public schools, not to mention physical education, has largely been eliminated.

You’ll never hear a top administrator say, “Wait. Drawing and music is too important to loose. All of us in the top 25% of the district salary range will take a pay cut for the next two years.” The current crisis is no exception. At least one Representative, though, David R. Obey, is going against the grain.

Obey wants to use almost a billion dollars to prevent what many feel might grow into massive teacher layoffs in the next fiscal year (Lawmaker wants to shift some ‘Race to the Top’ funds to prevent teacher layoffs). “When a ship is sinking,” Obey says with rare common sense, “you don’t worry about redesigning a room.”

Obey has yet to be successful; in part becuase his idea might delay the “Race to the Top” program designed to re-tool “No Child Left Behind.” Who wants large scale lay offs in the public schools? Perhaps a demoralized union would accept some of the uglier changes, like merit pay, proposed in the so-called reforms…