Nine Shift

Education: "What's the moon shot?"

"What's the moon shot?"  That is what schools entrepreneur Steve Barr asked/stated in a recent interview on The Connection on public radiio.

Barr is trying to redesign the Los Angeles public schools by creating a different kind of charter school, one where 90% of the money actually goes to the school instead of administrators, where teachers get more pay, and where students learn more.  He's causing a ruckus in the LA school system.

But he also signalled a call for anybody - - you, me - - to create a new social order, a new model, in whatever area you/I want, when he asked - - but really stated - - "What's the moon shot?"  That is, what is the big huge unobtainable goal that somehow, sometime, some way, can (and needs to) be actually obtainable?  Go for it, he says.  Now's the time to create the 21st century. What do you think of Steve Barr?  And "what's the moon shot" for you?

Start of "new order"within sight

This month it just feels like the start of the "new order" of the 21st century.

Some 100 years ago, there was definitely a "new order."   You can see the term used in news accounts included i the classic novel 1919 by John Dos Passos.  John Dewey wrote about a "new order of conceptions" for schools.

The "new order" consists of a new infrastructure, economy, laws, inventions and more. The struggle to create that new order, with justice, pit the working class against the wealthy elite in the last century. We shall see what the "sides" are in this century.  And how each nation creates its "new order," for better or worse. But it's clearly time to start fig hting for whatever 21st century you believe in. (photo of albino deer Julie spotted near our cabin)

What's your top priority for the "new order" of the 21st century?

Americans lack high speed access

By world standards, Americans do not even have high speed Internet access.

That's my conclusion after reading this week that "high speed" in the U.S.A. is three times Slower than high speed access in France.  And some ten times Slower than high spped access in Japan and Korea. 

My turn to whine.  I am in the woods of northern Wisconsin, and while I shouldn't compalin about my wonderful vacation, I should complain about the dial up Internet connections.  It is not even possible to conduct reasonable business on dial up anymore.  Got any answers for us "poor" Americans?