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The Company Cookbook: A Journey Through the Center of the Middle of the Shredded Cheddar Cheese Universe

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Anyone who's ever been to a company potluck should really appreciate this.

The funniest thing is that I find myself making bizarre casseroles and jello salads for these events too, despite the fact that I'm a pretty good cook. What is it about lunch in Conference Room 5A that makes me reach for the cream of mushroom soup?

Taking the Mommy Track to Oblivion?

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

The New York Times' most forwarded article today is Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood. At its most interesting, the article asks what it means for society when well-trained, smart, and motivated women groomed for positions of leadership and power opt out of the 9-to-5 (or, more realistically, 9-to-6, 7 or 8) workday and take up the full-time work of raising children. The article argues that this is an important question for elite institutions as
The women [these schools] are counting on to lead society are likely to marry
men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be
full-time mothers.
What the article fails to properly acknowledge is that the majority of the "stay at home moms" who come from these high-achieving, privileged backgrounds probably won’t be structuring their days like those of a middle-class 1950s housewife. Instead, most will channel at least some of their hyper-perfectionist, overachieving, multi-tasking energy into community involvement. Is this work not an acceptable definition of leadership?

Implicit in the “social impact of motherhood” question is the noblesse oblige ethos of elite education: social responsibility accompanies privilege. That ethos certainly plays an important part in my life decisions, and I hope that it does in lives of my classmates, too. But I think we’d be wrong to assume that the only way to fulfill this obligation is through high-powered work-for-pay. We shouldn’t devalue the social import of the work of raising good kids or of the volunteer work that makes our schools, charities, churches, and other important organizations run.

I’m 99.9% sure that full-time motherhood is not a choice I’d make for myself, but I don’t think there should be a filter question on Ivy applications to keep out those who would.

Kozol Redux

Monday, September 12, 2005

Jonathan Kozol has a new book coming out this week, and will be speaking twice in DC to promote it: Politics and Prose on Friday and Blair HS in Silver Spring on Saturday morning.

It's called The Shame of the Nation: Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. I haven't seen a copy yet, but the press release for the Silver Spring event that I saw contained some excerpts, including the following:

'I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations,' said President Bush in his campaign for reelection in September 2004. 'It's working. It's making a difference.' Here we have one of those deadly lies that by sheer repetition is at length accepted by surprisingly large numbers of Americans. But it is not the truth; and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the black and brown and poor, and if it is not forcefully resisted it will lead us further in a
very dangerous direction.

and
'There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education. There ought to be; we measure almost everything else that happens to them in their schools. Do kids who go to schools like these enjoy the days they spend in them? Is school, for most of them, a happy place to be? You do not find the answers to these questions in reports about achievement levels, scientific methods of accountability, or structural revisions in the modes of governance.
I saw Kozol speak while I was an undergraduate, and I have to say, I remember his speech bringing me to tears. I was invigorated by what he had to say, ready to be a crusader for social justice. Last year, he was giving an address at Georgetown, and I went to see him again. I was ready to be reminded what it is that I work for.

Kozol railed for 2 hours about how tests are bad, standards are bad, accountability is bad, education researchers in *shudder* "Washington think tanks" are turning elementary school into a factory system, and the world of education is a dispirited, broken place because of efforts to analyze policy decisions and find efficient solutions. I was sorely disappointed, and came out asking "What would you rather we do, barring immediate reversal of America's poverty issues?" I honestly want to know: acknowledging the fact that it's nearly politically impossible to pump more money into education without some proof that it's working, what would you suggest we do instead?

Savage Inequality is still a mesmerizing, heart breaking book. Kozol is at his best when he's revealing the great injustice of economic conditions in our country, especially because his audiences are largely in communities of privilege that are isolated from the harsh reality of urban poverty. But testing didn't cause these conditions, and testing isn't aggravating them either. Once he leaves the realm of anti-poverty cheerleader and stumbles into policy analysis, Kozol's soaring rhetoric falls dramatically short.

I agree with Kozol--our ultimate goal should be that every child loves to learn. But, given all the ground we have to make up by the time they even enter kindergarten (which he so eloquently reveals himself), disadvantaged children have got a lot of hard work ahead of them if that's ever going to happen. It's unfair, I agree. But blame the inequality, not the tests that measure it.

Abstract analysis opens doors!

Just put a long post over on Kindling Flames. I'm excited about this metaphor-- education entrepreneurs as development NGOs. Fleshed out, I think it has the potential for a really interesting paper! Especially because there's been a lot of talk recently about philanthropy in education, and its impact on the policy process.

Reminds me of this great (if not a little abstract--but I love that stuff!) article I read last year--written by a linguist--about the power of metaphor to restrict or expand your thinking about an issue. From August 2003's TCR: The Matrix, Metaphors, and Re-imagining Education. I think I originally found it because some blog I was reading was mocking it as EduFluff, but the overall point, I think, is a good one. Good abstraction can open new understandings.

Apparently the Feds Watch Reality TV...

Friday, September 09, 2005

I couldn't help but laugh at this article today. Richard Hatch, the first winner of Survivor, apparently didn't report his prize money to the Feds, and thus didn't pay any taxes on it. Survivor was not only one of the most popular shows on TV, but also launched a cultural phenomenon... you'd think the dude would assume *someone* in IRS-Land watched it!

Back to business in 4 short days

Friday, September 02, 2005