‘Course, the weather we’ve been having recently makes it seem less absurd and February is always spring in Florida… Gah.

Well, if anyone still wants to associate with me after this little expression of the interesting times in which we live, I am coming home on Saturday and will be in town for a week! Tae, I have something for you. Elf, I have nothing for you, because you didn’t leave anything behind.

My exams are tomorrow…I might even be ready, but at this point, ain’t much I can do. So here’s to a fun evening with friends!

Categories: college, home
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My first word in the matter of a Pennsylvania school board voting to discontinue the International Baccalaureate Programme is that I am extremely biased. Almost unabashedly so. The program and the friends I made there made my high school experience what it was, and I treasure that. I also credit IB with allowing me to stretch my mind, open my horizons, and challenge what I thought I was capable of.

So first, read these if you haven’t already:
AP: PA school board votes down Baccalaureate
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Educaton program splits Upper St. Clair
Just for good measure: Pug’s Place on the issue

That said, I would like to point out that there are some disgusting aspects of this story that should be apparent to anyone who is moderately interested in education – American or otherwise. Whether or not the Upper St. Clair school board wants to recognize it, we live in an increasingly globalized society. But Julie Quist, president of a conservative education group seems to think that loyalty is like a glass of water: when you use it all in one place, there ain’t any more. The only patriotism that might be undermined by an international, globalized view of the world is that blind sort of patriotism that slaps a “Free and Proud” sticker on the bumper and will follow the stars and stripes off a cliff if that’s where it leads. To my way of thinking, educating our children to think past that is not only a good thing but a necessary thing. Yes, America is a great place to live for most of us, but hubris will only get us into trouble. And “sense of sovereignty”??? All hail King George?? I think not.

Similarly, the allegation that IB’s endoresment of Earth Charter indoctrinates students with Marxist principles smells like rotting fish. Despite our German class jokes about Fred(rich Engels) and Karl (Marx)… No. There’s really nothing I can say about this one. Hell, I’ve read Marx…but in college – and my conservative little formerly Southern Baptist college at that. This is so incredibly bogus and these people don’t have a clue. IB is about making you think, forcing you to think, twisting your arm until you start to think for yourself. IB and indoctrination is a contradiction in terms. The classic liberal arts model that IB presents embraces original thought based on competency in a given subject. Or to put it another way, first you must know what you’re talking about, then you must have an opinion. Don’t you wish that were a rule for life?

It seems that the serious matters lie in less sensational lines. IB does cost the schools a pretty penny, not only for the exams taken at the end of the program, but also for lab equipment in the sciences and for teacher training. And education is notoriously underfunded just as teachers are notoriously underpaid. I can easily see how a program benefitting a small percentage of the student population would slip under the axe.

Especially when IB can look so much like other programs – for example, AP (which has American roots, if you’re still angsting over the first point). Now, I have no serious qualms about AP (though I’ve seen articles that would argue otherwise). In fact, I think that one of the smart things about Choctaw’s IB program is that it allowed for a modicum of overlap between IB and AP. Junior year we had English classes that were joint IB/AP and we all took the AP exam at the end. The same year, we were all doing U.S. history, so there was little practical difference between the AP class and the IB one; again, we all took the AP exam. In many other places, an AP course (or an honors one in 9th and 10th grade) and an IB one looked fairly similar, allowing people with really tight schedule to slip into the other program, especially in earlier years.

So why waste the money on this foreign program? What does it do that AP doesn’t? I would argue that it offers continuity. Like a college, it offers you a four-year track and expects you to work at a high standard in all subjects. It encompasses not only core subjects (English, math, science, history), but also requires four years of a foreign language, a certain amount of community service, and as icing on the cake, a four thousand word research paper (hey, fifteen pages was a lot at the time). And that continuity lends an almost interdisciplinary aspect to IB. Each of your teachers knows what you’re getting from the others and is aware of how the calculus you’re learning relates to the European history you studied two years ago or how issues pertinent to biology are important to a novel you’re reading for English.

Beyond that, the idea is suggested to you that you are not learning facts for the sake of cramming your head full of facts. You are in fact learning how to cram your head with facts. You are learning how to draw relations and correlations between facts and how to derive implications from them. While you learn about the world in which you are expected to be a global citizen, you are studying the art of learning. It is the argument for any liberal arts education, and I would apply it to my college experience just as readily. I’ve called high school my “preface to Furman” and I’ve called college “IB, part 2.” It works either way.

This is also the answer to board member Dr. Trombetta’s statement, “I want to know what that has to do with education” regarding an exam question about marriage forms and gender relations (which would be a perfectly viable question in my History of Africa course right now, by the way). The point is not to test knowledge but to encourage critical thought.

You might think that the 700 students who are suddenly no longer part of the IB program would be only too happy to give up the foreign language they hate or the extended essay they dread writing. And no doubt some of them are. But I suspect there are many – especially juniors and seniors – who feel cheated. Who were told that IB was an investment that would pay off by helping to prepare them for college. Who have put in a hell of a lot of work and feel unappreciated and unvalued by their community.

And that seems to me like a damn shame.

Categories: college, in the news
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A couple of fascinating aspects to today’s story about a British man who was convicted in Austria of being a Holocaust-denier.   The most coherent article is from Deutsche Welle (don’t worry, it’s in English), but check out the list at the bottom of the BBC’s article. What a statement it makes, that all these countries have laws against denying the Holocaust – the three major German-speaking countries are on the list, as are pretty much all of the places into which the Nazis tried to expand in WWII, plus Israel.  Even France is on the list, though the U.K. naturally is not.

Categories: in the news
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…this article from the Chicago Tribune boggles the mind.

I’ve eaten McDonald’s fries forever, but never often – and not at all for a while. Could this reflect a change in the last year or so? Could their dairy ingredient be lactose or milk fat, which don’t bother me? Or am I indeed that much less allergic these days?

Fascinating – and then some.

(CNN.com covers the story too, but the article is the same AP blurb and the Tribune’s site is infinitely cleaner. Or maybe I’ve just blocked their ads already…)

Categories: in the news
2 Comments »

Poetry slam went well. There was a really interesting mix this year – lots of hiphop-y and rap-y type stuff, which interests me as a novelty if nothing else – which I didn’t remember from past years. The audience was really into it, and to no one’s great surprise, the few of us who were a little more conventional didn’t last past the first round. So I actually only read the first of the poems you see below. I’m not so much heartbroken over not having to compose a poem in five minutes, though now I’m curious to try. Delusions of grandeur shattered again. I’m over it – friends have been really great, espcially CCLC people (my Furman family, really), to include an adorable note from one of our newbies (in whom I sometimes see more than a little of myself, two years ago).

A Sudden Focus

Turning back, he stops,
squinting as the Ford’s dusty hood
turns dragonfly blue
in the four pm sunlight of mid-October.

The car’s tapered nose and sassy eyes
hit him like the first guitar chords
after the amp kicks in.
He quivers like a cymbal,
reverberating
in the cacauphonous midst
of a bustling WalMart crowd,
focused on that curvaceous little car.

Did Jessie still drive a car like that?
Back in high school she used to squeeze her drum set
one piece at a time
into the back seat of her Ford Focus,
hitching up her jeans before they fell off her hips.

Those days, Jessie dreamed of leaving home
getting her eyebrow pierced
hitting it big –
back when the old gang tried to start a band.

Practicing a riff, she used to purse her lips,
pounding, repeating, perfecting,
until a wild smile spread ran her face,
tossing her head as sound ricoched around the garage.

When he dealt out chords, she would cut the deck
syncopating, improvising, slipping him ace glances
until his fingers slipped and the whole group
fell apart with a crash

louder but less shocking than the slam of Jessie’s trunk
when she packed that dragonfly car,
pointing it into the sunset.
“So long, ya’ll,” she saluted,
heading for flight school in Colorado.

Dodging a cell-phone-shopper with a baby,
he surveys the parking lot,
watching the back of a woman in orange for
a full
half minute
before deciding she’s somebody else.

Circling the blue Ford, he half expects
to see it full of drums,
but all he finds is a bumper full of stickers:
Vote Bush. Greek letters. In pink: I (heart) Jesus.

The drum solo in his chest
stops dead.

* * * * *

The Musings of One Whose Neighbor Owns a Moped

I wouldn’t want to leave you in the dark
when one day you come home to find it gone –
that moped I hear squealing as you park.

I lift the blinds to watch you disembark,
You pat the bike and stumble off, mid-yawn.
I wouldn’t want to leave you in the dark

Temptation sure is strong to leave my mark
and leave that thing in pieces on the lawn:
that moped I hear howling as you park.

But crime, in truth, is really not my lark
Defacing strangers’ property at dawn?
I wouldn’t want to leave you in the dark.

Temptation sure is strong to leave my mark,
to take your whining bike and chain it down.
that moped I hear sputtering as you park.

So if you find your bike has lost its spark,
Or cannot find the motor I’ve withdrawn –
I wouldn’t want to leave you in the dark
about that moped, squealing as you park.

True story, that one. I know several of you love motorcycles and I’m okay with that, but this moped drives me up the wall. Whining in or out all day and half the night, then joy-riding around the parking lot… My walls are thin and the thing is LOUD. Oh – and I really want to get the word “lark” out of this thing. This is one of my problems with reading too many old books…I pick up too much old slang and when I try to write with it, it sounds precocious. But when you read it out loud, you can gloss over “lark” and move along to the next line easy enough.

P.S. Jumping off the bridge: my Johari window. 

Categories: college, scribblings
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Good grief, it HAS been forever since I posted! No wonder all of you are mad at me! In the interest of putting off the reading I should do for history of Africa and the essay I should be writing for German, here goes. (Hell, last on the agenda was laundry and next may be making brownies. And I wanted to be in bed around midnight?)

I had a wonderful weekend with the CSC at the beginning of the month – how fun to all (almost all) be in the same place again!

I got an acceptance letter this week! Rosemont will have me. Slight confusion about opening the letter and having the actual letter saying “you’re accepted” stuck to the inside, so all Mother pulled out when she was on the phone with me were the sheets for “Intent to Enroll” and such. Dad solved the mystery later, fortunately! Then slight confusion regarding the date by which they want to hear back from me – written in as 2/24/06. Eeep!! I have no guarantee of hearing from Emerson by then, not to mention the fact that I’m one of the most indecisive people on the planet. So I called them this afternoon and the woman I spoke to said the date was flexible and made a note on my file to not expect my reply until late March. So! Here we go again. I may have to find a way to visit these places soon-ish…

In more local news, I’ve put my head in the noose and agreed to be a contestant in the annual Poetry Slam that our English Honor Society puts on. I put my name in a couple months ago when the list was three people long and the organizing committee was desperate for people. Now the event is tomorrow evening, and I’m a little nervous. The structure is that there are about a dozen of us competing with a handful of audience judges. In the first two rounds, we read a previously composed poem, with a few contestants eliminated after each round. The last few who make it to the third round have five minutes to compose a poem on a topic chosen by the audience. We shall see. I will have to post the poems I plan to read tonight – one of them some of you have seen already, the other is newer.

Beyond that, there’s the usual sources of busyness. Tests and papers, books to read, German movies to watch, lots of video projects at work, trying to get recommendations for a scholarship application, trying to find time to write the application, planning a bridal shower, convincing self that my stuff is decent enough to read for an audience tomorrow night, plus a sprinkle of trying to track down people who won’t return e-mails: nothing new under the sun. And yet, there’s always something new. And then WHY do I let myself get ensnared in another Lord Peter novel? Save it two weeks for spring break! says Common Sense. Just peek at the first chapter as an incentive, murmers Temptation. Madness ensues.

Categories: college
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