Administration – 2¢ Worth

Staff Sergeant Edward Carter Jr.

At the end of the American Civil War, 21 African American soldiers had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. American soldiers with dark skin earned Medals of Honor in every subsequent war until, strangely, World War II.

As a child, Edward Carter Jr, an African American, lived in Shanghai, China with his missionary parents. At 15, he joined the Chinese Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant before it was discovered that he was a child. Discharged, he enrolled in a Shanghai military school where he received extensive military training and learned four languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Hindi and German.

During the Spanish Civil War, Carter joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer unit fighting General Franco’s fascist regime and his NAZI allies. After that he insisted in the U.S. Army, just months before the Japanese attack on Perl Harbor. Some time in 1942, a counterintelligence service put him on a watch lists because of his service in Spain. The Lincoln Brigade’s administration had socialist leanings – and he spoke Chinese. In 1944, he was shipped to Europe but delegated to supply duties, in-spite of his military experience. Later that year, General Eisenhower, running short of combat soldiers, instituted the volunteer Ground Force Replacement Command. Early in 1945, 4,562 darker skinned soldiers, were serving in previously all white units, including Staff Sargent Edward Carter. He came to the attention of General George Patton who selected him to serve as one of the general’s guards.

Later Carter relinquished his rank so that he could enter combat duty as part of the general’s “Mystery Division” and he was recommended for the Medal of Honor by his superiors. Instead the Army gave him the second highest honor, The Distinguished Service Cross. After recovering from wounds and being re-promoted to Staff Sargent, Carter finished the war training troops. By that time, Staff Sargent Edward Carter had received the Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, American Defense Service Medal, Combat Infantry Badge and numerous other citations and honors.

When he tried to re-enlist, the Army barred his enlistment without explanation. Carter died of Lung Cancer in 1963, a result of shrapnel that was still in his neck.

In 1997, Sergeant Carters body was exhumed and taken to Washington where he was moved in a horse drawn caisson and full military honors to a finally resting place in Arlington National Cemetery and President Clinton posthumously award the Congressional Medal of Honor to Carter’s son, Edward Allen Carter III.

Source: Military Museum – https://goo.gl/dQmefP

While Trump Defends the National Anthem, He Threatens our National Symbol

A bald eagle, our national symbol

A few days ago, while walking around Shelley Lake in Raleigh, I saw a bald eagle flying high over the water. I pointed up, trying to get the attention of a group of teens who were walking toward me. Finally I yelled to them, “There’s a bald eagle!” They turned, looked up then turned back around and continued walking and talking.

This puzzled me, until I realized that they are not aware that several decades ago, the majestic birds were almost extinct. Some of you may remember when you’d never seen a bluebird? So many people simply do not know how badly these birds and other occupants of our planet were driven to the brink in the first half of the 20th century.

What brought eagles, bluebirds and so much else back from the precipice was a government that started to regulate the industries that were polluting the environment of all living inhabitants of the Earth. This is why I want to share that..

while Trump has been focusing the attention of his base on immigration and respect for the national anthem, he and his administration has been dismantling those environmental regulations at the behest of billionaire industrialists who are tired of environmental protection cutting into their profits.

Here is an article from Bloomberg Environment on the Trump’s activities behind the smoke and mirrors – 26 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back in the Trump Era

A Look at Who Democrats Voted for in the 2018 Primaries

Too many of the blog articles and political ads that we read fail to cite the sources for their information. FiveThirtyEight not only describes their sources, but in this case they have provided a link to the source dataset that they used for the analysis. They encourage us to look at data that describes the Democratic primaries, and draw our own conclusions.

In a recent FiveThirtyEight podcast, the data journalists looked at data related to 2018 primary elections to determine who Democratic voters are choosing this year. That particular episode segment is written up on their site as “We Researched Hundreds of Races. Here’s Who Democrats are Nominating.”

The researcher, Meredith Conroy, wanted to answer two questions.

Are democrats shifting to the left?
Is a more diverse cohort going to lead to more Democrat winners?

Female Candidate They only considered new candidates, seeking to avoid the messy influences of incumbency. Among other things, they found that women won 65% of the races that included at least one man and one woman. Male candidates won only 23% of those races.

In fact, all else being equal, being a woman has been worth an additional 10 percentage points over being a man in the open Democratic primaries (they) looked at.

Women candidates also tended to have more experience as elected officials than their male opponents. Such are the complexities of the political game. Conroy also wrote that said that what was important about the increased number of women running for office, win or lose, it will serve to encourage more women to run in future races.

The candidates’ Ideologies were measured by who endorsed them. Those endorsed by the Democratic party establishment did the best, by far. This contradicts the notion that Democratic voters are shifting far to the left.

That said, it is worth noting that candidates endorsed by more left-leaning organizations did not do poorly. This included “Our Revolution” (associated with Bernie Sanders) and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

In short, Democratic voters seemed to favor

Women,
Candidates with previous elected experience and
Those who worked for the Obama administration.

Less favored were

Nonwhites,
Veterans,
Candidates funding their own campaigns,
LGBTQ candidates and,
Candidates with STEM backgrounds (surprising me)

Another Giant Step Backward

CC BY-SA 2.0

If you think that America’s future energy should be burning coal and other fossil fuels, then you should be happy with Trump. According to a Bloomberg report, the Trump administration plans to use two Federal laws “to order (electrical) grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life…”

Further reversing our country’s progress, Reuters has learned that Trump’s tariff on imported solar panels is forcing renewable energy companies to cancel or freeze investments of $2.5+ billion in large installation projects. According to developers, it also cancels thousands of jobs.

All of this while Britain regularly announces increasing numbers of hours and days that their entire grid is powered without coal. The BBC reported on April 24 that the nation had gone three days without coal – the first time since the 1880s.

Sources:
Bloomberg Article – https://goo.gl/noeSrN
The memo – https://goo.gl/1SqfZx
Reuters Report – https://goo.gl/FveFPd
BBC – https://bbc.in/2HrRyn0

What do they Have to Gain from our Illiteracy?

StockMarket-Employment.jpg

My questions first: 1) Where are U.S. citizens getting misinformation? 2) What do the liars have to gain by misinforming us?

According to a May 11 Public Policy Polling press release, 43% of voters believe that unemployment as increased during Obama’s presidency.¹ In truth, there are more U.S. citizens employed today (April 2016, 5,867,000) than at the highest employment period of the GW Bush administration (April 2008 5,540,000) – this from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The first graph shows a devastating dip in employment during the first months of Obama’s presidency, but that was clearly a result of the banking debacle, which happened before his inauguration.²

PPP’s polls also indicate that 32% of voters believe that the stock market has declined during the current administration.¹ Again, this is untrue. Microtrends’ historic charts for the Dow Jones indicate that the previous administration enjoyed a high Industrial Average market index of 15,811 in October of 2007 – only 1,070 points above the value on his first day of office. The highest index during Obama’s two terms was 18,314 on February, 2015 – an increase of 9,329 points above its value on the first day of his presidency.³

Again, Where are U.S. citizens getting misinformation? .. and what do the liars have to gain by misinforming us?

¹ Jensen, T. (2016). Ryan Disliked by Republicans; Trump Could Hurt Down Ballot. Retrieved from Public Policy Polling website: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_51116.pdf

² BLS Data Fander 0.8. (2016). Retrieved from United States Department of Labor website: http://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?st=0&r=20&fq=survey:[ce]&more=0

³ Dow Jones – 100 Year Historical Chart. (2016). Retrieved from Microtrends LLC website: http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart

“Follow the Money” to Ferguson

Chris Lehmann challenged us (EduBloggers) last week to join the conversation about the police shooting of an 18 year old African-American man in Ferguson, Missouri and militarized posturing of law enforcement against the resulting protests. To be honest, I was not fully aware of the situation, too focused on getting my daughter ready to return to college and establishing a second residence to be closer to my and my wife’s parents.

I’ll agree wholeheartedly with all of Chris’ sentiments here, here and here, and would expound on them if I could. But, as a white, anglo saxon, protestant, eighth generation American, whose grandfather’s grandfather probably owned slaves, I honestly do not feel worthy to ardently express righteous sympathy with what I would characterize as second Americans. White man’s guilt?

I would like to ask a different question, though – and not as an attempt to distract us from a conversation about the unfulfilled promises (myths) of the American Dream. I ask this alternate question because I believe that there is another struggle happening here, one that possibly goes back to the beginnings of this country.

Looking at the picture to the right, I do not see how anyone could disagree with calling this a militarized police presence. But where did all that military hardware come from? Who bought it? ..and why? ..and Who got paid for it?

If we agree that one reason for learning (being taught) history is to avoid making its mistakes¹, then here might be a useful starting question, “What were the historical mistakes that led to the situation of this picture?”

This could go almost anywhere in human history, of course, and why should formal learning experiences be limited (by testable standards)? But that’s a different issue — maybe.

We might, for instance, go no further than a little more than a decade ago, when 19 mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists, attacked the United States at it’s heart, New York City. Those 19 mostly Saudi Arabian men, using our own technology against us, were effective nearly beyond anyone’s imagination.

Our response was to make war in Afghanistan and Iraq and declare war on terror, establishing the Department of Homeland Security. Although little else happened here, local police forces still find themselves armed for terror both from without and within. ..And you know what they say about a hammer.²

I would suggest that we responsibly and effectively teach history to avoid its mistakes, but also as a guard against having history re-written for us.

I will close here by suggesting that we ask students utilize contemporary literacy skills and do what Deep Throat³ said, “Follow the Money.”

1 A paraphrasing of George Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“Santayana, G. (1905). The life of reason. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15000

2 The Law of the Instrument, or as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.“

3 Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information toBob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post in 1972 about the involvement of United States President Richard Nixon‘s administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal.

Posted with Blogsy from my iPad

Public Education in North Carolina Deteriorates Further

My daughter just alerted me to a 10:42 AM article appearing on the WRAL.com web site, Lawmakers Propose Dumping Common Core Standards in NC.

Not surprising.

Sen. Jerry Tillman, c/o WRAL.com

The puppet-masters of the Tea party have effectively used the Common Core standards to create a flashpoint for generating emotional energy against government regulation. North Carolina is not alone in struggling with the politics of CCSS, as several states have abandoned the Common Core – as a title.

But the arrogance of NC’s General Assembly demands that we go further.

Sen. Jerry Tillman, R-Randolph, said that other states, such as Florida and Indiana, had merely renamed Common Core in their repeal bills. Indiana, he said, “didn’t totally devolve itself from Common Core. This bill does that.”*

The clincher, and what provoked me to write this article, was that the proposed bill assigns the writing of a new, North Carolina curriculum to an “Academic Standards Review Commission,” which would be part of the state’s Department of Administration not the Department of Public Instruction.

In an effort to find any logic in this, I found, not without difficulty, an organizational chart for the N.C. Department of Administration. Its offices include:

Motor Fleet Management	Purchase & Contract	State Construction
State Property Office	Historically Underutilized Businesses	Mail Service Center
Surplus Property	Facility Management	State Parking
Council for Women	Human Relations Commission	Commission of Indian Affairs
Youth Advocacy & Involvement Office	Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation

And, here it is…

-> Non-Public Education <-

Binker, M. (2014, April 24). Lawmakers propose dumping common core standards in nc. WRAL.

A Video Game Idea

I’d thought about this early this summer while my daughter was in the hospital. In amongst catching up with a back-log of professional reading, building out and refining her personal learning network, fleshing out lesson ideas, and concept mapping her teaching strategies – and getting well – she ran a restaurant. It was on her iPad, periodically beckoning her reading or browsing because it was time to open up the store, put the soup on, come up with discounts, and post signage, all to enjoy a successful mock revenue generating establishment, Restaurant Story.

I was imagining a similar style of game, but with a different focus — all brought back to mind when school administration guru, Scott McLeod posted a question on his blog, “How would you Revise Principal Preparation?” At present, he has 33 comments that are well worth the time reading, including some rather outlandish ideas from me.

But the game idea came back, a CMS style video game that challenges you to build out and maintain a school. You might start with a one room school house, adding on as you earn credit — adding a library, gym, laboratories, wings of classrooms, etc. The player would also manage a budget, allocate funds, add courses, and hire staff.

The goal of this game IS NOT generating the best test scores. No! No!

The goal of your school is to graduate the next Winton Marsellas, a team of biologists who cure cancer, the next Kurt Vontegut or the staff of an award winning trend-zine.

Would a game like this, that might become popular, serve to change the conversation about schooling? I’m just dreaming!