The Politics of Taking, Keeping or Bestowing Your Name

A piece on Yahoo, “Hyphenated married name fight heats up on Facebook” by Janelle Harris for CafeMom’s blog The Stir, caught my partner Sally’s attention. The piece invokes feminist principles including calling out patriarchy as the problem, but the political act that the author is marshaling her arguments for is in my world view a pretty tepid one, though in the author’s it may seem pretty radical. The other aspect of this piece that caught Sally’s attention were the 2000 plus comments at the time (now more than 3100) that in engendered, with a wide spectrum of opinions.

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Giving What I Can Give Freely

My supervisor at work sent out an email with a link to the piece, “1 in 3 Americans Gets Less Than 7 Hours of Sleep: CDC”, from HealthDay magazine, along with a comment that among our circle of colleagues (including him and me) it was more like “3 out of 3”. I understood my coworker’s good intentions in acknowledging that our team was understaffed and all the extra work that caused. But I also felt that maybe the comment was tapping into what I see as an assumed mythology in many American workplaces that working too hard is a badge of honor. (See my piece “American Calvin”).

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Saint Gotthard Tunnel

Nearly two months into my European odyssey in 1973, on a train from northern Italy to Switzerland, a weary traveler and somewhat of a lost soul, I entered what I recall as the Saint Gotthard Tunnel, under the Alps, and emerged into a completely transformed world and a new chapter in my existential journey with fresh insight into the human condition. (Note that I may have actually gone through a different tunnel of comparable length, as noted by someone who read this piece with a good knowledge of Western European railway geography, though at the time that was my recollection.) Continue reading →

Wrestling to Understand my Adversary

I am all about promoting what I see as our societal evolution from “patriarchy to partnership”, from an authoritarian power hierarchy of control towards a circle of true equals. To that end I occasionally clash with other progressives who are more supportive than I am of some “social engineering” like state-standardized mandatory public schooling. But more often than not it is key elements of the conservative world view that I find myself at odds with.

Unlike other progressive people I know who think that a “principled conservative” is an oxymoron, I was taught by my mom to “respect your adversary” and “pick your battles” in order to “be effective”. To that end I am always trying to engage the more conservative people I encounter respectfully, and exercising principles of nonviolent communication, try to understand their position and put myself in their shoes.

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Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives and Dancing

Food-chugging show host Guy Fieri
I can think of no greater exemplar of our American fetish with a steady diet of rich juicy food full of fat, salt, sugar and cholesterol (that contribute to our national pastime of accumulating “life style” diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity) than the enthusiastic red-faced Guy Fieri, host of the Food Network show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”. He criss-crosses the country and its local low-brow eateries masticating his way through super-sized Philly cheese steaks, bratwursts and macaroni and cheeses presumably ignoring the cholesterol numbers in his blood tests (if he even dares have those tests) and always looking overheated and about to burst. Continue reading →

Considering If and When to Go to College

A year ago hedge fund manager and author James Altucher announced in a provocative piece for Yahoo Finance Tech Ticker, “Rethinking College as Student-Loan Burdens Rise”, that college, particularly right after high school, may not be a good investment for most students and their families that often are paying the bill. Says Altucher…

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that motivated kids are going to make money whether or not they go to college… So teach your kids how to be motivated. Teach your kids how to sell a product, build a network of connections. That’s going to be far more valuable.

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Egypt and Moving Beyond Privilege

Like many others, I am caught up in the events as they continue to unfold in Egypt. Watching the video this morning of the jubilant crowds after Mubarak announced that he was stepping down brought tears to my eyes. Sharing that joy, I still understand that it is an unfinished narrative of a possible transition from patriarchy to partnership, from autocratic rule by a privileged oligarchy of civilian strongmen and military generals to a more egalitarian parliamentary system. Like any compelling story where life and death are at stake and the outcome is in doubt, I continue to be on the edge of my seat.

But stepping back and looking at the big picture over the centuries of the odyssey (three steps forward and two steps back) of human development, what I see is a trend away from the concept of privilege. That is, moving beyond the practice of granting some people more respect, higher status, and power over others based on their gender, race, sexual orientation, age, family, or position within some sort of a hierarchy. And moving instead to a circle of equals where power is not seized but granted by others and is exercised to facilitate rather than to control.

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My Take on Learning in the 21st Century

In my previous piece, “What is 21st Century Learning?” I tried to put a context around eleven replies to that question from people identified by Ed Week magazine as thought-leaders in the business of education. That context is the transition in American society, and the wider world (case and point is Egypt and the Arab world in the past month), from external authority to the shared authority of a circle of equals. At this time in our human history, I can think of no more profound thread in our cultural evolution.

In keeping with this developmental thread, it seems appropriate that I go beyond commenting on the thoughts of identified educational authorities on the question, “How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?”, and put forward my own as a fifty-five year old person and parent of two now young adult children, who has done (and continues to do) his share of formal and informal (that is real life) learning.

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What is 21st Century Learning?

A recent Ed Week online article, “How Do You Define 21st Century Learning”, featured the thoughts of eleven people connected to the US education establishment as teachers, consultants or educrats. I was intrigued how each would frame this topic, relative to my own framing as a parent and more of a many educational paths (including unschooling) advocate. (FYI… to see my own thoughts on this topic click here.)

Here is the article author’s framing of the question…

The term “21st-century skills” is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world. In a broader sense, however, the idea of what learning in the 21st century should look like is open to interpretation — and controversy.

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It’s the System!

I got feedback from Blanche, my partner Sally’s mom, that the term “patriarchy” does not really resonate with her in terms of describing that model of society and its institutions that I keep referring to in many of my blog pieces. It was interesting that Blanche focused in on that term and made the point to share her thoughts with me. I have been wrestling with the term myself versus various other descriptive words for the same concept (like “hierarchy”, “us and them”, “pecking order” or “pyramid of control”). These to contrast this organizational model with the more egalitarian “circle of equals” (a good descriptive term that I’m more happy with using), which I believe to be the model our human society is evolving into.

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