Melissa has this free subscription to Time...it's the only reason I read one of American's "Big Three," as we refer to them in forensics...a reference that was not a favorable one when I was competing...Big Three meant it was one of the three major newsmagazines -- Newsweek and U.S. News being the other two -- that you gave to novice extempers and speakers to research current events...because they were easy to digest...and that you avoided like the plague as you got more experienced and smarter:):):)...
But...I have to say that Time Magazine has pleasantly surprised me this week:):):)...
Despite the incomparably stupid cover story proclaiming Kanye West "the smartest man in pop music" (what the fuck?:):):):):)LOL:):):):):)...is Josh Tyrangiel, who wrote the story, just kissing Kanye's ass...or is he really that dumb?:):):)...
There is a very nice story on John McCain and Hillary Clinton as the two leading candidates for President in 2008 (though the collection of polls I cited earlier show Rudy Guliani leading the pack among Republicans by slight margins)...
Joe Klein writes his best editorial yet...I've always thought, reading Joe's pieces, that he had something out for President Bush, too often, frankly...but this most recent piece is a very balanced view of both a war that we can't walk away from...and the failures of a President who can still not come to terms, publicly, with the human cost of his failures as a leader...Joe's comments on the naivete of Cindy Sheehan's protest in Crawford...and yet the need for the President to acknowledge the anguish of a mother who has lost her son without a peep of acknowledgement on his part that his and many other lives may not have been lost had the President seriously considered this war before he engaged it...are some the best work I've ever seen Joe write...spending time with servicepeople has clearly brought home for Joe the gravity of both this war...and of the need for a public acknowledgement of failures and mistakes in the conception of this war...
And Barrett Seaman, a former Time editor and correspondent and author of the book Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You, writes a very nice article arguing for lowering the drinking age titled, "How Bingeing Became the New College Sport...And why it would stop if we lowered the drinking age"...
Though his comments on drunk driving are similarly counterproductive as the minimum drinking age that he is rightly critical of:):):)...the article overall is a very honest and realistic look at both the problem of binge drinking on campuses...and on the value of lowering the drinking age to better account for that problem by allowing young people an opportunity to learn to drink responsibly:):)...
Why in the world would we want to look MORE like places like Iraq and China and North Korea and Afghanistan and other more repressive places in the world to presumably solve problems that are clearly better resolved and dealt with in America and other free countries in the world, where and when that freedom is taken seriously?:):):)...
I'll never know:):):)...
The most important source of hopeful reality on this question...that people -- like the University presidents that Barrett talks to for his book who largely agree that lowering the drinking age would help prevent binge drinking -- do seem to love freedom more than repression, over time...even as they naively romanticize repression as a means of dealing with problems they have no solutions for:):):)...
And speaking of which...the best article in the magazine is Chris Whittle's book excerpt on his ideas to improve schools and learning:):):)...
For those of you not familiar with Chris, he is founder of Whittle Communications, Channel One, and the Edison Project, an effort to reinvent public education by offering to run public charter schools for school districts...
I student taught for an Edison Project school in Wichita -- Jardine Junior Academy --that made amazing progress in dealing with school violence...and made moderate progress, academically...and I like Chris' view of the need to innovate in schools and school governance...and not to get lost in old ways of doing things in schools for their own sake...
Chris has clearly thought very deeply about how to improve education in America...and this excerpt in Time reflects that...and some very good ideas -- a serious focus on independent learning being one of his best -- about improving education and public education in America:):):)...
Have a great day everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
