oops ok.. oh.. btw can I have some money to build a library on blue mars? ^_^

Our society is going bankrupt on trying to ensure that kids learn and need to stay in school.

Eventually the child that has to be coerced, whether by force or by fun, to learn will give up on the system and will tune in, drop out, and collect welfare.

Sorry.

Now go organize the DDR tourney so that kids don’t have to worry about their fines. Except for poor Billy, who is poor and has no sense of rhythm. His self-esteem is destroyed.

They should only do what their teachers tell them, think the thoughts their teachers allow them to think and parrot back what their teachers have taught them through wrote memorization. Only the students who are especially smart or extremely talented at memorization games and the reading and understand of boring, dry texts should succeed in life. Kids should only like things that are of benefit in getting a job that earns good wages, possibly in one of the trades. God forbid kids like dinosaurs because they’re AWESOME.

The meaning of their existence should be relegated strictly to interpretations of hard science and not at all because THEY ARE HUGE AND CAN, LIKE, TOTALLY EAT PEOPLE, MAN! Or because they raise Batman’s cool quotient by like 9 thousand because he has one in the Batcave. God forbid kids come to knowledge through a personal and (perhaps) visceral interest in a subject (such as dinosaurs or detective work) instead of just learning things because they’re interested in the topic and want to find out more. Learning should only be miserable and painful, since that’s the way WE learned things. There was none of this ‘choose your own topic’ for a research paper nonsense, and comic books were certainly not given college-level courses.

I see one of my jobs as a librarian teaching a love for learning (this goes hand in hand with teaching the ability to do effective self-directed learning and research from reliable sources). Kids go to school and are taught what is important to the world. One of those things is getting “credit” for everything you do. My niece HATES reading even though she reads well above her grade level because she can only read AR books for “credit” in school and the AR books are not on topics she likes. She doesn’t understand that you CAN read for fun, above or below your reading level (or I’d have never experienced the wonderful pictures and verbal gymnastics of the Skippyjon Jones books) or that you should somehow be given credit for your reading. Whatever happened to picking up a wholly inappropriate or irrelevant book just for fun? I guess I should stop reading for fun and play more tennis or something. I think this attitude of “well, is it on the syllabus?” is not only rather 19th century, as far as learning methods goes, it really works to crush natural curiosity. Of course, that probably works with the idea of social compliance. Go get yourself a reasonable, respectable job that highlights your ability to know facts like when the constitution was signed, and minimizes the fact that you don’t actually understand what it’s about, other than what you wrote down from memory on your fourth grade test on the subject matter.

Sorry. Fun, engaged and self-directed wins out for me because I take for granted that if you have enthusiasm for learning, you’ll learn what you want to on your own time, and you’ll be excited about learning what you “must” learn during the school day.

Shut up, stop thinking, and get back to work.

Slacker

Have to go to traffic court? How about we put in slot machines to make the time go by quicker and people will go and do the right thing instead of ducking and skipping court.

School? A three ring circus should do the trick. We don’t want kids not having fun.

Congress? Introduce South Korean Parliamentary rules and watch the fur fly and the ratings for C-Span soar.

We want a FUN society.

That way our tweets will be entertaining.

“Nah — in my library we’re still obsessed over the annual summer reading program, which I find is not so much about reading but getting numbers up.”

Are you a children’s librarian? I’m guessing not. The bells and whistles of summer reading programs can be silly, but the idea is to attract kids and families who might not come to the library otherwise. And to get kids who aren’t avid readers in the habit of reading whatever they’re interested in – for fun.

I put an enormous amount of energy into making our summer programs fun and exciting, and they work.

Don’t get me wrong – I like it if we get good numbers. But the point is outreach, and making the library a fun, friendly place to CHECK OUT BOOKS AND OTHER MATERIALS.

kthxbye

Those people will never retire.

Why should they? They don’t work as it is, they just sit around and complain that it isn’t like it was in the good old days.

Then they go get stoned.

Adios.

The fact that he uses the Delta stewardesses is, to me, very disturbing. Stewardesses were greatly exploited, expected to trade on their looks, were powerless in the jobs and laid off without resource or recourse.

When Godin also describes Picasso as having to “overcome painter’s block… even though he might be worried that people are going to laugh at him…” we know
a) Godin isn’t describing the real, historical Pablo Picasso.
b) Godin is describing us, as he thinks we should be.

Clear now?