Thanks, nowiser!  (looking around nervously for topicops)…

You’re right, Rob; in conversation people do enjoy a lot of topic freedom.  But there is a virtue in at least orbiting a nominal topic: it allows a theme to develop more fully.  It’s that “inch wide and a mile deep” thing and often produces interesting insights. 

So, anyway, I was listening to this really cool remastered edition of Jethro Tull “Stormwatch,” yesterday, and…

Captcha: stop

Oh, I mean, uh, right - TEACHERS - no, it isn’t their fault.  I work at a university that was founded to educate public school teachers and is still best-known for that.  The public school teacher is made-to-order for school districts that have a very clear idea of what they’re looking for.

Once he or she is on the job, your friendly schoolteacher has nearly zero freedom to innovate and no time to go beyond the basics.  School districts paint the lines, and you CAN’T color outside them.  And the school districts are now moving inside lines painted by the state government, which has its own set of lines painted by the feds. 

I have absolutely no idea how to break that logjam.  There isn’t any feature of public education that isn’t fiercely defended by some constituency.

Captcha: “normal” which is the name of the town I live in.  The university used to be called “Illinois State Normal University.” I think I’ve got the captcha thing figured out.  The word may be chosen randomly by the system, but there’s a good chance it will be possible to draw some conceptual parallel to something in the entry above it.  Some parallels will be so close as to be downright eerie.  Those are the ones I notice (just catching on to this now… a little slow on the draw)

Right, DOF, but it’s also a great exercise in how people selectively find meaning in coincidences.  They focus on the “eerie” ones (that is, the “hits") and ignore the “misses” (like my current captcha word: zebra).  They’ll also take the word and search for any relevance to MAKE it fit.  (This would be the point at which I would make a comment about people not changing their stripes, or something ...)

[Quote]I have absolutely no idea how to break that logjam.  There isn’t any feature of public education that isn’t fiercely defended by some constituency.[/Quote]
This leads to a deepeer problem within American soceity as whole.  Most Americans have become so preoccupied at defending their ‘territory’ and myopic viewpoints that they have lost sight of the big picture all together. 

What good is it to have a child that can understand ‘humanitarian aid’ but can’t read or write?  What good is a person that prays all day and then molests children at night?  What good is a pledge to an imiginary diety if no one repects it?  What good is a president that turns a democracy into theocracy and terrorizes the same world we’re trying to be at peace with?

Yes, teachers probably have to deal with more political bullshit than most but all of us have to deal with this same crap every single day.

captcha = ‘purpose’ That’s what President Bush, on C-Span, is telling us that we have now.  He’s definitely given me purpose.

Bush… He’s definitely given me purpose

Yeah, he does deliver on his promises.  I read somewhere he promised that he would be a uniter, not a divider; and sure enough the entire Muslim world is united now at least as far as the US is concerned.

...it’s also a great exercise in how people selectively find meaning in coincidences.

So if I dream a thousand dreams over the years, and by chance ten of them line up pretty well with something that happened the next day, I’ll disregard the ones that didn’t line up and conclude that something supernatural is going on.  I must be psychic!  My dreams fortell the future!