Response to "I love Gooooooooooold"

In Brian Glover's enthusiastically titled blog post, "I love Gooooooooooold" [sic], he talks about his concern for the future of the American dollar and your new understanding of our nation's system of currency. It's funny he mentions that he once believed our dollars served as a substitute for more "burdensome" forms of currency (like precious metals) - this is what I assumed when I was younger, too. I myself am only beginning to understand the dollar; its fluctuations and relation to currencies around the world are mostly a mystery to me.

It would seem to me that Utah's actions have already begun to serve their intended effect, at least partially; people are beginning to notice the desperate lengths to which states are reaching to increase the value of American currency, or else make available viable alternatives. And although I recognize the strength of the symbolism in turning to gold to boost our currency's worth, I can't help but notice what detractors of this movement are worried about. For instance, the implementation of gold as currency could serve oppositely of the desired effect if economically influential countries like Japan and some European nations don't also decide to make the switch. It is suggested that "the Federal Reserve [control] the distribution of dollars instead, to rein in inflation," which sounds like a safer and less drastic move on paper.

Ultimately it is hard to say if such measures will improve the state of the dollar, but at the very least it would seem that actions like these are spotlighting the concern to our politicians. As I stated before, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to matters of currency, but I always relish the opportunity to learn.

Celebrities and Birthers, an affair from hell

Unless you live in a cave, or perhaps are capable of ignoring pompous attention-seeking blowhards (are you a wizard??), you’ve probably caught wind of Donald Trump’s recent media follies. Namely, he’s decided to start telling major news outlets and talk shows that he is very seriously considering running for president against incumbent Barrack Obama in 2012. For those who remember that Trump “jockeyed” to run as a third-party candidate in 2000’s presidential election, this may not come as a huge shock. Indeed, Trump has often been quoted “considering” running for office over the span of various elections in the past decade. A feature unique to Trump’s most recent declaration of political intent is his newfound skepticism of Obama’s birthplace. Yes, Trump is a Birther.

I don’t feel I need to explain why Birthers are, on the whole, incalculably insane. But I would however like to meditate, for a moment, on what political office and the Presidency means to men like Donald Trump. It seems to me a sad state of affairs when a political campaign (especially one as important as the race for the office of our nation’s leader) can be exploited by men seeking celebrity and a fat(ter) paycheck. Donald Trump is not a politician. Donald Trump is a man with entirely too much money and time, desperately seeking attention from anybody who will give it to him. His recent “Birther” nonsense only serves to expose his aggressive grasping for the limelight – that he is willing to stoop to Glenn Beck levels of pandering to the lowest possible dregs of political society leaves little mystery to his motives. That Trump may actually hold a decent shot at making it to the running (according to NBC New York, a March poll measuring approval rating found that “Trump's numbers were 9 percent "very positive" and 17 percent "somewhat positive," for a combined total of 26 percent,” placing him ahead of even Mitt Romney’s 15 percent), however, is another embarrassment entirely.

I suppose the point of my ranting is this: when did running for political office become such a celebrity’s game? Can the source of this issue be traced back to the Kennedy/Nixon debates? Has television killed the aura of prestige once held by those running for political office? It is my opinion that the way Americans judge their political leaders today – on notoriety and mostly at face value – is extremely destructive to both the political atmosphere in our country and the shaping of our government politics. Actions like those taken by Trump make a mockery of the political institutions this country relies so dearly on – and, unfortunately, because of the frivolous and excessively scrutinizing manner in which our politicians are portrayed in the media, Americans buy into and perpetuate these mockeries. I believe it is important to hold our politicians and potential candidates for office to appropriately high standards – it is only natural for the people of this nation to want to know as much as they can about the people who represent them, so that they can feel as though they trust them. But when people like Trump can make baseless and outrageous accusations about elected officials and ride the ensuing media coverage into office, we need to ask ourselves whether we are becoming paranoid.

Re: No Child Left Behind

I agree wholeheartedly with my classmate’s disapproval of standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act. As a fellow veteran of the TAKS test, I can attest to its ineffectuality. These standardized tests are in no way a measure of student academic intelligence, and the manner in which schools prepare students for assessments (read: devoting much of the curriculum to preparation for them) likely only eats valuable course time that could have been spent on subjects of the instructor’s choosing. Who thought it was a good idea to take the curriculum out of the teachers’ hands?

Luckily, it seems as though the TAKS test is being phased out, gradually. Perhaps this means legislators are finally realizing the mistakes made in the No Child Left Behind Act? In any case, the test that has been chosen to replace TAKS is called STAAR, and the Texas Education Agency promises the test will be “significantly more rigorous than previous tests” and purports to “measure a child’s performance, as well as academic growth.” However, the TEA also notes that “the grade 3-8 STAAR tests in reading and mathematics, by law, must be linked from grade to grade to performance expectations for the English III and Algebra II end-of-course assessments.” So, I suppose we can only hope that these “performance expectations” have will be higher than the ones used during the TAKS’ era, for the sake of our state’s students.

Though these changes are limited to Texas schools, I believe it shows promise that our state government is listening to our complaints, and I think their actions are indicative of a growing understanding in our government that major educational reform is needed if the students of our nation are expected to succeed amongst our foreign peers.

EDIT: Here is the TEA's website, where I obtained information on the STAAR test.

NPR's Battle Plan

As a once-avid listener of all things NPR, this opinion piece from the Huffington Post piqued my interest. In it, author Eric Boehlert criticizes Nation Public Radio’s reaction to conservative activist James O’Keefe’s recent sting, which focused on comments made by NPR’s now freshly resigned ex-“head of fundraising,” Ron Schiller. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that “a video was posted online of [Schiller] making disparaging remarks about Republicans and tea-party supporters to people posing as members of a fictitious Muslim group” (Full Article). James O’Keefe was later discovered to have made two distinct versions of the video – one edited and one unedited. The edited version allegedly accredited certain comments to Schiller when he had, in fact, been paraphrasing comments made to him by “prominent Republicans.”

In the opinion piece linked above, Boehler calls NPR’s submissive reaction cowardly and ineffective, citing the apparently misleading nature of O’Keefe’s original edited video as a point over which NPR could have raised significant issue. Boehler states, “if NPR leaders knew immediately when the O'Keefe story broke that the tapes he was peddling had been "heavily edited" to discredit NPR, then NPR did a very good job keeping that information to themselves,” adding that “You have to fight back when bullies attack.”

Though Boehler’s opinion is stated without total awareness of the situation (it seems awfully brazen of him to assume NPR made a “misstep” when in fact non-action was likely the best looking option at the time for a supposedly non-partisan organization to take against an attack by conservatives (hindsight is always 20/20, etc.)), I am inclined to agree somewhat with his position. Though I’m sure NPR was attempting to keep their image as squeaky-clean as possible, perhaps contesting the edited video more publicly would have helped them save face in the long run.  As it stands, however, Boehler is likely correct in predicting that NPR will play target to more and more partisan attacks in the future, and would do well to establish a firm defense when said attacks arrive.

Fresh Mishaps in America's School Systems

In this editorial from USA Today, the issue of teacher layoffs based on seniority (or lack thereof) – an issue whose existence I was entirely unaware of until reading this article – is discussed at length. Regarding the issue alone, I couldn’t help but find myself agreeing with the author’s point; it seems rather strange to employ a system for layoffs that weighs a teachers’ longevity with the district so heavily over general competence and student satisfaction. As the author mentions, there are many teachers who escape firing and attain seniority due to prescheduled teacher evaluations that fail to serve as an active judge of proficiency.  I don’t feel the need to explain why such a method is completely ridiculous – besides, it’s all there in the article – but suffice to say that if, as the author says, this system is already in use in school boards across the country, major reforms to our teacher evaluation system are desperately needed.

            The author makes mention of another system of evaluation some districts are experimenting with – one that “rate[s] teachers, in part by measuring students' progress on standardized tests. “ Though he goes on to say that this new practice is already “under fire” by teaching unions, I believe this sort of evaluation to be just as faulty as the seniority-based method. Standardized tests are not necessarily an effective litmus test for teacher capability – since the tests are, obviously, written to a standard, a teacher need only impart the information needed to pass the tests, and can usually do so through the use of materials compiled by the organizations that write these tests. I believe we need to devise a method of evaluation that takes into account teacher creativity and ingenuity, and an instructor’s willingness go outside the “track” of standardized teaching in order to get through to their students.

            The author’s persuasive methods were adequate to the point that I was sufficiently convinced of the validity of his position, but in all honesty I don’t believe this was a difficult argument to sell. The author was smart to provide examples of teachers remaining in their positions long after they should have been let go – such instances I imagine would be deeply affecting to the parents of schoolchildren, the likely demographic for a piece like this. He also exhibits and appropriate passion for the subject he is critiquing; I believe it is important for the author of an editorial to at least maintain the image that he deeply cares about the centerpiece to his story. All in all, the story seems like a considerable success.

In an article posted on CNN’s National News page today, the publication discusses a recent court decision that sanctions the right of a fanatical church to protest at the funerals of deceased members of the U.S. military .

Putting aside for a second the disgusting hatred displayed by Westboro Baptist Church (an organization now almost synonymous with hate speech), this decision raises a number of interesting questions about laws governing free speech. Ultimately we cannot fault Westboro for choosing to speak their minds – the ability of ordinary American citizens to deliver speeches with the potential to incite public unrest is one of the cornerstones of our society, and possibly the most powerful tool we have for inspiring real change. But protesting at a funeral seems like a pretty textbook case of privacy invasion, and I can’t help but question whether crashing a private military funeral should be a lawful act.