In support of Sting's stinging presentation at TED

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is an annual, global set of meetings with the slogan, "ideas worth spreading," in which various speakers address a wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. It is a culturally enriching experience for all who speak and watch the conference.

David Brooks wrote an opinion article in the New York Times responding positively to the presentation that rock star singer Sting gave. He mentioned a barren period in the middle of his career when he was unable to write new songs. During this period, all he could recall was his childhood, about poverty and those unspeakably harsh nights when as a child he had to live on a street that led to a shipyard. Ironically, reminiscence over his difficult childhood years were what led him out of this unfruitful stage and revived his creativity.

Brooks was drawn to Sting's presentation because unlike most TED talks, which are all about the future, Sting's was about going back into the past and finding things that seemed bad at the time but turn out to be good in the long run. Brooks found Sting to be "circling back and coming forward." 

He said, "Sting's appearance at TED was a nice reminder of how important it is to ground future vision in historical consciousness. Some of the [other] TED speakers seem hopeful and creative, but painfully and maybe necessarily naiive. Sting's talk was a reminder to go forward with a backward glance, to go one layer down into self and then after self-confrontation, to leap forward out of self. History is filled with revivals, led by people who were reinvigorated for the future by a reckoning with the past."

It wasn't that Sting said all this during his presentation at TED. Brooks was able to draw meaning behind the very fact that Sting was sharing about his past experiences at a conference that was predominately centered around the future of the world. He looked beneath the surface, and shared what he got out of a rock star's presentation that we could all learn from.

Response to an op-ed on common core

Mary E. Burnham recently wrote an op-ed on the atrocities of common core in the education system, particularly in light of the newly updated regulations on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in Connecticut. Her main point was that common core standards promotes a "one size fits all" policy towards education that is detrimental to students who need one-on-one attention in certain academic areas. She also found it inappropriate how the new regulations have set in place a new teacher evaluation system that is unnecessarily time-consuming and complex. And finally, she commented on the state tests that all students are required to take, which she feels are diverting parental trust on the education system and placing too much stress on the students.

Her arguments were fair and she gave reasons for her views, but they were presented in a very unprofessional manner. The solutions she offered included eliminating the Common Core State Standards, high-stakes testing, new teacher evaluation system, and asking parents if they want to opt out of the data collecting for state statistics. These solutions are specific, but they are rather weak. She does not clarify what exactly each of these actions will do to better the issue, nor does she explain alternatives to eliminating these policies.

Response to "The Apartheid of Children's Literature"

Christopher Myers, an author and illustrator of children's books, wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times called "The Apartheid of Children's Literature." He wrote so poignantly about the message we send to children of this generation by excluding African American characters from children's books. The characters in these children's stories have been and are continuing to be predominantly centered around white communities and a world where only white people live and succeed. Even decades after the civil rights movement and those hard years in our nation's history where we fought for equality among different races, racism still exists today, and it has evidently even seeped into the way we educate our children.

Myers refers to books as "maps" to children. They learn to navigate the world based on the stories they read. What lessons do we teach kids when books don't even reflect the diversity of our world, which we all want our children to learn to appreciate? How can we expect the world to change, to shake ourselves free from the dust of racial prejudice and pick ourselves up again when we aren't teaching the young generation to appreciate differences, to find beauty in our differences?

Cleverly weaving in references to famous works of children's literature (for example, expressing that there is an elusive villain to this issue and it's up to us to be the James Bond/Black Dynamite to fight against the message we are sending to kids by excluding members of non-white races), Christopher Myers makes a call to action to all writers, authors, parents, teachers, and guardians to join hands in opening the eyes of the younger generation to be more aware of what a diverse world we live in--and to appreciate the beauty within those differences.