Seattle Photo-Bridge View
Bellevue
Seattle Photo-Sunday Morning Fog
Thanks for looking. Getting a little abstract lately…
Seattle Photos-Reflection Portrait
Potential advantages: Catching more genuine expressions.
Potential disadvantages: It’s tougher to focus and use available light in reflected surfaces manually (no pre-sets/settings).
Seattle Photo-A Few More Fall Colors
Light’s a little weird. Thanks for looking:
Sunday Photo-Shadows In The Market
Weekend Photo-Peace At The Mall
Two Photos At The Mall-Lost In Shapes
Bad focus, but the colors might be interesting:
Three Bellevue Photos-A Little Unreal
Two Friday Photos And A Poem By Donald Justice-Women In Love
kk
Women In Love
It always comes, and when it comes they know.
To will it is enough to bring them there.
The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.
Their limbs are charmed; they cannot stay or go.
Desire is limbo: they’re unhappy there.
It always comes, and when it comes they know.
Their choice of hells would be the one they know.
Dante describes it, the wind circling there.
The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.
The wind carries them where they want to go.
Yet it seems cruel to strangers passing there.
It always comes, and when it comes they know
The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.
From The Bellevue Reporter-Walter Backstrom’s: ‘Educational Progress And The Liberal Plantation’
It’s notable when someone in the Seattle area stands up against “the orthodoxy”. In this case it’s the Washington teachers’ unions and the unimpressive state of education in Washington. There are many reasons for this, but excessive bureaucracy is certainly one:
“It reminded me of the same fights that I have had with the educational establishment. They said I wasn’t an expert in education, and that I should be quiet and stop being so negative. I remembered a teacher urging me not to write that second-graders use calculators on math tests.
That is when I really got angry.“
Seattle has some good reasons to promote diversity, namely a diverse population. Under that banner, though, huddle many people busy ignoring their own self-interest where it can matter most: the students themselves. See the Discovering Math debate for a taste of the discussion.
That’s where another Seattle dynamic (somewhat political as well) plays out: The dissenting opinions and reformers to the orthodoxy are often entrepeneuers, successful business types and business leaders whom Seattle has attracted.
Sometimes, parents and reformers know a lot about their own disciplines (engineers, for example), but aren’t sympathetic to the problems a teacher reasonably faces. Some of them are sympathetic though, and it gets interesting when they are pitted against “the orthodoxy:” the entrenched interests, union protectionists, and the true-believing bureaucrats who can, as Backstrom notes, become part of the problem.
——————————————————————————
I don’t believe education fits under Milton Friedman’s intellectual net, nor would I want it to. But I like seeing how he comes at the problems of scarcity of resources, students failed by the system, and entrenched educators:
