Warde, I. (2020, August 1).
Government by the worst. Le Monde Diplomatique.
https://mondediplo.com/2020/08/12government
Like Alexis de Tocqueville described early 19th century US, this article lays out well the current cancer of the country.
Ubu is a grotesque and shameless character, megalomaniac and authoritarian, an who ‘says stupid things with loutish authority’. Indifferent to the rules he sets and violates, if not contemptuous of them, he is sometimes transparent in trumpeting his designs and methods.
The 20th century had no shortage of putschist generals, bloodthirsty buffoons and other Ubu-like figures who caused havoc in the countries they ruled.
The president-elect flew into a rage when he learned that a fundraiser was being organised to pay staff for his accession into office and screamed at the head of the transition team, ‘You’re stealing my fucking money.’
Kakistocracy in action is personified by the outsized role of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner
Beyond ‘misgovernment for profit’, kakistocracy serves a political agenda. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said the aim of free-market zealots is to reduce the size of the state ‘in order to be able to drown it in a bathtub’, implying it needs incompetence to discredit the idea of public service.
Digital Agility: Embracing a Holistic Approach to Digital Literacy in the Liberal Arts
https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/1/digital-agility-embracing-a-holistic-approach-to-digital-literacy-in-the-liberal-arts
A 2016 Pew Research Center study indicates that the digital divide in the United States is not solely about access to technology; it also is about the ability to use technology to get what we need.1 What does digital readiness mean; applying cumulative knowledge to real-world situations. Having a tech or STEM-related degree does not ensure digital readiness.
How Can We Encourage Digital Agility in the Liberal Arts?
Digital pedagogy often creates opportunities for instructors to create non-disposable assignments—assignments that are not designed to be thrown away but rather have a purpose past being required.3
“We need to marry the best of our academic work with the best of edtech. In other words, what would it look like if education technology were embedded in the everyday practice of academic disciplines?”4
Project-based learning fits well within the curricular flexibility of the liberal arts. In project-based work, students apply what they are learning in the context of an engaging experience.
Building off frameworks that are already in place, like the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy,
External-facing work offers students real situations where, if we imagine what digital agility looks like, they have to adjust to possible new digital environments and approaches.
Reflection provides a way for meaning-making to happen across individual assignments, projects, and classes. Without the chance to assemble assignments into a larger narrative, each experience lives in its own void.
How Can Institutions Build Systems-Level Support?
Liberal arts colleges in particular are interested in the ways they prepare graduates to be agile and critical in a digital world—as seen in the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) Rubrics.
he Bryn Mawr Digital Competencies Framework5 was followed by more formal conversations and the formation of a working group (including Carleton College,
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more on digital fluency in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+fluency
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-10-22-high-tech-surveillance-comes-at-high-cost-to-students-is-it-worth-it
The phrase “school-to-prison pipeline” has long been used to describe how schools respond to disciplinary problems with excessively stringent policies that create prison-like environments and funnel children who don’t fall in line into the criminal justice system. Now, schools are investing in surveillance systems that will likely exacerbate existing disparities.
A number of tech companies are capitalizing on the growing market for student surveillance measures as various districts and school leaders commit themselves to preventing acts of violence. Rekor Systems, for instance, recently announced the launch of OnGuard, a program that claims to “advance student safety” by implementing countless surveillance and “threat assessment” mechanisms in and around schools.
While none of these methods have been proven to be effective in deterring violence, similar systems have resulted in diverting resources away from enrichment opportunities, policing school communities to a point where students feel afraid to express themselves, and placing especially dangerous targets on students of color who are already disproportionately mislabeled and punished.ProPublica
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more on surveillance in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=surveillance
“Let’s hope you kill yourself” – How Spain is failing bullying victims
Experts say that the authorities are doing little to help the growing number of young people who are dropping out of school and, in some cases, taking their own lives, because of abuse
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/07/08/inenglish/1562600636_068148.html
the crux of the matter, the reason why families and institutions are constantly clashing over
school bullyingMadrid regional authorities claim that
cases of school harassment are going down, but that is because it rejects most complaints: in the 2015-2016 academic school year, there were 573 complaints, of which only 179 were accepted.
In 2015, an
11-year-old boy named Diego killed himself and left a suicide note behind: “I can’t stand going to school anymore, and there’s no other way to stop going.” The child had been attending a religious school in Villaverde, in the Madrid region. The courts twice dismissed an investigation into his death, ruling out harassment of any kind.
“We are flooded with complaints, but
school bullying is not listed in the criminal code. So other crimes have to be proven: physical injuries, crimes against moral integrity…,” says a spokesperson at the Madrid Juvenile Prosecution Service. In 2017 this department received 192 complaints and dismissed 81 because the individuals involved were under 14 and could not be held criminally liable.
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more on bullying in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=bully
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more on surveillance in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=surveillance