ICYMI: Big Bishop Sunday Edition (5/24)

Everybody in a lofty position had to start somewhere, and the current head of the Episcopal Church in the US happened to start out as the rector at our local church. He has done a fine job of standing against the current christianist tide. He was also a valued school board member during a difficult time with a great commitment to public education (his sister is currently education chief for the state). And when he was just a lowly local bishop, he married my daughter and son-in-law in that same church. That church is celebrating its 200th birthday today, and the very reverend presiding bishop will be visiting to share a few words. So, a cool day.

Ordinarily I put the tech-related reading at the bottom of the list, but today I have two really valuable tech pieces to share, so we'll start this week's list with those.

Real signals or artificial stereotypes?

Though I referenced this item in a post this week, it bears repeating. Adam Kucharski tells us about an experiment in which Copilot was given two data sets of survey responses, one labeled US and on UK. Could Copilot discern the cultural differences between the two? It could, and did so at great length. Except that the two data sets were just two copies of the same dataset. Whoopsies.

Googlebooks are the first anti-personal computers

The next awesome tech tool is a computer that is "AI-first." It will tell you what it is you want to do next. "It is Google’s computer acting on your behalf — not your computer under your control." Ashley Biancuzzo, PCWorld associate editor, is not feeling it.

Parents explode in fury at school’s plan to constantly film their children to train AI

The crazypants folks at University of Washington just wanted preschool teachers wear body cams so that everything they said and did could be recorded to train AI. That included filming the children. And parents had to opt out to avoid it. And they were pissed, so the university gave up this time-- but you know that idea is still out there.

Koch and Walton Tied Front Buys Its Way into Maine Governor's Race

Maurice Cunningham is an expert in tracking dark money. Here he notes that DFER, the supposedly Democratic advocacy group for school privatization, is throwing plenty of money around for the Maine gubernatorial race. 

Children Are Not Property: The Case for Children’s Fundamental Rights

Bruce Lesley argues the point once again for the people in the back-- children are not chattel. And no, that doesn't mean that parents are unimportant.

Teachers: Please Take Action on the Public Policy that Affects Our Work and Our Students

A rare guest post at Jan Resseger's blog. Brand new teacher Mackenzie Morgan asks teachers to please get in the debates about education policy.

We Taught Students to Read. We Still Can’t Tell if They Understand.

Oh, look. Could it be the reading pendulum swinging back away from decoding toward comprehension. Quel surprise!

Tennessee governor signs Memphis schools takeover into law

Nobody has proven more thoroughly than Tennessee that state takeovers do not work. So, of course, Governor Lee would like to launch another state takeover of a school district.

Education Department Reallocates Minority-Serving Institution Funds Again

Just a quick take from Inside Higher Ed (so you may want to save your free clicks). It requires some more study, but it sure seems like the feds saying "Let's just put money supporting those non-white students into just getting them ready for a job."

The Last Bell Rings, But the Lessons Don’t Stop

As always, TC Weber writes about many things, but come for the explanation of the importance of a half-decent principal.

Neanderthals vs Humans vs Ants vs AI

Do we get smarter when you collect more of us? Benjamin Riley takes a look at some science.

Commencement, Continuation, Convocation

Adrian Neibauer shares some thoughts about transition and commencement and the students going through them.

Academica Enters Florida’s Voucher Gold Rush

Sue Kingery Woltanski takes a break from taking a break to look at how one charter giant is getting ready to cash in on vouchers, too.

Why Is ALA Giving a Platform to a Company Promoting “AI Librarians”?

What the heck, ALA? The AI School Librarian has some questions.

Memorial Day, 2026

Nancy Flanagan once again the personal with the bigger picture. A worthy Memorial Day meditation.

At Forbes.com this week, a look at the attempt to slash next year's education budget (which looks a lot like last year's, except for the branding).

Of all the musical appearances on Colbert as he went down to the wire, I think this was my favorite.

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US Department of Ed: I Can Has Skillz

Earlier this week, the actual United States Department of Education posted this on their dead bird app account-

Once you get past the 1962 Soviet Russia esthetic, there's just a lot of AI sloppage to take in here.

Why so much copper tube, and why is it running everywhere except to the actual faucet? Is that supposed to be the innards of a radiator above the sink? Is some of running into his butt? What the heck is that coupling that the tubing is running into on the left rear corner of the sink?

Once you start looking closely, you'll notice that these tools are some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare. His sort-of-pipe wrench is close, but what the heck is she using to do... something... with the piece of pipe in her hand? What is the odd assortment of unusable wrenches, from the ones only half there to the closed-end wrench with a smooth, round interior-- what bolt do you tighten with that? And what are the assorted odd shapes in their toolbox? 

Her shirt is held shut with snaps or buttons? It doesn't look quite right for either. But his shirt is apparently held shut with patriotic thoughts. Why does he get two flags to her none? Hard to say, but eagle-eyed uniform-knowledgeable viewers will have noticed that the flag on his sleeve is backwards-- stars-forward, as if the flag is advancing into battle, is the correct positioning.

That may or may not be a US Postal Service van behind them, but I'm pretty sure its front end is levitating. What are the two reels of wire for? And why is she looking-- well, neither at him, nor at where he is pointing, nor at whatever operation she's performing with her hand? Also, if she's going to go to work plumbing, she might want to take that ring off. 

This is our tax dollars at work on a project that I think actually would have benefited by being sent to the states. It's progress, I suppose, that at least some people in the department apparently now understand that AI is not a steak sauce. I suppose we can also be grateful that these AI plumbers have the correct number and configuration of limbs (though I have some doubts about his right thumb). But if there was ever an example of work that would be better handled by a stock photo than by AI, this is it.

But no-- we get this amateur hour AI that apparently nobody at the department looked at long or hard enough to notice that maybe the folks who would consider a blue collar job (and lord knows we need more blue collar workers) would look at this and think that the encouragement was coming from someone who doesn't know jack about trades. 

It does make me nostalgic for the days of "All your base are belong to us."

As you might guess, the interwebs have had a field day with this. Here are two alternative takes--

ChatGPT vs. BABEL

One of the great heroes in stemming the tide of using robots to evaluate student writing has been Les Perelman, who taught writing and composition at MIT (among other places), where he served as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum. He went had to head with many robograders, repeatedly revealing their many deficiencies. 

But he got tired of hearing bot companies claim that sure, maybe an expert writer could fool the bot, but a regular student could not. So, "I decided to test that hypothesis," he wrote, "by attempting to fool the computer with something less intelligent than any student, another computer." So he and his team created Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language Generator (BABEL Generator), a program that could generate fluid gibberish. Perelman then passed the BABEL gibberish through various robograders, most of which gave the gibberish high marks, even though it was senseless (but grammatically smooth) junk.

BABEL was on line for a while, free for anyone to play with, so I played, and while it sadly appears to no longer be there, I still have some of the gibberish BABEL whipped up, so I thought I would pretend to be a student and get some "help" with my stuff from ChatGPT. 

What's the point, you may ask, of giving ChatGPT stuff that was not generated by a human being in good faith. 

First, an awful lot of what is crossing teacher desktops these days is, in fact, work not generated by humans in good faith. And as more teachers adopt LLMs as "aids" to "help" grade student work, the more students must question why on earth they should even try to generate human good-faith writing when there will be no human good faith attempt to read it. AI judging the work of AI is already happening. So I don't think this exercise is all that removed from classroom reality.

Second, watching what ChatGPT does when asked to respond to gibberish with no actual human intent or intelligence is instructive. Just for clarity's sake, I'll note that I was using the basic free-when-you-log-in version. 

This is going to take up some space, but I think it's worth it. Here we go.

Sentence Rewrites

Will start with an easy one. Given "privacy" as a prompt, BABLE extruded this pair of sentences:

Privateness has not been and undoubtedly never will be lauded, precarious, and decent. Humankind will always subjugate privateness.

I asked ChatGPT to "rewrite this sentence." It did not correct my lack of a plural, but it did come up with this:

Privacy has never been fully respected and likely never will be. Humanity will always find ways to undermine it.

It also suggested that if I wanted "to keep it more philosophical."

Privacy has never been truly honored, nor is it likely ever to be. Humanity will always seek to subordinate it.

Faced with three adjectives that make no sense, ChatGPT picked the one that came closest to a word that would complete the sentence and picked a more probable word. It took the same approach with "subjugate." In the case of "humankind" and "privateness," it went to a more usual word. It also killed BABEL's legitimate parallel construction. If BABEL had a voice, ChatGPT edited it out.

A Full Paragraph

On to a harder challenge. I had BABEL spew a full essay based on three words-- isolationism, Europe and war. The introductory paragraph was this one:

Warfare has not, and no doubt never will be expedited. Human society will always oust isolationism; some of appetites and others for an exposition. a lack of war lies in the field of literature but also the field of philosophy. War is the most inappropriately eventual trope of mankind.

The previous BABEL work might have meant something if you squinted real hard, but this is some top notch junk. When I asked ChatGPT to rewrite it, an acceptable response might have been "What the hell are you even talking about?" I also asked ChatGPT to "evaluate" the paragraph. 

Warfare has never been, and likely never will be, eradicated. Human society continually rejects isolationism—driven by ambition, desire, and the pursuit of dominance. The aspiration for peace belongs not only to literature, but also to philosophy. Yet war remains one of humanity’s most tragically recurring realities.

It also offered a "more literary" version.

War has never been fully overcome, nor likely ever will be. Humanity resists isolation, compelled by appetite, ambition, and the longing for expansion. The dream of a world without war exists in both literature and philosophy, yet conflict endures as one of mankind’s most persistent and tragic conditions.

Here, ChatGPT just throws out the words that don't make sense and looks for a more probable match based on the parts of the sentence that it leaves intact. "Warfare" and "expedited" are not probable sentence companions. It keeps warfare and ignores expedited. In its notes, ChatGPT wrote "Expedited means “sped up,” which does not fit the context. You likely mean eradicated, prevented, or avoided." 

Of course, BABEL didn't "mean" anything. But for ChatGPT words exist as coordinates in a multidimensional matrix (like a bunch of islands in Steve Ditko's renderings of Dr. Strange) assigned based on all those pieces of writing that the company stole for training, and what ChatGPT can check is whether or not the coordinates it has been fed in the form of your sentence are associated with each other or not. "Warfare" and "expedited" don't appear in the same neighborhood (especially if you throw in "never" and "not"). 

But ChatGPT is programmed to pretend that it can infer the writer's intention. In its "evaluation" of the paragraph, it uses phrases like "you may mean" and "the intended meaning," but again-- BABEL had no intent when it wrote this (just as ChatGPT had no intent when it replied). And it once again cannot address that this passage is nonsense:

Your passage has strong philosophical ambition and a serious tone, but several word choices and constructions make the meaning unclear. It reads as if you are aiming for a dense, literary style, though some vocabulary is being used imprecisely.

No, the passage had no ambition at all. And to say the construction makes the meaning "unclear" is not a human reaction to this gibberish. But ChatGPT deals mostly in fluency and structure, and BABEL's paragraph mostly delivers that. 

Finally, this stumper.

That opening paragraph was the closest to intelligible that BABEL came in the whole essay. Here's something from the middle of the essay:

As I have learned in my semiotics class, isolationism is the most fundamental casuistry of humankind. Though interference for obloquy inverts, information processes brains. The same pendulum may process two different orbitals to process an orbital. The plasma is not the only thing the brain reacts; it also receives neutrinoes for irascibility with war. Due to interceding, petulantly but extraneously petulant expositions protrude also on Europe. a contemptuous isolationism changes the injunction at warfare.

ChatGPT was pretty much stumped by this. The detailed responses focused almost entirely on versions of "the meanings of word X and word Y don't have any connection I can find." The summation:

This passage has an intentionally intellectual and abstract tone, but it currently reads as semantically unstable — many words are either used incorrectly or combined in ways that obscure meaning rather than deepen it. It resembles philosophical or post-structural writing stylistically, but the logical connections between ideas are difficult to follow.

So "intentionally"?? ChatGPT extrudes even more inferences about the writer's intent, including "The passage demonstrates a strong desire for philosophical density and elevated diction." I do like the phrase "semantically unstable" and would probably use it myself if I were still grading student papers; it doesn't mean anything, really, but sounds smarter than "this is a freaking mess." And "resembles philosophical or post-structural writing stylistically" is a hoot. This passage did push ChatGPT to issue an actual correction: "The brain does not meaningfully 'receive neutrinos for irascibility.'” The response also includes the notion that there are "traces of themes." Also, "The result feels more surreal or experimental than analytical." They do indeed. Also, "feels"?

Also, it was at this point that ChatGPT suggested I upgrade for more memory.

Prompted to rewrite the passage, ChatGPT extruded this:

As I learned in my semiotics class, isolationism may be one of humanity’s most enduring rationalizations. Although public interference and condemnation often reverse political intentions, information continues to shape the human mind. Just as a single pendulum can influence multiple motions, one idea may alter many intellectual trajectories. The brain responds not only to physical stimuli, but also to invisible pressures—fear, ideology, and the persistent anxieties surrounding war. Through political intervention, emotional and often unnecessary disputes continue to spread across Europe. In this way, a contemptuous form of isolationism reshapes humanity’s understanding of warfare.

ChatGPT just throws up its imaginary cyberhands and falls back on making shit up.

What can we learn?

AI apologists may argue that, gee, ChatGPT was just trying to give BABEL the benefit of the doubt, or fall back on the old argument that ChatGPT would be fine with human good faith efforts. I disagree.

Steve Ditko

Imagine this scenario. You are on the phone with a mentor, and as you pour out your thoughts, they reply with a steady stream of "Uh-huh" and "I hear you" and "That's a good point." You decide to continue the conversation in person, so you put your phone in your back pocket, still connected, and run to their office, where you find them on their phone, still saying "Uh-huh" and "I hear you" and "That's a good point" even though they are just listening to your butt. What would you conclude about how closely they had been listening to you when you were actually talking?

ChatGPT makes comments about writer intent and ambition and purpose not because of anything that the writer has written, but because that's just how ChatGPT is programmed to "talk." It is "hallucinating" writer intent and the meaning of the writing itself, latching onto a couple of word-coordinates and pulling up some nearby word-coordinates.  

While I was working on this post, a post from Adam Kucharski popped up on my feed that is just astonishing. Copilot looked at two datasets of writing, one labeled UK and one labeled US; Copilot was asked to mine the two 2000 responses for cultural differences, which it did, with relish. But the twist-- the two datasets were just two copies of exactly the same 2000 responses. 

It's not just that AI "analysis" of your writing is bad (though it is). It's that what you have written is largely irrelevant to the process that the chatbot goes through. It answers the same question that chatbots always answer-- what would the thing you just asked for look like? It does not perform an analysis; it creates a simulacrum of what an analysis would look like, and if any of that happens to be an accurate analysis, that's purely an accident. It cannot detect the difference between an actual human expression and a simulacrum that imitates human expression. 

Analysis of a piece of writing must include some inferences about the writer's intent. Chatbots are not remotely capable of making such inferences. But as we see above, even when such intent literally does not exist. it doesn't matter to the chatbot because it's just making shit up about all that anyway. It cannot tell the difference between a human in the loop or another bot, and that suggests that it can't "see" the human in the loop even when it's there. 

18 Rules For Life (2026 Edition)

 After first posting this list years ago, I have made it a tradition to get it out every year and re-examine it, edit it, and remind myself why I thought such things in the first place (it is also a way to give myself the day off for my birthday). This list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence. 

In a break with tradition, I have fewer numbers this year (this is not the book I'm working on, but if you're a publisher who sees a book here, feel free contact me). And as the years roll by, it is interesting to note that some rules loom larger than others depending on the state of the world that year. 

In the meantime, today I exercise a blogger's privilege to be self-indulgent. My rules for life, in no particular order.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. You will hurt people in life, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. Sometimes conflict and struggle appear, and there is no way out but through. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more.

This is doubly true these days, even though some folks have decided that being a dick is a worthy goal, that inflicting hurt on Those People Who Deserve It Because They Are Wrong is some sort of virtue, that treating people poorly, on purpose, is not only okay, but necessary. It isn't. Be kind.


Step 1 of the writing process

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better. Important note: having screwed up yesterday does not excuse from doing better today. No matter how lost or in the weeds you may be, no matter where you are, there's always a direction that takes you towards better.

And it's not just the "better" but also the "do." It's not enough to sit on the couch and think better thoughts. Our recent past reminds us that making the world better means actually doing something, putting something out into the world, standing up for what matters, making an effort to support what you value. 

3. Tell the truth (as best you can).

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). "Untrue but advantageous for my team" is not an okay substitute for "true to the best of my understanding." Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie.

This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind.

But you simply shouldn't speak, post, write or publish words that you know to be untrue. Untruths are not an acceptable means to an end; we rarely achieve our ends, and so it is our means that end up defining us. 

As a culture, we are drowning in bullshit. So much so that we simply accept that being told things that aren't true is just an ordinary part of life. And it is now accelerated because we have amazing little bullshit-generation machines, machines that cannot conceive of "true" or "false" and do not need to in order to fulfill their function of saying things that no human actually means. AI makes it easier than ever to generate a string of words that is disconnected from any intention, meaning, or truth. This not good for us.

4. Seek to understand.

Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday must be rewritten today in the light of new, better understanding. Ignoring evidence you don't like because you want to protect your cherished beliefs is not helpful. Understand that this is a journey you will never complete, and it's not okay to quit. 

All of this goes double for interacting with other human beings. Do not simply decide who they are, or who you want to pretend they are (see #3), and force their every action and word to fit, rather than trying to understand what they are trying to communicate. Misunderstanding people on purpose makes the world a worse place.

5. Listen and pay attention.

Shut up, listen, watch, and pay attention. How else will you seek understanding? Watch carefully. Really see. Really hear. People in particular, even the ones who lie, will tell you who they are if you just pay attention.

Don't skip moments because you think they're minor. Your life is happening right now, and the idea of Special Moments just tricks us into ignoring a million other moments that are just as important. Also, love is not a thing you do at people-- to say that you care about someone even as you don't actually hear or see them is a lie.

Also, pay attention to things and people who contradict your cherished beliefs about yourself, because there may be something there that you really need to hear.

6. Be grateful.

You are the recipient of all sorts of bounty that you didn't earn. Call it the grace of God or good fortune, but be grateful for the gifts you have been given. You did not make yourself. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe God/the Universe/fate everything. I have been hugely fortunate/blessed/privileged; I would have to be some sort of huge dope to grab all that life has given me and say, "This is mine. I made this. It's all because I'm so richly deserving." I've been given gifts, and the only rational response I can think of is to be grateful. That's important because gratitude is the parent of generosity and grace. These days, the world needs more grace.

Maybe you believe that all human beings are not created equal, that some deserve more power and privilege than others. You are still fooling yourself to believe that the good parts of your life are there because you deserve to have them given to you. Understand that your privileges are privileges, and not some payment of what God owes you. 

7. Mind the 5%

95% of life is silly foolishness that humans just made up and then pretended had some Great Significance. Only about 5% really matters, has real value. Don't spend energy, worry, fret, concern, time, stress on the other 95%. The trick is that every person has a different idea of what constitutes the 5%, and sometimes the path to honoring and loving that other person is to indulge their 5%. 

Narrowing down and refining your 5% is a lifetime project. Some people just give up. Some people believe that 90% is the "really matters" part (which is exhausting). 

To know your 5% requires you to know yourself. Strip the definition of yourself of references to situation and circumstance; don't make your 5% about your car, your hair, your job, your house. The more compact your definition of self, the less it will be buffeted and beaten by changes in circumstance. When you define yourself by your car and haircut, the loss of your car or your hair is an existential crisis. Refining your core means you don't waste existential panic on minor bumps in the 95%. Note: this is good work to do long before you, say, retire from a lifelong career that largely defined you.

Also note: do not climb into your own navel and build a home there. At some point you have to stop reflecting and processing and analyzing and just get on with life. 

8. Mind your own business (and hush).

Somehow we have arrived at a culture in which everyone needs to have and express an opinion about everything. If it's not your monkey, not your circus, and not a topic about which you know a single damn thing, what do you suppose you will add by chiming in? There are people whose whole day is organized around roaming the internet so they can unleash their opinion on people (see Rule #1). This does not make the world a better place, doesn't make them better people, and doesn't help solve the issue. Sometimes it is perfectly okay to say, "There's no reason for me to express an opinion about this topic."

Worse, we now have folks who believe that not only should they have and express an opinion about how others live, but they should be able to put their opinion into law. Nobody has ever made the world (or anyone's life) better by imposing their own moral code on others. 

9. Take care of the people around you.

"What difference can one person make" is the wrong question. It is impossible for any individual human to avoid making a difference. Every day you make a difference either for good or bad. People cross your path. You either makes their lives a little better or you don't. Choose to make them better. The opportunity to make the world a better place is right in front of your face every day; it just happens to look like other people (including the annoying ones). Nobody is in a better position than you are to take care of the people right in front of your face.

These opportunities may come at inconvenient times in inconvenient forms. That's tough--we don't get to pick our times or circumstances, but we can either rise to meet them or bail. Bailing does not make the world better. Take care of people, even when the leadership of the country is leaning hard on the message that you don't need to care about Those People.


You are never too young for your first tin hat.


10. Commit.

If you're going to do it, do it. Commitment gets up and gets the job done on the days when love and passion are too tired to get off the couch. Also, commitment is like food. You don't eat on Monday and then say, "Well, that takes care of that. I don't need to think about eating for another week or so. " Commitment must be renewed regularly. Make choices. Live intentionally.

11. Shut up and do the work

While I recognize there are successful people who ignore this rule, this is my list, so these are my rules. And my rule is: Stop talking about how hard you're working or what a great job you're doing or what tremendous obstacles you're overcoming. In short, stop delivering variations on, "Hey, look at me do this work! Look at me!" Sometimes we spend too much time talking about the work instead of just doing the work. Self-reflection is valuable, but at some point you just have to get on with the work.

Note, however, there is a difference between "Hey, lookit me do this work" and "Hey, look at this important work that needs to be done." Ask the ego check question-- if you could do the work under the condition that nobody would ever know that you did it, would you still sign up? If the answer isn't "yes," ask yourself why not.

One of the side effects of social media is that not only do we curate and craft our lives, but we want lots of other people to participate in and confirm the narrative that we're creating. "You're canceling me," often means "You are refusing to corroborate my preferred narrative." We don't just want an audience; we want pliable co-stars. Worry less about both. Don't curate your narrative; do the work. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story--that will have to take care of itself.

12. Assume good intent, complexity, and the possibility of growth.

Do not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is either evil or stupid. They may well be either, or both-- but make them prove it. People mostly see themselves as following a set of rules that makes sense to them. If you can understand their set of rules, you can understand why they do what they do. Doesn't mean you'll like it any better, but you may have a basis for trying to talk to them about it. And as a bare minimum, you will see yourself operating in a world where people are trying to do the right thing, rather than a hostile universe filled with senseless evil idiots. It's a happier, more hopeful way to see the world.

Also, this: when you paint all your opponents as monsters, you provide excellent cover for the actual monsters out there, and you excuse monstrous behavior in yourself.

People grow up. People learn things. People have a day on which their peculiar batch of quirks is just what the day needs; our strengths and weaknesses are often the exact same thing just in different contexts. Awful people can have good moments, and good people can have awful moments-- it's a mistake to assume that someone is all one thing or another. Nobody can be safely written off and ignored completely. Corollary: nobody can be unquestioningly trusted and uncritically accepted all the time. People are a mixed mess of stuff. Trying to sort folks into good guys and bad guys is a fool's game. This is one reason that relationships based on commitment are more stable and positive than transactional ones. 

13. Don't waste time on people who are not being serious.

Some people aren't serious. They don't use words seriously. They don't have a serious understanding of other people or their actions or the consequences of those actions. They can be silly or careless or mean, but whatever batch of words they are tossing together, they are not serious about them. They are not guided by principle or empathy or anything substantial. There's no time-waters quite like trying to change the mind of a person about X when that person has no serious opinion about X to begin with.

Note: do not mistake grimness for seriousness and do not mistake joy and fun for the absence of seriousness. Beware: One of the great tricks of not-being-serious people is to get you to waste time on them, to spend time and energy thinking, fretting, arguing acting about shiny foolishness, leaving them free for larger abuses that go unchecked.

This rule is being heavily challenged these days are a whole lot of very un-serious people have been installed in places of power, and that makes it very hard to distinguish between wasting time dealing with them and investing time in protecting stuff from them.

14. Don't forget the point.

Whatever it is you're doing, don't lose sight of the point. It's basic Drivers Ed 101. If you look a foot in front of the car, you'll wander all over the road. If you stare right at the tree you want to miss, you will drive right into it. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eye on the goal. Remember your purpose. 

And don't try to shorthand it; don't imagine that you know the path that guarantees the outcome you want. Every "If I do X, then I will achieve Y" needs to be examined, because generally it's better to just aim straight at Y. We are living through a dynamic demonstration when someone believes that being rich, famous and powerful will somehow fix gnawing spiritual emptiness and fear of death.

And this doesn't apply to just the big stuff. Many an organization has foundered because its leaders lost sight of the actual point of the organization. Focus on the point (even if it's a goal that you may never reach) because otherwise you will miss Really Good Stuff because you had too many fixed ideas about what the path to your destination is supposed to look like.

Therefor...

15. Don't be misled by your expectations.

Most of our daily misery (not the real big suffering stuff) is the result of measuring our actual situation against expectations we've created for ourselves. So many times we could be saying "Wow! A steak!" but instead we go with, "Dammit, where's my watermelon?"

Doors will appear on your path. Open them even if they are not exactly what you were expecting or looking for. Don't simply fight or flee everything that surprises or challenges you (but don't be a dope about it, either). Most of what I've screwed up in life came from reacting in fear-- not sensible evaluation of potential problems, but just visceral fear. Most of what is good about my life has come from saying "yes." And most of that is not at all what I would have expected or planned for. With each passing year, I look at my life and think, "Well, this is not what I envisioned at all, but it is mighty fine."

16. Make something.

Music, art, refurbished furniture, machinery. Something.

17. Show up.

The first rule of all relationships is that you have to show up. And you have to fully show up. People cannot have a relationship with someone who isn't there, and that includes someone who looks kind of like they're there but who isn't really. In the combination of retirement and parenting again, I'm reminded that this also means nor just being fully present, but remembering to show up at all. You put your head down, go to work, and then a week or two later you're suddenly remembering that it's been a while since you checked in with someone. Rule #2 applies.

Part B of this rule is that when you show up, you may suddenly find out that the place and time requires something of you. Showing up means answering that call.

18. How you treat people is about you, not about them.

It's useful to understand this because it frees you from the need to be a great Agent of Justice in the world, meting out rewards and punishments based on what you think about what people have done or said. It keeps you from wasting time trying to decide what someone deserves, which is not your call anyway. It also gives you power back that you give up when your stance is that you have to wait to see what someone says or does before you react to it.

Treat people well because that's how you should treat people, not because you have decided they deserve it. But don't be a dope; if someone shows you that they will always bite you in the hand, it's prudent to stop offering them your hand. (Also, their repeated hand biting is all about them, not about you and your hand).

Video: Why Teachers Quit

Bored Teachers is a well-known brand of humor for teachers by teachers. But sometimes they post things that are more serious, like this video that captures the vast response to an earlier video about teachers leaving the profession. 20,000 responses! 

This video breaks the "why I'm quitting" responses into four problem areas. Yes, this is anecdotal, but it also captures what is going on out there for many teachers in the classroom. Students who can't regulate, parents who don't parent, administrators who don't back teachers up, and a system that has dropped more work on teachers with less support.

It's just a seven minute watch, but it certainly speaks to what many are feeling, and asks the big question-- what will be the result?

The Vanishing Parent Problem

One of the nicer customs at the elementary school attended by the Curmudgucation Institute Board of Directors is an annual Breakfast with Your Parental Unit event. During the 45 minutes before school starts, you can come in and eat donuts or muffins or fruit with your child. But this year I noticed something.

The event is split up into two divisions-- K-2, and 3-5. This is our first year in the older division and, well... When we were doing K-2, the setup involved tables filling the whole gym, and seating was still tight. When we arrived for this year's version, only half the gym was set with tables, and there was space a-plenty. It was a reminder of the Vanishing Parent Problem.

My old high school band director (and later my colleague) used to observe that turnout for band concerts was counter-sensical. When they are still elementary students, he noted, everyone comes to hear them. Parents, aunt, uncles, neighbors--wall to wall audience. Even though the sounds of a fifth grade band are objectively Not So Great. Then years later, when they are high school students and are playing very well and making objectively beautiful music, the auditorium is barely half full. 

You can see it also on Open House night. The Institute's Chief Marital Officer has always taught in elementary school, and it is rare that Open House does not involve every single parent showing up. But as a career high school teacher, I always found Open House an excellent night to get uninterrupted paperwork done in my room. Maybe one or two parents would show up (and generally the ones to whom I had nothing to say beyond, "Your child is awesome.")

I'm not asking for more parents who helicopter around their children well into the child's twenties. But I do wonder why so many parents just kind of check out of the dailiness of their child's education. That dailiness is exactly where the parental support is needed. It's easy to say "Education is important" (just as it's easy for students "This year I'm going to really apply myself") but the challenge is to keep plugging away at it, day after day, including the days that are not necessarily super-exciting.

That's how you model commitment-- by showing up and being engaged even on the days that aren't super-inspiring all by themselves. Parenting and studenting and teaching are similar in that respect-- you can go through the motions without actually engaging and you can create the impression that you're doing the work. 

We like to focus on landmarks-- first day of school, prom, graduations-- with the declaration that such occasions only come once. But here's the thing- every day of every year only comes once. And as your children grow up, there will be moments that will stay with them for the rest of their lives but--and this is a big but-- you will never know when these moments will come ahead of time. Finally, as your children grow, there will be a series of lasts, the last time they do or say X-- and once again, you will never know your child has done something for the last time until later. 

Students need to know that they are important, that their education is important. School is a huge chunk of their lives. It is enormously powerful for children to feel seen by their parents, and that includes having parents see how their life goes in school. A parent demonstrates that the child matters and that school is important just by showing up. 

Schools can certainly do more to involve and engage parents, but ultimately it is a parental choice of whether or not to slowly disappear as the child ages. As the board of directors ages, I hope the crowds for them and their classmates doesn't keep shrinking. 

Yes, AFC, Federal Vouchers Are Vouchers

The DeVosian American Federation for Children wishes you would stop using the "v" word.

AFC now has a "scholarship fund." their version of scholarship granting organization, an important step in both promoting the new federal vouchers and cashing in on them. 

But AFC CEO Tommy Schultz would really like people to think there's a difference between the federal tax credit program and school vouchers. Schultz is full of it on this point, but since he's posted his argument on a web page, we have a fine opportunity to understand his argument (and why it is baloney). 

The crux of his argument is this: a voucher is a "government-funded program" in which the state takes revenues collected from taxpayers and gives it to parents to spend on some education-flavored expense. But the Education Freedom Tax Credit-- well, I want to give this to you in Schultz's own words.

The EFTC works differently at every step. Instead of the government spending public money, the EFTC encourages private individuals to donate to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). In return, the donor receives a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 on their federal tax return.

The SGO—a nonprofit—then uses those private donations to award scholarships to eligible families. Those families can use the scholarships for tuition, tutoring, special needs services, curriculum materials, transportation, technology, and other K–12 educational expenses.

The money never passes through a government agency. It goes from a private donor to a nonprofit to a family.

Yes, this is exactly why the whole dodge was created in the first place. If you've ever wondered why anyone would create such a convoluted method of funding, the answer is that it was designed to work around pesky laws that forbid giving public tax dollars to private (religious) entities. The government didn't actually touch it, so voila!-- it isn't taxpayer-funded government money!

It is not hard to understand why this is bullshit. Let me offer two examples.

Example 1 (Civilian): Your brother owes you $100. Your spouse tells you to go collect that money, and under no circumstances are you to buy beer with it. You go to your brother's house and tell him, "Look, just give me $50 and two cases of beer and we'll call it even." You go home with your $50 and your beer. "You spent $50 on beer!!" says your spouse, angrily. "I did not," you reply righteously. "The $50 never touched my hands, therefor I did not spend it on beer." What are the odds this explanation will satisfy your spouse?

Example 2 (Lawyerly): The Kentucky Supreme Court threw out that state's attempt at a tax credit voucher, noting exactly where the tax credit argument fails.  “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” they wrote, “rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.” Kentucky's constitution, like many others, specifically forbids the spending of taxpayer funds on private (religious) schools. So the court found“ the funds at issue are sums legally owed to the Commonwealth of Kentucky and subject to collection for public use including allocation to the Department of Education for primary and secondary education” and reallocating them to private school tuition is unconstitutional.

Also, since EFTC dollars are tax credits, that means the taxpayer will give the money to the SGO and might then collect it as a tax return from the government, so technically, the government will lay its hands on these funds.

But Schultz really, really wants you to see things differently. He even has a FAQ space for the issue, starting with "Is the Education Freedom Tax Credit a voucher?" No, because vouchers use public tax dollars and the EFTC "incentivizes private donations." Which serves his purposes better than saying the EFTC allows you to give your federal tax liability to a private school via the SGO pass through. 

Does the EFTC take money from public schools? This is one thing the federal voucher has over state vouchers-- the cost in lost revenue can just be added to the federal deficit. Yay? Of course, transferring students out of public schools will still cost those schools money and resources.

Can EFTs be used only for private school tuition? Of course not-- like ESA style vouchers they will be useful for any education-flavored you might come up with. Or, as demonstrated by Arizona, they might be used for all sorts of stuff that isn't actually education-flavored at all. 

What is a scholarship-granting organization? AFC mentions the part where an SGO launders the money and hands it off to families. They skip over the part where the SGO gets to keep as much as 10%, allowing SGO outfits like American Federation for Children Scholarship Fund stand to make a nice chunk of change.     

The web page gives a pretty clear and direct presentation of the view that EFTC supporters are trying to pitch. The one notable surprise is the degree to which they kind of throw state voucher programs under the bus by turning them into Brand X for comparison purposes.

AFC is swimming upstream here. Everyone understands that the federal vouchers are, in fact, vouchers. Some supporters try hard to use "scholarships" (which is a term that tested much better with audiences) or lean on the tax shelter credit aspect, but most everyone who writes and talks about these calls them vouchers, because that's what they are. 

They repurpose government funding for the use of private (religious) institutions. That's a voucher. Trying to wave a bunch of smoke and mirrors and incantations around the actual mechanics or the repurposing doesn't change a thing. A rose by any other name smells as sweet, and a voucher by any name still smells bad.