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Monthly Archives: December 2013

Education, Planning

Janesville Schools’ Reckless Plan

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Months ago, someone told me about a Janesville School District plan to charge teenage students from China and east Asia to live and attend classes in Janesville’s schools.

I thought it was a joke.  It took quite a bit to convince me that, actually, there was a nascent plan like this.  

It’s hard to fathom the level of recklessness in enticing these students, from half the way around the world, to live far from their families, at a paying rate, for the privilege of a Janesville education, when so little has been considered carefully.  

The truth is that desperate communities with middling leaders produce bad plans.  One sometimes sees places that will throw anything at the wall, hoping something will stick.

It’s worse, though, when the plans involve a project this difficult, this sketchy, and involving minor children.  

One may see more about the story online at the Gazette, in a story that – predictably – questions little.  

See, ‘Janesville international education plans taking shape’ @ http://gazettextra.com/article/20131201/ARTICLES/131129711/1059.  

Next up for that paper: Edsel taking shape as car of the century and Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign against Pres. Reagan shaping up nicely.

That the district would use its ‘chief information officer’ on a tour of east Asia (including ‘seven Cambodian schools in two days’) tells how shallow this effort is: selling paying families on the prospect of an education here without an established curriculum, without a plan for supervision of living conditions for minor children, etc. is astonishing. (Cambodian students, as it turns out, will not be initial prospects for the program.)  

About living conditions, one reads that 

Smiley [Robert Smiley, Janesville School District’s chief information officer] also met with a Chinese businessman who is remodeling the old Holiday Inn in South Beloit, Ill. Smiley said he had several meetings with Wang Zhibin and his investment group. Wang plans to house Chinese high school and college students in one wing of the hotel.

That’s not an established boarding program – it’s an ill-conceived idea that’s fraught with risks.

By the way, there’s sure to be a defensive, red-herring claim that to criticize the plan is to doubt the ability of Asian students to live in America –  nothing could be farther from the truth.  One shouldn’t doubt the ability of students from abroad (from Asia, Europe, etc.) – one should have every reason to question this slapdash domestic program to wring tuition from families with the hope of a high-quality American education.

There’s a reason that boarding programs are few and far between, and that the programs America has are often long-established and expensive: it’s very hard to do this safely and with academic success.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.3.13

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Good morning.

Whitewater will have a forty percent chance of drizzle and rain today, with a high of forty-four.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

Koalas are small and benign-looking animals that are sometimes ornery and that are capable of making sounds far deeper than tiny animals should be able to make. Mary Bates writes about their vocalization at National Geographic, in a story entitled, Puzzle of Koalas’ Unusually Deep Voices Solved:

Koala bellows have a pitch about 20 times lower than they should be given the animals’ size—it’s actually more typical of an elephant-size animal. Male koala bellows, for instance, are so fearsome that sound designers used recordings of them to create the T. rex roars in the movie Jurassic Park.

For male koalas, this adaptation is essential to their love lives: A deep voice is attractive to female koalas choosing a mate.

So, how do they make such deep sounds? Bates continues:

Koala_graphic-1-600x765

Courtesy National Geographic

When scientists looked at the voice boxes of male koalas, they found their vocal cords weren’t large enough to create the animals’ extremely low-pitched mating bellows. But further examination revealed a second, much larger pair of vocal folds located outside of the larynx, where the oral and nasal cavities connect.

Charlton and his colleagues used a combination of physical, video, and acoustic analyses to demonstrate that the newly discovered vocal folds outside of the larynx are capable of producing extremely low-pitched sound as the koala inhales air through its nostrils.

Wisconsin has a first in 1947:

1947 – First TV Station in Wisconsin Established
On this date the first TV station in Wisconsin, WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, was established. The seventeenth television station in the country, WTMJ-TV was the first in the Midwest. [Source: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Libraries]

Here’s Puzzability‘s Tuesday puzzle:

This Week’s Game — December 2-6
Festival of Lights
Here’s a bright idea for Hanukkah. The answer to each day’s trivia question this week is a two-word phrase, name, or title in which each word can be followed by the word “light” to make a compound word or phrase.
Example:
What was achieved for the first time by the Soviet Union in 1959 with an unmanned craft and by the U.S. 10 years later with a manned craft?
Answer:
Moon landing (moonlight, landing light)
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word trivia answer (as “Moon landing” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, December 3
What football position has been notably played by Jim Brown, Walter Payton, and O.J. Simpson?

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.2.13

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Good morning.

Monday begins with freezing fog in the morning, later to become cloudy with a high of thirty-nine.

Napoleon_in_Coronation_Robes

On this day in 1804, Napoleon crowns himself emperor of France. Waterloo comes later.

On 12.2.1954, the United States Senate censures a Wisconsinite:

1954 – McCarthy Censured by Senate
On December 2, 1954, the United States Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Declaring his behavior “contrary to senatorial traditions,” the 1954 Senate resolution officially condemned McCarthy.

Puzzability begins a new series, around a theme of light:

This Week’s Game — December 2-6
Festival of Lights
Here’s a bright idea for Hanukkah. The answer to each day’s trivia question this week is a two-word phrase, name, or title in which each word can be followed by the word “light” to make a compound word or phrase.
Example:
What was achieved for the first time by the Soviet Union in 1959 with an unmanned craft and by the U.S. 10 years later with a manned craft?
Answer:
Moon landing (moonlight, landing light)
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word trivia answer (as “Moon landing” in the example) for your answer.
Monday, December 2
What punk rock band turned their rock opera album American Idiot into a Broadway musical?

Uncategorized

Daily Bread for 12.1.13

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Good morning.

A new month begins with partly sunny skies and a high of thirty eight.

On this day in 1884, an accident alters studies at UW-Madison:

1884 – Fire Destroys UW Building
On this date fire destroyed Science Hall on the UW-Madison campus. As a result, engineering students were forced to use the cramped space of the former dormitory, North Hall, for the next four semesters. [Source: College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Early in the twentieth century, Wisconsin gets a heavyweight champion:

1906 – Fred Beell Crowned Heavyweight Champ
On this date Fred Beell, of Marshfield, Wisconsin, won the American heavyweight wrestling championship in New Orleans, taking two of three falls from Frank Gotch. Beell’s reign was brief. Sixteen days later, he lost a rematch to Gotch. Beell’s victory was the only match that Gotch lost from 1904 until his death in 1918. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel].