As a writer, one of my favorite quotes about writing comes from Douglass Adams. He says: “I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.”

Too funny, right?

Well, it seems as if George Dubya Bush, once again, has a preposterous amount of egg on his face. Why? Because he set forth a ridiculous deadline that no one in the field of education (no one worth their salt, I should say) ever though would possibly be made and poof! now the Obama administration is left with cleaning up more of George Dubya Bush’s mess.

Seems that the “mandate” that all school children reach 100% academic proficiency by the year 2014 is gonna get yanked. (Read here for more.)

And why? Because this deadline was never anything more than a political platitude that Bush used to try and trump up goodwill for his political tenure anyway — crafted into policy at the expense of reality, of course. A reality, BTW, that he knew he’d never be on the hook for because his term in office would have long since been finished. (A few years too late on that front, if you ask me, but that’s fodder for another blog post.)

Yes, the aims of “closing the achievement gap” and “raising academic proficiency” are still going to stick around… but the deadline to do so is gonna be ka-boshed.

Still in Iraq, pulling the plug on NCLB’s proficiency deadline, financially reeling from deregulating the credit markets to the point of implosion while hunting for WMD’s that were trumped up to begin with… The guy makes Nixon look like Lincoln.

Whoosh! Ka-BOOM!

The sound of a deadline colliding with reality.

Obama wants to address the school-kids of this nation and, whodda thunk it, there’s controversy surrounding the idea of such an address to our nation’s youngsters.

Now, obviously, (or maybe not, so I’ll say it here) I am of the opinion that a well-spoken President addressing our nation’s kids in a “you can do it” tone now that it’s back-to-school season is good for the kids, good for the schools, and good for the good ol’ U. S. of A.

So I wonder, is it just me, or does this brouhaha strike anybody else as artificially contrived, politically motivated nonsense?

I mean, and this is a quote I pulled off the AP wire:

Texas Governor Rick Perry says he understands the concerns of parents who don’t want their children listening to President Obama’s school-time speech next Tuesday on the importance of education, aimed directly at the nation’s school children.

Well, I am glad he understands the concerns… cause I don’t. Could his political affiliation actually be the cause of the concern?

I mean Obama is OUR president, of the entire country, and if he wants to fire up the students, I say, “It’s about time a President did this.” Nice idea. Come to think about it, we couldda used something like this many, many years ago. But the right wingers (and I mean the far right-wingers) are…

“…saying Obama is using the opportunity to promote a political agenda and is overstepping the boundaries of federal involvement in schools.”

Huh? I mean is “work hard, set goals, aim high and strive to become learned” some kind of liberal agenda now? (I am only speculating that this will be the thrust of his speech.) I mean if it is, I am way more liberal than I thought I was. And trust me, I am a tax and spend, California, left-coast animal lover, who believes in things like universal pre-school, universal health care, and recycling.

To counter, Obama’s people say the reason for it is this:

“It’s simply a plea to students to really take their learning seriously. Find out what they’re good at. Set goals. And take the school year seriously.”

Ooh… sounds nefarious. I bet there are secret code words embedded in the Closed Captioned text too that will send messages to aliens about our nuclear codes.

Yet, folks like Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Steve Russell say this…

“It gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

Like I said, “Huh?”

Why do I have a feeling that if this was an idea from the prior presidency, some of those folks who are now chirping would have been singing an entirely different tune?

Then again, it never would have happened with our last president because Dubya Bush was (at best) a C- student, so having him tell the kids not to “misunderstimate the value of a gooder education” really wouldn’t have helped anyone too much.

Come on, does politics have to taint everything nowadays? I mean can’t the President say one nice thing without it being politically motivated? Will Obama’s Merry X-mas wish be dissected by the pundits for the way he tries to abscond with the well-wishes of the season for Democratic gains in the House come the 2010 elections?

Truly, am I the only one sick of this nonsense? Really, at what point do we not all recognize that this kind of stuff is hurting, not helping, our nation?

You know, Freud once famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Well, “sometimes a speech to kids is just that… a speech to kids.”

Check out this story about the coming tsunami for education that was splashed today. They literally titled it, “A ‘tsunami’ of Boomer teacher retirements is on the horizon.”

Of course, just because we know about the problem, doesn’t mean we are going to do anything about it. America has turned — much to our discredit — into a nation of reaction instead of proactivity. (I blame George Bush’s short-sighted mentality about proper management of things for much of this right now. To wit, I cite the pouring ga-zillions of dollars into a red-herring chase for drummed-up charges of WMD’s in Iraq instead of recognizing that we had things at home that could have been proactively dealt with before they became a calamity like the housing crisis, banking mess, Wall Street rapaciousness, Louisiana levees, deteriorating schools, the need for green energy, and so on. Anyway…)

Right now, it seems to me that we have to find a way to get our best and brightest to actively choose the profession of education. Currently, the top — and even the middle range of college graduates — are heading into things like business and law, jobs that chase the money (and feed the rat race). I’ve said this before, but when is the last time the Harvard valedictorian stood up and said, “I am going to be a middle school English teacher for the next 35 years.” And meant it.

The crowd would groan conveying the sentiment, “But why? You could be so much more.”

This stigma is very dangerous. People view the profession of teaching as a second rate career. I, for one, will disagree to my last breath but still, how do you change the perception of a culture?

Boomers are retiring. God bless them for their service. But it’s clear that we need an infusion of new educators and I think it’s going to take a national bill — like the GI Bill or something — because American education needs an overhaul. In many ways, we are looking like GM, once the model and envy of the world, now a… well, I’ll let you fill in the blank.

Check out my sweatshirt today. It’s Spirit Day, purple and gold for the Lynwood Knights. How many folks are actually proud to be an American teacher these days? I am, but when I travel the country and speak to others, so many, many of them seem demoralized.

We have to CHANGE THE GAME, FLIP THE SCRIPT, TURN THE PAGE… and avoid cliches as we do so.

More and more attention is being paid to the notion of writing in the 21rst century. This report just came out and it’s got some stuff that is well worth reading. However, the irony that I am posting this on a digital thread on a ning, well… in a way, if you are already reading this, it’s like preaching to the choir.

Having said that, there is no doubt that the world is changing under our pens and keypads. The idea that students in the next era will have to be competent writers using 3,000 words, 300 words, 30 words, 3 words and no words to express their ideas is somewhat of a leaping off point for comprehending both the opportunities and challenges of the era ahead.

Yet, while writing changes, shifts and morphs I am not fearful because the importance of critical thinking rises with these new mediums — instead of diminishing. In my estimation, thinking seems to be more important than ever as weighing, evaluating, synthesizing and applying brain power appears to be more important than ever to the writers and readers of the 21rst century. I mean so many folks are bemoaning the demise of newspapers but it’s not the black ink which smudges on our fingers in a semi-hard to navigate linear, non-interactive transmittal of information in an environmentally unsound paper-wasting business model that people are decrying… what they really fear is the art of real journalism is being supplanted by bloggers who have no training in the art of effectively verifying information. If newspapers die, I am not sure we care. If journalism dies then democracy is at risk. Now on one hand, the first hand twitterers and bloggers who are on the scene at things like the Mumbai bombing provide some of the most insightful information into what happened at the scene of the disaster — so the bloggers and twitterers certainly have their place. On the other hand, if people don’t pay for their news, then the NY TImes, Washington Post and so on, do not pay real journalists to go investigate, illuminate, and communicate the salient facts (i.e. the perpetrators, their motives, the impact on a geo-political scale and so on). Twittering an analysis of the international complications which arise from destabilizing governments through attacking civilians seems as if it might be a bit lightweight. (Huh? 140 characters isn’t enough space to get Kissinger-style insight into the circumstances? You are just so old fashioned, Mr. Alan!)

Now I am not so quick to defend traditional journalism because they let a buffoon like George Dubya pull the wool over our eyes with the whole WMD farce which really cost America… well, I am not going to go there. But traditional, mainstream media drank the kool-aid for the neo-cons who were hell bent on invading Iraq under a cooked up WMD scenario so all the things which I fear traditional journalism is supposed to defend us against and represent is on shaky ground with me. However, if world news devolves to the point that a 15 year with a blog is on equal footing with a pulitzer prize winning Chicago Tribune reporter in terms of disseminating our news, I do feel there is some cause for concern.

So what does 21rst century writing look like? That’s easy — it looks like a lot of things… and it’s evolving. But how do we effectively think about writing — both while we are doing it and when we are reading it? These, seem to me, the real questions.

Today I went to work inspired and energized, with a proverbial bounce in my step. And why? Well, it’s simple.

Our new president, Barack Obama. It was his first day of work in the White House and the fact is, in my opinion, it feels like it’s the first real day of honest, noble, best-interests of America work that has been done in that building in a heck of a long time. I am not sure any of us realized how numb we had become to the idea of a total buffoon leading our country for so long. With Calamity George gone, it feels as if we can now get back to doing what Americans do quite well once in a while… make history in a positive way that shines a light on the highest ideals of what mankind can ultimately be.

It’s also clear that this ning inspires me. I mean it’s pretty unreal the amount of smarts, passion and genuine insight which has already assembled here in the Jamdom. I guess invitations started rolling out in earnest about 2-3 days ago and already we are have a host of truly wise people — people with opinions I greatly respect and admire, if not always agree with — assembled at this online expresso bar chatting up everything from books like The Burn Journals to videos starring 1rst graders imploring Obama to really step up for education.

I guess I am gonna have to get off of the bashing George Bush bus. However, there is still a part of me that thinks/fears he’s gonna come back. Like Obama’s inauguration will be revoked, Karl Rove will pull a Karl Rove and Dubya is gonna end up with the power to manage the financial crisis, Iran, Iraq, green energy and NCLB for the next 4 years while Sarah Palin preps her run for 2012.

Grrrrgghh!

I know it’s irrational, yet still I worry about it much in the way that a person wakes up from a nightmare, realizes they were just dreaming and then is still concerned to go back to sleep since they have no desire whatsoever to go back to bed with the beast they just slept with in their head again. And this is not a red state/blue state thing. It’s not republican bashing or any of that. It’s simply my opinion that George Herbert Walker Bush just finished his marathon tour of being the worst president in the history of the United States and our entire nation is worse off for having him.

Seeing Barack reclining in the Oval Office today well, it made me feel as if we have authentic stewardship once again. And now I want to do my best to help — by applying best efforts towards the area of remaking and reshaping America’s schools. It is do-able. And necessary. And when I think of the folks who are already stepping up to join this cause, it makes me feel good.

Now is our time. This is our part.

Go ahead. Chime in on the ning-thing. Love to hear from ya!