PFT: Jets paid $1 million to trade Revis

AP

Here are the terms of trades completed on Friday, April 26, the second day of the 2013 NFL Draft. All draft picks are 2013 selections unless otherwise noted:

The Titans acquired a second-round pick from San Francisco (No. 34 overall), sending second- and seventh-round picks (Nos. 40, 216) in 2013 and a 2014 third-rounder to the 49ers. The Titans selected Tennessee wide receiver Justin Hunter at No. 34. The 49ers took Florida State defensive lineman Cornellius ?Tank? Carradine at No. 40.

The Chargers traded for the Cardinals? second-round pick (No. 38), giving up second- and fourth-round picks (Nos. 45, 110) to Arizona. The Chargers used selection No. 38 on Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te?o, while the Cardinals took LSU linebacker Kevin Minter at No. 45.

The 49ers acquired the Packers? second-round pick (No. 55). In return, San Francisco surrendered second- and sixth-round picks (Nos. 61, 173). The 49ers took Rice tight end Vance McDonald at No. 55. The Packers used the No. 61 choice on Alabama running back Eddie Lacy.

The Ravens traded for the Seahawks? second-round selection (No. 56). Baltimore sent Seattle second-, fifth- and sixth-round picks (Nos. 62, 165, 199) to complete the deal. The Ravens took Kansas State linebacker Arthur Brown with pick No. 56. Six picks later, the Seahawks selected Texas A&M running back Christine Michael at No. 62.

The Saints acquired a third-round selection from Miami (No. 82). In exchange, the Dolphins received two fourth-round picks (Nos. 106, 109) from New Orleans. The Saints took Georgia nose tackle John Jenkins at No. 82. The Dolphins would trade selection No. 109 to Green Bay.

The 49ers traded for the Packers? third-round choice (No. 88), surrendering third- and seventh-round picks (Nos. 93, 216) to Green Bay. With pick No. 88, San Francisco chose Auburn defensive lineman Corey Lemonier. The Packers would deal the 93^rd selection to Miami (see next entry).

The Dolphins acquired a third-round pick from Green Bay (No. 93), giving up fourth-, fifth- and seventh-round picks (Nos. 109, 146, 224). The Dolphins selected Utah State cornerback Will Davis at No. 93.

The Dolphins traded wide receiver Davone Bess and their fourth- and seventh-round picks (Nos. 111, 217) to Cleveland. In return, the Browns sent the Dolphins fourth- and fifth-round picks (Nos. 104, 164).

The Saints traded running back Chris Ivory to the Jets in exchange for New York?s fourth-round pick (No. 106). The Saints dealt No. 106 in a package for pick No. 82, which was used on Georgia nose tackle John Jenkins.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/27/jets-paid-1-million-to-trade-revis/related/

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Miss. man arrested in ricin letters case

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) ? A Mississippi man whose home and business were searched as part of an investigation into poisoned letters sent to the president and others has been arrested in the case, according to the FBI.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested about 12:50 a.m. Saturday at his Tupelo home by FBI special agents in connection with the letters, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said. The letters, which allegedly contained ricin, were sent last week to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and earlier to an 80-year-old Mississippi judge, Sadie Holland.

Madden said FBI special agents arrested Dutschke (pronounced DUHS'-kee) without incident. She said additional questions should be directed to the U.S. attorney's office. The office in Oxford did not immediately respond to messages Saturday.

Dutschke's attorney, Lori Nail Basham, did not immediately respond to phone or text messages Saturday. Basham said earlier this week that Dutschke was "cooperating fully" with investigators. Dutschke has insisted he had nothing to do with the letters.

Ryan Taylor, a spokesman for Wicker, said Saturday that "because the investigation is still ongoing, we're not able to comment."

Charges in the case were initially filed against an Elvis impersonator but then dropped. Attention then turned to Dutschke, who has ties to the former suspect and the judge and senator. Earlier in the week, as investigators searched his primary residence in Tupelo, Dutschke had remarked to reporters, "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

Charges initially were filed last week against Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, the Elvis impersonator, but then dropped after authorities said they had discovered new information. Curtis' lawyers say he was framed.

Curtis' attorney, Christi McCoy, said Saturday: "We are relieved but also saddened. This crime is nothing short of diabolical. I have seen a lot of meanness in the past two decades, but this stops me in my tracks. "

Dutschke and Curtis were acquainted. Curtis said they had talked about possibly publishing a book on an alleged conspiracy to sell body parts on a black market. But he said they later had a feud.

Judge Holland is a common link between the two men who have been investigated, and both know Wicker.

Holland was the presiding judge in a case in which Curtis was accused of assaulting a Tupelo attorney in 2004. Holland sentenced him to six months in the county jail. He served only part of the sentence, according to his brother.

Holland's family has had political skirmishes with Dutschke.

Her son, Steve Holland, a Democratic state representative, said he thinks his mother's only other encounter with Dutschke was at a rally in the town of Verona in 2007, when Dutschke ran as a Republican against Steve Holland.

Holland said his mother confronted Dutschke after he made a derogatory speech about the Holland family. She demanded that he apologize, which Holland says he did.

Steve Holland said he doesn't know if his mother remembers Curtis' assault case.

___

Associated Press writer Jack Elliott Jr. in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-miss-man-arrested-suspicious-letters-case-151339370.html

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Wellywood Woman: Under-Representation in Scriptwriting

Recently I participated (from my bed, distracted by itchy shingles) in an excellent?Blackboard forum?discussion on under-representation in scriptwriting,?inspired by the news that the prestigious?Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting?are tracking gender among its applicants. (They have a wonderful ongoing commentary on their?Facebook page.)?Alas, so far, only a quarter of the applicants are women. You have three days left to enter!!!

from Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Facebook page ?(26 April 2013)

The Blackboard Forum: Under-Representation in Screenwriting

Shaula Evans?led the Blackboard discussion warmly-and-welcomingly-and-brilliantly. In her introduction, she says:

'Where are the women' pops up more than other similar potential questions, both online and offline, because it is relatively easy to tell from people?s names if they are male or female, and unless you are collecting demographic data, it ranges from difficult to impossible to tell what proportion of your community are people of color or GLBTQ, have disability issues, are members of minority religions, are economically disadvantaged, etc. Geography is certainly an obstacle of a different kind that many of us right here are actively tackling. Age discrimination is a terrible scourge in American TV writing. And where women are under-represented other people often are, too, and their lack of participation and representation can be even harder to address because it is an 'invisible' problem. So we?re going to open this up beyond the question of gender and look at the broader question of under-representation of any group in screenwriting, along with examples of programs and resources that are addressing obstacles to those groups.

This broader question resonated for me with a?Writers Guild of America (West)?statement that I love, which is one of the inspirations for the Development Project:

Industry diversity is not only about equal access to employment opportunities; it is also about opening space for the telling of stories that might not otherwise be told.

But most of the fascinating Blackboard discussion was about women screenwriters. The usual issues ? confidence, the need for mentors and allies, the value of blind reading, whether there are as many women screenwriters as men (I think so!) etc were canvassed, from a variety of perspectives, with goodwill and respect. And many contributors provided links to very useful info.?

As I read, my main concern became that both the Academy Nicholl Fellowships and The Black List have stated that half their script readers are women, as though that is a good thing, something that inevitably helps women scriptwriters. (The Black List is a script hosting service, where writers pay to submit their scripts using their own names or pseudonyms for hosting and evaluations, and the highest-rated scripts are brought to the attention of participating industry professionals. Industry pros can also actively search for scripts on the site using criteria that include evaluation scores, genre, and tags.)

One contributor to the Blackboard debate thought that because half the Black List readers are women, that would reduce the risk of bias:

Gender bias is unlikely because half the [Black List] readers are female.

Another disagreed:

I do think though that even women readers can be capable (unwittingly) of gender bias (and I speak as someone who has been a reader), simply because we have all been taught what a well-made story is, and that notion is largely based in the supremacy of the traditional hero?s journey. It can be hard to be open to non-traditional ideas and methods, even when you want to, and it takes reading with that self-awareness. The Geena Davis Institute has done research that revealed that it?s only a small percentage of female characters who have journeys unrelated to the men in their lives, or even just conversations about something other than men. Even in works by women writers.

I do believe it?s changing for the better, and younger female writers are less likely to be oriented this way. For the rest of us, to fully explore our experiences as women through story, it may be that we have to re-train our brains to some extent, to give ourselves permission to focus fully on creating worthy female characters and storylines that have every bit the richness of stories about men. There are so many amazing stories to tell, stories that both men and women can take inspiration from and even, certainly just pure enjoyment watching women be women.

And the other contributor agreed.

...great point about women also being capable of gender bias; of course this is true. I kick myself sometimes when I find myself thinking in a way that was shaped by the gender biases I grew up with.

There are other myths around women's support for other women's storytelling beyond the one that women appreciate other women's work more than men do. There's the one that women support other women to tell their stories, more than men do. And that, given a choice, women will support other women's storytelling instead of supporting men's stories.

An element of Emily Sands'?three-part?research, recorded in her Princeton thesis?Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender: An Integrated Economic Analysis of Discrimination in American Theater,?perhaps uniquely,?explores one aspect of these myths, women readers' responses to playscripts when they are told that women wrote them.

Emily Sands' research into playwright gender issues

The whole thesis is a great read and here's an extract from a?New York Times?article about it. It shows the complexity of the issues that face women playwrights, among which the 'woman reader' problem is just one; and establishes that having women readers assessing scripts doesn't necessarily help women writers, at least when those scripts are plays.

The first [part of the research] considered the playwrights themselves. Artistic directors of theater companies have maintained that no discrimination exists, rather that good scripts by women are in short supply. That claim elicited snorts and laughter from the audience when it was repeated Monday night, but Ms. Sands declared, ?They?re right.?

In reviewing information on 20,000 playwrights in the Dramatists Guild and Doollee.com, an online database of playwrights, she found that there were twice as many male playwrights as female ones, and that the men tended to be more prolific, turning out more plays.

What?s more, Ms. Sands found, over all, the work of men and women is produced at the same rate. The artistic directors have a point: they do get many more scripts from men.

For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary?s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael?s. The biggest surprise? ?These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,? Ms. Sands said.

Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, ?Say that again??

Ms. Sands put it another way: ?Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.?

Ms. Sands was reluctant to explain the responses in terms of discrimination, suggesting instead that artistic directors who are women perhaps possess a greater awareness of the barriers female playwrights face.

For the third piece, Ms. Sands looked specifically at Broadway, where women write fewer than one in eight shows. She modeled her research on work done in the 1960s and ?70s to determine whether discrimination existed in baseball. Those studies concluded that black players had to deliver higher performing statistics ? for example, better batting averages ? than white players simply to make it to the major leagues.

Ms. Sands examined the 329 new plays and musicals produced on Broadway in the past 10 years to determine whether the bar was set higher. Did scripts by women have to be better than those by men?

Of course, there are many ways to define ?better,? but on Broadway, with the exception of three nonprofit theaters, everyone can agree that one overriding goal is to make a profit. So did shows written by women during that period make more money than shows written by men?

The answer is yes. Plays and musicals by women sold 16 percent more tickets a week and were 18 percent more profitable over all. In the end, women had to deliver the equivalent of higher batting averages, Ms. Sands said.

Yet even though shows written by women earned more money, producers did not keep them running any longer than less profitable shows that were written by men. To Ms. Sands, the length of the run was clear evidence that producers discriminate against women.

A year before Emily Sands published her results,?Julia Jordan presented figures?from three states in the U.S. that show that women write for theatre at around the 20% level that exists in scriptwriting for feature film production in many parts of the world. So perhaps the first part of the research can be applied to screenwriting and explains why fewer women have entered scripts for the Nicholls Fellowships in Screenwriting. But, are the database figures a reliable measure? For example, I know that half the students who take an MA in Scriptwriting at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters are women and that women win the annual class prize more often than men. Last year in New Zealand's Script Writer Awards women won Best Feature Film Script, the Best New Writer Award and the Unproduced Feature Script Award, where women also wrote seven of the ten final scripts. This evidence of a strong cohort of women scriptwriters exists alongside New Zealand's dismal track record for produced feature scripts by women and suggests that women scriptwriters produce excellent scripts here (and in other parts of the world) in greater numbers than appears from our engagement with competitions and databases. What happens to all those scripts? Do we enter competitions only if we are confident that our work excels?

Maybe men appear to be more prolific when they engage with databases and competitions only because they feel more welcome and at home there than women do. Maybe it's necessary for organisations and databases to strategise to attract women scriptwriters and people from other under-represented groups, some of whom will also be women. Because more diversity of all kinds will make for a richer culture. But decision-makers have to believe that and to work for it, or it won't happen. The Black List has just introduced a group of 'diversity tags' for scriptwriters to use when submitting scripts to its service, including a #BechdelTest tag, thanks to suggestions from @Silverwingscrpt and @BiatchPack on Twitter and from @margibk in the Blackboard discussion, who wrote:

Why not a set of tags that describe the protagonist? Female, male, straight, gay, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and so on. Such tags would help any search designed to find a screenplay featuring underrepresented groups. And the writers can choose whether they wish to tag their screenplays that way or not.

And that seems like a good place to start.

As for the second part of Emily Sands' research, it didn't surprise me that exclusively?women artistic directors and literary managers gave worse ratings to 'Mary?s' scripts than to Michael's, in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response. While Emily Sands suggested?that artistic directors who are women perhaps possess a greater awareness of the barriers female playwrights face and this may explain their ratings, I suspect that the reasons are more complex and include the effects of learned gender biases like those that the contributors to the Blackboard discussion referred to and which I've observed wherever women (including me) assess other women's work. We're all conditioned to enjoy and support men's work more than women's. Those 'golden boys' are seductive!

The 'higher batting averages' element makes sense, too and it's great to have this confirmation of it. At the moment the reality is that women's stories will be resourced only if they're exceptional.

New Zealand and gender bias in theatre

I know little about gender bias in New Zealand theatre. But four years ago Branwen Millar wrote an article in Playmarket magazine (not available online) where she started

As an emerging playwright, I'm excited by the huge talent and diversity of our writers. As a woman, I'm disheartened.

She acknowledged that she had "a massive amount of support for my writing" but is "at a loss when I look at the landscape I'm entering", provided some grim statistics about women playwrights' representation in productions and awards and asked:

Where are the female voices in our theatres? Is it that men are better writers? Do men write faster and therefore have more plays? Receive more support? Are women one-hit wonders? Why do they stop writing?

Nothing's changed since. Earlier this year, in a New Zealand Herald opinion piece entitled Men still pull strings in Auckland theatre, Janet McAllister commented on the lack of female playwrights and directors in Auckland theatres. This is how she started:

The performance arts have a female-friendly image - the ladies are thought to like all that theatrical stuff. But two years ago, I noted the proportion of female directors, playwrights and public-forum speakers participating at various Auckland venues and found that the more flagshippy and stalwarty an establishment was, the fewer of these key women it featured.

The number of women onstage merely masked the general chauvinistic Svengali nature of the industry, with males pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Two years on, has anything changed? Not much, although there are a few hopeful signs, a few worries - and one absolute shocker.

You can read the original article here. Then came a response from distinguished playwright and screenwriter Fiona Samuel, printed several days later in the Letters to the Editor section.

Re Janet McAllister's Opinion column in Saturday's Herald Weekend section, pithily titled 'Men still pull strings in Auckland theatre', I thank the Herald for this timely analysis.?
In Janet's final paragraph, she hopes that the presence of two plays-in-development by female playwrights in the Auckland Theatre Company's Next Stage showcase for 2012 indicates change to come. Don't hold your breath, Janet.?

To my knowledge, ATC has never taken a play by a female playwright from this development initiative on to presentation on the main bill stage. One male/female writing team has made the leap, but that's it - one co-writing credit in seven years.?During that time, nine female playwrights had work in Next Stage; none progressed to production as sole author of a main-bill drama under the aegis of the ATC. ?

The men fared differently. In those same years, plays by Stephen Sinclair, Michael Galvin, Dave Armstrong, Victor Rodger, Geoff Chapple, Arthur Meek and Eli Kent have progressed from development workshop to full theatrical presentation.?

Is this just a surprising coincidence? After seven years, it looks more like a pattern.
So - will things be different in 2013 and beyond? I'd like to think so, but this record doesn't fill me with optimism.?

Fiona Samuel ?(NZ Arts Laureate & playwright)

In New Zealand we're fortunate to have?Playmarket,?a not-for-profit organisation concerned with

...the development, support and representation of New Zealand playwrights. We are a key advocate for the continued growth of New Zealand theatre on our stages and coordinate a range of resources, services and opportunities for playwrights.

Today, I went to the Playmarket website and counted the images from produced plays on two of their pages. ?There were twenty-five writers represented, some several times. Five of them, 20%, are women. ? There are 179 playwrights listed in Playmarket's database and 69, or 38.5%, are women. Why are images of their productions not reproduced in the same proportion? Playmarket has two diversity-oriented programmes, Asian Ink for Asian playwrights and Brown Ink for Maori and Pasifika playwrights, some of whom will of course be women, but no discrete women's programme. Does Playmarket need to up its game? It seems that change is needed in the New Zealand theatre world, as it is in film.

Celebration

Now for the good news, a wee celebration.?Playmarket's?Adam NZ Play Award?is an annual group of awards, supported by arts philanthropists Denis and Verna Adam. It's the only New Zealand award for new writing and "encourages writers to banish all self censoring, all worries about what theatres want, what is affordable and what they think audiences want to see". Only unproduced plays are eligible and the plays are read blind. The top award is for the Best New Zealand Play (last won by a woman in 2009, by Pip Hall with?The 53rd Victim) and further awards for Best Play By a Maori Playwright, Best Play By a Pasifika Playwright and Best Play By a Woman Playwright.Hannah McKie, a Creative Writing PhD student at the International Institute of Modern Letters, and part of the all-women Page Left Collective, is this year's winner of the Best Play By A Woman Playwright with Mary Scott: Queen of the Backblocks. This means that her play is also the New Zealand entry in the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, "given annually to recognize women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre."Renae Maihi, an actor/writer/director, won Best Play By A Maori Playwright for Patua, a play about child abuse, funded by Creative New Zealand. Renae's first play was Nga Manurere.
She also co-wrote Katie Wolfe's short film Redemption and is writer/director of a New Zealand Film Commission funded short ? Purerehua/Butterfly, currently in post-production. Many congratulations to Hannah and Renae.

It's taken me a few days to write this and in the meantime, ever hopeful, I've been tweeting about the Nicholl gender split,?hoping that might encourage more women to enter.?And kind tweeps have been retweeting. But it's made no difference.?There's so much more work to be done.?Here's the info for today, off the Nicholl Facebook site (the main site seems to be down).

Source: http://wellywoodwoman.blogspot.com/2013/04/under-representation-in-scriptwriting.html

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Obama chides lawmakers over flight delay fix, budget conflict (reuters)

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Itihasa made itihasya...: Thoughts on education and learning...

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Reimagining education, learning and society...some ramblings

Schools, learning, teaching, universal access, textbooks and more ...Matters educational are tenuously holding centre stage in contemporary India where otherwise facetious debates on corruption, gender violence, caste and communal fracases, economic stimulus and likes, form the cynosure of public attention,?? determined and defined mostly by hyperventilating TV news anchors and some by scholars and experts? in ed and op ed pages of leading dailies. But in their discourses, issues connected to education emerge often in terms of numbers: poor enrollment, high drop out rates or when lamenting the qualitative aspects; poor infrastructure, pitiable computing, reading and writing abilities, ( resulting mostly from) woeful teaching standards.

However such concerns appear very normalizing wherein other knowledge paradigms and possibilities of learning and teaching is barely taken cognizance of. So even when the tardy enforcement of RTE, viewed to be a progressive legislation to universalize education in India,? is seen with dismay by many, it is largely done so, perhaps unconsciously, as failure to enforce and 'democratize' a standardized vision of learning which also embeds certain dominantly accepted epistemes and knowledge systems.

Issues I have with studies and reports like ASER and PROBE and the alarming inferences that many draw is the fact that learning and literacy are seen as a very formal attribute. One certainly cannot but concede that literacy is what makes abstraction possible and enhance the quality of perception, observation and is transformative. No one can really find fault with a processes that seeks to activate the abstraction capabilities, and scholars such as David Olson, Jack Goody and Walter Ong have argued? that it is literacy that sharpens if not shapes culture as well as cognition, and which separates 'primitive' from 'civilized' societies and that 'mastery of a written language affects not only the content of thought but also the process of thinking - how we classify, reason, remember.' (references here)? But as Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole contend the impact of literacy is complex and localized and cannot be described in terms of 'generalized changes in cognitive abilities'.??In this even Paulo Freire, the icon for critical schooling and political empowerment of the oppressed masses who envisaged a 'praxological' 'dialogic' form of pedagogy attempting to 'liberate' one from 'magical' consciousness to critical ability, stressed the act of reading and the importance of writing. However orality does continue in Freire's thought even when he privileges writing, reading as facilitating abstraction, in his emphasis of dialogue.? (reference here)? Dialogue is basically oral and in Freire's stress on reflexivity and praxis, he seeks to develop a sort of interior dialogue which links theory and action to social reality. When Freire suggests reading of the word has to be preceded by reading of the world, such an understanding is derived orally, '...even the spoken word flows from the reading of the world.' But since Freire's approach is democratic and egalitarian transformation through conscenciatization his goal, he adds that, '...we can say that reading the word is not just preceded by reading of the world but by certain form of writing it or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious practical work. For me this dynamic movement is central to the literacy process.' (reference here)
Consequently some argue that Freire and his followers failed to realize that literacy itself is often a colonizing process that reinforces a modern form of individualism. (reference here)? Further let us consider the study of Thomas Farrell who had asserted that many Black students-particularly those from inner-city? backgrounds- in the US have been socialized? in the purely oral cognitive patterns of Black English, which is essentially a spoken rather than written language. Consequently he observed that they lack control of the full? panoply of conjugations and coordinating and subordinating syntax that distinguish standard written English which form a necessary matrix? for abstract and analytic thought. Donald Lazere a scholar of literacy and media who tried using literature that black students could relate to like autobiography of Malcolm X or James Baldwin's 'Notes of a Native Son' in his advanced literature classes expecting that working-class Black students might better be able to relate to the subject matter was thwarted by their difficulties with the syntactic and intellectual complexities. In this these students leaned on readers (guides) in? handling new vocabulary and allusions and clearing exams. Further another scholar Lisa Delpit, also concludes from her experience teaching? Black inner-city children that? they dislike the current neglect of standard form and mechanics and want instruction in the? formal skills they need to progress in schooling. (Reference here)? In India many Dalits too maintain a similar position who want to be 'equal participant' and seek 'empowerment' because the past for them means nothing - no worthwhile skills other than menial and extremely derogatory work and therefore memory of past is one of exploitation and oppression. In the present, a normative education (despite all the warts and problems) is certainly more liberating.? But needless to say such formal schooling does entrap us into normative and regulative socio-politico regime which far from being liberating becomes another oppressive institution of modernity.

Therefore does it mean modes of cognition, perception and learning which are tied more to the concrete, specific and tangible have outlived their utility and relevance? I also ask this - Did not orality also nurture superior craft skills which more than the literate sections of the populace sustained us for thousands of years - fed us, clothed us and helped us survive wars, epidemics and hunger? help us make beautiful monuments, art and also brought about understanding of human body, physical world and more?

Schools as operationalized in certain formal space and time, even when enabled by a sensitivity to evolve a curriculum which is cognizant of the childs' social and cultural experience, resulting in a child centred, socially and culturally appropriate pedagogy and an inter-disciplinary and integrated curriculum, has its inherent limitations. These are particularly exacerbated in our age and time of super specialization and performance - where formal exhibition of knowledge in the abstract thru tests and examination - has become sine qua non to prove one's accomplishment and one's employment worth.

Indeed the point is our sense of shock, despair and lament at such poor 'showing', would perhaps not be so profound if it were that these school drop outs could still sustain themselves in work that ensures good living wages facilitating a life of dignity and self respect. The issue many perhaps worry about here is the fact that India does not have a well equipped labour force to work either in factories or in cubicles. In such a scheme of things, where manufacturing (mass produced in conveyor belt form) and services ( particularly IT enabled) which is predicted to contribute the most to GDP, and a high GDP and growth rate would then give us something to brag about, is being jeopardized.

In dealing with this anxiety and satisfying globally benchmarked and defined norms of literacy, education and learning, variables like pedagogy, teacher training, textbooks etc are reframed to make it relevant to the most deprived children and consciously tailored to seek their empowerment. But yet even accounting for few who do and will benefit from these well meaning interventions derived from critical theories of Habermas and Friere, it will in the end precisely do that i.e. enhance only a few.

Nevertheless let us look it matters this way...what if we have a an economy where agriculture and crafts can continue to provide for one's existence (beyond hand to mouth as it were) something which can be more environmentally sustainable, less competitive and ensures that we do not as a society sink to ribald consumerism?

An example will perhaps help to make my point with greater clarity. I know this carpenter whose services we have been availing for more than 10 years. He is a carpenter par excellence but (and I use but with a slant) a school drop out. The way he determines the quality of wood, is able to cut the wood with finesse, shape it into beautiful chairs, tables and cots is seen to be believed. It is evident that his craft displays an acute understanding of mathematical and geometric proportions, weight, mass along with a deep sense of aesthetics. Now his whole skill can be abstracted and presented in terms of non-figurative and theoretical? knowledge through formulas, axioms, theorems, hypothesis etc to students in classrooms. And if my carpenter friend was to be seated in the same classroom it is possible that he is at a complete loss (the key word is possible here...) but we cannot blame him (and the teacher as well or for that matter the curriculum) if he is at pains to understand the concept and even flunks all evaluative processes. On the other hand one may also claim that given the contextual and embedded learning in operation here, my carpenter can make the leap to abstract thinking and grasping. But my contention here is the tenuous nature of such abstraction .


One's credentials as someone who is learned need not be limited by abstracted abilities and skills exhibited through formalized learning spaces (schools/colleges) and its normative practices.? What is more important in my view is their politicization and equipping them with citizenship attributes. A Frierian vision of politicization and empowerment is not precluded because of? poor articulation in writing and deficient reading skills. In other words citizenship and criticality does not and need not hinge on formal literacy abilities. What if my carpenter friend also showed perceptible political consciousness, recognizing aspects of his work as being so fundamental to the material culture we have, takes pride in it but seeks adequate compensation that affords him a better quality of life? What if he says,' No! I dont have any regrets in being a carpenter and I wont insist that my children need the kind of education that will ensure them 'better' jobs as long as this job or any other which they are comfortable doing, emerges from skills and competencies they have proclivities for, arising organically from their socialization and exposure which 'formal schooling' enhances and nurtures it, rather than trying to impose something new on them. It should ensure a life of dignity and decency. Their work should not confine them to living in hovels with poor sanitation, power and deny them some creature comforts. (beyond mobile phones and TV!!!) So if carpentry, farming, garage work, masonary, etc, professions more fundamental to our existence than that of a IT code jockey, bank manager and even a doctor or an engineer, and can ensure us good quality of life, in what ways are we less important or our work less dignified or are we of any inferior intelligence?'

Of course, truth be told my carpenter nurses a deep sense of inferiority and neither does he exhibit such critical and politically edifying thoughts. He certainly does not want his sons (and even daughters thankfully) to have anything to do with carpentry and dreams of his kids becoming good techies and engineers working in false roofed, glass fronted A/C buildings.? But in my view my carpenter is a victim of double whammy - stigmatized as failure by education and lacking political and citizenship consciousness. This despite the brilliance he brings forth to his work which adds so much value to so many people. Tragic indeed. But if we lived in a world where one's intelligence, survival did not depend on such economic externalities and warped by skewed social values, would my carpenter be facing this crisis? This is precisely what Gandhi feared and sought a more organic and integrated school model not divorced from work as he argued in his Nai Talim. This dovetailed well into the non-industrial and non-urban vision he had for India based on his visceral understanding of modernity and its pathologies engendered by commerce, consumption and competition.

At certain levels such a perspective may appear elitist and Brahmanical. I have already dwelled on this aspect here and would not repeat myself.



II

As a teachers I think we need to understand the larger context elucidated above and work towards using pedagogies that can still overcome these structural constraints. Now this is not easy and I dont think I myself succeeded in much measure in this direction. I was teaching in a school catering to middle classes and had to do the needful to put them on an aspirational path. Also the training programmes offered by these schools with its obsession on performance never helped me to understand issues in the manner I'm increasingly begin to look at. As teachers we were given to, rather than subject to accountability and therefore lots of training on appropriate teaching methods, child centred teaching, multiple intelligences and blah blah we were inflicted upon.? Regarding these I recently came across this blog? by Subir Shukla. As Subir says over the last two decades, there has been an explosion of 'pedagogies'...(and government, NGOs etc) have all come up with what they consider 'sure fire' methods of teaching...(to make) classroom processes...interesting, 'joyful' activities will be conducted, teaching learning material and 'learning ladders' will be used, and so on.

What Subir says next is more significant, 'At the heart of it all though, is the basic tenet that if the teacher really cares for his children, he will find a way. All these pedagogies begin to have meaning only if the teacher is interested in children and finds delight in helping them learn. Now most of our training programmes, materials and pedagogical models might claim to be make teaching more effective, but they don't necessarily generate that emotional commitment to children and their learning that is a prerequisite to successful classroom processes.'?








Modernity as we have it then predicates on such an education system and institutionalized nature of work. To conclude

?

Source: http://www.historyandpedagogy.org/2013/04/thoughts-on-education-and-learning.html

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Controllers to return; flight delays sway Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Furloughed air traffic controllers will soon be heading back to work, ending a week of coast-to-coast flight delays that left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious.

Unable to ignore the travelers' anger, Congress overwhelmingly approved legislation Friday to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to withdraw the furloughs. The vote underscored a shift by Democrats who had insisted on erasing all of this year's $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts, not just the most publicly painful ones, for fear of losing leverage to restore money for Head Start and other programs with less lobbying clout and popular support.

With President Barack Obama's promised signature, the measure will erase one of the most stinging and publicly visible consequences of the budget-wide cuts known as the sequester.

Friday's House approval was 361-41 and followed the previous evening's passage by the Senate, which didn't even bother with a roll call. Lawmakers then streamed toward the exits ? and airports ? for a weeklong spring recess.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would sign the bill, but Carney complained that the measure left the rest of the sequester intact.

"This is a Band-Aid solution. It does not solve the bigger problem," he said. Using the same Band-Aid comparison, Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said that "the sequester needs triple bypass surgery."

The FAA and Transportation Department did not respond to repeated questions about when the controllers' furloughs would end. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who helped craft the measure, was told by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Friday that the agency is "doing everything they can to get things back on track as quickly as possible," said Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley.

In the week since the furloughs began, news accounts have prominently featured nightmarish tales of delayed flights and stranded air passengers. Republicans have used the situation to accuse the Obama administration of purposely forcing the controllers to take unpaid days off to dial up public pressure on Congress to roll back the sequester.

"The president has an obligation to implement these cuts in a way that respects the American people, rather than using them for political leverage," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a written statement.

"Unfortunately for this administration, the term 'sequester' has become synonymous with fear," Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said during the debate.

Halting the furloughs was the latest example of lawmakers easing parts of the sequester that became too painful.

They previously used a separate, wide-ranging spending bill to provide more money for meat and poultry inspectors. Attorney General Eric Holder cited extra funds in that same bill as the reason the Justice Department would be able to avoid furloughs. Transportation Security Administration employees also have gotten relief.

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats ? backed by many fiscal experts ? say the sequester law gives agencies little maneuverability, requiring them to spread cuts evenly among most budget accounts. The Federal Aviation Administration was achieving about a third of its required $637 million in cuts by furloughing nearly all its workers ? including the 15,000 air traffic controllers ? one day every two weeks.

Obama and his Democratic allies want to roll back the entire sequester, with the White House proposing a substitute mix of spending cuts and tax increases that Republicans have rejected. The GOP has proposed replacing the across-the-board spending cuts with others, many of them aimed at programs Democrats defend.

That has left many Democrats reluctant to ease across-the-board cuts for individual programs that cause a public outcry because they worry that would relieve pressure on Republicans to undo the entire sequester.

"While there is a little bit of leverage and pressure, let's broaden it to the sequester as a whole," Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., told reporters before voting against the bill.

Said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: "How can we sit there and say, 'Four million Meals on Wheels for seniors gone? But that's not important. Over 70,000 children off Head Start. But that's not important.' What is important is for Republicans to hold a hard line" on budget cuts.

Even so, the complaints about flying delays became too intense, and in the end only 29 Democrats and 12 Republicans voted against the measure Friday in the House. The FAA said there had been at least 863 flights delayed on Wednesday attributed to the furloughs, with hundreds of others daily since the furloughs began last Sunday.

The bill would let the FAA use up to $253 million from an airport improvement program and other accounts to halt the furloughs through the Sept. 30 end of the government's fiscal year. The money can be used for other FAA operations, too, including keeping open small airport towers around the country that the agency said it would shut to satisfy the spending cuts.

But Democrats were bitter Friday that cuts in many federal programs remain. Besides the Head Start pre-school program, they complained about ongoing cuts for health research, feeding programs for poor women, children and the elderly and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed and about furloughs of civilian Pentagon workers.

"Let's get a big deal. Let's deal with all the adverse consequences of the sequester," said No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer, whose Maryland district has many civil servants and who voted no.

Congressional approval was hailed by groups representing the airline industry and the union representing controllers.

"The winners here are the customers who will be spared from lengthy and needless delays," said Nicholas E. Calio, president of Airlines for America, representing major carriers.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said the week of problems showed that a "fully staffed air traffic control workforce is necessary for our national airspace system to operate at full capacity."

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Joan Lowy and Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/controllers-return-flight-delays-sway-congress-210602052.html

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Reports: Cops shot outside Italian premier office

ROME (AP) ? Two Italian paramilitary police officers were shot and wounded Sunday in a crowded square outside the premier's office in Rome as Italy's new leader was being sworn in a kilometer (half-mile) away.

An AP television producer saw two wounded officers, one of them lying on the pavement with blood pouring out of his neck. Seven bullets lay on the square.

The Italian news agency ANSA said the assailant, described in reports as a man dressed in a suit and tie, was detained by police.

The shooting came just as Premier Enrico Letta and his Cabinet took their oaths in the Quirinal presidential office a day after he nailed down a coalition deal between his center-left forces and the conservative bloc of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

It was unclear if there was any connection between the events, but tensions have been running high in Italy following inconclusive elections in February that left the nation in political deadlock.

Italy's state police chief raced to the scene. An aide to Foreign Minister Emma Bonino told reporters at the presidential palace that the new Cabinet members were being kept inside until the situation became more clear.

The shooting immediately sparked ugly memories of the 1970s and 1980s when domestic terrorism plagued Italy during a time of high political tensions between right-wing and left-wing blocs.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/reports-cops-shot-outside-italian-premier-office-100457952.html

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