2 Million Minutes

Two Million Minutes

The documentary by Robert Compton compares and contrasts the education experiences of six students; two from each of the countries of India, China, and the United States.

. . . Two Million Minutes until high school graduation. . . Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation. . . Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career. . . Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult.

Interview with Robert Compton on Q&A on CSPAN

Read On @ Your Local Library:

CalCat or WorldCat

Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce by National Center on Education and the Economy - Wiley, John & Sons, 2008
~ shows how the dynamics of the global economy will lead to a steady decline in the American standard of living if this country does not undertake the first thorough overhaul of its education system in a century.

Last Good Job In America: Work and Education in the New Global Technoculture by Stanley Aronowitz - Rowman & Littlefield, 2008
~ one of the nation's leading critics of education, the world of work, and the labor movement shows how new technologies, labor, and education all are deeply intertwined in our culture and everyday lives

Higher Education in the World 2008 by Global University Network for Innovation - Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
~ annual report explores in depth the key issues facing Higher Education institutions in the 21st Century

Library Services & Technology Act Funding

ALA

IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED

Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA) Funding

Contact Your Senator

To Support Federal Funding For America's Libraries!

2 Most Important Federal Programs for Libraries
~ Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA)
~ Improving Literacy Through School Libraries Program

NEED EVERY Senator to sign a "Dear Colleague" letter from Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Susan Collins (R-ME).
addressed to the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriation Subcommittees

Support the request for $ 214.432 M – FY 2009. Programs that don't have a vocal support network are in danger of being cut.

The deadline for signing this letter is March 14.

View the "Dear Colleague" library letter @
Find Elected Officials: President, Congress, Governors, & more @

Illiteracy in America

SCLLN Adult Learners

Illiteracy in America

ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson featured a special series, “Living in the Shadows: Illiteracy in America” that examined the hidden phenomenon of illiteracy in this country: Part 1: Feb 25; Part 2: Feb 26.

Click on Title for Video or Story:

~ Illiterate in America
~ A Michigan City’s Literacy Crisis
~ Literacy Programs at Work
~ Living in the Shadows: Monica Baxley
~ Living in the Shadows: Roger Vredenburg
~ Silent Epidemic: Illiteracy in America
~ News You Can Use: Literacy Resources for Adults and Children
~ Out of the Shadows, Overcoming Illiteracy

Read On @ Your Local Library:

CalCat or WorldCat

Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America
E. Jennifer Monaghan, University of Massachusetts Press 2007

~ who learned to read in Colonial America? Who learned to write? Reading instruction was largely motivated by religion, while writing instruction generally had secular motives -slaves and other marginalized people were allowed to learn to read but not to write.

Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky's Moonlight Schools: Fighting for Literacy in America
Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin, University Press of Kentucky 2006

~ Stewart decided to open the classrooms in her district to adult pupils in 1911. Convinced that edication could eliminate the poverty that plagued the region, she founded the Moonlight School movement, ultimately designed to combat illiteracy. The movement's motto: Each one teach one.

Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared
Mike Rose, Viking Penguin 2005

~ Remedial, illiterate, intellectually deficient—these are the stigmas that define America's educationally underprepared.

Read Across America Day: March 3

Read Across America Day
Celebrate Dr. Seuss' Birthday !

Oh, the Places You'll Go

Dr. Seuss on the Web:

~ Seussville
~ Dr. Seuss National Memorial - Springfield, MA
~ Dr. Seuss Collection @ UCSD
~ Dr. Seuss parody page

& watch a prevue of Horton Hears a Who ! @
~ release date: March 14
with Jim Carrey as Horton
Steve Carell as The Mayor of Who-ville
Carol Burnett as Kangaroo

So Light a Candle, Woodja !
Check Out a Dr. Seuss Book @ Your Local Library

The End of Literacy . . .

The End of Literacy . . .

articles, opinions and comments about literacy and reading habits that have appeared since Howard Gardner's column in the Washington Post (Feb 17 2008)


The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading. by Howard Gardner
Washington Post, February 17, 2008

What will happen to reading and writing in our time?

Could the doomsayers be right? Computers, they maintain, are destroying literacy.

The signs -- students' declining reading scores, the drop in leisure reading to just minutes a week, the fact that half the adult population reads no books in a year -- are all pointing to the day when a literate American culture becomes a distant memory. By contract, optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words. Will they carry the day?

Maybe neither. Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision. READ ON

~ a reaction from:The National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance

Mr. Gardner's essay is well worth reading, but how long it has been since he has spent any time in public elementary or secondary schools? A challenge for Mr. Gardner-- spend a month working with young people in Worcester,Massachusetts, or in East Cleveland, Ohio, or even any middle class/working class neighborhood public school across the country to see where our nation truly is concerning reading, writing, and education-- to see the state of actual school buildings, school libraries, and public libraries in many parts of our nation. Have a conversation with a real group of kids, ask them what they read, how much they read, when they read anything at all. And then see if he would draw the same conclusions. READ ON

~ issue of schools, school libraries and budget cuts {just a few}

Austin: Libraries short on money, books: Austin school librarians making do with old and moldy books, aging collections.

Modesto: Modesto City’s plan to eliminate junior high school librarians is irrational - Stephan Krashen
California: The Governor plans to cut $5 billion from education over the next 18 months because of the budget crisis. I suggest we accomplish some of this by dumping the High School Exit Exam - Stephen Krashen
South Carolina: Improving the K-12 system is not enough; the greatest oppurtunity lies within adult education.

~ the value of The Big Read or One City, One Book events

Jim Henley’s Los Angeles Times (2/25/08) column: Big Read or Big Waste?
Stephen Krashen’s comment: The Big Read is a bad solution that addresses the wrong problem

a bit of a mashup, catchup sort of post which will end with 2 Gardner titles

Five Minds for the Future
Harvard Business School Press 2007
~ outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead.

Howard Gardner Under Fire
Edited by Jeffrey Schaler, Open Court Press 2006
~ leading experts who disagree with Gardner on specific issues explain their reasons, with no holds barred, and Gardner replies cogently and pungently to each one of them.

Read On @ Your Local Library: CalCat or WorldCat

Children of the Code: Update

Children of the Code:
'The Code and the Challenge of Learning to Read It'
A Social Education Project & Documentary Series

February 10, 2008 - Update: Chapter 5b

Ye First Millennium Bug: The Roots of Confusion

~ it's easy to forget that the system we have learned is a system that is based on a series of accidents that result in layers of complexity" - Dr. Thomas Cable, Co-author: A History of the English Language

YE FIRST MILLENNIUM BUG

Latin Roots
~ The clergy begins to write English using the letters/sounds of Latin
French Rules
~ French displaces English as the official language of England
The King’s English
~ Henry V resurrects English writing
The Chancery Scribes
~ The King's scribes forge the roots of modern English
The First Millennium Bug
~ The fall of phoneticism, the rise of complexity, and the roots of confusion
The Great Vowel Shift
~ Massive shifts in pronunciation add further confusion
Casting Spells
~ The printing press standardizes the unstable writing system

“Ye First Millennium Bug” picks up where “A Brief History of the Code: Part 1” left off. This chapter sketches the story of the emergence and standardization of written English.

The history of the English code is an amazing story of historical accidents, negligence, elitism, and, in the words of Dr. Thomas Cable, “No one minding the store”.

..."the accident of the printing press, which in England served to freeze spelling in the fifteenth century so you have these bizarre spellings." - Dr. Malcolm Richardson, Chair, Department of English, LSU

Newsletter & Updates @

Linguists: Documenting Vanishing Voices

"The Linguists: Documenting Vanishing Voices," premiered at this year’s Sundance Festival. The film highlights endangered languages in Siberia, India and Bolivia

In Siberia, fewer than 25 elderly people speak Chulym. In Bolivia, a language once spoken by healers to the Inca emperor is on the verge of extinction. In the Orissa state in the east of India, younger generations no longer speak Sora, a language of the region with a complex and expressive way of putting words together.

Scientists estimate that of 7,000 languages in the world, half will be gone by the end of this century. On average, one language disappears every two weeks.

READ ARTICLE @ National Science Foundation News

. . . just a click away

World Language Clock @
~ 6912 Living Languages
~ Endangered Languages (SIL)
~ The Endangered Language Foundation
~ Current Count of Living Languages
~ Living Languages by Country
~ Top Spoken Languages in the World

Enduring Voices @
~ saving disappearing languages