Afghanistan in the '50s

There's an amazing set of pictures on foreignpolicy.com looking at Afghanistan in the 1950s and '60s, showing that it has not always been this "medieval" place of thugs and misogynists we see today, at least not in Kabul.

Utah, cutting back on high school

So, I can't quite imagine a worse way to cut costs than jeopardizing the future by cutting back on education. Although, in some ways you do wonder what we're teaching in high school at all.  100 years ago, it was expected that by the time you got out of high school you actually knew something. My grandfather graduated from a one-room school house in rural Pennsylvania with Greek and Latin and went on to have several patents. I certainly didn't know that much by the time I left high school in a good suburban school district and I imagine that fast-growing Utah doesn't teach their kids as much as I got taught. Now some nutter wants to cut out 12th grade.  What do you think?

A Utah lawmaker has proposed a cost-cutting measure to keep high school students from slacking off in their senior year -- eliminate 12th grade.

A Utah lawmaker says too many 12th graders spend the year "playing around." As part of a cost-cutting measure, Republican State Senator Chris Buttars has proposed eliminating a fourth year of high school statewide.

(Getty Images)

Republican State Senator Chris Buttars earlier this month proposed ditching a fourth year of high school statewide, calling 12th grade a time for "nothing but playing around."

Addressing the Utah State Senate's Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee meeting, Buttars said cutting high school back to three years would save the strapped state $102 million annually.

"You're spending a whole lot of money for a whole bunch of kids who aren't getting anything out of that grade," Buttars said. "It comes down to the best use of money."

Buttars' has since diluted his proposal, saying that eliminating 12th grade should be an option available to students. [abcnews.go.com]

Incomplete Manifesto

The Academy for Global Citizenship, a charter school where I serve on the board, is developing a zero net-energy building for our permanent home. We have some great pro-bono work being done by the the OWP/P Architecture firm in Chicago. They're bringing together a huge number of people to collaborate on this project at a meeting later in the spring. One of those is Bruce Mau, who is a frequent collaborator with Frank Gehry. I checked out his web site this morning and came across his Incomplete Manifesto that guides the work of his studio. Some of the ideas are very interesting, and even if you know them already, good to be reminded.

By the way, if anyone has any ideas on who'd like to contribute to a capital campaign for this project, let me know. No idea is too crazy.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas
to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas
of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

Do real men read?

I went to the Printer's Row Book Fair this afternoon, which is one of my favorite street fairs of the summer. It's always on the same weekend as the 57th Street Art Fair, which is one of my other favorites. (I'll go there tomorrow.)

The Book Fair has readings, used book stalls, obscure publishers, and apparently literacy groups, like Real Men Read. The only troubling thing was that there was no one there - not even a little stack of brochures. I was struck that it appeared that no real men were reading, or even talking about it.

This brings to mind for me the trouble that some of my clients face as well. If you claim to be doing good, but then don't do as well as other people expect you to, you get more criticized than if you'd never tried to do good in the first place. So, do I criticize Real Men Read for not showing up? Maybe they were out actually teaching reading this afternoon.

In my work, I help companies and commercial buildings become greener and the environmental watchdogs are ruthless when someone misses their targets, but are fairly quiet about companies that make no attempts to do the right thing. It hardly seems fair. My father, somewhat cynically, has been known to say "No good deed goes unpunished."

So, am I punishing Real Men Read by pointing out that they're MIA at the Book Fair? Or is it reasonable to hold people who have declared a goal to a higher standard?

Thank Goodness

Einstein said,

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

What a relief - I just thought I didn't know anything anymore.