ack in the early days of this blog, one of my most popular annual features from 2002 through about 2005 was my “State Of Twin Cities Talk Radio” piece.

Partly  because of the conflict of interest, partly because it’s bad form to criticize one’s own station’s programming, and partly because I just don’t like listening to so many local talk shows these days, I stopped.

Fortunately, Speed Gibson has decided to step into the gap.  It’s going to be an ongoing series.

The Twin Cities’ grievance-based community is clutching its pearls and howling over the proposal by the Sleepy Eye superintendent’s proposal to cut budgets by going to a four-day school week:

A school superintendent in Sleepy Eye says the district needs to seriously consider converting to a four-day school week.

Superintendent John Cselovszki says the move would mean longer school days with more breaks. He says the shift would cut costs associated with busing, teacher substitutes, heating and cooling.

The Journal of New Ulm says Cselovszki made his comments Thursday at a Board of Education meeting.

Board member Ron Geiger acknowledged that a shorter school week could help the district avoid other budget cuts.

This, of course, is heresy to the educational-industrial complex – the teachers’ unions, the educational academy and so on.  Leaving aside the logistics issues – teachers seem to have come to enjoy having their days end by 3PM sharp – there are good financial reasons to cut the school week.

And Sleepy Eye being a small town, there’s a certain common-sense nature to their approach to solving those logistics issues:

Fellow board member Darla Remus worried that the change would create daycare issues for elementary students on Mondays when there was no school. Her colleague, Sheila Schmid, suggested that high school students could fill the daycare need.

The problem, of course, is that it’s accepted as a matter of faith by the current educational-industrial complex – along the lines of “smaller classes improve achievement” – that keeping kids’ butts in chairs longer is a key part of a good education.  By their logic, more hours equal better education.

Of course, like the “smaller classes” canard, it really just isn’t necessarily so:

As the four-day week unfolded in Hawaii members and institutions of the community stepped in the fill the vacuum. Parents sought activities, and students were flexible. New spaces opened up for young people to learn on Fridays. Museums and Rec Clubs offered Friday learning opportunities, some at little or no cost; others parent-run (parents rotated days off of work to manage supervision of student activities). Parents, wary of potential new costs for child care, welcomed the innovations.

New online learning options could be done during this time, from home, or a coffee shop, or a library, or a friend’s house. What different kinds of combinations can be found when inspired young people, parents seeking new options, and communities come together to pick up the slack? Imagine the potential to capture and accredit the value-added by these types of activities. What if post-secondary institutions began accepting the validation, by a reputable organization or company, for this type of out-of-school learning?

I believe there’s a strong case to be made that kids – some more than others, to be sure, because kids are more unique than most people – learn as much out of class as they do in, provided a decent support system at home (and let’s be honest, the kids without support at home are the ones that largely won’t be helped by cranking up the hours in chairs either).

And cutting the school week to four days, at its best, taps the ingenuity of parents and, best of all, kids to engage in the best kind of education there is – self-education.

The left is of two minds about “civility” and “vitriol”

On the one hand, they say, perceived incivility and “vitriol” (the most overused word of 2011 so far) from the right aids and abets mass-murder.

On the other hand, the same from the left is a Constitutional right:

The proof?  The Leftwing has gone berserk over the chorus of condemnation of a play in Missoula, Montana that called for the beheading of Sarah Palin.  Rather than condemn the line in the play advocating for such barbarism, the Left instead has chosen to nitpick about the details of whether or not the play was intended for children, who produced it, or whether or not it was intended as a ‘joke.’

No one from the Leftwing, however, condemned the play or the producer for taking one of the great works of Gilbert and Sullivan and adding in at the last minute a line that called for Sarah Palin to be beheaded.  In fact, some of the reaction of the Left not only applauded the line but outright called for ALL conservatives to be beheaded.

It gets depressing, after a while, covering this sort of thing.

Here is a sample of comments made on yesterday’s article about the play:

“Since the Conservatives don’t understand civility, maybe we should chop all their heads off.”

“This is NOT a “children’s play.” Please get your facts straight before publishing information that could have serious effects on this non-profit organization.  This was an operetta produced by MCT Community Theatre, which is the community theatre arm of Missoula Children’s Theatre. This was not a production that was intended specifically for children. There were a small number of children in the cast, but there are children who chose, as artists, to perform in many productions outside of children’s theatre.  Had this been a children’s theatre production, this would have been unquestionably inappropriate. This was NOT, however, a “children’s play”!”

Please note, however, children were in the cast and children were in the audience.  What, then, is the point?  Any nonprofit that would allow such a thing to be stated, whether it is ‘a children’s play’ or not, should be questioned as to their value to the community.

Time for the left to get the point – walk what you talk.

(And my reference to “the point” is not a subtle call for the left to be stabbed or bayoneted).