The NYC Board of Ed — which of course really means Mayor Bloomberg nowadays — has effectively banned bake sales. In the name of — say it with me — fighting obesity.
The problem I have with this is that the bake sales became necessary because of funding cuts; vending machines and bake sales and whatnot didn’t become common until the Reagan-era tax cuts and resulting slashing of school financing. So if you aren’t going to restore funding for sports programs and uniforms and clubs and activities, AND you take away their ability to make money to cover the costs that the city’s not providing, then you’ve just hamstrung your sports programs. Which might not be the most effective way to “fight obesity,” given that physical activity is generally considered an important part of that, if you’re actually serious about “fighting obesity” and not just putting on a show of being tough.
It’s also yet another way to shift the focus from the structural and systemic issues to the individual, putting the sole responsibility on the individual to fix the problem rather than on the system to fix the things that make it more difficult for individuals to fix things for themselves.
Now, Bloomberg actually has some ideas which *do* address systemic problems, such as the grocery gap, and I would even argue that his ban of trans fats and his requirement that chain restaurants post calorie counts of items also address a systemic issue, which is lack of information about what’s in the food or how many calories are actually in a “serving,” without which you can’t really make informed choices about your food. But all this ban is going to do is exacerbate the original problem, which is the underfunding of schools. Until you’re ready to fix that by raising taxes on your rich friends, don’t take away the workaround.
Library school is very big on the presentations and the group projects. I understand why; after all, during an interview for a position as a librarian (especially in the academic context), you will be expected to do a presentation for about an hour (including Q&A) to show that a) you can successfully research something and b) you can convey the results of your research, which is something you’ll be expected to do frequently on the job.
The value of group projects I’m less sure about. Sure, you can show that you work well with others, but I’m going to guess that most of the time, when you have a group project on the job, it will involve someone assigning work to various people, who will then have clear goals.
The group project I’m currently working on isn’t quite like that. We have 10 people — the entire class — working on the same project. We will all get the same grade. We’ve had to decide how to split things up ourselves, and nobody’s in charge (though, thankfully, someone has taken the reins by setting up the wiki and doing the kind of administrative stuff that will shape the project).
These things *can* work, if you have clear areas of responsibility so that one person isn’t stuck doing all the work and everyone else free-rides. Or if you don’t have any problem children who don’t work well with others.
We’ve already had a problem child emerge. Continue reading ‘Herding cats; or, why Zuzu hates group projects’
Who knew?
All three of my classes had projects due this week. And it’s not the writing of the papers that’s so much the problem, it’s the damn fussy citations.
Last one goes in tonight, a paper on globalization, very open-ended. I decided to give voice to my displeasure at having to read Thomas Friedman’s NYT Mag article, “It’s A Flat World, After All,” by pointing out how absurd it is that he talks up how wonderful outsourcing is and only once mentions money as a motivator — which he quickly dismisses. It’s all about the ideas, y’all. My God! The world is flat!
One of the last readings in the class is an op-ed by John Yoo(!) and John Bolton(!!) on returning treaty power to the Senate. Like I trust anything those two have to say about the Constitution or international relations.
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