Decluttering our lives is easier said than done

I missed posting yesterday due to spending a couple days in the mountains, enjoying some piece and quiet (so much quiet) in a friend's cabin near Fairplay. "Cabin" is not a very accurate term here, since the house has a two-car garage, two floors, five bedrooms, a modern kitchen, wifi, and more. It was very nice.

But Kathleen and I agreed after this trip that we are not interested in investing half a million bucks into a second home in the mountains, or anywhere else, for that matter. 

Her preference would be to rent places for however long we might wish to stay (Hawaii, Vegas, California, etc.), figuring that half a million can cover quite a few rentals for many, many nights, and we would not have that "anchor" that owning one nice mountain home involves.

Some folks obviously enjoy the outdoors more than I do, and some are quite satisfied with a "get away" where there are few neighbors, and where it takes over 90 minutes just to drive there over two-lane roads (finishing with ten miles of dirt and gravel).

I find myself more and more appreciating all the standards and equipment we have developed for our Highlands Ranch home over the years, from how to access the Internet to placement of furniture and screens, to our own coffee maker with a fancy burr grinder for the beans. 

Over the past few weeks Kathleen and I have replaced our desktop computers with Dell XPS boxes that are very fast and include loads of memory, and this somewhat routine upgrade -- our "old" desktops were 4-5 years old, which made them dinosaurs -- was enough to cause anxiety and pain.

After 14 years in this home, we have replaced the heating and cooling along with most of the major appliances. Every change was a pain and more will be coming. 

I wish I could call someone at Dell and order a "souped up" and brand new home like we can computers, but here's the bottom line: The older we get, the more we become uncomfortable with the inevitable changes our material "stuff" prompts, often at inopportune times.

Kathleen has a Post-It note near her desk that says, "Do I Need It? Use It? Love It?"

This advice from a decluttering expert makes a lot of sense, though its simplicity masks all sorts of difficult decisions and time-consuming sorting.

Perhaps I will set aside some time once this semester wraps to apply the Marie Kondo advice on that Post-It and clear out some clothes that have hung unused in my closet for years. 

On the other hand, inertia is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.

Sports don't exist in a vacuum, and that is one reason we love them

I often think about "unified theory" philosophies for education and journalism teaching in particular. Some of that desire is likely due to simple boredom (Really? I am teaching THIS again?) and some is just a way to keep my head in the game, so to speak.

My interest in reviving (or perhaps establishing) sports reporting as the bedrock of student media journalism is what led me to begin analyzing those "17 reasons" last week and I recognize that no one benefits from my "x-ray analysis" of each of the 17 claims in that famous article. What advisers and students really need is a combination of permission to commit to a strategy plus some practical advice on best practices.

I have some hazy ideas for some focused workshop sessions and more fully explored lesson plans, and maybe this summer will provide some opportunities to get into those in depth.

But I wanted to wrap up my little series on those many reasons traditional classroom instruction and organization come up short with the very last item on the list, which may be the reason that is most insightful.

Reason #17. In football, a public performance is expected. 

Schoolwork is almost always performed somewhat privately, often for the teacher alone and occasionally for a classroom of peers. That leads to writing that focuses on an audience of one -- the teacher -- and that tends to reward caution and meeting expectations rather than being provocative or experimental.

When we find ways to make student work and skills more public, motivations to settle for poor performances or even "just good enough" performances are reduced.

That may be one reason sports are not for everyone, just as we might say about acting or playing in the band or debating. I suppose avoiding embarrassment might come across as quite negative, but that doesn't make it less powerful.

There is also the joy of surpassing expectations and engaging in something that is more compelling than earning an A in a science class or English 9 class based on test results and one person's evaluation of our efforts.

In sports, we keep score, which is a powerful assessment tool. But the allure of athletics never is limited to simply winning or losing and, in fact, being part of a losing team can be just as fulfilling as being on a state champion team. 

The big football game may bring together thousands of community members to cheer (and to critique from the stands). A sense of community is part of this, but there is also civic pride and the simple enjoyment of young people striving to do their best in the open arena.

Contrast that sort of expectation and pressure with a freshman taking a test over "Romeo and Juliet." Her parents may care, I suppose, but her performance has no effect on the wider community. In fact, we build school curriculum to reward individual effort much more than group efforts. Class rank and the tendency for educators to constantly be sorting students, even if they avoid the old-fashioned "grading on a curve," create individual competitions rather than supporting group achievements.

But being part of a giant democracy and world depends much more on larger groups of people sharing goals and strategies and hopes.

A football team that ends up with a 4-5 record may be mediocre by one measure, but the members of that team often benefit from the interactions, the challenges, the realizations that not everyone can win all the time, and so many more lessons. 

That is a lesson that we all need to be reminded of, and sports journalism is a great place to teach that lesson.

Much ado about very little, in 140 characters

The old saying in journalism is that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press," but that recognition of the importance of having control over the means of production is clearly outdated.

I was thinking about this traditional wisdom as I was reading all the commentary on world's richest man Elon Musk purchasing Twitter for a mere $44 billion. That's like $100 for most people's budgets, but that's not the point.

Twitter is the "press," in this case, and Musk will definitely own that press and everything that appears on it... and he is on record as being in favor of nearly unfettered free speech. Conservatives are cheering his buyout, and that should be enough to make everyone think a bit more critically about another rich guy adding to his "toy collection."

I deleted my little-used Twitter account last fall, as the platform dithered about how to handle the dangerous lies from Trump and his minions, and I have never regretted that. When Twitter finally banned Trump for life due to his repeated violations of their rules, I didn't start tweeting again. I am fine.

The numbers regarding Twitter are startling, with over 192 registered users worldwide, though that makes it only the sixth most popular social media app. Only a very low percentage of those users create the vast majority of the total posts each day, which seems like the opposite of a democratic institution.

It's quick and short and nasty and easily sharable. It has little to do with journalism but almost all journalists are on Twitter all the time.

I would love to see Musk lose a boatload of money as people delete their Twitter accounts, but that is not likely to happen. About 8 percent of Americans say that Twitter is their main source of news, while over 50 percent claim that Facebook is their primary news source. Both those statistics are disturbing when we consider the cesspool of the Internet and the deluge of bots and slimy sites and unscrupulous users out to make a buck.

Maybe Musk will institute some new processes that will make Twitter the "town square" for the world, but certainly this is true: Elon Musk will soon be the publisher of Twitter and ultimately must own its content. He's too rich to care much about what anyone thinks about him, of course, but pissing off millions is not ever a good play for business owners.

Here's another observation: the Twitter purchase by Musk bumped the Ukraine invasion to a "second story," at least for a few days. 

The media can't resist covering rich people doing "rich people things,' and that is too bad.

Light where the sun don't shine... often

The latest blatherings from Tucker Carlson about "tanning your testicles" is an irresistible topic, evidenced by comments and spoofs by late night TV hosts, as well as extensive coverage in all sorts of media.

Boosting a man's sperm count (I guess) is the goal of exposing testicles to specific light, and the goal is to produce "manlier men," whatever that means. The Fox News segment I have seen shows men engaging in all sorts of cliche "manly" behaviors, from splitting wood to fighting, ending with a naked man standing before some device that shines light on his midsection. 

See why this little blip in our world is drawing outsized attention?

But first, the very idea that sperm counts are down needs to be verified, and Snopes.com has found that this claim is substantially true. In fact, Western male sperm counts are down by 59 percent in studies over the past 15 years of so. This is not true for other regions of the world, but that may be due to poor researching techniques and not enough data. It seems that average penis size is also declining a bit, which has little to do with ability to reproduce but might seem more alarming to some fragile male egos.

So we have some data that confirm lower sperm counts. Connect that data to some worries about the "feminization" of America and some odd longing for the "good old days" of men being men -- usually defined as aggressive and overconfident and dismissive of the weak (including most women), and you have a story. 

My gosh, college is now dominated by females, a complete flip-flop from 50 years ago, when campuses were male bastions and society wondered just how much education a woman really needed to raise a family and support a man.

The problem with connecting two trends (or observations) is that correlation is not causation. Lower sperm counts may have nothing to do with societal trends, but Carlson supports the idea that men being asked by society to be less aggressive and angry and stressed and self-confident has led to the lower sperm counts. Or maybe not.

It might be the other way around, of course, with low sperm count producing less traditionally male behavior, which leads the Fox News commentator looking for a solution: tanning your testicles.

But most scientists believe there is a clearer cause and effect that begins with increasing use of pesticides and potentially harmful chemicals present in our drinking water and food supplies, and that those chemicals are the culprits. If we assume THAT is true, then no amount of tanning will reverse the "problem."

Unless we believe that certain light frequencies can reverse the effects of those harmful chemicals in our bodies. Technology to the rescue!

Bottom line: no one is quite sure what is causing lower sperm counts and some people might wonder just how big the problem is. Do lower sperm counts lead to fewer births, for instance, when we consider the age range of potential male sperm providers? 

Estimates are that about 250,000 sperm are released in a single ejaculation, so a reduction of half leaves us with 125,000. Overall, that seems compelling. In individual cases, it's more murky. And I would want to know if sperm count changes radically between, say, age 20 and age 50, as well as knowing age distributions of those men whose sperm count was measured.

The ultimate cause and effect boondoggle is to take the lower sperm count trend and pronounce the future extinction of the human race. Yeah, that would be bad, but is that a likely result?

I take comfort in knowing that Tucker Carlson is here to save the species. How about you?

This is the way the mandate ends, not with a bang but a whimper

Taking a break from my series analyzing "17 reasons" today -- good for me and likely for you, my ghostly reader. I will get back to the remaining reasons, perhaps in a bit less detail and with fewer digressions, as you may be seeing the overall point of the argument: traditional school rarely opts for models that clearly create more engagement and enthusiasm and longer-lasting learning. 

That is my vague transition to a post about processes and procedures that apply more broadly, starting with the elimination of mandatory masking on airplanes and publish transportation. The ruling has almost no connection to legal "reality" and was issued by a Trump acolyte who was confirmed by a Republican Senate despite the bar association labeling her as "not qualified." Yes, the ruling will be appealed and likely overturned.

But let's not ignore this: the mandate was going to expire in two weeks without such a decision and there are few people who think removing masks on planes and trains and taxis will cause huge disruptions. After all, anyone who has traveled in the past year or so (since vaccines) must have noted the wide flaunting of the rules, the poorly worn masks, the extended sipping of a drink to avoid putting that mask back on. 

There is a certain amount of "mask theater" (or "I won't wear a mask theater") that passes for political debate and identification in our bizarre times. It's not far from our universal "remove your shoes as you pass through security" rules, prompted by ONE botched attempt by a wanna-be terrorist to set off a shoe bomb. 

We also have amped up publicity about kidnapped children, despite kidnappings by non-relatives happening very rarely. The number of those kidnappings averages about 300-400 each year, though there are many more cases of missing children (95 percent of whom have "run away from home"). But overreacting to one case of something, while perhaps coming from best intentions, can lead to current obsessions with "our poor children being stolen away, forced to become gay or trans, pushed to feel guilty about themselves, and more. I know these fears are not the same nor equal in potential damage... but all those concerns grow out of not understanding risk. 

Humans are terrible at assessing risk, and always have been. But somehow we manage to hop into cars and drive many miles while living with the risk of an accident. We buy weapons for defending our homes when the chances of a home invasion are vanishingly small. 

I have vague hopes that the end of mask mandates may bring down the nation's political temperature a bit, but I would not bet on it. 

There is a reason horror movies and all sorts of thrillers are popular: many people love being scared. The psychology of that escapes me but perhaps has to do with NOT being the victim. Whew! THAT guy in the movie got attacked but I avoid it, or something. Maybe it's about getting the heart rate up from time to time or feeling superior to "victims" who suffer and die in literature and film and TV (and in the daily press) constantly.

The irony connected to all this fear, of course, is that we now live safer and healthier lives than at any time in human history. Technology has created standards that protect us in ways we are not aware of. Vehicles, for instance, are much safer. Driver education classes used to feature gory car crash video and stills, but they are not what saves most lives when people are in car crashes. The car is designed to protect us most of the time and we don't need to participate to enjoy that increased safety.

The reasoning behind the removal of mask mandates may be flawed, or even silly, but the results are OK for most people. That is at least partially due to the miracle vaccines that have essentially stopped vaccinated people from dying of Covid. 

All we had to do was get vaccinated and boosted. The rest is automatic.

'Let's run that again' is not a negative instruction

I am covering two reasons football is better than high school this morning, since they are complementary.

#5. In football, repetition is honorable. 

We may or may not be on board with Malcolm Gladwell's assertion that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly skilled (or expert) at something, but we all agree that a certain amount of practice pays off. Practice needs to be purposeful and strategic -- practicing the wrong things doesn't lead to sudden success -- but almost everything gets "easier" or better or more efficient, with practice.

Basketball players do not come on the court for pre-game warmups immediately firing three-pointers. They run simple layup drills, and even the professionals do this. Football players run the same plays in practice, over and over, until they don't hesitate in their tasks. 

Long ago I helped coach a 7th grade football team and the offense I taught consisted of only seven plays, each of which could be run either to the left or to the right. If the players ran them correctly, we had a decent chance of moving the ball forward. In my coaching infancy, I discovered that, in theory, every play a team ran in football was designed to produce a score. The "x" factor was simply whether the ball carrier could run by or fake out or bowl over TWO defensive players, assuming the other offensive players all handled their opposite number with a block or screen or some deception.

In most academic classes, the idea that we will go over essential skills every day is unheard of. No way. We've got to move on. We've got all this planned curriculum to cover and time's a wastin'.

Most teachers are fine with moving the class on to the next project, book, unit, or experiment, even if many in the class have demonstrated at most some minimal skill or competence or understanding of the previous lesson. "Hey, everyone is passing, at least, so we can move along." 

Or think of it this way: in that English 9 class I constantly refer to, some students may earn a D on an assignment (or flat out fail) but does that bring the class to a halt until everyone is somewhat equal in skill and performance?  Unlikely. But that 7th grade team repeated key plays over and over until everyone was doing their job. "Let's run it again," is an athletic coach's friend.

Reason #6 is related to #5. In football, the unexpected happens all the time. 

In a football game, players line up across from the same opposing players quite often, yet every play is unique. Successful practice teaches players what to do but everyone knows the opposition may do something different and everyone has to adjust. There is no time to reflect on best choices and athletes can't just coast on their basic skills and fitness. 

Learning to read resembles this uncertainty factor. We take on increasingly complex texts as we become more comfortable with vocabulary and syntax. We don't have to have encountered a text before to competently make sense of our reading. In fact, we love to read something new and compelling.

Football players can't take a play off (well, they can't if they hope to continue playing), unlike most students in a classroom, who can doze or daydream or doodle or subtly check their phones... Classroom group discussions are routinely dominated by just a few students, though we suspect that others have valuable insights to share. They just don't feel empowered to share them and find it comfortable to watch and listen to others rather than take a chance on expressing something. 

Lesson plans for most courses are built on strict cause and effect patterns. If the teacher structures the lesson as lesson design suggests, students (widgets) will naturally progress in rational ways and all reach the same conclusions, skills, and ideas. Disruptions to the plan are damaging and wasted time means the logical progression is hurried. 

But education is not a fancy cookbook, with surefire recipes for success. If we found a foolproof recipe for learning, wouldn't everyone be successful?

I noticed in my own career that the very best lessons were those that took off in unexpected directions, and that the longer I taught, the more nimble I could be. Sticking to the script is what we do when we aren't prepared enough to enjoy variations and options and even the unknown. A lesson is not a play, with each student needing to properly recite lines for success.

Football coaches are continually surprised by how players handle shifting situations. Most academic classroom teachers are not fans of surprises. Order is essential for those carefully planned lessons to reach their goals. Surprises can be bad or embarrassing. 

I'm not advocating for uncontrolled chaos, but wouldn't it be nice to be regularly surprised in the classroom?

The whole can be much greater than its parts

Here's #4 from "17 Reasons Football Is Better Than High School: In football, a player can let the team down. 

Coaches often talk about the importance of chemistry within a team and how the way all the individual interact can produce more success than anyone might predict based on raw talent. You rarely hear a classroom teacher gush about how a freshman English class has performed far better than raw test scores predicted.

Academic classes don't assign "team grades." The emphasis is always on how the individual does and no matter how we try to develop a civilized "classroom culture," in the end it's each student for herself.

That incentive of not wanting to let your team down is powerful and we have simply removed it from the options for most classes. 

Players who don't buy into the team concept tend to either quit athletics or find a sport that does not require a group for success. Or they are simply asked to leave.

Think of all the academic classes you have been in where you knew a fair percentage of your peers could not care less about the subject being studied, much less care about how those around them were doing, how much they were learning, and how they were connecting new learning with previous learning.

Football teams that don't work together, with individuals sacrificing and going beyond expectations, always end up losing in the long run. The players may have to suffer collectively for a while if the "every person for himself" ethos takes over, but lack of success is self-correcting in sports. Coaches and players want to win, or at least perform their best, and simply repeating routines and traditions that are not producing success can't continue. Changes must be made.

I was browsing some of my current college class gradebooks the other day and found a significant number of students either not participating or submitting assignments consistently late. Several students are in danger of not passing, but more are looking at a final grade that has almost no relationship to their writing ability. They are the "Bart Simpsons" of the academic world, mostly underachieving and then complaining of the world's unfairness.

In sports, there is enormous peer pressure to push oneself, to rise to standards and surpass them. If there is no blocking for the talented quarterback, and no one to catch the passes, all that individual talent is for naught. In my college classes, those students who are earning solid A's could not care less about their peers who are flailing (and failing). Why should they?

There are a very few "peer editing" assignments where one student's not participating could affect a partner's score, but for online courses my practice quickly became to NOT penalize the partner of a student who simply did not post a draft for the "peer edit." Yes, those students with the underachieving partner missed some feedback, but I wonder just how helpful that feedback would be in the end.

Imagine the unrest in my courses if I declared that each group or partnership would get the same score, even if someone didn't participate at all. Oh, the injustice!

But I recall many sports practices in my life where the entire team would be running wind sprints because one person on the team was late or repeatedly ran the wrong play or simply "dogged it" during a drill. It wasn't fair, perhaps, and we grumbled, but the peer pressure on that kid who was not working hard mostly meant that such indiscretions were not repeated.

Sports value and practice community in ways most academic courses just can't or won't.

I would often ask students on the yearbook staff about how many C-level photos and captions should appear in the final book. The answer was zero, of course, with the goal being that everything in the yearbook would be A-level (however we define that). 

As with a football team that does not win all its games, sometimes content in the yearbook did not rise to a high level. We had to publish at some point, even if almost everything could be a little better, much as a football team needs to play the scheduled game even though players don't feel ready. But the team goal remained to "win."

Performance activities reward working together and sincere support for people. Most academic classrooms are all about how I did, not how we did.

Everybody loves approval of some sort, but most students fall short

It's a milestone, perhaps to be posting #300 in my little Monday-Friday blogging experiment that has been going for about 15 months. Sometimes I worry that I don't have a clear enough focus or that I am either being too general or too personal. I honestly have no idea who even reads the posts.

But I carry on, and one of the ongoing themes of the blog is that I imagine writing for media advisers or prospective teachers, and that is where we are now as I continue exploring the essay "17 Reasons Football Is Better than High School." I consider sports reporting to be a great opportunity for narratives and for writing nonfiction stories that include all the rhetorical devices we learn in English Language Arts courses.

Today it's #3: In football, teenagers are honored. 

This may seem both obvious and (depending on your interest in athletics) unneeded. Athletes are constantly given various forms of approval, from award banquets, pep assemblies, yearbook spreads, trophies, to letter jackets and banners hanging in the gym. We put team on Homecoming floats and community members attend games (or at least they CAN).

Imagine those sorts of recognition events and signifiers for top math students. Stars always get attention, and some of that is likely misplaced, but even the third string offensive linemen get their letters and feel part of the larger football program. 

When I taught in Iowa City, the cross country program in the school was tops in the state year after year, and at one point there were about 100 girls on the team. Imagine that! Only the top six times count in cross country meets, but the sport was about so much more.

For over 90 young women, it was about reducing personal times and about being part of a larger movement. It was about hanging with friends at team 'feeds' or simply getting to know some students when girls were freshmen and trying to find their way through 9th grade. It was about eventually working hard enough to perhaps be one of the runners with the best times, even if now they were struggling to even finish the course. There was even a recognition that running and pushing oneself was good for you, mentally and physically.

In many academic courses, a constant question is "Will this be on the test?" Teachers grimace and come up with sarcastic zingers in response, but that question never gets asked among sports teams. In sports, everything is on the test, and the tests are games. 

Few students feel a spirit of camaraderie with their chemistry class peers. "Hey, guys, we are all working for a goal here and we can support one another and everyone can find something supportive to do to make our chemistry class great." Ha!

A standard drama cliché is that "there are no small parts, only small actors." The point is that the show is more than the sum of its parts and that no one on stage can be successful without a larger, dedicated community. 

In high school academics, we have a star system and some of those "stars" rarely even interact with other students, much less find ways to lift the performance of the entire class or grade. That is due to the competition in most classes being between students as individuals (if she gets a good mark, that reduces my chance to get a good mark) rather than the focus being on the group succeeding.

Students hate group projects in English or social studies classes, learning that some in each group always take on more than others. Labor in those groups is never precisely equal. Why should I share my hard work with others who aren't as interested or motivated or smart as I am?

Again, that is not a regular concern among athletes. They are part of something larger than themselves.

The honors come naturally. 

Activities are not measured by "good enough"

Continuing with my close reading of "17 Reasons Football is Better Than High School," I am moving to Reason #2: In football, teenagers are encouraged to excel. 

This is clearly true in many performance-based activities, as coaches, peers and audiences may find themselves surprised by the student doing something unexpected or with unexpected skill.

In most standard academic areas a student does well enough for an A, and that is that. Students meet predetermined standards and they have proven their competence. The course is completed. The unit is over. The test has been finished. Now students move on to another predetermined set of requirements.

In football, there is no such thing as "good enough." Coaches congratulate players, and they may enjoy the adulation of fans, but then it's back to the practice field where they are encouraged to do even more, to be even better. 

In football, merely winning the contest is not the bottom line. It is quite common for an athlete to reflect on a performance and find that the result was lucky or the team won but the athlete did not perform "perfectly" or up to a standard.

In most performance activities, coaches, directors, advisers, etc., push students to constantly improve. As media advisers, we expect reporting and writing and design to be clearly better later in the year than those were early in the year. This is NOT true for, say, a New York Times reporter, who is expected to be functioning at the top of her game every day, every story. But I also note that professional development never stops, with feedback from editors and consultants... and opportunities to be recognized for truly excellent work in numerous awards competitions.

If a student scores a perfect mark on some test, like the ACT, that signifies an end to that activity. Why would a kid ever try that again? But a running back who scores three TDs in a game doesn't simply stop playing the sport.

The academic world claims to be encouraging students to excel, of course, but only to the level prescribed for that age group or class. If a kid gets every question right on some quiz, there is nothing more to do. In fact, most students would be upset to find that after acing the test, the teacher hands them more work to do, more challenges. A lot of school is completing requirements.

But a football player never can play a "perfect" game... and no one can even define what perfection might mean in athletics or editorial writing or singing the lead role in the musical. 

It is quite common to watch a performance and think, "That student really surprised me there. I had no idea that she could do that or I had never seen that particular action or interpretation before."

Most of school is about showing teachers (and the community) that students know the "right" answer.

Football is about striving for some undefinable excellence. Football also includes opponents who are also striving for that essence of success, providing context beyond a rubric or score sheet.

Reason #2 is a reminder that success in education is shown most clearly through demonstrations and performances, not through multiple choice tests.

And students are quite willing to take on the challenge of those performances, welcoming the extra pressure and the possibilities of failing. 

Failing is always a possibility in football or most any performance. In most classrooms, failing is disaster and some schools have basically created systems to avoid ever needing to fail a student. 

But players routinely miss tackles or blocks or drop passes. Even the stars.

How can that sleepy kid in fifth hour be so full of energy on the athletic field?

Continuing with my interest in sports journalism and how it can become the heart of our reporting (though not the sole topic, of course), I will be citing several sections of a 1998 essay by an ethnographer named Herb Childress. He spent hundreds of hours observing and interviewing high school students over a year, spending most of his time observing outside normal class time, and approaching them as he would any "new" culture.

This will hardly shock anyone, but he consistently found that students who were listless and bored while in almost any classroom would suddenly summon up endless energy and focus and enthusiasm for an after-school activity -- from sports to part-time jobs to hobbies.

The classic line was something like, "I wish Billy could work as hard in math class as he does on the football field."

Childress titled his essay "17 Reasons Football is Better Than High School," but he explained in the article that what he meant was more like "even football is better than high school," since he doesn't like football as a sport. 

The nice thing is that you can sub in almost any high school activity for "football" and his findings still make sense. So we could have "journalism" is better than high school, with the assumption here that by "high school" Childress meant traditional classroom instruction.

Here's reason #1 from the article: In football, teenagers are considered important contributors rather than passive recipients. 

This is significant mostly because this sort of attitude is quite rare for teenagers to experience. Most academic life begins with the basic idea that children are "empty vessels," ready to be filled with knowledge and skills, and class time is when that gets done. The students are not in charge of much -- "you don't want the animals running the zoo" -- but even football, with its authoritarian tendencies, looks so different from daily classes.

Most students enter a new term with blank notebooks and await instruction. That is the definition of passive behavior.

No matter how knowledgeable or skilled a football coach is, he can't make tackles or throw passes. The players are responsible for their performance, in the end. That is why a football coach might completely change an offense from one year to another. If one year a team features some big, fast running backs and a quarterback who is not a accurate passer, no one is surprised to see an offense that runs the ball most of the time. If a couple years later the team has a quarterback who can throw and several speedy wide receivers, the passing game is going to be emphasized. 

There is no one right way to play football, it turns out, and innovation is prized. Is that how geometry classes work? Are skills and interests of students taken into account when curriculum is created and taught, or are students all expected to master the same material in the same amount of time (or grades suffer)?

If a football coach stubbornly sticks to one strategy, despite not having the needed talent and skills on the roster, that coach will eventually be looking for a new position. 

Is that true of a geometry teacher whose class is not meeting state-mandated goals and not performing well on standardized tests? Heck, no. Those lazy students will need to pick things up. No need to fiddle with class size or class length or even classroom strategies.

If we sub in "student media" for football, we realize that advisers can't force students to be great photographers (though we can certainly teach skills and provide opportunities and equipment), so insisting on publications that feature large photos and relatively little copy for that particular staff and year. 

If we find ourselves with talented writers who possess clear and unique voices, advisers might find ways to provide sufficient space in student media for them to share those gifts. 

There are no standardized tests in football or in student media. 

When more join the school's "Madden" team than the football team

There was a time when I would have read a report on the Colorado High School Athletics Association having a goal of supporting esports in at least 50 percent of high schools as a mislabeling of an activity. No, BTW, I don't know the date the association has in mind for reaching that percentage, and I assume the hope is for all schools to offer some level of esports eventually.

I had a limited view of what a sport was while growing up, but a ball was almost always involved. Wrestling was an exception as were most track events, but cheerleading and poms and dance teams? They seemed to fit in a specialized "performance" category, much like marching band. I mention marching band only because in my rapidly receding personal history I helped create a P.E. credit for marching band members in fall trimester. A P.E. credit is not a sport, of course, but it's a close cousin.

Esports are a late-comer to my evolving list of sports activities, though I'm not sure I would include them under "athletics." But that will likely change, particularly if one of our grandsons ends up joining a high school esports team. 

One of the things I like most about high school sports is that students can be involved in teams, learning so much more about themselves and about how to function in a diverse society than mere games can accomplish. Most of what high school athletes truly treasure from their sports revolves around friendships, and learning to appreciate people they might never have even met, and bonding activities, and time-management and dedication.

Lots of people are like me, I assume, never playing organized sports after high school (and many students don't get to participate in sports at all as athletics tend to funnel the average out of the sport). But the lessons I learned follow me everywhere (and my ancient stories annoy even those who love me).

Still, esports? 

A Japanese researcher proposed eight "defining characteristics" of sports: physical training, victory or defeat, mental training, pleasure, sport rules, world wide organization, fiction and modern rationalism. That seems quite comprehensive and I am still trying to link them all together. I am also not certain that all eight must be present to qualify an activity as a sport. In fact, I have hazy arguments against, say, the need for "world wide organization." Can't a kid invent her own sport, played exclusively in her neighborhood?

But esports certainly possesses most of those eight characteristics, with the "physical training" category being somewhat suspect. Yet it's hard to separate the discipline of focus and dexterity from that of concentration and patience and drive to win. 

But here's the real reason I have come around to esports in particular: they provide an opportunity for community that many schools have difficulty creating. I guess when everyone gathers in the gym to cheer for their teams (or boo their opponents), there can be some sense of belonging, but most assemblies are "mandatory fun" activities. 

It's a failing of how high schools are structured, I suppose, that most kids entering a large comprehensive high school may feel lost in the mob, feeling isolated and unsupported.

If I were in charge of public schools, I would consider a requirement that EVERY student must participate in a sport, club or performance group throughout their high school years. Mandates are a tough sell, of course, and the first thing that happens is the "what abouts?" and the unique exceptions that would occur to a critic.

I would love a serious debate that addresses all those exceptions to the rule and "what abouts?"

Bottom line: if esports provides some students with a place to gather and interact and work with others toward a competitive goal, I am for them.

Writers benefit from models to work from... read, then write

This week one of my writing classes is writing reviews, one of the most common forms of persuasive writing.

Below is a quick review by Brittany Witherspoon, one of the regular reviewers from https://popculturereviews.com/  This reviewer is a fan of the remake of West Side Story and isn't too interested in exploring what does not work or what might be improved, instead choosing to focus on four specific things she likes about the movie. I chose this review to highlight because it tends to much more difficult to rave about a movie or TV show or restaurant than to pan them, to find fault and to quibble.

This tendency can be seen in the halls of any school, by the way, as kids gather at lockers and gossip and share stories. The largest clumps of listeners gather around the student sharing the most scandalous tales. A student extolling the virtues of a friend or particular teacher soon loses audience share. 

Never forget: most news is "bad news," and that applies to school gossip as well as the front page of the Post. This truth is not a great advertisement for human nature.

Every so often, a film gets released at a certain time of year and generates little to no buzz. One of 2021’s prime examples of that is West Side Story. There could be several reasons for this. Maybe fans of the original just didn’t care to see Spielberg’s take on the beloved classic. Or, considering we’re still in a pandemic, film fans might not have thought it was worth it to press their luck. Whatever the case, the film bombed at the box office, bringing in a total of 70.7 million dollars against a 100-million-dollar budget.

Now that it is awards season, film fans are revisiting features they might have missed during the cold winter. And lately, West Side Story has been the talk around town. The American musical drama, which follows the forbidden love between Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) hits HBO Max today (March 2, 2022). Here are four reasons to watch Spielberg’s latest.

I will interrupt to mention that it would not be timely in March to review a film released in December, but the recency factor is found in the film being finally available on cable, allowing for more potential viewers. The first question readers always have is: "Why am I reading this right now?"

The opening graf also contains the "concession" in this argument, about the relative lack of box office success and about some consumers not feeling the need to revisit a classic musical. 

4) A five… six… a five, six, seven, eight!

As a musical theater nerd, I cannot express how important choreography is to a feature musical. Dance is a way to capture and express emotions through intricate movements and fluidic bodily poetry. And this statement remains true when it’s in film. Luckily for dance fans, choreographer Justin Peck knew exactly what to do. Blending movements and dance sets from American choreographer Jerome Robbins’s original numbers and choreography of his own, Peck delivers fantastic dance numbers. He captures the intensity, vibrancy, and beauty like the original while adding his own flair. What could be better than mixing a little old with the new?

3) Now THAT’s cinematography!

If you’re on Twitter, you might have noticed that this film has been generating quite the online buzz. Specifically, West Side Story’s “puddle shot” has become the standout scene of conversation. After learning that this was a last-minute suggestion made by cinematographer Janus Kamiński, I could not believe it. In fact, the team filmed it on the final day of principal photography. Talk about movie-making magic! Scenes like these are prevalent throughout Spielberg’s musical. And it’s exactly why it’s deserving of all the attention. Bravo Kamiński!

2) Ariana DeBose… need I say more?

On Sunday, Feb. 27, Ariana DeBose took home the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) award for an outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role. I cannot shout from the roof-top enough how well-deserved her nomination/win was. Ariana is a scene-stealer. I could not take my eyes off her, as she delivered THEE performance of this film. There are no limitations to what Madame DeBose will accomplish next. I know it!

1) Not his first rodeo…

I always get a chuckle out of commentary like “so-and-so has still got it.” This usually comes after said filmmaker has made a couple of films that are outside of their normal quality releases. Spielberg has definitely been in these conversations recently to which my reply is… he never lost it! That’s right folks… Steven Spielberg is one of the best filmmakers living today, and he even shows no signs of slowing down. And if his contributions to cinema keep going in this direction, I will continue to be a champion of his work!

I also note a few too many exclamation marks in this review. Yes, we can be enthusiastic about something but when we need to add superfluous punctuation to be more clear, that should be a clue that we need to go back and supply the details and anecdotes that allow the READER to feel enthusiasm without us forcing them.

From a structural standpoint, breaking the review into four distinct sections, each with a subhead, is smart and fits modern reader expectations, particularly for online readers. Focused "chunks" are a great choice for many writing projects.

We finally watched the latest James Bond movie (No Time to Die) and I was thoroughly unimpressed. Lots of action to no clear effect, among other criticisms. I wanted write about it, but where would I find the timely angle? Perhaps when it finally gets to Amazon Prime... since Amazon has bought the studio and film rights for most of the franchise?

Still, sometimes it's nice to read a review that is quite positive. And, for what it's worth, I enjoyed the remake of WSS so I felt affirmed by this review.

 

"Free speech for me, but not for thee"

I used to teach my journalism students that censorship could not ultimately prevail due to the Internet and the fact that people could circumvent specific instances of censorship because the Internet cannot be fully controlled.

Turns out I was sort of right while also being incredibly naïve. 

Free speech is one of those core American values that we are enthusiastic about in the abstract but that we are not so sure about in specific instances.

Right now the country (the world?) is engaged in arguments that boil down to "free speech for me, but you? not so sure about you." 

It wasn't long ago where we were deluged with all sorts of calls for "freedom of speech" on college campuses, and those calls came from right wing groups and individuals. Poorly written university policies that were too vague and too paternal have been under fire for some time.

Now the right wing is busy condemning the other end of the educational spectrum, trying to limit what can be discussed in elementary school.

Russia is engaged in a very successful censoring of all honest reporting on the war in Ukraine, with a tight rein on TV and newspapers. Still, some "truth" is getting through because tech savvy people will always find a way to provide some options for users. At this point, the only real Russian strategy would have to shutting down the Internet across the entire country.

The U.S. still provides almost unlimited choices in what media we consume, a crucial difference between this country and a dictatorship.

I am not a free speech "fanatic," as I do support reasonable standards as to age of those receiving the speech. I don't have a firm age cutoff for, say, discussing sexuality but the question is worth some conversation. But I assume we could come to some agreement on when certain books or movies best fit with brain development and society's interest in providing protections for the young. It wouldn't satisfy everyone, of course.

Lately it seems that many Republicans have decided that some speech is just so dangerous that laws need to be created to control it. I'm sure many would point out that Democrats have the same opinion about free speech, particularly when that speech violently disagrees with progressive values.

Free speech is more attractive when most of the country can agree on basic facts and values and can support the basic rights and humanity of those who hold differing views.

We are now to the point that we are questioning other people's basic thinking skills, morality, and ability to make informed judgments. 

Ideas are powerful and when we are not sure we can "win" an argument through rational debate and evidence, it's very human to want to simply shut down other voices.

Today's challenge for student media is to find ways to keep the conversations going, to keep asking readers to think about alternatives and injustices and traditions and compromise.

We don't need textbooks for examples of great rhetoric

Once again, thanks to Frank Bruni and his weekly blog for highlighting some great recent writing. I picked out four samples on varied topics to take a closer look at today.

Here is Robin Givhan’s take on Smith vs. Rock at the Oscars in The Washington Post, which a bit ironically bemoans the obsession with the slap: “The culture has little patience for the damaged thug in a T-shirt and jeans who’s lucky if his power extends the length of a neighborhood block, but it has the stamina to dissect the psychic pain of a mogul in a made-to-measure Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo.”

I would often use quotes from newspapers in AP Lang classes as a way to explore diction, syntax, figures of speech, and tone -- the four key categories of rhetorical choices. The only (maybe) challenging diction here might be "mogul," though there would likely be some students unable to quite place what "Dolce & Gabbanna" might mean. Of course, may readers can at least approximate meaning from context and that "made-to-measure" adjective would help.

If we were discussing this sentence in class today, I would ask about that simple change in direction achieved by "but" that leads from one claim to a second claim and immediately sets up a conflict. Students would benefit from seeing the rest of the story (or maybe just reading the link online) to see whether the writer did a solid job of supporting those two claims.

Also in The Post, David Von Drehle noted that for all President Biden’s considerable virtues, “when big issues are on the line, he remains the oratorical equivalent of a kid learning to ride a bike in a room full of Ming vases.”

Here we have a simile of sorts, asking readers to picture delicate pottery threatened by an unsteady young bike rider. The writer's comment referred to the president's speech that seemed to call for Putin to be removed from power. As I mentioned in an earlier post: he accidentally spoke the truth and we can't have that. 

One thing to discuss with students is that we all need to make thoughtful choices, in rhetoric and in many other areas of life, rather than stumble around, not being precise and perhaps clouding up our claims.

The theater critic Peter Marks, appraising the costume design in the Broadway revival of “Plaza Suite,” noted “a mother-of-the-bride dress so redolent of springtime it might have to be mulched.”

It's not easy to write descriptions that rival those of photographs, but writers can actually create far more than visual impressions. Here we have a comparison of a dress to spring, and students would benefit from defining "redolent," a term most high school students have never heard or read. It primarily means "fragrant," but here it also means "evocative." The dress probably has no particular odor, but I can imagine a floral arrangement and vivid greens and yellows and pinks. 

Finally, one more interesting sentence, this from George Will, who wrote this on Ginni Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Thomas), after news broke of her stolen-election text messages to Mark Meadows: “The shelves in her mental pantry groan beneath the weight of Trumpian hysterics about the 2020 presidential election having been stolen and the republic’s certain ruination under Joe Biden.”

That metaphor of the mind consisting of storage space that may not be strong enough to support some ideas is not brand new but students benefit from the image created. 

Journalists are usually advised to not push vocabulary and readability indexes much beyond 8th grade level, insuring the widest range of readers for their work. I would argue that one educational contribution student media can make to the community is to push reading levels a bit higher.

The key is to avoid being "boring" and to always include some sort of context clues for unusual diction choices. Don't jam complex vocabulary into every sentence or every story, but sometimes the more advanced diction choice is the more precise one. Sometimes readers need more than basic facts and can better understand a simile or metaphor.

What if one goal were for student media to function as a living textbook?

What happens when all actions and facts are up for debate?

Disinformation is making everyone a bit crazy, and certainly tapping into the craziness that was always there in mankind, even before social media.

Many of us have been appalled by the videos and photos coming out of Ukraine, showing dead and mutilated bodies, and by the reports of rape and indiscriminate bombings and shootings. Much of the Western World is stunned and angry.

But most Russians believe (or profess to believe) that all the videos and photos and reports are fake, meant to damage their country's reputation. They have been fed a constant stream of coverage by the Russian media about fighting Nazis in Ukraine and about Russia being unfairly attacked.

But the Big Lie is not limited to Ukraine, of course. Last week, Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain, a first-term member of Congress, credited Donald Trump with having "caught Osama bin Laden," among other terrorists. 

bin Laden was taken out in 2011, long before Trump was elected, but would anyone be surprised to see this bizarre claim be repeated endlessly on right wing social media and TV? After all, a congressperson said it.

Here in Colorado, we have multiple Republicans running for state and national office who still cling to the fiction that Biden is not our elected president and that a giant conspiracy led to a coup. 

Ministers are praying for the persecuted insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and their zealot followers chant "amen!" Congregations pray for the "baby-eating Democrats" to be destroyed by a loving God.

Disinformation is a nicer way of saying "lies." Misinformation is how we describe mere mistakes. 

Journalists, researchers, and scientists make their share of mistakes, sometimes falling victim to pressures to publish and proclaim before all the facts are in. There is a reason journalism is often termed "the rough draft of history."

Less than two months ago, the common wisdom was that Ukraine would fall to the Russians in a few days. Now every media outlet is exploring how they could have been so wrong and what they didn't understand about, well, a lot of things.

But at least most reputable media outlets are trying to correct earlier errors. Less reputable media continue to lie, often out of knee-jerk reaction to anything claimed by political rivals.

The reality of disinformation causing so much confusion, anger, and hatred has to be addressed in the high school journalism classroom -- in every classroom -- and you couldn't blame students for doubting the accuracy of their own school media.

But building credibility with the audience is our only option, and the more localized and verifiable the coverage, the more trust is regained by the public for the media, for government, for the police, for churches and schools.

There isn't much a student media program can do to combat the disinformation on social media and state propaganda channels. But the coverage of our own campuses is the foundation of trust that we can try to build. And it is comforting to know that most students really do trust their teachers and their school. 

This is not new, but today our dedication to accuracy MUST be goal #1. We need to "get it right," to spell the names correctly and get the right scores of games. 

Local media can be where we all begin reclaiming the truth.

When everything starts to feel like a catastrophe...

A blogger I have followed for years is Seth Godin, and he posts some sort of item every day, 365 days a year. That volume of posts means that only some of them really connect with me, meaning I can apply his general thoughts to teaching or advising or just organizing my life. Some don't apply to me, at least that day.

But they tend to be short and it only takes a few moments to read them... and then there is that handy "delete" key.

Today's post caught my eye with this catchy "headline"/title: Catastrophization

That is not an English word, though it is related to "catastrophize," a verb meaning predicting the worst, no matter what the event or fact. Despite spell check rejecting the word, it made sense. I even had to say it (quietly) out loud to get the feel of the term. 

Here are the first two grafs of Godin's post:

Life’s a tragedy. It always surprises us, and eventually, we all die.

But tragedies don’t have to lead to catastrophes. A catastrophe is a shared emergency that overwhelms our interactions and narratives.

Social media has amplified a tendency of some people to make more of some situation or event or misstep than is deserved. "OMG! My car wouldn't start this morning and I missed the meeting" would be a fictional but possible "cry to the universe" that we have all seen in some form.

Our response might be to remind the poster that this is NOT going to change the course of the poster's life. It is hyperbole for the sake of grabbing attention and (maybe) faux sympathy. We rarely send that response, of course, opting for discretion and rightly assuming that pointing out the reality of the complaint not being that big a deal will lead to defensiveness and anger.

Godin goes on to note that "catastrophization is a sure way to grab some attention." It's part of the social media business model. And spending much time watching cable news begins to warp our sense of reality.

Here are the final three grafs of his post: 

...it’s exhausting. Catastrophe fatigue sets in, and we end up losing interest and drifting away, until the next emergency arrives.

Catastrophization ends up distracting us from the long-term systemic work we signed up to do. It’s a signal that we care about what’s happening right now, but it also keeps us from focusing on what’s going to happen soon.

The best way to care is to persist in bending the culture and our systems to improve things over time.

I would never argue that there are NO catastrophes in life, for individuals, for communities, for nations, for the world.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a catastrophe for Ukrainians, and perhaps for Russia itself, and could lead to a nuclear war that would involve the entire planet.

A health emergency might be catastrophic for a person and an entire family. 

The trick in life is to resist the urge to blow everything out of proportion, and we spend a lot of time civilizing children so that they don't continue to react to something like dropping their ice cream cone on the sidewalk as something that is worth wailing about, beyond consolation.

A student missing a deadline is not a catastrophe -- it's not even a tragedy. It's not a shared emergency and there are multiple solutions to the emergency.

An important part of learning to educate is finding strategies to distinguish between a simple problem and a true catastrophe. 

Unlike most areas of study, journalism is not developed with a textbook

Should our goal as teachers be to help students focus deeply on a limited range of topics? That is the "depth over breadth" argument.

Or are there more benefits from wider learning that doesn't go into much depth but that at least acquaints students with a wider world and more varied options? That would be the argument of E.D. Hirschs' Cultural Literacy. It was published in 1987 but seems as relevant as ever.

I was thinking about this basic argument as I watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night. I had a passing familiarity with a few of the artists and no knowledge at all of others, but found myself enjoying the performances while adding to my "cultural inventory." I could at least engage superficially in any conversations where some of those award winners are mentioned... or just not sit there glassy-eyed and unresponsive. I am no expert on Olivia Rodrigo, and wouldn't even recognize her music beyond one tune, but I would at least know she is a singer and not a basketball player. That's something.

One of the benefits of wide knowledge is that we can at least follow along in many conversations, though we are not "experts" and aren't able to go into the depths of analysis that some can offer. Those "experts" are often called upon by journalists to provide the deeper background that readers may want.

Journalism is not something you study so much as "do." Journalism is a series of practices and professional standards and procedures, but the idea of a journalism student spending hours poring over a dense textbook seems unnecessary and even irrelevant.

Journalists need to learn by doing, though it is nice to have a teacher/adviser who can provide guidance and share some best practices. That's why many introductory journalism classes begin with some quick instruction on how to interview sources, how to structure questions, and how to take notes (or properly record interviews). 

But discussing and practicing on classmates quickly becomes boring. Time to go out and visit a classroom or a club meeting or a sporting event and then interview a few people. If students come back with little to write about, that is a crystal clear indication that more work needs to be done on reporting skills. And sometimes students just need to get over a natural shyness or uncertainty.

Here's what most young reporters quickly realize: people LOVE to be interviewed, particularly if they are accustomed to obscurity -- and that would be most students. Think of how few times in school when a teacher truly wants to know a student's opinion. Most questions asked in school are designed to produce predetermined answers, just as a standardized test would do.

But a student journalist is seeking to learn something that could be of interest to readers when sitting down to talk with a source. Journalists tend to be "cyclical experts," digging deep for specific reasons and in focused periods of time. Then comes the next assignment to cover and the journalist becomes an "instant expert" in THAT topic or issue.

The philosophy of reporting that works best begins with curiosity. It begins with an acceptance that the reporter does not know everything already and seeks new insights, details or anecdotes. This philosophy does not resemble the "talking heads" on TV or podcasts, many of whom are playing more off their own personalities and experiences, and then creating arguments that don't have much support in terms of facts.

A kid who reports on the sophomore baseball game seeks to become somewhat expert on that particular sport, team, and game... certainly learning far more than a reader who was not able to attend the game. 

For any new adviser trying to help students become better reporters, here's an open secret: Get them out of the classroom talking to people they don't know all that well, and do it as early as possible.

The first few times will be hit and miss, but they are like rough drafts. We can't improve a piece of writing until there is a piece of writing, however flawed.

Hey, where is everybody?

The pandemic, combined with the skyrocketing number of open jobs and low unemployment rates, has left many colleges struggling to find students.

The country is down at least one million students since pre-pandemic days, with many potential students choosing the immediate rewards of decent full-time jobs over spending time on campus. It's hard to blame them.

Education is under attack from many sources, including those saying campuses "cancel" speech that doesn't meet "woke" requirements. For years, the media has focused on the debts students have accumulated and now struggle to pay off.

Pull back a bit and things may not look all that bad. In 1950, there were about 2.8 million students enrolled in college, and half of them attended private institutions. Today there are an estimated 19.8 million students enrolled, and almost 75 percent in public schools. 

Estimates are that there are about 31 million Americans age 18-25, traditional college age. Yes, it's quite a blur of statistics, but no matter how you look at it, at least 12 million people who might be enrolled in a college of some sort are not. 

But female and minority representation are way up and economists still can show the long-term benefits of a college degree.

And in 2020, about 37 percent of all Americans had some sort of degree, opposed to under 6 percent in 1950. So good news abounds.

But college administrators are in a panic, perhaps due to overly optimistic projections about enrollment in the recent past which led to expanding campus facilities and hiring more professors and support staff.

Employers are being forced by staffing shortages to bump up minimum pay and add bonuses and all sorts of incentives at the same time as college enrollment is declining. It's a heated competition and a good reminder that improvements and progress rarely are enjoyed by everyone. There are bound to be ebbs and flows.

Some states are devising ways to encourage more college education, with New Mexico, of all places, leading the way. Starting this summer, the state will cover all tuition at any public college in the state, no matter the family income of the student. No matter the immigration status. And the legislation enjoys bipartisan support. 

There are some minor conditions, such as maintaining a 2.5 GPA and having lived in the state for at least 12 consecutive months before enrolling, and some worry that the funding may dry up if energy prices fall and as pandemic relief money from the federal government ends.

A welcome bonus is that the "free college" program applies money for tuition and required fees BEFORE room and board and all sorts of supplementals (often more expensive than the tuition itself). So various scholarships can be used to fund those living expenses.

And get this: the $75 million cost per year of the program amounts to about one percent of the state's annual budget. 

Of course, even good news comes with some caveats. Much of New Mexico's current state income is derived from taxes on oil and other energy production -- the state is now #2 in the country in energy production. Environmentalists see some bad tradeoffs there.

But if New Mexico can find a way to make college available for all, other states are sure to follow.