Monthly Archives: February 2014

For my first education-related civic issues post, I would like to focus on high school education changes. According to the news and media, the United States has not been moving ahead in student achievement regarding test scores, compared to the rest of the world. While many countries are flying by us, our scores suggest an unremarkable and uncompetitive idea of the education system. Among these facts, there is a lot of reform proposed to lessen the gap between low-scoring students and get them up to speed. Many have ideas on how to move low-scoring students to perform better. However what seems to be lacking consistently are proposals on how high-achieving students can perform even better.

That’s not to say that raising scores on the bottom end wouldn’t be positive, just that it’s equally important to consider this fact: The thinkers and builders of our country’s future need to be intellectually nurtured in order to stimulate their ambition to work hard. Kids, even of high school age, need a reason to be excited about learning and school should be the place where children feel like their potential is valued. But what happens instead is that oftentimes tests such as the PSSAs and more recently Keystones are lowering the intellectual standards for kids to strive towards. Why aim to be exceptional when an 8^th grade knowledge of basic math concepts is enough to get your high school diploma? An article I read recently more aptly phrases my concern: “Declaring victory at minimum competency, which is what our system essentially does, is just really starting to worry us a little bit”.

It’s dangerous and delusional to convince ourselves that making tests easier to pass will increase the skill and talent of those taking them. But rather than put in the real hard work to modify education, those at the top have chosen to delay the consequences by changing the definition of “Proficient”. And even in cases where gaps have decreased among low-scoring students, no measures have been taken to take advantage of the high scoring students or to increase their scores even further. There is still so much untapped possibility to decrease the gap between high achieving students. But instead of being okay with unimpressive results, why can’t we strive to do better? Work harder? America was not founded on the principle of settling for less.

The point I’m getting at is that simply being “good enough” isn’t good enough for the real world. If policy makers want to honestly improve test scores and make American kids more competitive in the international work force, they need a better plan. Because lowering the standards for everybody so that more people meet them doesn’t sound like it’ll work well in the long run. A problem needs a solution, not a band-aid.

(article used: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/08/education-reform-may-leave-high-performing-students-behind?page=2 )

The Passion of Anna (1969)(Language: Swedish).

My foreign film of choice this week was a Swedish classic, which had been resting in my Netflix queue for quite a while. The Passion of Anna is a film that perfectly encapsulates the middle ground between drama and horror, something I’ve gotten used to with Scandinavian movies. The film itself isn’t particularly terrifying by modern standards but the mounting tension presented throughout gives a sense of suspense that modern cinema has desensitized us from.

Though the story is told mainly through the eyes of a man named Andreas, Anna is introduced almost immediately as a local woman who we later find out has lost both her husband and child in a car accident. She was the only survivor, and the event continues to haunt her in ways the movie touches upon. Though Andreas is initially involved with someone else, the film cuts to a few months later where he and Anna are living together. Despite a lack of passion throughout their relationship, it ends violently when Andreas comes to a slow realization regarding Anna’s past, right around the time that I realized the same thing while watching.

Visually, Ingmar Berman captures the cold and desolate environment of Sweden and connects it to the isolation felt by many of the characters. There is also a running theme of animals in the film, which leads me to think he is trying to draw parallels between wounded animals and wounded people.

Likes: I overall enjoyed the film. Particularly the dialogue has some monologues that are quite poetic. It’s an unusual plot which I also think is refreshing.

Dislikes: I can’t decide if I’m fond of a cinematic technique used throughout the film, which was to pause the story and cut to a short monologue by each actor describing their respective character. I don’t know if it was necessary or if it added to the film creatively.

However in general it’s a unique film that’s worth watching.