What began as appreciation for his Flickr tools (which, by the way, are useless to me now that Flickr is blocked by my school district’s web filters), has shifted to his personal blog about his family.

John Watson has so many projects that listing them all here would do them a disservice. But, I highly recommend subscribing to the feed for his blog called Flagrant Disregard. Most of the posts are just quotes from conversations with his children (ala “Kids Say the Darnedest Things”), but they have had my wife and I laughing in parental empathy for months. One of his recent posts, entitled “On Monkeys” is a great example:

Daughter: Can I get a monkey?
Me: No.
Daughter: Why not?
Me: Monkeys are wild animals.
Daughter: But I could give them a banana and they’d come to me.
Me: But they’re still wild.
Daughter: Are there tame monkeys?
Me: I don’t think so.
Daughter: I wish the president would start a company that trained monkeys.
Me: Now that you mention it, that would explain a lot.

I have found myself over the past few weeks reaching a philosophical crisis. My views on the future of education in America, and my political inclinations are at odds.

Many of you know that I am an admirer of Bill Ferriter, the blogger behind The Tempered Radical and a freakishly charismatic middle school teacher who uses Web 2.0 technology in his lessons in ways that I can only dream of. To boot, he earned the title of Teacher of the Year from his our school district last year. It’s enough to make a fellow educator either seethe with envy or long to emulate his success. I have converted this year from the former group to the latter.

Over the past six months, as I have begun to frame my own opinion on the ongoing debates over teacher accountability and the reauthorization of NCLB, I have been reading much of what Mr. Ferriter writes for his blog (as well as others hosted by the school district), and I find that it strikes a chord with me. I wholeheartedly believe in his philosophy about the importance of teachers taking control of the conversation about where the responsibility for learning resides. I share his contempt for those in our profession who are content to wallow in their antiquated teaching methods, wishing for the “good old days”. I had all but built a website in homage to the Ferriter mystique when I followed one of his conversations to another, very different blog.

When I arrived at EducationMatters.us, I was immediately taken aback by the format of the site. I mean, is it me or is this one of the most painful blogs to read in all of the Great Blogosphere? I honestly don’t know if it is the fonts or the logo or what, but I cringe every time the page loads in my browser window. Once I got over the presentation, I got back to being hoppin mad about the content. I wanted the author, a man evidently named “Lennie” (based solely on his email address which is the only information about the author that I could find on the site) who writes for the John Cox Presidential Campaign, to see that he was treating teacher like public slaves. I wanted him to understand that we are educated, trained, and experienced professionals who take our vocation seriously and can be trusted to do it properly without public scrutiny over the minutiae.

That was all well and good until I began to read what he was posting. While I didn’t agree with a lot of it, I felt a sense of appreciation for some of what he was writing. When I came out of the daze in which I found myself, I realized that Lennie was spouting a largely Libertarian philosophy about how public schools should be run. It may help, at this point, to explain that I have been a registered Libertarian for as many years as I have been able in the ridiculous state of North Carolina where ballot access laws are more strict than any other place I have ever lived.

I came to the painful realization that my soul agreed with the reasons behind the opinions expressed on EducationMatters.us, even if I found fault with some of the specific ways in which my profession was portrayed. And all of this left me with a conundrum: how do I reconcile my political views with my professional ones? I have a feeling this one isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.

With my new iPhone in hand, I’ve finally discovered the wonderful world of podcasts. One of my personal favorites is the award-winning Grammar Girl podcast, starring the surprisingly charming Mignon Fogarty. Each week, she goes after an issue (many raised by her listeners via email or voicemail messages) and uses extensive references from obscure style guides to correct the masses. I think that the true enjoyment of listening to this show comes from the guilty pleasure of having a professional tell you that you are justified in your long-held pet peeve about how some people love to spell “lose” as “loose”. Oooooh, it feels so good.

I have been a big fan of Stephen J. Dubner and Steve Levitt ever since reading “Freakonomics” two years ago. I discovered their blog a few months back, and that has helped rekindle that feeling of Science explaining Life that made me love the book so much. They recently “upgraded” to become part of the New York Times website, which has allowed them to include videos and many more cool features.

The recent posts on their site have centered around the most controversial topic in the book, the correlation (note: not causality) between the drop in U.S. crime rate during the 1990′s and the legalization of abortion in the 1960′s. We learn more about the research that led to the scientific paper on which this part of the book was based. Great reading for conservatives and liberals alike.

As the name suggests, this new enterprise is oxymoronic at its core. I will be using my “free time” to post and comment on things of interest to me–Apple products, atheism, dumb people, and education, to name a few–in a unpredictable, yet well-planned, style. I welcome your comments, and I look forward to engaging in some interesting conversations.

Photo courtesy of k4cay at Flickr.com