TN House to delay Common Core and PARCC for 2 years

I'd be lying if the news about the Tennessee House of Representatives passing a bill which would delay the implementation of Common Core and PARCC for two years didn't command my attention last night. However, I wasn't surprised. I had been predicting this would happen before the 2014 Tennessee legislative session even began. I was surprised that the House chose to do this as an amendment to another bill, rather than as a stand alone bill. But considering I just finished watching several new episodes of House of Cards, nothing should surprise me in the world of politics.

So what does delaying Common Core and PARCC for two years mean for educators making huge strides to implement and prepare for both? It doesn't mean anything. Many of the modifications to prepare for Common Core and PARCC were necessary to accommodate 21st century learning anyway. The preparations for Common Core and PARCC were and are great first steps in changing the way we educate children. So many of our methods and techniques were desperately out of touch with today's students, that the training and time spent preparing for Common Core and PARCC was not time wasted. The new attention to learning versus teaching is a paradigm shift that truly engages best practices for 21st century students, regardless of the standards being taught.

Will the Governor veto the bill? What does he have to lose politically by vetoing? Will the House have time to overturn the veto with a simple majority? It doesn't matter. It's only political theater. Educators have bigger fish to fry. Those districts and educators focussed on learning will be successful in educating students, with or without the decision-making of politicians.

Gravity: A Critique

!!POSSIBLE SPOILIERS!!

Quentin Tarantino gave an interview while promoting Django Unchained where he discussed how Westerns reflect the different cultural eras and decades in which they were produced. While the themes of cowboys, the frontier, law and order are often explored, there is also a subtext that delivers a cultural commentary. After viewing Gravity, I'm wondering if the same can be said for the Sci-Fi genre.

Gravity is visual stunning and that is well covered in countless other reviews. The acting and story are okay, at best. But what's most curious are the references to survivalism, evolution, spirituality, and humanity's relationship to technology. While most Sci-fi space flicks are filled with action and fantasy, Gravity takes a more careful humanistic approach. One can't help to recall Stanely Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Alfonso Cuaron even seems to reference the film in a few scenes.

Kubrick paints technology and our relationship to it in a different light that Cuaron. This is probably attributed to the Cold War and the Space Race itself. Technology is cast almost as a supreme being with  HAL 9000. In 2001, tools and technology have enabled our evolution from the Prehistoric Age through the Space Age. Kubrick does raise some concerns about our dependence on technology without giving a direct opinion.

Cuaron's vision of technology is entirely different. We watch computer after computer, and device after device fail for Kowalski and Stone. The clean sexiness of Kubrick's spaceships are replaced by broken down, cluttered and abandoned relics of a very recent past. While some spiritual symbolism has given a few religious groups the idea that Gravity is an outright denouncement of technology's false promises, the themes of survivalism and evolution counter that interpretation. Rather, Gravity is a critique of our current technological adolescence that both Carl Sagan and Gene Roddenberry have referenced. How do we move forward? Is that something that we can control? How do we compensate for our lack of control? How does technology make us more or less human? Unfortunately, I don't believe that these themes were fully developed in the film for concerns that it would alienate wider audiences. Considering the climate through which Hollywood films seem to be made, we are probably lucky that any subtext was allowed to survive into the final cut. (Which also lead me to thinking, Kubrick probably never would have been allowed to make 2001: A Space Odyssey in today's world. Not without more action and more noteworthy lead actors.)

I'm interested to check out Her next. Spike Jonze gave an interview back in the fall that caught my ear referencing some of the same themes of Gravity. I've also read reviews claiming that it is 'the most important Sci-Fi film' since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Our relationship to technology is changing. It's nice to see some directors taking the time to critique it.