It behooves you to check out http://security.tao.ca if you are an activist or otherwise concerned about online privacy. Tons and tons and tons of great resources.

A coalition of stakeholders has joined forces to ensure communication and coordination between seven of the organizations that voted No Confidence in the Board of Trustees recently. This is one of the most positive developments I’ve seen in a long time. Hear Hear! award goes to Martin Olliff: When you speak with a united voice … people aren’t able to say it’s just a few malcontents. Indeed. Building a powerful network of information and self-defense between University shareholders, is the only way that the Board is ever going to be taken down.

The ACLU has published a press release which endorses John Conyer’s introduction of legislation to ensure that the widespread problems with our voting system that were highlighted in last year’s election, are resolved. The press release also criticizes President Bush and the Republican Congress, who have not lifted a finger to do anything about the bill or the problem as a whole. The House has not scheduled any hearings on election irregularities and has no timetable for addressing it. ACLU representative Christopher Anders testified to the Democratic Caucus of the House:

Although the 2002 and 2004 elections may seem distant, Anders added, we are already very late if we want to get the reforms in place to achieve equality in the polling place.

Gee, the problems of the electoral system disproportionately disenfranchise poor and minority voters. If it weren’t for the problems that this bill aims to fix, George W. Bush would not have been elected President. And now the Republican Congress and Republican President are not willing to take concerted action to ensure fairness in voting. What a surprise!

Speaking of open and democratic schools, TECHNOS features an interview with Daniel Greenberg about his experiment in democratic schooling, the Sudbury Valley School, which is still running successfully after 33 years. All school governance is democratic (on the New England Town Meeting model), there aren’t any fixed curricula or pre-set courses (though students arrange for courses of study with instructors and do their own self-initiated independent study), and the only requirement for graduation is to adequately–in the judgment of the school community–defend in writing the thesis that they have taken responsibility for preparing themselves to be effective adults in the larger community.

I would like to see a couple more things before I really judge (simply judging from an interview of a school founder is not always the best way to go). Specifically, I’d like to see some experiences (and not just advertising brochure testimonials, but real experiences) from students. I’d also like to see some more comments about how these voluntary courses do end up being set up. Is it all one-on-one study, or do students usually get together and form study groups around a common list of reading (which I think is really beneficial for a lot of subjects, particularly in the humanities), or what? But on the face of it, it really sounds like an amazing opportunity for kids to learn in exactly kind of the environment that I was talking about–one which is open, democratic, respectful, and conducive to imaginative, critical, self-directed learning.

The sheer mass of letters in response to Camille Paglia’s Welcome to my world is hard to believe (13 pages worth of them), but even more amazing is their single-mindedness: nearly all the letters are on her shredding of the modern high school environment, and every single one of them, save one, emphatically agrees with some part of her comments. This came from everyone from disaffected shop teachers and craftspeople, to religious homeschoolers, to Lies My Teacher Told Me readers, to people advocating the destruction of standardized curricula. Now, most of the comments ranged from off-target to painfully reactionary, but I think this should really indicate something: high schools really suck. Nearly every single letter had the same theme of alienation, boredom, and stifling while in high school–whether from post-grad degree holders or dropouts.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot that’s good about high schools today. I had a great high school experience. I wouldn’t mind teaching at one of them myself. But there is a lot that is actively cutting against that good. And most of it has to do with the petty authoritarian structure of high schools. Students are forced into class, they sit and fill out forms, bells ring, and like good little rats they find their way through the maze to the next classroom. Guidance counselors track them into the course line-up that most befits their socio-economic background, goon squads of idle administrators patrol the hallways lest anyone consider spending their time outside of approved venues. Since I left my old high school, they’ve begun requiring student ID cards and greatly tightened up a once nearly unenforced closed campus policy.

The best parts of my high school career were the times when I was really free from this kind of micromanagement. My senior year I had a Early Release car tag that was supposed to only cover the last period of the day, but was effectively permission to leave campus whenever I pleased. Lax enforcement of attendence and tardy policies for seniors made it even better. I stuck with all my classes and learned a lot–and I really enjoyed it, because I was finally being treated like a responsible human being capable of making my own choices. I really look askance at the administrative response to school violence, which has been to tighten up and lock down their little bureaucratic fiefdoms as much as possible for the sake of security. That locking-down means even more locking-down of imagination, critical thinking, even more conversion of vital young girls and boys into boring docile bodies filling out forms. It’s taking what should be an academic community and turning it into a prison.