Sunday Loose Association Blogging

Ambling around the Internet, following links from fellow Ann Arbor bloggers at Mousemusings and An Empire Wilderness, plus a few tangents, I came across the following pair of related ideas:

From Common Dreams, about the Academic Bill of Rights:

"In Baxley's bill -- which is really the Horowitz bill -- students are customers, whose tastes and prejudices must be accommodated. Professors are likened to vendors who must take care not to offend or disturb those who have come to purchase their wares."

"It's like the Wal-Mart model: Maybe they can import holographic images of professors made in China, attractive classroom automatons who can be programmed to present marketable and politically acceptable material," she said dryly.

From Neil Bush's Ignite! Learning:

Dear Teachers, Ignite! Learning is thrilled to introduce you to The COW (Curriculum On Wheels), a program designed to let you deliver lessons in the same way professional presenters do. The COW (including computer, projector, and speakers) comes pre-loaded with all of Ignite!'s Science or Social Studies courses. You just plug it in and start teaching!

Please contact us to learn how to get The COW for your classroom.

Context: Barbara Bush made a "generous" donation to the Katrina relief fund, but earmarked the funds, so that they had to be used for the purchase of curriculum materials from her son's software company.  

This is as good of an example as you can get, of the Culture of Corruption.