With a name like “Current,” and intelligent TV for young adults, how could the RiverTown community not be interested?

At the start of Grow With the Flow, I say

We seem to be taking childhood awfully seriously as we step into the new millennium. We hear that our children will have to fight and claw their way into the world if they expect to do more than survive. Even when we try not to listen, the messages of ruthless competition, dwindling opportunity, increasing demands — the threat to these people we love so much — chews on us. It makes us fearful. It can even corrode our common sense and our natural instincts. Our children have to be prepared! Every minute is important!

Today’s Doonesbuy (8/21/05) says it beautifully.

The first printing of Grow With the Flow is ready to ship to customers, IntelligenceRiver.net shows every sign that all the parts are working, and today is halfway between my father’s birthday and mine, so let’s call this the Official Publication Date.

So far as I can tell, that doesn’t actually mean anything in particular, but a bit of ceremony seems appropriate, so I think I’ll have a sip of grapefruit juice and turn in.

In a recent article, Michael Janofsky, Students Say High Schools Let Them Down says

A large majority of high school students say their class work is not very difficult, and almost two-thirds say they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting, according to an online nationwide survey of teenagers conducted by the National Governors Association.

The survey … also found that fewer than two-thirds believe that their school had done a good job challenging them academically or preparing them for college.

The article brought to mind a speech by Bill Gates, which was given to the same group,the National Governors Association, at the National Education Summit on High Schools.

I hope to come back to his speech again – it’s interesting from several points – but the survey of students brought to mind his

new three R’s, the basic building blocks of better high schools: 
• The first R is Rigor – making sure all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work;
• The second R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate to their lives and their goals;
• The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve.

Students say they’d work harder if classes were more demanding or more interesting. Mr. Gates says school work should be rigorous and relevant, which sounds like about the same thing.

This speech has been sitting around my desktop for a month. I keep starting to say something about it, and wandering into some byway – at this point, I have three word processing documents going. (Maybe the problem is I’m not using Word; I need the Whacha Wanna Say? Wizard to come help me.) I suspect the Wizard would prompt me with questions like these:

• Students want schools to work them harder. Is that to be believed? Why do they say they want to work harder? A desire to make something of their lives? Fear of the job market?
• OK, let’s say for the moment that governors, students, and the business community would like students to do more rigorous and relevant work, with lots of relationship support to help them. Anything missing in the formula?
• Why are both the speech and the survey Mr. Janofsky references appearing under the aegis of the National Governor’s Association? What’s the agenda?

Do I sound a bit cynical, a bit doubtful? The odd thing is, I agree with the speech; I found it moving and thoughtful; I know from many clients that rigor, relationships, and relevance in their high schools is profoundly out of balance.

Since I obviously don’t know what to make of this, let me focus on one part that makes me nervous. I propose a contest for readers: Complete the stems below. The winner will be selected by Mark V. Shaney, and probably won’t get a prize.

Rigor without Relevance would be ____________

Relevance without Rigor would be ____________

A mad melee of micro actions as we move to marketing – which is to say, Paul and Andy are both home for a visit, and in and around good family time, Paul and I are fixing typos on the Web site and I’m pressing everyone into service thinking about the details of “release,” the magical and arbitrary moment when we declare that Grow With the Flow and IntelligenceRiver.net are officially launched.

Boy! The side roads I wander down! Ellen Goodman took a shot at Steven Johnson last weekend:

In “Everything Bad Is Good for You,'’ maverick Steven Johnson swears that today’s popular culture is making us smarter. It isn’t the content but “collateral learning'’ that matters, says this unabashed fan of “Grand Theft Auto.'’ We should worry less about “the tyranny of the morality play,'’ he says, and smile more about the way the games challenge skills. But if the culture now provides a “cognitive workout,'’ what muscle is it building? Better and smarter pornographers? Maybe everything bad is worse for you.

I mentioned Johnson’s book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, a couple times just recently – I’m intrigued by the idea that video games are good brain training. But her point is well taken – I imagine a majority of the games being played are violent, and apparently some of them (I haven’t played “Grand Theft Auto") would not be great manuals for good Boy Scouts.

When I read , “the tyranny of the morality play,'’ there it was: I had indeed wandered into a medieval morality play, with Ellen Goodman taking on Everyman’s Evil Twin, John’s Son!

The result was inevitable – I got totally off track, and spent most of the evening googling around the general territory of the morality play. The obvious first jump was to Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, where I quickly discovered that I don’t get Hawthorne any more than I did in high school.

But I did hit some good general advice about arguments in Everyman itself:

Thou art but a fool to complain,
You spend your speech and waste your brain;

And then I found just what I wanted in Pilgrim’s Progress,, which I’ve been really meaning to read for several decades now:

Take heed also, that thou be not extreme,
In playing with the out-side of my Dream:
Nor let my figure or similitude
Put thee into a laughter or a feud;
Leave this for Boys and Fools; but as for thee,
Do thou the substance of my matter see.
 
Put by the Curtains, look within my Vail;
Turn up my Metaphors, and do not fail
There, if thou seekest them, such things to find
As will be helpful to an honest mind.
 
What of my dross thou findest there, be bold
To throw away, but yet preserve the Gold;
What if my Gold be wrapped up in Ore?
None throws away the Apple for the Core.

Our culture seems to have a good deal of trouble with any argument more subtle than Good vs. Bad. Johnson certainly intended to walk straight into the firing range with his Good-Bad title. And I think Goodman took the bait with an uncharacteristically one-dimensional response. But let’s not throw away the Apple for the Core:

* The process of playing video games may foster some cognitive skills.

* The content of some video games may be bad for kids.

The one statement has no necessary connection to the other. “Grand Theft Auto” may foster problem solving, thinking on your e-feet, planning and anticipation – while at the same time destroying a kid’s moral framework and giving him specific instruction in how to Go Directly to Jail.

That’s not about Video Games. It’s about this particular video game.

Can we get out of the morality play and start asking questions that might get us somewhere? Are there games that can teach the same skills using a morally defensible framework? Do they already exist? Can we write them of they don’t? Would kids play them? Would parents buy them? Have Ellen Goodman and Hilary Clinton played “Grand Theft Auto,” and if they did, who won? Is anyone reading this who actually knows something about “Grand Theft Auto"? Am I old enough to get it for my birthday?

Two days ago, we figured out why Internet Explorer wasn’t displaying the Coffee Shop tables (the different topic areas for discussion). Turns out it was displaying them, but a foot or so to the right of where your monitor screen ends. Ah! Microsoft! With that fix, we’re down to typos and making sure all the links work – which is to say, just a fraction of an inch, after all the delays, from full, honest-to-gosh publication!