Write Drunk Redux

I am taking the advice of Hemingway and, in the spirit of New Year's, have decided to write drunk; perhaps I shall come back to this post at a later date and choose to edit sober.

The Mayan calendar suggests (and I don't particularly believe it) that the end of the world is fast approaching - to tell you the truth, I couldn't be happier about that.

Endings are good things if only because they have this indomitable habit of creating beginnings; if the world as we know it is ending, I, like REM, feel fine - the world as we know it deserves a good end so it can get off to an even better beginning.

2011 was a rough year capping off a rough few years that have been part of a rough new century; particularly in the realm of education our brave new world has gotten worse and I'm quite happy to think that the era of education as we know it is coming to a swift and merciful end.

Perhaps the end of the world as predicted by the Mayans heralds in a thousand years of strong emphasis on arts education, perhaps it will simply bring about the end of No Child Left Behind (which couldn't possibly come to a bad end because it's been a poorly planned and executed program from the start, so any change in its status as an apparatus of government would be preferable to its current operation), perhaps we're about to see the final gasps of test-based standards and monofocus classrooms, perhaps we'll come to the realization that classroom education is a bunk theory and go back to a culture of tribal elder education (doubtful and probably suboptimal in the long run - tribal elders are notoriously bad at explaining physics, which are notoriously important when trying to accomplish things like building effective automobiles or bridges). One way or another it would appear that changes are on the horizon, and change of any kind is an event to be welcomed, since its absence is death and all that.

Education is only one example of the kind of thing that has been hard to get a handle on since we (literally) partied like it was nineteen ninety-nine, other examples in that category include carbon emissions, the Middle East, the American Political system, and the possibility of global thermonuclear war but in all of these realms we have seen change, both positive and negative, a constant reminder that we, our ideals, and the possibility (or surety) of a different tomorrow are steadily chugging on - vibrantly alive and beautiful in our inability to stay the same even for a single second.

I find it amusing that so many people are freaking out about the end of the world. Every damn day is the end of the world, as far as the events of that day are concerned, and that's a good thing. If we didn't overturn each day, decade, century or millennium with the end of a world or an era we'd never get anywhere, do anything, or be of any use to anyone.

So here's to the end of a day, the end of a year, the end of the world, and a new beginning to all of those things; welcome in 2012 with a celebration of the changes you see in your life and the world around you and embrace every moment as the joyous encapsulation of the end of the world as you know it.

Happy New Year,
Cheers,
Alli

PS - the blog will be taking a break for a couple of days as we organize a new schedule for the writers in order to bring you entertaining, edifying, educational content in a different order than normal - so don't expect Eric's belligerence to always follow Leena's critical clarity - we're mixing it simply to see if we can set off a different set of fireworks (after all there's nothing like poking a beehive full of grumpy writers just to see what happens.)