An article about school violence has been circulating through e-mail for several weeks and has caused quite a buzz in the African-American community online.
In "School Shootings and White Denial," Tim Wise asserts that whites have ignored problems of dysfunction and violence in their own communities for years. Yet after each school shooting, there is an echo of the same refrain: "Things like this just don't happen here."
The article, published in AlterNet.org, asserts that whites have been "lulled into a false sense of security." This, despite the high-profile shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado – as well as others in Kentucky, Oregon and, most recently, two in California.
"We ignore the warning signs, because in our minds the warning signs don't live in our neighborhood, but across town, in that place where we lock our car doors on the rare occasion we have to drive there," Wise writes.
A follow-up piece by Akilah Monifa points out that this opinion is something that people of color have been "quietly thinking and surreptitiously discussing for years." Yet, the original article was written by a white man.
Sadly, the second school shooting at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California – a predominantly white school – seems to underscore Wise's point.
Layoffs in distance learning: ECollege, a distance education learning company, announced last week that it will lay off 35 of its 330 employees.
ECollege supplies software, marketing and technical support to schools that want to provide online courses to their students.
The company recently lowered its earnings forecast for the first quarter and expects to lose up to $5.5 million, on revenue of up to $4.2 million, the Associated Press reported.
CEO Oakleigh Thorne said that eCollege has attracted fewer customers because some schools are designing their own online courses.
Online or else: This fall, the University of Dayton will require all prospective students to submit an online application.
The Catholic university is the second school in the country to ditch paper applications. West Virginia Wesleyan College was the first to do so last year.
"With this step, Dayton is again establishing a precedent that will soon become common practice," Richard Hesel, principal of Art & Science Group, said in a statement. "For all intents and purposes, the paper application will disappear within five years. Dayton is just several giant steps ahead of the inevitable."
Incoming students are also invited to meet their roommates in advance in an online "virtual residence hall." The school is also installing a wireless network.
Ed-Sec visits San Francisco: On Tuesday, Secretary of Education Rod Paige will be in San Francisco for Sun Microsystems' Worldwide Education & Research conference. Paige will be speaking about Bush's education plan, "No Child Left Behind."
Former Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander, will also speak at the conference.