Free and open Education?

[Jay McPhail]

Today we had a team of reporters out from Chinese Central television (CCTV) to cover what we are doing with empowering student learning in our district. To date we have had local, state, national and international coverage of what we are doing but the sheer size of CCTV’s audience (2 Billion) is staggering. I’m always surprised at the world view of the California educational system as they still view us as the leader in innovative educational reform, even though in reality our state systems are antiquated and increasingly inhibit innovation. I’m also pleased that the area of strength in the US educational system that is recognized is the general freedom of access (at least perceived) by our international visitors but in reality we lock our students and teachers down more than they are in a country like China. I read periodically about how China and other authoritarian governments selectively filter web sites for objectionable political content and the resulting outrage. That type of filtering for adults occurs every day in our districts and others. There is some rationale for doing that for students, but adults? Is our educational system a free and open one? Not in the area of technology and internet access…..

You can view the final videos at:


http://news.cntv.cn/world/20120218/102993.shtml
http://news.cntv.cn/world/20120218/103126.shtml
http://news.cntv.cn/world/20120218/103116.shtml
http://news.cntv.cn/world/20120218/102995.shtml