Extra Credit Reading: Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Have you heard of the brand-spanking-new $63 million School of the Future in Philadelphia? Lots of domestic and international EduBigWigs are taking a little hands-on tour. Meanwhile, our own globe-trotting U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and friends entourage are off on yet another site-seeing junket fact-finding mission, this time to Japan.

Parents in New York City are in open rebellion over that district's attempt to ban students from having cell phones on school grounds. (Here's a N.Y.C. EduCrat's nightmare: parents take all the energy that they're currenly expending on fighting this ban on cell phones and instead use it to band together and pack board meetings in order to agitate for safer bully-free schools where defiant or disorderly students are not permitted to distrupt the learning environment.)

In a case that's sure to raise eyebrows and cause quite a bit of head-scratching, a ten-year-old boy has been suspended from school for giving his fifth-grade teacher an "overtly sexual" hug. (Did anyone else see the kid and his mom on Fox News last evening?)

Carnival-Carnival: the midway of The Carnival of Education is open for your educational pleasure over at What It's Like on the Inside, and don't forget to see what the homies are up to at this week's Carnival of Homeschooling.

It seems as though once they're elected, members of congress are expected to attend a class. (It's rumored that the top-secret syllabus includes topics such as: legalized bribary in the guise of fundraising, the Art and Science of patronage and nepotism, and How to Take a Trip bought-and-paid-for by lobbyists without getting busted.) -----------------------See our latest EduPosts here and yesterday's Extra Credit Reading there.