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As part of a class-action settlement, DuPont is making competitive scholarships available to anyone living within two miles of the company’s west Louisville plant. Applications are due March 15th.
The new endowment fund of $482,863 will provide scholarships to help defray educational expenses in several areas, including undergraduate study at two- and four- year colleges, vocational or technical educational courses, training to help someone attain a certificate or degree, or graduate study. The number of scholarships granted will depend on the number of qualifying applications received, he said, adding that the foundation expects the endowment to grow through investments in the coming years.
People can find out if they are eligible by going online to the foundation website, found here, which includes a map as well as list of eligible addresses. All current and future occupants of the addresses that opted out of the settlement will not be eligible for the scholarship, Stewart said.
Students on the University of Kentucky campus placed banners on campus yesterday to protest how the school names buildings, specifically the “Wildcat Coal Lodge.”
Here’s what we reported on today:
- Health Commissioner Says Vaccine Concerns “Unfounded”
- Daniels: More Budget Cuts Possible
- Male H.S. Principal Retires After Misconduct Complaints
- Nunn Moved To Psychiatric Unit
- Cold Front Brings Chill, Threat Of Flood
- Belle Of Louisville Receives $10,000 Donation
- Ballard Teacher Receives Milken Award
Every so often an academic muckety-muck comes out of his ivory tower to chastise the younger generation for being dumb. This SNOOT can’t tolerate (read: understand) the language kids use when writing on FaceBooks, txt msgs and their tweeter machines. Just thinking of it now I can almost hear the tweed rustling.
It’s not completely unfounded for someone to worry about language being misused, but aside from being pretentious, the argument that new technology is destroying the English language is unfounded. At least that’s what Clive Thompson says in Wired.
Thompson summarizes a study to make the point that kids are reading and writing more than ever, and the writing wasn’t garbled abbreviations.
Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.
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The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn’t find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.
Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But it’s also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions.
Are you a teacher? Have you noticed any new trends in student writing?
Here’s what we reported on today:
- Poverty Task Force Begins Work In Frankfort
- Preservation Groups Work to Move Civil War Monument
- Louisville Receives Stimulus Grant For Firehouse
- Berman Reacts to District Accountability Scores
- Clark Co. Lawyer Joins Medicaid Fraud Unit
- Plans Announced For Botanical Garden
- Bank Executive Opposes Regulating Financial Industry
- Norton/Anthem Officials To Meet
Here’s what we reported on today:
Former PRP High School football coach Jason Stinson hasn’t said much–or anything–since his acquittal last week, but the C-J has an update on his career.
Four days after being acquitted of reckless homicide in the 2008 death of a player, former Pleasure Ridge Park High School football coach Jason Stinson was reassigned to PRP Monday.
Stinson, who had been assigned to non-instructional duties pending the outcome of the case, can resume his job as a “Technical Teacher,” according to a Sept 21 letter to Stinson by Carolyn Meredith, employee relations director for Jefferson County Public Schools. The letter did not state what day he might return.
“No limitations will be placed on your employment with the Jefferson County Public Schools,” Meredith’s letter stated. “You are welcome to apply for positions of your choosing.”
Superintendent Sheldon Berman said last week that while PRP already has a new head football coach this year, Stinson could apply for any coaching jobs he wanted, including at PRP.
This post comes to us from WFPL arts and humanities reporter Elizabeth Kramer.
Last week, I wrote a post about recent grumblings, complaints, etc., about the National Endowment for the Arts. Meanwhile, there has been some action at the NEA after criticisms about conference calls that discussed getting artists and arts groups involved in weighing in on discussions about issues like health care, the environment and so on, which are also important to President Obama. The Washington Post is crediting FOX News talk show host Glenn Beck with the shakeup. (The newspaper’s media columnist Howard Kurtz also wrote about this in yesterday’s column. And, of course, with the column’s other tidbits, it’s definitely worth the read.) Beck was probably the loudest voice to ring out after news about the calls surfaced, but there were other voices that brought up some valuable concerns about the thrust of the conference call.
But let’s face it; the idea of co-opting artists to help spread particular ideas is ancient. Now, one historically known practitioner is trying looking to bridge the gap it has with contemporary artists: Pope Benedict XVI has announced an arts summit for November. The Vatican has invited 500 painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians, singers and film and theatre directors to form “an alliance between art and faith.” This comes after years of criticism of the Church in work by contemporary artists. (Here are reports by the BBC and The Guardian.) Some invited artists have already declined, including Bill Viola, whose video art work was shown in an exhibit last year at the 21C Museum Hotel.
From the New York Times:
Washington Monthly has recently released its new college ranking. It’s based on several factors, one of which is a comparison between a college’s graduation rate and the makeup of its student body.
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Toward the bottom of the ranking, the University of Louisville has an expected graduation rate of 59 percent and an actual rate of 44 percent. The University of Massachusetts, Boston, has an expected rate of 46 percent and an actual rate of 33 percent.
This post comes to us from arts and humanities reporter Elizabeth Kramer.
Last month, art was under fire — or at least some art created by three San Francisco groups. The fire came in the form of a letter to the National Endowment for the Arts complaining that the art was obscene. (I reported on it and that Kentucky Congressman Ed Whitfield had signed it. He was the only one of Kentucky’s six-member Congressional delegation to sign the letter. Dan Burton and Mike Pence were the only two of Indiana’s nine U.S. House members to sign it.)
Now, some people involved with the NEA are under fire after Patrick Courrielche reported that the agency facilitated a conference call with other organizations and artists to drum up ideas and enthusiasm in the arts communities nationwide to create art that addresses issues important to President Obama — health care, education, energy and environment— well, you get the idea. It’s caused a ruckus on blogs and has received some ink from newspapers.
But before going further, a word about — history.
Quick History: In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was this phenomenon known as the culture wars. That’s when some issues became more hotly debated and seemingly — through the media anyway — widened the gap between liberals and conservatives. Many conservatives, rallied around issues like abortion, gun control — and taxpayer-funded art. The latter got a lot of attention in nearby Cincinnati when the Contemporary Arts Center exhibited works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and its director went to county court for “pandering obscenity.” The traveling exhibit of which some homoerotic images were a part had been funded by the NEA. That and a few other incidents caused many members of Congress to oppose the NEA and how it distributed money. It was a mess. From the late 1980s through 2008, NEA funding fell by more than 50 percent, and that does not include adjustment for inflation. The agency has yet to recover from these cuts.
What has happened in the interim? Well, arts advocacy groups have stepped up to encourage discussion about the arts — from Americans for the Arts to its sister groups in individual states, including Arts Kentucky and the Indiana Coalition for the Arts. They’ve focused on how art contributes to education and local economies and makes connections between people around the country and the world. In recent years, some prominent conservatives have given voice and action to their belief in the importance art to society. One prominent example is Mike Huckabee. As Governor of Arkansas, he signed legislation to provide music and art instruction by certified teachers for all children in grades one through six for 40 minutes a week.
And Now: Last month, when I learned of the letter Whitfield had signed, I wondered if it could reignite the kind of banter and action that helped significantly cut public arts funding.
“The idea that we could be falling into these same old scripts again, to me it really, it makes my heart drop,” Michael Brenson told me last month after we talked about the letter. Brenson, a former New York Times art critic, wrote Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Arts in America.
And the recent flap seems to signify we could be embarking on another rollercoaster of debate over arts funding. The players and commentators are certainly lining up. They include Glenn Beck at FOX News, The Washington Times, George Will (who questioned the legality of the conference calls on Sunday’s This Week), John Cook of Gawker and some respectable art observers like Lee Rosenbaum. Rosembaum and Courrielche make the case that artists should be independent thinkers and that government-funded art should be enriching the cultural landscape, not propagating government policies.
While the big wigs in media debate this issue, could it have a larger and devastating fallout for artists in places like — well, Kentucky and Indiana? What do you think about the role of art in society and government-funded art? Who do you think controls this debate and why?
While this new episode gives me that same kind of sinking feeling that Brenson referenced, as a journalist, I also see it as an opportunity to discuss what the arts have done for individuals and communities and imagine its possibilities to better understand its power and ourselves.
Image: Ron English, Money is the Root of All Art, 1994
