Once Upon a College: Clinton Global Initiative on the Ground in Haiti

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Clinton Global Initiative on the Ground in Haiti

For students who attended the recent CGI conference, or if interested...

Clinton Global Initiative on the Ground in Haiti

On Tuesday, January 12th, a devastating earthquake rattled through the small island nation of Haiti. With former President Clinton's direct involvement the Clinton Global Initiative sprang into action immediately, sending supplies, gathering funds, and developing plans for the long term economic viability of the country in the wake of such a disaster. As the brainchild of President Clinton's former advisor Doug Band, the CGI has been at the forefront of international aid and philanthropy since its inception in 2005. Based on action-oriented ideals, the CGI and its members devise practical solutions through measurable "Commitments to Action." The CGI has helped more than ten million children gain access to better education, provided forest restoration to more than thirty three million acres, granted more than one hundred and fifty million in medical research, and has provided treatment to over 30 million people for tropical diseases. By visiting the Initiative's website, you too can contribute to help the people of Haiti overcome this horrible disaster. Learn more about the Clinton Global Initiative here.

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What this is about

A long time ago, in an educational universe far away and almost certain never to return, the professors of a certain small college experimented with experiential learning and taught their students not just to "read, write, think, and figure", but also to do practical things with that learning. Educational theory and research results from Kurt Hahn to modern scholars suggests strongly that experiential learning works better, particularly for active young people. It also matters greatly that young people have the physical and mental confidence to do something positive with their learning, particularly to make social and environmental change, in other words, to lead. This kind of confidence comes with physical challenge and being made to defend your ideas out loud, among other things. The small college was built around these ideas, deliberately, by a group of determined and innovative educators. With this success, along came the inevitable bean-counters who believed such a valuable education was way too expensive for those students. Wanting to keep more of the students' money (to pay their six figure salaries, of course), they cut the programs the first chance they got and went all-online where the teaching help is way cheaper and less demanding of budgets for tools and materials. I happen to think it was well worth the investment for any student who really engaged with the opportunity, but... bean counters gonna count beans. So the college is, for all useful purposes, gone, or at least changed beyond all recognition and not any good at teaching anyone anything practical at all. But the memories remain. And, despite the best efforts of the new administrators to erase them, so does quite a bit of open-source computer data to remind us of those memories, in the form of this and several other blogs and video pages online. In the case of this blog, the blog data were mine, not the college's, all along, even though they tried many times to get their cold dead bean-counter hands on them. So fuck 'em. Oh, and yes, this particular professor cusses more now that I don't have to worry about pointy-headed supervisors. Fuck them too. Enjoy. And remember, llegitimi non carborundum. If you're one of our former students and looking for stories you wrote or photographs or records of projects you worked on, just use the keyword search function or the chronological record to find your projects. They're all still here. Drop me a line using the comments section. I'd love to hear from you.

Once Upon a College

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Clinton Global Initiative on the Ground in Haiti

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What this is about

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