New WonkyFolk – Just No Steely Dan. Plus, Chu & Bradford Talk Politics, Stick To Science. More.

How many different ways can you say, 'too close to call?"

I'll be at the Power of Innovation Summit with Phyllis Lockett, Jane Swift, and Michael Moe.

The election is 11 days away, so we've got election content.

WonkyFolk

Jed and I talk about the election in a new Wonkyfolk. We also talk about Denver, charter schools, advocacy, and inter-generational learning in the advocacy world. We apparently need theme music, send your ideas.

You can listen here, and show notes.

Or here:

If you like to watch, then here.

The Election & Education

On Tuesday 50Can's Derrell Bradford, consultant Dale Chu, and I talked about the election and its implications for education.

You can watch the discussion here.

Stick to Science

Sometimes around here we talk about activist capture. It shows up in education a lot. We talk about what Julia Galef calls "scout mindset," basically accurate analysis of the landscape, accurate forecasting, whatever you want to call it. Basically engaging with the world as it is, not as you might wish it to be.

This is what you should not do, especially with publicly funded research:

If you don't want your research politicized, then don't politicize your research. It should go without saying, this isn't good for LGBT youth, it's toxic for them. By doing this you're not a a warrior of some kind, you're a liability. I get it, if there were not people trying to outright ban a class of medical treatment that is sometimes necessary then it would be a better climate (some version of that is true on most contested issues by the way, it's not permission to abandon your commitments). But this has the opposite effect on the climate and it's about as anti-empirical as you can get. And again, I recommend this discussion on The Disagreement.

RIP Phil. Thank you.