“Don’t listen to the cynics.  That’s the only piece of advice about which I am certain.  They were wrong about my generation and they are wrong about yours.”

Vice President Biden gives the Commencement Address at the University of Pennsylvania. 

A Milwaukee second-grader recently wrote to Joe Biden with an idea to limit gun violence. “Dear Vice President Biden, I have a great idea to help make our country safer, better and the best,” Myles, a student at Downtown Montessori Academy, proposed. “I think guns should shoot out chocolate bullets. Then no one will get killed and no one will be sad.”

Biden wrote back, endorsing the concept. “I really like your idea,” Biden’s note reads. ”If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate. You are a good boy.”

(Source: New York Magazine)

“You find the things that you love.  And you love them the most that you can.”

-What it Means to Be a Nerd 

msnbc:

The new Democratic senator from Massachusetts introduced her first bill Wednesday, the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act, offering students temporary relief from the burden of high interest rates on loans.

A woman living here has registered to vote, thereby assuming responsibility of citizenship.

Election day, Wisconsin!  Head to the polls by 8:00 tonight!  And remember, you can register to vote right at your polling place.  

Please consider voting Ed Fallone for Supreme Court Justice and Tony Evers for State Superintendent. 

The Window Rock School District, in the heart of the Navajo nation in Arizona, is proposing the unthinkable: closing three of its seven schools as a result of the federal sequester.

The schools are among 1,600 public schools on Native American reservations and military bases that are feeling the impact of federal cuts now, months before the rest of the country’s classrooms see the effect of reduced dollars from Washington.

usagov:

Are you a student who wants to intern at the White House this fall? The application period is now open.

Reblogging in case any of you are interested in this opportunity! 

We pick up where we left off last week in our second hour of stories from Harper High School in Chicago. We find out if a shooting in the neighborhood will derail the school’s Homecoming game and dance. We hear the origin story of one of Harper’s more prominent gangs. And we ask a group of teenage boys: where do you get your guns?

Harper High School, Part One can be found here.

We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances.

I highly recommend listening to this.

The current model for education reform in this country — a corporate model with transparency problems and severely decreased political accountability — is broken. Handing over our schools to hedge-fund managers, and to the people like Michelle Rhee who volunteer as well-remunerated middle managers, privatizes public education without having the basic cojones to admit that it’s happening. This is not the way it’s supposed to work.

(via skillshare)

State and local governments are giving out $80 billion a year in tax breaks and other subsidies in a foolhardy, shortsighted race to attract companies. That money could go a long way to improving education, transportation and other public services that would have a far better shot at promoting real economic growth.

barackobama:

Hello, new favorite thing: 30 reasons.

Learn more: The Pew Center on the States