Or even more interesting, I should say. Alex pointed me to Bow Street Runner, an historically accurate game being developed by Britain’s Channel 4. It’s a murder mystery that takes place in the seedier neighborhoods of Georgian London, and the production values are fantastic. You poke around at things, talk to people, and little by little the facts are uncovered.
Makes me wish for programs of similar quality to be developed here for education. Imagine doing problem-based learning in this format as a way to teach history and reasoning at the same time. The Jasper Woodbury videodiscs pointed the way years ago. Today’s kids would want something a bit edgier and more interactive. Who’d be up to the task? Discovery Learning? The History Channel? Has to be someone with deepish pockets.
Maybe we’ll be returning soon to a time like the post-Sputnik years when federal dollars were spent developing creative new curriculum and not just on testing the bejesus out of kids. One can hope.
This seems like a good day to reminisce about a memorable day from my past and to reveal something I’ve never written about: unlike most Americans, I’ve seen Fidel Castro in person.
It was May 7, 1972. I was in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for my mandatory “termination physical”… a quick look by the Peace Corps doctor to document the damage two years in the tropics had done to my skinny young body. Malaria? Check. Lost 30 pounds? Check. Weird digestive quirks? Check. Same as everybody else.
Walking back from the embassy, I noticed people beginning to line the streets. Why, I asked? Turns out that Fidel Castro was making a quick side trip to Sierra Leone in the middle of his state visit to Guinea. The crowd got noisier, and a minute later there he was in an open car next to Siaka Stevens, Sierra Leone’s president. Castro was talking non-stop to Siaka, so I guess his English was up to speed. He seemed tall and wiry and overcaffeinated, his eyes darting around at the buildings and not really connecting with the crowds. Looking for snipers? The car zoomed past and it was all over in a few seconds.
I’ve seen Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Howie Mandell, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak up close but this is almost my favorite brush with fame. It’s second only to JFK.
Two videos came down the wire over the last day or so that are worth sharing. One’s for Obama, the other for Ron Paul (though I didn’t know that until I read the comments about it.) Were there songs this good in the last election? I don’t remember any. These both moved me by their cleverness and their message.