Today’s New York Times raises some interesting questions about honor societies: Do they maintain their prestige if they’re not exclusive enough? Can “the market” for honor societies be flooded?  At what point does being in an honor society become a resume-padder rather than a meaningful achievement?

As Honor Students Multiply, Who Really Is One?

COMMACK, N.Y. — There have been so many honor societies created at Commack High School on Long Island in recent years that some students ended up in six or seven of them, racking up memberships like so many merit badges or thanks-for-playing trophies.

But the school reversed course this school year, cutting out its 28-student technology honor society and combining those for sign language, Latin, German and French. That left 11 societies, and a community wondering how much honor is too much.

With so many societies, some students are unable to attend all of the meetings and shirk their duties with the groups, showing up only to collect the “honor cord” — a decorative tassel — to wear at graduation.

Commack is one of many places where educators and parents are re-examining the role of honor societies, which started out as an academic distinction reserved for the top 5 or 10 percent of a class but have become a routine item on college résumés.

Click here for full text.

Every trip to Starbucks and every stroll down the grocery aisle that Britney Spears makes may seem spontaneous, but let’s never underestimate the hyperstrategy of image-making behind celebrities. The latest fluffstorm, linked above, is about Britney’s contract with photojournalists who want to shoot her concert in Stockholm. They’re required to sign it if they want to cover the show, and it stipulates that Spears’ management has the right to decide which photos are published. Those who sign it also agree …

that no pictures be published more than 30 days after the concert and – maybe most odd – that Britney Spears’ management would hold the future copyright on all pictures that they like.

Seriously?

Are the people behind this stuff are supremely naive or supremely deluded? These little tempests in teapots always make me snicker. For one thing, they’re self-defeating: the people trying so desperately to control the image become so obsessed with the control part that they damage the very image they’re trying to nurture, which is just, well, stupid.

For another thing, these “management” moves are transparently hypocritical: the same people trying to dictate which photos can be published and who can own them would be the first people to pull the “freedom of expression/speech/press” card if anybody tried to dictate which songs Britney could sing or write or record or perform or own. If you represent an artist, you have the responsibility to treat the rights of other artists with the same respect that you expect your own client to receive.

But maybe what bugs me most of all is how unprofessional these tactics are. When you’re handling stars like Britney, you’d better have to have a thick enough skin to take some licks now and then. It’s just part of the nature of the beast. If you’re the kind of wimp who’s gonna take his ball and bat and go home if you don’t get to call the shots, then you have no business in the major leagues.  So what do you do if a newspaper prints an unflattering photo of Britney? Here’s a hint: grow up and deal with it.

Please be sure to leave your feedback!

Edit: How does this guy do that? Is this a Power Point transfer thing? Curious …

Another one of my favorites:

The teacher area even has a portal area (via “GSO Builder”)that allows them to establish groups, collaborate, and access best practices and resources. Also on offer: a page of links devoted to teacher tools for integrating technology. The site also provides teachers with access to webinars 24/7 through access to its webinar archives. Students and parents can access resources to instruments such as ACT and SAT prep, CRCT resources and special education support.

It’s a rich site with more to explore than I assumed  — or that I had time to thoroughly immerse myself in during class. It’s definitely a site worth revisiting, and I know I will.

I was impressed with Literacy for the 21st Century. Of special value, I thought, were the PowerPoint slides targeted at students of different ages with specific questions they can explore, the essential questions for teachers, and “why literacy is important.” The article/site has an abundance of information and I plan to go back and refer to it repeatedly. I definitely plan to incorporate media literacy as one of the underlying themes of my classes. It won’t be a unit, at least in my ideal world. It will be a topic of continuous discussion and exploration.

“My brother-in-law asked me a question about fonts last weekend. I was like, how the hell does Ted know what a FONT is? He’s an engineer!”

– Comment from a friend and fellow journalist over lunch, 1996.

We had a discussion in class on Tuesday that keeps replaying in my head: the future of books. Dr. Crovitz was talking about how encyclopedias have changed in the last few years as the Digital Age erupted, and publishing began transforming from the deliberately honed craft of professionals to a tool (or plaything) of the masses. One response of the encyclopedia companies was to write extensively longer pieces, but to include fewer topics, Dr. Crovitz said: The encylopedia companies hoped that adjustment would keep them relevant and profitable. Some of my classmates expressed concern that libraries are now “media centers”; they worry that libraries are becoming so digitalized that shelf space for books is shrinking.

“We’ll always need books,” somebody said.

I can’t shake that conversation: It hit too close to home. I’ve never worked for an encyclopedia company, but I’ve spent more hours of my life in those Britannica meetings than I want to remember. I spent the last 10 or 15 years of my career as an editor sitting in meetings with the marketing people and the circulation people and the product development people and the beancounters and the corporate heads and the techies. We talked about innovative strategy and new business models and brand identity and differentiation and blah blah blah blah blah. We racked our brains trying to figure out a way to keep our print products relevant: People now demand their information online, but they won’t pay for information they receive electronically. Can we create password-protected sites? If so, how do we keep a single subscriber from sharing a password with multiple users? Can we deliver a product by e-mail, and if so, how do we keep the e-mail from being forwarded? What can we do in for-profit publishing that is so indispensible that people will continue to pay us to create content and we can still make money?

So Tuesday’s class conversation was almost painful; I guess I’m still a little raw from my years of dealing with these questions every frickin’ day. I don’t have the answers, but I’ve come to some conclusions, developed some opinions. My conclusions may end up entirely  off base, but I want to throw them out there because they’re getting too loud in my head after that class discussion.

The sad truth is, we won’t always need books. If you want evidence, look at book retailers. Remember when you could go into cool, hip little independent bookstores and browse all day? Maybe they’d have once-a-week poetry readings or book clubs or a guitar and flute duo on Sunday afternoons. Some of them had specialties, like the old Sphinx on Piedmont, which exclusively stocked books about the paranormal. Or they carried an eclectic selection covering a wide range of topics, like the old Oxford Books at Peachtree Battle, which later moved to Pharr Road. And even the chain bookstores were convenient: it seemed like there was always a Chapter 11 nearby. Didn’t every mall have Waldenbooks and B. Dalton? In 2009, you have the three big-box retailers: B&N, Borders and Amazon, and you can only touch a book at two of them. Most of their money isn’t made selling books; it’s made selling shelf space to people who want to sell books.

No, we won’t always need books. We as consumers have already made that decision. Which makes sense really, when you consider that we haven’t always had books. Before books, we had scrolls. Before scrolls, we had tree bark and stone and wax tablets and etched clay and cave walls. Books, really, are a technology in their own right.

It’s a cold reality: Your grandchildren or great-grandchildren probably will never know the seductive touch of crisp new pages that smell like fresh ink, or the dreaminess of opening a book that’s older than your grandparents and inhaling its dusty musty breath. They won’t touch books, or read them, except possibly on occasion for some directed purpose, much like we might spin a 45 today.

And while books will go away, stories won’t. Hopefully, the Kindle or some other hand-held will emit the same magic for future generations that we paperophiles found in books.

For those of us whose lives have been changed by the power of a book, who have been molded by books, it’s an emotional revolution that we can’t quite bring ourselves to acknowledge yet, much less embrace.

We’ll always need books, won’t we?

I don’t want to punch you in the stomach or anything, but … NO. We will not always need books. It seems impossible and unfathomable, right? Yeah, well, that’s called denial. It’s OK. You have time to stay in denial for another decade or two. Me? I’ve already spent too much time trying to force the toothpaste back into the tube.  The e-train has left the station; If I run fast enough, maybe I can catch up to it.