It looks like Congress has renewed the America COMPETES Act. The House passed (228 to 130) the Senate's version that was passed last week.

"After all, we wouldn't teach kids how to play football by lecturing to them about football for years and years before allowing them to play. And if education is about the 'lighting of a flame not the filling of a pail' -- we should be putting the tools of discovery, invention and fabrication at the finger tips of every child -- inside and outside of the classroom." ( Thomas Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy)

From an interview with Dale Dougherty of O'Reilly Media, in which Mr. Kahill talks about President Obama's support for hands-on science, mathematics, and engineering educational experiences like those provided by Truman State University. I say, let's take what we do to another level. Who's with me?

This weekend, while I was playing hookey from Church, I stumbled upon this program on Fareed Zakaria's GPS, on CNN. It was a program titled "Restoring the American Dream" and it talks about what America needs to do get back on track to be the world's greatest economic powerhouse.

http://rss.cnn.com/~r/services/podcasting/fareedzakaria/rss/~3/-EpSlZG9tW8/gp...
I liked this program so much I made the students in my Senior Seminar (for mathematics majors) sit through it. I hope it gave them a sense for the ideas in Zakaria's The Post-American World and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. it also suggested that Seth Godin's Linchpin could be useful for those who are about to graduate from college.