Two Billion.
If you search for the word “Blog” on Google, that's how many hits you'll get. Millions of people, through websites like Myspace, Xanga, Blogger, Typepad, and others now chronicle day-to-day experiences and items of interest to a wide online audience. So why another blog? Let me try to explain.
Recently, I’ve have had the chance to spend some time talking with students about Our Education on sites like Myspace and Xanga. A ton of middle school, high school, and college students out there are now a part of this community, and as far as I can tell, daily musings with titles like “My F***ING Day at School” and “How A Guy Should Treat A Girl” are par for the course.
Then there are the blogs like SlashDot, the Drudge Report, DailyKos, and others which are so popular that their writers can make a living off of web-based advertising revenues—a loop-hole in the game of life if I’ve ever seen one. Even a relatively insular field like K-12 education reform has developed a blue-ribbon list of blogs such as Eduwonk, Schools Matter, and This Week in Education, just to name a few. Though these blogs are widely read in the education policy sector, their entries (with headlines like “Quality is Not Supplemental,” “More KIPP Love!” and “USDE Sells Off AYP”) are often too policy-heavy to be of interest to typical students and parents.
So why another blog?
With personal student blogs and education policy blogs growing in popularity among markedly disconnected audiences, the purpose of Our Education's blog is to create a bridge between these two worlds. Because the relationship between the youth who write the "My F***ING Day at School" entries and the ed wonks who care about "USDE Sells off AYP" entries is much, much more important than either young people or education advocates realize. And until they come together, students and ed reformers both will suffer.
We don't mean to suggest that students are experts in the nitty-gritty of public policy, or that ed policy folks don’t care enough about young people. We just want to see a day where young people are engaged in fighting to improve their own schools, and where adults recognize youth as active partners in this process—not just passive recipients. Because when a million students stand up to demand high quality education and work with key groups in the democratic process, we as a nation will finally find the drive to come together, fight through the gridlock of tough policy and resource debates, and make education at long last a national priority.
As she signed Our Education’s petition for an American right to high quality public education, Tiffany Pham, a High School student in Florida, wrote,
“Every kid should have an equal opportunity to learn. Just because of where they're from or who their parents are, it shouldn't stop them from getting somewhere in life. We all can succeed if we're given the chance.”
How right she is. Students like Tiffany have already started to come to www.OurEd.org to join in this shared vision, and many more will do the same over the course of the year. The Our Education Blog will be here to share their stories.