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Daily 013: Farewell Friday - Assembly Meeting Recap

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Summary

Assembly meeting recap with flu vaccine survey approval. Enrollment reopened for new families. Article Club discussed Asimov's "Profession" - critique of conventional education. BLM signs installed.

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the Air, under the tent, and around Baltimore.
0:06 This is your daily podcast of all the goings ons and around arts and ideas.
0:13 So last night we had our first assembly meeting of the year.
0:17 We usually don't have any until the springtime, but this year is an unusual year to say the
0:24 least.
0:25 The assembly meeting had about 20 participants and we had a good discussion and a lot of
0:32 action items passed.
0:37 So just a very quick recap of it, we approved implementing an anonymous survey for flu vaccine
0:45 so we can get a feeling for the percentage of people who are flu vaccinated.
0:52 We gave an update for the school online and in person.
0:59 In short, it's going really well and we're all excited to be here and the weather's fine
1:05 here and we hope any of you online get the chance to join us soon.
1:11 The next item of business was approving for the in-person temperature checks, that being
1:21 above 99.5 is sort of the threshold for saying okay, there might be a problem here.
1:28 Take multiple temperatures, verify that that's what's going on, it's an average, and give
1:33 us a call.
1:34 Talk to us and hopefully go get yourself a test or something.
1:39 Alrighty, what else?
1:41 There was, and this is all coming from memory, mind you.
1:47 We did decide to open up enrollment again so we're reaching out today to new families
2:03 in the queue and maybe we'll have a new family during the visiting week next week.
2:10 We will do no more than two at a time except for this one family of three, we'll do that,
2:15 put those three together, and our goal is to make sure that we don't have too much clumping,
2:22 spread out the ages, and so forth, but you know, looking at the chronological queue,
2:29 that seems to actually already work out.
2:32 So that was mostly the assembly meeting, I'm pretty sure I forgot something, but there
2:37 will be notes sent out, I believe with the newsletter, if not with the newsletter, then
2:42 in a separate email.
2:45 Alrighty, what else?
2:46 We had Article Club today, we read Asimov's Profession, for those who have not read it,
2:53 it's basically taking the conventional model of education to an extreme in a sci-fi way
3:00 and sort of thinking through what would happen.
3:05 Many of us found it a little bit hard, you know, implausible, a key component was this
3:12 knowledge just gets downloaded into the brain, and for some reason people are not able to
3:21 add to it afterwards, either through cultural norms that they can't learn more, or something
3:30 with the process wasn't really clear, and you know, that was a hard thing to kind of
3:36 really accept, and it was kind of key to the larger point of the story.
3:39 I won't spoil it though, so it is a short story, so fun little one, and sort of does
3:48 highlight what we think of as sort of one of the biggest dangers of, you know, being
3:54 spoon-fed knowledge like we typically do.
3:58 The story was a bit extreme, nobody ends up like that, but you know, we value the ability
4:06 to create and explore and to really learn from experience and putting things together
4:12 and all those good stuff.
4:15 For next week, the Article Club will be reading an excerpt from Rutger Bregman's book, Humankind.
4:23 In particular, it's the story of a group of boys from a private school who get stranded
4:30 on a, I believe it's an atoll, a little island off the coast of somewhere, maybe Madagascar,
4:41 I'm not really sure, it's been a while since I read it, but the idea was to find an example
4:47 where the Lord of the Flies scenario had the potential to happen and then to see what actually
4:53 happened.
4:54 Spoiler alert, no Lord of the Flies, they got along well and, you know, they developed
5:01 ways of cooperating and dealing with conflicts and, you know, it's a really cool story to
5:08 read and generate lifelong friendships.
5:12 So that was cool.
5:17 And then, I guess, that might be about it for today.
5:25 The type of day today is Farewell Friday, so we say goodbye to this week, it was a good
5:38 week, very calm, we had no JC cases this week.
5:43 I believe this is the first time in my six years where we haven't had any JC cases whatsoever
5:49 this entire week.
5:51 So that's something.
5:54 We have a lot of space here, so that's probably helpful, and, you know, we have relatively
6:00 small groups, so maybe the dynamics is less problematic, I'm not really sure.
6:07 Or maybe people just don't want to come out to the tent for JC, I don't really know.
6:12 I like JC.
6:14 So maybe next week we'll get a case.
6:18 Alright, well I hope you all have a great weekend, I'm looking forward to getting back
6:23 here on Monday, hopefully the weather will stay as nice as it is right now, butterflies
6:29 flying around, and sheets blowing in the breeze, we got a mulch pile back again, so that was
6:40 cool, and a Monday, maybe a Gaga game is about to get started, there's some people mulling
6:45 around the pit, and so that would be kind of neat.
6:50 Alrighty, oh and we have some new signs in the yard, I'm sure if you're coming in person
6:58 you'll see them, if not, let's just say the acronym is BLM, you can figure it out.
7:05 Have a great day and see you all tomorrow.