Blogspot

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

So Guys, you have your computers in front of you, don’t you…Well, that’s because we live in the age of the computer. Computers, and of course the Internet, have changed our lives in just about every way imaginable…

They dominate our homes, organizing our communications, our finances and our social calendars; They run many of our household appliances, drive our cars and power our Ipods while keeping our playlists in order…

Computers, we have learned, even allow us to photograph ourselves in muscle shirts and send all over the world wide web.

They allowed a mayor of a major urban center to send text messages to his chief of staff and computer technology allowed the world to hear just how crazy Mel Gibson is…

And when we arrive at work each morning, Sybil, guess what’s likely waiting for us there…? That’s right, more computers…

They are an integral part of our daily existence and nowhere is this more apparent than the field of education, especially with the advent of online learning… We need look no further, Tom, than HBCUsonline.com as an excellent example…

And this issue of technology and education is popping up all over the world.  In fact, an Indian professor from England named Sugata Mitra, has been promoting what is known as MIE, or Minimally Invasive Education…

Now, MIE basically comes from a mindset that claims that children can easily be taught by computers — without formal instruction, and little to no adult intervention…

They learn on their own!

Professor Mitra’s, current support of Minimally Invasive Education comes from some experiments he conducted some time ago back in poor neighborhoods of India… These experiments later inspired the writing of the movie that ultimately became – you guessed  it – Slumdog Millionaire…

Computers with internet connections were strategically placed in easily accessible public spaces in numerous Indian slums for children to discover and use unsupervised…

The results were provocative… Mitra, concluded that groups of children from disadvantaged backgrounds can learn to use computers and access internet resources, on their own, if given appropriate free, public and unsupervised access…

He also concluded that they can develop basic skills in language and math; that they can teach themselves to use e-mail, chat and search engines; that they can even improve their test scores in school, and increase their aptitude levels…

All pretty much on their own…

Now Tom, while a lot of this doesn’t surprise me since I already believed that children are by nature open and curious, it does raise serious questions about the role computers play in the learning process…

While computers and technological advances represent an extraordinary benefit to the educational process, they are not the educational process itself…

A computer can’t replicate that special relationship between a good teacher and a child; a computer by itself can’t effectively gauge a student’s emotional needs…

But, a teacher working effectively with computers, can… When done properly, it is a powerful alliance of humanity and technology where both academic and emotional support are readily provided…

In fact, even on the college level, HBCUsonline.com was designed to bring the human element and supportive environment of our HBCUs to online learners, since many online students were only getting the academic side…

But whatever we feel about the role of computers today, technology is something we, as black people, have to deal with, or it will deal with us… It can either help us or hurt us… As they say, we can either be “on the leading edge or the bleeding edge…”

We must deal with it, be aware of it, understand it, incorporate it appropriately, and help determine the role it plays in our community…

There are a number of online tech newsletters or magazines out there today that can keep us up to speed…

In closing, I want you to keep a thought in mind –especially you amazing teachers out there…

It’s best represented by an early 20th Century quote that I’ll paraphrase:

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary people.  But no machine can do the work of one extraordinary individual.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Education

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, we’re coming up on an annual celebration that not everyone is familiar with, but it’s tremendously important to the Black community.  In fact Tom, it’s so important that you went to New York last year to participate, lend your name and support to it.

And what am I talking about?  Community Healing Days.  This is three days on the third weekend of every October designed to focus Black people on putting to rest the tired, but powerful, myth of black inferiority…

The celebration is sponsored by the Community Healing Network and championed by Dr. Maya Angelou…

This year, Dr. Angelou is asking people to take a stand for emotional emancipation by wearing something sky blue during Community Healing Days to show, as Dr. Angelou says, “our collective determination to turn the pain of the blues into the sky blue of unlimited possibilities.”

So mark your calendars and make sure to wear something sky blue on October 15th, 16th, and 17th…

And as we think about emotional emancipation, it is also important to recognize that our history did not begin with slavery…

Case in point: This past week, the Egyptian government announced the discovery of an ancient tomb in the Egyptian city of Luxor made for a 25th Dynasty Nubian priest named Karakhamun…

This is especially fascinating because it’s one of the few dynasties that modern-day Egyptologists actually ADMIT was black…

In fact, Will Smith is preparing to play the part of 25th dynasty Pharoah, Taharqa in a major Hollywood film set to come out in 2013…

Dr. Elena Pischikova, a white Russian Egyptologist who uncovered the tomb, has consistently said that ancient Egypt was a black African society…

This site establishes clear cultural links between Black people and Egyptian dynasties…

Dr. Pischikova, has partnered with an African American historian named Anthony Browder …

He conducts annual study tours to Egypt and was mentored in Egyptology by Professor Asa Hilliard.

When Browder found out that funders were not interested in the 25th Dynasty because it was openly acknowledged as being black…

He founded the ASA Restoration Project in honor of Professor Hilliard.

The Project raises money for the continued excavation and promotes awareness of the 25th Dynasty…

Browder is recruiting teams of African American volunteers to work at the site and is currently talking to a number of HBCUs about participating as well…

So guys this is real history in the making right now and African Americans are leading it…

What they’ve uncovered so far is amazing…

So, if we’re serious about community healing (and we should be), we need to celebrate these shining examples of our incredible African past …and we need to put time for healing on our agendas.

So, two things: First, let’s be sure to celebrate Community Healing Days – in our sky blue – on October 15th through 17th …

You can get more info on this at communityhealingnet.org

Second, let’s support the Asa Restoration Project which is giving us a fascinating glimpse of our ancient history…before the myth.

Go to asaprojectblog.com to donate to this or even find out how you can take part in the dig itself…

And in closing, I want to recount a comment that a recent traveler to Egypt passed on to me… He said that a number of the African Americans touring the excavation had thanked Dr. Pischikova, for her work, to which she responded:

“It is I who should be thanking you for allowing me the chance to explore your beautiful culture and history.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Events

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, most of us in the black community know or should know by now that this is National Historically Black College & University Week.

On Tuesday, my good friend and fellow commentator Jeff Johnson did a wonderful job of clarifying the need for us as a community to support our own institutions no matter how much support they receive from the public or from those outside of our community.

As I listened to Jeff, I imagined a hypothetical scenario…

Sybil, I don’t know if you remember that story back in the day about what the world would be if black folk never existed…?

Well today, I want us to seriously consider what our community and our world would be if our HBCUs never existed…

So, here we go… Imagine how the field of education itself would be without the contributions of a Mary McCloud Bethune or a Booker T. Washington, the legendary founders of Bethune Cookman College and Tuskegee University, which have produced so many black leaders over the years.

Or, think about this… How much worse would American race relations be if the NAACP hadn’t been co-founded at the turn of the 20th Century by Fisk University alum, W.E.B. DuBois?

Imagine how pedestrian world literature would be without the mellifluous poetry of Lincoln University’s Langston Hughes or the penetrating prose of Nobel Prize winner, and Howard University alum Toni Morrison?

Daytime TV, the movie industry, the economy, and the black female’s billionaire club would all take a serious hit if Tennessee State University hadn’t produced a woman named Oprah….

Would we even know the name of the late and legendary Biggie Smalls, if Howard hadn’t produced the original Hip Hop entrepreneur Sean – Puff Daddy or is it P. Diddy or is it just Diddy? – Combs?

And, Tom, who set the modern-day standard for excellence at the wide-receiver position?  A product of Mississippi Valley, the record setting and ageless Jerry Rice.

And, neither I nor the President of the United States would have received a law degree from Harvard but for the tireless Supreme Court advocacy of Thurgood Marshall, a proud graduate of Lincoln University and the Howard – not Harvard – HOWARD law school.

Even more, would the civil rights movement itself have ever gotten off the ground if a young preacher from Atlanta named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had not been trained at Morehouse College?

…and let me pause here, in REMEMBRANCE and HONOR, to ask where the American political system would be today without the incomparable Dr. Ron Walters who lost his battle with cancer less than a week ago.  Dr. Walters, a Fisk graduate and long-time HOWARD professor, as campaign manager for Jesse Jackson, planted the seeds in the minds of millions that a Black man might be a serious candidate for president of THESE United States.

So without this Fisk Graduate, and without Virginia Union graduate (and Omega man, Tom) Doug Wilder becoming the country’s first elected black governor, and without a Howard man, Ed Brooks becoming the first black elected to the Senate, we might not have a black president today.

And where would all of us be today –me, Sybil & Jay and the millions of listeners and college students across the country who have benefited from The Tom Joyner Morning Show—if not for the extraordinary careers of our very own Tom Joyner, who of course hails from Tuskegee?

No one would be listening to our voices right now…

So that makes the point really clear…

These examples show how important it is for us to support our HBCUs –Institutions well-versed in the art of producing greatness…

So spend some time at HBCUs online.com to get all kinds of relevant information regarding our black institutions and learn about how your family can continue our brilliant educational legacy…

And Tom, we’ve heard it said a million times, but since it’s especially appropriate today,… I’m gonna close by saying it again:

“A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Education

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, in two days we’ll be coming up on the nine year anniversary of 9-11… Can you guys believe it’s actually been nine years…

We’ll never forget the horror of that day…

It affected us deeply as a nation and still continues to affect us in many ways, be it legally, politically, internationally, or even culturally…

We passed laws, changed policies, raged wars … our society was transformed, as was our view of other countries, and perhaps most importantly ourselves…

Now I know that you guys heard about this so-called preacher who wants to burn the holy Koran on 9-11…

But I’m not going to talk about his foolishness or politics today… Instead, I want to focus on the psychological impact on us as a culture since that dreadful day in 2001…

It is certainly no secret that fear weakens our ability to think clearly.

When you are in a fearful state, the ability to think is short-circuited, and rash.

Think of irrational fears: fear of heights; the dark; public speaking …

Everybody has them, even people who seem confident and successful: Take T.I., for example, he obviously has a fear of living outside a jail cell.  George Bush has a fear of the English language.  And, Bobby Brown well he has a fear of diets;

But seriously, logic and reason can go out the window when we are in a state of fear…

When we’re afraid, we become much more likely to agree to things we never would agree to if we were thinking clearly, especially if someone tells us it’s going to “keep us safe…”

Anyone remember the phrase, “Weapons of Mass Destruction…?”  WE DIDN’T FIND NARY A ONE!  And, how many lives have been lost because of that deceptive phrase?

Speaking of deceptive phrases, guys, which was worse: 1) “Weapons of Mass Destruction” 2) “I did not sleep with that woman” 3) “Read my lips: No new taxes” or 4) Sarah Palin arguing that she’s qualified to be President?

Oh, I’ve got another one for you, Jay… Remember, a little over a year after 9-11, the Bush administration told us to run out and stock up on duct tape as a precautionary measure in the event of another terrorist attack…?

What’s duct tape going to do against a bomb?  I know it’s pretty strong, but come on, people!

My point is this: acting out of irrational fear, and abandoning reason and logic in the name of safety, has never kept us safe or secure… To the contrary, it makes us more vulnerable…

Because, first, we’re victimized by a tragic event, and then we are victimized again by those who take advantage of our fearful state…

We end up losing twice…

So, Tom, I pray we will never have to suffer another unspeakable mass tragedy like 9-11

But if we ever do, I also pray we don’t allow our own fears –and those who opportunistically prey on our fear– to further victimize us…

And since I’m an optimist at heart, you’ll always hear me remind you that there are emotions more powerful than fear…

Love & Hope can see us through any situation.

Love & Hope can subdue fear and restore balance, clarity, wholeness & health…

Love and Hope permitted our enslaved foreparents to escape against impossible odds.

Love and Hope  allowed a once illiterate slave named Phyllis Wheatley to write poems so powerful that they’ve withstood the scrutiny of centuries.

Love and Hope protected black folk from angry mobs in the 60s.

Love and Hope allowed John Lewis to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge.

Love and Hope empowered Barbara Jordan to defy the mores and norms of the South in order to claim a seat in the United States Congress.

And Love and Hope allowed a skinny black kid with big ears from Kansas by way of Hawaii to dream of becoming president of the United States.

So no matter what may come, we can never let our fears take the place of Love & Hope…

A popular quote sums it up best…

“You block your dreams when you allow your fears to grow bigger than your faith.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Events