...and we're back.

It got me to thinking about something that I think about fairly regularly and I've surely discussed with a few of you (as if there's more than "a few" of you reading this) before. This whole obsession of living your life through Facebook is not good. Facebook is meant to be something that complements regular life and is nothing more than a mild distraction with interesting content because you (presumably) know the people generating all the new material. It's just something we "do", but for some, it has veered dangerously close to being who we "are".

Some of what has brought me to this conclusion is nothing more than the same annoying things you see when you look at Facebook (and if you don't have a Facebook, that's fine, so long as you're not someone that spends more time talking about not being on Facebook than those on it spend talking about it). The epic problem comes from people using their ability/right/power to post inane garbage on Facebook to do exactly that. But there's another kind of Facebook garbage that is a little more rare and perplexing than the simply utterly useless garbage. It's the garbage that actually makes you think to yourself, "why are they posting this and what response are they going for?"

These people put way too much of themselves into their Facebook-ing. They divulge relationship details, they bear their heart, they express despair...they filter nothing. There are surely people that see this as a good thing since such strong emotions are best not left bottled up and if Facebook is an outlet for that, so be it. Thing is, there's all of us on the receiving end of this stuff and it's a bit irresponsible of the sender of such messages to just throw it all out there when obviously not all the people we're friends with on Facebook are the kind of friends we want to have this kind of interaction with. For example, I am likely to approach a conversation a little differently if I'm talking to a close current friend that knows me on a day-to-day basis than I would if I'm talking to my middle school social studies teacher.

It's just such a big burden you're putting on the people reading your drama, when many of those people are just on Facebook for casual entertainment purposes. Is that how you want your serious life issues viewed? As someone's distraction from a slow day at work or cure for insomnia? Not that everyone would see it that way. Some people might really see your problems as a cry for help, but oh wait, we haven't spoken to each other in 10 years and live in different states. Or better yet, we've actually never met and we ended up as Facebook friends because you mistook me for someone else with the same name. It's a good thing I now know the sordid details or your life, or at least the sordid details of what you spend your time doing or thinking.

Some of you might be thinking at this point, "dude, you just need to de-friend all these strange overly-emotional types you're talking about." Oh, but that perfectly illustrates my next point. I have been on Facebook for almost 7 years. I have a modest, but perfectly respectable, 600+ friends on there. And I have never once de-friended someone. Why? Because when you start de-friending people, you have crossed that line into taking Facebook way too seriously. Perhaps there are exceptions to this, such as de-friending an ex-significant other as a form of catharsis, but in general the rule applies. If you consciously consider the process of "cleaning out" your Facebook friends list as some sort of statement, you've got much bigger issues to worry about. Why? If someone has access to these deep recesses of your personal being, you're sharing too much on the internet. This should be the first sign you're over-doing it and missing the purpose. At the very least, you just need to set your privacy settings accordingly. I can't tell you what privacy settings to set because I've never checked my own. Why? Because I share nothing on Facebook that there is anyone I wouldn't want to see it. Do I necessarily want complete strangers seeing my profile information? No, but would I be worried if one did? No, again.

This may sound as though I'm ranting in response to someone de-friending me on Facebook. Not the case. Occasionally I'll stumble upon the realization that someone has de-friended me, which is usually the result of me suddenly noticing that there's less inane babbling on my newsfeed than I'm used to. When this happens, my first thought is, "Why did this happen?". After about 0.47 milliseconds of that thought, a sense of relief and contentment settles over me. Why? Because right then I know there are people that obsess over Facebook far more than me and that I'm actually among the Facebook users that have the least riding on it. I cannot even imagine sitting down and making a dedicated effort to prune my friends list. This hardly means that I'm good friends (or even know) everyone on my friends list, but it does mean I simply don't care enough to bother. I would honestly rather spend the time staring at a blank wall (or writing a rambling blog entry) that I might otherwise use going through the mental process of making cuts.

Is there a agreed upon method for that sort of thing? Is there an algorithm that computes if someone is worthy of being your Facebook friend based on how long you've known each other, how often you see each other or whether you were even friends in the first place? This is especially vexing when it was the other person that be-friended you in the first place. It's like they really were just using you for their own satisfaction or self-assurance for a time, then they dropped you from their life, or at least their life as it appears on a computer screen with a log-in name and password. Then again, these are the people that invest far too much in Facebook in the first place.

So, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook, pour your hearts out and feel free to de-friend away, even de-friend me if you wish. Just know that while I may have over 600 friends in the virtual world, I will eventually find out and that sly grin that comes over my face (after 0.47 seconds) will be the look of me realizing that I have just destroyed you.

One of the big stories this (or was it last?) week has been the launch of Google Plus (or is it Google+?). Yes, I just managed to put four different punctuation marks in a row. I should probably just stop here (shut up, nobody is making you read this), but I won't.

So yeah, this Google Plus thing. I don't really know what it is or what it does. I've heard it's sort of like Google's version of Facebook, but will somehow be better, but I can't seem to recall exactly how or why. This is something I could have researched before these fingers started dancing, but so could you. That is, you could research it using Google (note, not Facebook). Anyway, I can't tell you what it does or doesn't do and how that compares to what Facebook does or doesn't do. I have used Facebook since about August 2004, when grad school began. I don't really remember much else since the beginning of grad school, but Facebook has helped make it a lot less uncomfortable when someone says "remember when such-and-such happened in (a year since 2004)?" Thanks to Facebook's seemingly endless ability to keep my messages, photos, statuses and pokes (do people still do this? you know, on Facebook, that is), I don't have to worry about it. And it is for that reason that I don't really care what Google Plus does or doesn't do. If it's good (and thus warrants the "+"), I'm sure it's something I'll use. Otherwise, I'll let tried and true Facebook keep doing its thing.

That's sorta the point of this entry I guess. At this point, Facebook has become so good at what it does, it has ceased to really warrant much concern from me one way or the other. It is very true that the reason it does this so well is because it's not really following in the footsteps of anything else that came before it. Granted, there was MySpace (most recently) and Friendster (a little older), but nothing has ever "done Facebook" as well as Facebook. That's part of the reason why Facebook is probably a more common word for most people than the words "face" or "book" are combined.

Back to G+ (I'm going to call it that for now, or at least until everyone starts mistaking it for a Gatorade product), I have seen people begging on their Facebook statuses for an invite to this new-found competitor. That's like walking in Domino's just to ask for Pizza Hut's phone number. Don't these people realize that the reason why they resort to Facebook to seek out very specific information is because Facebook is just about the best way to do exactly that?

Well, I got a G+ invite. I didn't ask for one, but a good friend just so happened to send me one, because that's what friends do. I eagerly got myself going (I don't actually remember how you "get it going", but I did whatever you do when you're new to G+) and started adding people to my circles. That was fun for a few minutes, then I realized this was essentially just like Facebook, so I went looking for something different it can do. After about 30 seconds, I instinctively started reading Facebook. That's just how it works.

Now I see that Spotify's music service is finally reaching the US and guess what? People are already on Facebook asking for a Spotify invitation. I have no idea if it'll be the next music-related flame out like iTunes' "Ping" or if it'll be a hit. And G+ (not a Gatorade product, by the way) might be a serious contender for peoples' time that should be spent doing something else. It all remains to be seen, but it's such an odd thing that we are now so enamored with these various forms of social networking that we beg each other for the privilege to use something we never knew we were missing in the first place, especially considering we never really had a problem with the incumbent either.

All this thought about the importance of social networking online got me to thinking...

Having spent a few hours over the past several days watching the documentaries The Lottery and Waiting for "Superman", I am clearly more capable of making an entry about America's education system than I was before. Problem is, like with so many of today's "big" issues, there is no clear-cut answer. There are facts, however. Granted, facts can sometimes be misleading, skewed or simply irrelevant, but it sure beats hearsay or conjecture.

It might be argued by some that American schools are worse now than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but is it fact? We sure hear about how bad (mostly public) schools (in mostly impoverished areas) are. This is probably a fair statement. However, these schools were never necessarily great. The problem comes when you consider that there aren't as many decent options for the people coming out of these schools, regardless of whether or not they have a diploma in hand. The formerly "fall-back" jobs provided by the agricultural and manufacturing industries simply aren't there in the same quantity as before. They've either changed continents, or at least countries, or disappeared altogether. This has left many recipients of a poor school system more likely to end up confined to another damaged system, the prison system. If you look at the bright side, though, it means more gainful employment opportunities for those interested in being a prison guard.

Meanwhile, as those "fall-back" jobs have gone elsewhere, the people that took them are living in countries that now have better academic performance than the US on many levels. The leftovers of this "transaction" has been more poorly educated (if educated at all) people who do not even have a "fall-back" job to fall back on. These days the expectation of students is to gain an education that will demand a job and, more likely than ever, a well-paying job. As a result, the gap has widened to wider than ever before. Since you actually have to compete for a "good" job in the US these days, you are more inclined to get a higher degree (or equivalent), thus making you even more likely gainfully employed than those that went down the "fall-back" path.

So, the fact is, American schools are not really getting any worse relative to American schools of the past. The status quo has been very well maintained domestically. When compared to the educations being given and received globally, though, the US looks terrible. Everyone else has gotten better and did not really bother to make the US level of education the goal, but merely a milestone on the way to better. If the US truly wants to be a free market leader of the world, we must look beyond our broad borders for our competition, motivation and justification.

The two fine documentaries named way back in the first paragraph see charter schools as an idea to solve the problems. Although the evidence presented is quite convincing, even if these schools are not a fix-all, their mere existence brings to light much more. The argument here isn't the same as private versus public schools. That is an apples and oranges comparison. While the two ultimately strive to do the same basic thing, the approach, priorities, philosophy and often outcome differ greatly. With charter schools, the issue isn't whether classes are taught by nuns, or if school uniforms are required, or if sports are relevant, or who can afford the tuition. These charter schools are essentially "free" (in the same way other public schools are, which is to say they aren't really free) and are located in the school district which they serve. They also have been shown to often (but not absolutely always) out-perform their local "zoned" counterparts by a huge margin. Oh, but their teachers and administration are not part of teachers' unions. Oops.

What the involved union figureheads fail to realize is that this is not about them. Granted, teachers are (for the most part) underpaid and under-appreciated. That does not, however, make their pay scale or work schedule the focus. The matter at hand is the quality of the education of kids at their mercy. The plain truth is, nobody wants to make life harder for teachers. Nobody wants to tell a willing teacher they can't do their job. It's just a matter of keeping priorities straight and letting a little simple logic enter the equation. It stands to reason if the teachers have nothing to worry about in regard to their job being tied to their performance (like the vast majority of jobs that people actually have to apply for and be hired for), it's easy to see why so many will put their own interests first and do so in a staggeringly reprehensible fashion. Of course, not all teachers will do this, but the ones that will are probably the same ones that got into teaching because of the system in place and it probably wouldn't be a stretch to say they had a teacher or two with the same mindset while they were getting their own education. Right back to the status quo we go.

This union issue is pretty depressing, but not because unions in general are inherently good or bad. Bad teachers can't be fired and the option to avoid the bad teachers can't be exercised by many. As the documentaries state, the system is clearly broken, but that's not to say it's broken everywhere. I had the fortune of attending fine schools throughout my education, including public schools from the first day of middle school to the last day of graduate school. I also had a mother that placed a high priority of academic pursuits, just like many of the parents in the films and parents over the past several decades.

As long as there have been schools, there have been good students and bad students, good teachers and bad teachers, good ideas and bad ideas. It is time to take the good and replace the bad, even if the bad was once good. In other words, it's not just the system that's broken, but those at the helm as well. That is to say, it's not just about what others (be it domestically or abroad) are doing right or better, it's what we're doing wrong or worse.