- January - New Technology, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- February - Challenges for the next generation
- March - "A Republic, if you can keep it"
January has five Thursdays, so we could let Skye give her presentation on Afghanistan on one of the Thursdays that meets her schedule. Certainly one of other topics covered in January will be on how the new technologies affect privacy.
Vince wanted a discussion to help of understand what the kids today are interested in. We certainly can cover that during one of our meetings in February. Remember, I will be away on the third week in February, so I am looking for a volunteer to lead the discussion, on Feb. 20.
I will also be away on the first week in March. Tim will lead the discussion that week. He will be looking for topics on how we have strayed from our Democratic principles. This would be the time for Bill's topic on gun control, Ken's topic on local politics and Al's topic on religion in politics.
As for the topic of Education, it fits nicely under all three themes. So we may have several sessions on Education.
If I missed any of your favored topics please let me know.
The March timing for a discussion on local politics will be great. The filing deadline for candidates is Tues., Feb. 25 at 9 PM. They'll have about a week to withdraw if they want to do that. So sometime after the first week of March, we'll know exactly who is running to represent Howard County in public office. Then early voting starts on Thursday, June 12 with the regular election day on June 24. The major races locally will be for County Executive, County Council, Legislative Districts (9/12/13), and Board of Education. In some cases, the eventual winners will be clear from the start and the discussion of those situations won't take long. So I should have no trouble covering it all within the time frame.
ReplyDeleteActually, candidates will only have until office closing time on Thursday, Feb. 27 to withdraw. So I'll be ready to discuss it all anytime in March.
ReplyDeleteThe 2nd TED talk above is quite powerful. Isn't it amazing-strange how children in other countries would do anything to be able to attend school and US kids are oftentimes just the opposite?
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