Hope everybody had fun this independence day weekend. The weather here in San Francisco was gorgeous! And the annual SFO jazz festival was on! Ah, the good life!

With regard to the focus of our blog, I am happy to mention that nationally renowned and respected journalists, especially op-ed column writers of the New York Times, have started paying a lot of attention to our education woes. Paul Krugman graces the topic regularly, and so do others. One influential voice that has joined the bandwagon is Nick Kristof, a Pulitzer prize winning columnist famous for his highly visible coverage of the human rights violations in Darfur. Since the beginning of this year, I have noticed Kristof writing more about education, with the hope, I think, that by keeping the issue in our sights, the current administration will do something to solve our problems. Read some of his posts on the topic:

Our Greatest National Shame

Rising Above I.Q.

Education’s Ground Zero

The Best Kids’ Books Ever

Other interesting reading: An article in the New Yorker about ‘Green Dot’ schools in LA
(registration is required to read the full article):

Now for some other thoughts

Over a period of time, I have realized that I am a part of the ‘too much talk, not much walk’ bandwagon, which is comprised of a group of professionals who care to regularly express their thoughts about the current state of affairs through blogs and such, but who dare not take part in community activities that really make a difference. Consequently, I decided in June of this year to start a small foundation to address various societal issues that I think need to be addressed in our communities. For a while, I was trying to come up with a good mission statement that would describe the goals of the foundation. My statements only got bigger and more complicated as tried to include multiple areas. Oddly, I woke up the 4th morning with a single thought in my head, that I don’t really need a complicated mission statement, but something really simple, along the lines of, The foundation aims to address societal problems by proposing innovative solutions.

So here goes. I had thought of a good name, but turns out that there is another religious foundation by that name in India. So had to default to The Date Foundation (the website is parked, but not active). The foundation started with acquiring of the website on July 4th, 2009. I will post more as work progresses.

Cheerio!
-Shailesh