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SHANGHAI — Yao Ming has made it official, telling a packed news conference in his hometown that a series of injuries have forced him to retire from basketball.

The 7-fooot-6 center, who became a household name in China before starting his NBA career with the Houston Rockets as the top draft pick in 2002, said: “I will formally end my career.”

Yao played eight seasons in the NBA, but missed 250 regular-season games over the past six years.

Houston general manager Daryl Morey attended Yao’s farewell conference Wednesday, and NBA Commissioner David Stern was scheduled to send a message via video link. Morey had to get permission from the NBA to be attend because the lockout prohibits contact with players.

If we were a private school, the debate over the diversity requirement would simply be about its relative merits. Personally, I think it is impossible to teach diversity as a graduation requirement. It is such a complex issue that all that can be taught is a worldview. Everyone has a different concept of what constitutes diversity, be it ethnic, religious, economic, literary, etc. Even when you have courses devoted to discussing different notions of diversity, you still have a philosophical framework with which you approach it.

The role of worldviews

Diversity is a word defined by your worldview. Because the UW is a public school, this issue goes beyond the relative merits of the courses and into the nature of education itself. Every school, every course, every professor — everyone promotes his or her own particular worldview, even at the UW. Something as simple as requiring students to take any of two courses currently listed under the diversity minor becomes inordinately complex when public money is involved. This raises the point that students should individually be in control of their education. Instead of funding schools then, the state should fund students with vouchers they can use to support any school they wish, allowing for greater personalization in education. If we adopted that system, the UW could adopt the proposed requirement because students could choose where their money is going.

“Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum,” said the late University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom in his book, “The Closing of the American Mind.” “It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.”

To subsidize a school is ultimately to subsidize a worldview. Witness the recent battles over Texas schools’ K-12 curriculum, which was blasted by The New York Times for promoting conservative viewpoints in a positive light. It goes both ways, though.

Encouraging worldviews at the UW

The UW is well aware of worldview indoctrination and has been pretty cavalier about it. Making all incoming fall 2009 students buy Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” was a tactic seemingly designed to both personally enrich the president and campaign within the classroom for him.

In the last campaign cycle, the University of Washington faculty and staff donated $306,345 to political candidates and PACs — $276,602 went to Democrats or self-described left-wing PACs, $22,251 to nonpartisan PACs, and $7,492 to Republicans or right-wing PACs.

This is not left-wing bias, this is the left-wing establishment. Whatever diversity we will learn will be what the left terms as diversity. Even if active proselytizing does not occur, what you view as fact and how you present it is determined by your worldview. If the UW were a private school, this would be perfectly fine, but because we are a public school, we forfeit a lot of our ability to require certain courses.

Discouraging color-blindness

Let’s look at some of the diversity curriculum itself. After many drafts of this article and long discussions with editors and colleagues, I was encouraged to do a few interviews. I first interviewed diversity requirement supporter and BSU senator Tracy Hansen-Lamont. I asked him about some of the things I saw in the proposal materials, such as using the requirement to discourage a color-blind mentality.

One of the reasons Hansen-Lamont gave for taking diversity courses was that the world is a diverse place. I agree with him that in a globalized world, it is valuable to learn about other cultures. From his perspective, color-blindness ­— which I defined as treating people merely by their words and actions — could be used as a form of racism.

“The thing about color-blindness that’s bad is that it doesn’t recognize diversity,” Hansen-Lamont said. “Being black is a big part of my identity.”

We should judge people by their words and actions, but we shouldn’t ignore their uniqueness as individuals shaped by cultural experiences. This includes not ignoring skin color, Hansen-Lamont told me, since skin color often carries with it a set of experiences.

The second person I interviewed was Wayne Perryman, who has written prolifically on the subject of race and who also has given numerous sensitivity courses. He is also a local inner city black minister, former newspaper publisher, former talk show host and author.

Perryman agreed with Hansen-Lamont that color-blindness can act as a subtle form of racism because, while it seeks not to use ethnicity against someone, a good thing, it often covers up the cultural influences that went into making that person the unique individual that he or she is.

Notice, though, that this discussion about color-blindness is ultimately a discussion about how people should treat each other. When you are looking at influences on an individual, you need an agreed upon framework because people with different worldviews have different opinions about what constitutes acceptable beliefs and behavior. You cannot be indiscriminate, but at a public university, you must seek general student consensus as much as possible. At a private university, this is a lot easier because the university can more easily choose values it wants to encourage.

Implementing a diversity requirement

“I don’t think the universities are capable of doing the topic justice,” Perryman said. “They either promote a political ideology or racism.”

I have to agree with him on that. Since diversity is a word defined by your worldview, you will not be getting diversity with this requirement, you will just be getting a worldview. But I go one step further. Worldview indoctrination is unavoidable in education. This is more obvious with private religious schools that advertise their worldviews. A Catholic school like Christendom College in Virginia teaches from a Catholic perspective and has a core curriculum corresponding to its values. It is impossible to be truly impartial in terms of having a worldview, including whatever worldview is encouraged by the diversity requirement.

It is OK to have classes focused on the subject of diversity as long as they are not required. I think it is a great idea to learn about other cultures and languages, and this is something students should do — but at a public university, students should take these classes on their own initiative.

Summer may still be in full swing, but it’s never too early to start helping cash-strapped Palm Beach County families prepare their kids for school.

For the 17th year, the Community Back to School Bash, an annual event that collaborates with 69 nonprofit agencies to encourage people to donate school supplies, money and used uniforms, is doing its part.

The donated supplies and uniforms will be distributed to more than 11,000 underprivileged kids, said Stephanie Saraco, the event’s president. When the event began in 1995, it served only 120 kids.

We want to make sure these kids start off the school year with confidence, said Saraco, an executive assistant with NCCI Holdings in Boca Raton. Starting on equal footing and having the same type of supplies as their peers are important.

All families must be pre-registered and qualified to receive the school supplies and clothing, Saraco said. Some of the agencies the Community Back to School Bash collaborates with include The Lord’s Place, a West Palm Beach agency battling homelessness; For The Children Inc., a family services group in Lake Worth; and New Hope Charities, a food distribution program in West Palm Beach.

Saraco said the children receiving the donated supplies and uniforms are homeless, in foster care or at risk of being homeless.

According to the National Retail Federation, in 2010, the average family spent about $549 per child to prepare them for school, up from $380 the previous year. In tough economic times, more families don’t have that kind of money to spend, Saraco said.

The need just keeps getting greater and greater, she said.

Donations are being accepted at all Palm Beach County Walgreens stores as well as dozens of other locations from Jupiter to Boca Raton. The locations are listed at www.backtoschool

bashpbc.org.

This year the event joined forces with the School Uniform Initiative of Palm Beach County, an organization which collects new and used uniforms for needy children.

We were both working for the same cause, Saraco said.

More than $220,000 is needed to purchase school uniforms, school supplies and backpacks. So far Saraco said the event has raised about $100,000 and will probably end up with close to $150,000.

We’ll need the community to pitch in, Saraco said.

Gamom told us that Jay Leno took on the APS scandal last night in his monologue. Here is the segment that begins with Leno punctuating a comment on the LA heat wave with the comment, I was sweating like a school kid in Atlanta trying to pass a test on his own.

Closing a fence around the State of Virginia requires not one team but two. Virginia joined rival Virginia Tech in doing so this past winter, Mike London’s first full recruiting cycle with the program, but it was not until this summer that we saw both the Cavaliers and Hokies team together to force national powers to look elsewhere for their top out-of-state talent. What does this mean for our two Virginia programs?

For Virginia, a rejuvenated recruiting effort spells future success for London and company — and it means the Cavaliers won’t be down for long. For Virginia Tech, recent recruiting successes come as a result of a staff shakeup by Frank Beamer, validating his decision — a tough one, I’d think — to push two longtime assistants off the sidelines and into advisory roles within the athletic department.

A quick look at how each team has fared thus far in the 2012 recruiting cycle, according to Rivals.com: Virginia has landed 15 verbal commitments, nine from in-state, while Virginia Tech has received 21 verbal commitments, 12 from in-state. The Cavaliers and Hokies have combined for 16 of the early top 30 in Virginia, according to the site.

According to Kyle Tucker of The Virginian Pilot, the two teams could end up signing 23 of the state’s top 30 players; Virginia currently holds a commitment from linebacker Kwontie Moore, the fourth-best player in-state, and Tucker thinks the Cavaliers could gain a commitment from the state’s second-best player, defensive end Eli Harold.

Tucker, via his Twitter feed, went on to make another great point: it’s been a long time since what he calls “the Great Exodus of 2006,” when 9 of the top 10 players in Virginia — including Percy Harvin — left the state; overall, 13 of the states top 15 players that year chose a program other than Virginia and Virginia Tech. In short, much has changed over the last five years.

I think it can all be traced back to London’s arrival. He’s done a great job replenishing a depleted roster with impressive talent: his first class, a 26-strong group, was long on athletic ability, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. His staff’s hard work has continued in 2011. Moore, one of the top linebacker prospects in the country, has been joined by a crop of commitments that includes defensive back Courtney Wynn, the 14th-ranked Virginia prospect; linebacker Mark Hall, ranked 18th in the state; and offensive lineman Andrew Miles-Redmond, 20th in the state.

Think Beamer wasn’t paying attention? He definitely was, and London’s inroads with some of Virginia’s top recruits had to have been one of the leading factors behind his decision to make staffing changes. One was replacing running backs coach Billy Hite with his son, Shane, who has taken the point position in Tech’s strong recruiting start. It was a staff-wide mandate from Beamer: I know you can coach, he must have said, but we need to work harder on the trail.

And while the Cavaliers and Hokies clean up, other programs pay the price. Kind in the past to interlopers like Penn State, Florida, North Carolina and others, only two schools — Stanford and Boston College — currently have verbal commitments from recruits ranked in Virginia’s top 20 prospects. In essence, Virginia and Virginia Tech win on two fronts: in landing the state’s best, they keep top talent from heading to their rivals.

Now, there’s a long time until signing day. And these are verbal, non-binding commitments, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a Kwontie Moore, for instance, has a change of heart and heads elsewhere. But you have to like what you’re see, whether you’re for the Cavaliers and the Hokies: all of Virginia wins when the best players stay in-state.

And we thought we had our work cut out for us as teachers of pre-pubescent tweens and teens.

After reading Rethinking Popular Culture and Media, we discovered just how much media saturation and corporate influences have stacked the cards against us. This anthology co-edited by media literacy scholars Elizabeth Marshall and Özlem Sensoy includes over 40 articles divided into six sections written by elementary and secondary public school teachers, scholars, and activists who examine how and what popular toys, books, films, music, and other media “teach”.

The anthology challenged us to change the way we think and therefore the way we teach.

The editors wanted us to confront how commercialism, branding, and profit motives complicate public education. Marshall and Sensoy noted that “the lives of children and youth are thoroughly saturated by corporate influences that promote values of consumption, hierarchy, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for equality.” And, they compiled an anthology that demonstrates the relevance media literacy should have across grades and content areas.

The ways consumerism and market forces serve as crosscurrents in our classroom come across in many selections in the book.

• John Sheehan, a former vice president of the school board of Douglas County, Colorado, cautioned that “public schools should be a respite from the onslaught of advertisers.”
• Business education and social studies teacher Larry Steele challenged his students to reframe the concept “bottom line” in his “Sweatshop Accounting” action research that teaches business and economic lessons using a social justice lens.
• Robin Cooley provided an inquiry approach to teach students about gender stereotypes based upon a female student’s complaint that all of Pottery Barn’s merchandise for girls is pink. Cooley and her students explored gender stereotypes and examined gender stereotypes through deliberative discussions and activities. This project culminated with students writing letters to Pottery Barn about its gender bias merchandise and offering suggestions to combat the stereotyping they observed.

The editors present a multicultural perspective and inspired us to flip the script from what we learned in our history classrooms.

• Herbert Kohl reframed the “too tired to move the back of the bus seamstress” narrative of Rosa Parks. Many of us did not learn that Parks was not an average citizen, but an avid social activist. Her decision to stand up against segregation was not a spontaneous act of rebellion, but a calculated tactic. Does the distorted narrative make people think that only special people like Parks can cause change, and that mass movements are bound to fail without special people like her or Dr. King at the forefront? Or is it simply an easier way of expressing an important historical event to children to help them understand the massive changes that occurred in American society over the last half century?
• Ruth Shagoury challenged the distortion of Helen Keller’s “famous deaf and blind persona.” Shagoury presented Keller’s pioneering work as a suffragette and socialist, battling against poverty and injustice. Maybe we should revisit how we teach students about Keller, not just focusing on the physical challenges she experienced during her childhood.

The theme of teachers and students as reflective learners was central throughout many of the selections.

• Gregory Michie discussed several movies, including “Half Nelson” and “The First Year” and came to the conclusion that teachers must learn from students and students must learn from teachers in order to have success in urban schools. He offered a positive message: “…urban teaching is not all toil and struggle. … It’s nurturing a community among teenagers who’ve experienced too much pain in their young lives.”  Michie’s approach to teaching is very proactive. He used films to demonstrate how different approaches can be effective and reminded us that although urban teaching is a daily struggle, it is important, valuable, and rewarding work.

The book is mostly successful, but it could have provided a few more concrete suggestions on how to address the complexities of race, sexism, and stereotypes in the classroom. Those strategies would be helpful for teachers whose day is already dominated by a narrowing or standardized curriculum.

We had a particular critique of Chela Delgado‘s summarization of the movie “Freedom Writers,” which reflected on how the techniques demonstrated by Ms. G in the movie would not work on a large scale. However, her reflections offered no alternative strategies that could be implemented in classrooms. We found Delgado’s article to be pessimistic when she noted that she is scared that teachers will believe in  the “Freedom Writers” approach and attempt to use it on a larger scale and fail miserably. However, we know teachers in our district who have successfully used the “Freedom Writers” curriculum.

This book would add three new Rs: race, rights, and religious freedom. Teaching these areas in the classroom can be touchy at the best of times. We caution teachers to tread carefully  – but do walk the path.