Two items of interest in the Chronicle of Education this morning (first two links below require subscription):
First,
many Yanomami people are distressed to know that blood samples taken from their communities in 1968 are still being held in American laboratories, a Yanomami activist said Friday at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.
Apparently the Yanomami dead can’t be disposed of in the Yanomami fashion unless all the physical remnants of the deceased are entirely destroyed.
On the other hand, according to the similarly exotic customs of more than a dozen tribes of American academics, government education data should not only never die; it should also never fade away into archives but instead remain forever available on government web sites. Seemingly fearful that the Republicans have progressed from book burning to data deleting , The American Educational Research Association, the American Library Association, and a dozen other organizations have complained that the Dept. of Education is preparing to delete data from its web site that does not reflect the philosophies of the Bush adminstration. See AERA’s letter here.
The Department’s spokesman replied that its web site is indeed being updated but that outdated information will be archived and still available.
