by I just learned from my colleague Dennis Harper of Generation YES that our nation’s Homeland Security Department confiscated calendars comprised of 12 pieces of student art, printed on cards and stored in a CD case. The calendars were traveling with a friend of Dennis who was on his way to Liberia as holiday gifts for people working with Dennis on the creation of The Liberian Education Complex.
Liberia has had NO schools during decades of civil war and Dr. Harper, who taught there in the 1970s is working with former students to bring hope to the newly stable nation.
Why were the calendars confiscated? They were accused of being bootleg CDs. The person transporting the calendars demonstrated that there were no CDs in the CD cases, but that was not good enough.
Here’s a question for you. Am I not allowed to travel with my own CDs if I created them? Pretty soon you will only be able to leave the country with the music of Senator Orrin Hatch.
Oops! The Senator’s eCommerce site does not work (good thing he’s a teleco regulator). If you wish to purchase one of his fine music CDs, click here
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.