Find news about Obama's grandparents and his mom Stanley, the music business, toxic plastic numbers, in the Educational Cyberplayground Blog.

2007 Nobel Prize Winner economics Ned Phelps professor and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Winner 2001/Columbia University professor both endorse Barack Obama for President.

Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery."

In a reference to his American ancestry, Obama writes "while one of my great-great-grandfathers, Christopher Columbus Clark, had been a decorated Union soldier, his wife's mother was rumored to have been a second cousin of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy."

Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother and a strong-willed, unconventional member of the Mercer Island High School graduating class of 1960.

This is Sidney at his best. Great writing by William Rose. Classic scene. "Let me tell you something, I owe you nothing! because you brought me into this world - You Owe ME speech!! You and your whole lousy generation . . .

FULL TEXT OF OBAMA'S SPEECH ON EDUCTION 5/28/08
"As president, I will work with our nation's governors and educators to
create and use assessments that can improve achievement all across America
by including the kinds of research, scientific investigation and
problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st century
knowledge economy. [How are assessments, as such, going to improve
learning?] The tests our children take should support learning not just
accounting. [If this means that educrats design tests badly, okay. But who
is going to design better tests.] If we really want our children to become
the great inventors and problem-solvers of tomorrow, our schools shouldn't
stifle innovation, they should let it thrive. That's what MESA is doing by
using visual arts, drama and music to help students master traditional
subjects like English, science and math, and that's what we should be
doing in schools all across America."