Before his first title bout with Sonny Liston, former World Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali once said, “Your fists can’t hit what your eyes can’t see.”  The same can be said for the modern day bully.  While I am certainly not advocating fighting, or any kind of violence, when dealing with a bullying situation, my father used to tell me that the easiest way to handle a bully was to stand up to them and show them you’re not afraid.  This was much easier to do when the bully was on a playground or in the school yard.  How do you stand up to the modern-day bully, the cyberbully?

 First, let me explain cyberbullying.  According to the website stopcyberbullying.org, cyberbullying is defined as, “…when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones.”  While there are countless incidents of cyberbullying, the most recent resulted in Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old Irish immigrant living near Boston, MA, committing suicide after, “Some students made mean-spirited comments to Phoebe in school and on the way home from school, but also through texting and social-networking Web sites,” according to Dan Smith, principal of the South Hadley High School Phoebe attended.

 Highlighted as part of New Civic Discourse on the 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning, New Civic Literacy allows digital natives to bring participatory media into the civic sphere.  While there are so many positive aspects to New Civic Literacy, cyberbullying is clearly an example of how social media can be misused.

 To learn more about cyberbullying, visit stopcyberbullying.org.  To learn more about preventing and stopping cyberbullying, click here.

Since the beginning of August, the public debate on health care has darkened my mood and sparked my pessimism about the future of the United States. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I have been a health care policy wonk ever since I was involved in drafting the first Massachusetts universal health care statute. Although it was repealed before it took effect, it was the pre-cursor for today’s Massachusetts statute, in effect since 2006, key parts of which are replicated in the various health care reform bills under consideration in Congress. These include mandates on individuals to purchase health insurance and on employers over a certain size to contribute to their employees’ health insurance, and an insurance exchange through which individuals and small businesses can buy health insurance at reasonable prices.

What I can’t understand is the fervor and depth of the opposition to health care reform on a national level. The polls say that people feel they will lose out under a federal bill if they already have coverage, and that they are worried about the cost of the bill. I read the latter point as personal, too: fear that one’s taxes will go up. Concern about the deficit just is not convincing, given all that has transpired. Still, how can people not be happy with a proposal that prohibits insurance companies from refusing to cover pre-existing conditions and from dropping anyone when they get sick? And why does involvement of the federal government in regulating and enlarging the health insurance market arouse the anti-government derision that has been a recurrent theme of the past 30 years? More recently, after all, the health insurance companies and HMO’s have been equal objects of scorn, fear and hatred. And the proposals do not actually substitute government programs for private health insurance - something it would be hard to know in light of headlines proclaiming a “federal takeover” of health insurance.

I decided to look at the 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning to see what light it might shed on the situation. I thought I would find wisdom at Altered Bodies, since that is the driver closest to Sick Herd on the 2006 map, and it links bad health to bio-distress and good health to learning.

But I actually found more insight under New Civic Literacy. Underlying the bottom-up forces seeking to re-create the world lies trust in oneself and one’s peers over any expert or authority. While I am a long-time active believer in “power to the people,” this debate is challenging for me. It reminds me of my resistance to The Wisdom of Crowds and my dubiousness about the initiative and referendum process as a mode of governing. If we the people really are ready to re-create our society, how can we be sure that public decisions really are wise, and that the shrill or ignorant do not prevail? Where is the room for expertise and experience in this kind of world? How can we avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water?!