Coming of Age: "Growing Up" With Barack

MeanMesa knows that every Inauguration Day includes some form of the promise made in January 2008.  On that wintry day in Washington, the President told us that "I will be President for all Americans -- including the 48% who didn't vote for me."

Of course, our first thought was that the special interests so dear to the hearts of the less-than-loyal opposition would be spared, a few, select oxen would go un-gored and a few ear-marked "Bridges to Nowhere" would still see the concrete dribbling into their foundation forms.  Such ideas arose in us -- that is, in the expectations of voters from both parties -- because our fundamental understanding of a New President pictured, ultimately, a man in charge of where the money would be spent.

It turns out that Barack Obama's ambitions ran a bit deeper, in fact, a few furlongs beyond that overly simplified assessment. Obama very conscientiously embraced some rather more difficult necessities which he correctly surmised as a unavoidable appendages to his chair in the Oval Office.  In addition to all the highly visible challenges with the economy and the disastrous wars in the Middle East, the new President was firmly convinced that the American electorate had grown far too lax to effectively meet what was now facing us.

Obama's new job included a painful rehabilitation of what the Founders had optimistically assumed would be an "educated electorate."  To further complicate matters, the "uneducated electorate" who would comprise the class in this re-development project were fully empowered with ballots.  Whatever tact he might take as he pursued this necessary correction would require a "soft touch" indeed if the preoccupied and distracted "students" were not to simply replace their teacher out of hand for some less demanding choice.

Those "students" had grown quite accustomed and comfortable with being manipulated by those with the ambition to replace the President.  Obama found himself responsible for a nation driven by fear.  Everything from "godless Communists" to the ossified, tedious "death fear franchise" of the religionists now chimed the tune which had replaced the old, more elevated, more legitimate song of national idealism.

Reduced to a faux desperation, the voters would run like lemmings at the latest construction of easily digested threats.  Only the outrages of the autocracy had been a strong enough shock to even consider electing someone like our new "teacher."  Nothing else, it seemed, could have penetrated the hazy cloud of terror so meticulously crafted by those with the dream of riding national division to the seats of power.

Barack would need to reconfigure the electorate in a way which might still serve to save the country.  The "ship of state" can hardly be expected to "weather the storm" with crew and passengers who are driven exclusively by an endless series of false fears, each one designed to exploit another one previously exploited.

Among this repertoire of "newly discovered nightmares," the only faux-nightmare to be avoided, it seems, is that the "storm" the ship is "weathering" originated from precisely the same process and not from the rain and wind of unpredictable squalls, but rather from the ambitions of the least developed among the ship's inhabitants themselves.

A Little History

The story of people on the planet includes plenty of instances where some ancient state was "suddenly" confronted with an adversary from which it had no defense.  The Zulu faced Lord Kitchener's colonial army with spears.  The Eskimos faced the influenza of the Russian sailors without anti-bodies.

In some cases, those so challenged rose to the "terror of the moment," reconfigured themselves and prevailed.  In other instances, the rout was complete, a pogrom not the result of a lack of bravery or commitment, but more conveniently defined as an "unfortunate clash" between two worlds.

Barack Obama encountered his own, contemporary version of such a challenge.  Many see his election as, in fact, an effort at such a reconfiguration.  However, although it may have been the beginning of such a process, it was little more than a beginning.

Our nation's literacy peaked around the 1950's.  Those times introduced a nuclear threat so grave that even the slightly less interested were compelled to be at least somewhat interested.  Books and newspapers were routinely consumed by truck drivers and plumbers.  High school civics classes were very directly dedicated to establishing a fundamental understanding of "why it was worth it" to remain in such a fearsome "fight to the death" with the Soviets.

Being placidly uninformed, uninterested or simply detached from the information of the moment amounted to something conceptually similar to being suicidal.

However, as the world softened a bit, that is, as the "other side" faltered ever so slightly, a new, detached kind of indulgence became a respectable new alternative.  The previous horror subsided a little, making the previous infatuation with the nuances of foreign policy more comfortably distant.  Good times -- at least better times -- once again reintroduced the subtle narcotic of effortless oblivion, that is, once again, "the livin' was easy."

And it wasn't just the "war business" which enjoyed this growing complacency. A dutiful attention to other matters -- especially domestic ones -- soon joined the optional "reading" list.  By the mid-1960's a new metric for literacy had been devised.  It was "voluntary illiteracy," and the definition was based squarely on the premise that, although a survey subject could read, he was choosing not to.

This phenomenon signalled the start of a serious dilution of our traditional reliance on the good decisions of an "informed electorate."

The Nature of the "Oblivion"

What exactly were all these domestic areas of information which grew to be so dangerously neglected and precisely how did that happen?

These developments were not without sponsors.  In every case, fear became the refinery of new public opinions advantageous to those in charge of the redefinition.  Ideology had served well during the era of "mutual assured destruction," but it had required a preparatory education.  The new "products" required nothing more than a popular presence of unexamined certainties, relics of religion, tradition and a poorly understood national history which could be wonderfully exploited by just the right "triggers."

It turns out that newly stupefied Americans could be manipulated by race fears, an incomprehensible economy, the vagaries of religionist prophecies, family values and so on.  The new "currency of the day" consisted of vast, threatening , ever darker clouds of "attacks" on each solitary thread in the fabric of previously "never questioned" societal norms.

As the electorate painfully realized that it was unprepared to consider such matters based on a rational, educational data base, the fear level increased.  After all, when confronted with a challenge to one's certainties in a vacuum of factual information or understanding, even an opinion presents a better possible basis than nothing.

When we find ourselves "flying blind" information-wise, we may as well start lending credence to how we feel.  And, if we are feeling constantly fearful, who does that leave "at the wheel?"

There is little refuge beyond the "fear response" for the citizen allergic to facts. This reality, not missed by those who intended to exploit it to its fullest, began to produce results which were more and more grotesque and less and less understandable in the context of our national history.  The information starved descent into the panic of "survival mode" set the stage for a cultural , economic and spiritual exploitation previously beyond the dreams of even the worst among us.

Obama's Challenge

Compared to the case of the British arsenal of Martini-Henry's of the Zulu War against natives with spears, Obama's America was facing a slightly more serious imbalance.  The challenge facing Obama's new charge evolved from reality itself.  However, unlike the technological disadvantage which had suddenly faced Kitchener's Zulu opponents, our own nation had not been suddenly disadvantaged by any unforeseen consequences.  Instead, Americans had disadvantaged themselves with decades of neglect with respect to staying educated and informed -- or even particularly interested -- in the affairs of the nation.

The priority previously given to education and involvement was forsaken.  The self-destructive phenomenon had now risen to such a serious level that Americans simply no longer chose to be involved at all with the fate of the nation if it involved keeping track of trends and events.  Inebriated by everything from "super power" status to poorly understood nationalistic "exceptionalism," they had become gloriously irresponsible, that is, happy-go-lucky, uninvolved, "voluntary illiterates" with respect to the most basic duties of their citizenship.

Some "Not Too Tasty" First Results of the New National Kindergarten

To save the nation, the President had to reinvigorate this lagging interest in what the country was facing and what could be done about it.  The electorate would have to become re-involved.

Given our recent "track record" on such an involvement, hardly anyone could expect that the "first fruits" of Teacher Obama's efforts would be "roses, simply roses."  That very limited expectation has been robustly realized in the preliminary results of the effort.  A very predictable freak show of "Senate Witches" and other denizens of medieval politics emerged in full force.

However, on the brighter side, even the lumberjacks and football fans now enjoyed a growing understanding of terms such as "deficits," "national debt," "unemployment rates," and "trade agreements."  And, not only had the understanding been increased, the policy interest in such matters had begun a period of reinvigoration, too.

Granted, much of what has been accomplished so far amounts to little more than a wide spread, sinister attraction to the ramblings of the likes of Beck and Limbaugh, but it is a start.  Positively, there seems to be a growing appetite for fact and information and a waning infatuation with sheer, inflammatory opinion.

No parent could lovingly expect his second grader be overly eager to devour Schopenhaur after only a week in school.

The education of this electorate seems to still depend too often on violent incentives.  However, this new thirst for knowledge sprouted under the boot of the autocracy for some.  For others among us, it has not yet emerged from the dubious region of self-suffocation and remains a "garden of horrors," a relentless exploration and exploitation of simply more fears and threats.

A "happy ending" for President Obama will be a return to our traditional two party system with educated voters, a media determined to educate not persuade, and citizens caring enough to labor over good decisions for our country.

Afghan Literacy: A Test for USAID?

"Nation Building" has to start somewhere. Loads of money and hordes of bureaucrats might just be the wrong approach. A good beginning might be somewhat simpler.

MeanMesa notes a familiar comment from those lamenting the litany of reasons why the complex struggle in Afghanistan can only just barely -- or not all -- become a success. That reason?

Most of the population of the country is illiterate.

Following closely behind this are a depressing cacophony of other, associated, and even more medieval reasons including war lords, flaming corruption, military desertion, oppression of women, lots of heroin -- oh well, you get it. However, when we pause on the illiteracy angle for a moment, we realize that it may be one of those cases where the murk of over simplified public opinion -- regarding how hopelessly bad everything -- actually obscures a tactical opportunity, one of regrettably few which seem to be on our NATO "table" right at the moment.

The plan proposed here represents a heady mix of Obama style Community Organizing, regional warlord hegemonies, a military strategy of integrating European troops into local populations and a tottering commitment by both Afghans and occupiers to suppress rampant, outrageous corruption. It promises to lay an actual, tangible foundation for a functional police force and provide an improved cadre for the autonomous security forces in training.

It can substantially augment the crippling lack of jobs in that unfortunate country. It can offer the opportunity to reinforce NATO's public interest in dealing with what has been, so far, at least, a clergy unwilling to step down squarely on one side or the other of the conflict. The plan can move lots of Afghan boys with lots of free time off the streets where they can be recruited by the bad guys. Finally, it can emulate in the Afghan theater the "cash for peace" idea that underpinned the taming of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. By the way, if all those reasons aren't enough to make it interesting, money wise, this baby can deliver good results at a bargain basement price!

So, exactly what kind of a hare-brained MeanMesa scheme could possibly deliver all these positive outcomes?

Simple.

Solve the illiteracy problem.

Here's the plan.

Since the warlords are effectively in charge of most of the country beyond Kabul and a few blocks of Kandahar, enlist their cooperation. Tell them that NATO finds it necessary to bring members of the security forces up to a point of rudimentary education -- emphasizing literacy -- in order to build the Afghan army and police.

The approach to this will begin with local warlords selecting sites -- always subject to NATO military approval for having workable security possibilities -- where either new buildings can be constructed or existing buildings can be modernized into suitable schools. These would be schools along the lines of what Junior Colleges are like in the US. In fact, there would be schools similar to Junior Colleges in cities without much money and built in bad neighborhoods. There are plenty of examples.

Not all of these schools would be created in Kabul. either. The Western provinces would be even better, remote locations. Those areas are already under European NATO occupation, that is, they are controlled by soldiers from governments which are pretty "gun shy" about having their occupation forces involved in a shooting war of the likes of Helmund.

This distribution of facilities would spread the wealth to areas of Afghanistan which are essentially pacified, but which receive only a smattering of the immense War on Terror money which usually has trouble getting past the outskirts of Karzai's capital. It's also possible that schools in these more uncontested areas would have fewer security problems, that is, Taliban attacks. Students from less well controlled occupation areas could be sent to distant schools when necessary.

A NATO officer would be placed in charge of each project, and a contingent of NATO military forces under his command would move in to permanently billet at each site. These foreign soldiers would be responsible for the construction of the buildings, the operation of the school and the on-going security. Each school site would house all the students, teachers and assigned military in one place. Each school would have an Afghan head master and faculty, and be named in honor of the local "boss."

The construction of the schools -- and the resources to complete the job -- would fall to USAID or the NATO equivalent. There would be no architects, Requests for Proposals, Code Compliance difficulties or even contractors. The military officer responsible for the school would make all the decisions regarding the preparation of the facility. Hey. This is what "occupation" means!

Time would be of the essence. The first twenty or so schools, probably in the Western Provinces, should be in full operation within months of initiating the program. When the officer responsible was convinced that he had a workable project, required materials would be transported to the site through military channels. The construction would be completed by future students under military leadership. Sponsoring NATO countries could compete to see which Army was best at building schools on time and on budget. Any buildings made for this purpose should be able to fill other local needs -- or remain as schools of some sort -- after this program has run its course.

The class schedule would be extremely simple, that is, very abbreviated when compared to the Junior College model. To graduate from these schools a student must be able to read and write Pashto, the official national language of Afghanistan along with, if possible, a smattering of Pahlawi, Persian Dari and some Farsi. see: Pahlawi/Farsi/Dari

Graduates should be able to perform fundamental arithmetic, read maps, fill out police reports, correspond with commanding officers in writing and so on. Because very few women will be required in the new Afghan security system, schools for them could be placed in locations where their presence would not be provocative. Afghan students who demonstrated a promising prospect for learning more could be provided with additional schooling under the same program.

To mollify the clerics, there would be no religious education, but there could be appropriate religious opportunities included in living conditions at each school. However, a final condition of graduation from these schools would be completion of classes in fundamental Afghan civics, Constitution and law

Acceptance of an Afghan youth to enter one of the schools would require his enlistment into the Afghan Security Services or the Afghan National Police. Once accepted, each student would receive a monthly stipend (hence the similarity to the "cash lubricated" Sunni Awakening), which he would probably send home to his family. The cost of keeping a young Afghan man in a subsidized school, fixing his teeth, hiring his teachers, buying his books, paying to heat the place and so on, would amount to a fraction of the cost of killing one.

By the time an Afghan graduated from this short education, his value to the Afghan military or police would be much greater than that of the fellows taken right from the fields, the situation most often the case now. For the warlord, the prospect of having, after the completion of their enlistment terms, drug dealers who could read and write might be appealing.

While the schools were operating, the military assigned to the project would be in charge of all discipline, procurement, educational results and security. When the students were not in reading and writing classes, a beginning course of military or police training could fill the other half of their day.

An estimate of the total time from introduction (enlistment) to graduation would be somewhere around four months. Such a schedule would mean that recruits from an educated cadre could begin entering the Security Services in less than a year from the start of school construction.

The other positive outcome would be the penetration of the responsible military contingent into the local community. Because they would be a small, permanent complement of combat soldiers, military engineers and trainers, the addition of civilians with necessary expertise would not be too difficult. The suppression of corruption and the detection and removal of Taliban sympathizers from the faculty and students would fall to the officer in charge of a specific school project.

Let's get going -- time's a wasting. It will be just like Community Organizing except with guns.

Obama's Next Stink Hole: Educational Performance Testing

Will it be possible to test public school students to improve the educational system?87

A Proposal for A New Direction in Public School Student Testing

The “No Child Left Behind” idea has probably spun out its last ideological talking point. The ill fated program’s most destructive quality was that it provided way too much fertile ground for ideological “talk show” nit picking from both sides. It will die quietly among the corpses of other momentary political educational “snake oil” cure-alls dating back at least as far as the Eisenhower years.

All these programs died from the same pair of plagues. The first was that none of them could breathe itself into life without funding. Whatever funding was proposed was gradually eliminated by questionable Congressional opinions about results. The second was that none of these legislative efforts could present proof of effectivity adequate for its own political protection. There were never any credible, unassailable test results to substantiate progress which could survive the Congressional looting operations.

Now, President Obama has, predictably, propped education up as one the legs of his three legged stool. He has even dared to trot out the seemingly good idea of merit pay for good teachers, a traditional bipartisan "meat-puppet" fun factory with a history of utterly destructive results. No one in Congress from either side of the aisle can agree on a concrete approach for testing public school students or school teachers.

The truly new feature of the debate this time around comes not from the studied educators but from the headlines of the newspapers still surviving that industry’s head long slide into the irrelevance of its neo-con news manipulation. The United States, in a performance record eerily similar to our health care disaster, spends the most money for the worst out comes (36th in the industrial world in most areas) from public education. Today, we require neither a wizened old educational expert or a tax craving politician to tell us that the public schools are a mess. The Chinese, Scandinavians, Europeans and Asians are running laps around our graduates.

That is what our testing vacuum has led us into as a nation which was originally famous for its innovative public education. Facts on the ground always trump expert educational opinions if the media presents them to the American people. These current educational “facts on the ground” are all around us in a troubling, unavoidable way, yes, just like a herd of homesick wildebeests in the parlor.

So far we have managed to fill in the gaps left by the shortage of our own educated workers by siphoning off the best from Eastern Europe, India, China and other places where education is still being taken seriously. However, with the waning purchasing power of the new “Paulson” dollars, that solution may well be ending. In recent years we have focused most of our attention on exporting colonial, greedy aberrations of our export style of free market capitalism and crooked elections and the rest of the world has returned the favor by supplying the best and brightest of its chemists, doctors, mathematicians, physicists and programmers to run our country.

The dilemma with educational testing has a few issues in common with the wildebeest problem. Just as was the case with medieval martyrs who were to be torn apart by bulls attached to each arm and leg, the educational testing quandary is characterized by its own four, self-serving flesh tearing bulls. We will consider a definition of precisely who those parties might be in modern terms, then we will look at a possible -- and delightfully simple -- solution to the whole affair of sensible educational testing.

Flesh Tearing Bulls Type One: The dogmatic, ideological arsonists.

This bunch is always willing to rant about big government intervention in the educational system. The threat they harness so effectively is to suddenly arise during elections with their prepackaged inflammatory rhetoric. They are able to convert any outcome, good, bad, or indifferent, related to changes in the educational system to a creeping, liberal contamination of traditional American values, those would be values such as illiteracy. More importantly, they seem to be consistently able to do this at election time.

Consequently, these ideological arsonists, already suspiciously under educated, are able to impose their “fire up the crowd” generalities at just the most strategic moment, term and after term, repopulating the legislative bodies of the House and Senate with more talking point zombies.

Flesh Tearing Bulls Type Two: The "free market" educational profiteers.

By sustaining their influence with copious campaign contributions, this crowd is able to sell text books and tests of incomprehensibly low quality to school boards, state legislators and governors. The secret of accomplishing this travesty year after year lies in the careful marketing of the content of these books of theirs and the emphasis implied by the questions in the tests they provide.

This means that such obsolete concepts as a 6,000 year old earth, tax and spend liberals, historically justified wars of aggression and the like can be injected into public school text books on a “pay as you play” basis. The procurement offices of state and local governments purchasing these text books and tests are only too happy to get an opportunity to “reinforce societal norms” with the both the content of these shabby, confusing standardized books and the rather shadowy “right answers” which correspond to the shabby, confusing standardized tests.

Flesh Tearing Bulls Type Three: The Ensconced Educational Credentialists

This bunch seeks primarily glory, but very often find tenured job security a close second. If they are able to insinuate their consistently ineffective educational ideas into the testing system, their credentials as absolutely indispensable, educational geniuses are sustained. This may seem silly, but these Type Three Bulls actually labor constantly in the hope of complicating things so profoundly that the test questions they might approve have twisted, tormented baggage so circumnavigatory that graduate logic students would simply surrender when they read them.

The effect of this priority on typical public school students is to train their young minds to the elaborate "agenda dodging" tactics necessary to survive the test questions at the expense of what most tax payers would consider legitimate educational materials. Having materially failed at designing effective educational systems, these “parasites of complexity” have adopted a last, desperate ambition to keep all educational policy issues -- and test questions -- so complex that only they can interpret the results, an interpretation which, not surprisingly, usually suggests educational successes based on their plans.

Flesh Tearing Bulls Type Four: The Insistent Anti Intellectuals.

Although this group may also provide denizens of Type One when properly groomed by campaign strategists, or even otherwise, they are numerous -- and vociferous -- enough to qualify as an independent category. They prefer to compare all contemporary education systems with imaginary ones which have been dredged up from their memories of their own childhood. Of course, 95% of ideas introduced by them with phrases such as “In the old days ..” or “When I was young...” are entirely fabrications of equally unexamined appetites for a return to “The good old days...” In fact, these memories of theirs are not memories of their youth at all, but rather no more than poorly detailed constructs which have been placed in their minds by others (Types Two and Three).

Incredibly, these test complainers, considering their own uncertain educational status, would actually prefer that public school students not be educated too effectively. The prospect of losing an argument with one of their children is vastly more threatening to them than creating a nation where education is completely below the standards of its industrial competitors.

The Flesh Tearing Bulls have thwarted every attempt to adopt a rational testing program which might provide for merit pay for good teachers, lead to the selection of reasonably truthful textbooks or even provide some rational means to direct Federal educational subsidies beyond the current “graft and extraction schemes.” We might recall that George and Laura Bush “contributed” $10,000 to the Katrina emergency funds to restore education in that ravished city. What we might not recall is that this altruistic couple selected a gospel based history text written by the President’s brother as the exclusive “educational material” to be purchased with their money.

Somewhere, almost certainly, there was a test available to measure the success of that, ah, text book. Can we guess what sorts of answers might have been the “right answers” for public school students taking that test?

So how can we solve this testing problem? We have very confidently exhausted the more ideologically biased, the more expensive and profitable, the more credentialist innovated and the more anti-intellectual options. In various times and in various school districts we have experimented with every one of those approaches, and the result was a uniformly skeptical electorate which had reasonably concluded that none of their results measured any more than which interest had threatened or paid off the purchasing department most effectively.

What kind of test can actually measure educational progress? Certainly nothing similar to these previous cynical attempts. It will have to be a new approach, and here it is.

1. Unmanageable question selections.

The proposed test should present roughly 15,000 questions with topics scattered in an entirely random sequence. There should absolutely not be an English, history, literature, mathematics, civics or science section. Everything should be entirely mixed. A wildly uncontrollable collection of questions will end forever the lament of those who claim that testing means “teaching to the test.” No teacher can “teach” to this test.

2. No Grade Level Testing

There should be no implied educational level for any of the questions. In the body of the 15,000 questions should be plenty of choices for both first graders and seniors in high school. The public school students taking the tests will select the questions they want to take the risk of answering. The number of correct answers minus the number of incorrect ones will establish the educational status of the student. There will be no “upper” or “lower” limits on the knowledge level of the student respondent. If a senior scores at the tenth grade level or a third grader scores at the eighth grade level, so be it. The tests will have begun to generate some credible results which can actually be useful in tailoring an education for actual students, not theoretical ones.

3. Incorporate Real Critical Thinking

Probably the most lethal attack on measurement of critical thinking occurred when test results became little boxes to be filled in to answer multiple choice questions. The message of that “leap to efficiency” was that essay questions were simply too expensive to grade, and hence, not revelatory. Further, one unavoidably valid feed stock of critical thinking is the width of the spectrum of information available to the thinker. The Type Three folks have effectively controlled this area of testing for long enough. The results, with or without their confusing excuses, are abundantly -- and discouragingly -- clear.

4. Include Easy and Hard Questions

The test questions can have weighted difficulty. The first graders will be attracted to the one and two point variety, the juniors and seniors to the five and ten point variety. There won’t be enough time for a senior to select all the grade school questions and emerge with a good score. In fact, there won’t be time for any student to answer more than 10% or 15% of the questions in the difficulty -- and point -- range which will yield a good score on the test. That is the point. By selecting the questions they will attempt to answer from the vast number of questions offered, each student will effectively configure his own test. Good test results require a wide open testing process without preconceived limits.

5. Totally Random Question Selection

Let all the experts interested in participating submit their own questions. A good, rough estimate of the number of questions needed in the resource collection would be, say, 250,000. By the way, that would be 250,000 per year. Each annual test should be taken at random from a new, fresh collection of 250,000 possible questions. If the random questions selected are accidentally weighted toward a certain age group, the results can be quite rationally adjusted without impacting the objectivity of the effort. On the other hand, with 15,000 questions presented to students in the final form of the test, such a coincidental shift would be rather unlikely.

The testing regime could easily be spread over a three day period with 5,000 fresh, random questions being presented each day. If that approach was too exhausting, the tests could be issued in 1,000 question sets on fifteen school days distributed throughout the year or even at varying rates for students from different age groups. There would be no cheating, no prepping and very little arguing about the results. When such tests were administered annually on a nationwide student population, district by district comparisons might well prove chilling, indeed.

Legitimate testing results would deliver usable and effective data for directing and targeting the efforts of the entire public -- and private -- educational system. When test results are finally lifted above the contentious, yelling Bulls who have managed to neutralize every effort so far, we might see some material advances we urgently need in our national educational product. Until then, we will continue to fly blind.

We need them, and we need them soon.

For an interesting blog post on this subject, NCTE Elementary:
http://ncteelem.blogspot.com/2007/04/onerous-testing-in-public-schools.html
and for a sample of the confusing Type Three action, ( there are plenty)
http://www.fcrr.org/assessmentReadingFirstCriticalElements.htm
For example, the following article from the BBC concerning science testing in the UK:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7966688.stm