It's like Edward Tufte, Leni Riefenstahl—and, I dunno, Polyphonic Spree?—got together to brainwash you.

I've got to hand it to the video's production company, The Cultivated Word, for creating an triumphantly insipid piece of propaganda. Some advice, though: Try a slightly less obvious, bombastic approach; it might be less clear to your subjects, er audience, what you're trying to do.

The company's motto, from their web site: "We turn passive viewers into engaged audiences." What does that even mean?! Passivity and engagement are fairly orthogonal concepts—and what does "engagement" really mean? And the last time I checked, an audience is made up of viewers.

What they seem to be going for is the cultivation of sentiment based on emotional manipulation, which is nothing new, but I find the way they package it—as part of the solution rather than part of the problem—rather galling.

On another note, it very much reminds me of the end design work done in Waiting for "Superman", which itself made me feel a little like their director thought his audience a group of simpletons in deed of stick figure diagrams explaining the most basic concepts.

Good idea, but seriously lacking in just about everything else.

No online classes? No search function or categories? No preview or course outline? ("You'll learn how to make a bag" doesn't cut it). No details about what makes their instructors qualified to teach? (Being successful doesn't make you a good teacher). Single classes with an average length of 90 minutes? What could anyone learn from that?

Nothing about their website convinces me that their classes are worth my time or money. I'm all in favor of making education more efficient, but this site just seems to be doing it all wrong.

Awesome goals, that are even better considering how much the US is paying for education now - and planning to cut.