On writing tics and mental kits
I’ve written before on writing tics, such as the horde of whereases that used to appear in my student writing. (I wonder how many of them knew that the conjunctive whereas is a contronym, a fact that caused a few problems in their essays.) Tics are easy problems to solve: you point them out, and […]
Florida ed news: Class-size cap repeal killed
Surprisingly, the Florida senate vote on the Republican leadership’s attempt to repeal or soften the constitutional class-size cap failed to muster even a majority, let alone the three-fifths supermajority needed in each house to go directly to the ballot. More Florida ed politics on the jump…
Books: accountability or academic freedom?
Well, no publisher thus far has bitten on my proposal for an academic-freedom book. I guess David Horowitz’s self-inflicted publicity wounds plus the existing books have made it less appealing. But I have some interest in a book on accountability, so I may tap that one out over the summer. My first stab at explaining […]
Test-prep as steroids
NY Times reporter Samuel Freedman now suspects what I wrote just three weeks ago. Me: “I’m afraid that test-prep works, if only in the sense that steroids work in sports, with the short-term results.” Freedman: “Under the pretense of fair competition, tens of thousands of high school students and their families employ the scholastic equivalent […]
John Kenneth Galbraith
By Sherman Dorn on April 30, 2006
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith died last night in a Boston-area hospital. He was 97. I started reading him as a teenager, one of my aunts became an economics major because of his writings, and we will miss the voice of one of the best public intellectuals in the U.S. in the 20th century. He was […]
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