"That’s so gay" lawsuit
An AP story on a California lawsuit centers on a school’s warning a student for saying, “That’s so gay” after being insulted for being Mormon (the insult aimed at her was “Do you have 10 moms?”). This is a case of 2 insults don’t make a right, but there’s a question of whether quasi-disciplinary treatment is […]
Comma interruptus
I’m currently providing advice to some colleagues on a manuscript, and 90% of the changes I’m suggesting are the elimination of commas that come in the middle of a clause between the subject and verb or between the verb and the object. In almost all cases, the commas separate parenthetical comments that would be more […]
Of Diane Ravitch and presentism
In an amended entry earlier today, I noted my being a Michael Katz student and somehow still not having fits at the sight of Diane Ravitch’s name. (As far as I’m aware, Michael doesn’t, either.) That doesn’t mean that I agree with her substantive scholarship, and I’ll repeat here a 2004 contribution I made to […]
The myth of apolitical education policy
Monday in Get Schooled, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Bridget Gutierrez asked, But will public education ever not be political? This is a classic statement that gets a mental “facepalm” reaction from me. How can you have education connected to citizenship (either education for citizenship or education attached to citizenship as a right) and then expect that […]
Welcome Meier and Ravitch to the blogosphere
Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have finally started their blog Bridging Differences. It should be an interesting and readable conversation. Update: One commenter writes, “I thought Michael [B.] Katz hated Ravitch–well, he trashed her scholarly work, anyway. Isn’t she out of favor now?” Yes, I’m a former Michael Katz student (Michael Katz, the historian of education at […]