Raul Hilberg, 81
Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg died over the weekend. I never met him, but he deeply affected my understanding of history and human cruelty. As a child raised in a American Jewish household in the 1960s and 1970s, I was exposed to the first generation of Holocaust education. (I didn’t know until a few years ago […]
School uniforms and state interest
A renewed debate over constitutional rights and school uniforms should be the basis for a discussion of the obligations of school districts to avoid fads. In general, federal courts have ruled that school districts are immune from first-amendment arguments because they have articulated plausible arguments for restricting student dress. As long as lawyers for the […]
Framing NCLB debates
Matthew Yglesias has a point about the the details of NEA’s No Contractor Left Behind flyer passed out liberally at YearlyKos this weekend. Yglesias notes that the message of the flyer relies on sloppy reasoning and is more sensationalist than sensible. I’m worried by something else about the flyer: it’s irrelevant to NCLB policy debates. […]
Steve Spurrier’s tantrum
University of South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier wants the University of South Carolina to lower its admissions standards for football players to whatever the minimum is for NCAA athletes. Steve, we might be more sympathetic to this ploy if South Carolina’s freshman graduation rate for African-American football players entering in 1999-2000 were higher than 38% (compared with […]
A double-dare for Eminem and 50 Cent
By Sherman Dorn on August 6, 2007
From Confessions of a Community College Dean: Word you never hear in rap: azalea. For extra credit: put orange at the end of a rhymed line without using door hinge.
Posted in Random comments