On Wendy Kopp, TFA, and Linda Darling-Hammond
Back in June, I wrote a long entry on Teach for America and Linda-Darling Hammond’s critique of the Kopp organization and model. I had been puzzled at the claim by Kevin Carey and others that Darling-Hammond simply hated TFA with the type of bile that is usually attributed to Karl Rove, Bill Belichek, and others […]
Both Fish and Bérubé are wrong
Some years ago, I ran across someone who was so firmly convinced that schools were heterosexist, he thought that K-12 teachers should be forbidden from mentioning anything about their private lives lest they reinforce heteronormative assumptions. I asked, “Okay, so that means you can’t have a picture of your spouse or children on your desk?” […]
In formidonis
A week ago or so, my daughter’s composition class teacher assigned an essay that was clearly linked to the history class: not an essay, but Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741), the quintessential First Great Awakening sermon. I am not religious, certainly not Christian in any of its flavors, yet […]
Epistle to the late night
Dear evening, I very much enjoy your company at times such as this evening, when I love to unwind at the end of a day and contemplate ideas that I usually do not have time to. But that’s not this evening. You may notice me at 1 am with a stack of student papers, not […]
Michael Bérubé Tuesday
I’m too exhausted right now to think too much about Bérubé’s visit today. I know that his synapses work at least three times as quickly as mine do, he and I disagree about the definition of cultural studies (and at and on this point I think he’s right), and we also disagree about the underlying […]