Duncan’s talk at Teachers College: first impressions
Some quick impressions of the text of Arne Duncan’s speech at Teachers College today: Historical quibble: Duncan said he was speaking at a place where “giants like John Dewey played such a formative role.” No, he didn’t, or at least not at Teachers College. When Dewey moved from Chicago to Columbia, he moved from education to philosophy, […]
A gadfly remembered: Jerry Bracey
An e-mail from Kevin Welner yesterday announced Jerry Bracey’s death Monday night. I only met him a handful of times in the past 20 years of his persistent, indefatigable efforts to poke holes in every public report or news story he saw as an effort to demonize public schooling. His Huffington Post column from September […]
The curious case of Larry Summers
Okay, maybe I can’t let well enough alone on economics. About a decade from now, someone will have both the material and distance to write a fabulous biography of Larry Summers. On one level, he is a brilliant economist. At another level, he has been a total MF, and at Harvard the financial games and […]
An historian reads the business section (with apologies to John Allen Paulos)
I do not generally comment on economic matters, but I think historians of education can say something productive about the current myths plodding around the internet about the stimulus and the non-bank sector of the banking industry. First, some of the current discourse: Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida, is unimpressed […]
New grading routine attempt… and why Blackboard 8 continues to be horrible
I need to crack down on myself today and spend all of it grading and doing other teaching-related tasks. Now that I have figured out an awful, awkward, arguably arbitrary workaround for an incredibly stupid usability problem with the Blackboard 8 Grade Center,* I know how students can access feedback I upload and can be […]