Losing Placement
The controversy over AP African-American Studies, explained (vox.com)NCAA eliminates ACT and SAT scores (The Bulletin) Throughout my high school years, there was a lot of pressure put on us students at the abattoir to enroll in as many AP classes as we could. We were constantly told that not only would taking these classes be expected at the top-tier colleges that most of us were expected to apply to, but that high scores on the AP tests would allow us to skip a lot of…
Erasing History, Erasing People
The DeSantis administration’s ban on AP African American studies ‘is eroding traditional pubhlic education’ in Florida, state school board member says (Business Insider via msn.com) One of the central pieces of the right-wing attack on academia in the late eighties and early nineties, which resulted in the phrase “politically correct’ entering mainstream American discourse, was the debate over Stanford University changing one of its course requirements for all first-year students there. As the university community debated the changes, conservatives were quick to point to a…
Making It True
[This blog contains descriptions of child abuse.] One of the worst beatings my father ever gave me came in response to me asserting a truth. I was eleven or twelve years old, and I don’t remember how we got into an argument, but I remember it having something to do with me not being able to make something stand upright. My father was yelling at me because he thought I could never get this thing to stand upright, even though I had done so before…
There to Hear It
Strife in the Schools: Education Dept. Logs Record Number of Discrimination Complaints (New York Times via yahoo.com) 2023 marks one hundred years since Upton Sinclair published his exposé on American colleges and universities, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education. It’s a book that I’ve been revisiting lately in my research, and while it may not be as well-known or as consequential as some of Sinclair’s other works, it’s still worth reading today. Although some parts of the book haven’t aged so well (such as…
Mask On
It’s Time to Wear a Mask Again, Health Experts Say (New York Times via Yahoo! News) During my final years in Toledo, I would occasionally see people wearing face masks at stores like Meijer and Kroger, especially during the winter. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing face masks outside of hospitals and doctors’ offices before then, but I was enough of a Japanophile to know that wearing a mask when one is worried about spreading illness is far more common in Eastern countries than…