Category Archives: politics

Glory Be to [Insert Name of Country Here]

books, internet, politics, writing 2023.06.05 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

AI and Its Effect on the Book Publishing Industry (goodereader.com)Julie Plec and More WGA Members Detail Writers Strike Negotiations, Demand Streamers to Release Ratings: ‘We’re Mad’ (Variety via msn.com) One personal project that always seems to be on the back burner for me is an examination of the fiction written during the Cold War in the Soviet bloc countries. My interest in this started about a decade ago, after Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son won the Pulitzer. For his novel, Johnson did extensive studies…

Oh Hell N-O

personal, politics, teaching, toledo 2023.04.10 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Unwieldy bill would destroy higher education in Ohio | American Historical Association (news.yahoo.com)“‘Don’t just publish another paper. Let’s do something,’ says scholar-advocate Cindy Blackstock (universityaffairs.ca) As spring passes, a handful of elementary schools across America will still devote their last day to outdoor activities for their students, to help them blow off the stress of the past academic year. (Far fewer schools are doing this than was the case when I was younger, with the push to pass all those standardized tests and all that…

Losing Placement

politics, teaching 2023.02.13 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

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

politics, rhetoric, teaching 2023.01.23 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

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

personal, politics, shopping 2023.01.09 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

[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…