Category Archives: teaching

Indoctrination Into Silence

Students Get Mixed Messages On Whether Protesting Will Get Them In Trouble (NPR.org) School Bans Students After Gun Violence Protest (Newsweek via msn.com) It certainly made for a good media spectacle. Shortly after being sworn in as the first Democratic mayor of New York City in twenty years, Bill de Blasio indicated that he would move quickly to stem the tidal wave of support for charter schools in the Big Apple that his predecessors, particularly Michael Bloomberg, had rammed down New Yorkers’ throats for over…

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Not-So-Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Education Dept. Considers Tougher Rules On Loan Forgiveness In Fraud Cases (KPBS.org) Reconsidering the cost of education (npr.org) The role of higher education in Americans’ lives exists on a number of different spectrums. When I was younger, attending a private school but living in a working-class Toledo neighbourhood, the spectrum I became most aware of was that of possibility. Even though I was going to a school where college was pretty much a given for every graduate, I was living with families where even the…

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The Un-Enlightenment

America hits peak anti-intellectualism: Majority of Republicans now think college is bad (salon.com) I was part of the generation that first clued into the joy of Nickelodeon during the rise of cable TV in the 1980’s, but when the network was still so young that there was no such thing as Nick at Nite. Even at a time when most television networks ended their “broadcast day” and went off the air every night, it was still jarring to have Nickelodeon switch over to static in…

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Stunting Students’ Growth

College Access Index Shows Shrinking Levels of Economic Diversity (npr.org) Senate Republicans Reject DeVos’ Proposed Education Cuts (rollcall.com) DeVos Says More Money Won’t Help Schools; Research Says Otherwise (npr.org) I was teaching a composition class in Toledo a few years ago, and in that class I had a student who always wore sports-themed clothes. He was a Red Wings fan, so I was able to get him to talk whenever I brought up the team’s fortunes (at least they made the playoffs that year, grumble…

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Let the Circle Be Broken

I’ve mentioned before, on several occasions, that one of the most profound and affecting lessons I learned about being a teacher, back when I was still reading up on pedagogical basics, is that when you don’t teach that something is capable of being changed, then you teach — through your silence — that it can never be changed. This doesn’t mean that change is likely, or that attempts to change won’t be met with strong resistance, or that teachers shouldn’t caution students about the difficulties…

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