Who runs our IPS? “The crisis is not about education at all. It’s about power.” ~ James BaldwinOverview:Traditionally, local school board races are nonpartisan. Such elections are supposed to be about grassroots politics and connections made at doorways between candidates and voters. Campaign chests are small: some yard signs, political buttons, and lots of volunteers. [...]
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Arguing All Sides: Propriety and Ethics in Business and Education
Morton J. Marcus is a former Prof of IU’s Business School (it has a corporate sponsorship but I’ll exercise my freedom to ignore it). He was director of the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) for more than 30 years, having retired from the university in November 2003. He is published every Friday in the Bloomington [...]
Writing Instruction Grounding Social Control
Those of us who have been teachers and/or wannabe authors before everyone was an author (see the note yesterday re: artists)–I know I’m treading on my commoner sensibility here, always a tension in me–remember there is a book by William Zinsser called On Writing Well. I’ll confess that I own it and yet have never read [...]
Nell Scharff and New Visions
Who’s Afraid of Nell Scharff? (cross-posted at Schools Matter) Now, if you’ve read The Atlantic‘s piece on the “writing revolution” (I’ll review this in another post) you may have picked up on the name Nell Scharff, but you may also have just paid her no attention. She is introduced in the piece and identified in this [...]
Schools (Don’t?) Matter, (Nor) Does Creativity?
Okay, I’ll confess to being less than tactful most of the time. But I gotta tell you, I’m pretty tired of one particular complaint that I hear (rather, read) again and again on education sites and FB pages dedicated to combat testing regimes in public education: “Your stealing my child’s creativity!” Be sure, I too [...]
To Dissect a Polemic: First, Examine the Polemicist
Dissecting The Atlantic’s Reform Manifesto: Part IV Go to Part I; Part II; Part III “Why Kids Should Grade Their Teachers,” by Amanda Ripley I had an instructive moment in my education well after I left the educational institutions at which I’d been vacationing (“all work and no play,” right?): I was working at a bookstore, naturally, as I [...]
Empty of Fact: Rachel Brown’s Bellwether Propaganda
I asked Doug Martin, my colleague at The Common Errant and a dogged investigator of politico-corporate-educational malfeasance, to help us interpret the misleading graphic presentation offered by Rachel Brown for The Atlantic‘s Reform Pamphlet. Ms Brown seems to responsible for page 87; I don’t think it’s appropriate to say she wrote it as it is primarily a [...]
Homeschooling, Freely Unequal
Dismantling The Atlantic Monthly Reform Manifesto 2nd Installment I. I introduced the The Atlantic’s Reform pamphlet (“22 pages…”) by focusing on the presentation of content. But, I regret to say I left out what might have been the most important part: the “cover” of the section. It’s a TEST BOOKLET! Surprised? II. Now, this is clearly ideological content [...]
Autism, ADHD, Adaptation and Randomization
[Cross-posted at Schools Matter.] I. Some time ago I wrote a piece noting how it seems autism is becoming a useful “disorder” to have. (I used the quotes for a reason which I hope becomes clear.) The post, “Autism: the next ‘specialty’ credential,” tried to create a kind of choral effect between an essay by [...]
Twenty-Two Pages of Corporate Education Advertising, Or, The Atlantic Monthly’s “Special Report”
[Cross-posted at Schools Matter.] This begins a series of readings concerned with the articles and images found in the October Atlantic Monthly which promote the “Reform Agenda” of both conservatives and liberals (as power has no pure politics). I will primarily be concerned with the conveyance of ideology. However, I have asked my Errant collaborator Doug Martin [...]
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The Chaos of Monoculture
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The Custom House: Louis Agassiz with Christoph Irmscher
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The Errant Goes Audible: The Custom House on WFHB
