Although it was difficult at times, Horace Mann succeeded in persuading a majority of his contemporaries that free schools with trained teachers could inculcate desirable social values and simultaneously provide a practical education leading to prosperous and constructive citizenship. Today’s educators are limited to a hope that their proposals might bring about a slight improvement [...]
Archive for February 2009
Horace Mann’s vision “a fading dream.”
February 26, 2009Ian McEwan on John Updike
February 26, 2009In his autobiography Self-Consciousness, a “big-bellied Lutheran God” within the young John Updike looked on in contempt as he struggled to give up cigarettes. Many years later the older Updike, now giving up on alcohol, coffee, and salt, put into the mouth of that God the words of Frederick the Great excoriating his battle-shy soldiers—”Dogs, [...]
The Dead Tree Theory, Gail Collins in the NYTimes
February 26, 2009The Republicans can’t try to convince the country their ideas are better because of that intellectual bankruptcy problem. All they can do is make Barack Obama’s programs look feckless, plunging everyone into so much despair that by next summer the public will be ready to go live in caves and eat squirrel stew. The waste [...]
Nine Truths about the Public Schools
February 22, 2009There are truths about public school education that need to be said. The endless debate about the schools, the equally endless series of reform efforts mostly ignore these truths Truth number one. Public, as in public school, doesn’t mean public. The word, a poor choice from the beginning (common was better but not much) probably [...]
Paris Walk
February 21, 2009Today, we walked down la rue Bonaparte from the Jardin du Luxembourg and stopped before the Fontaine in la Place St. Sulpice. “L’église Saint-Sulpice,” a Google search tells us,” est l’un des lieux de l’action du roman Da Vinci Code, qui fait passer à tort le méridien de Paris par le gnomon et l’obélisque.” and [...]
France and California, Ungovernable
February 21, 2009History tells us that there is nothing inherent in human nature that brings the peoples of one nation together and enables them to act in concert. For populations within countries, no more and no less than the members of a single family, will never be of a single mind but will always represent opposing points [...]
Learning, a Bell or normal curve
February 20, 2009Learning is no longer an exchange between the student and a mentor or tutor. Instead, we have made learning (or at least schooling because it’s highly questionable whether it’s mostly learning that goes on in the schools) an exchange between some number of students, as many as 30 or more in some inner city public [...]
Plus Ça Change
February 17, 2009I voted for him. I still like him. And I’m very happy that he, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha, and Michelle’s mother, are now living in the White House, and that the Bush family has returned to Texas, from where they should never have left. But under our new president weren’t things supposed to be different? [...]
The cities where Americans most want to live
February 17, 2009Well we’re not alone in wanting to live in Tampa. We learn from researchers at the Pew Center that Americans want to go South and West, that the top ten places where they want to live are Denver, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento in the West, and Orlando, Tampa and San [...]
Stimulus Money for the Schools
February 17, 2009There is much talk, and gloating among the members of the education (read school) establishment about the $100 billion in new money for the schools now made available by the stimulus bill just passed by the Congress. The talk, however, is all about getting the horse to water, about changes to the paths to learning, [...]
