Cocking a Snook asks an interesting question that I started to answer in her comment box: What can Homeschooling Learn from Our Present Political Stories? It started with some musing about how Ron Paul seemed to unite extremists on both the left and right behind him over on Spunky’s post NEA endorses Obama. [...]
December 7, 2007 – 7:44 am
Thanks to not having a television, the first I heard of the mall shooting in Omaha yesterday was through an email from another blogger I opened this morning.
Dana, you’re ok down in there in Nebraska I hope?
It was an odd subject line and not how his emails usually begin. Nine dead in a shopping [...]
November 29, 2007 – 7:48 am
I am not sure what is being cheapened here: women or our rights.
I have seen the advertisements for BITTEN, Sarah Jessica Parker’s new line of fashion, hanging in the mall and they bother me more every time I see them. Visiting BITTEN’s website, I find this increasingly offensive line of fashion has its own manifesto:
It [...]
November 9, 2007 – 6:31 am
A lesson which backfired (or did it?), an offended student, another coalition and another protest against Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
In a lesson to prepare students to read Huckleberry Finn, a teacher writes a number of emotionally charged words on the chalkboard. “Nigger” is among them, which offends a student.
[...]
October 1, 2007 – 5:02 am
I don’t do this very often. Actually, I am not sure that I have ever done it. But Peggy Noonan’s words need no commentary.
You don’t want to judge Christ by Christians, someone once said. He is perfect, they are not.
In a similar way you don’t want to judge capitalism by capitalists, [...]
September 30, 2007 – 12:50 pm
English literary tradition has produces a number of great works with which we should all be familiar. Schools are doing a good thing when their required reading list includes such works as Of Mice and Men, Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies, and, as much as I despised reading it, maybe even Jane Eyre.
But [...]
September 29, 2007 – 4:35 am
In Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, I found an interesting passage which echoes some of my own thoughts on our culture.
Excessive fear can transform a person and modify behavior permanently; it can change the very structure of the brain. The same can happen to a whole culture. What will it [...]
August 29, 2007 – 5:13 am
Interstate travel provides its own unique glimpses into the culture of the local population. The entire state of Texas, for example, is obviously insane. The Texans’ rugged individualism results in a stressful experience for those unfamiliar with their roadway custom (or lack thereof). The trouble is not so much with common highway [...]