A Pointless Feel-Good Story about Reinvention–and the Alternative Case to Be Made for the Value of Interdisciplinary Studies, Minors, and Dual Majors

For several months, there was much political debate about the extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Predictably, people on the Far Right, from Rand Paul to Paul Ryan, asserted that the extension of benefits would amount to a disservice to those receiving the benefits. The reasons ranged from the broadly ideological—for instance, that…

CCSS: The Pushback Gains Momentum

Since the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were introduced, The New York Times has been in constant, clamorous support. Columnists as diverse as Paul Krugman and David Brooks have lauded them; new stories have assumed their obvious utility and necessity. Today, however, that started to change. Columnist Timothy Egan wrote this: The push for Common Core standards…

Badass Teachers Unite!

One day in October of 2011, I went down to Zuccotti Park to listen to what the Occupy Wall Street people were saying about education. They had a circle going, moderated by a couple of people from Columbia Teachers College and a member of the NYC City Council was handing out his card. It was…

Guns on Campus, Idaho Edition

Last month a bill was introduced in the Idaho legislature to allow guns to be carried on campuses in the state, though they would not be permitted in certain campus buildings or at certain campus events. The Idaho Statesman published an editorial, endorsed by its entire editorial board, opposing the legislation. The following two paragraphs…

Education Reform: The Individual at Risk (Except when Protected by Money)

Taylorism, the systematization of labor developed by Frederick Taylor, makes the worker immediately replaceable. Individual skill and knowledge becomes irrelevant–on the part of the worker. Only at the higher levels of management and ownership does creativity count for anything. It’s an elitist system positing that those at the lower echelons are merely cogs, not thinkers.…

Far-Right Rhetorical Co-Opt, Item 2

When the ACA provision that allowed the uninsured to receive insurance from government coordinated exchanges finally was on the verge of going into effect, the conservative think-tank FreedomWorks initiated a civil-disobedience campaign, of sorts. They tried to enlist masses of young people to reject the inexpensive and often government-subsidized insurance now available to them. But…

Wyoming Rejects Climate Science

Several days ago, in an article for Salon, Lindsay Abrams reported that the state of Wyoming rejected the Next Generation Science Standards being implemented nationwide as part of the effort to increase student interest and achievement in the STEM disciplines. As has been the case whenever and wherever these science standards have been challenged, one…

Framing the "Reformers" in Our Public Schools

After something of a hagiography of Shavar Jeffries, David Brooks gets to his point in a New York Times column called “How Cities Change”: Now Jeffries is running for mayor of Newark against City Councilman Ras Baraka. The race has taken on a familiar shape: regular vs. reformer. Brooks is casting Jeffries as an education reformer and…