Where Do We, As Teachers, Go from Here?

BY AARON BARLOW President of the National Council of Teachers of English Doug Hesse posted on Facebook today that he is scrapping his upcoming presidential address “hoping I can find something to say to about the prospects of teaching reading and writing in a country where so much hatred abounds, where facts do not matter,…

Donald Trump's War on Education

BY JOHN K. WILSON Donald Trump spent most of the 2016 campaign saying almost nothing about education. But recently, Trump has made comments revealing that if he wins the presidency, it could have dramatic and alarming effects on public schools and universities. In his latest pronouncements about universities and in his “Contract with the American…

Donald Trump In Disguise

BY JOHN K. WILSON Here’s an important point to remember this Halloween: Trump is a narcissistic con man dressed up as a presidential candidate, as I reveal in my book Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire. It’s the scariest costume anyone will ever wear. Inside, he’s as hollow as a Trump piñata that my cats Sunspot and…

How to Invite Satire That Hurts

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is from Brian Stetler’s Reliable Sources daily newsletter from CNN for Sunday, October 16: “Trump Turns on SNL “Sunday’s funniest (?) story is about SNL and specifically about Trump’s reaction to the show. On Sunday morning, after watching the skits, he tweeted, ‘Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire…

Dumbing Down “Genius”

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH   Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle   DaVinci   Galileo   Newton   Shakespeare   Franklin   Lincoln   Edison   Tesla   Freud   Einstein   Hawking   Trump _________________________ If you have not been following the news, here are the opening paragraphs of an article written by David A. Graham…

Irony of the Day

BY MARTIN KICH An alternative title to this post might be “’Redefining The Takers.’” The New York Times has reported the possibility that Donald Trump may have avoided paying federal income taxes for more than two decades because of a $913,000,000 loss reported in 1995. In response to the story, Trump has asserted that he…

Irony of the Day

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This short item was written by Andrew Kaczynski for BuzzFeed: “Guests at several of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s hotels woke up to a complimentary copy of USA Today’s blistering editorial that concluded Trump was “unfit” to be president. “The newspaper’s editorial board weighed in on the presidential race for the first time in…