And This Is Why I Teach

My stepfather is dying.  I hate even using the word “step” because in every sense of the word, he is my father.  And he will be gone soon.  He is in hospice now.  There is a hospital bed in my mother’s living room.  There will be no more emergency room last ditch efforts to save…

The Coddled Kids Are All Right

The cover story of this month’s Atlantic magazine features Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s essay on “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Their thesis is simple: “A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.” Unfortunately, their thesis…

What’s the Deal with Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher, and PC?

Jerry Seinfeld recently told an ESPN radio host, “I don’t play colleges. I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’” The only time Seinfeld shows up on a college campus is when someone leaves the TV on in a dorm lounge and one of his lucrative reruns comes…

ONLINE EDUCATION–ALL TOO CONVENIENT, LIKE FAST FOOD

I remember how shocked I was upon finding out that some students were taking all of their classes online–while living in the dorms. Then I was dismayed, too, that the source I learned this absurd behavior from did not even try to pull a Captain Renault out of Casablanca and say, “I’m shocked, shocked to find…

PA State Senators Crafting Legislation to Allow Universities to Secede from State System of Higher Ed

Author’s Note: A version of this post was publish on Raging Chicken Press under the title, “Slow Train to Destruction of Public Higher Ed in PA?: Defund then Divide-and-Conquer,” on Saturday, Feb. 22.  If the fall 2013 semester saw the term “retrenchment” – the elimination of faculty, programs, and jobs – become part of daily…

Wall Street on the Susquehanna: PASSHE Bond Scheme Bleeds Budget for Beautiful Buildings (Abbreviated)

This originally appeared in Raging Chicken Press on October 21, 2013. It is a fairly long article detailing changes in Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) policies regarding new buildings and capital projects. The more I looked in the financial schemes at the system within which I work, the more it became clear that…

Reign of Error: the important new book by Diane Ravitch

This is crossposted from Daily Kos at the request of Aaron Barlow: The testing, accountability, and choice strategies offer the illusion of change while changing nothing. They mask the inequity and injustice that are now so apparent in our social order. They do nothing to alter the status quo. They preserve the status quo. They…