Sometimes you read things you cannot comprehend were actually given life in the giggling light of day. A recent example of this non-awesomeness happened last month in Trenton, New Jersey when it was decided by the Educational Forces of Evil to no longer force third-graders to reveal a secret and explain why it was important to keep that secret a secret.
There are certain expectations of you when you become the principal of a school. You are, so to speak, the coach of the entire school — it looks to you for guidance and leadership. You need to have a certain kind of moral fortitude in order to be the school principal because in a way you are also the keystone of the school. It should come to no surprise to anyone, therefore, that when the principal of a school slips up and behaves in a manner that is unbecoming of anyone meant to be taken seriously in a school, let alone the head of the school, said principal must face strong consequences.
Continue reading → What Not to Do When You Are the School Principal
Who started the fire? Was it Plutarch so many years ago, or was it W.B. Yeats not too long ago? The quotation in question — “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire” — is extensively used in education, and in arguments about scholarship and proper attribution the world over. Here’s that quote, found right on the main page of Gallaudet University’s Department of Education, attributed to “William Yeats:”
I recently had a wonderful conversation with my mentor Howard Stein — also my Columbia University MFA Playwriting Chair and head of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies, and now lifelong friend — concerning the appropriateness of ending an English sentence with a preposition.
I am convinced every American child needs a Chinese mother. That way, we’ll be ensuring the necessary and obligatory dedication to mind, learning and quantifiable success. I realize my position may not be a popular one, but after reading this ovaric essay — Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior — I am now all in on the Chinese methodology of raising proper children.
It costs a lot of money to house prisoners in cells when the idea is no longer reformation, but rather separation and dissonant punishment:
One year at Princeton University: $37,000. One year at a New Jersey state prison: $44,000.
Prison and college “are the two most divergent paths one can take in life,” Joseph Staten, an info-graphic researcher with Public Administration, says. Whereas one is a positive experience that increases lifetime earning potential, the other is a near dead end, which is why Staten found it striking that the lion’s share of government funding goes toward incarceration.
It is difficult to change who you are once you have lived a certain way for years, even decades. For people who struggle to lose weight, for example, part of the problem is not that the workout routines or proper nutrition is difficult on a day to day basis — but actually changing the lifestyle to become that in which those routines are the norm and the nutrition is a healthy one is the challenge. This is just as difficult when, for example, a person is trying to break away from a bad way of living — a criminal lifestyle, gang membership, or similar affiliation.
Do you think the children of bigots deserve a righteous education? If so, how does one go about providing a non-secular learning experience to the children of prejudiced parents?
Continue reading → Do the Children of Bigots Deserve a Righteous Education?
When I receive my daily Google Alerts, I usually cringe when I need my name invoked in web properties beyond which I control because it usually means I’m dead again, or being accused of something that isn’t true.
Continue reading → The Difference in Performance: Interpretation and Improvisation
How did Chris Christie get elected governor of New Jersey? Why would the people elect a bully in a suit who secretly caters to big business while publicly cutting the lifelines of the working class and the less fortunate?
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