Free Press: David Sedaris Punching Down
Words, we are now regularly reminded, are violence. So too is silence. I read not long ago that capitalism is violence, as is misgendering someone. Ignoring someone is violence, but so too is paying them attention.
Sedaris is a cosmopolitan humorist, so he is describing coastal people and what is written by influencers on social media, but many young people don’t seem very resilient.
In February 2021, then-president Kristina Johnson launched an initiative to hire 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires” (the acronym stands for black, indigenous and people of color). These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in “diversity, equity and inclusion” looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.
What one change in public education would you implement to improve the quality of education?
Teachers say, “Get better parents.” That’s true, but not helpful. We teach the students we have. Public schools are a condensed version of the community. If the community is dysfunctional, the children of the community aren’t likely to be much better.
Somebody is having an exciting day. This is in North Olmsted, across from St. Richards.
Twice in the last week, I’ve been asked about former students without the former student being present. As a seasoned professional, these situations are not awkward.
NYT: Teachers can’t hold kids accountable.
NYT: Teachers can’t hold kids accountable.
This New York Times editorial about teaching covers real problems that are collapsing public education, but nothing here is new. These problems were evident the entire time I’ve been teaching, but Covid allowed the wreckers and degenerates to go all in. They are opposed by parent groups, but it’s a tough slog.
Kriste Smith gets $10k for North Royalton
Schools that work well, do so because they have a few teachers like Kriste. North Royalton tends to have a lot of them, even though the administration doesn’t know or care.
During the Covid year, the first quarter was going to be remote. and that was about all we knew. Teaching remotely, I couldn’t give students the a quality show, so I thought that I’d produce lecture videos that are good in a different way. The intent was to renovate the curriculum while producing videos that would be a resource for my remaining three or four years.
I’ve recently been conversing with a couple of students that I had during the Covid year. Both are in engineering at The Ohio State University. I had both when they were juniors in Physics, and again, as seniors in AP Physics 2. Since I knew them prior to the Covid year, I didn’t need to introduce myself. For students with whom I was not acquainted, it seemed important to produce a video that gave them some sense of Physics and how I approached the course.
Cell phones banned in Dutch schools
Cell phones, tablets and smartwatches will be largely banned from classrooms in the Netherlands from January 1, 2024, the Dutch government said on Tuesday, in a bid to limit distractions during lessons.
I would not appreciate a law like this in the US.
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