Howdy hippies in third (with Feltskog) and sixth period English (with Feltskog and Mirwis) classes! Attached just below this entry is your Holocaust research paper works cited page--just click on the hypertext ("1 attachment," then "Holocaust Research Paper Works Cited Page") and it will download to your desktop.

The Trouble with Ed Schools by David Labaree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a particularly cogent analysis of the reasons that education schools are ridiculed as lacking intellectual depth and seriousness. Teachers may want to read, in particular, chapter three, which brings to bear the tools of academic sociological analysis on the relations between teachers and their charges; this is simply one of the best explanations of the stresses teachers face in their professional practice I've yet seen, and ought to be read by demagogues, political hacks (I'm thinking here, primarily, of the sordid history of the New York City Department of Education during my tenure here, as well as Mayor Michael Bloomberg's regrettable tendency to antagonize teachers over his failures as the "education mayor") and others who blame teachers for our current educational malaise.

View all my reviews

If your idea of school reform includes teacher-designed and driven curriculum, a meaningful discussion on what exactly comprises education in an age saturated with information, and a general stop-and-think attitude when considering major changes in public education, then you will definitely want to swing by and hear what the blogger at The Assailed Teacher has to say.

On the other hand, if your idea of school reform includes scripted curricula that deskills teachers, endless high-stakes testing, the privatization of education and the consequent abdication of responsibility for this task vital to a free and open society to corporations whose first motive by their own admission is earning profits--and not educating students, and you possess in general an attitude of contempt toward teachers (and you are, of course, to your undoubted comfort, far from alone in your ignorance), then this is probably not for you, and you should head to the ALEC website or any other of the legion of sources that pander to your ignorance.

It is, of course, your choice--something your teachers would have taught you.

Superman: Tales of the Bizarro World by Jerry Siegel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Particularly amusing in an era when facts are regularly submitted, via highly ideological media outlets, to the Bizarro World treatment. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3: Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When this book was published, Robert Caro made the rounds on the more cerebral talk shows in electronic media, and I heard him talk about this book on Charlie Rose among other places. I don't remember if he said that he would write a fourth volume on Lyndon Johnson's presidency. In spite of some weariness (I've read all three volumes of this biography in the past year) with the subject, I hope Mr. Caro does apply his magisterial research and writing skills to those years of Lyndon Johnson's career.

I rate this book four stars--for it certainly, objectively rates five--for highly subjective reasons: this is more a book about the United States Senate and the byzantine manner in which it functions (or doesn't), and the gravamen of this book is that body's manifold attempts in the late 1950s to pass civil rights legislation. Because Lyndon Johnson is widely regarded as a leader on civil rights, Mr. Caro writes and analyzes how Senator Lyndon Johnson bent the Senate to his considerable will and, quietly but effectively, scuttled one civil rights bill after another.

Much of the analysis of the functions of the Senate works to show just how Lyndon Johnson was able to do this; I understand the purpose of all this--to maintain the high standard of scholarly disinterest, and therefore integrity, that Robert Caro sets for himself. Nonetheless, I found much of the narrative on the Senate itself exhausting and repetitious, and therefore give this book a highly subjective four star rating.
Post Scriptum: Last evening, while looking at the acknowledgement of sources in the book's final section (which includes, of course, the bibliography), I read that a fourth book in this series, on Lyndon Johnson's vice-presidential years, is indeed in the works.

View all my reviews

As I say at almost every opportunity to do so, and hasten to point out at the top of this entry, this is not a political blog. Indeed, I am basically ambivalent about most political ideologies because at some point, they are all idiotic. I particularly despise the kind of platitude-spewing, demand-making rigid ideologies that this country has had a special facility to produce. My own politics eschew ignorance and stupidity and favor enlightenment and intelligence.

So you probably won't be surprised to hear that, in my own opinion, one of the salient characteristics of the Tea Party is its willfully ignorant, verging on fantastic, interpretation of the history of the United States. Likewise, it comes as no particular surprise to me that the Tennessee Tea Party has demanded redactions in United States history textbooks so that young minds aren't sullied by the fact, for instance, that George Washington owned slaves, or that the United States government's policies toward the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent were by any objective measure (and in any case explicitly stated, as has been well documented by historians like Dee Brown) genocidal.

This kind of know-nothingism is really nothing new in American culture. Unfortunately, at least from where I stand, that makes it no less aggravating or depressing.

Mind in the Making by Ellen Galinsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A first-rate how-to manual for stimulating cognitive development in young children which ought to be required reading for parents and educators. Very highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the '80s by Richard Rushfield
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Rarely do I fail to finish a book. However, I must say that this book is one for which I was happy to make an exception. The narrative, which is in fact essentially fiction, conforms to Dorothy Parker's dictum (and I paraphrase): "This is not a book to be set aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force." When I was a student at Hampshire, I avoided people like Richard Rushfield, just as I avoid them now.

And by the way, Hampshire is what you make of it. If you are immature, there is a good possibility you will make nothing of it--or worse, become a malignant force like Mr. Rushfield and his pals.

View all my reviews

Heartbreak Soup by Gilbert Hernández
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As the summary on the back cover of this collection attests, "...in the third issue of Love and Rockets, Gilbert Hernandez abruptly jettisoned his Marvel and Heavy Metal-influenced sci-fi yarns to focus on the day to day tribulations of a tiny Central American hamlet more or less untouched by time--Palomar." Mr. Hernandez gives his readers a clue to this transition in the story "Love Bites." As the story opens, Heraclio begs his lover Carmen not to destroy his copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has displaced her in his attention and, presumably, affection (continued...).

The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters by Plato
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Along with current--and ongoing--findings in cognitive science, pretty much everything you need to know about teaching.

View all my reviews