AREN’T ALL CHILDREN EQUALLY DESERVING?
A common practice for introducing students to the ethical foundation of philosophy is to pose moral dilemmas, possibly the most typical example being the life-boat dilemma that forces a person to choose who lives, and thus who dies.
Science fiction (SF) and speculative fiction often build entire other worlds in which the given circumstances create a series of moral dilemmas that are the basis of the tensions and actions of the novels and films. Writers such asMargaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale, for example) and Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle, for example) often build these worlds in the tradition of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley as a way to say, “This is where we are heading, but we don’t have to end up there.”
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the possible other world is one of scarcity, and by the end, the moral dilemma revolves around the fate of a child. The novel’s given, readers must accept, creates the narrow range of choices the characters face; that is part of the power of SF/speculative fiction.
Pulling back, however, from created other worlds, we are faced continually with moral dilemmas—often ones also
Aren’t All Children Equally Deserving?
A common practice for introducing students to the ethical foundation of philosophy is to pose moral dilemmas, possibly the most typical example being the life-boat dilemma that forces a person to choose who lives, and thus who dies. Science fiction (SF) and speculative fiction often build entire other worlds in which the given circumstances create a series of moral dilemmas that are the basis of t
Hess, Please Begin the Moratorium
Hess, Please Begin the Moratorium.
Ali: “You Must Listen to Me”
Ali: “You Must Listen to Me”.
YESTERDAY
remnant 35: “Is that what writing amounts to?”
remnant 35: “Is that what writing amounts to?”.
OCT 13
Is Learning to Read Natural?
I need to offer as few clarifications since my recent post on how the teaching of reading has been historically corrupted by the influence of reading programs. The motivation of the clarification comes from a comment posted by KenS.* First, my literacy teaching for the past thirty years does rest on a controversial concept—that grammatical knowledge is essentially biological (see Pinker and Chomsk
Teaching Reading and Children: Reading Programs as “Costume Parties”
Well into my 30s and during my doctoral program, I was finally afforded the opportunity to read carefully the work of John Dewey. This late scholarship on my part is an indictment of teacher certification, but it is also a window into the historical and current misinformation about the state of reading and the teaching of reading in U.S. schools. Dewey, the Father of Progressive Education, I disco
remnant 34: Orwell “loved his country and its working people”
remnant 34: Orwell “loved his country and its working people”.
OCT 10
Common Core in the Real World: Destroying Literacy through Standardization
I have a brief comedy routine I use with my students, typically early in each course I teach—in part to introduce them to me, and in part to make a point about literacy.* The joke goes like this: “When I graduated high school,” I say, ” I had 7,000 comic books,” slight pause, “and no girl friend.” The students typically laugh, and then I deadpan, “That’s not funny. That’s sad.” When they suddenly
OCT 09
The Central Issue at the Heart of America’s Growing Education Gap
The Central Issue at the Heart of America’s Growing Education Gap.
OCT 08
Ali: “You must listen to me”
1972 James Baldwin declared in his No Name in the Street: The truth is that the country does not know what to do with its black population now that the blacks are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle; and they especially do not know what to do with young black men, who pose as devastating a threat to the economy as they do to the morals of young w