THE BECOMING RADICAL
Radical Scholarship
the becoming radical
A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness
by
Millions of Reasons to Reject CC in One Paragraph.
Should Universities Reward Academics for Public Influence?
NOTE: Since I have already posted a few comments on the blog mentioned below, and since I have already received a couple responses to those comments, let me open with a caveat about my selfishness in this post: (1) I am not lobbying to be including in the ranking identified below, and (2) my selfishness is much larger than that as my central argument involves how I and all academics are evaluated
remnant 49: “I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown the dream is gone”
remnant 49: “I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown the dream is gone”.
JAN 09
Ending Poverty Requires Community, Not War
Many, if not most, wars have failed to salvage victory from the inherent destruction war brings. All wars leave collateral damage in their wake. A big picture message offered in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow is that the war on drugs, a key part of the larger era of mass incarceration, has devastated the lives and futures of African American males in ways that are nearly incomprehensible. T
JAN 08
Standards Won’t Change Inequity: A Reader
The new Common Core and related tests are likely to continue a three-decade pattern of traditional schooling either integrating the new standards and tests into the existing structure of schools or using the new standards and tests to justify existing practices. And thus, I offer a reader below, highlighting a demonstrable set of interrelated problems with U.S. public schools and higher education:
JAN 07
Tone, pt. 4: Dystopian Fiction, Passion, and the Education Reform Debate
Two early scenes in Shaun of the Dead require viewers to understand zombie narrative tropes in order to achieve the film’s satirical intent—distinguishing Shaun of the Dead from the zombie horror films it skewers: Shaun makes nearly identical trips from his apartment to a local convenience store, the first involving a normal day and the second after the (unknown to him) zombie apocalypse. Througho
Behind the Advocacy: TFA Remains Mostly Spin, Distraction
Schools Matter: Behind the Advocacy: TFA Remains Mostly Spin, Distraction
JAN 06
King’s Next Shining Novel: More “True History of the Torrance Family”
Stephen King’s career reminds me of the career of Kurt Vonnegut in three ways: (1) they suffered the negative consequences of being associated with writing genre fiction, (2) they are often devalued as being too popular to be credible “literary” authors, and (3) as many popular writers are, they are often associated with one work—King with The Shining and Vonnegut with Slaughterhouse-Five. King, a
Capitalism, Silencing Women, Silencing Teachers
A central aspect of my blog about Classroom Teaching Experience and Whose Voice Matters highlights that the silencing of teachers is a subset of the silencing of women. That post followed my claim that teaching is an invisible profession. Since posting that blog, I have read A Feminist Critique of Marx by Silvia Federici, which in part asserts the invisibility of women in Marx’s analysis of capita
JAN 05
Trickle-Down Administration: Education Reform in a Culture of Distracting Outrage
“One of the strange things about our politics is the disconnect between what sorts of things lead us, collectively, to express outrage and what sorts of things we don’t notice,” David Kaib begins in an examination of outrage centering on a marijuana Op-Ed by David Brooks, adding: I’m thinking specifically of how a statement can set off outrage while the background behaviors, activities or policies
JAN 03
Civil Rights Issue of Our Time?
While the credibility of challenges leveled at the current education reform agenda—such as commitments to Common Core or the rise of “no excuses” charter schools—is often called into question throughout social and mainstream media, I see little to no questioning of political mantras of education crisis, utopian expectations for schools, and the consistent refrain of education reform being the civi
Conditions of Teaching Are Conditions of Learning: On Students
I’m not prone to New Year’s resolutions, but I have decided that with the arbitrary designation of a new calendar year, I have a way to focus on new commitments, specifically in how I interact in the virtual world. So when I read a derogatory comment on one of my blog posts (describing my post with “stupidest” and then making a word choice error or typo), I resisted the urge to comment, but posted