Education in Black and White: Beware the Roadbuilders
Nettie sees the world in a stark black and white once she faces and confronts the missionary zeal being done to the people who are native to Africa. The letters exchanged between Nettie and Celie, which constitute The Color Purple, are literally the lived stories of oppression and the oppressed right there in black and white for readers: The first thing I should tell you about is the road. The roa
Kindness as Antidote to Fatalism of “Grit”
For all the advocates of “grit”—along with the disturbing racism and classism—the world is a horrible place, a fixed horrible place—one requiring children to be treated horribly as practice for that horrible world. (I imagine “grit” advocates see the world in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road when they are planning how to “toughen our children up.”) And thus, it is that fatalism I find nearly as disturbi
6-2-14 the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L. Thomas, Furman University)
the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L. Thomas, Furman University): Invoking “Oliver Rule (Expanded)” for Education Reform DebateWhile it is becoming increasingly common and frustrating that the most perceptive views of political and public claims and policies come from satirical programs and their figure-heads (as I have noted recently)