An English Teacher's Homepage
Paul maintain a blog which focuses on concerns in education, rhetoric, literature, science, and other nerdy topics
All opinions expressed in Paul's blogs are solely his own. They do not represent the opinions of his employers and/or associates.
I strongly believe we should focus our investment, financially and otherwise, on supporting and reforming traditional public schools when needed. DeVos, if confirmed, threatens the survival of traditional public schools, but she is far from the only threat. A national obsession with charter schools, while not always misguided, is a more immediate and long-lived challenge. Both issues must be confronted in the defense of public schools.
Read MoreTrump’s election shifts more responsibility onto each of us to build the sort of social discourse that will likely be challenged in the years to come....We must hold ourselves and others to a higher standard in our social discourse. We must strive to have even greater empathy, including for those we resent. We have a more exigent obligation to promote and enact social justice....Our future as a sane and functional society may well depend on our ability to enact decency in the face of dissolution.
Read MoreLanguage and icons are powerful, and flag are among the most pervasive and powerful symbols. We need to confront these symbols, particularly when they are embraced as part of such a high-profile act of violence. However, we cannot let this discussion end there; we cannot practice only activism of convenience. The popularity of the Confederate flag is a symptom of a larger system and we must treat it as such.
Read MoreThe chairman may disapprove of students being civilly disobedient, but it seems he thinks students would only do so at the command of some outside influence. That attitude demeans students' autonomy by suggesting that they could never have the idea or drive to speak out on matters that affect them. Instead, they must be puppets for some group of adults set on corrupting our youths. "Ageism" is a clunky word, but it seems to fit here; these students' protests are being diminished by the chairman (among others) seemingly based on their age. Give them a few years and Witt may be able to more comfortably write them off as misguided adults, responsible for their own ignorance. Until then, he has to resign himself to writing them off as incapable of having an interest in education and social justice in their own right.
Read MoreThis is the website of Paul Binkley, an English teacher from Colorado.
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