Progress or Ruin
Monbiot’s recent article sits in my belly like lead: As a child and young adult, I delighted in being able to identify almost any wild plant or animal. And now…
Marie Snyder
The Trouble with Relativism
From a comment on a social media post advocating that we stop protesting people with Trump hats: “The trouble with refusing to serve someone because you abhor their views, is…
Right to Free Speech, not to an Audience
In Brian W. Van Norten’s article in today’s New York Times, “The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience” he carefully argues the stance that I’ve attempted to…
On Limits to Free Speech: Hate Crime Laws and Defamation Suits
Watching the excellent series The Handmaid’s Tale, at first I questioned the glaring lack of racism in the show. It’s supposed to be happening just a few years in the…
Left Wing Opposition Rebuttal
Here’s a facebook response to my previous post about left-wing ideology, and the post included a link to this article about Peterson. First claim: the left are promoting racism and…
Defining the Left
This is a continuation of my previous post on the political correctness issue raised in last week’s Munk Debates with Jordan Peterson, Michelle Goldberg, Michael Eric Dyson, and Stephen Fry…
Munk Debate On Political Correctness
Immersed, as I have been, in the political correctness / free speech dichotomy, I looked forward to the recent Munk Debate with Michelle Goldberg and Michael Eric Dyson on one…
The 9.9 Percent
The Atlantic has a great article about the 9.9% being the new American aristocracy. Matthew Stewart has separated the 0.1%, who are the super rich, from the moderately wealthy who…
What Should Teachers Do to Prevent Gun Violence?
Lots of us have students who don’t quite fit in and spend all their time alone, friendless. They might have been bullied for being different, and we can’t always solve…
A Bit More on Free Speech
You’re free to say the earth is flat and say it all day long on a wide variety of media platforms, and even write a book about it if you’ve…
A Crackpot Posing as a Genius
I’ve been noticing many articles, recently, about the plight of loneliness. It’s now linked to anxiety and depression, and addiction, and a former US Surgeon General calls it the most…
Seeing Jane Goodall
A post in which I gush a bit about it all. Jane came to my city last Wednesday night. I had so much to do this week, but I had…
On Entitlement and Unfettered Rage
One of the benefits or downfalls of the internet is that it allows fringe groups to find each other online. When it comes to feeling like nobody in the world…
Happy Earth Day
It’s the 48th Earth Day, and it’s the 20th anniversary of Mann’s hockey stick graph made famous in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. So we’ve known, for sure, that climate…
On Peterson, Political Correctness, and Postmodernism
Peterson was on Bill Maher last night. They’re both people that have some clever ideas, but also promote a few questionable notions in a way that’s slick enough to just…
On Progressive Education
I recently watched a film, Most Likely to Succeed, which has inspired a lengthy post about educational reform. FIRST, A BIT ON DEWEY AND SKINNER: (If educational theory isn’t your…
On Extra Time and IEP Designations
We administered the literacy test yesterday with one new twist that most teachers weren’t privy to until the previous evening: There would be no specific accommodations for students with IEPs…
On Masculinity
Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present, wrote an interesting article in The Guardian last Saturday on the rise of a new idea of masculinity…
On the Necessity for a Public Takedown
When, a couple months back, I read Katie Way’s depiction of a date between “Grace” and Aziz Ansari, at first I felt badly for him to be outed as such…
On UW’s Mental Health Recommendations
After another suicide on the campus of the University of Waterloo, the university compiled 36 recommendations to try to alleviate the mental health crisis and held (and taped) a forum…