Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Reading As Conversation

Reading is a conversation. Reading a good book or a good poem is like talking with someone who has thought things through and has managed to come up with something that is really worth saying. Our reading practices should reflect that reality. Just because there is not a person sitting in front of us...
February 17th, 2010 | Art & Literature, Culture, Education | Read More

I Said, You Said, Ze Said

Don’t say as you do, and you’ll do as you say. Linguists can keep debating over whether cultural thought shapes language or language shapes cultural thought. PC—oh, I mean, ‘politically correctness’—cast its vote long ago. The theory behind mashing English through androgynous cookie cutters...
January 19th, 2010 | Culture, Education | Read More

Rural Studies and the Death of Main Street

The small towns of America’s heartland are becoming an endangered species, argue researchers Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas in Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America—a lengthy title for a slim and troubling ethnography. In a nation where urban studies...
January 6th, 2010 | Book Reviews, Culture, Domestic Policy, Education, Family Issues, Heritage & History | Read More

Academic [d]Evolution

“Do you know anything about graduate school applications?” My boyfriend Matthew, like me, is a junior in college and beginning to think about (that is, be overwhelmed by) the nearing terrors called ‘grad school apps’. My mother half laughed—the kind that is mostly air whistling through the...
January 5th, 2010 | Culture, Education, Other | Read More

Rebels Without A Cause: Conservatism’s Big Divide

If you have an opinion, there’s probably a brand of conservatism just for you.  If you care most about faith and values, for example, you might consider yourself a social conservative.  Those who worry about preserving the culture are paleo-conservatives, and neo-conservatives consider national...
December 2nd, 2009 | Conservative/Liberal, Education, Politics, Republicans | Read More

The Death of the Talent Fairy: Why I’m Learning Calculus

It is an often-overlooked truth that a mathematician is a good friend to have. In my case, I happen to have a best friend who has dedicated years of his life to the study of mathematics. We make quite a pair, and there is a unique quality to our friendship in that our conversations often dwell on how...
November 20th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Education | Read More

A Word from our Higher Powers: The MLA Seventh Edition

There is hardly a student in the United States whose work remains wholly untouched by the influence of the Modern Language Association. Whether a fledgling upstart or a seasoned scholar, anyone doing academic work in the humanities has been guided through the massive collaborative effort of the MLA....
November 5th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Blogging, Education, Media, Technology | Read More

Whitewashing Cultural Sepulchers

She’s only three, but our differing taste in music is already a source of conflict. When I turn on Johnny Cash or Regina Spektor, she is adamant: “No.  Songs ’bout Jesus.”  In other words, the local contemporary Christian music station. At first this seemed OK.   Like many...
October 28th, 2009 | Culture, Education, Media, Music, Other, Technology | Read More

The Trouble with Poetry

How do you “teach” a poem? As with every worthwhile text, to lecture is not enough, nor is it the most appropriate way, to teach a poem; rather, the poem must be discussed. Yet often when teachers ask students: “What does this poem mean?” blank stares and silence follow. Sometimes, a...
August 17th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Education | Read More

A Hero Passes

Frank McCourt wasn’t a well-behaved celebrity.  Of course, in our age a statement like that tends to suggest a tired starlet who must shed her underwear or shave her own head to get media attention, but McCourt did neither.  He did get chastised by his principal the first week of teaching, once for...
July 24th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Culture, Education | Read More