I finished my dissertation in 2016, titled the Student Experience of Other Students. I tried that summer to develop the dissertation into an article. The Qualitative Report allows articles of 40 pages, so I was cutting the 260-some odd pages bit by bit. I was informed by more experienced writers that what I was doing […]
At a recent department meeting we voted to align our grading scales. That means we decided that to achieve a grade of A, a 93% average of all course work would be required. An 85% average would yield a B, 75% a C, and on down the line. There was not much debate, but some […]
I wait until it’s quite late, for my neighborhood, 11pm or so, to walk my anxiety-ridden dog. I want my walks to be relaxing, and if I go out earlier she will bark at anyone and anything that moves. Incessantly. Shrilly. Irritatingly. There are enough nerves with the pandemic, so I walk late. I try […]
When I was in the fourth grade at a school in Flagstaff, AZ, they played Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” over the loudspeaker EVERY MORNING. Perhaps you surmise from the capital letters that the song did not have its intended effect. I was a worrisome and superstitious 9 year old. I wore a cross […]
I listened to Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain, which is a memoir that traces his path from globe-trotting youth to Columbia University all-star student to Trappist monk. It seemed kind of short–am I the only one who mistrusts audiobooks that claim to be unabridged? I don’t know if monasteries and classrooms could be more different, […]
Is there any place more indoctrinating than a school? Is there any site of greater resistance than a school? These questions emerge as I read Robert Mcfarlane’s Underland and listen to talks from Robin Wall Kimmerer. McFarland mentions Kimmerer, an indigenous scientist of botany, as a person developing a grammar that can flatten the hierarchy […]
Jim Garrison is a philosopher of education that teaches at Virginia Tech. In his book Dewey and Eros, he has a great chapter that describes how he uses Play-Doh to introduce John Dewey’s philosophy. I modified this activity for my Foundations of Education course because it sounded accessible, fun, and out of the ordinary. It’s […]
In 1985, Neil Postman wrote a book titled Amusing Ourselves to Death, which used a well-known idea from Marshall McLuhan’s media theories, “the medium is the message,” to critique television. The central idea was that TV affected us more through its form than its content. True to the Hiedeggerian roots of McLuhan’s work, Postman expounded […]
State representative Rick Staples, with the TN commissioner of education, Penny Schwinn, held an “informal town hall meeting” at the Knoxville Arboretum and Botanical Garden at the end of August (8/28/19). I went because it was called a town hall meeting, but the only people there seemed to be other politicians, the Knox County Board […]
I’ve been listening to Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. Hearing his descriptions of the desert remind me of the not insignificant amount of time I’ve spent in southeast Utah: Moab, Castle Valley, Arches, Glen Canyon. The best dream I ever had was set in the desert. I was flying around the rust and orange colored sandstone […]
