by David Safier Friend of the blog Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute has spent a great deal of time discussing, arguing and cajoling in the comments section, and I, along with commenters, have discussed, argued and cajoled right back. It's been one of those rare occasions where two sides meet on an even playing … Read more
by David Safier I asked a teacher friend how his school was handling the budget cuts. "Oh," he said, "we just stopped teaching. We know there'll be cuts down the line, so we don't want any of our kids to be smart enough to take our jobs." I was going to respond with a witty … Read more
by David Safier This is more for fun than anything (or an English teacher's idea of fun, anyway), but it's a semi-interesting comment on the phonics/whole language debate. Do we read syllable by syllable, as phonics people say, or do we use lots of contextual clues to scope out the words we're reading, as whole … Read more
by David Safier I use the term "snark" often, and without thinking. But over at R-Cubed, someone asked Tedski what he meant by the term "snark," since most definitions head back to Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark," and that doesn't make much sense in its modern usage. Tedski's brother (Tomski? That just doesn't work, … Read more
by David Safier Here's a good thumbnail sketch of Obama's education agenda from the Center for American Progress. CAP is a progressive think tank,but this isn't a political analysis. It's more of a description. And you'll see that you can't typify Obama's plans for education as either liberal or conservative. The ideas swing both ways. … Read more