by David Safier From Bush's speech in Calgargy, Canada, about the book he's planning to write. "I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written, at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said. He also said it's going to be "fun" to write … Read more
by David Safier Quick, someone find Clarence Thomas a speech writer! Now that the Bush administration is gone, it looks like he's garbled up his talking points. Americans today are self-indulgent and don't make the sacrifices that their parents and grandparents did, and the nation's leaders don't ask people to act for the higher good, … Read more
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