Education: July 2009 Archives

Nina Munk on Hard Times at Harvard | vanityfair.com

How the smartest people on the planet messed up the management of their massive endowment by playing the same stupid financial games as everyone else.

Disney: Hegemonic enemy of queer pedagogy - Crunchy Con

The sad fact is that crazy ideas like these from the academy find their ways into our public schools:

"Queer pedagogy is primarily about disrupting and destabilising the cultural binaries male-female, sex-gender, heterosexual-homosexual explicit or implicit in these normalising discourses that operate to constitute and perpetuate artificial hierarchical relations of power between their constructed polarised opposites."

From the same report: "Interestingly, a close friend gave her six-year-old niece a Barbie to add to her extensive collection. This Barbie was different, many hours were spent 'queering' Barbie up.... Barbie's hair was cut short, she had several tattoos, a nose and nipple ring, black leather clothes, and so on. Despite all the effort put into this performance, this 'Queer Barbie' lasted less than a week--she was found defrocked and mutilated (missing limbs), hidden at the bottom of the cupboard; 'Queer Barbie' was well and truly reprimanded for her gender 'slippage' and was ostracised from her more respectable hetero-feminised cousins."

Open Mic at the iMonk Cafe: What Might Boys Read? | internetmonk.com

Many, many good suggestions, beyond Harry Potter and Narnia.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Best Kids' Books Ever - NYTimes.com

Nicholas Kristof's recommendations include The Hardy Boys series, Anne of Green Gables, The Wind in the Willows, The Prince and the Pauper, and the Harry Potter books, plus a bunch you may never have heard of. In a blog entry, the Kristof children offer their own book recommendations.