Education: July 2020 Archives
Teaching marginalized kids taught me orderly classrooms, Western canon keys to liberation
Sohrab Ahmari, writing in the New York Post
"Do you know what would have happened if I'd told my Mexican-American students' moms, 'You know, ladies, I'm not teaching your children grammar, because grammar is an integral part of the white, phallocentric structures of Âoppression that keep you and your community down'?
"They would've slapped me with their purses and called me a pendejo -- and rightly so.
"The same would have gone for the notion, bizarrely gaining currency these days, that the yearning for order and even abstract reasoning as such are white, Âcolonial constructs.
"I watched the best of my fellow teachers run tight ships, with clear expectations for behavior, systems of reward and punishment and a general ethic of uprightness pervading their classrooms. And, again, guess what? The kids, and their parents, appreciated such efforts enormously."
"Not for Camera View" -- Strong Towns
Photographer Johnny Sanphillippo's habit of photographing ordinary places has attracted a fair amount of negative attention and suspicion over the years.
"Why not capture what the landscape really looks like? America is mostly parking lots, squat concrete strip malls, storm water retention ponds, refineries, chain link fences, and tract homes made of plastic siding. Photographing the authentic American landscape is both more challenging and ultimately more rewarding if you can do it well....
"I was walking around a nondescript neighborhood in Chicago a few years ago when five squad cars surrounded me at an intersection. I was asked for my identification, they were keen to see what was on my camera, and there were all sorts of questions about who I was and what I was up to. The police wouldn't say exactly why they descended on me in such an overwhelming fashion, but it was pretty clear there had been a report of unsavory activity of the terrorist variety."
I can only think of one occasion where I was challenged in a frightening way for taking pictures. I had spotted an interesting neon sign on a hotel located along what was once a major highway on the edge of Orlando. I made the mistake of getting out of the car to take the picture, and a burly guy who looked like he stepped out of The Sopranos came out to ask me what the **** I was doing. (Maybe he thought I was photographing license plates.) He calmed down after I explained that the sign had caught my attention, and he encouraged me to come back some time for dinner at the restaurant. (No thanks.)
A Not So Happy Warrior: Mike Adams, 1964-2020 :: SteynOnline
"The American academy is bonkers and has reared monsters - so that we now have a 'black liberation movement' staffed almost entirely by college-educated white women (including a remarkable number of angry trans-women) from the over-undergraduated permanent-varsity Class of Whenever. We are assured that out in "the real world' there is a soi-disant 'silent majority' whose voices will resound around the world on November 3rd. For what it's worth, I don't believe in the existence of this 'silent majority', and a political party that has won the popular vote only once in the last thirty years (2004) ought to be chary about over-investing in it.
"But either way, if you're doing the heavy lifting on an otherwise abandoned front of the culture war, what you mostly hear, as Mike Adams did, is the silent majority's silence - month in, month out....
"Pushing back can be initially exhilarating - and then just awfully wearing and soul-crushing: 'I'm with you one hundred per cent, of course. But please don't mention I said so...'
"And yet, if the facts are as they appear, a tireless and apparently 'happy warrior' - exhausted by a decade of litigation, threats, boycotts, ostracization and more - found himself sitting alone - and all he heard in the deafening silence of the 'silent majority' was his own isolation and despair."
A Not So Happy Warrior: Mike Adams, 1964-2020 :: SteynOnline
"The American academy is bonkers and has reared monsters - so that we now have a 'black liberation movement' staffed almost entirely by college-educated white women (including a remarkable number of angry trans-women) from the over-undergraduated permanent-varsity Class of Whenever. We are assured that out in "the real world' there is a soi-disant 'silent majority' whose voices will resound around the world on November 3rd. For what it's worth, I don't believe in the existence of this 'silent majority', and a political party that has won the popular vote only once in the last thirty years (2004) ought to be chary about over-investing in it.
"But either way, if you're doing the heavy lifting on an otherwise abandoned front of the culture war, what you mostly hear, as Mike Adams did, is the silent majority's silence - month in, month out....
"Pushing back can be initially exhilarating - and then just awfully wearing and soul-crushing: 'I'm with you one hundred per cent, of course. But please don't mention I said so...'
"And yet, if the facts are as they appear, a tireless and apparently 'happy warrior' - exhausted by a decade of litigation, threats, boycotts, ostracization and more - found himself sitting alone - and all he heard in the deafening silence of the 'silent majority' was his own isolation and despair."
