December 2011
12 posts
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts,...”
– Charles Bukowski (via burnthazel)
Teach for America: The Hidden Curriculum of... →
That education reformers have long argued that “incentives” are necessary to improve the teaching profession underscores another in a series of ironies that mark the movement. Reformers believe that if teachers are subjected to “market forces,” such as merit pay and job insecurity, they will work harder to improve the education they provide for their students. The need to incentivize the...
“If you were to press your heart close up against somebody else’s heart...”
– Andrea Gibson (via kelsofication)
The Rise of the NBA Nerd: Basketball style and... →
But 21st-century blackness has lost its rigid center, and irony permeates the cultural membrane. More than kids knowing they can be president of the United States, it might be more crucial to the expansion of black identity that — thanks to, say, N.E.R.D or Odd Future — they know they can be skate punks. Kanye West can release an album called The College Dropout, then run around the world...
Clash of Civilizations: The Confusion of Being a... →
American political discourse — and American criticism of China — can clash, sometimes painfully so, with the more closed and more uniformly nationalistic social norms Chinese students are accustomed to. Their desire to share in American prosperity and their admiration for its fair social values are often complicated by a defensiveness of their homeland, instilled in them by a...
