Why is Mark Twain’s autobiography only coming out now, 100 years after his death? Because he stipulated so before dying. What he expresses in these screenshots from a PBS Newshour clip of the manuscript suggests why he might have wanted these thoughts to stay silent for a century. And they’re strangely resonant in our own [...]

Interesting. James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, shares his experience of being invited to write a preface to the Chinese translation of his book due for publication in the People’s Republic of China. Loewen writes, [O]n behalf of . . . one of the largest [...]

Kids, if your mom sounds like the blond lady, be very, very sad: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Socialism Studies www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party And goodness knows we can’t have our children learn about anything that doesn’t cause global financial meltdowns, global warming, [...]

Watching Cindy Gallop’s “Make Love, Not P0rn”  TED Talk (see bottom of post),  I winced at some jackasses in the audience laughing at the speaker’s message. She wasn’t trying to be funny, and for good reason: that our youths are learning about sexuality from bad online p0rn is no laughing matter. Gallop uses the 5-minute [...]

On Blogging in the Late Weimar Republic Reading the headlines of Alltop.com’s “top education” sites‘ brings to mind the cover of the old Supertramp album, showing a man sunning himself in a bathing suit on a lounge chair, surrounded by grimy industrial waste. The album’s title? “Crisis? What Crisis?” Economically, American banking deregulation has dragged [...]

“Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read!” So he vanished from my sight, And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy song, Every child may joy to hear. –William Blake, Songs of Innocence “And [...]

[Since my students just finished reading Nabokov's Lolita, I thought I'd give their responses to the notion that it shouldn't be taught in upper secondary. This is the third in the Why We Should Teach Lolita in High School series. See Number One here, Number Two here, with many interesting comments. If you want to [...]

Extending my last post on why I think Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita should be required reading at some point in high school language arts classes: In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus kills his father, then marries and impregnates his mother: we teach this parricidal, incestuous, antique “classic” to 14-year-olds. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince’s uncle murders [...]

{Update 15 April: After reading this and the comments, be sure to read this follow-up post and the comments there. Interesting stuff in those comments.] Constance incarnate Diane Cordell tagged me for this literature-themed meme begun by Paul C. at quoteflections. It’s a fun one for me, for a couple of reasons. But first, here [...]

One for the MiniLegends [Update: I was out of the loop preparing for my wedding when Australian Al Upton's MiniLegends and Qatar's Jabiz Raisdana got hit by two shockingly reactionary hammers. Since this podcast features Noel Thomas, an Australian high school principal representing all that is most forward-thinking and impressive about Australia's educational system, I'd [...]