Readers of George Orwell’s Animal Farm should remember Squealer, the pig whose “journalism” manipulated the entire animal society into unquestioningly supporting the dictatorial pig Napoleon. If they studied Animal Farm in the classroom, the depressing odds are they learned it as a good, all-American attack on socialism. The most simple-minded of our teachers make a [...]

Hear, hear: University students worried about getting a job see the study of the humanities as a waste of precious time. . . . Times are hard for humanists. But when economic growth becomes the focus of education, both democracy and human decency are in jeopardy. In her new book, Not For Profit: Why Democracy [...]

Teaching method 1: Have students learn about child labor in 19th century sweatshops by having them read about them in their unfailingly sterile, detached textbooks: Factories in the 19th century had no child labor laws. Children of all ages were made to work in sweatshops for long hours and little pay, with no protection from [...]

An example worth sharing to students of a kid who figured out the power of simple blogging — combined, of course, with quality thinking and writing — and blogged his way to stardom by age 27. In China. From the excellent China Digital Times, with emphasis added: Han Han was named as the ‘Person of [...]

Oh, the French wit. Just the right sauce for my Freedom Fries: Asked to sum up Bush’s record on the [climate change] issue, France’s climate ambassador Brice Lalonde chose instead to pass on a story he had heard. A man comes to the White House asking to see Bush. “He doesn’t live here anymore,” he [...]

Picture this: enterprising students in cities in Texas, particularly, and other cities nationwide – along with counterparts in Romania, which just mandated a Creationism-only science curriculum (I kid you not), and maybe Turkey, for good measure – organize Smart Mobs to strike, peacefully and simultaneously, out of the blue to demand only 21st century science [...]

From the “We Don’t Need Four Ten More Years” Department: This is serious, and an opportunity for some net-roots experimentation that could be fun. So let’s talk the problem first, then possible solutions: 1. Creationists at it again The Houston Chronicle reports that a majority in the Texas Board of Education is likely to vote [...]

Annotations of Obama’s 2004 Interview on His Religious Beliefs Obama is a year older than me, and that’s only the beginning of the list of ways I relate to him. Here are more things we have in common: He didn’t grow up rich and privileged. When he got out of college, he drove a car [...]

He wins in a Democrat landslide. Hopes are high for a progressive agenda unseen since the New Deal, and he delivers, in the first days of his presidency, an avalanche of legislation meant to fulfill those hopes. But he also inherits a military conflict that his advisers are counseling him to escalate – with a [...]

Looking ahead, I have great hope that we will have the courage to embrace the changes necessary to save our economy, our planet and ultimately ourselves. In an earlier transformative era in American history, President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon within 10 years. Eight years and two [...]