Tag
Education
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“Totto-chan,” the Myth of Hans Asperger, and Disability Pride amidst Fascism
In the lead up to World War II, one headmaster educated children with a variety of abilities—and doing all he could to protect his students from Japan’s authoritarian government.
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The Future of Diversity on Campus
Donald Trump is a threat to American higher education. Signs and wonders of harm abound. In addition to his abysmally unqualified secretary of education …
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The Student Debt Crisis and Its Deniers
The year 2016 seemed to begin with the promise of actual reform to federal student loan policy, with meaningful consequences for the industry. Bernie Sanders thrilled …
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Trump Syllabus 2.0 en Español
Desde su publicación en junio de 2016, en medio de la intensa campaña electoral que llevaría a Donald Trump a la Casa Blanca, el “Trump Syllabus 2.0” ha probado …
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Breaking the ESL Student’s Imagination
The creation of vivid, readable, and faithful translations of literary works into English calls not only for considerable expertise in the original language, but also for consummate writerly skill in the so-called target language—usually, one imagines, that of a native speaker. So what could anyone expect to achieve by teaching literary translation to students of…
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Rape Culture Syllabus
I just start kissing them. Just kiss—I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything. —Donald Trump The video was released on Friday, October 7. At the presidential debate two days later, when CNN…
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Josef Albers in the iPad Era
In a crisp white shirt, his right knee on the floor, famed former Bauhaus instructor and future head of Yale University’s department of design Josef Albers holds a half-smoked cigarette in one hand and a color swatch in the other. He is demonstrating to a class of students at Black Mountain College the precarious principles…
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Against Careerism, For College
Having just seen a new crop of students graduate from my university, and seeing them now off into the world—to jobs, internships, and further study—I find myself thinking about what college is for, what it results in, and the feelings that swirl around the event of graduation. In the longest single section of David Foster…
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Trump Syllabus 2.0
On June 19th, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a web version of a mock college syllabus that sought to explore the deep historical and political roots of Donald Trump’s political success during the 2016 Presidential campaign. The syllabus suffered from a number of egregious omissions and inaccuracies, including its failures to include contributions of scholars of…
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The New Working Class
Tamara Draut is a policy expert and social critic based at Demos, a progressive think tank. Her latest book, Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America, calls attention to the …
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Graphic Novels for MBAs
Over the course of the two-year program at Harvard Business School, an MBA student will read over five hundred case studies. They range in length from a single page to over 50, but their format is typically the same: a description of an ambiguous scenario that forces students to read actively and decide for themselves…
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“Democracy and Education” @100
The rallies during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign feature exuberant call-and-response exchanges. Denouncing immigrants from south of the border, Trump shouts, “We’re going to build a wall.” He pauses to let the crowd’s emotions storm up. Then he asks, “And, by the way, who’s going to pay for that wall?” The crowd roars back, “Mexico.”…
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Can You Name the Authors of these Poems about April?
National Poetry Month is in full swing! We’ve combed through our poetry anthologies for allusions to April. Can you match the lines to their authors?
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Portable and Infinitely Useful
Now that he has passed his first birthday, my son Miles has begun to handle books differently. Instead of gnawing on them, he stacks them purposefully on each other, pulls them off the shelves and flings them into piles, or moves them from room to room, chatting to them all the while in not-quite-English syllables.…
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2015’s Most-Read on the Public Books Blog
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over our most popular features from last year, here were the top five most-read essays from our blog: “Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking,” by Christopher Schaberg It’s a phrase that’s parroted endlessly, but is anyone quite sure exactly what it means? “In the Great Green Room:…
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In the Great Green Room: Margaret Wise Brown and Modernism
When Goodnight Moon was published in 1946, no one predicted it would become a classic. Its sales began to take off in 1953, and now the book has sold over 14 million copies. I grew up with Goodnight Moon and I raised my daughters on it. The text remains bearable, charming, and even compelling after…
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The New School Tie
In 1998 Harrow school opened a satellite campus in Bangkok. Founded in 1572 by Royal Charter from Elizabeth I, Harrow is one of Britain’s ancient “public” schools, fee-paying institutions independent of the state that educate some of the wealthiest and most privileged members of society. Following Harrow’s example, other public schools quickly expanded into the…
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What Global English Means for
World LiteratureGlobalization is one of the great issues facing universities today, particularly in humanities departments. It means different things to different people, but most agree that globalization pluralizes. In the words of Jonathan Arac, globalization “opens up every local, national or regional culture to others and thereby produces ‘many worlds.’”1 However, this rapid pluralization is occurring…
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Outline for a Workshopped World
Despite their centrality to what Mark McGurl has recently designated the “Program Era” in American fiction, writing workshops don’t fare well in novels produced by the writers who participate in them.1 The campus novel is almost always satirical, and scenes set in creative writing classes tend to be crucibles of crippling shame and slavish emulation.…
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Liberal Arts: A Safe Space?
Lydia Davis has a wonderful short story called “Idea for a Sign,” in which she explores the dynamic of social settings where people who don’t know one another must sit side-by-side, as on a train. Davis suggests that it would be easier if everyone wore signs explaining exactly what they will and will not do…
