8 Comments

Tend to refer to God as IT. Since it created males and females, almost by definition it is neither and both. Not to mention hermaphrodites, asexuals, viruses, and other forms of life. Giving IT a pronoun would be difficult, but making God in man's image is a travesty.

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There were a bunch of reasons we left Park Slope in ‘98, but one of them was my worry that the school system, then being held in check by a few sanity-minded folks from going full-on bananas, was about to slip off the chain and go full wing nut. And this is School Board 15, supposedly the best and brightest in the City. My question is: who was in the “room where it happened”? Did anyone suggest what cannon fodder this was going to be for right wing media factory? Do these people hear themselves? Every time I think the academic left wing sabotage machine is getting tamed, it roars again.

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This is bothsiderism which will ultimately help to elect Trump. On the one side you have a party of violent.thugs whose most recent two adventures were to decide frozen embryos are human babies and then to rely completely, to adopt, as their principal witness to impeach Joe Biden a man who was clearly at the least a,Soviet intelligence useful fool. On the other hand you have a party with a nutty left that believes a number of weird things but also believes in democracy and isnt violent. Can’t we simply acknowledged that Trump is an extinction event, one of the most dangerous men in American history, and not normalize him? He’s not normal.

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Another brilliantly written essay, Joe. One correction---negative campaigning did not start with Pat Caddell, I can assure you. And it didn't begin in 1986. I am not sure when it started, but it was widely used by NCPAC in 1978 against Senators who had voted for the Panama Canal Treaties. And it worked. Several were defeated.

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Of course, Les, negative campaigning is as old as the Pharaoh. But using it exclusively, without any positive ads about your candidate, began with Caddell.

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Joe, it’s always the soundest policy when addressing Education to, well, not say anything unless … yes, you’ve been there. THAT is because it is, and always be, patently absurd to discuss educational attainment without paying close attention to the same family background and upbringing you allude to earlier. Hence, teacher unions. They’re the only line of defense teachers have, and even the union is useless when the teacher enters the classroom, closes the door behind her, and tries to make it work.

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Thanks for your comment, but it's not a strong argument. It's like saying you have to be a soldier to write about war. I've embedded with the troops...and also with teachers, in dozens and dozens of schools. I've had extensive conversations with educators and union leaders over forty years, including a memorable four hours with the brilliant Albert Shanker (who favored charter schools). But you are right: The Coleman Report in 1968 clearly established that parental involvement is the most important element in educational attainment. There can be success at the margins; I've seen it...but the unions' work rules put a real damper on experimentation and creativity.

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Yes but, to be clear, this particular school serves the wealthiest, trendiest, and, yes, whitest population in all of Brooklyn. If this was, say, East New York you could maybe give them a pass, but here - this is the crowd that reads Kendri and asks “what more can I do”??

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