PIED TYPE
Education
The times they are a changin’
Bet you can’t answer this question: What do the names “F-Bomb Firetrucks” and “Bamfs” have in common? Answer: Both are proposed names for volleyball teams at my 7-year-old grandson’s K-8 school! I was outraged when my son told me, even though I had to ask him what Bamf means. Both he and my daughter-in-law immediately … Continue reading
In the soup: Starbucks, Bing, Congress, et al
Education funding cuts Cutting funding to education? No wonder students are protesting today. The resulting tuition hikes in many cases will be so large that students already on tight budgets won’t be able to stay in school. Teachers will be fired, some classes will be eliminated, others will get much larger. I don’t agree with … Continue reading
SC can’t control foot-in-mouth disease
When it comes to explaining things, no one has been as inept recently as South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. Most of us understand what dependency is and how it develops. But Bauer really put his foot in it last Friday when he attempted to explain dependency by comparing poor children to stray animals: My … Continue reading
Printed books and their stores endangered
Interesting segment on The Colbert Report tonight. Sherman Alexie, author of the recently released War Dances, was talking about the plight of authors and books today. Alexie mentioned that he would not allow his book to be released in digital form. Why? Because it’s too likely to be pirated, something he says is happening a … Continue reading
Larning to spell iz steel inportunt
As background noise this morning, as on most Sunday mornings, I had Fareed Zakaria’s show on. He was interviewing Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and CEO, and posed an interesting question. Paraphrasing what I only halfway heard: “With all the spell checkers on all the devices we use today, will our children still learn to spell?” … Continue reading
The love of books
Books. What wondrous things they are. How invaluable they’ve been throughout history as bearers and guardians of mankind’s greatest ideas. As I child I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by books. There were walls of books in my home and in my relatives’ homes. Collected and cherished by their owners, kept always within view, … Continue reading
Using their indoor voices
With more grace, tact, and diplomacy than the other principals managed to display this week, President Obama delivered his commencement address today to Notre Dame’s Class of 2009. The controversy surrounding his appearance had risen to fever pitch. A pro-choice advocate was going to speak at the nation’s preeminent Catholic university! (Gasp!) University supporters were … Continue reading
Scholarship trumps honorary degree
President Barack Obama will be delivering the commencement address at Arizona State University this evening. But the headline has been that ASU is not going to give him an honorary degree. Instead, they will expand a scholarship program in his name. A scholarship will actually benefit someone, while still honoring the president. The media are … Continue reading
Shredding Strunk and White
Marian the Grammarian I am not, although for a number of years I was allowed to impose my ideas of correctness on the writing of others — and got paid for doing it. (How cool is that!?) I’d be the first to admit that no sooner did I walk out of the classroom than I … Continue reading
It’s a simple question
I’ve been browsing and got caught up again in the illegal immigration issue. I haven’t been there in a while. The subject didn’t get a lot of attention during last year’s campaign and President Obama seems to be concentrating primarily on the economy, as he should be. As a result, the issue seems to be … Continue reading
The continuing flap over bilingual education
When English is a student’s second language, what should a school do? It’s a big issue here in Colorado, where we have a large Hispanic (or is it Latino?) population. A local grade school landed in the headlines a few weeks ago when its principal, who favored a bilingual, transitional approach, was suspended. The parents, … Continue reading
You can lead a horse to water but …
How should Americans live in order to attain a reasonable level of comfort and security? The formula, seemingly forgotten long ago, is simple. Robert Rob spells it out in his Politico article, “Americans Lose Gift for Practical Living”: Regardless of how bad a school you attend, pay attention and do what your teachers say to … Continue reading
Education is infrastructure, too
I was just reading comments on another blog, and the editor in me got pinged — again. (Yes, it’s a curse. I retired, but my brain didn’t.) This time it was the spelling “infistructure” used in an otherwise well-written paragraph that also included words such as “stipulation” and “verification.” Not likely to have been a … Continue reading
‘Interim’ is a 3-syllable word meaning interval
Okay, I have to say this now before I explode. Jon Stewart just said “in-term” when he meant “interim.” Why do so many people on TV get that wrong!? I’m distressed that my beloved Jon Stewart is one of the unfortunate misinformed. “Interim” is a 3-syllable word meaning the interval of time between two events. … Continue reading
School vouchers: I still don’t understand
I just came across this little editorial in the Washington Post that touts school vouchers and worries that President-elect Obama might eliminate them. I’m a generation past worrying about vouchers and my son’s education, but I decided way back then that I didn’t like them. WaPo seems to be working off the premise that the … Continue reading
United they stand and to hell with the kids
The Denver Public School system does a lot of things that make me wonder about the intelligence of the people in charge. This, in turn, makes me worry about what’s happening to the education of our kids. Case in point: A recent DPS decision to start schools late on five days this year so that … Continue reading
You can observe a lot just by watching – 2
How many of you ever use the calendars in blog sidebars? Do you look at them just to see what day it is? Do you ever use them to pull up the posts from such-and-such a date? Or just look to see how long ago it’s been since the last post? I keep debating whether … Continue reading
Hillary spearheading fight against HHS ‘abortion’ label
Nothing makes my blood boil faster than someone, anyone, trying to tell me what I can or can’t do with or to my body. Seriously, how much more personal and private can you get? So I flipped out when I came across Hillary Clinton’s article Monday on The Huffington Post. It seems the Bush administration … Continue reading
PBS scores with ‘Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial’
This evening PBS aired “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.” I sat riveted for the entire two hours. Fascinating looks at the people and testimony in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case in Pennsylvania a few years ago, where the judge had to decide whether an effort to inject Intelligent Design (ID) into the school’s science curriculum was … Continue reading
School authority stops at the curb
Fox News just aired a short discussion about schools suspending students because of what they (the students) posted on myspace.com. The question was whether schools had the right to do this. The schools were acting within their rights if the activities occurred at school using school computers. The report, however, indicated that the alleged offenses … Continue reading
Subscribe Via Twitter
Click to get new post alerts via Twitter:
Pied Type
on Facebook
