Thursday, July 31st, 2003
MORE POSTINGS TO COME
Much later tonight a marathon blogging session will ensue to make up for my lackluster week.
Archive for July, 2003
Thursday, July 31st, 2003
ADDITIONS TO THE BLOGROLL
Check them out. An interesting mix I believe. A few are primarily there because they are excellent research sites. One of the new blogs, Classical Values, was kind enough to initiate a link to Zenpundit and I liked the esoteric references ( for example, to war criminal Alois Brunner ) and the thematic focus on the ancients.
Tuesday, July 29th, 2003
I HATE TO BREAK IT TO THEM BUT INVESTORS DO THIS ANYWAY
Why do they think Jordan lives off of handouts while Singapore flourishes ?
Tuesday, July 29th, 2003
WOOLSEY ON THE ” NEOCON STRATEGY”
Go here
Tuesday, July 29th, 2003
PARENTS UNITED FOR IGNORANCE
As someone who who cares deeply about history and is an advocate of educational excellence for children this story made my skin crawl.
I fully realize that school districts make all kind of personnel decisions based on reasons-often petty-other than the best educational outcome. The African-American teacher of Black History was assigned a different schedule for reasons unknown to the public – perhaps at that teacher’s request, perhaps not and parents in that community may be reacting to what has been heard from the grapevine. Nevertheless, the argument of the parents that their children can only learn their history from a teacher of the same race as themselves is in principle a denial of the discipline of history itself.It is also an argument that would never be made about physics or math;by that logic, none of us could possibly understand archaeology because none of us are ancient Egyptians.
Morally, this claim is troublesome because it speaks to the poisonous idea of inherently racial knowledge, unkowable by outsiders, a tool of exclusion and a barrier to greater understanding and empathy. The study of history asks ” why ? “, it puts the student in the shoes of another and makes them walk a mile. With “racial knowledge”, your shoes couldn’t possibly fit my feet so why bother trying them on ?
These parents are not hostile or ill-intentioned – they are scared that their children might have to try on something different than the same old shoes. It’s a plea for comfortable ignorance and it should be roundly rejected.
