Edits…

I'm in the process of working on the design of this blog, so please bear with me....

When Educational Research Battles Polictical Research

The New York Times Magazine last week had an interesting piece on new science indicating that physical exercise mitigates anger.  The science here is new only in the sense that this is a study that clearly indicates this link, but as others have written over the years, the link between physical activity (and sleep) and [...]

The ethics of TV ‘experiments’

Macon, over at Stuff White People Do, picked up on the ABC show “What Would You Do?“, specifically an episode on racism in public settings and how people respond. It is in some ways reminiscent of some early ‘instigation research’ where researchers purposefully instigated some conflict to see how people would respond.

Macon tackles the issues [...]

Youth Sexuality

According to data collected by Hunter College with the Human Rights Campaign, men are 12 when they first think they might be gay or bisexual. Women are 16 when they first think they might be lesbian or bisexual. By the time LGB people hit college age, they have, on average, had sex with someone of [...]

Terror Toys

So what do our children see and play with in today’s world? On TV, there is a Homeland Security reality program on ABC (yep, Disney owns that one too). Propaganda? The executive producer says it pretty clearly:
“I love investigative journalism, but that’s not what we’re doing,” he told The Reporter. “This show is heartening. It [...]

Dehumanizing People of Color

Well Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is at it again. He’s been criticized before, by the Mayor of Phoenix among others, for violating civil rights and for ignoring some 40,000 felony arrest warrants so he can focus on rounding up people with brown skin. “Immigrants” and “Criminals”, Sheriff Joe calls them, but he doesn’t [...]

So, who are you?

We all develop a sense of who we are, and this process is a juggle of one’s sense of self and our culture’s sense of us. Even  as adults, we are constantly refining this sense of self and even working on several different versions of it. Much like having several different resumes that highlight our [...]

When “the Market” runs the school

Over the years, there have been lots of examples of corporate interests making their way into classrooms. Teachers are well familiar with the posters oh so kindly donated by companies which plug their products in one way or another, or even go so far as to steer the politics of teaching.
Is this just the way [...]

“Class warfare” in education

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” This he said to a New York Times reporter in 2006 while discussing how little the rich pay in taxes relative to their incomes. He had noticed that he paid a lower tax rate [...]

Is empathy eroding?

Jean Twenge was recently interviewed on Fair Game with Faith Salie. Twenge is a professor at San Diego State University where she studies differences in generations. She has also written a book called Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before, which title is fairly [...]