In a final reflection video for a freshman writing class, a student gave a personal shout-out to me and to every classmate over a moody guitar soundtrack, and now apparently I have something in my eye.
An autistic undergraduate has tips for professors and administrators: The fact that my disability, and the accommodations that I require because of it, did not crush my higher-education dreams is a testament to the democratization of higher education. While college is still not accessible to everyone, more and more people are able to attend. Low-income, first-generation, mentally ill, and disabled students now frequently share classrooms with the middle- and upper-class…
Critical Thinking Matters Personal Essays vs. Academic Writing Summary vs. Original Ideas Filler: “There Are Many Reasons to Avoid the Filler Phrase ‘There Are’” Bloom’s Taxonomy: Hierarchy of Critical Thinking Skills
While my students are out of the room making a video, I’m quickly marking the homework that was due today. When we reconvene we’ll discuss both assignments, and then it’s on to the next task.
The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences… The trio say they’ve proved that higher ed’s fixation on identity politics enables “absurd and horrific” scholarship. Their submissions were outlandish—but no more so, they insist, than others written in earnest and published by these journals.
Gender, Place & Culture, for instance, published a 2017 paper that wasn’t a hoax analyzing the “feminist posthumanist politics” of what squirrels eat. This year Hypatia, a journal of feminist philosophy, published an analysis of a one-woman show featuring “the onstage cooking of hot chocolate and the presence of a dead rat.” The performance supposedly offers “a synthaesthetic portrait of poverty and its psychological fallout.”
Flight 93 crash site and Tower of Voices. Well worth the side trip on the way back from a weekend gig. I had to explain to the girl why the 9/11/2001 newspaper in the exhibit didn’t mention the attacks (it had been printed overnight). She was especially moved by the recorded messages left by some of the passengers. I was moved by the display that showed the contours of the…