Bishop Desmond Tutu led his country into an era he called Truth and Reconciliation. South Africa had been as bad as the American South; worse, (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
States with no lockdown as of April 4
04/04/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentFour states, all Republican governors. Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota. Iowa really surprises me.
Insults
04/04/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsConservatives complain that liberals insult them, calling them uneducated, rubes, fly-over country residents, red-necks and say they vote against their own interests. This is supposed (Continue Reading)
Vindication
03/09/2020 Pat Barrett 8 CommentsThis morning on Morning Joe I heard two statements vindicating what I’ve been saying for several years. Trump is seeing his prime device for dealing (Continue Reading)
Why no Black love for Bernie?
03/06/2020 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsIt’ simple. Bernie wants to change the society Blacks have been trying to get into. March 6, 2020 Addendum on watching Rachel interview Bernie Sanders: (Continue Reading)
Chilling memories prompted by Trump
02/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentSharp comparison given in article by George Packer on William Holbrooke quoting a woman who lived through the Balkan wars and was watching a Trump (Continue Reading)
“They all think that.”
02/13/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentA journalist from Abuja, Nigeria, reporting on Trump’s popularity in Nigeria, when asked about his racism, said that Nigerians recognize that all Americans really think (Continue Reading)
Just in case you wondered what happened to this category……….
11/04/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentTrump’s misdeeds, atrocities, and lies are simply too many to keep up with and they’re all well catalogued on MSNBC and other outlets. The lies (Continue Reading)
Final final to the grouplet
12/06/2016 Pat Barrett Add Comment“People that say that facts are facts — they’re not really facts . . . there’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts. And so Mr. Trump’s (Continue Reading)
Satire just might do the trick
10/17/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe have a new knock-knock or how many Xs does it take to….. type of joke: Just how stupid is a Trump supporter? I’m afraid (Continue Reading)
Looking for Mr. Trump
10/16/2016 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsHow bright is the line between Trump and the rest of us rude, crude and lewd guys? We’ve heard numerous men step out to say (Continue Reading)
Running blog on politics 2016
08/05/2016 Pat Barrett 1 CommentGiven the pace of political events, I’ve decided to stop flooding my Politics category with entries and to instead start a ramble with a political (Continue Reading)
Classroom control by SRO
10/31/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentA cautionary tale is part of new teacher orientation: third day of class a kid shows up after the teacher has carefully accounted for the (Continue Reading)
Two New Orleans young people who’ve made a mark
08/28/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentOn the Rachel Maddow show the guest host, Melissa Harris-Perry, interviewed two young people who survived Hurricane Katrina and went back to the city and (Continue Reading)
(No Title)
02/18/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentConsidering a post to flteach citing an article in NEA Today re the school to prison pipeline. I responded describing how Deasy stated that just (Continue Reading)
A Day Without Mexicans
01/23/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Diane Ravitch’s blog every day gladdens my heart that so many people are onto the phony reform movement. When I went to my son’s (Continue Reading)
Evidence for why you shouldn’t ridicule non-standard English
12/16/2014 Pat Barrett Add CommentSo important for our teachers to understand, but it’s buried on p. 29 of McWhorter’s The Missing Spanish Creoles: “In Creolophone communities, authors such as (Continue Reading)
American exceptionalism…. except for you
12/13/2014 Pat Barrett Add Comment“Teaching was a brave choice for Forten and other young black women and men. Before the Civil War, antitax southern state legislatures actively resisted the (Continue Reading)
How We Deal With Racism
07/15/2014 Pat Barrett Add CommentSome years ago, I was invited to a TGIF with an administrator, and three other teachers, two of them women. They had a couple of (Continue Reading)
(No Title)
07/01/2014 Pat Barrett Add CommentPicture a 30 something teacher, his school years behind him, confidently assessing his students. He has Black students and finds himself wondering why they frequently (Continue Reading)
How linguists challenge the racists
06/07/2014 Pat Barrett Add CommentHow can linguistics help us understand the education process better? In the early 70s, William Labov tore down the edifice of cultural deprivation as an (Continue Reading)
Ethnic slurs and sexual harassment
12/25/2009 Pat Barrett Add CommentOn flteach there was a thread on discussing race and ethnicity in the classroom. It was started by a teacher who was concerned that a (Continue Reading)
Reaching Af-Am students through understanding their culture
02/08/2009 Pat Barrett Add CommentI thought a while about writing this but I hope that by being so personal, I can get a discussion going among us about how (Continue Reading)