If you look through my categories or just search ‘reading’ you’ll find a lot of passionate entries on the topic. But I’ve neglected that for (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
First Year Mental Health
08/15/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAn article on Florida’s new requirement for five hours of mental health education a year in high school sounds like a step forward, but the (Continue Reading)
Testing – what is it good for?
01/16/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen I tested over a story I would make fresh copies for the test b/c students often wrote the English above the FL words. Besides (Continue Reading)
When parents act
10/21/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy son told me about five parents wrote letters to the school telling them of my son’s influence on their children….. all very positive. Now (Continue Reading)
The shelves are full but the minds aren’t
08/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMany years ago I presented at ACTFL and called it 30 Years of Black Culture in the Classroom. My main point was that the information (Continue Reading)
Personal verification of effects of poor teaching of history
07/28/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen sites the U.S. invasion of Bolshevik Russian 1919-20 and how history textbooks do not mention it. Such omissions (Continue Reading)
Who learns what how?
04/15/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’ve written about my wife’s cousin’s experiences learning Italian and Japanese. Tonight he revealed that in English he never could comprehend what he reads. He (Continue Reading)
Response to a teacher re race
01/19/2018 Pat Barrett 1 CommentAs quick as I can be 🙂 I am assuming you have students of various ethnicities in your classes. Much of what I write here (Continue Reading)
The concrete stays hard around our wings
05/29/2017 Pat Barrett Add Comment“True–because university fl teaching has been so slow to change, because even methods courses are often not up to date; because textbooks and the way (Continue Reading)
Professional courtesy
05/27/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen I entered teaching, I found quickly and sometimes to my chagrin that teachers have a certain profile, part of which is what might be (Continue Reading)
Notebooks for class
04/22/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentI bring up notebooks in responding to this query only in connection with grading, a recent topic on moretprs. I forgot to mention notebooks as (Continue Reading)
Fascism for real
01/31/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe value of education? The emphasis on a college education diminished the role of vocational training in the U.S. From what I can see, only (Continue Reading)
How to write – Eastern style
12/21/2016 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsFar from being a scold regarding features of grammar, spelling, and word choice, I welcome innovation in rhetoric and style. More and more, though, I (Continue Reading)
Whence and whither technology? Why?
10/12/2016 Pat Barrett Add Commentfrom the Diane Ravitch blog: That is, all too often technology is no panacea to improving learning and often undermines funding that might have gone (Continue Reading)
Counting electric sheep
09/10/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Susan Pinker’s summary of the research on electronic devices in the classroom as aids to learning, my little heart leapt: let’s quote from p. (Continue Reading)
Teachers walking out on contracts
08/18/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’m curious. How many of you have seen a teacher walk off the job, not return. In my 26 years of teaching, I saw it (Continue Reading)
Mirror neurons in the classroom
08/05/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentFrom The Village Effect by Susan Pinker, p. 77: “It was not so much the actors’ gestures that elicited a response, Iacoboni suggests, but the (Continue Reading)
Technology and teaching
07/29/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentFrom the Diane Ravitch blog: William Doyle describes an emerging international consensus about the appropriate and limited use of technology in the classroom. Doyle starts (Continue Reading)
Response to “libraries”
06/27/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentTo support the use of non-electronic media, II would note that more and more research is catching up to the wildfire-like spread of electronic communication, (Continue Reading)
A blog entry from the Diane Ravitch blog
02/23/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentChris Tienkin, a professor at Seton Hall University, analyzed the data from the PISA international tests and concludes that they say more about American society (Continue Reading)
Origins of standard language
10/08/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentFrancis Fukuyama in Political Order and Political Decay pp. 187-88 is attributing the change in society from ascribed status in part to the printing press (Continue Reading)
Really pithy
09/14/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis fits in with my plan to put items like this in my “Quotes and Anecdotes” category on my blog. Pithy, I say, pithy. Laurie (Continue Reading)
fortochka
09/11/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentSarah Palin used a Russian word in her speech at the anti-Iran deal rally, fortochka. I forget the equivalent she gave it, something like escape (Continue Reading)