After about four decades of hearing people declare diversity to be our greatest strength, I have to ask how that works out. What are the (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Thought Experiment
12/27/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAfter four centuries, most Americans can identify a piece of music as African-American. Not necessarily performed by African-Americans but in the African-American tradition. Why is (Continue Reading)
The Trumper in 1950s America
12/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis is the day after Christmas (went well incl. one grandson on leave from USMC with boot camp behind him) and it has been a (Continue Reading)
How Mass Media Affects Mass Man
12/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis from Meacham’s Soul of America quoting Richard Hofstadter: “…. growth of the mass media of communication and their use in politics have brought politics (Continue Reading)
Question for linguists
12/20/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just read in Medieval and Modern Greek by Robert Browning that Medieval Greek, while borrowing lots of words from Romance languages, could not borrow (Continue Reading)
What do you want to be when you grow up……?
12/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentFirst of all, that assumes you want to grow up.But when I was a kid the teacher went around asking the kids what they wanted (Continue Reading)
Post-76 year old update
12/09/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentWell over five years ago I read an article in, I believe, the NYT magazine that stated emphatically that after 76 a person’s body mass (Continue Reading)
Listen To Donny Deutsch!
12/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOn Morning Joe on Dec. 7, 2020, Donny Deutsch made an extremely clear statement. Joe passed over it because I believe he still has trouble (Continue Reading)
Let Me Tell You How Brilliant Isabel Wilkerson Is…..
12/07/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor years I have been bugged by the way people cast blame for a systemic problem on one individualized person or institution. On the listservs, (Continue Reading)
More evidence of the efficacy of repetition in input
12/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAn article on child acquisition of the ergative forms in Basque finds that Basque children receiving bilingual input, i.e. two different languages being used in (Continue Reading)
Symbols are important
12/02/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOur language sometimes scrunches word meaning down into what is commonly heard. Symbolism is one of those words, as in “It’s only symbolic.” That takes (Continue Reading)
Mistakes in teaching French
12/02/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI noted in Lesson #51 I wrote il n’a pas des amies when it should be d’amies. I am pretty sure I did not realize (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s lesson #1 June 25, 2018
11/29/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI am writing this up 8 months after the event and will reference subsequent developments. We went over the principles, incl. signs, comprehension checks via (Continue Reading)
oases of reinstatement but our long
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsHonor was lacking. Biden will tsk tsk us for saying a lack of honor was the principle in the Trump administration and in the Trump (Continue Reading)
As the dust settles……..
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsAs Trump gives up his law suits to overturn the election results, it remains to be seen what he will do next. Some say he (Continue Reading)
Buried culture
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsWhen I attended a human relations camp (Anytown) in the 70s as an advisor, I found that “culture night” consisted of sorting the various ethnic (Continue Reading)
Where are the Mozarts?
11/21/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentLooking at the history of Western music, certain individuals stand out as musical geniuses: Mozart, Bach. We recognize this phenomenon and marvel at it. These (Continue Reading)
FDR finesses Pearl Harbor a la Trump
11/21/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe are often reminded that the Corona Virus is an assault on America, every bit as serious as 9/11. The death rate is climbing to (Continue Reading)
Signs of acquisition
11/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentTracking one student has its advantages. When you are working with a group of students, it’s hard to notice what each one is acquiring. My (Continue Reading)
Fossilization as supreme
11/17/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentIn FL teaching theory, fossilization became a major issue. The theory went that incorrect forms, once learned, could not be unlearned. That appears to foreshadow (Continue Reading)
How Grammar Instruction Works
11/14/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently I’ve seen some posts on teaching the subjunctive. Most often the requests are for fun ways. That made be wonder what role fun plays (Continue Reading)
Slicing carefullly what commentators say
11/13/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentA while back, around 2018, I took Tucker Carlson to task (I hear he was devastated on reading my blog) for saying that demographic change (Continue Reading)
Recent highlights
11/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentPulling books off the shelf at random, the Reading Ladder offers some highlights of why these books are in the ladder. Starting with the most (Continue Reading)