Pat’s Polemics

On-going brilliance

Search

Lazy

  11/14/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A student is lazy. A class is lazy. A whole school is lazy. A whole generation is lazy. Teachers are lazy. What lies behind this (Continue Reading)

Old Teaching Notes
If you’d like an e-mail notice of each new post, subscribe here:
Loading

Recent Posts

  • Health stats and questions
  • Goofy professors and racist teachers do not a school make
  • What’s with this Asians are superior to Whites stuff?
  • The Price of War
  • Unlikely Heroes for a life-long liberal Democrat (think FDR)

Recent Comments

  • Pat Barrett on What doesn’t matter in the U.S.
  • 伟思礼 on What doesn’t matter in the U.S.
  • Pat Barrett on What bugs you most about MAGA people?
  • 伟思礼 on When is it an attack and when is it evidence?
  • 伟思礼 on What bugs you most about MAGA people?

Categories

Archives

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

At what point can we file a complaint?

  11/12/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Accidentlally, believe me, very accidentally, I hit upon a TV talk show called The View. A person named Laura Inghram was speaking. My wife says (Continue Reading)

Politics

Thanksgiving rears its ugly head

  11/11/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Bunny’s post hit a nerve. She says exactly what I’ve said in the teeth of massive denial on the part of some List members: kids (Continue Reading)

Culture

Pat’s Worldview – what it is – Part II

  11/08/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Now that I’ve given a bit of a biographical background so you know “where I’m coming from” (a phrase unknown to me growing up), I (Continue Reading)

View from under the Bus

Pat Barrett’s Worldview

  11/03/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently, several events impinged on my dulling consciousness that jarred me into thought. A panel discussion on Book TV on the closing of the American (Continue Reading)

View from under the Bus

An English verb in paradigm form

  10/29/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Let’s see what an English verb does. For all the grammar most fl teachers like to teach, I see evidence that they often don’t have (Continue Reading)

Uncategorized

How I learn from paradigms

  10/28/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

“Paradigms” is used here to refer to the way a language is analyzed in terms of its structures rather than its usages. So, for example, (Continue Reading)

Old Teaching Notes

Where we go wrong in these posts

  10/26/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here is a statement made by a poster: “It seems terribly elitist to require students to use grammar unique to one country above the grammar (Continue Reading)

Uncategorized

Reducing Effects of Big Classes II

  10/22/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

So now we go to the external forces that can hurt kids and teachers when classes are big: colleagues, supervisors, parents, and one’s own self-doubts. (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Reply to Reducing Effects of Big Classes?

  10/22/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I’ve thought and thought about this. The first image that comes to mind is of my old principal. Why was that? I realize that my (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Stay safe – don’t talk about sex

  10/22/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A poster wrote, concerning the Sarkozy divorce: “I wanted to check out the latest on the Sarkozy divorce and was surprised that my google query (Continue Reading)

Culture

All we want is peace, you jerks

  10/22/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I love this “reply” to the Turks by the Iraqi president, Talabani, who just happens to be a Kurd. “We are looking for peace, not (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

The devil’s loose again…

  10/20/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Dear old Watson…. no, not that Watson, the Nobel laureate Watson who has no standing in the sciences relating to intelligence, IQ, and “race”, …. (Continue Reading)

Uncategorized

Frank Smith (re hats)

  10/20/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A current thread on a listserv has to do with the behavior of students and how classroom rules can affect that behavior and give something (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

where’s the positive?

  10/17/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Rather than list all the irritating things kids do, how about a discussion of what is going on with kids and which kids? All of (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

another post that mirrors Frank Smith

  10/17/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here’s a post to a language teacher Listserv: “I’ve heard guácala used a lot by our Mexican teenage relatives who come to spend a year (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

The issue, my children, is control

  10/15/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently I read a post about tprs where the teacher said he didn’t like the lack of control over what the students were learning using (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Can complexity be reduced?

  10/13/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Anyone who looks at a REAL grammar of a language knows the complexity we language teachers deal with. A recent comprehensive grammar of English has (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Where it all starts

  10/12/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

“OMG, they’re coming for us!” The upsurge in discussions of school violence stemming from two incidents in two days reveals the lack of knowledge that (Continue Reading)

Culture

The difficulties of cultural stereotypes

  10/11/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Wes gave flteach members a website to go to on Amazon. The book is about how to advertise in various cultures based on the author’s (Continue Reading)

Culture

Iraqi women need training

  10/10/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The lovely news from Iraq, always a joy to read esp after the administration cleans it all up for us, includes the story of two (Continue Reading)

Politics

Back to basics

  10/09/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently a large response was garnered when I offered a list of Latin words with their Romance reflexes. I got balled up in trying to (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Do flashcards work? If yes, why, if no, why not?

  10/08/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here is a post from an extremely astute language teacher: I’ve been pondering something. Why is it that we think flash cards are a good (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes
  • Previous
  • 1
  • …
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • …
  • 102
  • Next
Theme By: Benajmin Lu
Powered By: WordPress