Category Archives: Education

Tompkins on Teaching

Posted on August 3, 2006 by Michael

I just read Tompkins’s essay “Pedagogy of the Distressed,” which, as I read, I realized I have seen quoted and heard teachers cite quite a few times. Tompkins notes that we don’t enact what we preach (106), that really, instead … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, English 588 Lit and Pedagogy (Summer 2006), Teaching Composition | 2 Comments

I like good questions

Posted on July 20, 2006 by Michael

I am a fan of good questions (of course!). I just picked up Gerald Graff’s Clueless in Academe, and right away, some good questions: …schooling takes students who are perfectly street-smart and exposes them to the life of the mind … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Teaching Composition | 1 Comment

who teaches?

Posted on July 15, 2006 by Michael

When I was student teaching, my cooperating teach gave me a book, The Courage to Teach, by Palker J. Palmer. She inscribed, beautifully: Mike- This is a book that always reminds me of what is important in this job. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Teaching Composition, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Passages from Althusser

Posted on July 12, 2006 by Michael

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 1971. 127-186. What do children learn at school? What do children learn at school? They … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Marxism | 1 Comment

Keeping Young Persons in Line

Posted on June 25, 2006 by Michael

This way of keeping young persons in line, of making sure they do not speak in their own voices of anything that counts for them, goes back to Roman times when schoolboys declaimed on proper topics in weekly themes. It … Continue reading →

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