I don’t enjoy flying, but I do like traveling. There is pleasure in being somewhere else, in experiencing a different city or country. All that is taken for granted in daily life cannot be taken for granted – and this is especially true when in another country, when the food, language, and culture differs in…
OK Go! Â They Might Be Giants! Â Joel Plaskett! Â Elvis Costello! Â R.E.M.! Â Stevie Wonder! Â Lots of musicians have recorded songs for children – either lyrically revised versions of one of their tunes, or entirely new ones. Â Here are 10 great ones. OK Go, “3 Primary Colors Song” “3 Primary Colors Song” is just out from OK…
Harold taks his purple crayon to the walls of the Ben Franklin School, on Flax Hill, in Norwalk, Connecticut.  The school houses the Head Start program.  I’m told that the mural was painted by employees of Pepperidge Farm. The photos are all courtesy of Jackie Curtis, a friend of Ruth and Dave – a.k.a. Ruth Krauss…
I’m doing it again – teaching an entire course devoted to Dr. Seuss (the link in this sentence takes you to the current draft of the syllabus). Â Art! Â Politics! Â Verse! Â Nonsense! Â Activism! Â These are but some of the subjects we’ll explore in English 710: Dr. Seuss, a graduate-level course which begins on Wednesday. Aiming to…
Gene Marks’ instantly infamous “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” column (Forbes, 12 Dec. 2011) is a classic example of how privilege remains invisible to the privileged. Though he acknowledges that he is “a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background” and so “life was easier for” him, the…
Moments after I finished my the oral portion of comprehensive exams, Professor Michael Kreyling (a member of my committee) turned to me and said, “You’re going to want to relax. But you can’t.” He then listed many reasons for not relaxing: I needed to write a dissertation proposal, start working on the dissertation itself, send…
In North America, those of us who are teachers or students are thinking about school. In August and September, the summer holidays end, and a new term begins. To commemorate (or commiserate?) this season last year, I posted Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom: A Back-to-School Mix. This year, I’m posting a mix about language.  Enjoy!…
What was high school like 90 years ago? This Newtown High School Handbook provides some sense of what it was like in Newtown, Queens in 1921, when Crockett Johnson (a.k.a. David Leisk) was a student there. No yearbooks from the Newtown class of 1924 (Johnson’s graduating class) survive, but plenty of things do: The Queens Public…
A plea to end the war on education.
Last Friday, in my English 703: Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature class, the students and I spent 5 minutes talking nonsense. Â We’d been reading theories of nonsense, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books – I thought it would be both fun and educational to put those theories into practice. So, based on our readings of Tigges,…
