virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com
The Virtual Growlery: The Assessment Craze
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-assessment-craze.html
Wednesday, February 5, 2014. The next step in this utilitarian, quality-control notion of education, of course, was to make sure that these "outcomes," elaborately measured and assessed, were used to reform - or more precisely, to penalize. Could hardly have been more pleased. The word "education" comes from the Latin ex-ducere,. 8220;to lead forth" and shares a root with “Duke.” But it can also mean “to draw forth,” and shares this sense with ductile. There has been, I will admit, an attempt to take cog...
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The Virtual Growlery: June 2013
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013. HG Wells, Television, and "Things to Come". I'm an enormous fan of the folks at the Criterion Collection. And keenly awaited their restored DVD of HG Wells and Alexander Korda's 1936 film Things to Come. And the disc did not disappoint; the restoration is brilliant, and the bonus features and commentaries are all illuminating as always. But they did miss one point, and I think it's a point worth making: Wells included television. Backlit an identically-proportioned disc with a sma...
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The Virtual Growlery: December 2014
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html
Wednesday, December 3, 2014. New Ideas about Policing - from 1829. The force behind this force was British PM Sir Robert Peel, whose name gave us two popular early nicknames for officers of the police he established ("Bobbies" and "Peelers"). In 1829, in the Police Act. He set forth a clear set of guidelines for these officers, which became known as Peel's Principles. Peel realized that, absent the public's trust and co-operation, the very idea of a police force was doomed to failure. The police are the ...
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The Virtual Growlery: August 2013
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html
Thursday, August 1, 2013. Literature is bad for you. With attacks on the humanities - and on my field of English in particular - coming from every direction, I feel that it's time to consider some new and perhaps radical strategies to promote the reading of literature in these attention-span dwindling days. What was the last straw? Was it when a student in one of my classes condemned Edgar Allan Poe's "A Descent into the Maelstrom" as "too detailed"? Asked whether its author was mentally ill? I think wit...
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The Virtual Growlery: July 2015
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html
Tuesday, July 7, 2015. West Germany signs up for its 50% debt reduction in 1953. What, exactly, is debt? The question takes on new urgency as, yet again, the economic wise men of the European Union declare that Greece must submit to their terms - for, after all, is there not a great debt at stake? Not to address it in the EU's terms, clearly, would be irresponsible and disastrous - and so, their ministers speak to Greece - the cradle of the civilization they claim to represent - as one would to a child.
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The Virtual Growlery: March 2013
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Friday, March 8, 2013. But as critics have lined up to disparage this latest effort, they've been painting with a rather broad brush - and in some cases, a roller - as with Chris Heller's piece in today's Atlantic, where he laments the " Sad, Century-Long History of Terrible 'Wizard of Oz' Movies. And, though there there sure have been a few stinkers along the way, as well as versions that I simply personally can't for some reason, stand watching ( The Wiz. The 1939 film, for all its wonders, was not an ...
virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com
The Virtual Growlery: January 2015
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html
Friday, January 30, 2015. There are still places on this earth where people do burst into song. 8221; And someone did. But here, in Ireland, it's understood that people do. Growing up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, I was subjected to my parents’ deep and inexhaustible love of musicals. Living far from New York, we never actually went to one, but they blared forth from the stereo all the same. “My Fair Lady” – “Oklahoma! I didn’t hear no singin’! Did you, pal? Loss – for the voice these actors s...
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The Virtual Growlery: I'm J.K. Rowling ... and so's my wife!
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2013/09/im-jk-rowling-and-sos-my-wife.html
Tuesday, September 24, 2013. I'm JK. Rowling . and so's my wife! It's an infamous scene. In Monty Python's Life of Brian. And a sly parody of Kubrick's Spartacus. A centurion arrives at the place of crucifixion with orders to release "Brian" - but he he has just one a problem, which one of these poor sods hanging from crosses is Brian? He takes the practical route: "Where's Brian of Nazareth? He calls out, "I have an order for his release! And then, one by one, everyone (except of course the real. And I'...
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The Virtual Growlery: Dissolution
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2014/02/dissolution.html
Wednesday, March 25, 2015. But in the midst of this neo-utilitarian fervor, something has been forgotten. As Mark Thomason wrote in a comment on a recent New York Times. I send my kids to college as a growth experience. It changes them, in good ways. I hope they do well financially, but I am not sending them to a trade school, I'm sending them to complete their education and complete growing up. It did me a lot of good, and it is doing them a lot of good. Seized their buildings and properties, and sent t...
virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com
The Virtual Growlery: March 2015
http://virtualgrowlery.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html
Wednesday, March 25, 2015. But in the midst of this neo-utilitarian fervor, something has been forgotten. As Mark Thomason wrote in a comment on a recent New York Times. I send my kids to college as a growth experience. It changes them, in good ways. I hope they do well financially, but I am not sending them to a trade school, I'm sending them to complete their education and complete growing up. It did me a lot of good, and it is doing them a lot of good. Seized their buildings and properties, and sent t...
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