• Is global warming a hoax and why should we care?

    Air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths each year thanks to billionaire oligarchs like the Koch brothers and their ignorant and foolish supporters.

  • What can the United States learn to improve public education and reduce poverty from two Fs

    Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: The two Fs I’m talking about are Finland and France. In another forum, this comment was made about Finland’s public schools: “Comparisons with Finland are foolish – virtually no childhood poverty, income equality instead of inequality and few immigrants … and high suicide rates.” Here’s my revised reply: What you say…

  • Reviewing The Teacher Wars, a History of America’s Most Embattled Profession

    Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: Reading Dana Goldstein’s book was a journey of discovery that I wished I’d taken in 1975, before I ended up teaching for thirty years in the embattled and often abused public schools. About the time I reached page 100, I e-mailed an old friend and told him that if I’d read…

  • This is my PURGE post, and it isn’t a movie review

    Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: Sunday, I walked downtown to see The Purge: Anarchy, and while watching the film and walking home afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about the unnamed New Founding Fathers mentioned at the beginning of the film—who were in their ninth year as the leaders of the United States. In case you forgot…

  • A Writer’s Cave—Here’s mine

    Did you notice the wood carving of a fighting scene from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms?

  • How Blogging helped me find Readers and sell Books

    The idea behind all of this free stuff that I write is to attract readers who might decide to buy and read one or more of my books, and I enjoy doing it.

  • John Ogozolak’s Choice: Clean a Septic Tank or Grade a Test?

    Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: John Ogozokak, a high school teacher in upstate New York, ponders here which is the more meaningful task: to clean a septic tank or to grade a standardized test: About a half dozen years ago the septic tank lurking beside our old farmhouse went kerflooey. I dug out the top of the rusty thing…

  • Is there a Silent Majority in the United States and, if so, do they have a seat at the table of power?

    The silent majority of regular voters in the United States are highly educated and like to read

  • Linda Darling-Hammond: How to Close the Achievement Gap

    Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University offers common-sense ideas about closing the achievement gap. She says that testing is less important than teaching. No surprise there. She reviews an OECD study about teachers. What it shows is that teachers in the U.S. work longer hours under more difficult conditions than teachers in many other nations.…

  • The Obvious Threat of Public Education to the One Percent

    Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: In a recent online discussion, it was argued by one voice that the public schools have failed, because they don’t teach independent thinking. However, I disagreed. Evidence that the public schools work well—just not the way the one percent wants—comes from several surveys where the opinions of the top one percent…