The Wagging Dog

In his article " Ending the Curse of Remedial Math ", David Kirp describes a CUNY program to teach low performing students the math skills they need to be eligible for course work at the associates degree level. That is, he describes a program to teach remedial math. This seems a funny way to end something. Isn't the way to end the curse of remedial math to end remedial math? Everybody agrees remedial math is a problem. Remedial courses are the great choke point in increasing college access. More students are getting in to higher ed to get the careers they need to make a decent living. These new students are, in general, people with weak K-12 achievement: Many of them are people who would not have been considered qualified for college in the past (even an AA program in community college). So to get them the degrees they need to get jobs, we first need to get them qualified to get in to the programs they need to get the degrees they need to get jobs. The way we get

Wonder Woman may be the first blockbuster movie featuring a female SUPER HERO, but The Americans tops that as the first peak-tv series to feature a female ANTI-HERO.   There have been other female superheroes, and even other female superhero movies , but the anti-hero business has been an exclusively male preserve. I haven’t seen Wonder Woman (a DC vs. Marvel thing, not a gender thing), but it seems like a fairly conventional superhero story: The good gal fights for truth and justice, etc.   The Americans goes further with a feminist remaking of a traditional genre. First, there is a gender role-reversal in the family dynamics. Elizabeth is the true believer, the patriotic soldier, and the ruthless one.   Her husband, Phillip, is the weaker link, placing family before duty. Phillip has been ready to quit the spy business since the pilot episode. It’s taken five seasons to get Elizabeth there. The series is really about her evolution. But beyond the genders of the chara

If you read my post about my mom, and I hope that you did, you know that I was also planning to write about my dad.   I kind of got side tracked by the insufferable assholes and health care. And now Donald Trump is blowing up, so it’s hard to think about much else. But, it’s important to try, just to keep one’s sanity. So I am going to do everyone a favor and write about my dad to distract us all from what passes for politics these days. One reason I wanted to write about my dad is that he was the anti-Trump. Donald Trump is a narcissistic blowhard who thinks the world owes him, and resents any difficulties that might come his way (even if those difficulties are directly his own doing). My dad was not that way. My dad was a mensch. Now there have been many wise and learned books written about menshlikeit and the definition remains somewhat elusive. One central component, though, is a feeling of grace, of being lucky. Part of being a mensch is appreciating what you have, feeling li