Well, I've managed to once again not write here for long enough that I feel a bit guilty about it. Job well done Greg...
For the last month and a half I have been positively swamped by my courses and am finally enjoying some time to breath upon their completion. It was great to get a chance to spend five weeks meeting my colleagues, discussing, studying and debating concepts of education, and building the first tools for use in classrooms come this fall. Still, I'm happy it is vacation time.
I am actually currently in Chicago with my wife visiting my old stomping grounds, friends, and even playing tourist in the city for a while. It is wonderful to get back here and see so many friendly faces, not to mention all of the excellent food and fun. Had lunch at Lou Malnati's yesterday, and I'm still experiencing that warm, happy, full feeling that only the best Chicago deep dish can provide. Good times.
Perhaps the best part of all this free time, though, is the opportunity to read for my own pleasure. Most recently I read David Egger's Zeitoun and am now making my way through David McCullough's extraordinary biography, John Adams. For those of you who have not read either book, I strongly recommend them both. Although they are both non-fiction, they are both written with a strong narrative voice and are eminently readable. Just yesterday I was struck by a common thread in the two books. Zeitoun follows the story of a Muslim American family in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. It is a phenomenal depiction of the possibilities inherent in America and the problems that arise in a crisis for which nobody has prepared. Sadly, one of the main themes of the book is the overlap between America's post-9/11 institutionalized racial paranoia and the FEMA-organized response to maintaining law and order in the flooded city.
As a counterpoint to this story of panic and unchecked law "enforcement" I was struck by a quotation from John Adams during his famous defense of the British soldiers who had fired upon the crowd in Boston in the incident immortalized as the Boston Massacre. Adams posited that, "it's of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished." This statement rang true to me on every level and raises so many questions that I was immediately swept into a revery of how I could teach from it.
Of course, as I've alluded, my immediate tie was to the panic response in New Orleans that led to so many wrongful arrests. But to draw out the string farther, Adams' quote can be seen as an argument against shadowy military tribunals in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the reactionary policies in the Patriot Act and the historical Alien and Sedition Acts, and even debates over such topics as civil rights and the death penalty. What a wonderful debate could be had over whether the prime goal of the judicial system is to punish the potentially guilty or protect the potentially innocent! What lessons could be learned by considering the same question in the light of the court of public opinion, especially the junk media.
As is often the case when reading the writings of America's Founding Fathers, I am inspired by this one line, this one thought. I hope that I can hold onto it and challenge my classes to consider its implications through history and their own lives.
For the last month and a half I have been positively swamped by my courses and am finally enjoying some time to breath upon their completion. It was great to get a chance to spend five weeks meeting my colleagues, discussing, studying and debating concepts of education, and building the first tools for use in classrooms come this fall. Still, I'm happy it is vacation time.
I am actually currently in Chicago with my wife visiting my old stomping grounds, friends, and even playing tourist in the city for a while. It is wonderful to get back here and see so many friendly faces, not to mention all of the excellent food and fun. Had lunch at Lou Malnati's yesterday, and I'm still experiencing that warm, happy, full feeling that only the best Chicago deep dish can provide. Good times.
Perhaps the best part of all this free time, though, is the opportunity to read for my own pleasure. Most recently I read David Egger's Zeitoun and am now making my way through David McCullough's extraordinary biography, John Adams. For those of you who have not read either book, I strongly recommend them both. Although they are both non-fiction, they are both written with a strong narrative voice and are eminently readable. Just yesterday I was struck by a common thread in the two books. Zeitoun follows the story of a Muslim American family in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. It is a phenomenal depiction of the possibilities inherent in America and the problems that arise in a crisis for which nobody has prepared. Sadly, one of the main themes of the book is the overlap between America's post-9/11 institutionalized racial paranoia and the FEMA-organized response to maintaining law and order in the flooded city.
As a counterpoint to this story of panic and unchecked law "enforcement" I was struck by a quotation from John Adams during his famous defense of the British soldiers who had fired upon the crowd in Boston in the incident immortalized as the Boston Massacre. Adams posited that, "it's of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished." This statement rang true to me on every level and raises so many questions that I was immediately swept into a revery of how I could teach from it.
Of course, as I've alluded, my immediate tie was to the panic response in New Orleans that led to so many wrongful arrests. But to draw out the string farther, Adams' quote can be seen as an argument against shadowy military tribunals in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the reactionary policies in the Patriot Act and the historical Alien and Sedition Acts, and even debates over such topics as civil rights and the death penalty. What a wonderful debate could be had over whether the prime goal of the judicial system is to punish the potentially guilty or protect the potentially innocent! What lessons could be learned by considering the same question in the light of the court of public opinion, especially the junk media.
As is often the case when reading the writings of America's Founding Fathers, I am inspired by this one line, this one thought. I hope that I can hold onto it and challenge my classes to consider its implications through history and their own lives.
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