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    “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

    —Howard Zinn
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    Teaching to the Template

    Saturday, September 5th, 2009

    In my early childhood, I was under the impression that “people are people.” I assumed one template for everyone, thinking that some individuals merely tried harder than others. (That made bullies, in particular, difficult to understand.) //

    Why We Pick on the Weak

    Saturday, September 5th, 2009

    Bullying is a fairly common topic in education nowadays. Frightened by the events at Columbine and such, many schools have set a zero-tolerance policy. The US Department of Health and Human Services has a Web site devoted to prevention of bullying. Experts from law enforcement and social work offer advice on how to deal with [...]

    Plagiarism, Copyright, and the Information Age

    Saturday, September 5th, 2009

    Recently I met a young man who worked his way through college by cranking out research papers for an online term-paper store. The company sells “model” research papers, many made to order, so my young acquaintance might find himself writing about quantum mechanics one week and Stalin’s concentration camps the next. The job gave him [...]

    Equal Is as Equal Does

    Saturday, September 5th, 2009

    Back in the early nineties, I taught English 101 for college freshmen for a couple of years. Besides covering the basics of composition and introducing students to the university library, English 101 was also supposed to present certain common topics of “scholarly discourse”—including gender issues and racial equality. //

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