Writers whose works I love: Neal Stephenson, Thomas Pynchon, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Herman Melville, Ishmael Reed, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Feodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and James Joyce.
Email at PeterRobJon at gmail
Twitter: BrevetCaptain
I love this!!!
FOUR MORE YEARS!!
FOUR MORE YEARS!!
FOUR MORE YEARS!!
“Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid. We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money. States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets. And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down. Recently, I spoke with a group of college presidents who’ve done just that. Some schools re-design courses to help students finish more quickly. Some use better technology. The point is, it’s possible. So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.
Higher education can’t be a luxury – it’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.” - President Obama
I fully agree with this with one caveat: we also need more strictly technological/vocational high schools and post-secondary schools.
If one wants to be a carpenter, plumber, electrician, HVAC technician, an engineer, actuarial/accountant, and one hates the idea of going to a liberal arts college for four years, there’s no need to be there. I have had many, many students flounder in an English course above composition because they simply hate being there—yes, I teach critical thinking skills in such a class, but it’s not like learning to design and fit door jambs or run wastewater lines, or re-wire an existing house couldn’t also teach critical thinking and problem solving skills.
I don’t want to make college an elitist enclave again—that was bad—but there are so many people for whom going to college is simply not what they want or need to do for four years. For others going to Michigan or Duke or UCLA or Holy Cross (Crusaders Rule! NO ONE DENIES THIS!) or where ever for four years (or more!) is a dream come true.
(Source: pantslessprogressive)
Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. — Stephen King, “Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption”
I’m grading and tumbling and blackboarding, as per usual on Tuesdays, but this day, Election Day, is moving me close to tears. I am full of hope.
I find the notion that a people as weird, diverse, angry, resilient, smart, stupid, tuned in, tuned out, and all the rest can decide for ourselves who will represent us for the next four, or two, or six or whatever the years might be for county coroner (we vote for that here in Jawja), extremely moving. It’s such a new idea in human history. And one full of hope.
My brevet captain came to America in 1860, and here I am, 152 years later, waiting for the California polls to close tonight so that the networks can (hopefully) call this election for our President, and he will get another four years to do great things in our names. Hope and Change y’all, are real.
I truly believe that he can become one of the greatest Presidents in our history. Our FDR. Our Eisenhower. Our Lincoln.
I’m pretty close to tears, y’all. But the champagne is on ice.
I hope.
