Yeah—was one of the weirdest revelations when I moved from NYC publishing world (books!!!) to NYC schools. Similar in some ways to the fact that 25-ish% of NYC’s schools have newspapers.
Oh yeah no, many such tanks
Sometimes don’t feel especially confident that the progressive think tank alternatives have much faith in what public school kids are capable of doing
@mattbarnum.bsky.social maybe of interest—given your reporting on nyc/failures of dems to figure this school thing out!
Fair
People who think learning algebra and reading a novel are basically the same run our schools
The “learning goals are dumb” thing is a cliche at this point but it’s true—people who think every 45m needs to produce evidence of some new skill or practice, regardless of discipline, inevitably trivialize learning
Often it will—not enough kids frantically busy doing some skill thing
That’s the thing! One of the things teachers worry about is letting kids do the sorts of things that make book units possible, like reading silently during class, or “popcorn reading”—will that mean a bad admin evaluation?
I want to shake people and be like, teachers WANT to assign whole books. you don't need to make it a legislative mandate! just give us appropriate autonomy and an incentive/evaluation structure which won't punish use of complex, long readings and full works - most teachers will jump in w both feet.
Thank you! Will never look at Howl the same. And I love the reframing of Cold War discourses—clearly relevant in several ways now.
Think one of the things I take from people who almost get it is that you really can’t get it unless you’re in the classroom every day, seeing what happens/wondering what could and should
THE FORCE OF LAW
This is basically my daily experience
Loved your essay—will definitely share it with my students.
Highly readable review of what promises to be one of the most "urgent" books of the year.
the cover of Banning Books in America
“Cohen describes books as ‘the oldest and best place where opinions and impressions and whole worlds are captured and recorded.’ He’s right.”
John Downes-Angus on “Banning Books in America.” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banning-books-america-samuel-cohen-censorship-libraries-education/
Lots more in this book that I could write about—writing about an edited volume turns out to be kind of hard—but this is the angle that resonated with me.
Thanks also to @annieabrams.bsky.social and @edrabinski.bsky.social for sharing your stories. Proud to call myself a fellow NYC educator alongside you both.
Thanks to @sayanniething.bsky.social for helping me find the verbs in my sentences and clarifying my argument!
Wrote about @samcohen.bsky.social’s book banning volume for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. The volume invites us to consider why books matter—and it shows the many ways they’re under attack, even here in progressive NYC.
lareviewofbooks.org/article/bann...
Best NYC book people maybe don’t think of first when you ask best NYC book?
Oh cool. I saw it in a store and figured it was just a publisher who’d bought rights to things I already read—this sounds a lot more fun.
I assumed it was just the famous essay! So this is something new?
One fun thing about books is that some of them are in fact very good
“Must be important for some reason, and power is something I care about, so it must have something to do with power”
“For cultural literacy” seems like an argument people make when they have heard that books are good but are not themselves particularly interested in reading them, so need to explain their importance some other way
Like I’m in a book club with a couple friends who are priests, reading De Trinitae. What annoys me about these guys is that they have zero respect for the traditions they weaponize for explicitly political reasons.
Right, and like everyone else attracted to the apparent sophistication of postliberal identity politics, that “self” is just a bundle of resentment, anger, and confusion
Right this guy is not John Henry Newman. Has never read Ignatius. Actually think Catholics should be much more concerned than they are
