"One thing that the school board mentioned in their decision to dismiss Hawn was the 'inappropriate' language in your poem. What was your reaction upon hearing that? Did that strike you as being the real reason why?"

"I know it’s not the real reason why. I have their required reading list. And in the books that they are required to read, there’s sexual assault, murder, a lot of cursing. So I know that it was just a terrible excuse for their discomfort. And this is coming from somebody who was 16 years old having to, who grew up in a mostly white neighborhood, in my latter childhood, reading Mark Twain and reading the word 'n***er' over 200 times in a book. Huck Finn was bad. That’s classic literature, but the fact that I say, 'You’re not racist because you don’t use the N word, but y’all use n***as every day,' now it’s too much? Now, it’s superfluous? Fuck out of here."

From "What the Author of the Poem 'White Privilege' Thinks of a Teacher Getting Fired For Showing It to His Class/'I know that it was just a terrible excuse for their discomfort,' said Kyla Jenee Lacey." (Slate). 

Here's the video of the poem the teacher played for the students. I recommend using headphones. I think it's a sincere effort at poetic polemic, but the "n-word" is said out loud. 

 

As for the firing, I don't like seeing teachers fired, but I don't understand how a teacher could think that could be played out loud in class. 

"Nationwide, six teachers have died of Covid-19, reports Katie Shepherd in the Washington Post. 'It isn’t clear whether any of the teachers were infected at school,' she writes."

"Actually, it is clear that only one of the six had any contact with students before becoming sick. In Mississippi, Nacoma James, 42, coached football over the summer till he developed coronavirus-like symptoms and went into quarantine. It’s not known how he was infected. Some of the others had attended a teacher work day at school or visited their classroom, but none had taught students face to face...."

Writes Joanne Jacobs (on her education blog).

Here's the WaPo article: "As students return, the deaths of at least six teachers from covid-19 renew pandemic fears."

Do you think WaPo readers were deceived into thinking going back to classroom teaching is killing teachers? Well, let's just check out the highest rated comments over there. Highest rated: "Trump fans sure picked a funny time to start pretending that they think it’s super important to attend school." Third highest rated: "The blood of teachers, staff, students, parents, and relatives are on the hands of Donald Trump...."

ADDED: That "blood" commenter gets the grammar wrong: "blood... are..."

"[A]n enduring, solidly constructed bridge between the Beat generation and New Age sensibilities."

That was, the NYT would have us believe, Rod McKuen, who has died at the age of 81.

“There was a time not long ago when every enlightened suburban split-level home had its share of Rod McKuen,” The San Francisco Chronicle wrote in a 2002 profile. “His mellow poetry was on the end table (‘Listen to the Warm’), his lovestruck music and spoken-word recordings were on the hi-fi and his kindly face was on the set, on ‘The Tonight Show’ and Dinah Shore’s variety hour.”

"Listen to the Warm" came out in 1967. I don't know about every enlightened suburban split-level, but the first time I ever heard about that book — and I would have been 16 at the time — it was getting sneered at as tripe. People always mocked Rod McKuen. Where does the San Francisco Chronicle get its information about "enlightened suburban" folk? Who are they talking about?!

But that's poetry. Snobsville. Let's talk about song lyrics! Here's Billboard's article "Rod McKuen's Surprising Chart History: From Frank Sinatra to Madonna":

I'm a complete sucker for "Jean":



Roses are red!

So goodbye to Rod McKuen... Goodbye, my friend, it's hard to die/When all the birds are singing in the sky/Now that the spring is in the air/Pretty girls are everywhere...

ADDED: I'm playing that song at the last link, and Meade hears the line "[we] skinned our hearts and skinned our knees," and says: "Ooh! Skinned our hearts! That really hurts when you skin your heart. I didn't even know that hearts had skin." And that reaction kind of summarizes the problem a lot of people had with Rod McKuen, which might be paraphrased: What is this bullshit? Meade continues, taking issue with the line "Goodbye to you, my trusted friend/We've known each other since we were nine or ten" — "Such a trusted friend he can't even remember what year it was." And I say: "Give him a break, he's dying" — meaning the character in the song is dying. And now the lyricist is dead. Give him a break!

IN THE COMMENTS: Joanne Jacobs writes:

Jacques Brel wrote a sardonic song about a dying man saying farewell to his adulterous wife and her lover/his best friend. Rod McKuen kitschified that into "Seasons in the Sun."

"Seasons in the Sun" is the song discussed — without saying the title — at the end of the post — the one with the skinned hearts. I went looking for the Jacques Brel song, which is called called "Le Moribond," and I found this nice, sharp performance, complete with English subtitles:

The Harvard Law School collage assignment.

Prettier Than Napoleon went to Harvard Law School and got assigned to make "a collage, a drawing, a crayon rendition, or any form of expression that depicts the qualities of the lawyer you most want to be." She links to the collage, which is hilarious.

She's responding to this Joanne Jacobs post about collaging in a high school pre-calculus class.

What idiotically inappropriate art assignments were imposed on you when you were in school? Law school assignments most heartily welcomed!

What is the educational theory behind this (if any)? I'm guessing it's some sort of attempt to make people who don't take easily to books feel welcome. I have way too many memories of listening to teachers at my kids' schools murmuring about the wonders of "hands on" assignments and "learning by doing" and thinking they don't believe children can learn by reading. Then there's also the whole self-esteem angle, taken to the extreme of making the subject the student himself — what it means to me, how I feel about it, what my self-image is within it. I've got to admit that as a student, I thought about myself a lot. But what I mostly thought is: I'm bored and you people are stealing my precious time.

Arrrgghh! I just had a flashback to a high school art class where I was assigned to make a collage and given the subject: "society." The hell! Anyway, at least it was an art class and not history.

Things that remind me my property tax bill is arriving soon.

Joanne Jacobs notes the strange approach to spending money that prevails here in Madison, Wisconsin.