Blogroll

Birthday to me

We have a video of my oldest daughter’s birthday 20+ years ago where my middle daughter insisted on loudly performing “Happy Birthday” as simply “Birthday to you!!”. The phrase has been used in our family probably since then. Since today is “Birthday to me” and I’m 366 days (thank you Leap Year) from the big […]

Defending Socrates — or at least his method

Legal education has been under attack from inside and outside the legal profession for any number of years. But with the recent economic crunch and the lack of jobs, one of the targets is the Socratic method. One of the more recent attacks came in a blog post at the Chronicle of Higher Education, where […]

Psychotic ‘patriots’

Evidently it doesn’t take much any more to start throwing around death threats. Locally, the mischaracterization of a recent decision by the Sioux Falls School District has led to school board members receiving a variety of menacing calls and emails, some threatening death. And it’s all because of “patriotism.”

See, the School Board recently amended […]

Is there a constitutional right to literacy?

An interesting class action lawsuit was filed in Michigan this week. Essentially, it claims the approximately 1,000 students in the Highland Park School District have been denied the right to a basic and adequate education because the school system has failed to ensure that students are reading at grade level as required by state law. […]

Visiting a few longtime bookshelf denizens

In decluttering my home retreat and bookshelves a couple weekends ago, I noticed a number of books that have been with me since I was a college undergraduate some 30 years ago. Perhaps that is not uncommon and the fact several deal with history may make them more likely to be kept. Still, I couldn’t […]