Literary reading, standardized tests

Clair Needell Hollander, New York City teacher, on literary reading and standardized tests:

We cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that purposely ignore their hearts. By doing so, we are withholding from our neediest students any reason to read at all. We are teaching them that words do not dazzle but confound. We may succeed in raising test scores by relying on these methods, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

Teach the Books, Touch the Heart (New York Times)

The new Blogger interface, unliked

If you (too) use Blogger and have misgivings about the new interface, here’s a good place to voice them, a “problem rollup” post at Google Groups: I do not like the new Blogger interface because.

My main complaints: the text-box for composing and editing is much too large, and the new interface remains broken on the iPad. For Google to switch users to the new interface before getting the iPad problem worked out would be unconscionable. But it looks as though we’re headed toward unconscionable.

[Is Google’s non-reponse to the iPad problem related to Apple–Google hostilities? I wonder.]

“Pineapples don’t have sleeves”

A Daniel Pinkwater story, adapted for a standardized test, is in the news.

[I discovered Pinkwater’s books in adulthood. My favorites: Aunt Lulu and Young Adult Novel.]

Mitt/Mark and the big trees

[Mark Trail, April 21, 2012.]

Too weird. Today’s Mark Trail sheds new light on what Mitt/Mark may have meant when he averred that the trees in Michigan are “the right height.” The right height for what, Governor Trail? What are you and they hiding?

Related posts
Mitt/Mark Romney/Trail
Mitt/Mark Romney/Trail, learning from experience

[Yes, Mitt Romney and Mark Trail are the same (two-dimensional) person. “Tom” would appear to be Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, who endorsed Romney earlier this week.]

Music Man Murray

Streaming at NPR: Music Man Murray, a 2011 film by Richard Parks. Murray is eighty-eight-year-old Murray Gershenz, seeking a buyer for the contents of his Los Angeles record store. With music by Van Dyke Parks.

[It’s Record Store Day.]

Should I check e-mail?

A flow chart by Wendy McNaughton (via Coudal).

“It isn’t creative at all!”

Elizabeth Bishop, from a letter to anthologist John Frederick Nims, written on the last day of her life, October 6, 1979:

You can see what a nasty teacher I must be — but I do think students get lazier and lazier & expect to have everything done for them. (I suggested buying a small paper-back and almost the whole class whines “Where can I find it?”) My best example of this sort of thing is what one rather bright Harvard honors student told me. She told her room-mate or a friend — who had obviously taken my verse-writing course — that she was doing her paper with me and the friend said “Oh don’t work with her! It’s awful! She wants you to look words up in the dictionary! It isn’t creative at all!” In other words, it is better not to know what you’re writing or reading.

From Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters, ed. Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz (New York: Library of America, 2008).

Related posts
Elizabeth Bishop at Vassar
Lines from Elizabeth Bishop

Move that prepositional phrase

From the Huffington Post:

See also: Godwin’s law.

[Thanks, Elaine.]

Mitt/Mark Romney/Trail, learning from experience

[Mark Trail, April 19, 2012.]

Mitt/Mark Romney/Trail is learning from experience. On his way to pick up Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, Mitt/Mark travels with his dog inside his vehicle, at least while being photographed, or drawn.

[Yes, one-percenter Mitt Romney and ninety-nine-percenter Mark Trail are the same person. There are no classes in America. No seat belts either.]

Dick Clark (1929–2012)

[“TV deejay Dick Clark, standing in the middle of his teenage fans who are swirling around him on the studio dance floor during rock ’n’ roll number on his weekly show American Bandstand.” Photograph by Paul Schutzer. Philadelphia, December 12, 1958. From the Life Photo Archive.]