YA Fiction, Elitism and the Culture of “Should”

11 Çarşamba Haz 2014

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Count My Stars

By now I’m sure nearly everyone in the writing world has read or heard about the Slate piece on how adults should be embarrassed/ashamed to read Young Adult literature. (I’m not going to link to it, because I refuse to give them the clicks.)  I couldn’t possibly have missed it – when I checked Twitter on Thursday morning, my timeline was a seething mass of fury. And I… well, went off implies a brief explosion. This took place over the course of nearly three hours, prompting what I consider one of my top five greatest honors of my entire internet history:

Image

And, you know what? It was. When I get up a good head of steam on some righteous anger, it looks a little like this:

ImageMore often than not, I’m reduced to outraged sputtering, but every now and then I am able to find and use my words, and…

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Names of Shame. The Six Rulers with History’s Worst Epithets

11 Çarşamba Haz 2014

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The Social Historian

Image John-George I of Saxony. Mine’s a Pint.

Everyone loves a good epithet. Charles the ‘Great’, Sven ‘Forkbeard’, Eric the, er, ‘Memorable’.

But namecalling, it turns out, is really not cool and can be very mean. So spare a thought for these six men: the Johnny-two-straps of History’s great playground.

—

James the Shit (King of England, Ireland and Scotland, 1685-88).

Poor James II was probably England’s most rubbish King, ever. In 1685 he inherited a state that was peaceful, prosperous, and financially secure. And yet he managed to mess it all up faster than you can say ‘David Moyes’. Never one to miss the opportunity for a strop, he chucked the Great Seal into the Thames and legged it to Ireland where he made some lovely new allies, before promptly deserting them. They showed their feelings about this through the medium of wit, and dubbed him for posterity as Seamus…

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The Shotgun at the Market

11 Çarşamba Haz 2014

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immanentforms

I was grilling some burgers and hotdogs for my family on Thursday, and I ran up to the supermarket because I needed more buns, some potato salad, and other things that I never remember I ran out of the last time I had a cookout. I drove the three blocks to the market, hopped out of my car and was greeted by the sight of a middle-aged white man strapping a shotgun on his back and walking into the market just ahead of me. My initial reaction was irritation. Why is this guy bringing an apparently loaded firearm into the grocery store at 6pm on a Friday? Is he trying to intimidate people? Trying to make a political point? I wanted to go to the store manager and register a complaint, but I found it hard to call up my rational objections to carrying loaded guns in public places (objections…

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What it’s like for an Arab to go on vacation

11 Çarşamba Haz 2014

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The Bancast

I have a full-time job. By Jordanian standards I have a decent job – as a presenter on the drivetime programme of a local radio station.

Once a year I feel entitled to go on a summer vacation and for a week or two forget about everything else that matters. And why shouldn’t I?

Oh right, cause I’m an Arab…

sea

Your average hard worker with a first world citizenship will pick a destination, purchase a plane ticket, book a hotel (maybe), go on holiday and return to their routine feeling fulfilled.

As an Arab – a Jordanian at least – it’s a little more complicated:

Step 1. Choose a destination

Step 2. Discover that it requires a pre-approved visa. Nine out of 10 times it’s a Schengen country. Even then you must apply at the country of entry’s embassy.

Step 4. Check to see if chosen destination has an embassy in your country. No? Change destination accordingly.

Step…

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Seventy Years Ago Today: Utah Beach, Normandy

10 Salı Haz 2014

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Hugh Nibley [off the record]

Photo of American soldiers onboard a ship approaching the coast of Normandy. American soldiers wait onboard their ship as they approach the coast of Normandy, June 6, 1944. Photo: National Archive

There was a big French battleship blazing away right next to us, and the Germans zeroed in on us with their 88s as we put the rope over the side and started to swarm down into the landing craft. As soon as I got down the rope ladder, the very spot where I should have been waiting on the ship was hit by an 88, and half a dozen tankmen were blown up. The chaplain I had been talking to was wounded. 

The landing craft went in as far as it could, and then there were still a couple of hundred yards – quite a way to go yet. I climbed in the Jeep and revved her up. I had packed it with sandbags so we could get some hold on…

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Who or What Broke My Kids?

10 Salı Haz 2014

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powersfulmath

I am Desperate

I am on a desperate search to find out who or what broke my students.  In fact I am so desperate that I stopped class today to ask them who broke them.  Was it their parents, a former teacher, society, our education system or me that took away their inquisitive nature and made math only about getting a right answer?  I have known this was a problem for a while but today was the last straw.  

A Probability Lesson Gone Wrong

It started out innocently enough working on the seventh grade Common Core standard 7.SP.C.5 about understanding that all probabilities occur between zero and one and differentiating between likely and unlikely events which I thought would be simple enough. After the introduction and class discussion we began partner work on this activity from the Georgia Common Core Resource Document (see page 9).  The basic premise of…

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