ICYMI: Another Awful Week Edition (5/29)

It just keeps coming. I've said my piece elsewhere, and will continue to do so in places where it might matter. I hope you do the same. In the meantime, here's some reading from this miserable week, and I swear, most of it is not about the news you have already read about over and over and over again.

Stop saying nothing has changed since Sandy Hook

I'm as guilty of saying so as anyone, but Greg O'Loughlin, guesting for Andy Spears, points out that some things are very different.

Why America's carnage never ends--and only gets worse

This piece is more hopeful that the title suggests, but it's also a pretty sweeping indictment of... everything. It also provides a look at our situation that goes outside the usual lines of debate. I don't agree with all of it, but it's something to ponder.

America is a society screaming out in rage and pain. In shock and despair. It’s heart has been ripped out. It has been dehumanized. You can see it in the way dogs are treated. Now imagine how people are.

How people treat each other. That is they key choice a society ever makes. Europeans and Canadians treat each other in ways Americans don’t. With dignity, respect, gentleness, warmth. Americans treat each other on a completely different spectrum. It goes from indifference to hostility to outright hate.

This is what happens when trust collapses in a society, as people become dehumanized.

Before massacre, Uvalde gunman frequently threatened teen girls online

What's bothersome here is not that he did it, but that in doing it, he was not particularly out of the ordinary. From the Texas Tribune.

Are active shooter drills worth it?

A really excellent piece of reportage from Rachel Cohen at Vox (who admitted that what she found challenged some of what she believed going in); a thorough look at the pros and cons of those stupid damn drills.

Voting is not enough to save public education or keep it safe

Nancy Flanagan on what it is that we need right now. Read this twice.

A year of "protecting children" in Texas

A good deep read into the contexst of Texas, a state whose leaders have lost their way.

Ohio charter schools gobble up more than ever

Stephen Dyer points out just how hungry for tax dollars Ohio's charter schools are.

Whittle's latest project barely solvent

Chris Whittle just can't stop failing upwards. Washington Post has the story of his current project-- a private school that was supposed to change the world, but which can barely pay its bills.

Teachers suspended for teaching.

When TC Weber covered this story, he was assured that no such thing happened. Now NewsChannel 5 in Nashville has the story of teachers suspended for daring to use their own materials in class and deviate from the proscribed teaching plan.

Attacking machine learning training by re-ordering data

Cory Doctorow with an explanation of just how not-magical machine learning actually is.

Conservatives long ago lost the war over America's public schools

Adam Laats in the Washington Post explaining that conservatives long since lost this battle, and that's why they are continuing to fight the way they are.

Teachers, deputized to fight the culture wars, are often reluctant to serve

Kelly Field at the Hechinger Report shows us what the prohibitions against--well, all the things-- looks on the ground.

Texas' Jim Crow-styled Highland Park ISD

When someone wrote a glowing tale of Highland Park's successes, critics popped up to explain that HPISD is a fine exercise in old-school segregation. The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has the receipts.

Inside the first year at Alabama's LGBTQ charter

This school was in the new for being a target of a candidate's political ads. Now AL.com has a feature story about their year. 

Under new laws, some teachers worry supporting LGBTQ students will get them sued or fired

Meanwhile, in other places, Don't Say Gay laws continue to have the intended chilling effect. A USA Today story, via MSN (so no paywall).

Meet the mild, gentle kindergarten teacher who tackled an intruder at her elementary school

Heck of a story from Nashville, and a reminder that teachers are dealing with this kind of crap all the time.

Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”

Maris Popova is a treasure. Her site The Marginalia (previously known as Brain Pickings) is loaded with fascinating and often uplifting material. I recommend subscribing. This piece about Beethoven's struggles in creating and presenting his Ninth Symphony-- it's inspiring and uplifting and it made me go listen to the symphony again.