tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78972860653743558902024-03-19T04:21:59.433-07:00Mike Rose's BlogMike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.comBlogger211125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-73091945287349200322021-06-28T14:35:00.000-07:002021-06-28T14:35:02.692-07:00The Desk: A brief memoir on the power of imagination and language “The Desk” was just published in The Hedgehog Review, a wonderful magazine of culture and politics that comes out of the University of Virginia. The memoir depicts a difficult time in my small family’s newly established life in Los Angeles, and the material and mental resources I brought to bear on what was happening to us. “The Desk” is the story of the protective qualities of a child’s Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-46941002929960962092021-05-30T16:40:00.001-07:002021-05-30T16:40:33.211-07:00An Evening with Bob Moses in the Mississippi Delta During my travels around the United States visiting good public school classrooms—which I would document in Possible Lives—I was fortunate to spend time in Mississippi observing Civil Rights leader Bob Moses demonstrating and helping local teachers implement his innovative mathematics curriculum, The Algebra Project, a supplement to the traditional mathematics course of study in middle Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-61092676709272322512021-04-02T19:43:00.001-07:002021-04-02T20:55:21.653-07:00A Brief Reflection on Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Use of DataIt is the evening of April 1, and I am listening to “1-A,” the excellent public affairs show that comes out of WAMU in Washington, D.C. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is the guest, and he is explaining to host Jenn White the rationale for his recent decision to mandate standardized testing for this school year. I had high hopes for this man, given all his experience in schools, and I stillMike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-16208174377924131742021-03-10T12:00:00.003-08:002021-03-10T12:01:31.264-08:00“If You Feel Better, Press 1” A Miniature from Our Time So I’m in my home talking with my friend of many years, Ed Frankel, a seasoned writing teacher and a beautiful poet. I just read to him a few pages on how the harmful tendencies in education policy and reform (from the over-reliance on standardized testing to rule-focused and routinized training and evaluation of teachers) are legitimized Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-29885797130250657272021-01-23T13:53:00.016-08:002021-01-23T14:12:36.278-08:00Hope Amid the Ruins Along with the violence wrought on so many—including planet Earth—by the Trump Administration, the last four years have brought us one bitter irony after another. A recent one was the giddy celebration over the passing of 2020. Bye bye 2020. Good riddance. See you in the rear-view mirror. The Internet vibrated with farewell memes. Then came the precursor to Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-68329759142463571422020-11-28T06:36:00.001-08:002020-11-28T08:02:13.227-08:00Thank YouIn this season of giving thanks and expressing gratitude, there is much I am thankful for. I am thankful for you, the readers of this blog, and thankful for all my readers in any medium. To have something you've written read by others is a great honor. I'm thankful for the expulsion from the presidency of my country a cloven-footed, grotesquely evil man. I'm thankful for my many Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-46732676262806712652020-10-01T16:23:00.007-07:002020-10-02T15:03:40.754-07:00Politics, Disillusionment, and DespairThis blog will not make me many friends. It is addressed to those who are so disillusioned by the 2020 election—perhaps intensified by the first Trump-Biden debate—that they might sit out this November or not cast a vote for president. And this blog is addressed to those who see no purpose whatsoever in electoral politics, for they witness no change in their lives or in their neighbors’ lives, Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-34462423079666204052020-09-06T14:10:00.002-07:002020-09-06T18:15:34.695-07:00Some Modest Advice to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from Someone Who Has Never Run a Political Campaign … But Is Apprehensive About This One
An article in the Boston Globe written right after the end of the Republican National Convention captures the anxiety a lot of us feel who desperately want Donald Trump voted out of office. Even though Biden leads in the polls, we are “wary of a 2016 repeat.” “Trump looms like some horror movie villain,” writes journalist Jim Puzzanghera, “Who just keeps coming no matter how much is thrown at Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-43358599895064161402020-08-18T14:49:00.000-07:002020-08-18T14:49:33.173-07:00 “It’s Not Wants That We Want, It’s Needs”This is a lightly edited transcription of an interview with Sandy Villatoro, a hotel housekeeper from Arizona who was laid off during the pandemic. Her husband is a roofer whose income has suffered. The interview aired on August 6, 2020 on NPR, one week after the expiration of the $600.00 per week augmentation to unemployment benefits. I’ve removed most of the reporter’s introduction and framing Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-47057875582247296252020-07-22T14:22:00.001-07:002020-07-23T09:23:07.338-07:00What It Means to Care
The passage below, excerpted from Possible Lives, is a reflection on the notion of “care” in teaching. Care is a central tenet in the helping professions, most fully developed in education by the philosopher Nel Noddings. The way I see it, the care in teaching is a special kind of care, one that, among other qualities, has a significant instructional and cognitive dimension to it. Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-44004715888248807662020-06-12T09:32:00.000-07:002020-06-12T09:37:37.576-07:00To Say A Name
Each of the chants rising up from the demonstrations for racial justice burst with significance: Black Lives Matter, No Justice, No Peace, the various calls to defund police departments. Though only a few words in length, each has a consequential political history. Each speaks volumes. I want to reflect here on one of the chants – Say His Name, George Floyd – because of the many ways Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-34854780893166186912020-05-31T19:52:00.001-07:002020-05-31T19:56:44.912-07:00Teaching Over the Long Haul
NOTE TO READERS. I have been working on this blog for a while, trying to meet my end-of-May deadline, but now I am hesitant to post it, given the urgent anguish that surrounds us. I have tried to write about this moment, but I am a slow writer and was unable to produce for you anything that has not already been written, and written with more knowledge and wisdom than I have about the Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-45832317480273502322020-04-21T12:37:00.001-07:002021-01-23T13:17:11.380-08:00The Tawdry President: Donald Trump, the Public Library, and COVID 19
During the last week that has included President Trump's daily updates on COVID 19, I have been watching Frederick Wiseman’s three-hour-and-seventeen-minute documentary on The New York Public Library, Ex Libris. If you’ve never seen a Wiseman film, and if you’re stuck indoors, this might be a good time to start.
Wiseman has been making documentaries for 50 years —he Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-16836927897505466472020-03-26T18:58:00.000-07:002020-03-26T19:02:01.096-07:00Risk and Everyday Heroes
In the terrible and constant flow of images related to the coronavirus pandemic, the pictures of grocery clerks at their stations have been catching my attention. The images are so familiar and benign: the clerk tapping keys on the register, or, hand extended, passing packaged meat or a box of soap over the scanner, or leaning over to help a customer insert a credit card. How many times a day isMike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-26104940720029780872020-02-27T13:21:00.000-08:002020-02-27T13:36:08.154-08:00Teachers’ Knowledge, Teachers’ Strikes, and Slaying Goliath
Over the past eight or nine months, I have been writing in this blog about perception and knowledge. How we gain knowledge, how background and social location affect that knowledge, whose knowledge counts, how the context or setting from which we perceive and know matters. (This from an earlier blog: “What you see depends on where you sit, and for how long.”) My fixation on this cluster of Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-30456263315096515802020-01-31T12:26:00.003-08:002020-01-31T12:28:57.397-08:00Some Thoughts on Character Education, Non-Cognitive Skills, Grit, and the Formation of Public Discourse about Education
Beginning several decades ago with the discussion of the value of “soft job skills” (punctuality, self-monitoring), we seem to be increasingly concerned with what have come to be called “non-cognitive” skills in the workplace, the schoolhouse, and in life itself. Valuing a wider range of human abilities and characteristics is a good thing, but there are some significant Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-37749805966490761902019-12-13T10:34:00.002-08:002019-12-13T11:24:31.088-08:00Who Should Go to College?: Unpacking the College-for-All Versus Occupational Training Debate<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN AR-SA <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-68787299924563190372019-11-26T12:32:00.001-08:002019-11-26T12:32:34.546-08:00Scenes from a Community College Tutoring Center <!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN AR-SA <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-3248529087321312312019-10-31T11:13:00.000-07:002019-10-31T11:50:14.179-07:00“What You See Depends on Where You Sit, and for How Long”: On Perception and Knowledge<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-75592547282612239202019-09-30T13:38:00.003-07:002019-10-24T10:21:16.631-07:00Small Thoughts on Giving Money Away: A Modest Proposal for Educational Philanthropy<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN AR-SA <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-1121752597567701872019-08-27T13:54:00.000-07:002019-09-10T20:50:33.852-07:00My Immigrant Grandfather Stood on His Own Two Feet – Until He Lost One of Them in American Industry
Because
of the continual violence waged by the Trump Administration on immigrants,
migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers – the most recent being the denial of
flu shots to migrants in detention – an assault from a week or ten days ago is
already old news, fading into memory. Excuse me, then, for going back into the
archives to August 13, Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-77455412298280624052019-07-29T14:17:00.000-07:002019-07-29T14:32:47.591-07:00Who Isn’t Writing About Education —and Should Be?
There’s a
rock in my shoe, a small thing, a really small thing that I started
noticing years ago and can’t shake loose. An irritant that has grown in
significance. Over the last 20 years, The New Yorker magazine has
published 60 articles under the banner “Annals of Medicine,” and 38 of them, 63%,
are written by medical doctors. Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-64489217253323708262019-06-27T13:28:00.000-07:002019-06-28T08:46:35.784-07:00Classrooms and Hope
At the beginning of 2019, the gifted
political journalist Susan Glasser wrote a column
titled “Is Optimism Dead in the Trump Era?” in which she mused on the “January
Effect,” the “year-opening optimism” of the stock market and, more generally “the
eternal hope for a fresh start” that typically characterizes many spheres of
ourMike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-36534957701945559952019-05-30T13:03:00.001-07:002019-05-30T13:21:22.127-07:00On Counting and Writing <!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7897286065374355890.post-15146657526647665272019-04-29T17:22:00.000-07:002019-04-30T22:18:43.691-07:00The College Cheating Scandal, Inequality in College Admissions, and the Preoccupation with Status in Higher Education
Last month the college cheating scandal became our national soap opera with episode after episode of wealthy parents paying big money to hire test takers, falsify records, and create phony athletic profiles for their children. I’ll admit, I was in the front row gaping at the brazen grab for advantage by people who have every advantage imaginable, tuning in daily as the tawdry details emerged.Mike Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013622839240394965noreply@blogger.com0