Peter Gow, Trying to Further Education and Educators

Archive for the NotYourFathersSchool Category

BANTER AND SCHOOL CULTURE

A friend, knowing I’m an old maritime fiction (Patrick O’Brian, Richard Woodman, and Alexander Fullerton are among my favorite authors) as well as an admirer for the leadership of Captain Picard in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series, recently pointed me to a really interesting post in […]

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CHOPPING WOOD AND INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER

Lucky me! In a week I start a half-year sabbatical, my first since 1996 and a real privilege for which I will be eternally grateful to my school. On the other side, I’ll be coming back to a new position—as yet to be fully defined—that will allow […]

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HOLIDAY WISHES

It’s been a long slog through autumn, but the solstice is past and the days are indeed growing longer again. Light is vanquishing darkness in our hemisphere. There’s still a lot of darkness around, but I feel quite certain that regular readers of this blog are determined […]

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ARMED GUARDIANS

While I may not have much to add to the chorus of scorn rightfully being heaped on the National Rifle Association’s shockingly inappropriate “armed security at every school” idea, I do have a couple of observations, one based on experience, the other common sense. I was raised […]

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MY COUSINS’ SCHOOL

My cousins’ school in western Connecticut is in the news. The younger generation has grown and moved on, but their mother—a teacher and counselor, author of a book on grief—lives in town, a few blocks from the school. I haven’t heard from any of them, but their […]

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“WE TEACH”—THE ELUSIVE LANGUAGE OF CHARACTER EDUCATION

While I was in the middle of thinking about my Six C’s for Learning, a hot conversation was taking place in one of the online college counseling communities about the ways in which schools report—or choose not to report—disciplinary infractions to colleges. At least one school stated that […]

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MY SIX C’s FOR 21st-CENTURY LEARNING (OR FOR ALL TIME?)

At some point in the past couple of years we turned a corner into strange territory where secondary schools, apparently even “college prep” secondary schools, need to devote themselves to producing skilled workers for the 21st-century labor force. Luckily, we have been given multiple lists of these […]

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BEST CLASS EVER; EVER AGAIN?

I recently ran across Australian educator and blogger Andrew Douch’s account of the “best school [he’s] ever seen.” North Beaches Christian School in Terrey Hills, near Sydney, sounds idyllic, right down to the acoustically clever ceilings that keep noise levels down. I’d like to see this place. […]

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‘TIS THE SEASON–for Schedule Committees!

Ah, the season has rolled around again. The fall of 2012, with its too-early Thanksgiving and string of less-than-five-day weeks owing to some holidays and, in our neck of the woods, the weather, is drawing to a close, and people are thinking how miserable their schools’ schedules […]

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INTERLUDE—Further Reflections on Sport and Education

I’ve written here on a couple of other occasions about the culture of sports and athletics that has arisen, nourished (or malnourished) by the sports culture that permeates so much of North American society: stressed or at least occasionally oppressed kids, some bizarro moral warpiture around institutional […]

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TRADITIONAL LANDS

I here affirm that the offices from which I work are situated on lands that have a very long and continuing history as a locus of residence, livelihood, traditional expression, and exchange by the Massachusett, Wampanoag, Abenaki, Mohawk, Wabanaki, Hohokam, O’odam, Salt River Pima, and Maricopa people. The servers for this website are situated on Ute and Goshute land. We make this acknowledgment to remind ourselves, our educational partners, and our friends of our shared obligation to acknowledge and work toward righting the inequities and injustices that have alienated indigenous peoples from the full occupation and utilization of these spaces.