Imagined Conversations: A Review of Why School?

In This Essay

Why School? : Reclaiming Education for All of Us by Mike Rose

Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol

I first learned about Why School? : Reclaiming Education for All of Us while listening to Marketplace on NPR back in August. I ordered it from Amazon.

I tore into it immediately. I have been thinking about it since then. I had been a bit afraid to review it too quickly.

Mike Rose covers a lot of topics in his slim 169 pages. But his essays are broad, each like an introduction to the topic rather than like tightly argued persuasion piece. And therein lies the value of these essays.

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Weekly Review: October 2nd to October 8th

Exploring back archives of interesting blogs is a wonderful idea. I came across a number of great essays on The Word Blog on boston.com. Anyone have any suggestions of good blogs about language, literature, or education? I am going to need to setup an RSS Reader…

Otherwise, it seemed like a slow week for news that interested me that had deep coverage. Some of the stories were too short, leaving me wondering for more. As we roll back our print media, we lose the ability to cover depth of different topics. Many things tantalized me. But the stories I found really fulfilling was one about imaginative play and its positive effects on early childhood behavior and education.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Getting Her Message Across
• If Imagination Be the Food of Learning, Play On
• Chartering a Course
• Can Grammar Make Us Better People?
• Self-Assessment
• What Are You Doing Wrong?
• 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature Winner
• Stopping by the Wal-Mart on a Snowy Evening

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Living through Literature

In This Essay

Don Juan DeMarco

Don Juan by George Gordon, Lord Byron

Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

I first saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni while studying at an Italian language institute in Rome during the summer of 2004. That summer was my introduction to opera. I saw both Carmen and Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni stuck with me, however.

That first performance piqued my interest, both in opera and the Don Juan legend.

Since moving back to Massachusetts, though I am not sure what triggered it, I have become increasingly more interested in the Don Juan legend. I saw the opera again when the Boston Lyric Opera performed Don Giovanni last season. I purchased a recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and have listened to it almost to the exclusion of all else since I bought it. I have reread Molière’s Don Juan. I read Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell as well as Baudelaire’s. I reread most of the first Canto of Byron’s Don Juan, and despite my renewed interest found Byron’s poetry dry. Next I want to read Tirso de Molina’s El Burlador de Sevilla which is thought to be the first written version of the Don Juan legend.

While looking at the works of the Don Juan legend, I stumbled across Don Juan DeMarco. I was intrigued by the description on Wikipedia. I ordered it from the public library and watched it this weekend.

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Weekly Review: September 25th to October 1st

Today I’m launching a weekly link review, in which I’ll publish newspaper, magazine, and radio stories related to literature, education, psychology and neuroscience. Bear with me as I get the style down and while work out a few bugs, like how to link items in the table of contents to the full page so that you can jump right to any title that catches your fancy.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Barring Books in Harvard
• Bright Star, Movie Review and Trailer
• Becoming Teachers
• The Craft of Writing and Inspiration of Mentors
• Metaphors and the Way We Think
• Does Education Protect Someone from Dementia and Alzheimer’s?
• Taking Things Serially

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