Markle isn't a princess. She couldn't hack a life of duty, and fled; pausing only long enough to sneer at the decorum with which Her Late Majesty, The Queen, led her entire life. Flogging napkins is about her level though I'd warn customers to check that Markle's aren't pre-used; everything else about her is shop-worn.
We've been headed for trouble for years, ever since fresh-faced journalism and law school students who want to grow up to be reporters and judges started saying that their goal was "to make a difference!"
It is not the job of journalists and judges to make a difference. Their jobs are similar in that they are expected to simply call balls and strikes, not to be activists.
Reporters should be wearing fedoras, smoking cigars, drinking too much, and hanging out with unsavory characters to get the real scoop, not sitting in the Times offices scrolling through Instagram for leads. Judges should be reading the Constitution, staying awake during oral arguments, and writing opinions that are principled but might make them personally unhappy, not picking winners and losers in the courtroom.
The most important part of this entire issue of TFP is the Jo Boaler story, and yet it just gets a blurb and so far only one comment that I can tell.
Jo Boaler is to math education what Lucy Calkins was/is to reading education. The devil in a pretty dress. The word method/look say/whole language/balanced literacy garbage way to teach reading has been ruining children for decades. It was exposed nationally and rightly so in the "Sold a Story" series highlighted by TFP months ago. Now it's time for TFP to do the same thing with Jo Boaler and what she sells, which I call CRT math.
Jo is not the first person to try to make K-12 math education "easy" and water it down to the lowest common denominator. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's my kids were subjected to "fuzzy math" and the elimination of basic skills in favor of using calculators and guessing. As now, the math wars mostly took place in California and drifted across the rest of the country. By the time it got to my state we were told that "women and blacks can't learn math the traditional way that (white) men learn math". I fought this crap with help from a group called Mathematically Correct (a play on politically correct) led by a then young Stanford math professor named Jim Milgram (he's now emeritus in the Stanford math department; Jo Boaler is in the education department). Milgram's group of math professor parents turned the tide and wrote the stringent California math standards that Jo Boaler and her acolytes are now trying to destroy in favor of CRT math.
If you deep dive into the current controversy you will find that Jim Milgram is leading the opposition to Jo Boaler and her scandal ridden attempts to rewrite the California math standards so that they will be"equitable" for black children. Her proposals are replete with language that says grading tests or even telling black children that they "got the wrong answer" is racist and oppressive. Jo Boaler has gone way beyond the "women and blacks" arguments I was faced with as a parent. Now women are no longer mentioned and it's all about black children being oppressed by the white man's mathematics.
Please TFP, get someone to do the deep dive. There's even a young black man computer scientist at Berkeley who has been opposing Jo Boaler on her particular brand of crap. He's the Coleman Hughes of math. Jo Boaler even got into a defamation dust-up with this dude and lost spectacularly. It's a great story and needs more attention than a footnote in Oliver's "what we're reading". But I'm grateful Oliver at least took notice.
Very good comment. I'd not want to wait for the Oliver/TFP folks to get into the story on a deep dive. Any links you can offer on the "young black computer scientist at Berkley" issue?
Jelani Nelson is the guy. He nicknamed Jo Boaler "Professor Karen". After he publicly called her out on her theories and her shoddy research, she sent him an email in which she threatened to call the police basically. So Nelson published a screenshot of her email and put her in the metaphorically same box as the white women who accuse black men of attacking them. It's really quite hilarious because this is a black man at the highest level of numerical science who got there the traditional way by doing the work. And he wants black children to learn math, not be babied and handed a worthless diploma.
Thanks. I've read up a bit on Nelson. Great guy. He has really exposed the ignorance of Boaler. She is increasingly on the hot seat, most recently for serious ethical questions about her publications. She needs to be run out of Stanford so she stops doing damage from there,
I'll Google it and get back to you. Nellie can't do math and seems proud of it. You're right that TFP won't pursue this if it's up to Nellie to make the decision.
The comments section has been keeping me here. TGIF started out well. Lots of humor, not the trite and tried, conservatives-are-stupid stuff that you find on Jimmy Fallon/Kimmel, but good stuff. Lots of pulling the curtain away from the usual media narrative. But it has slid into blah and warmed over at best. I'm no fan of Trump's persona and his tendency to say stupid things but may well vote for him to undo the Dems stranglehold on America through law fare and the deep/security state. Bowles clearly has TDS - as do most of the writers and editors at TFP - and mock Biden's gaffes but not his "policies" and the direction his Administration has pointed us toward.
Actually I suspect now that TFP is getting media attention, articles like the NYT piece this past Monday on government involvement in censorship - the article named Bari Weiss, among others, as a right side/Republican opponent of Democracy and all the good things government can do by fighting "misinformation". I suspect things like that tend to make Bowles' spine a bit weak. Probably Bari's, too, though she is pretty much fixated, understandably on the war Israel is fighting against its own existential threat.
I would love something from TFP to explain how the Eight Amendment to the US Constitution has not been violated by Leticia James in her now seizing property on behalf of a $450 million fine. Same for E. Carol Jean. And most definitely looking forward to TFP explaining the whole classified docs case.
I have a problem with the author's use of "cowed" in the sentence: "You’ll also know that Times’ leadership has usually cowed before those activists. " Does he mean "cowered"? Or, "has been cowed by"?
Markle is trying to be the next Martha Stewart or Joanna Gaines. But, both Stewart and Gaines started small, Stewart as a caterer and Gaines as an interior designer, and built upwards from there. They first honed their talents, and I'm sure they both worked hard at it; then leveraged their experience into more. Markle has no known talents in the area she is trying to move into, so it looks more like seeing Stewart and Gaines's end point, and trying to leap over all of the hard work it takes to be a success.
Those others started with some talent in a small operation. Markle is starting large with no talent. She won't develop any as she thinks she is entitled to success.
But I think that is what you said. I just had to repeat to get it off my chest.
Well Oliver, I bitch about your pieces enough that I ought to at least give kudos for the bitch slap at Meghan Markle. She really is the embodiment of rank materialism (I think that is what you wrote). She is as cringey a person who exists in the public sphere today. Shallow, transparent social climber, married a genetically deprived/ genetically terminal Euro-weenie, she trashes others in the very family she clings to to vault into social significance. You can't write enough bad shit about her. Thanks!
Lock Meghan in a cell with any captured Hamas terrorist and wait. Soon he'll be hysterically pleading for execution. And this, on humanitarian grounds, should be allowed. (I believe there's even a footnote in one of the Hague Conventions about it.)
Naturally, the form of execution is open to question. Death by prolonged exposure to incessant, solipsistic, babbling insanity may be most appropriate
On the other hand, he might simply strangle the woman.
In which case: Victoria Cross...? Westminster Abbey...?
Markle isn't a princess. She couldn't hack a life of duty, and fled; pausing only long enough to sneer at the decorum with which Her Late Majesty, The Queen, led her entire life. Flogging napkins is about her level though I'd warn customers to check that Markle's aren't pre-used; everything else about her is shop-worn.
Covered a lot of ground well. Enjoyable. 👍
We've been headed for trouble for years, ever since fresh-faced journalism and law school students who want to grow up to be reporters and judges started saying that their goal was "to make a difference!"
It is not the job of journalists and judges to make a difference. Their jobs are similar in that they are expected to simply call balls and strikes, not to be activists.
Reporters should be wearing fedoras, smoking cigars, drinking too much, and hanging out with unsavory characters to get the real scoop, not sitting in the Times offices scrolling through Instagram for leads. Judges should be reading the Constitution, staying awake during oral arguments, and writing opinions that are principled but might make them personally unhappy, not picking winners and losers in the courtroom.
We've lost all that. Can we ever get it back?
The most important part of this entire issue of TFP is the Jo Boaler story, and yet it just gets a blurb and so far only one comment that I can tell.
Jo Boaler is to math education what Lucy Calkins was/is to reading education. The devil in a pretty dress. The word method/look say/whole language/balanced literacy garbage way to teach reading has been ruining children for decades. It was exposed nationally and rightly so in the "Sold a Story" series highlighted by TFP months ago. Now it's time for TFP to do the same thing with Jo Boaler and what she sells, which I call CRT math.
Jo is not the first person to try to make K-12 math education "easy" and water it down to the lowest common denominator. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's my kids were subjected to "fuzzy math" and the elimination of basic skills in favor of using calculators and guessing. As now, the math wars mostly took place in California and drifted across the rest of the country. By the time it got to my state we were told that "women and blacks can't learn math the traditional way that (white) men learn math". I fought this crap with help from a group called Mathematically Correct (a play on politically correct) led by a then young Stanford math professor named Jim Milgram (he's now emeritus in the Stanford math department; Jo Boaler is in the education department). Milgram's group of math professor parents turned the tide and wrote the stringent California math standards that Jo Boaler and her acolytes are now trying to destroy in favor of CRT math.
If you deep dive into the current controversy you will find that Jim Milgram is leading the opposition to Jo Boaler and her scandal ridden attempts to rewrite the California math standards so that they will be"equitable" for black children. Her proposals are replete with language that says grading tests or even telling black children that they "got the wrong answer" is racist and oppressive. Jo Boaler has gone way beyond the "women and blacks" arguments I was faced with as a parent. Now women are no longer mentioned and it's all about black children being oppressed by the white man's mathematics.
Please TFP, get someone to do the deep dive. There's even a young black man computer scientist at Berkeley who has been opposing Jo Boaler on her particular brand of crap. He's the Coleman Hughes of math. Jo Boaler even got into a defamation dust-up with this dude and lost spectacularly. It's a great story and needs more attention than a footnote in Oliver's "what we're reading". But I'm grateful Oliver at least took notice.
Very good comment. I'd not want to wait for the Oliver/TFP folks to get into the story on a deep dive. Any links you can offer on the "young black computer scientist at Berkley" issue?
Jelani Nelson is the guy. He nicknamed Jo Boaler "Professor Karen". After he publicly called her out on her theories and her shoddy research, she sent him an email in which she threatened to call the police basically. So Nelson published a screenshot of her email and put her in the metaphorically same box as the white women who accuse black men of attacking them. It's really quite hilarious because this is a black man at the highest level of numerical science who got there the traditional way by doing the work. And he wants black children to learn math, not be babied and handed a worthless diploma.
Thanks. I've read up a bit on Nelson. Great guy. He has really exposed the ignorance of Boaler. She is increasingly on the hot seat, most recently for serious ethical questions about her publications. She needs to be run out of Stanford so she stops doing damage from there,
I'll Google it and get back to you. Nellie can't do math and seems proud of it. You're right that TFP won't pursue this if it's up to Nellie to make the decision.
Thanks. I fear that there is only so much reality that Bowles can take before the cognitive dissonance causes her to suffer the vapors.
Yeah, she's not exactly an intellectual power house. TGIF is becoming unreadable. A lot of TFP is becoming unreadable.
The comments section has been keeping me here. TGIF started out well. Lots of humor, not the trite and tried, conservatives-are-stupid stuff that you find on Jimmy Fallon/Kimmel, but good stuff. Lots of pulling the curtain away from the usual media narrative. But it has slid into blah and warmed over at best. I'm no fan of Trump's persona and his tendency to say stupid things but may well vote for him to undo the Dems stranglehold on America through law fare and the deep/security state. Bowles clearly has TDS - as do most of the writers and editors at TFP - and mock Biden's gaffes but not his "policies" and the direction his Administration has pointed us toward.
Actually I suspect now that TFP is getting media attention, articles like the NYT piece this past Monday on government involvement in censorship - the article named Bari Weiss, among others, as a right side/Republican opponent of Democracy and all the good things government can do by fighting "misinformation". I suspect things like that tend to make Bowles' spine a bit weak. Probably Bari's, too, though she is pretty much fixated, understandably on the war Israel is fighting against its own existential threat.
“In other words, it’s the generation most focused on their well-being who are most miserable.”
No. It’s the generation most sold on buying their “authentic selves” from the medical-pharmaceutical capitalizing on the secular reformation.
Meghan Markle , Douchess would be more fitting. Bored hypocrite.
LOL!!!! Get ready for another "stolen election."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-strikes-unique-fundraising-agreement-with-rnc-report
"The Lobby"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lSjXhMUVKE
Can anyone translate what's being said here?
https://www.reddit.com/r/israelexposed/comments/1bkg57h/recent_israeli_drone_footage_committing_genocide/
The problem isn't "self-care," TFP dummies.
The issue is that, today, too many people think they should be ecstatic all the time.
I would love something from TFP to explain how the Eight Amendment to the US Constitution has not been violated by Leticia James in her now seizing property on behalf of a $450 million fine. Same for E. Carol Jean. And most definitely looking forward to TFP explaining the whole classified docs case.
I have a problem with the author's use of "cowed" in the sentence: "You’ll also know that Times’ leadership has usually cowed before those activists. " Does he mean "cowered"? Or, "has been cowed by"?
Can Germany’s far right be stopped? Jeremy Stern asks an uncomfortable question and discovers some uncomfortable answers. (Tablet)
Fantastic article thank you!
Markle is trying to be the next Martha Stewart or Joanna Gaines. But, both Stewart and Gaines started small, Stewart as a caterer and Gaines as an interior designer, and built upwards from there. They first honed their talents, and I'm sure they both worked hard at it; then leveraged their experience into more. Markle has no known talents in the area she is trying to move into, so it looks more like seeing Stewart and Gaines's end point, and trying to leap over all of the hard work it takes to be a success.
Those others started with some talent in a small operation. Markle is starting large with no talent. She won't develop any as she thinks she is entitled to success.
But I think that is what you said. I just had to repeat to get it off my chest.
Well Oliver, I bitch about your pieces enough that I ought to at least give kudos for the bitch slap at Meghan Markle. She really is the embodiment of rank materialism (I think that is what you wrote). She is as cringey a person who exists in the public sphere today. Shallow, transparent social climber, married a genetically deprived/ genetically terminal Euro-weenie, she trashes others in the very family she clings to to vault into social significance. You can't write enough bad shit about her. Thanks!
FINALLY, A SUITABLE PROFESSION FOR MEGHAN MARKLE.
Lock Meghan in a cell with any captured Hamas terrorist and wait. Soon he'll be hysterically pleading for execution. And this, on humanitarian grounds, should be allowed. (I believe there's even a footnote in one of the Hague Conventions about it.)
Naturally, the form of execution is open to question. Death by prolonged exposure to incessant, solipsistic, babbling insanity may be most appropriate
On the other hand, he might simply strangle the woman.
In which case: Victoria Cross...? Westminster Abbey...?
For her of course.