The Salt-Box

Today I found out that my parents check up on A’s and my teaching by reading RateMyProfessors.com regularly.

Awesome.

Urmee Khan has a terminally silly post this morning at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site, arguing that only middle-aged white guys like HBO’s brilliant show, The Wire.  Her chief objection to the show is its treatment of women:

It is misogynistic. All the main characters are men, apart from one woman. It is a world of men, in which many of the women are portrayed as subservient, lap-dancing gangsters’ molls.

This isn’t really true (there are several women who’d count as main characters) as a description of facts on the ground, and it’s just insipid as cultural commentary, inasmuch as it confuses a representation of misogyny with its endorsement.  The show signals pretty clearly indicts even its most sympathetic characters for their attitudes toward women.

She’s not much better on race:

The white characters in The Wire inhabit - usually - a sort of post-race world, where friendships and enmities with black men are denuded of racial tension. There are questions about how realistic this is, but for the purposes of the show, race in The Wire is a background hum rather than a dominating theme. When, in season three, a white detective kills a black colleague, under the mistaken belief he’s a criminal, the “racial element” (as it’s referred to) of the resulting controversy is shown as something unreasonable.

This isn’t an especially reasonable reading of season 3, which includes in it a ludicrous white cop who insists on singling out black cops as character witnesses for the shooter.  It also glosses over racial tensions depicted in the first two seasons.

But my main reason for writing this post is just anecdotal: As far as I can tell, women love The Wire.  That’s how it came into our home, through word-of-mouth from West Hartford moms.  (Think Little Children, and you’re not far off.)  I’d heard of the show for a couple of years, but never queued it on Netflix because I figured A. wouldn’t be interested.  But then Every Single WH Mom she hangs out with started watching it obsessively, plowing through those first 3 seasons on DVD over and over again, and talking about it nonstop at playdates.  So, we started watching, and got hooked.

Frankly, the first scene of the first episode caught us: It’s the greatest opener to any television show.  “This is America–everybody gets to play.”

I know typo-blogging is a bit unfair, but this one’s pretty funny.  From today’s New Britain Herald:

The story, of course, is deeply unfunny.  While I’m prepared in theory to agree that throwing money at problems isn’t always a good solution, it does strike me as unreasonable to take a state “Educational Cost Sharing” grant and apply it to . . . tax relief, at a time when the city’s high school risks losing accreditation.

The thing that nearly prevented us from moving to New Britain wasn’t the tax burden, though I recognize it’s relatively high; rather, it was the reputation of the schools, particularly the high school.

When the city postponed fireworks on Wednesday, we decided to go see Ratatouille.  (A split decision: A & I loved it; The Little Man thought it was a little funny, but nowhere near as good as Cars, Toy Story, or The Incredibles.  I do think that the movie may demand a little too much attention to social nuance for a 4-year-old to truly love it, especially when there’s no compensatory violence. He thought the short, “Lifted,” was awesome.)

Three notes from our adventure:

• The family in line ahead of us had 3 adults and two kids.  As the man in the family stepped up to the register, he turned to one of the women and said, “Take [name] and the kids and get snacks.”  Then, he turned to the cashier and asked for 1 adult and 4 children for Transformers.  The cashier sold the tickets without batting an eye, and the ticket-taker admitted them without a second glance.   It turns out that teenagers *might* not care 110% about minimum-wage jobs.
• At the Loews theater we attended, there was no way to get water as the drink in a kid’s snack pack (which A and the Little Man share).  When A asked the snack dude, “Well, what if you don’t want to give your 4-year-old soda?,” his first (nonverbal, but very, very obvious) answer was, “Unclench.”  I was proud of him for choking the word down.  Ultimately, we had to spring for an extra water.  And to upgrade from “popcorn-and-Goldfish crackers”, which seems ridiculous, to “popcorn-and-fruit snacks” cost $1.
• According to the black couple coming out of Transformers, the point of that movie is “protect the white girls.”  The woman of the couple claimed that is in fact the plot of all movies.

How often do you get a review published on your birthday?  It was thoughtful of the PMC editors to arrange that for her.

 She’s thirty-four  I of course would never mention her age.

If your kid is 4, is it too early to worry about the fact that the local high school flunked it’s NEASC accreditation visit?  The only real reporting on this story has come from NBBlogs.  Today Patrick Thibodeau had the link to the NEASC report, but Elisa Hutcoe Krochmalnyckyj had the story first, plus a follow-up.

Patrick’s post today looks at the way the budget processes of the city and the board of education impede the ready flow of resources.  Reading the report, I was naturally more drawn to curricular questions (no lab science in 9th & 10th grade!) and opportunities for students.  In particular, one bit jumped out:

New Britain High School provides many opportunities for students to extend learning
beyond the normal course offerings and the school campus.  Students have the
opportunity to participate in partnership programs with the University of Hartford, St.
Joseph College, and Tunxis Community College.  Summer programs such as the Choate
Rosemary Hall Connecticut Scholars Program and the Center for Creative Youth at
Wesleyan University are also available.

If only there were a university in New Britain . . . I am somewhat surprised not to see CCSU in the forefront of this list.  I know faculty who have partnered with teachers in Hartford, and I know that there are a lot of CCSU students who work with New Britain rec sports.  Plus, there are a pretty fair number of us who live in the city, and many of us have kids.

Then again, some times education people crack me up:

Several teachers report using personal funds to
purchase equipment such as DVD players, TVs, printers, and projectors in order to
deliver the curriculum as written and to allow students to participate as active learners.

I’ve heard that about TVs and DVD players–they definitely “allow students to participate as active learners.”

My four-year-old has listened with mild disbelief for a couple of weeks now whenever I’ve mentioned that people would be lining up outside the local Apple store to buy phones.  He’s seen the phones (or, at least the videos and the mockups), and thinks they’re cool, but he couldn’t get his brain around “lining up for hours to buy a phone.”  (And, yes, Alex, I’m getting one, though I didn’t go today.)

So, he did what he always does when he can’t get his brain around something: He modeled it.   He built an Apple store out of Lincoln Logs and PlayMobil accessories, and then queued up the customers.  (All photos linked below–both of his model and of the real customers–are by my kid.)

Here’s the customers lining up, here’s a tighter shot, and here’s a close-up of the pile of iPhone boxes on a deliveryman’s hand-truck.

At this point, my wife, who *also* couldn’t get her brain around “lining up to buy a cell phone,” decided to take him to the mall (Westfarms, in West Hartford, CT) to see whether Dad was right, or just insane.  She made sure he brought my camera: First he took a picture of the sign, to show where he was.  Then he took a picture of the people on line.  But then he got distracted by the security guard, who seemed on the verge of doing something interesting.  Alas, the guard turned out to be friendly.  Finally, The Little Man snapped a picture of the guard’s cool hat.

He definitely is on board with getting a real one now.  Maybe Fake Steve can send a shirt.