The Arizona highway seemed an endless blur, edged by desert sand, and topped with a starry night sky. Sue, Josh and Benjie slept behind me in the van, while my thoughts flew back to Pennsylvania. Angry thoughts. Confused thoughts. Replaying the events that led to my resignation from the public schools and to our present […]
Compulsory Education
By Ted Watchel The day before I started my first year of teaching, I put the following quotation from George Santayana on the bulletin board in ominous black letters: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The quotation stayed up for several weeks, until I changed it to a display of […]
Measuring the Marigolds: The Folly of School Grading
by Ted Wachtel Inchworm, inchworm Measuring the marigolds. Seems to me you’d stop and see How beautiful they are. “If you cannot count it, it does not count,” is the official school motto. Without measurement, schools would not be schools. I estimate that I spent the equivalent of between one and two full school years […]
