Ian Underwood

I was thinking about the best way to get some yellow stars made for people who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19, to reflect the way that society will increasingly isolate and denigrate them, when I found that protesters in Germany had already started wearing such stars… until the German government banned the practice. Some … Read more

The Great Society was racist. How do we know that?  It was created by Lyndon Johnson.  And Johnson was a racist. How do we know he was a racist?  Because on various occasions, he used the N-word. And does it not follow from ‘progressive logic’ that anything created by a racist is itself racist, and … Read more

It would appear that, in general, this is not the case.  As evidence, consider the current discussion over ‘changing the filibuster’. President* (and former Senator) Biden’s new take on this mirrors that of Senator Manchin:  the rules should be changed so that, to engage in a filibuster, some Senator should have to be up there … Read more

The basic reasoning behind HR1 seems to be: If you have a right to vote, the government can’t make you prove anything before you can exercise that right. The basic reasoning of opponents of the bill seems to be:  We require proof in order to exercise all kinds of other rights — to buy or … Read more

Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) has been arguing of late that the rules governing the Senate filibuster should be changed, even though he graciously agrees that the Senate should continue to be required to take into consideration the views of the minority. But while Manchin thinks filibustering should be harder (he says ‘more painful’) to … Read more

From an episode of Peaky Blinders: Politics is about deliberately making things better for some people by deliberately making them worse for others. Has it ever been expressed more clearly than that? Note that the people for whom it’s intended that things will get better (like unions, or banks, or government employees and contractors) are … Read more

Remember when Democrats were trying to use House Rules as an excuse for disarming legislators in the statehouse, arguing that there are essentially no limits on what a majority of the House can do in its own chambers? I suggested that the next time the Republicans found themselves in the majority, they should pass a … Read more

Focusing on achievement — determining why some kids learn while others don’t, and exploring ways to deal with that — is hard.  It’s messy.  It can lead to uncomfortable conclusions — for example, that many of our traditional practices may actually be doing more harm than good. It’s much easier to focus on money.  It’s … Read more

The photo above shows a playground from the early 1900s. I know what you’re thinking:  Could something like that even exist today?  And should it? While you’re thinking that over, consider this perspective from Lady Allen of Hurtwood, a leader of the playground movement in Great Britain during the 1940s: Better a broken arm than … Read more

Here are two questions that people never seem to ask when talking about schools, because they’re obsessed with money: 1. If you want to learn something, can anyone stop you? 2. If you don’t want to learn something, can anyone make you? Perhaps instead of a pedagogy problem, what we have is a motivation problem.  … Read more

On lists of ‘21st century skills’ that we’d like kids to be learning, adaptability is usually near the top. We don’t know what the future will bring, except change.  So students need to be prepared to deal with how the world will be, rather than how it used to be. But how can public schools … Read more