By [email protected] July 21, 2016 Uncategorized No Comments From the movie “Dumbo” to Saturday morning cartoons, the image of an elephant cowering from a tiny mouse is pretty well established. A 2007 episode of the Mythbusters television show actually seemed to validate this theory, as evidenced by this short video clip. But, have you heard that […]

By [email protected] July 20, 2016 Uncategorized 6 Comments You know the scene in Animal House where Kevin Bacon bends over to grab his ankles while a cloaked, paddle-wielding Doug Niedermeyer smacks him on the butt for a fraternity initiation? With each stroke of the paddle, Bacon exclaims: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” The […]

Back in March, education blogger and Pennsylvania school teacher, Peter Greene (curmudgucation.blogspot.com), wrote this about the nationwide teacher shortage: If you want to buy a Lexus for $7.95 and nobody will sell one to you for that price, that is not a sign of an automobile shortage. If you want to hire a surgeon to cut […]

By [email protected] July 3, 2016 Uncategorized No Comments As you might expect, I watched the recent state primary elections with great anticipation. A relatively balanced summary of the results was posted by Trevor Brown on the Oklahoma Watch website Tuesday night. As Brown opined, “Overall, the results of last week’s primary didn’t produce a clear […]

How to Better Teach Critical Thinking – Model it! By [email protected] June 30, 2016 Uncategorized No Comments According to one of many insightful comments attributed to Mark Twain:  “All generalizations are false, including this one.” Given that premise, consider the following faulty generalizations: Ideologies are a great thing. They provide us with consistent belief systems. They […]

By [email protected] June 28, 2016 Uncategorized No Comments I would be surprised if not all of us, at some point in our lives, hadn’t been admonished by someone with the scolding phrase: “Don’t be such a jerk.” While those words obviously cause us to want to become defensive (“Well, if I’m a jerk, you’re a bigger jerk!”) […]

By [email protected] June 26, 2016 Uncategorized No Comments The poor misunderstood BLOB. According to the dictionary, a blob can be a globule of liquid, a small lump or splotch, an oozy amorphous object, or a dull, slow-witted person. Certainly none of these conjure up positive impressions in the mind of those on the receiving end […]

By [email protected] June 23, 2016 Uncategorized 1 Comment Here’s a dumb question: At what point after a locomotive crashes should the engineer and fireman stop shoveling coal? I would think the first priorities in the above scenario would be to clean up the wreckage, investigate the cause of the crash, and then work to correct […]