Andrew Ordover's Blog: Scenes from a Broken Hand, page 17

New Year’s Day and the Man in the Mirror: What Can We Change?

(this post was previously published in a slightly different version at http://www.catapultlearning.com/categ...)

On New Year’s Day, 1990, the newly elected president of a
newly democratic Czechoslovakia stood in front of his people and spoke about
the fall of Communism and the challenges that lay ahead. He started his speech
like this:




My dear fellow citizens,


For forty years you

Election Day: Education and the Pursuit of Happiness

Originally published by Catapult Learning, LLC, at: http://www.catapultlearning.com/2012/...



Then tell me, O Critias, how will a man choose the ruler that shall rule over him? Will he not choose a man who has first established order in himself, knowing that any decision that has its spring from anger or pride or vanity can be multiplied a

If You Build It, They Will Come: The Importance of School Structure

This post was originally published on the Catapult Learning site, at: http://www.catapultlearning.com/2012/...


"There are several ways," Dr. Breed said to me, "in which certain liquids can crystallize--can freeze--several ways in which their atoms can stack and lock in an orderly, rigid way." That old man with spotted hands

Transitioning and Teaching: The Common Core State Standards and Math

This post was originally published on the Catapult Learning site, at http://www.catapultlearning.com/2012/...


The meeting room was generic. The hotel could have been anywhere. I had to wonder how many people had cycled in and out of that room over the years, staring at PowerPoint slides that someone had thought would change

Back to School: The End of the Silly Season

(originally published at http://www.catapultlearning.com/categ...)

In Washington, where I live, the summer months are often called the “silly season,” the time when logic flies out the window and the news media focus (more than they usually do) on the frivolous and the outrageous. During a presidential election year, the silly season becomes a time of alarmist rhetoric, full of dire

Learning on Demand

The world of education does a marvelous job of ignoring and resisting modern fads and trends, serving up instruction in more-or-less unchanged ways for over a hundred years. It will be interesting to see if we can hold out against the trend of "on-demand" that has affected so many other areas of modern life.

We've already seen the authority of the gatekeeper erode in face of on-demand publishing

Soup-Kitchen Schooling

Remember those old movies where homeless men dragged their ragged bodies into Salvation Army shelters for some soup and perhaps a bed, and had to sit through some kind of religious service as their "payment" for the room and board?

This appears to be Louisiana's new model of education reform:


Louisiana is embarking on the nation's boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the

Breakfast with Boys

One of the nicest things about my day is that I get to have breakfast with my two boys before going to work. I read the paper while the boys read the comics. Sometimes we talk about news stories. Sometimes we talk about what's going on in school. Sometimes we talk about whatever is on their minds. It's a nice, low-key time of day.

This morning, I read them a story from the Washington Post about

"Sodomy is Not a Civil Right"

So says some cretin in my home state of Virginia, who unfortunately has the power to derail the appointment of a gay judge, and was able to get his ugly face on television to spout off about it.

How about "being left the hell alone?" Isn't that a civil right?

How did a country founded by people running away from religious intolerance and political oppression mutate into this nation of

What We Owe Each Other

The human is a social animal. It always has been, and it always will be. To abandon that essential fact about us is to destroy us. Live together or die alone. A human who rejects society and goes off to live entirely alone has always--everywhere--been regarded as a a saint or a mystic or a madman. Everywhere.

We have a myth, in this country, that we are rugged individualists, and that we need