*** Bob’s Insider’s Message ***
(reprinted to Blog from 1/1/04 email list)
Everyone seems to be looking for the magic bullet, the way to solve everything at once. But every battle is won one bullet at a time, not by a magic bullet.
One of my blog readers made a comment that makes the efforts I’ve put into the book and WOL worthwhile. The fact that he said it in the midst of chewing me out did not matter. I deserved the chewing out.
“Oh, and yes, I do own a copy of your book and I’m not sending my kids to college as a result so don’t start with me.”
What more can I say.
Happy New Year.
Bob
#1 by Elizabeth on 01/16/2005 - 1:14 pm
I’ve read your book. I’m also a graduate student in my 40s: I finally got tired of banging my head into a brick wall and decided to go ahead and a get a piece of paper or two that _proves_ I know things, since prospective employers weren’t willing to take my word for it.
Teach children to _think_, to look for the messages behind the messages. My parents did that, which made for some embarrassing incidents, as well as some prolonged discomfort, such as during “Social Studies” units on what a wonderful organization the U.N. is.
At my age of ….uh…., I’ve long since been used to reading between the lines of just about everything.
In History, there’s a specialty called “historiography,” which is the study of what gets written as history and how it gets written. I hate jargon with a _passion_, but I understand historiography. (It’s a required subject for non-Education graduate degrees in History.) I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I understand it….
#2 by Joe R. on 01/18/2005 - 3:03 pm
One of the things that this reminds me of is something that I seem to have been doing a lot of lately. That is to use clever wording to liberals to actually get them angry about some of these things. It’s like “giving them permission” to take on an issue that they would normally accept blindly. They cannot really think for themselves, so you have to think for them and go through all of the logical steps, then sometimes it appears that a little light goes on in their heads. They sort’ve stare in space for several seconds while I examine their face and hope that they make the necessary connection. You need a lot of patience, but it occasionally can be mildly rewarding.