Socially Distant Cuisine

Anyone who's ever been to a company potluck should really appreciate this . The funniest thing is that I find myself making bizarre casseroles and jello salads for these events too, despite the fact that I'm a pretty good cook. What is it about lunch in Conference Room 5A that makes me reach for the cream of mushroom soup?

The New York Times' most forwarded article today is Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood . At its most interesting, the article asks what it means for society when well-trained, smart, and motivated women groomed for positions of leadership and power opt out of the 9-to-5 (or, more realistically, 9-to-6, 7 or 8) workday and take up the full-time work of raising children. The article argues that this is an important question for elite institutions as The women [these schools] are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers. What the article fails to properly acknowledge is that the majority of the "stay at home moms" who come from these high-achieving, privileged backgrounds probably won’t be structuring their days like those of a middle-class 1950s housewife. Instead, most will channel at least some of their hyper-perfectionist, overachieving, multi-ta...

Jonathan Kozol has a new book coming out this week, and will be speaking twice in DC to promote it: Politics and Prose on Friday and Blair HS in Silver Spring on Saturday morning. It's called The Shame of the Nation: Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America . I haven't seen a copy yet, but the press release for the Silver Spring event that I saw contained some excerpts, including the following: 'I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations,' said President Bush in his campaign for reelection in September 2004. 'It's working. It's making a difference.' Here we have one of those deadly lies that by sheer repetition is at length accepted by surprisingly large numbers of Americans. But it is not the truth; and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the black and brown and poor, and if it is not forcefully resisted it will lead us further in a very dangero...

Just put a long post over on Kindling Flames. I'm excited about this metaphor-- education entrepreneurs as development NGOs. Fleshed out, I think it has the potential for a really interesting paper! Especially because there's been a lot of talk recently about philanthropy in education, and its impact on the policy process. Reminds me of this great (if not a little abstract--but I love that stuff!) article I read last year--written by a linguist--about the power of metaphor to restrict or expand your thinking about an issue. From August 2003's TCR: The Matrix, Metaphors, and Re-imagining Education. I think I originally found it because some blog I was reading was mocking it as EduFluff, but the overall point, I think, is a good one. Good abstraction can open new understandings.

I couldn't help but laugh at this article today. Richard Hatch, the first winner of Survivor, apparently didn't report his prize money to the Feds, and thus didn't pay any taxes on it. Survivor was not only one of the most popular shows on TV, but also launched a cultural phenomenon... you'd think the dude would assume *someone* in IRS-Land watched it!