Notices by Alfie Kohn (alfiekohn@sciences.social)

An awful lot of election analysts seem to be suffering from monocausotaxophilia - the love of finding a single cause that explains everything.

(But does this sort of sweeping reductionism itself explain why we're always getting into trouble? And if so, would that be called metamonocausotaxophilia?)

The classic conservative two-step:
1) Underfund public schools, hospitals, the post office, etc.
2) Point to the now-struggling institution and say, "You see? Government can't do anything right!"

Today, as federal employees are chased out by Trumpists, substitute "Forcibly depopulate" for "underfund." The same self-fulfilling prophecy unfolds.

"Israel isn’t massacring people in Lebanon because Hezbollah is attacking Israel; it’s massacring them so that it can go on massacring Palestinians."
Eye-opening read from @FAIR: "Demonizing Hezbollah":
https://fair.org/home/demonizing-hezbollah-to-legitimize-a-us-israel-onslaught-on-lebanon/

Someone going to start collecting these?

After I posted about my inability to understand how the sleazy guy who brags about abusing women could actually be favored over his (female) opponent by a majority of white women, I stumbled on this answer:

It strains my imaginative capacities to the breaking point to understand how any woman - or even anyone who loves a woman - could consider voting for this malignant misogynist.

Those bent on whitewashing history, banning LGBTQ-friendly literature, and otherwise imposing their reactionary values on the rest of us know that a little intimidation goes a long way because educators then get busy "self-censoring, well beyond the most controversial books":
https://slate.com/life/2024/09/banned-books-week-schools-censorship.html

Speaking of self-censorship, this warning by Timothy Snyder also applies to newspaper owners afraid of antagonizing - and thereby acting as enablers of - an incoming vindictive authoritarian.

Another example: The new Trump biopic "The Apprentice" almost didn't get released because all the movie studios were so afraid of angering Trump. "You think that things could be banned in North Korea or Russia or certain places, but you don't think that will ever happen here," co-star Jeremy Strong told the NY Times. "It's a dark harbinger that it even nearly happened."

Rhetorical question: What does it say about this country that all three of these things can be true simultaneously?

An English teacher quoted (misleadingly, she says) in a recent Atlantic article disputes its claim that kids are no longer able to read full books: Actually, she argues, they're "eminently capable of critically engaging in long form content, but are rightfully demanding a seat at the table where decisions about texts are being made": https://cmsthomas.substack.com/p/the-atlantic-did-me-dirty

Interesting observation from conservative Christian columnist David French: "In 9 years, countless Republican primary voters have moved from voting for Trump in spite of his transgressions to rejecting anyone who doesn't transgress. If you're not transgressive, you're suspicious. Decency...is seen as a rebuke of Trump."

There's a similar divergence with abortion-rights measures that are coming up for a vote in multiple states:
Proponents try to prevail by offering substantive arguments in favor.
Opponents use the power of the state "to keep these measures off the ballot or make them hard to pass" (NYT).
This is one more example of a far-right minority imposing its will on the majority. And it's only going to get worse.

Apart from what it says about our country that the election could even be this close, notice the difference in the kinds of developments that are tilting it one way vs. the other.
Toward her: strong debate performance, Taylor Swift's endorsement, etc.
Toward him: stuff like this (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/18/trump-election-georgia). And this:

I propose an update of Aristophanes' “Lysistrata” in which the appalled spouses and lovers of those planning to vote for Trump make it clear what the domestic cost will be.

"Ditching my rubrics freed me up to make the kind of comments that could most help my students." And in the absence of a rubric, this teacher adds, she now finds herself reading her students' essays with genuine "curiosity about what [they] had to say": https://medium.com/bullshit-ist/why-i-threw-away-my-rubrics-323e51a7aa49#.hzylpgo7c
(My own take on rubrics is here: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/trouble-rubrics/. And for comprehensive guides to moving beyond them, see Maja Wilson's books "Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment" and "Reimagining Writing Assessment.")

A little disconcerted to receive this request from Beacon Press, an independent progressive publisher that I've worked with on a couple of my books. Thoughts?

From the archives: "Poor Teaching for Poor Children...in the Name of Reform," published in 2011: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/poor/. What, if anything, has changed since then?

The #NYTimes has officially become a parody of itself.

"The past was alterable. The past had never been altered."
-- George Orwell, 1984