Links for April 29, 2016
The Unbearable Whiteness of Baseball
The Griffey showdown was one in a long line of coded racial arguments, minor battles between two types: the “standard” white player and his nonwhite foil. The archetype of the white baseball player has always been a study in negative space. He does not flip his bat after home runs. He does not insult the hard-working fans with talk about politics. He never takes more than one day at a time. As a result, he cannot exist without a foil to embody all those “flashy” or “hotheaded” or “provocative” things he is not. The foils, of course, have generally been black.
How ‘Productive Failure’ In Math Class Helps Make Lessons Stick
The general idea is to develop tasks that students will not be able to solve, but require them to call upon their preexisting knowledge to try to solve the problem. That knowledge can be of the subject itself, as well as the informal insights students bring from their lives. The students will inevitably fail — as the teacher expects them to — but that failure is framed as part of learning and so is not seen as shameful. This process primes students’ brains to learn the new concept from their instructor after the initial failure.
Is Staying In the New Going Out?
The rise of city-dwellers staying in is hard to quantify; how do you measure the frequency with which people don’t leave their homes? But culture, as usual, offers a mirror. Of all the customs that seem dated on shows like “Sex and the City” and “Entourage,” one of the most glaring is how often the characters went out — to premieres, cocktail parties, restaurant openings (are those even still a thing?), art openings, clubs.... We have memes about staying in (“Netflix and chill”) and phrases like “binge watch,” which suggest pathologically homebound behavior. We no longer dismiss the urge to remain warm, hidden, fed, cushioned and entertained indoors as a lamentable womblike regression.
(The correct answer is: no, you’re just getting older.)