By Andrew J. CoulsonDiane Ravitch is a leading education historian. Her work in that field is characteristically thorough and well-researched, and her books The Troubled Crusade and The Great School Wars, in particular, made significant contributions to our understanding of U.S. education history.

In my mailbox yesterday, addressed to "Resident":

You probably got one too! Apparently, it's
Next-Week-Is-Census-Day Day!
Once the initial "you have got to be kidding me" response
subsided, I called up the folks at the Census Bureau and they were
kind enough to send me their canned response to the "are you
freaking kidding me?" calls and emails they have been getting all
day. Excerpted below:

A front-page story in USA Today highlights
the "growing popular acceptance of marijuana," as reflected in
polls, ballot initiatives, and legislation. It notes that 14 states
allow medical use of cannabis, while others are considering similar
reforms; that the idea of reducing or eliminating criminal
penalties for simple possession seems to be catching on; and that a
large minority of Americans (more than 40 percent) say they support
outright legalization, as do most Californians.

One day we will all wake up from this nightmare,
and ask ourselves when exactly did we get to the point
where the first, second, third, and 99th reaction to every problem,
real and imagined, was to have the government do something about
it? On that Day of Judgment, we will be pointing bony fingers at
seemingly routine stories like this:

Appearing on Real Time With Bill Maher, amateur
Latin America scholar Sean Penn details his recent humanitarian
trip to Haiti, reveals that he has started an NGO, and praises the
United States military's reconstruction efforts in Port-au-Prince,
calling it the "most noble [military] mission since World War II."
(Penn has apparently forgotten the 2004 operation to provide relief to
parts of tsunami-ravaged South Asia.) 

Now run my health care!
Aren't there a coupla wars going on? A financial crisis?
Health-care debates? Oscar brouhahas? Decent weather for a
change?
It's good to know that the Federal Communications Commission,
among the least useful of any government agency to last into the
21st century (or the really way too long 20th century), is resolute
in working through its backlog of indecency complaints like
Eric Massa through his male staff after, like, "15
gin and tonics" (gins and tonic?).

Philip Jenkins, who has a history of
writing intelligently about religion in the Third World, has an
engaging article in The American Conservative about
Muslim/Christian conflicts in Indonesia, Nigeria, and elsewhere in
Asia and Africa.

Here’s this year’s book catalog (in black and white to save bandwidth)Download (PDF, 1.51MB)