The Top 5: Safe Spaces and Ideaspaces
Also, we remember 9/11/01
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind” (The Atlantic)
Because Jen Senior’s article last year on 9/11 was so powerful it won a Pulitzer, and we wanted to feature it again this year as we remember and mourn 9/11, 22 years later.
“Notes on progress: An environmentalist gets lunch” (Notes on Progress - Substack)
Because an environmentalist tells us, “what is ‘good’ for the environment often doesn’t line up with our intuitions.”
“The Safe Space That Became a Viral Nightmare” (NYT)
Because this is just one more entry in the broader discussion on free speech, hate speech, and inclusion considerations on college campuses across the country. “…cultural centers have also become something of a manufactured controversy as of late. According to some critics, these rooms and adjacent projects, like so-called affinity housing, in which students can elect to live in Black or Latino-themed dorms, for instance, are new forms of segregation, because they focus on the lives of minority students instead of the majority, which in most cases is white. None of these spaces exclude white students, but articles about them often imply that they do.”
“Engineering and the Evolving Ideaspace” (the shimmering void - Substack)
Because while this is a very cerebral article, it’s no wonder because the author discusses where ideas come from, how cultural evolution spurs new ideas, and how ideas last and lead to innovation.
“Gun Person” (Guernica Magazine)
Because we include this essay for its poignancy in writing about being a 21st century teacher amidst mass shootings. “The lesson I take away is that I’m not ready. The walls in our classrooms are so thin. This training has not trained us.
Not once did the volunteer use the word if. Always when.”