Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” Carter G. Woodson, 1933 “America was built on the preferential treatment of white people—395 years of it. Vaguely endorsing a cuddly, feel-good diversity does very little to…
Posts published by “Emily Lardner”
“It’s often said of the Trump era that the Republic has drifted into uncharted waters, but the more damning estimation is that we are mindlessly revisiting some of the darker regions of our historical map.” Jelani Cobb Jelani Cobb’s December 2017 article in the New Yorker Magazine compares this era…
Readers of Works in Progress will likely know that The Evergreen State College closed at the end of May because of an anonymous caller to Thurston County Communications who said, “I’m on my way to Evergreen University now with a .44 Magnum. I am gonna execute as many people on…
“We are at the point where … staying within polite discourse has no effect. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’ve availed myself of every available legal alternative. Nothing has been effective. When you get to that point, what’s left? If you’re, like me, driven to do something, you…
In November 2016, Evergreen’s Equity and Inclusion Council released its 2016-2017 Strategic Equity Plan. The central commitment in the plan is to “substantially improve the experiences of underserved students on our campus so that we close equity gaps in student learning and student success.” Strategic plans don’t necessarily lead to…
Olympia is home to an amazing alternative scene, as Teresa Eckstein pointed out in a February 2016 article for this paper, including over 20 alternative public and private schools, preschool through college. Alternative schools provide students with approaches to learning—project-based, arts-based, individualized, and/or community-oriented—that differ from traditional classroom approaches. Offering…
The responsibility of higher education to work toward alleviating wealth inequality Setting the stage We live in a time of unprecedented economic inequality in this country—unprecedented in severity, not in its existence. Policy changes, like increasing the minimum wage, revising tax codes to make them more equitable, making health care…
Policy changes that matter The most recent incident I’ve seen of a police officer shooting a Black person was reported by Nika Wright on July 19 on the Common Dreams website. According to Wright, and now more widely across news sources, Charles Kinsey, a caregiver at a group home in…
Call from a tree One of the reasons I supported Bernie Sanders’ bid to be president was the clarity with which he said we have to address climate change. In late June, a federal district judge in Wyoming, Judge Scott W. Skavdahl, overturned the Department of the Interior’s ban…
The United Way’s ALICE report reveals the real situation of struggling workers We are getting towards the end of the quarter at Evergreen, where I teach in the Evening and Weekend Studies Program, and I’ve been meeting with students to talk about their writing. These conversations are interesting, providing windows…
The King I wish I had known The representation of Martin Luther King Jr. that I grew up with, being only 10 years old when he was murdered, was very similar to the image portrayed in the powerful film, “Selma”, and like most people I know, I grew up reading…
Last month, I spent a weekend in New York City visiting family, and as I rode the subway in Manhattan from Columbus Circle to 34st, and from Grand Central to 40st in Queens, and from Herald Square to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, I thought about the attacks that happened in…
A need for adequate child care provided in a financially responsible manner One of my daughters recently moved from Olympia to Brooklyn NY, where she works as the director of a preschool. Her school, open from 7am to 6pm, Monday through Friday, is designed to serve kids between 2 and…
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues were interested in motivation. In particular, they wanted to understand why, faced with difficulties in school, some students are motivated to work at getting better while others aren’t, apparently lacking in motivation. What was that difference about? Through their research with both young…
La psicóloga de Stanford Carol Dweck y sus colegas estaban interesados en estudiar la motivación. En particular, querían entender por qué, frente a dificultades en la escuela, algunos estudiantes están motivados para trabajar y mejorar, mientras que otros no lo están y al parecer carecen de motivación. ¿Cuál es la…
When the Republican candidates talk about climate change Ever since I watched the Republican’s presidential debate on September 16, I’ve been experiencing existential arthritis. My sense of purpose feels stuck—it’s hard to get up in the morning and think life has meaning after listening to hours of righteous declarations backed…
Los Republicanos hablan sobre el cambio climático Desde que vi el debate presidencial republicano el 16 de septiembre, he estado experimentando artritis existencial. Mi sentido de propósito siente cohibido, es difícil levantarse por la mañana y pensar que la vida tiene sentido después de escuchar horas de virtuosa declaraciones respaldadas…
The Pacific Northwest has become a “choke point”, as activist Katie Rickman says, for the growth of the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. On their website, Audubon Washington provides a comprehensive account of where things stand now in terms of oil transport (http://wa.audubon.org/oil-trains), an issue that Works in Progress…
In Ecuador, right now, the wealthiest 2% are engaging in organized protests aimed at undermining a democratically elected government. Some think they intend an illegal seizure of power—a coup d’etat—and the president of Venezuela has called upon leaders in the region to guard against this newest challenge to democratically enacted…
Last month, I had the opportunity to visit a community college near San Francisco that is implementing a Spark Point Center on campus, a centralized hub where low-income students can access core services aimed at helping them achieve financial stability. The underlying assumption is that if low-income students have more…
Can gardening help repair the “normal psychological wear and tear” of ordinary living? In the book, Green Nature, Human Nature, Charles Lewis, horticulturalist and resident scholar at the Morton Arboretum, a botanical garden outside Chicago, argues that it can. Lewis writes about plants the way a lover writes about a…
The cap and trade system bill unlikely to make it out of the state senate A bill that would institute a cap and trade system to put a price on carbon in WA State was held hostage this month. SB 5283 never left the committee that Senator Doug Ericksen (R)…
Climate change and its discontents: finding our way forward in a planetary crisis Governor Inslee’s proposed Carbon Pollution Accountability Act may not be perfect but it needs our support. Why? Because it’s our biggest and best chance right now to assert the value of the planet over the rights of…
When I was growing up, the Thanksgiving holiday meant that my family got together with aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents from all limbs of the family tree to eat turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and pie. At some point in the increasingly rowdy conversations, a solemn adult…
When it comes to taxes, Washington has the most regressive in the nation The Supreme Court in Washington State is insisting that basic education be fully funded, and the group responsible for making that happen is the State Legislature. It’s not clear how exactly that’s going to happen. It is…