Well, not "from now on," but blogging is going to have to take a backseat to scholarship in the near future. I've just had several proposed efforts hit all at once. In the immediate future my attention is going to have to go to
- a local presentation at UK on bullying
- a local presentation at EKU on the legal history of inequity in Kentucky schools
- a national publication (accepted with revisions) on M A Cassidy
- a book chapter (accepted)on Education Reform in Kentucky: Just What the Court Ordered
- an international paper and presentation (accepted)on the legal and political hurdles to late 20th century school reform in Kentucky
- an international presentation on bullying (in the works)
- a handbook for EKU's new 200 hour co-op - part of our expanding clinical pre-service teaching experience
- a redesign of my course EDF 203: Philosophical and Historical Foundations of Education
So, try not to do anything Earth-shattering until I get back.
2 comments:
Let us never forget who M.A. Cassidy was or his insensitivity to black Lexintonians!
Kolan Morelock's "Taking the Town"
After seeing Birth of a Nation, Cassidy "said yesterday he believed the picture contained unusual educational qualities, and endorsed its presentation in Lexington."
page 155
Thanks for the reference. I didn't have that one.
But before you settle on this one remark as being definitive of him as a man, I hope you'll balance that with his long history - surprising perhaps - of working to bring black schools up to the same standards as white schools in Lexington and his strong support for other progressive initiatives.
But I will also attempt to show how, even that support, may fit into one type of "new south" accomodationist white supremacy.
Cassidy was an unapologetic ex-confederate sympathist, sure enough. My article will cite some of his racist comments and efforts to revise Confederate history as told in the schools. But it will also document a much more complex set of circumstances in Kentucky, and Lexington in particular, at the close of the 19th century.
It would appear that finding a racist in Kentucky at that time was a lot like finding a speeder at Indy.
My effort will be to present the facts of his superintendency in context with the larger movements going on in the "new south" at the time. It's a lot more nuanced than I originally thought. I hope readers will come to see that too.
I've about come to the conclusion that Cassidy represents, in one individual person, much of the confusion that attended Kentucky's shift from a Union state before the Civil War, to the neutral state that bred both presidents during the war, to a Confederate state after the war, as ex-confederates dominated the political structures.
If there was some concern that I might whitewash his record and only show the sizable quantity of "good news" from his administration, since he is the namesake of my former school - don't worry. That's not how I work.
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