The Carpetbagging Yankees

5 comments… add one

• Marianne Davis Sep 16, 2010  

  Please indulge me, Kevin, do you know any middle school instructors who would use this material? Apropos of the video itself — Are the kids meant to think it was reprehensible to work for the Freedmen’s Bureau educating former slaves? Are they to believe that southern whites who supported Reconstruction were swindlers and criminals?
  I took a moment to go to Insight Learning’s website, where they describe their products as ““for middle school administrators, teachers and parents who are dissatisfied with the low achievement impact of existing grade level material.” My questions for you are; 1. In English, does “low achievement impact” mean “poor quality”? and 2. Why do so many educrats imagine that obfuscation indicates erudition? We finance types may be going straight to Hell, but at least we won’t describe it as diathermically optimized.

  • Kevin Levin Sep 16, 2010  

    Marianne,

    I don’t really know how to respond accept to echo your disgust with the content of this video.

• Larry Cebula Sep 16, 2010  

  These Ignite Learning history videos are terrible and getting worse. You can find a ton of them on YouTube.

• James Kabala Sep 20, 2010  

  “Are the kids meant to think it was reprehensible to work for the Freedmen’s Bureau educating former slaves?”

  I think the video is actually trying to put forth a Goofus-and-Gallant contrast in which rapacious Spanky is the good carpetbagger and educator Franky is the good carpetbagger. That’s not to say the video isn’t awful, but it does have a tiny degree of nuance.

• James Kabala Sep 23, 2010  

  I mean Spanky is the bad carpetbagger and Franky the good one.