Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that as educators, we are supposed to be in the vanguard of teaching higher order critical thinking skills to our students. However, we’re like a leaky rowboat fighting a tidal wave of “gut reaction” across society. The campaigns, for instance, don’t want voters to think critically about their choice. Instead, they want to hit a “hot button” issue that will compel one choice over the other. We live in a world of emotion-based decision making, completely against what we understand about critical thinking, and it really shows in political races.

And, the Steelers won!

The link to that post: http://toughsledding.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/redneck-and-proud-of-it-what-wrong-with-this-picture/

Anyway, I sure hope your concerns that racism will rear its ugly head tomorrow are misplaced. But I’ve seen and heard too much of this intolerance from guys like Joe the Plumber. I’m surprised more folks didn’t call him on that Sammy Davis, Jr. reference, but my pointing it out only gets me the label of “urban elitist.” (If they only knew. Sheesh.)

A heartfelt post, Bob. But all this is distracting me from the important business of the evening. Go Steelers!