Analycize this...

Here's the latest from the mayor who runs the Chicago Public Schools. After facing something of a rebellion in the City Council following the parking meters/privatization scandal, followed by the forced 15-day furlough of 3,700 non-union city workers, Mayor Daley had this to say: "They can analycize anything. You know that."

The little red schoolhouse

WSJ ran this review of Jonathan Zimmer's new book, "Small Wonder," a history of the little red schoolhouse.

The one-room school was "neither as rundown as critics claimed nor as bucolic as defenders imagined," Mr. Zimmerman writes. But its champions understood its flaws. They were defending the principles of local autonomy and human-scale democracy. Mr. Zimmerman quotes a "rural mother" who lamented: "Individuality will be lost, the pride taken in 'our' school and 'our' teacher gone. Haven't the parents who bear the children anything to say?

Two letters

There were two good letters in this morning's Sun-Times. The first, "Want to retain teachers? Ask them for advice," from a retired teacher, helps explain why there's been such a high teacher attrition rate in Chicago. The second, "Don't revise history of 'police riot,' debunks the current rewriting of history around the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

He removed his badge so I couldn't see his star number. In a few moments the crowd began chanting, "The whole world is watching . . ." And the cops began to drag demonstrators to the police vans.