Ruyi's World of Books & Stories

Each time the issue of racism is mentioned,  tensions immediately run high, reason is thrown out the window, and emotional outbursts run rampant. Even though a lot of effort has been done to fight it, the devastating consequences continue to this day. The heart of this book is focused on the key elements that make racism possible and how to starve the lifeblood to these key elements and eradicate them from the root. Since racism is based on the faulty notion that one race is superior to another, you need somebody who believes that they are superior and another person who believes that they are inferior. When these two people interact, the outcome will reflect what they believe about themselves and their circumstances. This may sound too simplistic, but it is one of the major drivers of racism. In addition to superiority and inferiority beliefs, acts of impunity and unforgiveness are the other drivers. You have those that believe they are superior, and in their zeal to impose thei...

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter:  @farooqkperogi Before COVID-19, we were told that traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and face-to-face instructional methods were museum-bound. That compelled me to enroll for online teaching certification 5 years ago. But the COVID-19-inspired transition to online-only pedagogy across the world this year has shown that the reports of the death of traditional ways of knowledge dissemination are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain. The data that has emerged, at least in the US, shows that wholly online learning environments are too inadequate and too socially impoverished to stand in for the full "college experience." Students detest it, parents resent it, and teachers chafe at it. There're many reasons for this. I'll share only one personal example to make my point. A few years ago, a student I taught in an entirely online class and whom I'd never physically met requested me to write a recommendation letter for...