Susan Engel Is Smarter Than Whitney Tilson

Editor's Note: For those who don't know who Whitney Tilson is, he is one of the many white neo-liberal hedge fund managers out there that need to satisfy their white guilt and think they no more than people of color. Kind of like William T Carroll.

Yesterday I commented on a rather moving, lucid, well thought out opinion piece from yesterday's New York Times. The author Susan Engel is the senior lecturer in psychology and Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. OK, fine.

Whitney "I Love Rest Area Glory Holes" Tilson in his latest mass email and blog labeled her as just another "ed school professor." Of course Whitney is in love with his own thoughts and fails to properly vet his convoluted thoughts. Of course, we here at SBSB are willing to sit Mr Tilson down and educate him on properly thinking before he opens his mouth (oops, we don't mean to keep him from opening his mouth at rest area glory holes) or places fingers to the keypad.

See Whitney, Susan Engel is a psychologist who delves into education. At least that is what I have been able to ascertain. If the crack research team here at SBSB is incorrect, there will be a retraction. In fact maybe we should look at her profile page from Williams (click on image to enlarge).

I would say very impressive. In fact if you saw the photo Whitney you would leave the rest area glory hole life behind. Notice what she teaches? Yes, psychology. I am sure she would have a field day with you. However you probably need the entire team at the Institut für schweren psychiatrischen Erkrankungen. I mean like day and night for six months. But go the the profile page and see more. The many books she has written. How many have you written? What's that? I hear crickets Whitney.

One more thing. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence. Students from Sarah Lawrence are hip and cool. I know. I live stone's throw from there. See them all the time. I know, you went to Harvard. Not impressed.

As for your lack of credentials in anything remotely to do with children, aside from somehow, someway siring them (you probably closed your eyes during those "interludes" hoping for it to be over), your bio page at your website comes up a big fat zero. So the question begs Whitney, why do you know more than Susan Engel?

Whitney, you whine that she is not advocating testing. In fact you were in such a hurry to show how much you think you know, as if you were stuck in one of Freud's five stages of psycho-sexual development. Guess which one? I'll give you a hint. It's like every time you email or blog it is your way of showing your "tremendous" phallus. Your way of making up for a certain physical shortcoming. Which probably explains why you are never on the receiving end of the glory hole.

OK, back to what I was saying. You totally missed this line; "The reforms suggested by the administration on Monday have the potential to help liberate our schools. But they can only do so much." At no time, nowhere did she say to give up testing. But you were to in love with yourself to even read this. Or you read it and did not have the higher order thinking skills to understand it.

As far as your comment that schools need to do regular testing to be able to know that students are learning, it is being done and has been done for decades. Spelling tests, reading tests, math tests, surprise quizzes, are just a few examples. We know if a students is learning by speaking with the student. Asking students open ended questions. Problem with people like you and open ended questioning is that the answers are like snowflakes. No two are ever alike.

Whitney the challenge is still on the table. I also want to add another. Teach in an inner city school and show us all how easy it is. Please put your hedge fund money where your mouth is.

As a service to the SBSB fan base here is the clipping from Whitney's email (click to enlarge):