Search

The years of independence have changed various social, political, and literary realities in Kazakhstan, which has affected the thematic and stylistic expressions of Kazakh writers. Thus, research should identify the ideological, social, and thematic features of modern literary writing produced during the years of independence. In particular, social symbolism's role in transmitting national ideals should be scrutinized simply because such sentiments have various literature, cultural, and educational repercussions. Hence, this paper distinguishes the main issues and ideas revealed in post-independence fiction to give a diachronic analysis of the thematic scope of modern Kazakh literature. Following this, this study discusses the themes and topics found in post-independence Kazakh short fiction to shed light on how these texts can be used pedagogically.

This manuscript suggests that comic art or cartoons can be used for illustrating, depicting, skewering, or even satirizing ethical, unethical, and other practices associated with business decision-making. As a classroom instructional project, the approach presents arguments for why cartooning is a useful tool for business, education, and the arts. Cartooning can improve decision making by fostering creativity and generating more relevant and meaningful solutions to the problem. It is posited that artful cartooning will be of value to management decision makers when used as a tool to explain funny, difficult and/or heretofore inexplicable and puzzling phenomenon encountered both within the confines of the business world and beyond.

Politics and International Relations (Pol & IR) lecturers can capitalise on the established relationship between comedy and political analysis by using humour techniques to enhance the student learning experience and to develop students' critical analysis skills. Using collected data from focus groups with 21 British and International undergraduate students from four UK universities, this small-scale empirical study advances a methodology that enables participants to engage in collective meaning-making without being restricted by a closed-ended question survey. This research highlights student perceptions that humour attempts can make concepts memorable, improve student-lecturer rapport, and increase student engagement and motivation when lecturers consistently adopt a friendly persona and use humour to supplement high-quality lecture content. Mild self-deprecation by lecturers improves the student-lecturer relationship. Lecturer "banter" with students is risky, but might be acceptable if the lecturer's persona is consistently humorous and sufficient student trust is developed. Participants considered that analogies and pop culture references are beneficial explanatory tools, especially for complex Pol & IR concepts or theories. Memes were considered to be most effective when used as a summarising or concluding point, thus corroborating the "educate before subvert" principle.

From a cultural perspective, humor may be a universal feature of all cultures, but what is considered funny varies greatly from culture to culture. In this article, the authors demonstrate the importance of understanding kinds of humor that differ across cultures and offer clear suggestions for teaching three kinds--verbal irony, memes, and satirical news--with examples that can help students develop humor competency and enhance their twenty-first-century skills, including digital and media literacy.

This paper aims to study English jokes on Facebook. Since the current generation of our students is often described as Net Geners, learning the English language via jokes posted on social media can be one of the supportive ways for EFL learners to improve their L2 linguistic competence as well as L2 humor competence. The data, or jokes, in this study were collected from one of the most popular public pages, entitled "English is Fun". Seventy four jokes (out of 200 posts) from 1 to 16 April 2019 were collected and analyzed. The study result revealed that there were two major types of jokes: one was in a textual form while the other was a mixed-code message, or a combination of verbal and non-verbal elements. The latter was further classified into two subtypes: one had a verbal element as the primary factor to provoke humor while the other required interaction between the verbal element and nonverbal element. In addition, the findings showed that there were four types of logical mechanisms: pun, false analogy, faulty reasoning, and satire. As jokes can be a good source of teaching materials, three possible ways for using jokes in teaching the English language were suggested.

Sociology instructors have long used nontraditional texts such as literary fiction to demonstrate core course concepts, increase student engagement, and develop students' critical thinking in the classroom. In this article, I explore how written assignments structured around identifying core course concepts in a dystopian novel that connects to student interests can help develop higher-level and critical sociological thinking skills. Using data from an upper-level Sociology of Media course at a large, Midwestern university, I detail a final paper assignment centered around M. T. Anderson's dystopian satire novel "Feed." I present qualitative and quantitative findings that demonstrate students' successful use of higher-level and critical sociological thinking to identify, analyze, and support original arguments regarding core course concepts within the dystopian world and our own.

Oscar Wilde was described by W. B. Yeats as "a man of action, a born dramatist." Although people did not recognize him as a serious playwright until the 1890s, Wilde had managed to find other outlets for his theatrical passion, for example in writing fiction. In this paper, it is argued that Wilde incorporates metadrama into his 1888 fairy tale collection, "The Happy Prince and Other Tales." The discussion focuses on how Wilde employs the metatheatrical devices of the-play-within-the-play and role-playing to treat the social problems of self-immolating altruism and identity crisis respectively. In representing the social malady of exaggerated self-sacrifice, Wilde adopts the satirizing strategy which maintains the sense of the illusion evoked by the inset tale while simultaneously estranging the outer/inner story connection by dint of nonrecognition. Similarly, identity crisis is reflected through an estranged mode of role-playing: Wilde's characters impress the reader as performing too much to have a real-life identity. The ironic detachment enabled by the two metadramatic tactics in question constructs a mask, which allows Wilde to criticize social problems in a non-imitative manner, the central aim of the 1888 volume. In Wilde's fairy tales, the use of metadrama, in facilitating representations from a critical distance, can be seen as an example of what is labelled as "sincere mannerisms." Beneath the mask of his insincerity, Wilde is truly a serious humanist, assiduous in imparting to us the knowledge of ourselves and our existential condition.

The universities said it! Arthur provides a (thinkable) scenario, via the University of Central Tasmania.

Informed by a theoretical model of satirical uptake, this study investigated processing behavior and comprehension of satirical news articles. Reading times for segments of minimally different satirical and non-satirical texts were collected using within-subjects (Experiment 1) and between-subjects (Experiment 2) designs. Segment reading times and participant familiarity with news genres were used to predict ratings of sincerity, humor, and agreement, as well as manually coded comprehension scores for the satirical texts. In both experiments, text perceptions were significantly different for satirical (vs. non-satirical) texts, with some processing differences observed in Experiment 1. Further results from Experiment 1 included no effects for segment reading times on text perceptions or comprehension scores but did include effects for genre familiarity on text perceptions. Experiment 2 results indicated slower reading times were associated with higher perceptions of sincerity and lower chances of satire comprehension, suggesting effortful processing is a marker of failed satirical uptake.

While humor has long been documented as a useful teaching tool, it is almost entirely untheorized in terms of its potential for multicultural education. Specifically, the learning opportunities that racial comedic media offer in multicultural and anti-racist coursework is a particularly under-studied area, while research in this vein has great potential to positively affect pedagogies both within and beyond courses on critical multicultural education. In this article, two instructors, together with their students, examine the use of racial comedy as a teaching tool for multicultural education. The article begins by providing a brief overview of the literature on racial comedy and use of comedy in teaching, followed by a close look at salient characteristics of the teaching and learning environment of the course that allowed this work to emerge. The crux of the article centers on the identification and exploration of four themes, or interpretive tensions, animated by the class' engagement with racial comedy, and thusly helps illuminate the possibilities and complexities of utilizing racial comedy for multicultural education: (1) insider humor carries questions about who holds permission to initiate racial jokes and who is allowed to laugh at them; (2) perceptions of comedic irresponsibility inspired discussion around delineating between critical race comedy versus overtly racist comedy, and the gray areas in between; (3) educative commentary ensconced within racial comedy, such as that of many Dave Chappelle sketches, revealed our concerns about viewers who, lacking historicity and knowledge of root contexts undergirding the comedy, would likely misinterpret the humorous scenarios and thusly have their own racist stereotypes reinforced; and (4), while parody is humorous because of its inherent ridiculousness, we found that parodic racial comedy may create the opportunity for a slightly uncomfortable self-check, where the viewer can process her or his own actions and responses (assuming that he or she is receptive to such thinking). In highlighting these interpretive tensions, this analysis offers guidance for instructors and facilitators embarking on this journey, and furthermore contributes to our understanding of the possible pedagogical benefits from using racial comedy more broadly. [This article was written with contributions from Melanie Abbe, Sarah Apgar, Rachel Strongin, Susan Giarratano, and Serena Shields.]

This mixed-methods study explores how the use of satirical news videos contributes to student engagement with information literacy (IL) instruction. The sample was drawn from first-year undergraduate students in for-credit IL courses. Overall, the use of satirical news videos improved student engagement with, and enjoyment of, IL topics. Given the challenge of understanding the videos' satirical intent, however, instructors must provide context and discussion to help students process and critically understand the videos. This study also uncovered students' levels of trust in media sources, which have broader implications for undergraduate IL instruction.

Satirical news is a type of humorous media that mixes parody and satire to critique contemporary figures, events, and situations (Ermida, 2012; McClennen & Maisel, 2014; Peters, 2013). In addition to satirical television news programs like The Daily Show, satirical news websites such as "The Daily Mash," "The Onion," and "The Shovel" are extremely popular in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, respectively. There are also satirical websites for a number of subcultures, including foreign English-speaking residents in Japan ("Rising Wasabi"), sports fans ("Sports Pickle"), and evangelical Christians ("Babylon Bee"). Although satirical news is sometimes criticized as fake, scholars have contended that satirical news stimulates critical thinking about media, politics, and social issues through fun and intelligent coverage of current events (Fife, 2016; Peters, 2013).

Previous investigations of satire posit that satire comprehension is influenced by prior knowledge, satirical strategies, and other demographic features, such as age. However, these claims have not yet been tested using online processing techniques. In this study we investigate satire processing using newspaper headlines from the satirical American newspaper "The Onion" and nonsatirical headlines from "The New York Times." Reading times and humor ratings were gathered from 76 participants using behavioral response data. Results demonstrate that a higher age results in significantly higher reading times for satirical compared with nonsatirical headlines. In addition, levels of prior knowledge significantly interacted with different satirical strategies, influencing both reading times and perceptions of humor. Measures of headline familiarity and sincerity also interacted with perceptions of humor and satirical strategy. These results provide additional evidence for the importance that age, prior knowledge, and satirical strategies have on satire comprehension.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the teaching of literature with a competency-based approach. This is exemplified by means of a thorough study of a poetic duel between two relevant eighteenth-century writers, Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and more specifically, by means of the satires entitled respectively "The Lady's Dressing Room" (1732) and "The Reason that Induced Dr S[wift] to write a Poem call'd the Lady's Dressing Room" (1734).

In this research, we present a conceptual framework to examine the potential of social media as an educational space for peace education. In particular, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of social media that set it apart from other traditional media and educational spaces. Specifically, we conceptualize features of social media such as: social media as "knowledge commons"; imagined communities of purpose; public and private voice; civic engagement; and the experts' gaze. Finally, we provide empirical and discursive evidence from social media in the Muslim world with specific examples from the Pakistani blogosphere in support of the conceptual framework drawn earlier.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis's poem "Soneto de Natal" and the chapter "Um soneto" from his novel "Dom Casmurro" exhibit striking points of intersection that describe the same process: the creation of a sonnet. In the novel, Bentinho abandons his attempt with only a first and last line. "Soneto de Natal" presents a full fourteen; yet, when scrutinized, it rings as hollow as Bentinho's. This idea of the lacuna speaks to much of Machado's early poetry, which suggests that access to the poetic muse is bestowed through suffering by experience. Thus, the young Bentinho, not unlike the mute prophet of one such early poem, struggles for inspiration while "Soneto de Natal" presents the inverse: the prophet granted experience who discovers that he is, like a poet-Moses, slow of verse. By analyzing these two sonnets, taking into account their shared imagery, vocabulary, themes, and the stylistic choices of "Soneto de Natal," we not only find a Machadian critique of the sonnet-mania of the 1890s, but also unmask "Soneto de Natal" as the antipromethean exemplar of the novel's sonnet-making blueprint. In a deft sleight of hand, Machado illustrates his point in the most effective way possible: by passing off satire as the genuine article.

The BBC Radio 4 comedy-drama "A Higher Education" was written in 1999 to present a satire of a dysfunctional and cash-strapped university (Northfield) led by the egotistical and amoral Head of Drama, Don Crookfield (played by Rik Mayall). For those of us passionately engaged in the provision of higher education today, the satire also represents a sad reflection on the fact that many of the challenging issues presented in the play appear to have changed little in 16 years. Surely it is time for a change?

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections between their assigned reading and writing.

From the frequency of the racially motivated and racially justified slayings of black youth to the increased popularity of blatantly derisive racist humor, the enactment of race and racism appears to have become more defiantly overt and unapologetic. Consider the slayings of Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, and Jordan Davis, whose armed white killers, in each case, suggested that they felt threatened by their unarmed black victims; and the recurring incidents of blackface at race- culture themed parties--which in at least one case included a blackface portrayal of Trayvon Martin, complete with blood stained T-shirt. Yet this upswing of racist incidents seems to accompany the rise to prominence of President Barack Obama, whose candidacy and election also paradoxically ushered in postracialist discourse and rhetoric--claims that racism has been transcended and race is no longer relevant (see, e.g., Cho 2008; Ono 2010, 229). In this contradictory context, humor is a popular technology for weaving together these apparently opposing currents, such that racist humor is often justified as ''harmless'' fun. And, not surprisingly, in this critical moment for theorizing race and racism much-justified racial humor has presented itself in the form of political dissent directed at President Obama, around whom the postracialist currents seem to swirl. In this article, Philip Howard argues that postracialist humor is eminently pedagogical, playing a key role in the communication of racial knowledge in the postracialist climate when race is unspeakable. Through a focus on anti-Obama humor and its tropes, Howard examines postracialist humor and its particular features, strategies, and functions in the postracialist climate.

With the rise of biopolitical modernity, states justify both the existence of zombies and their monopoly on coercive violence via an imperative to care for the populations within their purview. But biopolitics' intrinsic link to the rise of a neoliberal model of governance, demonstrated by Foucault (2008), places a contradiction at the heart of the entire project: The exploitation inherent to capitalistic accumulation runs counter to the interests of the subjects from whom the system extracts surplus value. This article examines how the zombie imaginary and free market claustrophobia reinforce each other, bolstering confidence in state-supported and often racialized forms of violence despite mounting evidence that the socioeconomic system itself is a primary source of social ills. A recent science-fiction (sci-fi) film, though not a zombie narrative in the strict sense, nevertheless provides a telling example of the generic pattern at play. By evoking the vocabulary of chronic social crisis, the sci-fi film "Dredd 3-D" (released in 2012, hereafter called "Dredd") addresses issues regarding the policing of cultural difference that beset Western nations struggling to maintain a position of dominance in a shifting geo-politics. Rather than directing critique toward the structural determinates of this ongoing crisis (such as the role played by Western nations as the police force for a capitalist marketplace that produces the very crises it purports to manage), "Dredd" recuperates potentially dissenting energies back toward support of the system itself, displacing what should be a political-economic critique onto specific racialized and gendered subjects. These discriminatory, racist imperatives are hidden behind a superficial commitment to diversity and a more humane police force.

This article examines the reciprocity between children's literature and educational ideals in Dutch rewritings of international literary classics published for children between 1850 and 1950. It analyses the assumed pedagogical power of rewritings of international literary classics for children from the perspective of three theoretical concepts: (1) "cultural transmission" as a strategy of educational ambition in its capacity to serve social initiation, (2) "adaptation" as a transformation strategy to adjust an artefact to a specific audience, and (3) "gate keepership" as the determining factor in the communication situation of literature for children. Comparing original masterpieces that were originally not, or not specifically, meant for children with their derivatives sheds light on the strategies that were used to mould narratives into pedagogical examples. It shows how protagonists were educated along the lines of the ever-changing pedagogical discourse brought about by historically variable concepts of childhood and displays the transition of the educational value of subjection to external mastery to the ideal of self-mastery of the child. Moreover, it shows how rewritings not only functioned as agents in the transmission of literary artefacts, but by means of that, also provided for the transmission of culture. (Contains 5 figures and 69 footnotes.)

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a parody is "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule." A parody is a respectful yet critical satire, takeoff, or spoof of an original. In literature, a parody is when a person imitates an author's style or work to ridicule or provide humor. Parody is not hurtful but respectful. It requires writers to appreciate and respect the work they ridicule. In this article, the author describes and reports on an instructional lesson that was designed and implemented to help students write parodies across the curriculum. He describes the theoretical background for the lesson, the materials and procedures used, and the completed student samples. He concludes with thoughts on integrating parodies. Although this strategy was used with graduate students, it is his hope that elementary teachers will use it in their classrooms to help younger students experience the power and potential of parody.

This paper examines Michael Young's 1958 dystopia, "The Rise of the Meritocracy". In this book, the word "meritocracy" was coined and used in a pejorative sense. Today, however, meritocracy represents a positive ideal against which we measure the justice of our institutions. This paper argues that, when read in the twenty-first century, Young's dystopia does little to dislodge the implicit appeal of a meritocratic society. It examines the principles of education and administrative justice upon which meritocracy is based, suggesting that since 1958 those principles have changed. Young's warning no longer has any effect on us because the meritocratic system it warns us against has been transformed. (Contains 5 notes and 2 figures.)

The occasional role of humor as a vehicle for moral criticism is investigated. I begin by distinguishing between this particular role and the other kinds of ways in which humor and amusement might be regarded through a moral lens, consider historical approaches to humor that corroborate the kind of role for it on which my investigation focuses, and end by considering contemporary examples of irony, sarcasm, and satire as vehicles of just the kind criticism under review (for instance, the July 21, 2008, cover of the New Yorker). (Contains 33 notes.)

In this paper I explore the popular Australian television character of Ja'mie King--a teenage private school girl created and performed by male comedian Chris Lilley. I conceptualise Lilley's satire as a public pedagogy of young femininity. My reading of his satire responds to recent feminist scholarship around young femininities and "girl power", which explores representations of young femininity in popular culture in Western nations. Drawing primarily on the 2005 television mockumentary "We can be heroes", I explore how King can be read in terms of exaggerated "girl power" subjectivity. I examine the relationships, fashioned through the character of King, between "sexuality" and global citizenship activity. I consider the extent to which King's character teaches that young women can "have it all". I explore the extent to which her character teaches that they can be "beautiful" and "brainy", "self-determined" and "sexy" at the same time. (Contains 4 notes.)

Imaginary worlds have been devised by artists and commentators for centuries to focus satirical attention on society's problems. The increasing sophistication of three-dimensional graphics software is generating comparable "virtual worlds" for educational usage. Can such worlds play a satirical role suggesting developments in distance education practice and policy? The article examines the emergence of Hinterlife, a cartoon world run by a disarmingly despotic academic known to the real world only by his virtual name, Professor Horace. This article suggests that a healthy dose of satire can help distance education to overcome the problems generated in difficult economic times.

This paper is based on a recently published book, "Educating Against Extremism" (Davies, "Educating Against Extremism," 2008), which explores the potential role of schools in averting the more negative and violent forms of extremism in a country. It examines the nature of extremism; identity formation and radicalisation; religious belief, faith schools and the myth of equal value; justice, revenge and honour; and free speech, humour and satire. The paper argues that religious fundamentalism, as well as state terrorism, needs to be addressed in schools. The argument in the book is for a greater politicisation of young people through the forging of critical (dis)respect and the use of a secular basis of human rights. Specific forms of citizenship education are needed, which provide skills to analyse the media and political or religious messages, but also enable critical idealism to be fostered.

This article seeks to further dialogue between the disciplines of English literature and Higher Education by offering a different approach to examining the practice of graduate supervision--a comparison of three fictional narratives: two recently published novels and one ongoing online comic strip. It considers what these narratives reveal about the ways in which supervision is represented in cultural practices at this time. What kind of self or individual subject characterizes the research student and supervisor in these representations, and what kind of relationship between supervisor and student is portrayed? Examining representations of supervision offers a mirror, however distorted, of a pedagogical practice, enabling both students and supervisors to reflect on their roles in the supervisory relationship. (Contains 4 notes.)

"The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" is one of the best critical literacy programs on television, and in this Media Literacy column the author suggests ways that teachers can use video clips from the show in their classrooms. (For Part 1, see EJ784683.)

This project posits that incorporating political humor into the classroom can have a positive effect on learning in higher education. Specifically, we present preliminary findings from a quasi-experiment in which a humorous, "mock" textbook titled America (The Book) (Stewart, Karlin, and Javerbaum 2004) was incorporated into Introduction to American Government curricula in conjunction with a standard textbook. Our hypothesis argues that humorous presentations of politics and government can enhance the learning process and increase test scores by way of Matthew Baum's (2003a) "gateway" or "incidental by-product" effects. Our empirical findings show no such learning effect. Our qualitative evidence, however, suggests that humor-based teaching is clearly more engaging and interesting for the students. (Contains 4 tables and 4 notes.)

Comedy Central's popular program "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" is the best critical media literacy program on television, and it can be used in valuable ways in the classroom as part of a media literacy pedagogy. This Media Literacy column provides an overview of the show and its accompanying website and considers ways it might be used in the classroom.

For 53 years, Clifford K. Berryman was a political cartoonist for "The Washington Post" and "The Washington Evening Star". He drew thousands of cartoons commenting on the congressional and presidential candidates, campaigns, issues, and elections of the first half of the twentieth century. Berryman was a Washington institution, and his decades of daily front-page drawings were internationally renowned. Throughout his extraordinary career, he drew hundreds of members of Congress and every presidential administration from Grover Cleveland to Harry Truman. Unlike many political cartoonists, Berryman aimed his satire and criticism at policies and processes rather than at individuals. He never exaggerated the physical features of his subjects; instead, he created drawings of individuals that were faithful likenesses. The resulting goodwill from his subjects earned him friendships and influence. Berryman's exceptional work earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1944. Many of Berryman's cartoons reflected his view of the repeating cycle of campaigns and elections that he witnessed as a Washingtonian and keen observer of the national political scene. His work captured the seemingly timeless features of the election and campaign process in national politics. Because members of the House of Representatives are elected every two years, and presidents every four years, Berryman regularly observed and illustrated candidates and campaigns at every point in the election cycle. Some of the details of campaigning have changed since Berryman's political cartoons were published in the daily newspaper, but the process of campaigns and elections has remained remarkably the same. Two Berryman cartoons, featured in this article, illustrate facets of this process--how a candidate gauges and gathers support and the selection of campaign issues.

There is little question that popular television shows influence the shaping of social norms, identities, and the ways we navigate daily life. High profile shows are also a common magnet for critical attention. No primetime television show has provoked as wide a range of reactions as Fox's "The Simpsons." From shock radio to public broadcasting pundits pour condemnations, accolades, and adulations for this unique cartoon sitcom. From the masses to the literary elite, the world's most famous animated family touch one and all, from the raw funny bone to the higher intellect. In a parallel vein, there is no lack of strong and varied opinion regarding education in the USA, and few venues do a more effective job at representing its core controversies than this weekly cartoon. Here I angle a mirror at the primetime television screen and suggest some ways this animated series reflects inner, outer, and systemic relationships with education. The beauty of "The Simpsons" in this regard is that the translucent motility of an ostensibly average nuclear family in the anywhere USA town of Springfield buffers the gaze just enough to allow us room to laugh, however uneasily. (Contains 2 notes.)

This article considers J.M. Barrie's satirical treatment of the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence in "Peter Pan," and how Barrie's work both honors and undercuts it. It will first analyze the Platonic notion of the doctrine of reminiscence in Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807). It will then show its influence on Victorian literature in the depiction of the exalted perception and moral purity of children, and how Barrie satirizes these ideals by underscoring the ignorance and savage qualities of the children in "Peter Pan." The essay will also explore the portrayal of the Eden of childhood in Wordsworth's poem (as influenced by Plato), and how Barrie subverts this utopia by presenting a dystopic world where Darwinian principles rule. Like Darwin, Barrie argues for a natural rather than a divine origin of species and demonstrates the struggle for existence in a profoundly disturbing way. Finally, the essay will contemplate the subject of immortality and how, far from being an idealized condition as in Wordsworth's poetry, it is a far more ambivalent state in "Peter Pan."

The author disagrees with Homer Simpson who claims that "...cartoons don't have any deep meaning. They're just stupid drawings that give you a cheap laugh." He argues that The Simpsons have a deep meaning in the same way as the works of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell. The message in The Simpsons, Swift, and Orwell is that those in charge do not always undertake action with the public interest in mind--the basic premise of public choice. All three sources provide examples of other public choice themes, and they deliver their message through popular satire with layers of allusion.

By July 1994, "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" had appeared for the third time on the "New York Times" bestseller list with sales exceeding 100,000 copies. One year later, there were almost 1.5 million copies of "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" in print as it continued to excite public commentary. This popular book is an ideal case study for exploring the benefits and limits of satiric humor, the book's primary rhetorical strategy and the focus of this essay. We argue that because of its polyvalent nature, the use of ironic satire as a rhetorical strategy to debunk a position is unpredictable. In fact, as this essay demonstrates, some forms of humor may facilitate audience acceptance of the very ideas the satirist intends to disparage. In this case, Garner's use of satiric humor may have facilitated acceptance of moderate forms of political correctness. (Contains 55 notes.)

This is a reply to Mark C. Schug and Richard D. Western's article "The Homeless Social Studies Teacher: How Muzak Progressivism Has Harmed Social Studies Education." The Schug and Western article breaks down into three distinct sections: (1) a quasi-satirical analogy of teaching to tax accounting; (2) a description of the problems of progressive education as practiced in "student-centered teaching" and "curriculum integration"; and (3) a concluding set of remarks that ground Schug and Western's version of social studies education in "knowledge-based disciplines." In this response, the author discusses each of the sections, exposing some of the points that need attention, making relevant connections, and then concluding with a set of remarks that ground another version of education in active engagement, no matter the subject.

Presents a personal tribute in memory of the work of eccentric writer and performer Spike Milligan. Celebrates and examines Spike's absurdist poetry and sketches for children in the context of both British nonsense traditions and the poetry of American writer Ogden Nash and Dr. Seuss. (SG)