"Heart of the Commonwealth, represent!"

I'd always recommend you read Charlie Pierce in Esquire, but today's column has both some nice reflections from his father's time as a Worcester Public School administrator:

My father worked in what were then called “inner-city” schools. When he left the classroom—he actually taught fourth-period Bio—he became the vice-principal on whom disciplinary matters fell. He was notably tough, but he also was a realist. He had a running feud with one phys-ed teacher whose class was scheduled for the first thing in the morning. He kept sending kids who fell asleep down to my father’s office. The first thing my father asked them was whether or not they had had anything to eat that morning. If the answer was no, he’d give them some money and send them to a diner down the street. Then, he’d wait for the gym teacher to come down and yell at him. “Charlie,” he once told me, “You can’t teach a hungry child. It’s pointless.”

...as well as a great analogy on how the high school students are taking on the fringe right:

But the real high comedy has been to watch the conservative intelligentsia embark on a serious fool’s errand—namely, trying to battle with educated teenagers on social media. I mean, don’t any of these people have kids between the ages of 10 and 20? This is like the Redcoats marching back to Boston from Lexington and Concord. They’re taking fire from behind every tree and every stonewall, and they’re getting slaughtered on platforms they’ve probably never heard of.

But go read it all.