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Category Archives: Schools and Culture
At Risk Kids and the College Game
Summary: Low income kids often are first in their family to contemplate college, and so lack the fund of family college information taken for granted by middle and upper class students. Their back up option, the guidance of their high … Continue reading
At Risk Low Income Students: Sometime Victims of a Blame Game
Summary: Stereotypical assumptions about low income kids should not cloud the will to social investment, via schools, in their economic future. Yesterday I visited with an old friend and neighbor in a community in which I had lived for 35 … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: Voices from Unaccustomed Quarters
Summary: Voices from the business community and the Catholic Church give hope that the promise of “compassionate conservatism” will come to fruition, and eventually bipartisan funding will crystalize to supplement the educational growth of low income children. The populace is … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: Dysfunctional Cultural Currents Stymie School Reform?
Summary: In Yale students and public school students alike, cultural currents surface and raise questions how these patterns influence our children in their studies. News in the Yale Alumni Magazine that 62% of Yale undergraduates earned A or A- in … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: The NRA Wants Guns in the Schoolhouse — Say What?
Gotta hand it to the NRA. Back to the Newtown wall, they come out guns blazing, as though there is not insanity in the wash of weapons in our culture, but for sure the solution is in further armament. We … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: Progress in Infant Mortality Begs a Question or Two
Summary: Progress in infant mortality addresses the same root causes as the struggles of low income students in our schools. The academic struggles of low income students do not originate in poor schools, though are encumbered by them, but in … Continue reading
At Risk Kids: Attention Deficit Disorder — Its Diagnosis, Its Treatment, and as a Canary in Culture
Summary: With diagnosis of attention disorders on a substantial rise, medication is useful, but is not a panacea, and kids with these disorders are a flock of cultural canaries. The rate of growth of the number of school age kids … Continue reading
At Risk Students: The Case for Early Intervention
Summary: Though the case for early intervention, before kids reach school age, is persuasively cost effective, preciously little suggests the political culture is wise or mature enough to be so rational. Wouldn’t it be nice if wishing were to make … Continue reading
At Risk Students: The Decline of Marriage and the Low Income Student
Summary: The well publicized increase in children borne out of wedlock arguably increases the percentage of low income students in our schools, and therefore students relatively poorly prepared for the middle class norms by which schools operate. Harry carried around … Continue reading
School Reform: “Finnish Lessons”
Summary: Some characteristics of Finnish school reform give perspective to similar American efforts to change, particularly in the autonomy granted to teachers, the trust of whom is grounded in rigorous preparation and a successful lure of top students into the … Continue reading
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