Schooling America: Access

When the US Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation by race in public schools violated the US Constitution, the response from segregated school systems was not immediate. Rather, overcrowding was the issue most on the minds of the parents of the baby boomers.

The solution to the challenges posed by the Brown decision was “Access.’’ If the mother who wanted special attention could not get that, then she wanted a special program, preferably one for her child who undoubtedly was “gifted and talented.” Such a child had likely been identified by high performance on the intelligence and achievement standardized tests that were sweeping schoolrooms. These were the children who were introduced to the “new math” and other such subjects now being designed for schoolchildren by some of America’s most notable scholars, including those at the University of Illinois, who encouraged children to use “manipulables” while learning mathematics.

Roger Williams & Church-State Separation

These days, separation of church and state is in danger of becoming a hollow cliché. And on other days, it has been in danger of being regarded as a communist plot or, more recently, as a secularist one.

A look back at the life of the seventeenth-century founder of Rhode Island corrects these misunderstandings as well as gives a passionate freshness to the whole subject. Roger Williams was no communist, no secularist, and above all no huckster of empty slogans.

He was a deeply religious believer, in some ways even more religious than the Puritans who ejected him from Massachusetts in 1635. And he advocated religious liberty not because religion mattered so little but because it mattered so much.

“Torture” or “coercive interrogation”?

the Bush Administration has through multiple acts of ineptitude made it one of the central topics of debate in the world today. Louise Arbour, a former Canadian judge who is now the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the United Nations on December 7 that “Governments are watering down the definition of torture, claiming that terrorism means established rules do not apply anymore.” The United Nations press release on her remarks further describes her as calling “on all Governments to reaffirm their commitment to the absolute prohibition of torture by condemning torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and prohibiting it in national law.” There can be little doubt that the “government” she is most trying to speak to is our own. And, not at all coincidentally, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is spending most of her time on her current tour of European capitals defending the United States with regard to the issue of “rendition,” the technical term for sending suspected terrorists to other countries for interrogation. The most notorious case involves a German national who was undoubtedly the victim of a mis-identification by which he “was disappeared” to Afghanistan for five months and, he alleges, tortured in a CIA camp there before being abruptly released in the Albanian countryside and told that no one would believe his bizarre story. (The use of such a peculiar verb form of “disappear” is a legacy of Chile and Argentina, where suspected terrorists “were disappeared” by the fascist governments of those two countries in the 1970s and early ‘80s.) For good reason, the German government believed him, and Secretary of State Rice has apparently conceded the American error. She has also repeatedly insisted, as has President Bush, that the United States does not tolerate torture.

All Hail “Podcasting”: More also-rans for the 2005 WOTY

by Erin McKean You have probably heard by now (it’s one of the most-linked to items online) that the Oxford American Dictionary has selected “podcast” as the word of the year, or, as we refer to it in the lexicogging biz, the WOTY (pronounced “whoa-tee”, that is, it would be pronounced that way if anyone […]

Location, location

“Location’s very important. If you think about, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the location of the DMV in Washington, DC, is not important at all. Basically, if you want to deal with the DMV, you have to go where they put their offices. But Starbucks realized they don’t have that kind of power. They […]

The Education Carnival is now up

The Education Carnival is now up. Go read some excellent posts on American education. LINK

Schooling America: Adjustment

Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Carleton Washburne, embody the Adjustment period from 1920 to 1954. Mitchell with her friend Caroline Pratt founded the City and Country School in New York City as her children entered school in the 1920s. Mitchell had tried unsuccessfully to break the formalism of the New York City schools, and having inherited family money, she decided to establish a school of her own design. Its 1922 program of arts, play, shop, rest, as well as a little reading, is revealed in this chart showing the “Greenwich Village School Program, 1922 -1923.”

Undercover Economist at Tech Central Station

The feature article at Tech Central Station today is a wonderful review by Arnold Kling of Tim Harford’s book The Undercover Economist. Kling does not shrink from making the “inevitable comparison with Freakonomics.” Kling gives his “enthusiastic recommendation to The Undercover Economist” over its best-selling rival. (Click HERE to read Kling’s review of Freakonomics). Kling […]

Law & Politics

The central metaphor of Richard Pacelle’s review of Advice and Consent by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal in the Law & Politics Book Review is just too entertaining to avoid posting. At the appropriate age (and, truth be told, maybe a little beyond that), I would anxiously anticipate the second or third week of the […]

The Kabbalah

I couldn’t help but notice – try as I might to resist – this story from a few weeks ago in which Madonna, aka Esther, claimed that she’d likely get less grief from the media if she had become a Nazi instead of devoting herself to kabbalah. It made me think of this image from […]

Freakonomics is Gone!

Marginal Revolution reports that the first signed copy of Freakonomics has been sold for $610. Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and original owner of the book, has donated the proceeds of the Ebay auction to Levitt’s favorite charity, Smile Train, and Levitt has matched that amount with a donation of his own.

Katrina and Healthcare Reform

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina exposed an array of glaring deficiencies in America’s infrastructure – the slow response from FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and the fragile state of the New Orleans levees are perhaps the most prominent. But, according to Jill Quadagno, the most imposing challenge brought to light by Katrina […]

Bob Woodward and the Perils of Anonymous Sources

In the afterglow of Watergate, Washington journalists’ ever-growing reliance on anonymous sources left both reporters and editors vulnerable to manipulation. As editor of the Post’s Metro section, Bob Woodward failed to challenge a promising young reporter who submitted a sensational article on an eight-year-old drug addict, based entirely on anonymous sources. After Janet Cooke won the Pulitzer Prize for “Jimmy’s World” in 1981, an internal investigation exposed the story as fictitious. The Cooke incident derailed Woodward’s rise within the Post’s management and resulted in his nebulous position as assistant managing editor.

Schooling America: Assimilation

Patricia Graham provides historical context to today’s battles over public education.

Rosa Parks and Judicial Review

by James C. Cobb I was alternatively puzzled and amused by the torrent of praise showered on Rosa Parks, one of the most celebrated social activists of the twentieth century, by many of the same folks who are quick to condemn other activists who allegedly operate from a lofty court bench rather than a lowly […]

A Traditional American Thanksgiving

Andrew Smith, culinary guru and editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, asks “Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?” and investigates the history and culinary traditions of this most American of holidays. With detours to the creation of the turducken and other culinary oddities.