Blog 3 Columns

5 Un-PC Quotes from Past Inaugural Addresses 0
- History
- January 20, 2016
One year from today, news cameras across the county will be focused on the steps of the U.S. Capitol as the 45th president of the United States is sworn into office. Whomever the next president is, we doubt you’ll see comments like these: “[T]he foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and
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Should People Read Less News?0
- Culture
- January 19, 2016
Thomas Jefferson was one of the most famous critics of the news media. He went so far as to write, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.” Was Jefferson’s scorn unfair, or did he have a point? Should people read less news if they wish to
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Read Literature to Learn and Love the Truth 0
- Education
- January 19, 2016
The other night I testified (via telephone) before the Alaska state legislature, on the standards their public schools are adopting for classes in English. I’d read the standards but didn’t have them in front of me, so I was taken aback when one of the representatives plucked a directive out of all the verbiage and asked
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Is it Time to Stop Pushing the “College-for-All” Mantra?0
- Education
- January 19, 2016
In Forbes today, columnist Erik Sherman addresses a common mistake that politicians and the public make about education. All too often, writes Sherman, “we move from ‘education is good’ to ‘education will fix income inequality’ or otherwise charge the economy.” Because the public has believed such taglines, the push to send every student to college
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Have You Read These 10 Titles From the Original Harvard Library?0
- Education
- January 19, 2016
In 1638, a man named John Harvard died and bequeathed half of his estate and his library of over 400 books to a fledgling college in Massachusetts. Today, we know that college as Harvard University. To the modern ear, many of the titles John Harvard left to the college are unfamiliar and likely known to
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Famed Historian Explains How a Civilization Collapses 0
- History
- January 19, 2016
Will and Ariel Durant are famous for their magisterial 11-volume survey of human history titled The Story of Civilization. After spending fifty years of studying and reflecting on the history of mankind, they are at the very least an interesting authority to consult on the matter. In The Lessons of History—written after they completed their
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Chicago Cops’ New Motto? ‘Stay Fetal’0
- Culture
- January 19, 2016
Cop blogs can give you a fascinating insight into what’s going on behind the badge. If you want to get a glimpse of the realities and politics of police work in Chicago, check out Second City Cop, which gets about half a million pageviews each month. Some of it is rather humorous, like this request
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Australian Schools Brought Back Greek and Latin – and Are Seeing Amazing Results!0
- Culture
- January 19, 2016
In 2015, less than 40% of American 4th and 8th-graders achieved proficiency in reading. Public schools have been trying to boost these numbers for years, but have had little success. But news out of Australia may offer a new way to boost not only America’s reading proficiency, but math and science proficiency, as well. How?
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‘Pilpul’ describes what happened to academic writing 0
- Education
- January 19, 2016
At one point in Chaim Potok’s classic The Chosen, David Malter—the father of the main character Reuven—discusses the decline of Jewish scholarship in the eighteenth century. In the discussion, he uses a term that accurately describes much of modern academic writing—“pilpul”: “Jewish scholarship was dead. In its place came empty discussions about matters that had no
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5 Un-PC Quotes from Past Inaugural Addresses 0