Feeding Mind, Pursuing Truth
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- Blog 3 Columns
An Education We’re Missing Living in Cities0
- Culture
- September 29, 2015
Have you ever seen a “hen-pecked” chicken? It’s not pretty. Here’s a picture: (Source: cluck-cluck-here.blogspot.com) It turns out that chickens are actually quite cruel to each other. There is a “pecking order” and you don’t want to be the chicken on the bottom of that order. The farmer my family visited over the weekend pointed
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New Study: Big Kids Love Bedtime Stories, Too0
- Family
- September 28, 2015
Kids think bedtime stories are just for babies, right? Wrong. According to a recent survey conducted by Scholastic in Great Britain, nearly 40% of children ages 6-8 and 30% of children ages 9-11 regretted the fact that their parents stopped reading aloud to them. In the U.S., those numbers are even greater, as shown by
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Is Homeschooling Only for the Elite?0
- Education
- September 28, 2015
The summary of an article in this September’s edition of Boston Magazine reads: “More and more of Boston’s smartest families are opting out of the education system to homeschool their children. Is this the new model for creating elite kids?” The perception used to be that homeschooling was the realm of families primarily motivated by
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Is Freedom of Religion Being Eclipsed in America?0
- Politics
- September 28, 2015
Over the weekend, President Obama made some revealing comments about the freedom of religion. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, President Obama said: “We affirm that we cherish our religious freedom and are profoundly respectful of religious traditions, but we also have to say clearly that our religious freedom doesn’t grant us the freedom to
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Hollywood Star Became Stay-at-Home Dad After Wife Died of Cancer0
- Family
- September 28, 2015
Actor Rick Moranis was a fixture in many movies I watched growing up – Ghostbusters, Spaceballs, Parenthood, Honey I Shrunk the Kids. And then, suddenly, he wasn’t in any more movies. I had never heard what happened to him until I came across this Mental Floss piece this past weekend. As it turns
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Beware Those Who Try to Create Utopias0
- Politics
- September 28, 2015
There is a persistent temptation among human beings to seek after utopias. In our present world, we can see it in the world government ambitions of some political leaders, or the technocratic ambitions of reformers of the education system, or even certain parents who isolate their children from society in the hopes of preserving their
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Are We Less Free Than in Times Past?0
- September 28, 2015
No society is perfect. Yet, it is often assumed that American society is one of progress, and that, on the whole, we are better off than our ancestors. As evidence of this progress, people often point to the increase in life expectancy, educational opportunities, and career options. And, as one highly ranked Facebook comment on
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When Poets Were Rock Stars0
- September 26, 2015
Today we’re accustomed to crowds of 14,000 gathering for a concert or a sporting event. Not for a poet reading a lecture on literary criticism. But that indeed is what happened on April 30, 1956, when T.S. Eliot came to the University of Minnesota. He delivered his lecture “The Frontiers of Criticism” to
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Today’s High School Students Need More Vocational Training0
- September 25, 2015
If you were a high school student and had the option to either go to college and accumulate a load of debt or start a job immediately after graduation making a decent, middle-class salary, which would you choose? For many of today’s young people, the latter option sounds like an ideal, but impossible, situation. But
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