The Cambridge Story Is Not Going Away

 

First Paragraph

 My hometown was, in the 1960s, a passable embodiment of the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever their background. A half century later, however, life in Port Clinton, Ohio, is a split-screen American nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks that bisect the town can barely imagine the future that awaits the kids from the right side of the tracks. And the story of Port Clinton turns out to be sadly typical of America. How this transformation happened, why it matters, and how we might begin to alter the cursed course of our society is the subject of this book.

- From Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert D. Putnam, published in 2015.

This Looks Big

 

Two Key Questions on Technology

1. What will you do with it?
2. What will it do with you?

[Photo by Microsoft CoPilot at Unsplash]

Which Bands Will Be Played in 2100?

 

From "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

In television teaching, perplexity is a superhighway to low ratings. A perplexed learner is a learner who will turn to another station. This means there must be nothing that has to be remembered, studied, applied or, worst of all, endured. It is assumed that any information, story or idea can be made immediately accessible, since the contentment, not the growth, of the learner is paramount.

- Neil Postman

Crank It Up

 

Willie and Merle

 

Bring Them Back!

Natalya Murakhver on how the best children's history books were allowed to go out of print.

When I was a child, I read the Random House history series. All of the books were excellent.

Lupin