16th September 2010
Why We're Teaching 'The Wire' at Harvard
“In our course on urban inequality at Harvard this semester, we want our students to understand the roots of the social conditions in America’s inner cities. To that end, we get some help from Bodie, Stringer Bell, Bubbles and others from HBO’s “The Wire.”
30th August 2010
College Dropout Factories
“School reformers, including President Obama, often talk about high school “dropout factories.” These are the roughly 2,000 public high schools, about 15 percent of the total, with the nation’s highest dropout rates
16th July 2010
30th June 2010
Plagiarism Inc.
“Jordan Kavoosi built an empire of fake term papers. Now the writers want their cut.
21st June 2010
In Praise of Tough Criticism
“When it comes to criticism, is compassion really preferable to combativeness? Does an upbeat style actually encourage positive tendencies in the profession? Is compassion an intellectual virtue? The answer to those questions is no.
9th June 2010
A Classical Education: Back to the Future
“Sounds downright antediluvian, outmoded, narrow and elitist, and maybe it was, but when I returned home I found three new books waiting for me, each of which made a case for something like the education I received at Classical.
25th May 2010
The Secret Lives of Professors
“I came to Harvard 7 years ago with a fairly romantic notion of what it meant to be a professor — I imagined unstructured days spent mentoring students over long cups of coffee, strolling through the verdant campus, writing code, pondering the infinite.
20th May 2010
All Souls, Oxford Should Continue to Put Genius to the Test
“For more than a century, prospective Fellows of All Souls, Oxford have had to sit a frightening exam paper that contains no questions and just one word. Now it has been dropped – and Harry Mount (failed, 1994) says the college is the poorer for it.
19th May 2010
The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand
“Over the last several months, Schnur and the well-positioned fellow travelers on his speed dial have seen the cause of their lives take center stage. Why the sudden shift from long-simmering wonk debate to political front burner? Because there is now a president who, when it comes to school reform, really does seem to be a new kind of Democrat — and because of a clever idea Schnur had last year to package what might otherwise have been just another federal grant program into a media-alluring, if cheesy-sounding, contest called Race to the Top.
