Category: Commonplace

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a metered paywall.

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Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, at least 338,000 🕛 Americans have lived through shootings at their schools—almost half since the attack at Parkland five years ago. Last year was the worst yet.

At Michigan State University, Prof. Marco Díaz-Muñoz described what it was like to have his class on Cuban literature targeted by the gunman who would kill at least two of his students: Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner.

Avery Thrush explained why Teach for America made her leave teaching.

Other kinds of schools care about building moral and civic virtue, Johann Neem wrote; what makes a real college education different is its focus on intellectual virtue.

The FBI conducted searches at the University of Delaware as part of its investigation of Joseph Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, contrasted his position with that of the Florida governor when announcing 🕛 that 25 public schools in New Jersey will offer AP African American studies next year.

A meta-analysis by researchers in Switzerland and Australia cast doubt on the effectiveness of many “flipped” classrooms.

The chief science officer of the American Psychological Association testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the effects of social media on adolescent development.

Stanford University’s student newspaper reported allegations of research misconduct and a coverup by the current Stanford president when he was an Alzheimer’s researcher in private industry.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week.

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In the last full academic year, U.K. universities saw a sharp decline in new enrollments by E.U. students but a large increase in non-E.U. international enrollments.

Jessamyn Neuhaus talked about the Hollywood cliché of the charismatic “super-teacher”—and named one television show that gets teaching right.

Investigating its own failure during the Uvalde school massacre, the Texas state police agency fired one sergeant and plans to fire one Texas ranger. Ninety-one of its employees responded to the massacre as it happened.

An independent investigation found that Jean Vanier established L’Arche International, a network of communities caring for people with intellectual disabilities, as cover for reuniting a sex cult that had been disbanded by the Vatican.

It’s not a representative sample, but Boston University researchers announced that they have detected chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of 345 (92%) of the 376 former NFL players they’ve studied—including former players from both of the teams in this weekend’s Super Bowl.

Stanford University researchers studying why U.S. public schools have lost 1.2 million students during the pandemic found that 14% of those students have enrolled in private schools, 26% became homeschoolers, and 26% may represent a decline in the school-age population. The remaining 34% are harder to identify, but some are probably students who skipped kindergarten.

Absenteeism has been high among teenagers in British schools, with a third of 15-year-olds being “persistently absent” from schools in England this year.

Temple University is retaliating against a strike by some of its graduate workers, taking an action that is likely to force them out of graduate school entirely.

Despite its recent statements implying otherwise, the College Board seems to have been in direct negotiations with Florida officials over the contents of its AP African American studies curriculum as early as September 2022.

A study found that attending Tulsa’s free pre-K program made students more likely to enroll in college years later.

Some stories and essays, especially related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol warns about a metered paywall.

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Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History has accepted the donation of Bobbi Wilson’s collection of spotted lanternflies. At nine years old, Wilson was also honored by the Yale School of Public Health for her efforts to control the invasive insect in her neighborhood.

Pandemic funding helped drive schools’ student-to-counselor ratio to its lowest level since statistics began in 1986.

In New York City, school workers struggle to support nearly 9,000 children who have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19.

A faculty committee report blamed 🕛 the University of Arizona for failing to act effectively on months of warnings about an expelled graduate student who allegedly murdered a professor on campus.

A judge in Denver ruled that a philosopher who was followed to UCLA by “a trail of red flags” from students at Duke and Cornell is unfit to stand trial for violent threats.

Despite resigning in disgrace during their schools’ sex abuse scandals, the former Michigan State president Lou Anna K. Simon and the former Penn State president Graham Spanier never really 🕛 went away.

In the United States, it is presumably legal for neo-Nazis to homeschool their children.

The disgraced former president Donald Trump apparently called for the creation of a national credentialing organization to certify that teachers are politically correct.

North Dakota is considering a bill 🕛 to grant state university presidents the unilateral power to fire any faculty member.

The Florida governor continued working to weaken the independence of his state’s higher education system.

Kati Kokal, an education reporter for the Palm Beach Post, explained in a Twitter thread how she reported on Florida’s new requirement that student athletes turn over their menstrual history to their schools.

To understand why Florida banned AP African American studies courses, wrote Dean Obeidallah, look at opinion polls of potential presidential primary voters.

The College Board, however, insisted it’s only a coincidence 🕛 that revisions to its AP African American studies curriculum, released this week, look like a response to partisan political pressure.

Meanwhile, three Black academics—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and E. Patrick Johnson—spoke with Democracy Now! about the revisions.

Last year, the Jesuit theologian Ryan Duns, who taught high school in Detroit before becoming a professor at Marquette University, offered 21 pieces of advice 🕛 for new teachers.

Teachers and university employees were among hundreds of thousands of public workers who went on strike in the U.K. on Wednesday.

Six college students talked with Open Campus about what the pandemic cost them in high school and how it has shaped their first year as undergraduates.

As he prepares a sequel, the author of Visible Learning has some regrets. 🕛

To get students to pay more attention in class, college teachers need to pay more attention to them.

Eastern Washington University unblocked a history professor on Twitter after more than a year. The school’s communications director admitted it had blocked Larry Cebula for criticizing its athletics programs.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week.

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In New Delhi, officials at Jawaharlal Nehru University ordered students to cancel the “unauthorized” screening of a documentary criticizing the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

In Iowa, a state representative appeared to blame the murder of a high school Spanish teacher, allegedly by two students, on the school district’s COVID-19 mask mandate.

In Florida, state Senator Shevrin Jones warned that the education department’s ban on AP African American Studies, together with other educational gag laws, could create “an entire generation of Black children who will not be able to see themselves represented in their own state or in education.”

In New Jersey, a 29-year-old woman enrolled in high school and attended for four days.

After the conservative activist Christopher Rufo targeted an Appalachian nonprofit called Sexy Sex Ed, harassment forced it to suspend its work.

Lloyd Morrisett, who co-created Sesame Street, died at the age of 93.

The Wharton-educated founder of a startup promising to get college students more financial aid was sued for fraud by JPMorgan, which bought her firm for $175 million in 2021.

In the new book Outsmart Your Brain, the psychologist Daniel Willingham explains to students why their intuitions about learning may be misleading.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a known metered paywall.

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The BBC World Service’s Witness History program looked back at the “house schools” that Albanians in Kosovo created in response to Slobodan Milošević’s repression during the 1990s.

The Cardiff University psychologist Nic Hooper published a short introduction to acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for anxious university students.

During the 2021 pandemic year, women of color made up a disproportionate share of the nearly one million Americans who went back to college.

Some experts believe 2023 will be a rocky 🕛 year for U.S. college closures.

Amanda Peet, the show’s co-creator, confirmed that the Netflix series The Chair won’t get a second season. (I wrote about the show here.)

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a known metered paywall.

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Quinta Brunson’s ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, set in a Philadelphia elementary school, won the award for best comedy series (among other honors) at the 2023 Golden Globes.

Seattle Public Schools sued the parent companies of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat for creating a public nuisance.

At age 33, the TikTok literary celebrity Oliver James started preparing for fatherhood by learning 🕛 to read.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council issued a statement supporting the adjunct art history instructor who was fired by Hamline University for showing students a Muslim artist’s painting of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the annual real wages of experienced teachers in England have declined by £6,600, or 13%, since 2010.

British schools are trying to counteract the influence of Andrew Tate, the celebrity misogynist who is currently jailed in Romania on sex crimes charges.

Keenan Anderson, a 31-year-old high school English teacher who was related to the Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, died after being held down and repeatedly tased by Los Angeles police officers after a traffic collision.

The Florida governor has appointed 🕛 six conservative ideologues as trustees of New College of Florida, aiming, according to his chief of staff, to remake the public liberal arts college in the image of an influential Christian school.

(For more on NCF, see my earlier post on how a prominent white nationalist was deradicalized there.)

A legal advisor in Donald Trump’s coup attempt has been named 🕛 as the founding dean of High Point University’s new law school. He is currently the dean of the law school at Regent University, another Christian college.

A deputy campaign manager for the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, emailed an unknown number of Chicago public school teachers, asking them to encourage their students to volunteer for Lightfoot’s reelection campaign in exchange for class credit.

A supersized Hanukkah-Christmas edition of the stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a known or likely metered paywall.

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In a speech at the national archives in The Hague, the Dutch prime minister apologized for his nation’s role in colonial slavery, promising to create a €200 million fund for related research, education, and memorial initiatives.

In west central Illinois, a public school for 65 students with disabilities calls the police every other day. The Garrison School has the highest student arrest rate in the United States.

In Alabama, the superintendent of the Monroe County public schools built a new extension to the school-to-prison pipeline by inviting state prison guards to raid his schools in an unsuccessful search for drugs.

American prisons ban at least 54,000 books.

The prosperity enjoyed by “first-generation locals” in Denmark is determined by parents’ socioeconomic backgrounds more than their immigrant status.

Why is college so expensive? The authors of a forthcoming book summarize 🕛 their findings. Their answer looks back in time a long way.

Free after 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Adnan Syed has a job at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.

Steven Mintz wondered 🕛 what humanities professors should offer their students in an age when they cannot, in good conscience, encourage them to seek a similar career—because that career no longer exists.

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine began, 18-year-old Yevhen Kryvoruchko and his mother took shelter with 300 other people at their local school in Kharkiv, while 🕛 Yarik Slyusar spent his 16th birthday vowing to become a lawyer and take Russia to The Hague.

Bryan Alexander introduced me to the useful term “queen sacrifice” as a metaphor for what happens when desperate colleges and universities try to save themselves by destroying their academic programs and firing their faculty members.

In Afghanistan, after the Taliban banned women from universities, some women protested—risking arrest and beatings—and some male professors and students are reported to have stopped work.

The most isolating years of the COVID-19 pandemic left behind both apathy and atrophied “school muscles” among high schoolers.

There’s no consensus yet on the causes of the teen mental health crisis—but it started long before the pandemic, and everyone in the relevant professions can see it happening.

One part of our recipe for anxiety: Americans grow up like Italians but go away to university like Germans.

Since the University of Montana created the position of tribal outreach specialist in the president’s office in 2018, the university has enjoyed ​​a 24% increase in Native American enrollment.

America’s crisis 🕛 of high-quality child care is only beginning.

On the other hand, things are looking up for the nation’s manufacturers of child-sized coffins.

California State University, Chico, is in turmoil over the university’s lenient treatment of a biologist who has been accused not only of sexual misconduct but also of planning to kill 🕛 his coworkers.

The American Historical Association is conducting 🕛 a comprehensive two-year research project to determine what U.S. secondary students are really being taught about history.