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Lawnmower parents raise anxious kids
A middle-school teacher is called to the office so Dad can hand over his child’s water bottle. The girl doesn’t like drinking from the...

Joanne Jacobs
Oct 1, 20182 min read
GenZ prefer YouTube videos to books
Generation Z — aka post-Millenials –prefers learning from YouTube and videos rather than printed books, reports Lauraine Genota in Ed...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 29, 20182 min read


Who’s been deleting Papa Bear?
The Three Bears story without Papa Bear. Instead Mama Bear is a single parent raising two bears, both of which appear to be female. Or...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 28, 20181 min read


Think (and draw) like a mathematician
book titled Math with Bad Drawings after his blog. “Orlin shows us how to think like a mathematician by teaching us a brand-new game of...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 15, 20181 min read
Would UCLA hire Einstein?
Would UCLA hire Albert Einstein as a professor? asks Heather Mac Donald in the Los Angeles Times. Starting this fall, all faculty...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 14, 20181 min read


‘College for all’ works — for 16% of students
Our education system fails most students, argues Oren Cass, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and author of How the Other Half Learns. ...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 11, 20182 min read


New teen fiction genre: School shootings
Lilia Martinez, 15, a student in Michigan “estimates that of the 28 books she read over the last school year, both for pleasure and...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 3, 20182 min read


Title IX twisted: From soccer to sex harassment
Once a “reasonable equality-of-opportunity law,” Title IX has gone weirdly astray, writes Christina Hoff Sommers. “What explains the...

Joanne Jacobs
Aug 17, 20182 min read


Going AYP
Roxanna Elden’s Adequate Yearly Progress is an entertaining — and often infuriating — novel about a Texas high school coping with a...

Joanne Jacobs
Aug 3, 20182 min read
Build a book: Crafting ‘Treasure Island’
Microsoft, is trying to “schoolify” Minecraft, the wildly popular world-building game. The latest idea, Litcraft, lets kids build models...

Joanne Jacobs
Jul 28, 20181 min read


Gates: Facts are your friends
Bill Gates is offering all 2018 college graduates a free download of his favorite book, Hans Rosling’s Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re...

Joanne Jacobs
Jul 7, 20182 min read


It’s all hate speech now
The Declaration of Independence includes hate speech, according to Facebook’s algorithm. Christian Britschgi explains on Reason‘s blog....

Joanne Jacobs
Jul 4, 20182 min read


Summer reading
My husband’s grandson is turning 3. Mom and Dad requested a gift of Newtonian Physics for Babies. Here are some other ideas:...

Joanne Jacobs
Jun 22, 20181 min read


Raising self-regulating kids
Children — and their parents and teachers face a “crisis of self-regulation,” argues Katherine Reynolds Lewis in The Good News About Bad...

Joanne Jacobs
Jun 9, 20182 min read


Parenting: Are you a carpenter or a gardener?
Gopnik, a psychology and philosophy professor at Berkeley, wants parents to let their children grow freely without too much worry about...

Joanne Jacobs
Jun 2, 20182 min read


McEwan gets C+ on his own book
When novelist Ian McEwan’s son had to write a school essay on one of his father’s books, Enduring Love, McEwan “gave him a tutorial” on...

Joanne Jacobs
May 9, 20181 min read


Naked tykes by the fire pit
Sara Zaske moved to Germany with a four-year-old daughter, then gave birth to a son. In Achtung Baby she praises “the German art of...

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 17, 20182 min read


Learning isn’t always fun
When it is fun, it’s often because of “cognitive struggle,” the joy of doing what’s hard, Boser believes. As a teacher, Cepeda is tired...

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 11, 20181 min read


Duluth kids won’t read uncomfortable books
To protect students from racial slurs that might make them feel uncomfortable and “marginalized,” Duluth public schools will drop To Kill...

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 9, 20181 min read


Teaching troublemakers
She likes Carla Shalaby’s book, Troublemakers, subtitled “lessons in freedom from young children at school.” A former elementary teacher,...

Joanne Jacobs
Jan 22, 20181 min read
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