Essays
1093 results
Page 53
Pennsylvania and the death penalty
Last refuge of Death Row, or: Is this what William Penn had in mind?
James Dennis spent 21 years on Death Row for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet Pennsylvania continues to churn out slipshod death sentences even as New York, New Jersey and Maryland have all abandoned capital punishment. Would anyone seriously argue that the death penalty is fairer here than it was in our neighboring states?
Essays
7 minute read
30 reasons why 60 is not the new 40
What do you think of Jerry Lewis? (and other reasons why 60 isn’t the new 40)
“Sixty is the New 40” is a reassuring aphorism for Baby Boomers. There’s only one problem: It’s a load of crap. Here are 30 reasons why.
Essays
4 minute read
The Tea Party takes Washington
What should Obama do?
Our government’s present impasse is the product of a strategy long followed by the natural minority party to thwart the majority’s needs and wishes. President Obama could break it if he weren’t preoccupied with turning his enemies into friends.
Essays
6 minute read
When a teacher plays ‘counselor’
Report from the front lines: Am I a teacher or a therapist?
My first-grade student was poking her leg with a staple. My school— like nearly all Philadelphia public schools in this financially strapped season— lacks a full-time counselor. This meant that, for a little bit, I would have to change hats and become the counselor, to the neglect of my other kids.
Essays
7 minute read
Why public schools are unsustainable
A modest proposal: To save the schools, have fewer kids
Inadequate public school funding is a problem that won’t go away any time soon, unless Americans are willing to raise taxes or have fewer kids. Otherwise, eventually Mother Nature will step in with her own customarily drastic solution.
Essays
5 minute read
A near-death experience
As I lay dying, or: Mind over matter
I thought I’d fully recovered from two heart attacks. Then I got careless. The next thing I knew, as far as I could tell, I was dead.
A conscientious objector’s story
Moment of truth, 1969: We were the future, but we didn't know it
When I chose to apply for conscientious objector status during the height of the Vietnam War, I was 18 years old and an outcast among my family and friends alike. How, then, did naÓ¯ve and idealistic kids like me turn an entire country around?
Essays
11 minute read
Disputin' Putin
This just in: Pot calls kettle black
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent indictment of American exceptionalism echoes a theme I’ve taught for 60 years. But seems to have forgotten the exceptionalism that Karl Marx and Russia wished on European culture for generations.
Essays
2 minute read
The end of American exceptionalism?
Farewell to the City on the Hill
It’s time to rethink the doctrine of American exceptionalism that gets us into wars without end and has left America more isolated in the world than at any time since World War II. Maybe we can learn from the Russians, who’ve already been there and done that.
Essays
5 minute read
A Philadelphia teacher’s lost students
A schoolteacher’s lament: Save the children— from their parents
When two of my students slipped through the cracks, I was helpless to rescue them. And this was before the Philadelphia School District’s current financial crisis.
Essays
8 minute read