Essays
1090 results
Page 53
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
I remember Seamus Heaney and David Frost
Two who crossed my path: Heaney and Frost, remembered
I'm a celebrity hater at heart, except when two such exit on successive days: the Nobel Prize poet Seamus Heaney, followed by the TV interviewer David Frost. To one who knew them personally, as I did, they were not icons but warm and honest human beings.
Essays
4 minute read
Taunt the British at your peril
This means war! (or at least a change of subject)
So you think the English are modest and self-deprecating? Did you see how Prime Minister David Cameron responded when a Russian insulted his country? That ought to show them!
Essays
3 minute read
San Francisco: Free markets, free minds
The ultimate libertarian city
Many people think of San Francisco as an ultra-liberal nanny town, and a predominantly gay city, to boot. On the contrary, as I found on a recent visit, it's above all a place that welcomes contrarians and resents government.
Essays
4 minute read