On Sunday, April 22, The New York Times led its front page with a story revealing that infant death rates were rising in the South, particularly among African Americans. To sociologist David Williams, that was hardly news. Williams is one of the world’s leading scholars on racial disparities in health. Now the Norman Professor of […]
Education in America
Posted inEducation in America
Offering the Young a New Deal
This article originally appeared in CampusProgress.org. A few years ago, watching TV with my teenage son, I was struck by a point that financial-advice guru Suze Orman made to an audience of college students. What assets in America, she asked, are undervalued? Certainly not stocks, nor residential housing. The prices for both of those had […]
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Let’s Talk About Sex
As one of dozens of programs receiving federal funds to educate Ohio teens about sex, a group called Operation Keepsake maintained an online question-and-answer board, where it answered questions like, “How far can my boyfriend and I go and still be safe?” with the warning that “anything past kissing can be dangerous emotionally and physically. […]
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Educational Incentives (Don’t Go To Law School!)
In comments to the post on college loans below, Davis has a good suggestion: Simple solution — have the monthly student loan payment capped at a fixed fraction of your monthly gross income, and adjust the term of the loan accordingly. If I’m a bond lawyer, I pay back my loans over three or four […]
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GENERATION GAP.
GENERATION GAP. Baghdad, Iraq — It takes a while to get to Brigadier General Saleh, the commander of all Iraqi police forces in western Baghdad. For understandable reasons, the ornate Karkh Directorate police headquarters is protected by nearly an entire city block’s worth of cement barricades and concertina wire within the Sunni neighborhood of Yarmouk. […]
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Moral Reserve
Jeremy Wilson entered the Minnesota National Guard less than a year before September 11, 2001. He wanted to find a way to serve as his grandfather had in World War II while still getting a college education. During the first few years of his service, he served a tour in Italy. Now, he’s serving an […]
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IRRATIONAL HATRED OF UNIONS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE.
IRRATIONAL HATRED OF UNIONS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE. Recently, Mark Kleiman noted, against Mickey Kaus‘s frequent contention that busting teacher’s unions that prevent school boards from replacing bad teachers with the immense pool of brilliant teachers just waiting to be freed from odious tenure protections is the key to improving America’s education system, that […]
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Going for Broke
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast with such ferocity in late August 2005, Americans were shocked by the broadcast images of desperately poor people left to fend for themselves. The depth and consequences of poverty in America, normally hidden from public view, had once again become the subject of debate […]
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EDUCATION AND LIBERALISM.
EDUCATION AND LIBERALISM. Over at the Corner, Jonah Goldberg cites uncritically a letter writer who says, “I have been hoping for a long time that black Americans would stop voting monolithically Democratic as they became more educated and successful.” Now why doesn’t Goldberg contradict this assumption that being more educated would lead a group to […]
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THEY WORK HARD FOR THE MONEY, SO YOU BETTER TREAT ‘EM RIGHT.
THEY WORK HARD FOR THE MONEY, SO YOU BETTER TREAT ‘EM RIGHT. I didn’t have any luck getting anyone to join my last crusade, and I’ve given up on it myself, so here’s another, inspired by the Tyler Cowen Times op-ed on inequality that J. flagged this morning: I’m willing to accept a considerable level […]
