Alejandra is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who speak little English and hold down jobs cleaning houses and working in a hotel. Last year, she graduated from a high school in Santa Barbara, Calif., where the student population is roughly half poor Latino and half affluent white. Their worlds rarely intersect, with most white students taking high-level courses and most Latinos enrolled in the general-ed classes. But during her high school years, Alejandra was the exception. She was the only Latino student with immigrant parents enrolled in a college-level program known as ... Read More
What Are American Schools Doing Right?
February 4, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
We hear it over and over again: The public education system in the United States is broken. Smart teachers burn out and leave early. The achievement gap between poor minority students and their affluent white peers won't budge. America is losing ground to other developed nations on test scores. By now, anyone who has ever read a newspaper — assuming, alarmists may add, that you can read at all — understands that the American public education system is rife with problems. But, surely, some practices work. Isn't there a way to look at examples of success and replicate them? With these ... Read More
The Sun Is Bad For You; The Sun Is Good For You
August 30, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Go outside without sunscreen and risk melanoma, the deadliest version of skin cancer. Fail to get enough sunlight and risk dying of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and a host of other awful maladies. It's enough to cause paralysis-by-analysis over a simple walk in the park. In the past few months, a spate of surprising studies has added to a growing body of evidence suggesting that getting adequate amounts of vitamin D — the "sunshine vitamin" — protects against the risk of not only the osteoporosis and depression that people have long known about, but also colon cancer, breast cancer, ... Read More
Big Tobacco’s ‘Other’ Products Catch Fire
July 10, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Just because cigarette sales have been steadily falling in recent years doesn't mean the tobacco industry is going up in smoke. On the contrary, sales of other tobacco products, such as snuff, snus, roll-your-owns and especially cigars are on the rise, according to a new Harvard University study. Two years ago, R.J. Reynolds purchased moist snuff manufacturer Conwood. Philip Morris in the past two years has also begun testing snuff and spit-free snus in Dallas and Indianapolis. Meanwhile, the popularity of mini cigars is exploding among young people, especially in the hip-hop world. ... Read More
Red Meat: A Healthy Choice?
June 6, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
In the wake of the meteoric rise and fall of the Atkins Diet, the concept of eating red meat in recent years has taken a beating in the wider public consciousness. From books like Fast Food Nation — which brought to light the foul quality of much of the meat in fast food — to attack ads like a recent PETA campaign portraying Inconvenient Truth-teller Al Gore as a portly hypocrite for eating meat, the general message has been that meat is bad. Even environmentalists have joined in, stressing that a calorie of cow has a much larger carbon footprint than a calorie of carrot. Moreover, ... Read More
The Trouble With Genius
April 15, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
In many ways, Paul Griffin is typical of a talented college freshman. A gifted artist, perceptive reader and nimble athlete who jumps horses competitively, Paul graduated from high school with a 3.8 grade-point average. He wants to join a fraternity and relishes — only half-jokingly — the thought of “girls and beer.” Yet, if you talk to him for less than a minute, you realize something is amiss. Paul is one of eight freshmen at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism characterized by difficulties in ... Read More
