education

When he is the director of a school, apparently. David Prashker, poet and director of a Toronto school, has caused an uproar by posting his poetry on his website. Some of the works include violent and sexual imagery, and parents are now questioning Prashker’s suitability to direct their children’s education. A review of the material is underway.

Book Wish Foundation, a new nonprofit devoted to providing reading relief for people in crisis, announces a project to help Darfur refugees and neighboring villagers in eastern Chad. Donations are needed for library construction, reading glasses, secondary school textbooks, dictionaries, English language course books, and school supplies.

Historian David McCullough, discusses the importance of reading and education. “They [books] become part of the furnishings of our lives, literally. And the quality of what we read, and particularly the quality of what our children and grandchildren read is of the utmost importance…We are what we're reading…” So, what are you reading?

In her Nobel acceptance speech Doris Lessing recalls her childhood in Zimbabwe and speaks with passion about how the starving people there yearn for those books and education that the privileged shun for more inane pastimes. That, and so much more than that. Very vivd. Very poignant. Very worth reading.

For the last decade, educators fretted over the academic gender gap -- girls outperforming boys on standardized tests -- yet the divide remains obvious in reading.

There is plenty of blame to go around -- disengaged parents, uninterested publishing houses, distracting video games and teaching styles -- but not as many clear answers.

Reading and Math are two subject areas that children nationwide are struggling with. Research has found that music can be the answer to all their problems.

Can a literary community that praises Woolf’s cry for a feminine narrative afford to marginalize the voices of contemporary female authors who fall under the label “chic lit” or “mom lit”? Two major universities add chic lit to the curriculum.

Article posses topic for discussion.

George Will is not someone I would normally take advice from regarding books, but this was a fun read. It was a bit overwritten, and at times the fluffy prose overtakes the story, but there was a very interesting exploration of an attitude I see with my students -that learning is really the secondary goal of education, and that the problem is exacerbated by both students and the system.