“Keep anxiety at bay,” was the subject line of last week’s email from the Family Institute at Northwestern University. The magnitude of the task can’t be overstated. One of the monsters has come out of the closet, and he will soon live in a big white house built by slaves. …
In 2014, Kalyb Wiley Primm, a seven-year-old Black boy with a hearing impediment in Kansas City, broke down in tears after he was bullied by a fellow student. Upon hearing the little boy’s cries, his school’s resource officer, Brandon Craddock, embarked on an intervention. Frustrated by Kalyb’s persistent yells of …
“Millions of workers have gotten a raise!” the Economic Policy Institute exulted in an email on Sunday. Income growth in 2015 merited the adjective “superb,” with the fastest gains among black and Hispanic workers. Yet the early childhood workforce was nowhere to be found. The stewards of our human capital …
In the acknowledgments of Helping Children Succeed, Paul Tough’s latest ruminations on same, the best-selling author concedes that he had originally thought of the slim 125-page book as nothing more than an online report. His literary agent disabused him of that notion, visions of new readers dancing in his head. …
Play, the primary engine of human development, is vanishing. Melvin Konner, an anthropologist and neuroscientist, regards it as the central paradox of evolutionary biology, combining great energy and risk for an activity that seems pointless. But pointless it’s not. The positive emotions evoked by interactions, physical exercise, and mastery of …
Suddenly, everyone’s weighing in on what young children need. From CEOs of tech startups to the titans of philanthropcapitalism, from economists to journalists and political pundits, early development and education have become a free-for-all, the province of those whose expertise lies elsewhere. Enter, Erika Christakis, author of The Importance of …
I recently learned that Harriet Cuffaro had left us. Suddenly, I was back on the classroom floor at Bank Street College of Education, where she taught for three decades. Well past childhood, we were deep into block building, one of the most rigorous assignments I encountered in graduate school. Cuffaro, …
It was a moment that called for John Coltrane. The California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education—love that acronym, CARE-ED— had revealed the truth about the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes assessment: Overall, there is not a compelling body of research supporting the notion that a nationwide set …
“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote in the opening canto of The Waste Land. The month in which America celebrates child abuse prevention. Each spring, the English Language Arts, math, and science tests arrive, New York City’s third- to eighth-grade public school students busily filling in bubbles. As …
This morning, succumbing to my raging digital addiction, I opened yet another email from Education Week. The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines this malady as a “process” condition—distinct from an obsession with activities such as shopping, eating, and doing drugs. A primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory …
