Once, driving home from an evening conference at a parent’s house, I was listening to David Brodnoy on the car radio. He was saying that class size had absolutely no effect on the quality of education. A good teacher, he said, would do just as good a job with a class of forty as with…
I once saw, in The Wellesley Townsman, that two children who were great friends when they were in my second grade class were still together. Dozens of duos flashed through my mind – children who had resolved to stay together always. They’d go to the same college, marry two people who were also the best…
I’ve always had a thing about justice. If anyone seems to get short-changed in any way, it bothers me. Unequal distribution of wealth, appreciation, or health has always bothered me. So when children seemed to be getting a raw deal because they learned too fast, too slowly, or too differently, I did what I could…
Humor can be serious business. True, it can be an irritating distraction at times, diverting attention from the issue at hand. It can be destructive, eating away at human dignity or conveying suppressed anger in a way that it can’t be answered (Can’t you take a joke?). I know funny people, people who receive humor…
One of the many priorities teachers have is to make sure children know how diverse our species is. Another is to make sure they know we all have a lot in common. After years of struggling with this balancing act, I still don’t know how to give children the “right” message about diversity. To what…
Around the United States and around the world, it is being decided that children with “special needs” ought to be included in regular classrooms as much as possible – that removing a child from a classroom for instruction is harmful to everyone involved. Before I explore the nooks and crannies of this issue, let me…
I’m going to try to write this article from the point of view of a parent who has other things to do than keep up with the latest developments in education, and so is sometimes bewildered by the goings-on in schools. I will try not to make it a caricature, but there will be that…
When I first heard about life insurance, I was quite young. I thought it was a neat idea. I knew that a lot of people in the past had died, and I thought the trend should be stopped. I asked my parents to buy me some, and they explained, as well as they could to…
I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Blue’s stages of development. They refer to children’s evolving perception of their parents. They are based on years of anecdotal data. Unlike many systems that describe human beings, they haven’t been memorized by any undergraduates or discussed in seminars. You can decide, as you read, whether and how…
If you’re too “into” something, it can be hard to communicate with people who aren’t. So if I’m going to write an article about technology, I’d better hurry up. I already do all my writing and organizing information on the computer, and even on a slow day, I spend an hour on E-mail. Being disabled…