Author: Lance Garrison
To the Editor:Re “The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In” (editorial, Nov. 19):Bah humbug! American children suffered from “learning loss” before Covid. In 2019, 35 percent of fourth graders read at or above grade level, 41 percent in math. Hardly impressive. Moreover, we don’t test for skills employers care about — collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creative innovation.The science of how brains learn might help us refashion school for the 21st century. Students don’t learn well sitting passively in large classes memorizing facts to be regurgitated. Students learn in active, engaged, meaningful and socially interactive classrooms.Teachers know this. We…
Homelessness is an American tragedy, but it’s not hopeless. In a recent column, I explored how Houston has become a national model by reducing homelessness by more than 60 percent.One takeaway is that homelessness, above all, reflects a shortage of cheap housing. So I’m intrigued by an approach to providing such housing that’s gaining ground around the country. It’s an idea so old, it seems new: converting single-family houses to rooming houses.Rooming houses, boardinghouses or single room occupancy (S.R.O.) hotels used to be ubiquitous. President Thomas Jefferson stayed in a boardinghouse for several months before moving into the White House.…
I was still kvelling about earning my Ivy League degree when the glow of that parchment dimmed.On Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania put on a pathetic display on Capitol Hill when they were asked if calling for genocide against Jews counted as harassment.It depends, they all said. Penn’s Elizabeth Magill offered a chilling bit of legalese. “It is a context-dependent decision,” she told Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from upstate New York.Not since Bill Clinton was asked about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and replied, “It depends on what the meaning of the word…
Over the last few months, the incredulous question — How can Donald Trump possibly be leading the polls; there must be some mistake — has given way to the clear reality: Something in American life would need to change for Joe Biden to be favored for re-election in November 2024.The good news for Biden is that it’s easy to imagine developments that would help his re-election bid. Notwithstanding a fashionable liberal despair about how bad vibes are deceiving Americans about the state of the economy, there’s plenty of room for improvements — in inflation-adjusted wages, interest rates, the stock market…
KHIRBET ZANUTA, West Bank — The men came alone that morning, leaving families and sheep behind, and climbed the hill to see what was left of their village. On the sun-bleached crest, they found a scene of wreckage: The windows of the makeshift clinic had been smashed, household furniture lay shattered; sections of the schoolhouse had been burned to ash. There were drifts of clothing and stray shoes spread on the ground throughout the abandoned village, small things dropped in haste when the families fled.The Palestinians who live (or lived) in this hilltop hamlet had decamped in terror a few…
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Fighting climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air with giant blowers seems like a brilliant idea. Why knock yourself out trying to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions when you can continue to produce the emissions and then snatch them back from the atmosphere? That solution reminds me of the little red vehicle with robotic arms that the Cat in the Hat uses to clean up the house that he, Thing One and Thing Two have just trashed. “Have no fear of this mess,” the Cat in the Hat tells the children. “I always pick up all my playthings.”But…
To the Editor:Re “Texas Abortion Gets Approval, in a Rare Case” (front page, Dec. 8):A Texas judge has ruled that enforcement of Texas’ abortion ban would be “shocking” and a “genuine miscarriage of justice” in the case of a woman whose fetus has been diagnosed with a fatal condition and, if carried to term, would put at risk her life and future ability to bear children.An additional aspect of the case, however, is equally disturbing and needs to be emphasized. Texas’ abortion ban contains an exception for pregnancies that pose a risk of death or “substantial and irreversible impairment of…
Dec. 8, 2023 – Michelle Pridgen sometimes finds tiny black bugs called aphids in her Christmas tree, and usually a bird’s nest as well.“I just incorporate the nest into my decorating,” she said cheerfully.Pridgen manages the farmers market in Independence, VA, and coordinates the preorders for pesticide-free Christmas trees, one of which she always gets for herself. The market first offered pesticide-free trees in 2012, when a local farm happened to skip spraying a stand of trees. Since then, the farm has stopped using pesticides entirely, although it may sometimes spray diluted herbicides to control weeds, Pridgen said.“It matters a lot to…
On a recent trip to the United Arab Emirates, I felt as if I’d entered a fever dream of green exuberance. It was more than two months before COP28, the annual global climate meeting, which is in progress in Dubai, but the country was already awash in environmental hype. On the highway, banners for an event hosted by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the fossil fuel behemoth known as Adnoc, read: “Decarbonizing. Faster. Together.” A placard in my hotel bathroom asked me to conserve water by using the two-tiered flush, although the flush had only one tier. A friend’s…