I just listened to an amazing piece and I want to share it with you. Our kids today are so much more internet savvy than I am. Of course, when I was that age we did not have the internet. When I was a kid we were still writing with quill pens!

Great piece on NPR this morning... new research using old technology leading to advances that may drastically improve life for many people. 

We have written before about the poor performance of our children (and many grown-ups, too, unfortunately) in the area of geography. It is a sad state of affairs, but one, given today’s amazing technologies, does not need to exist.

Most of you are probably too young to remember but there was a time before television, and even before movies. Yes, really! Back in those days adults routinely attended the theatre not only to view plays, operas, ballets and other high art, but also to view “low brow” entertainment in what were called vaudeville houses. An evening of vaudeville involved a running slate of different “acts”  doing short on stage stints in succession and typically included a variety of entertainment from song and dance teams to comedy acts, jugglers, magicians and ventriloquists. Going to see a “show” was a hugely popular entertainment evening for generations.

If you read this blog often you will know I listen to NPR a lot. Today was no exception. At lunchtime I was out to pick up a sandwich and got stuck listening to a pair of interviews on Fresh Air with Terry Gross that concerned education in the United States. The first was a fascinating interview with former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, explaining what changed her mind on No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools. 

Kids love animals! No escaping that one. A visit to the zoo is a beloved experience for all kids. And it's a great part of their education, too.

There are some people who just love conspiracies and mysteries and especially anything to do with “the end of the world” Remember all the brouhaha about the “millennium bug” that was going to destroy all our computers on January 1 in the year 2000? Sometimes I think there are people whose own lives are so miserable they dream of catastrophe and disaster as welcome diversions from the monotonous mundane lives they lead. 

All over the midwest, in states such as Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, part of the curriculum for intermediate grades involves teaching 3rd, 4th and 5th graders about the Native American tribes that lived in this part of the country before the Europeans arrived. There is nothing strange about this. All over the country it is standard for states to require children in this age range to learn the history of their own state. In the midwest states that is all wrapped up in the history and culture of the tribes that inhabited this area in the centuries before settlers began arriving from the eastern colonies of the early United States.

On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln passed away in a small room in the Peterson boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theatre in Washington where he had been shot the night before. This is fact.