One warm spring evening, after my teenage daughter and I had spent two hours browsing job boards, the two of us sat at on a bench on the lakefront path on Lake Michigan, watching sweating commuters bike, jog or walk past us. Most of them wore headphones or earbuds. “Let’s try to guess what they’re…

stu_spivak / Flickr When I was studying at Oberlin College, a fellow student once compared me to her dog. Because my name is Simba, a name Americans associate with animals, she unhelpfully shared that her dog’s name was also Simba. She froze with embarrassment, realizing that her remark could be…

But unseen barriers do. Photo by Scott Webb, courtesy of Unsplash I’ve been a psychology professor since 2012. In the past six years, I’ve witnessed students of all ages procrastinate on papers, skip presentation days, miss assignments, and let due dates fly by. I’ve seen promising prospective grad…

A $5 app that will be effectively abandoned receiving no significant updates and lacking customer support. To put things into perspective, the time the developer spent reading a support email is worth more than he got paid for the app. The App Store model is perfect for such "consumable" software as…

Introduction: The Principle of Fallibility It is generally accepted by most that the complexity of the world far exceeds our capacity to fully comprehend it. Meaning we’re each forced to resort to various methods of simplification in our efforts to interpret things and make sound decisions in our…

The most tragic and infuriating piece of writing of the week came in Tuesday’s It carried a very plain and simple headline. "Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country" My short visit only confirmed my conviction and fear that the invasion would spell disaster for Iraqis. Removing Saddam was…

It was the strike heard ‘round the country. West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app . Their…

“If you believe in equality, you should defend the SAT,” argues Freddie deBoer in “ The Progressive Case for the SAT .” He contends that SAT scores merely reflect larger race and class inequalities. However, given that holistic college admissions are flawed due to those same race and class…

Editorial Every year, several companies--most notoriously Google--float various unfunny, excessively long dad jokes on April Fools Day. But rather than waste your time detailing these latest flat attempts at humor in tech, why not take a moment on April 1 to take a look at the really foolish stuff…

My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when a sudden pain consumed my lower back. The sheer force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I…

“Welfare makes people lazy.” The notion is buried so deep within mainstream political thought that it can often be stated without evidence. It was explicit during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) was nicknamed “We Piddle Around” by his…

Matt Christman, Felix Biederman, and Will Menaker of the podcast “Chapo Trap House,” which emerged during the election as a popular progressive critic of Democrats. Illustration by Rebecca Clarke Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, and Will Menaker befriended each other on Twitter several years ago.…

A statue of former British prime minister Winston Churchill is silhouetted in front of the Houses of Parliament in London in 2015. (Luke MacGregor/Reuters) Shashi Tharoor is author of “ Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India .” He chairs the Indian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.…

Demonstrators called for an investigation into possible Russian involvement in the 2016 election, Boston, February 26, 2017. (AP Photo / Steven Senne) T he publication of a House Republican memo alleging surveillance violations in the Russia probe has prompted President Trump to declare that he is…

United States Rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate. And the profit motive is to blame. The now-shuttered United Hospital in Creston, IA. photolibrarian / Flickr Issue 28 The Health of Nations Preview our new issue, featuring an exclusive interview with Bernie Sanders. The Few Who Won…

How data is manufactured to make curriculum look valuable, and why it doesn't work when it comes to your school. Long and boring. But important. submitted 22 days ago by futureformerteacher HS Science/Coach Prior to becoming a teacher, I was trained in biostatistics and experimental design. It's an…

Commentary Overconsumption of media is a serious problem for teens Comments At a certain moment last year, an uncomfortable silence took hold in my classroom. Lauren had volunteered to read the part of Mama during a reading of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun . Lauren was an excellent…

I have been in school for more than 40 years. First preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, and high school. Then a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, followed by a doctoral program at Princeton. The next step was what you could call my first “real” job—as an economics professor at…

Can you sing anything from a Marvel movie? That’s the question that Tony Zhou of Every Frame a Painting poses at the beginning of his latest video essay, The Marvel Symphonic Universe. Zhou gets several people on the street to hum songs from Star Wars , James Bond , and Harry Potte r but nobody can…

It seems then that the average heterosexual British man, be he a journalist or not, is in considerable peril. Giles Coren and Brendan O’Neill have observed the Kriss and Myers cases and decided they constitute a threat. Coren worries that “Ping out a couple of unwanted crosses into the ether and the…

On the morning a debt collector threatened to rape his wife, Andrew Therrien was working from home, in a house with green shutters on a cul-de-sac in a small Rhode Island town. Tall and stocky, with a buzz cut and a square, friendly face, Therrien was a salesman for a promotions company. He’d always…

CLOSE Ford Lillard grew up in Wiota and is now raising his two kids there with his wife, Liz. Only problem is their children, Bailey and Hunter, are the only two in town. Ford is the town's mayor and has a plan to bring the town back to life. Brian Powers/The Register Liz Lillard bakes with her son…

A senior from TechBoston Academy reacts as President Obama walks into her classroom with Melinda Gates (C) and Education Secretary Arne Duncan (R) in Boston in 2011. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images) Teachers have long been accustomed to “going along to get along” but increasingly are raising their…

Professional dream machine Mac OS 9 as a bootable system was phased out in all of Apple's computer product lines before the switch to Intel circa 2005-2006 . None of the aluminum PowerBooks support native booting of OS 9. Nor do the G5-based PowerMacs and iMacs—though getting OS 9 to run on these is…

Public schools have always occupied prime space in the excitable American imagination. For decades, if not centuries, politicians have made hay of their supposed failures and extortions. In 2004, Rod Paige, then George W. Bush’s secretary of education, called the country’s leading teachers union a…

Robyn Beck/Getty Images When I was asked to run the Democratic Party after the Russians hacked our emails, I stumbled onto a shocking truth about the Clinton campaign. Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I…

Aeon is a registered charity committed to the spread of knowledge and a cosmopolitan worldview. Our mission is to create a sanctuary online for serious thinking. No ads, no paywall, no clickbait – just thought-provoking ideas from the world’s leading thinkers, free to all. But we can’t do it…

Can you imagine any country today in national mourning over the death of a classical composer? When Giuseppe Verdi, born 200 years ago next week, died in January 1901, Italy wept as one. Almost a quarter of a million people took to the streets, marching to Va, Pensiero from Nabucco – better known as…

Mary-Faith Cerasoli has been reduced to “sleeping in her car, showering at college athletic centers and applying for food stamps,” The New York Times recently reported . Is she unemployed? No, in fact, she is a college professor— but an adjunct one, meaning she is hired on a short-term contract with…

Learning doesn’t happen without relationships. In the classroom, rules matter, but as many of us have learned after a few years teaching, relationships matter much more. One way we can deepen our relationships with students is to share a bit about ourselves with them, and create opportunities for…

O ne day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We…

President Trump speaks to fourth-grade students as he tours St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando on March 3, with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, second from left, as well as White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, left, and Ivanka Trump. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images) The K-12 education…

Gwen Beatty in James Sutter’s classroom at Wellston High School in Ohio, where she and Mr. Sutter butted heads over the issue of human-caused climate change. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times WELLSTON, Ohio — To Gwen Beatty, a junior at the high school in this proud, struggling,…

‘Buchanan has developed a hidden programme for suppressing democracy on behalf of the very rich. It is reshaping politics.’Illustration: Sébastien Thibault I t’s the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century. To read Nancy MacLean’s new book, Democracy in Chains :…

After-work drinks, second only to working breakfasts, are one of the great nuisances of office life—particularly when they’re planned, and in fields where they’re quasi-mandatory. Photograph by ANDY RAIN / EPA The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is not the easiest guy to love. He is, as Sam Knight…

2.28k Shares 2.27k Share 0 Tweet 0 Share 5 Share 0 Share 0 Share In the past few years, the Democratic Party’s rank and file have shifted left on major issues. From healthcare to legalization of drugs to taxes , the heart of the party has grown more progressive—and, in many instances, overtly…

Brendan Leach COLUMBUS, Ohio — In recent months, I’ve frequently found myself in places hit hard by manufacturing job losses, speaking to people affected in various ways. Sometimes, the conversation turns to the conflict people feel between the love of their home and the desire to leave in search of…

Imagine that you are a gubernatorial candidate who is making education and college preparedness a key facet of your campaign. Consider these two state average SAT scores. Quantitative Verbal Total Connecticut 450 480 930 Mississippi 530 550 1080 Your data analysts assure you that this difference is…

Last year when I attempted to pick my daughter up from school, the volunteers in the carpool line tried to put a fourth grader in my car, not the four year old I was attempting to retrieve. Both of us were vehemently shaking our heads, both of us looked totally confused, but the man with the radio…