Education / Youth

Threshold Questions

In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Joe Nocera has the sort of superficially thoughtful opinion piece that increasingly characterizes America’s “chattering classes.” The essay is a defense of for-profit colleges. Nocera acknowledges the obvious: such colleges enroll only 12% of the nation’s college students, but gobble up 25% of all federal student aid; fewer [...]

Continue reading...

, ,

4 Comments

Failing Econ 101

If I had any doubts whatsoever about the pitiful state of economic literacy in this country, yesterday provided a perfect example. I was reviewing a paper submitted by a student to one of our faculty members. He had given her a poor grade, and she argued that she deserved higher marks. I am the Program [...]

Continue reading...

,

2 Comments

The Value of Pontificating

I’ve been scanning the local news I missed during the past month, and duly noted coverage of a recent speech by Melina Kennedy on education. Kennedy (no relation–honest!) has focused her mayoral campaign on public safety, education and economic development, and has been delivering substantive proposals on those and related issues. In her education speech, [...]

Continue reading...

, , , , ,

No Comments

Historic Dyslexia

Republicans these days seem to be having an awful lot of trouble with timelines. Example #1: David Barton–Michele Bachmann’s very favorite constitutional “expert,” recently argued that the nation’s Founders “had already had the creationism-evolution debate.” Now I knew the Founders were brilliant men; what I didn’t know is that they had debated the theory of [...]

Continue reading...

, , , ,

1 Comment

Civic Literacy: Charting the Dimensions and Consequences of a Civic Deficit

Sheila Suess Kennedy Professor of Law & Public Policy Erin Braun, MPA Student Adriene Tynes, MPA Student School of Public & Environmental Affairs Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis Abstract Available data gives evidence of a widespread lack of constitutional competence and civic literacy in the United States. The consequences of this ignorance are profound; the [...]

Continue reading...

, , ,

2 Comments