+

Education

Grace Linn, 100, speaks at a Martin County School Board meeting on March 21, 2023.

Four hundred years ago, copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible were publicly burned by the bishop of London, with church authorities insisting that the Bible should only be read in Latin (and only by the clergy). In the centuries since, many books we now consider classics such as Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Jack London's "Call of the Wild," Walt Whitman’s "Leaves of Grass," Victor Hugo’s "Les Misérables, Charles Darwin’s "Origin of Species"—even Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and "Benjamin Bunny"—have been banned or censored in one way or another in various countries.

Battles over books are nothing new, but once in a while, they become particularly ugly or absurd, prompting people to speak out against book bans.

People like 100-year-old Florida resident, Grace Linn, whose speech at a Martin County School Board meeting has gone viral.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

8 classes that should be required for all students before they hit adulthood

If we want to prepare kids for adult life, we've got some glaring gaps to fill.

Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash

Why aren't we teaching students the things they really need to know as adults?

I remember sitting in advanced algebra and trigonometry class in high school wondering if I was really ever going to use any of what I was learning. Math at that level meant nothing to me in a practical sense. I planned to study English and education to become an English teacher, so I couldn't imagine why I'd need to learn the ins and outs of trig.

As it turned out, some of what I learned came in handy in the functions class I was required to take to fulfill my math requirement in college. But again, I found myself sitting in class with zero idea of why I was learning this level of math and suspecting that I was never going to actually use that knowledge in my adult life.

Now I'm a middle-aged adult and I can say with absolute certainty that I was right. In 27 years, I have not used anything I learned in functions. Not once. Not even a little bit. I agonized my way through that class to eek out a B-minus and to promptly forget everything I'd learned because it was utterly useless to me.

To be clear, higher math isn't useless—it's amazing. It was just completely useless to me.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Fascinating video explains why 'R' is sometimes considered a vowel in the English language

"'R' is an incredibly weird letter with so many different sounds and functions."

Video explains why "R" is sometimes considered a vowel.

If you went to elementary school in the United States, then you learned that vowels are "A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y." All other letters of the alphabet are consonants and make a hard or soft sound depending on their placement around the vowel.

But apparently, our elementary school teachers may have missed a sometime-y vowel…and nobody puts "R" in the corner.

That was a terrible "Dirty Dancing" reference, but nonetheless, here we are looking at the English language with a collective "What the heck?" At no point in my native English-speaking life did I ever realize "R" could sometimes possess the characteristics of a vowel. But PBS said so, and they brought us "Sesame Street," so I'm inclined to believe them.

Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D. breaks down what makes a vowel and explores how the letter "R" in the English language fits that description in the PBS series "Otherwords."

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash

What sinister groups are at work... really at work?

It’s feeling harder and harder to separate truth from fiction in the age of fake news.

But conspiracy theories and propaganda are as old as society itself. Perhaps most disturbing of all is the growing wealth of scientific evidence suggesting that we’re influenced even by news we know to be fake.

How many disproven JFK assassination theories are floating around in your brain thanks to Oliver Stone? Do you sometimes wonder if anyone has ever really landed on the Moon? And do you think just maybe it’s possible that Adolf Hitler actually survived World War II and lived out his days in Brazil? If so, you’re not alone.

Keep ReadingShow less