Browsing PBH By Articles

How Is Kim Jong Un Like Lady Gaga?

The Article: 2011’s Overachiever Of The Year in Foreign Policy Magazine.

The Text: When my mother turned 27, my father awakened her with the words, “By the time Albert Einstein was 27, he had already developed the theory of relativity. By the time T.S. Eliot was 27, he had already written ‘The Wasteland.’ And by the time Joan of Arc was 27, she had already been dead 8 years.” He probably also said “Happy birthday.” At least, I have to assume he said something nice because they’re still married 55 years and two more children later. I say more children because I was already nine months old at the time, a not inconsiderable achievement on the part of my mother that I think my father was short-sighted to overlook. After all, none of the three people he had mentioned had ever given birth, much less to me.

That said, my father’s litany of over-achievers (if you can consider being burned alive for heresy an achievement…which, by the way, in my family, we would…) would have to be seriously revamped thanks to the arrival on the scene of the pleasingly plump young leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. Kim is also 27 (or 28, depending on which government-propaganda, ministry-generated hagiography you choose to believe). But why quibble?

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How Forbes Gets Poverty Wrong

The Article: An Ode to a ‘Poor Black Kid’ I Never Knew: How Forbes Gets Poverty Wrong

The Text: One of the best parts about being an educator’s son is getting to hear all the crazy things your parent has to deal with courtesy of the “bad kids.” I was a relatively mild-mannered student, thanks in large part to the fact that my mother, a teacher turned school administrator, had raised me to be. Even when she wasn’t verbally doling out conduct lessons, I saw how an interaction with a mean or violent student would leave her frazzled at the end of a long day, and I knew I never wanted to inflict the same kind of torment on anyone else’s mom or dad. Nevertheless, a gut instinct of youthful rebellion underpinned by hip-hop and Propagandhi always led me to inquire about the wild kids at my mom’s schools, the ones who didn’t just listen to punk, but who acted it as well.

It was in pursuit of one of these vicarious thrills that I asked my mom why she was so upset one day when I was about 12 years old. “Just something from today with a student,” she said. I pestered her for more details, and she told me the story. A kid at her school—a primarily low-income, high-minority middle school serving sixth- through eighth-graders—was acting out. His outbursts were not normal, especially considering how young he was: He was rude, aggressive, destructive, foulmouthed, so angry. I remember my mom saying she was amazed at how much rage could fit into such a tiny body.

At first, the student’s teachers tried putting him in timeout. When that didn’t work, they escalated to trips to the principal’s office. When those didn’t work, he got detention after school. And when that didn’t work either, they started sending him home. But when he’d return from a couple of days at home and immediately start tearing his classrooms apart, the suspensions grew to a week, two weeks.

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What America Can Learn From Finland’s Education System

The Article: Finnish Education Safety Net Is Wide, Strong by Erin Richards in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

The Text: If it weren’t tucked into a forest more than 4,000 miles from Wisconsin, Vesala Comprehensive School could stand in for a public school in Milwaukee.

The industrial-looking building from the 1960s serves 365 students, most of whom live in nearby public housing projects. More than half come from single-parent households, and 70% are low-income. Twenty-two percent qualify for special-education services.

About 30% are immigrants or students who speak a first language other than the official languages of Finnish and Swedish.

But unlike in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, where the achievement level of a school can generally be predicted by its ZIP code and student poverty rate, Vesala is part of a national system where the performance gap between the lowest and highest achieving students is one of the narrowest among developed countries, according to a respected international exam.

Contrast that with Wisconsin, where the achievement gap between the lowest performing schools in Milwaukee and the average school in the state – or the average school in the suburbs – is dramatic.

Finland’s homogenous population and generous welfare system help contribute to its high overall student achievement. But some schools around Helsinki do serve a more diverse population of students in economically depressed communities. When faced with some of the same challenges as low-income schools in America, the Finnish system seems to redouble its efforts to make sure resources are shared and teachers and staff have the ability to work with small groups of students.

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The Best Of 2011 In Satire And Politics On The PBH Network

5. The Real Difference Between Europe And America

This year the global recession has caused many to draw comparisons between the United States and Europe. But is there much of a difference? Here’s an image-based list for you to ponder.

4. The College Lifestyle In Pictures

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Minivans, Kids, And Drugs: The Less Obvious Effects Of The Recession

The Article: The New Dealers by Tony D’Souza in Mother Jones.

The Text: For some time, I’d been hearing stories from my sources in the interstate marijuana racket about law-abiding “civilians” turning to the game because of the recession, and so, armed with introductions, I hit the road to meet some of these unlikely criminals face to face. That’s how, on a hot evening in June, I found myself in Dan’s Northern California kitchen.

Dan isn’t his real name. Nor are any of the names in this story, for obvious reasons. But his situation is a familiar, harsh reality for many Americans, as I learned while doing research for my recent novel [1] on this subject. Dan is in his early 40s, a slim, soft-spoken former short-haul trucker who once owned all the toys: a used Mercedes, snowmobiles, Jet Skis. When they were both employed, he and his wife—a retail manager—easily cleared $100,000 a year. “We ate out breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Dan, now a minimum-wage laborer, tells me with folded arms. “That’s the way life was for 17 years.”

Today, Dan’s toys are gone, sold to support an underwater mortgage. His wife, who kept her job, left him three years ago, driving away in the Mercedes. “She didn’t like the fact that I sat at home and she was going to work,” he tells me. “There were no jobs. I filled out a thing for the city, and 400 people were there for one opening—a garbage truck driver.”

Keeping the house has been Dan’s only real goal since 2008, when he was laid off. It’s a simple three-bedroom, two-bath in a prefab, working-class subdivision off the I-5 corridor. “I wanted my kid to grow up in a safe community,” he explains. “I have always made my house payment, and I’ve always made it on time.” But he fretted over things like gas prices. “My daughter would say, ‘Can I take your truck to the store?’ That’s 1.2 miles, which makes it 2.4 miles round-trip. If she went there once, I would not make it to work the next day. That’s how my money was. I’ve fought for it the past three years working two and three jobs. I’ve even changed my morals.”

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