The Writing Revolution

The Article: The Writing Revolution by Peg Tyre in The Atlantic.

The Text: In 2009, when Monica DiBella entered New Dorp, a notorious public high school on Staten Island, her academic future was cloudy. Monica had struggled to read in early childhood, and had repeated first grade. During her elementary-school years, she got more than 100 hours of tutoring, but by fourth grade, she’d fallen behind her classmates again. In the years that followed, Monica became comfortable with math and learned to read passably well, but never seemed able to express her thoughts in writing. During her freshman year at New Dorp, a ’70s-style brick behemoth near a grimy beach, her history teacher asked her to write an essay on Alexander the Great. At a loss, she jotted down her opinion of the Macedonian ruler: “I think Alexander the Great was one of the best military leaders.” An essay? “Basically, that wasn’t going to happen,” she says, sweeping her blunt-cut brown hair from her brown eyes. “It was like, well, I got a sentence down. What now?” Monica’s mother, Santa, looked over her daughter’s answer—six simple sentences, one of which didn’t make sense—with a mixture of fear and frustration. Even a coherent, well-turned paragraph seemed beyond her daughter’s ability. An essay? “It just didn’t seem like something Monica could ever do.”

For decades, no one at New Dorp seemed to know how to help low-performing students like Monica, and unfortunately, this troubled population made up most of the school, which caters primarily to students from poor and working-class families. In 2006, 82 percent of freshmen entered the school reading below grade level. Students routinely scored poorly on the English and history Regents exams, a New York State graduation requirement: the essay questions were just too difficult. Many would simply write a sentence or two and shut the test booklet. In the spring of 2007, when administrators calculated graduation rates, they found that four out of 10 students who had started New Dorp as freshmen had dropped out, making it one of the 2,000 or so lowest-performing high schools in the nation. City officials, who had been closing comprehensive high schools all over New York and opening smaller, specialized ones in their stead, signaled that New Dorp was in the crosshairs.

And so the school’s principal, Deirdre DeAngelis, began a detailed investigation into why, ultimately, New Dorp’s students were failing. By 2008, she and her faculty had come to a singular answer: bad writing. Students’ inability to translate thoughts into coherent, well-argued sentences, paragraphs, and essays was severely impeding intellectual growth in many subjects. Consistently, one of the largest differences between failing and successful students was that only the latter could express their thoughts on the page. If nothing else, DeAngelis and her teachers decided, beginning in the fall of 2009, New Dorp students would learn to write well. “When they told me about the writing program,” Monica says, “well, I was skeptical.” With disarming candor, sharp-edged humor, and a shy smile, Monica occupies the middle ground between child and adult—she can be both naive and knowing. “On the other hand, it wasn’t like I had a choice. I go to high school. I figured I’d give it a try.”

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Jon Stewart On Lawbreaking Muppets

There’s only room for one set of babbling talking heads, after all. And besides, FOX anchors are better at hiding their puppet strings.

Satire: Not Readily Understood By All Iranians

The Article: Iran news agency picks up “Onion” story, tells Iranians rural Americans prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama in CBS News.

The Text: An Iranian news editor may be lamenting his or her own fact-checking practices this Friday.

The English-language website of the Fars news agency appears to have been duped by a spoof story by “The Onion”, which claimed that a recent poll had found an “overwhelming majority of rural white Americans” would rather vote for Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Obama.

The story only appeared on the English site of Fars – which, like all other Iranian news organizations, is controlled strictly by the Islamic cleric-led government. By Friday afternoon, the story was apparently pulled down and attempts to access it generated an error message.

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Those Poor Mexicans

The War on Drugs will never truly be over, though mainly because the United States is waging it.

Monopolizing (And Legalizing) Marijuana

The Article: Uruguay takes ‘war on drugs’ in new direction: state monopoly over the production and distribution of marijuana in The Christian Science Monitor.

The Text: Uruguay has long been at the vanguard of social reform in Latin America. Today, it is on the verge of passing into law one of its most radical ideas yet.

The Broad Front – the center-left coalition that holds power – is proposing a state monopoly over the production and distribution of marijuana, making Uruguay the first national government to sell cannabis directly to citizens. The government says the measure is necessary to combat rising drug-related crime, decrease health risks for users, and counter ineffective US policies on drugs. But within Uruguay, interest groups have labeled the legislation totalitarian, while some international bodies argue it breaches global conventions.

“We’re putting this forward as international policy,” says Sebastian Sabini, president of the parliamentary commission created to debate the bill. “The war on drugs has failed. There are more consumers and more violence.”

“Uruguay is opening up a new path,” he says.

Pushing the envelope

Uruguay is often overshadowed by the far larger economies of its neighbors Brazil and Argentina. But the country has made a name for itself with a long history of pushing the envelope on social issues.

In 1918, Uruguay became one of the first countries in the region to officially separate the state from the Roman Catholic Church. It implemented South America’s oldest mandatory pension system in 1896, and a bill to decriminalize abortion is expected to pass later this year.

But the bill proposing the legalization of marijuana has been denounced by the United Nations for breaching its 1961 convention on narcotics, and Uruguayans are also skeptical: Polls say just 40 percent approve.

“We’ll end up with people who don’t use marijuana buying it to sell on and make a quick buck,” says Hugo Lacasa, a street trader in Montevideo.

In early September, a parliamentary commission began a six-month debate to refine the bill, which will next be voted on in Congress. The Broad Front has a majority in both houses, but given the audacity of the proposal, President Jose Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla, has said it must have a minimum of 60 percent approval by lawmakers. Usually, just a 51 percent simple majority is required.

‘Tackling’ black market

The government introduced the bill in part because of “the failure of the global ‘war on drugs,’ ” according to the text of the proposed law. It also believes that by separating the marijuana and hard drug markets, less people will become addicted to the latter – especially “paco,” a cocaine-based paste.

Violence linked to the black market for drugs will plummet too, says Julio Calzada, secretary general of Uruguay’s National Committee on Drugs. “Uruguay’s criminality rate has increased by approximately 10 percent in the last few years,” Mr. Calzada says. “We can tackle that by regulating the $40 million marijuana market.”

But legalization campaigners insist the plans would place too much control in the hands of government while the UN is irked by the “grave violation” of its drug interdiction strategy.

Alternative to the ‘war on drugs?’

The war on drugs was instigated by President Nixon in the 1970s in an attempt to curtail the consumption of drugs in the US. Since then, a similar strategy of zero tolerance has been adopted by politicians across the Americas, aided by Washington. Amid pushback from drug-trafficking cartels, violence has escalated, and tens of thousands of people have died.

Uruguay’s bill has been depicted as an alternative to that strategy, and other Latin American countries like Bolivia and Guatemala have expressed their support.

The Uruguayan government argues that the war on drugs can never achieve a “world without drugs.” Cannabis use rose by almost 9 percent worldwide between 1998 and 2008, proponents of the bill say.

Uruguay, a country of just 3 million people, has also supported Bolivia’s calls to legalize the coca leaf – the key ingredient of cocaine but also traditionally used in its natural state for medicinal purposes, and to stave off hunger and altitude sickness.

President Mujica said the government will require around 150 hectares, or 370 acres, of plantations to meet the needs of what they estimate are Uruguay’s 18,000 regular marijuana consumers. Most of the current supply is trafficked from Paraguay.

A ‘totalitarian’ bill

Mr. Sabini, the president of the parliamentary commission, says that if the state controls cultivation, smokers will be assured of a safe product.

A monthly limit of 40 grams per person will also be imposed, Mr. Calzada says. Foreigners will not be allowed to purchase the cannabis, as has been the case in popular party destinations like Amsterdam, Holland.

“The bill is there to resolve Uruguay’s problems,” said Mujica. “We don’t want drug tourism.”

However, in what may come as a surprise, the proposed legislation has not won over marijuana legalization activists, who label it totalitarian.

Juan Vaz, a leading campaigner once jailed for growing cannabis plants, is lobbying lawmakers to ensure they also allow private, domestic production. The current law would mean that individual growers keep breaking the law, and only state-run production would be legal.

“The government should regulate home cultivation rather than seek a monopoly,” says Mr. Vaz.

Mujica has said the proposal puts Uruguay “at the vanguard” once more. “The problem isn’t the marijuana in itself,” he said. “It’s the trafficking and the violence associated with the black market.”

“It’s time for a new approach,” says Mr. Calzada.