By the time I met Louise 20 years ago, her children were grown and gone, but I got to know her pretty well toward the end of her life. We agreed that it was tough to grow vegetables in the rocky soil of our neighborhood. We agreed that folks drove
Teachers from across the country appeared to me last night in a dream. With one voice they spoke: “Here’s why teachers feel that we can’t tell parents the truth about their children.” “Because the parents aren’t nice to us never mind respectful.They treat us like coke machines. When they see
A loving mother joined our running group a year ago. Alexa only wants what is best for her children, aged three, five, and seven. “My oldest is brilliant and accomplished,” she began as we headed out into the early morning mist. “He excels at everything.” The older members of our
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. That’s as may be, but the issue of who gets educated where remains unresolved 200 years after Jefferson wrote about our fledgling democracy. It is not news that those
Of all the gloriously exuberant excesses of the “Idiot-athon”, surely the shuttle run was the silliest and the most fun. After running 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 yards out picking up and putting down blocks of wood, competitors were required to remove a plastic bone-the femur if memory serves-in
“What if the impressionists had been dentists?” queried a droll essay in 1978. A more intriguing question considers what might have ensued had Wayne Gretsky been born in South Miami. In baseball, pundits argue about the greatest player of all time. Ted Williams or Willie Mays. Barflies pontificate about Walter
Before Matthew Broderick was Ferris Bueller and Ally Sheedy was the weird girl in “Breakfast Club,” the kids starred in “War Games,” an uplifting film about global thermonuclear war and the end of all life on the planet, that sort of thing. Spoiler alert: the world does not come to
Dumb questions used to make me want to climb up a tower and hurl dry erase markers at random folks walking below. “I. Just. Went. Over. That.” I would sputter through clenched teeth. “Cosecant is the reciprocal of sine; cosecant is not a punk rock group.” Remember the man teaching
Scholars disagree about the number of books in the Library at Alexandria when it was destroyed some 2300 years ago last Thursday. Estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 volumes. Even using the larger guess, an approximation of the sum total of accrued information available to the most learned academicians of
“How has the college admissions process changed in the 30-something years that I have been helping students choose and apply to college?” When I give talks or appear on radio shows, I typically point out how students are filling in more applications and that therefore it’s harder to predict who
Copyright © David Altshuler 1980 – 2024 | Miami, FL • Charlotte, NC | (305) 978-8917 | [email protected]
