Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected
New York Times
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches. [...]
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches. [...]
Choosing a nice death
NYTimes
THERE is some confusion about the cause of the liver disease that has given Fred Kress a short time to live. The 46-year-old handyman and house painter, who lives outside of Baltimore, had had hepatitis C, which causes liver damage, for several years. Doctors at one point suggested that alcohol abuse may have been a contributing factor, which makes no sense, Mr. Kress and his family say, because he was never much of a drinker. The real culprit, he now believes, was chemical: he didn’t wear the right mask when he was painting houses, and when he did his craft projects, making alien masks out of fiberglass resin, he worked in a small, windowless room, ignoring all the warning labels on the supplies he used.
“It said ‘will’ — not ‘can’ — cause liver and kidney damage,” Mr. Kress said. “My liver was completely fried.”
Even before he became sick, however, his life was no bed of roses. He had had a 20-year love-hate relationship with a girlfriend and was living, at the time of his diagnosis, with his widowed mother. His 17-year-old daughter has Rett syndrome, an autismlike disease that has left her unable to speak. And the day last February when his doctors told him he had no more than a year to live, his girlfriend and his best friend hooked up. [...]
A Positive Force: Mishpacha Magazine
Rationalist Judaism
[...] Beneath the black hat, Mishpachah is part of a revolution in charedi society. They print articles from Jonathan Rosenblum about how the Gedolim are manipulated by kanna'im to do harmful things, and about how the desire to have young men supported in kollel has led to money being the most important factor in shidduchim. They feature interviews with all kinds of people who would never be profiled in Yated or HaModia (although I'm not expecting them to feature me ever again!) The Hebrew edition of Mishpachah recently discussed, very positively, all the new programs to help charedim enter the workforce. Furious condemnations from the Gedolim followed, after which Mishpachah offered a profuse apology. But a wise friend of mine reckoned that they knew in advance that they would have to do this, but felt that it was worthwhile in order to get the information out there.[...]
Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in Israel
NYTimes
The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes peeking out takes long, swift strides toward the Western Wall. It’s late in the day, and he does not want to miss afternoon prayers at Judaism’s holiest site.
“We have to get there before the sun goes down,” he says, his stare fixed behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, the first clue that this is no ordinary Jerusalem man of God. It’s the rapper Shyne, the Sean Combs protégé who served almost nine years in New York prisons for opening fire in a nightclub in 1999 during an evening out with Mr. Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez. [...]
The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes peeking out takes long, swift strides toward the Western Wall. It’s late in the day, and he does not want to miss afternoon prayers at Judaism’s holiest site.
“We have to get there before the sun goes down,” he says, his stare fixed behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, the first clue that this is no ordinary Jerusalem man of God. It’s the rapper Shyne, the Sean Combs protégé who served almost nine years in New York prisons for opening fire in a nightclub in 1999 during an evening out with Mr. Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez. [...]
Pledge to Give Away half of fortunes Stirs Debate
NYTimes
WITHOUT a doubt, the biggest event in philanthropy this year was the Giving Pledge, a commitment by 40 of the wealthiest Americans to give away at least half of their fortunes, about $600 billion.
The goals of the pledge, which was organized by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren E. Buffett, were to stimulate discussion about philanthropy among the ultrawealthy and unleash a wave of me-tooism among others that would bring about “the Second Great Wave of Philanthropy,” in the words of Sean Stannard-Stockton, a blogger and philanthropic consultant.
Now, about three months later, the pledge has not yet visibly inspired new major gifts or attracted additional signatures — Mr. Buffett said he expected more soon — but has surely created discussion and debate, about the wealthy, their giving and what it says about our society. [...]
WITHOUT a doubt, the biggest event in philanthropy this year was the Giving Pledge, a commitment by 40 of the wealthiest Americans to give away at least half of their fortunes, about $600 billion.
The goals of the pledge, which was organized by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren E. Buffett, were to stimulate discussion about philanthropy among the ultrawealthy and unleash a wave of me-tooism among others that would bring about “the Second Great Wave of Philanthropy,” in the words of Sean Stannard-Stockton, a blogger and philanthropic consultant.
Now, about three months later, the pledge has not yet visibly inspired new major gifts or attracted additional signatures — Mr. Buffett said he expected more soon — but has surely created discussion and debate, about the wealthy, their giving and what it says about our society. [...]
PTSD - playing Tetris might protect against stress syndrome
CNN
The rapid-fire visual puzzles that make Tetris so engrossing may also make the video game a promising treatment for post-traumatic stress, a new study suggests.
Recurring, intrusive thoughts of a traumatic event (or events) are one of the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a type of anxiety disorder. According to the study, which appears in the journal PLoS ONE, playing Tetris soon after a traumatic experience appears to protect against these flashbacks, by distracting the brain from the event and short-circuiting how upsetting memories and images are stored.
Not just any video game will do. Notably, the study found that games that rely on trivia or language skills don't appear to have the same therapeutic effect as stacking Tetris blocks, probably because they activate different areas of the brain.[...]
Recurring, intrusive thoughts of a traumatic event (or events) are one of the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a type of anxiety disorder. According to the study, which appears in the journal PLoS ONE, playing Tetris soon after a traumatic experience appears to protect against these flashbacks, by distracting the brain from the event and short-circuiting how upsetting memories and images are stored.
Not just any video game will do. Notably, the study found that games that rely on trivia or language skills don't appear to have the same therapeutic effect as stacking Tetris blocks, probably because they activate different areas of the brain.[...]
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Hush: A new young-adult novel tackles sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox world
Tablet
Hush, a young adult novel by the pseudonymous Eishes Chayil (the pen name is a Yiddish-inflected version of eishet chayil, which means “a woman of valor”), received starred reviews from the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books and the notoriously hard-to-please Kirkus Reviews. Booklist called it a “stunning debut” and “powerful stuff.” School Library Journal called it “thoughtful, disturbing and insightful.”
So, why hadn’t I heard of it?
A librarian who reads Tablet Magazine alerted me to its existence, saying she hadn’t seen anything about it in the Jewish press. Indeed, a Google search finds only a snotty thread (based on Amazon’s description rather than on the book itself) on an ultra-Orthodox-run discussion board called Hashkafah, and a rave review on the blog The Velveteen Rabbi (written by a female rabbinical student in the Jewish Renewal tradition). That’s it.[...]
Hush, a young adult novel by the pseudonymous Eishes Chayil (the pen name is a Yiddish-inflected version of eishet chayil, which means “a woman of valor”), received starred reviews from the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books and the notoriously hard-to-please Kirkus Reviews. Booklist called it a “stunning debut” and “powerful stuff.” School Library Journal called it “thoughtful, disturbing and insightful.”
So, why hadn’t I heard of it?
A librarian who reads Tablet Magazine alerted me to its existence, saying she hadn’t seen anything about it in the Jewish press. Indeed, a Google search finds only a snotty thread (based on Amazon’s description rather than on the book itself) on an ultra-Orthodox-run discussion board called Hashkafah, and a rave review on the blog The Velveteen Rabbi (written by a female rabbinical student in the Jewish Renewal tradition). That’s it.[...]
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