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Accounting for different learning styles

The recent Harvard report on grading practices has drawn a lot of attention from colleges and universities across the country, particularly for its claim that grade inflation remains critical. The rising number of A grades assigned to students has prompted calls to return to traditional in-person exams and other lecture components. However, much of the public perception regarding Harvard students’ large proportion of A’s, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Beth McMurtrie, is “unsympathetic, painting Harvard as a college full of easy graders and entitled students.” ...

Politicians, please drop the creepy smiles

It seems half the country’s political figures have been instructed to grin like a theme-park greeter. Supposedly, that makes them seem friendly, approachable, relatable. When I want humanoid patter, I turn to chatbots. They’re more convincing. Why this epidemic of wax museum smiles? One reason, certainly, is social media, where every sour look gets amplified. No politician wants to get caught with his grin down. The forced smiles of President Donald Trump’s economic advisers really don’t work. As they’re pressed about grim economic news, their jolly best-is-yet-to-come ...

Life is all about improvising our way toward courage

Some fear rarely announces itself. It moves quietly, almost politely, and takes a chair in the corner of your chest and waits. Some days, I forget it is there. Other days, it stirs the cauldron of my stomach until I’m forced to account for it. For most of my life, I believed bravery belonged to people who felt certain. Heroes in stories seemed steady. Leaders seemed equipped. Even the adults of my childhood seemed to wake each morning with confidence about who they were and what they were doing. I assumed that once I grew up, that clarity would arrive for me, too. What arrived ...

Conservative giants worthy of praise

While only a small number of us live to be 100, everyone’s birthday has a centenary date. For historians who seem mostly to be of the liberal persuasion and obituary writers (ditto) the way the 100th anniversary of a conservative’s birth usually results in one of the following: Ignored, diminished with attachment of “right-wing” or “so-called”, and my personal favorite that is rarely attached to a liberal, “controversial.” This year is the centenary of two towering individuals in the conservative movement, neither of whom received the respect they deserved among the ...

Our policy should help to serve our interests

Is it too much to ask for immigrants who love America and its system of government? That’s a question that President Trump has been asking, with an especially high level of vitriol, in the wake of the horrific shooting of members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., the day before Thanksgiving. In a corker of a Truth Social post announcing “a permanent pause” in immigration from Third World countries, Trump went after Minneapolis-area congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and for good reason. Omar stands for everything we shouldn’t want an immigrant to be — ungrateful, ...

Are we closing the door on immigration? We haven’t quite yet

Can the United States come up with an immigration policy that will prove sustainable? Two writers whom I respect and take delight in reading, despite their widely differing views, Tyler Cowen, who favors more immigration, and Christopher Caldwell, who favors less, have their doubts. Both, incidentally, are writing for The Free Press. They are writing at a time when President Donald Trump’s executive branch is splashily and aggressively enforcing supposedly unenforceable immigration laws, and Congress still has Trumpish Republican majorities. Illegal immigration has been reduced ...