Apr 27
A Caltech grad and award-winning Torrance teacher is accused of opening fire at the White House Correspondents' Dinner — forcing President Trump's evacuation. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, now faces federal charges. Here's what we know.
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A Caltech grad and award-winning Torrance teacher is accused of opening fire at the White House Correspondents' Dinner — forcing President Trump's evacuation. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, now faces federal charges. Here's what we know.
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Quotes from two literary Lewises (Lewisii?).
If the love of knowledge is a kind of madness, then we're all mad here!
The Top Ten Finalists were announced this week -- now you get to decide who will win a $1,000 cash scholarship!
A Video Game About Walden Pond?
"I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics." ~Henry David Thoreau
In the mid-1800s, Thoreau spent a few years living alone in a cabin by Walden Pond in Massachusetts. His most famous work, Walden, was based on his experience. As any high school literature student knows, Thoreau was a leading transcendentalist and his works were a huge part of the transcendental movement.
Which is great...but it may not make for a very interesting video game.
The University of Southern California is working to develop a video game based on Walden. Basically, the player gets to wander around the woods picking virtual berries and catching virtual fish before returning to a virtual cabin.
What are your thoughts on this?
Read This, Not That: London Games 2012 Edition
Rumor has it that tomorrow’s opening ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic Games will feature a 40-foot-tall Lord Voldemort battling 30 flying Mary Poppinses. This may go down as the most awesomely literary opening ceremony ever.
Inspired by this rumor, we have compiled a list of books by British authors, some London 2012 themed reading selections for your enjoyment.
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling: Who hasn’t read this new classic? If you are one of the few who have yet to finish this seven book series, get going!
Mary Poppins by Dr. P.L. Travers: Yes, it’s a movie, but it’s also a book! Those of you who love the childhood classic starring Julie Andrews should definitely give the novel a shot.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: There isn’t a movie version in existence that does the original two Alice tales justice. These childhood classics can be enjoyed by readers of any age — highly recommended by our teachers and staff!
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: Another childhood classic. If you’ve seen the films, you should still read the books — the films don’t do them justice. Follow the Pevensie children through the wardrobe and into Narnia for the adventure of a lifetime!
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: A perennial favorite, this hilarious novel beats the pants off of the recent movie version hands down. Discover the importance of the number 42 for yourself in this sci/fi spoof!
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of course everyone’s seen the movie trilogy, but if you haven’t read the books then your fantasy literature knowledge is sadly lacking.
Animal Farm by George Orwell: This novella critiques Stalinism through the tale of a collection of farm animals who overthrow the humans. A must read for any potential English major!
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl: Take a trip down memory lane with James and his buggy friends. Revisiting Dahl’s works as an adult is an incredibly enjoyable experience!
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Is Mr. Darcy too proud or too prejudiced? The world may never know. Pride and Prejudice (NOT Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) is a book that anyone who enjoys classic literature must read AT LEAST once. Your humble author reads it once a year!
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: All Twilight fans should give this classic a read. It may not have vampires, but this renowned Gothic love story has everything else — a phantom in the attic, a brooding hero, and a gripping romance.
Peter Pan by J.M. Berry: Incredibly enjoyable, even for adults, this children’s classic is nothing like the Disney movie version from childhood. If you’ve never read it, we highly recommend it!
What are some of your favorite British novels or authors? If you were on the Olympic planning committee, what characters might you include in the opening ceremonies? Comment below — we’d love to hear from you!
A Sanitized Childhood: Do Millennials Fear Failure?
We love the Millennial generation for their creativity, their tolerance, their idealism, and their energy. We think they have the potential to do amazing things in the future. But we also think that too many members of the Millennial generation have been overprotected, resulting in an avoidance of risk and a fear of failure. Embrace failure for every defeat is a chance to learn and grow!
At C2 Education, we provide our SAT students with routine practice tests in order to gauge improvement and address weaknesses. One of these practice SATs includes an essay prompt which asks, “Is it necessary to make mistakes in order to learn?”
In reading responses to this question, you see a lot of students citing examples like Edison and his many failed light bulbs or variations of the truism “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But for every student who offers a hopeful view of a world in which mankind learns through trial and error, there are at least three more students who claim that mistakes are terrible and could never teach us anything.
This tendency to avoid mistakes like the plague is a symptom of a deeper problem among the Millennial generation: Millennials have been overprotected and are too often unprepared for the real world.
This past weekend, I witnessed a perfect example of this. I accompanied my young sister to her freshman orientation at a small local college. During the orientation, the students registered for their classes with the help of faculty mentors while the parents were held captive in a large auditorium. I quickly lost count of the number of parents who asked why they would not be allowed to choose their children’s classes for them. Several parents simply left the room, intent on finding their children regardless of the school administrators’ preferences. And those parents who remained behind spend the entire time anxiously texting their children. I had believed that my sister had sufficient confidence to create her own class schedule, but my phone soon began vibrating nonstop with test messages from my sister asking for advice, reassurance, and guidance in her course selections.
While the clear care and devotion that these parents hold for their children is most certainly admirable, I couldn’t help but contrast this experience with my own freshman orientation. I attended alone, as did most of the other students. I registered for classes alone, without giving it a second thought. I believe I might have called my parents a week or two later to share my class selections with them, but they certainly didn’t play an active role. And this wasn’t thirty years ago – it was a mere decade ago.
Following her orientation, my sister the Millennial immediately began second-guessing her choices, agonizing over the idea that she may have made a mistake. No matter how often I reminded her that she would still be able to change her schedule before classes start, she continued to obsess over the possibility that she might not have made the right choice the first time around.
Why are Millennials so terrified of being wrong? Why are they frozen by the idea of failure?
Sanitizing Gel
The Millennials grew up in an interesting era. Raised largely by Baby Boomers, these children were the first to have their hands constantly sanitized with alcohol gel and the first to play on rubber-coated playgrounds, the first to play in baseball leagues in which there were no winners or losers and the first to have their schoolwork graded in green ink because red might send too harsh a negative message.
In sum, the Millennials enjoyed a sanitized childhood in which their parents, teachers, and coaches made every effort to smooth the harsh bumps of growing up. Parents of Millennials want their children to succeed – they provide them with every possible opportunity and push them to excel in school – but have Millennial parents inadvertently gone too far?
Professors at the Mercy of Students
As any college professor would likely tell you, Millennial students (and often their parents) demand high grades, even if they aren't earned. One college professor writes, “The students were relentless. During the spring semester, they showed up at my office to insist I reread their papers and boost their grades. They asked to retake tests they hadn't done well on. They bombarded me with e-mails questioning grades. More harassed me to change their final grade.”
And one has to wonder: Why do these kids think they are entitled to better grades? The answer, according to John Watson, who teaches journalism ethics and communications law at American University, is that many of these students believe that simply working hard – even if the product isn’t very good – entitles them to an A.
And yes, it has to be an A – anything less, even a respectable B+, is unacceptable, because anything less is failure. As one college professor writes, “Just the other day I had a student in my office regaling me with a tale of horror: she got a B once! Maybe I lacked the corresponding horror because my own undergraduate transcript was just over half B's and B pluses -- of which I was at times quite proud, having earned them in challenging courses in which it was clear that while I was bright, I was not in the top third or fourth of the class. And this fact didn't actually bother me, because not everyone can be the best at everything.”
And that’s the key, the missing lesson that many Millennials still have to learn: No one can be the best at everything.
I do not disparage this generation – I believe that the Millennial generation has amazing potential to affect great change in our society. But only if they can learn to embrace failure. If this generation cannot learn to take risks, to fall down and get right back up, and to face up to their inevitable mistakes, then innovation and progress are doomed.
Congress Saved the Student Loans, Right?
In the weeks leading up to July 1, college students across the nation waited anxiously for Congress to come up with some sort of viable compromise to prevent federal student loan rates from doubling from 3.4% to 6.8%. On June 29, quite literally at the eleventh hour, Congress finally passed a $127 billion bill that addressed student concerns…sort of.
The bill dedicates roughly $120 billion to continuing various transportation projects — a jobs measure heavily supported by Congressional Republicans — while reluctantly providing the needed $6.7 billion to extend current student loan rates. President Obama signed the measure into law on July 6, taking full advantage of the photo opportunity during an election year.
The media hailed the passage as a success — “Congress Saved Student Loans!” — while largely neglecting to point out that the law only protects current interest rates for one year, limits eligibility for subsidized student loans, and alters the traditional 6 month grace period that recent college graduates enjoy. More importantly, even if the bill actually addressed each of these problems, it still wouldn’t come anywhere close to addressing our real student loan problems.
Last fall, news broke that student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt among American families. We have more than $1 trillion in student debt alone. The average student graduates from college owing more than $25,000 in loans. For most recent grads, that amount is almost what they’ll earn in a year. We are sending students to college to earn a degree that is supposed to be the key to their future financial success, but we are requiring that they virtually sell their souls in order to obtain said degree.
All of that is bad enough, but the issue is no longer merely a student rights issue. Unless something changes — and soon — we may face another economic bubble on a scale similar to that of the devastating housing bubble that launched this last recession.
From 1976 to 2010, the prices of all commodities rose 280 percent. The price of homes rose 400 percent. Private education? A whopping 1,000 percent. Why have education costs risen so dramatically? Of course there are many factors at play, but one of the biggest is student loans themselves. With the federal government and private lenders practically tripping over themselves to throw money at students, the money came easy; colleges saw this and knew that they could raise tuition rates without much backlash. Tuition rose, so students borrowed more; tuition rose some more, so students borrowed some more.
The result: Recent college graduates leave school saddled with large amounts of debt. Thanks to the recession, they too often find themselves unemployed or underemployed. No one making $8 an hour as a barista at Starbucks can afford the payments on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, so these students either put off repayment for as long as possible (accruing massive amounts of interest that they have no means of paying off) or they just stop payment altogether. Eventually, this bubble will burst; and since the federal government holds more student loan debt than any private lender, it will be taxpayers footing the bill.
To make matters worse, at least underwater homeowners had some options. They could declare bankruptcy or sell their houses to pay down the loans. Students have no such options. Even in bankruptcy, student loans aren’t erased, and I’d like to see someone try to sell their college diploma and receive enough to pay down their student loans.
It’s wonderful that Congress extended the low student loan interest rates (although it would have been nice if they’d done that in the first place instead of arguing about whether or not students deserve help), but it doesn’t really solve anything. Until tuition rates are brought under control, until student lending practices become more responsible, and until a higher education really is accessible for people of all economic backgrounds, our student debt problems are far from over.