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Authors and Their Books Education Issues Galore

 

EDUCATION ISSUES GALORE

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  In the midst of the culture wars of the late '60s and '70s, a great textbook war broke out in West Virginia when the local conservatives of Kanawha County declared war on the local progressives over their new textbooks, a war that included boycotts, bullets, and bomb threats. Trey Kay won a 2010 Peabody Award for his radio documentary on that 1974 battle. Many parallels can be drawn between the fears of those West Virginia parents and the fears of today’s Texas state textbook committee. It’s worth noting that in the intervening quarter century, the grand fears of the West Virginia families and churches never materialized and the state’s education still ranks in the bottom 15 in the nation. One of the most telling moments and quotes comes from a West Virginia parent who declares during the broadcast, “If I have been successful as a parent, nothing my children can read in school will hurt them.” That in itself is worth hours of debate. Listen to The Great Textbook War at:         http://mediasearch.wnyc.org/m/30507901/the-great-textbook-war.htm (58 mins.)
  A full transcript also is available at the site page for free.

• For more than a decade, the testing crowd pointed to Dr. Diane Ravitch as a loyal supporter. Having worked for both Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, she made no bones about being pro-accountability. In the early 1990s she was assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration. A widely respected education historian, she slowly began to have second thoughts about the testing mania of NCLB as early as 2003 and in 2010 published The Death and Life of the Great American School District, a book that thoroughly repudiated the testing community and itemized the damage done by narrowing curriculum in the name of higher scores — which never rose anyway. Listen as she explores the book’s issues with Diane Rehm, March 11, 2010, 52 mins. http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-03-11/diane-ravitch-death-and-life-great-american-school-system.
• Amanda Ripley added long-term research to her own decades of observation in the American classroom to write “What Makes a Great Teacher?” in the January/February 2010 issue of The Atlantic. Listen to a fascinating 30-minute interview with Ripley, covering what the great ones do, what the bad ones fail to do, and who’s most at fault in classroom after classroom, especially in the inner-city. Much to think about here.
        
  
  
• Three distinguished history professors host a monthly online podcast ("BackStory with the History Guys") that looks at a current issue through the eyes of their respective centuries of expertise (18th, 19th, 20th centuries). Every show is both insightful and entertaining, far from stuffy. In this episode, they look back at public education in America and wonder if we've set ourselves up for failure by expecting too much from a place where children spend only 900 hours a year. The archives of this series should be required listening for anyone teaching history.

• With the cell phone as ubiquitous to the classroom as ballpoint pens, what are the ramifications? Is it benign, distracting, or damaging? The answer can be found in a new study from three Stanford University professors ("Cognitive control in media multitaskers”) in the science journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). The study offers strong evidence that the biggest users/abusers of multitasking are also the biggest losers when it comes to intellectual performance. Just as worrisome is the finding that heavy users faired poorly in their performances even when distractors (laptop, ipod, iphone, etc.) were turned off, suggesting there’s a lasting negative impact from distracted-living, at least for brain-work.

  One of the Stanford author-professors, Clifford Nass, brought his findings to KQED’s public radio “Forum” and took calls from listeners in the San Francisco Bay area for a program called "Multitasking: Does It Work?" (Aug. 28, 2009 (55 min.). To download the program as MP3 audio, click DOWNLOAD. or listen via the panel below.

  
  

• In the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, a third-grade teacher in an all-white class in Iowa took an extraordinary step: She divided her classroom by eye-color, telling her students that blue-eyed students were smarter and better than brown-eyed students. Furthermore, she put identifying collars on the brown-eyed children, decreeing that blue-eyes could not play on the playground with brown-eyes. The reaction was immediate. PBS' Frontline filmed one of her classes three years later and again when that class returned for a reunion 17 years later. The entire program is available online and remains one of the most extraordinary lessons on the lasting impact of racism and discrimination. The first eight minutes of the program are entirely appropriate for grades 3 and up. The rest of the "A Class Divided" is geared toward middle- and senior high students, as well as adults. If there's a better example on film of how to teach, I'm unaware of it.
         Class Divided at: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/
  
• When Jim Sadwith was a student at a N.E. prep school (Hotchkiss School) back in the 1960s, he felt lonely, scorned, and disenfranchised until he read Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. That inspired him to write a play based on the book, after which he felt compelled to gain the reclusive Salinger’s permission to stage the play at his school. It took him more than a year to find and meet the author and the results were predictable: cursory rejection—except for a challenge Salinger threw at the boy. The results, short and long-term, make for a fascinating coming of age tale.
       http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_812_Meeting_Salinger.mp3/view.
• “On the Media,” NPR’s weekly show devoted to all things media, took a hard look ("The Net Effect," April 3, 2009) at how the Web is affecting the print world (books, newspapers, magazines) and what it could be doing to our brains—for better or for worse. It’s a refreshing and thought-provoking show.
        
  One of the experts interviewed on that show is Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, whose research is certainly the highlight of the show. For an uncut version of his interview, go to:http://odeo.com/episodes/24425883-On-the-Media-uncut-interview-with-Lee-Rainie-director-of-the-Pew-Internet-and-American-Life-Project.
            
  
• Dick Gordon explores one of education’s most pressing and continuous problems: the school dropout. In this interview he pores over the issues with a recent 20-year-old dropout and a former dropout that recharged himself, went to college, and now is a Houston ISD dropout prevention officer. The lessons in their personal stories should be heard by every student (junior high through senior high), educator, and parent. ("The Story," 50 mins., Dec. 10, 2008, http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_663_Lessons_From_A_Dropout.mp3
           To hear the interview here, click right:   
  
  
• One of the more controversial figures in American education today is Michelle Rhee, chancellor of schools for the District of Columbia, who is bringing a whole new paradigm to urban education, including the elimination of tenure. She's already closed down dozens of schools in what is the lowest achieving district in the nation. Nonetheless the question remains: Can fixing the school fix the child if the home is so badly broken? Listen as Diane Rehm interviews Rhee on December 26, 2008, along with taking calls from listeners:
      http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/08/12/16.php#24146
  
  
• One in every 150 children is now diagnosed to be somewhere on the spectrum of autism and much has been written and speculated on the causes and effects. The public radio program, “Speaking of Faith,” often addresses issues apart from the traditional parameters of faith and in this 60-minute program it interviews families of autistic children—"Being autistic and being human." It is riveting, inspiring, and very enlightening. For example, one family’s child is fascinated by the logos of film companies the precede the movie and it turns out there is a vast number of people engaged in the same obsession. How does an autistic person who is bound by the concrete relate to the abstract concept of God or religion, right and wrong, and even empathy? (Oct. 16, 2008, “Speaking of Faith,” 60-min. http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2008/beingautistic/)
  
  
• Jeremy Miller worked for 9 years as a Kaplan coach/tutor, including 2007 in New York City schools, using boilerplate-scripted lesson plans to help at-risk students achieve passing grades on state tests. His salary per day was $295 per day, with an overall cost of $1000 per student. The year after his NYC experience, he put his experiences on paper in a lengthy expose for Harper's Magazine (September 2008) entitled, "Tyranny of the Test." An integral part of the No Child Left Behind Act's solution to low scores, privatized supplemental instruction (like Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc.) takes a serious hit in this dispatch right from the trenches of education and will give pause for second- and third-thoughts about what we're doing in the name of higher scores. Miller gave a 30-minute interview to public radio's Leonard Lopate on WNYC in September 2008 at:         www.wnyc.org/flashplayer/mp3player.swf?config=http://www.wnyc.org/
              flashplayer/config_share.xml&file=http://www.wnyc.org/stream/xspf/107583
      
• Connie Heerman is a veteran 27-year English teacher working in an inner-city high school (Perry Meridian High School, Indianapolis) when she decides to use the book Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them (also the subject of the popular film a few years ago). Because the student-authors of the book occasionally use raw language, Heerman petitioned approval from the school board. When her queries went unanswered, she distributed the book to her students. And that's when the storm arrived, first with a demand that she retrieve the books, and then her suspension as a teacher. Listen as she tells this heart-breaking story to "The Story" and Dick Gordon. Ironically worth noting is the mission statement for Perry Meridian High School English Department: "We are committed to language literacy in all its forms as a critical tool for lifelong learning."
       To hear the interview here, click right:
  
  More on the Heerman issue can be found at Susan Ohanian's Web site under the topic "Teacher faces dismissal for not getting book OK."
• Is the "short story" an endangered art form"? Remember when nearly every periodical published at least one short story every month? Not so any longer. Meanwhile the publishing world focuses almost
  exclusively on the novel. KQED's "Forum" hosts a panel of publishing experts to discuss the issues.
  To hear the show, click right:
  
  
• The repetitive drudgery of schoolwork — without immediate rewards — often drives students into dropping out, opting for paying jobs with instant gratification. Some of these young people might have second thoughts after listening to the testimony of two women who totaled 28 years in a Perdue chicken factory, working the line, and then helped run a Duke University study on the physical and emotional damage done by that kind of work. No wonder some prefer the risk of military life over "line work." (APM's "The Story," 50 mins., May 14, 2008)
  To listen to the show, click on the right:
  
  
• In the wake of reports that 1 in 10 high schools are "dropout factories," graduating less than 40 percent of their students, NPR's Diane Rehm talks with 5 experts on the issues involved, www.wamu.org/programs/dr/07/11/07.php#18269 (55 mins., Nov. 7, 2007).
  
  
• Blake Taylor (and his mother) discuss what life has been like for a child diagnosed as ADHD at age five and medicated ever since. Far from a depressing journey, Taylor's tale is enlightening and inspiring. Today at age 19, he's a premed student at UC-Berkeley. (April 23, 2008, "The Story" with Dick Gordon, 20 mins). http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_500_ADHD_and_Me.mp3/view)
       To hear the interview, click right:
  
  
• Everyone sooner or later meets a disappointment that wounds deep enough to seem mortal. A story like that of Floyd Scholz can help ease such wounds. At age 13 Floyd had been told by his football coach that he lacked any redeeming athletic qualities and thus was wasting his time practicing with the football squad. Devastating. Within a few years, the coach was proved mightily wrong—Scholz became a national decathlon champion and seemed headed for an Olympic team berth in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. And then came disappointment again: President Carter cancelled the U.S. team's participation. Everything he had worked toward for five years had suddenly evaporated. Today Floyd Scholz is another kind of world-class champion—this time carving expensive birds out of blocks of wood. (April 21, 2008, "The Story" with Dick Gordon, 20 mins.) http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_498_Boycotts_and_Birds.mp3/view)
  Click to listen here:
  
  
• On The Diane Rehm Show, we get a glimpse of what it's like to teach in the American classroom under No Child Left Behind: veteran educator Jonathon Kozol discusses his book, Letters to a Young Teacher, and Dan Brown talks about his book, The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.
  
  
• Dr. Ben Carson, the preeminent children's neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins, was raised by a welfare mother with a third-grade education who was married at the age of 13. Watch and listen as he describes his rise from both poverty and the bottom of his school classes to the heights of personal and medical success. (Dr. Carson's personal story has been an integral part of The Read-Aloud Handbook for decades.) This interview comes by way of the Academy of Achievement, a Web site that symbolizes the unparalleled opportunity of the Web and, at the same time, the vast array of knowledge lost to those who cannot or refuse to use it. With each of the hundreds of world-famous individuals interviewed, their words come to us via text, audio, and video. The roster includes people from the arts, business, public service, science and exploration, and sports—all commercial-free. The subjects range from Dr. Carson and Maya Angelou to George Lucas and Desmond Tutu, Amazon's Jeff Bezos to the NFL's Peyton Manning, with each highlighting pivotal decisions in their childhoods and careers. In addition, classroom materials for teachers also are available from the foundation.
      There is also an excellent 55-min. interview by Diane Rehm with Dr. Carson from Dec. 23, 1999; it can be heard at: http://wamu.org/programs/dr/99/12/23.php
  
  
• For the umpteenth time, the question has arisen: Is Reading on life-support or already dead? As technology takes away more hours, young people gravitate to online games and chat-lines, and newspaper readership at a 20-year low, what does this portend for the future? WNYC (NPR-New York) devoted one show to the subject. First in was historian David McCullough, who is sincerely worried. Listen at: www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2007/12/21
  
  Next up was Caleb Cain whose December 24, 2007 New Yorker article, "Twilight of the Books," took stock of a recent National Endowment for the Arts study and declared: doomsday for reading is near. Were they over the top or right on target? Listen to their arguments at: www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2007/12/21. In addition, Cain's New Yorker piece can be found at: www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain.
  
  The "online literacy debate" continued with an interview with Elizabeth Birr Moje, professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture in Educational Studies at the University of Michigan, and Sunil Iyengar, director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) (20 mins., Aug. 12, 2008, "The Great Literacy Debate," WNYC-Brian Lehrer Show). Listen at:
  www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2008/08/12
  
  For a look at one of the earliest predictions of Reading's imminent demise, read about the Scribner's essay from 1894 "The End of Books." What caused the furor way back then? Thomas Edison's invention that began the technology revolution.
  
  
• Speaking of inventions, Amazon is now marketing a device that may revolutionize the publishing industry: the Kindle. With a screen that is unparalleled in its clarity (Amazon prefers to call it electronic-paper), it operates independent of a computer and is lighter than a paperback book (10.3 ounces). Buy a book and it's delivered wirelessly in less than one minute and stores 200 volumes. How much of a choice? More than 100,000 books available, including more than 90 of 112 current New York Times bestsellers at $10 each, along with newspapers like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Kindle's cost: $400. Too much? What if the price drops, as it did for the iPhone and the iPods and HD TV? Listen as Tom Ashbrook of NPR's "On Point" surveys experts and callers on how this gadget will or will not affect the reading culture of America at E-READING. (Nov. 20, 2007, 45-mins) at:
        http://archives.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/11/20071120_b_main.asp.
  See also ONLINE READING here.
  
  
• What makes for a bestselling children's book? Leonard Lopate (of WNYC-NY) polls three experts in the field — Jean Feiwel (former head of Scholastic), Diane Roback (senior editor of the children's section of Publisher’s Weekly), and Micha Hershman (a manager of Borders Group children's department) — to gather opinions. An excellent overview of the field today, with good and bad news. A full transcript also can be copied from the web site (Mar. 3, 2008, 25 mins.) at: http://mediasearch.wnyc.org/m/19252945/what_makes_a_best_selling_children.htm
  


• Child development experts have been sounding alarms for more than a decade about the disappearance of play from the landscape of childhood. A recent alert comes from Elena Bodrova of the National Institute for Early Education Research, who tells NPR's "Morning Edition" that the lack of play time is showing up in children's self regulation and executive function. What does that mean? Listen as she explains in this enlightening 7-minute piece "Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills." (Feb. 21, 2008, 7 min.) at: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
  
  
• On Feb. 1, 1960, four black college students in Greensboro, NC, handsomely dressed in jackets and ties, sat down for lunch at a Woolworth store (the equivalent of Wal-Mart today). At a time when segregation ruled the south, such an action was more than daring — in some places it bordered on suicidal. Denied service, they returned the next day with 15 friends who, in succeeding days, were joined by 300, and then 1000. A revolution had been started by four young people. Listen as one of those men, Franklin McCain, eloquently looks back to those events and the role it played in his own life and American history. (NPR's "All Things Considered," Feb. 1, 2008, 7 mins.) at:
        www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18615556.
     Related children's picture book: Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins by Carole Boston (Dial, 2003) looks at the lunch counter revolution through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl.
  
  
• One of the little-known chapters in the Civil Rights movement is the tale of a 24-year-old Presbyterian seminary student (Gurdon Brewster) who apprenticed during the summer of 1961 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and lived with "Daddy" King, Martin's father. The young man became an integral part of the King family that summer and in sharing his tale with Dick Gordon on American Public Radio's "The Story," he paints a vivid portrait of both the King family, the role of religion in the movement, and the dangerous times they lived in; (Jan. 21, 2008, 52 mins.) at
         http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_432_Summer_With_The_King_Family.mp3/view
  
  
• In light of new research showing a distinct IQ advantage for first-borns (6/22/07, New York Times, page 1 www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/science/22sibling.html), a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology explore the ramifications on "Forum" at KQED in San Francisco (June 29, 2007, 52 mins.) at www.kqed.org/epArchive/R706291000
  
  
• There's an alarming and growing academic achievement divide between our male and female students, with the boys showing up on the short end of the comparison in almost everything academic. Is it a boy problem or a man problem — or both? Two public radio shows have addressed the issues: In June 2006, Leonard Lopate of WNYC (June 16, 2006, 33 mins.) talked with college professor (and parent) Tom Chiarella (author of "The Problem With Boys," Esquire July 2006), along with Dr. Leonard Sax, author of Why Gender Matters; You can listen to the entire interview either by clicking on the menu immediately below or using your browser to reach www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2006/06/16. Chiarella's entire article can be found online at
            http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0706SOTAMBOYS_94
  
  Out in San Francisco at KQED, Michel Krasny confers with a panel of experts for opinions about what's causing the student gender divide. (July 11, 2006, 52 mins.) at www.kqed.org/epArchive/R607110900
  
  
• In "Put to the Test," American RadioWorks looks back on the first four years of No Child Left Behind, tracking its effects on one high school in Greensboro, NC; listen as various points of view are shared by principal, faculty, students and parents. The tale is sobering and the reporting is first-rate. Both audio and the show's transcript are available for free directly at the site. (Sept. 24, 2007, 52 mins.) http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing/
  
  
• Alfie Kohn, one of America's freshest, most respected education writers and the author of The Homework Myth, argues that little of what we call "homework" does any good and, in fact, may do considerable harm. Listen as he explains to NPR's Diane Rehm, and then takes calls from across the U.S., some of which contain fiercely cogent responses. (Diane Rehm Show, Sept. 5, 2006, 55 mins.) www.wamu.org/programs/dr/06/09/05.php#1144
  
  
  
• Far and away, the best public speech I've ever heard was the one given by New York Times foreign affairs columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Friedman in May 2005. Explaining to a St. Paul, Minnesota, audience how he came to write his million-copy bestseller, The World Is Flat, Friedman does everything we ask of a public speaker: he's dynamic, informative, entertaining, suspenseful, involves the audience, and poses a provocative scenario that lingers long after his spoken words have ended. One need look no further for a masterful example for a public speaking class. American Public Radio, 45 mins. at: http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/thinkglobal/local-thinkglobal-470738.mp3
  Click to listen to audio here:
  Friedman also is available online for viewing (free) on the Charlie Rose show, speaking about The World Is Flat.
  
  
• In the midst of prime television viewing hours one night in 1974, a young black woman leaned into a microphone at the Watergate hearings and declared in a husky voice that had been honed on debating teams at an all-black high school and an all-black college, uttered words that resonated across Washington and into the White House, while riveting the nation: “My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.” Those words by Rep. Barbara Jordan of Texas were, among other things, the single loudest clarion in what became a full-throated chorus for the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. No black woman in American history had ever been heard by so many Americans in one day, and with such historical effect. Her life story is heard in a special one-hour audio from KUT radio in Houston. The entire script for the show is available at http://kut.org/items/show/5525. The audio button for the broadcast can be found at the bottom of the page at: http://kut.org/items/show/5524. More Jordan material, including Bill Moyers' stirring eulogy at her memorial service, can be found through the University of Texas site at: http://txtell.lib.utexas.edu/stories/media/j0001-video.html.
  
  
• The most listened to radio drama in American history, "On a Note of Triumph," was broadcast simultaneously by all three networks, May 8, 1945, to mark the end of World War II in Europe (VE Day). Sixty million Americans tuned in to listen. The script was written by the man many believe to be the only true genius the radio networks ever produced, Norman Corwin. Carl Sandburg called the show" one of the all-time great American poems" and people could quote whole passages many years later. On its 60 anniversary, NPR rebroadcast both the show and a one-hour profile of Corwin (still alive and still brilliant at 95), narrated by Charles Kurault. Links to both shows can be found at: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4668028. Listening to the broadcast again while the war in Iraq was still being waged was a sobering experience. In 2006, a short documentary on this show won an Academy Award.
  
  
• If you're teaching a unit on the Civil War, don't miss this short segment from "Morning Edition" on the 140th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination. It features a recording from 1947 in which a 101-year-old Confederate veteran recalls being a teenage prisoner of war and one morning seeing the camp's flag at half-mast. "Who died," he asked. (3.5 mins., April 15, 2005)
  
• Beginning in 1974, the L.A. Theater Works began recording live theater for an audio archive that now ranks as the best in the world, with more than 320 major American productions. Via LATW's Web site, a complete play can be heard each week, along with 15-minute openings from dozens of others. In addition, its archive of plays is available for purchase on CD or audiocassette.
• Author Ernest J. Gaines was raised by his crippled aunt who had never walked a day in  her life, who crawled everywhere she went. In this NPR interview, he explains the role she and her friends played in his book and movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. (NPR, Feb. 5, 2005, 8 mins.)
  
• At any given time you can find as many as three sports biographies on The New York Times top-10 bestseller list. Sold as the athlete's own view, invariably the books are written by "ghostwriters" who often can't get the athlete to even read the book, never mind think it through. Listen as three top writers tell what it's like to write the life of a professional but non-reading athlete. (Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC, Dec. 2004, 30 mins.)
  
  
• Dr. Jack Shonkoff, pediatrician and dean of the Heller Graduate School at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and chairman of the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, waves a red flag about some of the learning mandates imposed today by federal education authorities. He declares, "Any attempt to use research on brain development for assessing children in education settings at the present time is completely unwarranted." Here he addresses the Minnesota School Readiness Business Advisory Council, a group of local business leaders working on issues of early childhood development. (2004, Minn. Public Radio)
  
  
• Academy Award-winning actor Sidney Poitier tells Terry Gross how he went about losing the heavy Caribbean accent he brought to the U.S. as a semi-literate teenager, an accent that prevented him from gaining roles at New York auditions: He listened to American radio announcers between rounds of hotel dishwashing, mimicking the announcer's words, sentence after sentence. ("Fresh Air," 2001, 17 mins.)
  
  
• On the 190th anniversary of the famous battle at Fort McHenry, historian Anthony Pitch, author of The Burning of Washington, explains how the Star-Spangled banner came to be written and why it is so important. (NPR, 14-minutes, 9/12/04)
  
  
• Listen as a panel of librarians, booksellers, publishers, and educators discuss the findings of the NEA that shows a record 10% decline in serious reading over the last decade. According to them, it's not all "doom and gloom." (KQED's "Forum," 8-6-04, 52 mins.)
  
  
• Geoffrey Canada is spearheading what might be the most hopeful urban school project ever: "The 24-Block Solution," covering 60 blocks and 6,500 families in Harlem. The goal — educating parent and child, before birth and after, before school and after school, in-school and out of school. Listen to his approach, now funded in the tens of millions by New York's elite for the city's poorest. The rest of urban America is watching this one with bated breath. ("Leonard Lopate Show,"WNYC July 21, 2004, 32 mins.) For more on Canada's Harlem Project, his 60-minute 2008 interview with TV's Charlie Rose can be viewed online at: www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/01/02/2/a-conversation-with-geoffery-canada. In August 2009, National Public Radio’s “This American Life” featured a segment on Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, the most successful urban poverty education program existing today. To hear the show, use the link here (www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1311), and listen to the Prologue and Act One (the rest of the show is devoted to other issues). Canada's first big splash came in a New York Times Siunday Magazine cover story in 2004, which can be found online at: www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/magazine/the-harlem-project.html.
  
  
• The issue of "black underclass culture" reared its head in 2004 from an unlikely source: Bill Cosby. Cosby explains his controversial remarks to "Talk of the Nation" and takes teachers' phone calls (July 7, 2004, 48 mins.), as well as guesting on "Tavis Smiley Show" (30 mins.). Also: Listen to a recording of Cosby's actual speech, and then a discussion by black writers and callers on "The Brian Lehrer Show" (WNYC, July 16, 2004, 32 mins.). "The Tavis Smiley Radio Show" took on the subject again with 5-minute commentaries by University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson (May 27, 2004) and Princeton professor Cornel West (May 26, 2004). The Atlantic Monthly went even deeper when it published the most in-depth profile of Cosby and his personal crusade ("This is how we lost to the white man") in May 2008, found at: www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/cosby.
  
  
• Harry Potter audio narrator Jim Dale tells how he manages the 200 different voices that make the Potter audios all-time bestsellers ("All Things Considered,"recorded 2000, 8 minutes).
  
  
• Terry Gross interviews education professor Diane Ravitch on outrageous "sensitivity censorship" in textbooks and exams ("Fresh Air," 40 minutes).
  
  
• Radio commentator/storyteller Jean Shepherd recalls (the night after) what it was like to participate in the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington (NPR, 15 mins.)
  
  
• Harvard is the most difficult college to gain entrance to in America. To attain that distinction even via the privileged suburbs is a major achievement but to reach it from a Thailand refugee camp by way of a New York city hardware store is almost inconceivable. Listen to 24-year-old Van Tran tell his story ("Weekend Edition," June 5, 2004, 7 mins.)
  
  
• An executive with The Princeton Review examines the new S.A.T. essay criteria and conjures how the works of four famous writers (Hemingway, Stein, Shakespeare, and "The Unabomber") would stand up under the S.A.T. essay grading code. (NPR, Feb, 2004, 5 minutes)
  
  
• The oldest forum for community affairs in America is California's Commonwealth Club.More than 3,000 major figures have addressed this audience in the last 100 years and its archive of recordings is being digitally preserved. Click Commonwealth to see a list of persons whose speeches can be heard via the Web, including: Dwight D. Eisenhower; Edward Teller; Ronald Reagan; Robert F. Kennedy; Benjamin Spock; Shirley Chisholm; Cesar Chavez; Desmond Tutu; and Bill Gates.
  
  
• One of America's great contemporary immigrant success stories —from Iranian poverty to Ivy League college president to president of the Carnegie Foundation — Dr. Vartan Gregorian. ("The Connection," 2003, 50 minutes)
  
  
• For working class America, the public library has always been a major thru-way to achievement. Listen as Washington Post Book Week Editor Michael Dirda describes his journey from being a child his teachers thought was mildly retarded to winning a Pulitzer Prize ("Diane Rehm Show," 2003, 50 mins.).
  
  
• When Vernon Jordan began college, he was the only black in his class and his reading scores were lower than those of  his classmates. How did he catch up, graduate, and become one of the nation's leading civil rights leaders and Washington power broker? Listen as he tells his and his parents' story. ("Diane Rehm Show," 2001, 50 mins.)
  

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Authors and their books

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AND . . . the funniest 31 minutes you may ever hear on NPR and not the least bit educational — in fact, some of the most politically incorrect but falling-down funny minutes ever aired on NPR: "Dame Edna" with Scott Simon.