bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Discovery of Nitrogen and the Disappearance of Alchemical Nitre: The Rise of Agricultural Chemistry in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Authors: Leigh G. J.
Published: November 2020

So far, we have seen how sophisticated systems of agriculture had grown up in many different places and at various times in order to overcome problems associated with the decline of soil fertility arising from continuous exploitation. In Europe and elsewhere, it was clearly understood that manures and various materials such as potassium (or sodium) nitrate could rejuvenate the soil, and empirically probably little more could have been achieved in this direction. Nevertheless, the supply of the products capable of doing this was clearly limited. Only when the scientific basis of the action of fertilisers and manures had been fully understood could further advances be made, and this only happened with the scientific revolution, which began to flower in the sixteenth century and continues in bloom to this day. The empirical experience of centuries seems to have led to the supposition in Europe that the air was somehow involved in restoring the fertility of soils and in the facilitation of plant growth. However, the reason for this influence could not have been presented in modern terms. A lot of the discussion was centred about the mysterious substance nitre, which was then not simply the salt we recognise today. There are many instances of statements to the effect that nitre was absorbed from the air and even references in the older literature to aerial nitre. Solid nitre was, of course, very well-known in the form of saltpetre and was widely employed as a constituent of gunpowder. This kind of nitre could also be used as a fertiliser, though there was not enough of it around to “waste” by spreading it on the soil. Then, as is often true today, warfare was regarded as a more important use for such a resource. Nitre could be extracted from manures and from ashes, and, because it was a crystalline solid, it certainly was not the mysterious something that was present in the air. There was no understanding of the modern notions of elements and compounds. It would take a long time—two centuries—for a truly scientific approach to agricultural chemistry to be developed, but it is still worthwhile to enquire what exactly writers of treatises in the mid-seventeenth century really meant.
Best Practice in Reading History
Authors: Allen Janet , Landaker Christine
Published: November 2020

Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde remind us of the goal that keeps many of us in education—the hope that we can create independent, self-motivated learners. Moving students from the views of history they hold when they come into the classroom and to those highlighted in this goal is a monumental journey. Joel was one of those students who challenged the depth of Christine’s resources in making that journey when he entered her room on the first day of school last year…. “I’m allowed to fail one class every year. And, every year, it’s history.” “Welcome to our class. Choose any seat.” I quickly learned that Joel wasn’t kidding. I asked his other teachers and, indeed, he had failed history every year. In our first class discussion about why we study history, I learned the root of Joel’s problem with history classes. “Come on, Miss. It’s not like these are real people or anything. What’s the point?”… After many frustrating days with the Joels of our classrooms, we all hope for a comment such as the one Christine finally heard: “Yo, Miss L. History makes sense to me now. I mean, we can’t let anything like this ever happen again (referring to the Holocaust).” The essential question for us as teachers is what kind of curriculum, instruction, and assessment will get more students to that goal. Which are the practices we should increase and which are those we should decrease if we want to help a student like Joel move from seeing history as useless and irrelevant to believing that reading history changes our behavior and our world? In What Really Matters for Struggling Readers, Allington says, “The search for any ‘one best way’ to teach children is doomed to fail because it is a search for the impossible” (2000, 22). While there may not be any one best way, I do believe there are effective practices that create a foundation of support for making our study and reading of history accessible, informative, and enjoyable.
1001 Computer Words you Need to Know
Authors: Pournelle Jerry
Published: November 2020

ac•cel•er•at•ed graph•ics port /æk'selƏ'rātid 'græfiks 'pôrt/ ▶ n. see AGP. ac•cel•er•a•tor board / æk'selƏ'rātƏr 'bôrd/ (also ac•cel•er•a•tor card) ▶ n. an accessory circuit board that can be plugged into a desktop computer to increase the speed of its processor or input/ output operations. ac•cess /'ækses/ ▶ n. the action or process of obtaining or retrieving information stored in a computer’s memory: this prevents unauthorized access or inadvertent deletion of the file. ▇ the opportunity to use a computer, files, data, etc.: unauthorized user access. ▇ a way to connect to the Internet: broadband access. ▶ v. [trans.] (usu. be accessed) obtain, examine, or retrieve (data or a file)…. USAGE: The verb access is standard and common in computing and related terminology, but the word is primarily a noun. Outside computing contexts, its use as a verb in the sense of ‘approach or enter a place’ is often regarded as nonstandard.
Basic Troubleshooting
Authors: Pournelle Jerry
Published: November 2020

Is your computer a little problematic? Slowing down? And you’re not ready to call in expert help? Try these tricks. As always, back up important data first. 1. A surprising number of computer problems—inexplicable system crashes, random program shutdowns, “not enough memory” errors—are caused by faulty RAM chips. These errors are normally hard to diagnose by yourself, but on Windows, the free program Memtest86 (http://www.mem test86.com) makes it easy. On Macintosh OS 9, use RAM Check 2.1, which can be downloaded at http://ftp.traffictrak.com/RAMCheck21.sit or http://download.digidesign.com/support/digi/mac/utilities/ RMCheck210.sea.hqx(.) You can also try Techtool Pro for OS 9 or OS X. 2. Four big demons of computers are dust, heat, moisture, and static. You can take some preventive measures, like covering your CPU and monitor when they’re not in use and protecting your computer by drinking your coffee away from the computer, but demons will strike no matter what you do, and they manifest their presence in odd ways. The most common is disk corruption, which shows up as disappearing or corrupt files and folders. Regular disk maintenance is important to keep these demons at bay. The most well-known tool for repairing disk drives is Norton Utilities (http://www.symantec.com), which is included in Norton System Works. You can use it to diagnose and fix already corrupt files, but it is most useful for preventive maintenance. Using these utilities to optimize or defragment your hard drive on a regular basis makes individual files as contiguous as possible, which can increase the speed at which files and programs are opened. However, Norton Utilities can sometimes cause problems of its own, particularly on older computers, if it is installed to run in the background. If you open System Works and click on Options, Norton Utilities, and then the Startup tab, you can uncheck the boxes that would instruct the program to start whenever you boot up. Then it’s up to you to decide how often you need to activate it, perhaps somewhere between once a week and once a month.
Dealing with Spam
Authors: Pournelle Jerry
Published: November 2020

If you’ve used e-mail for any time at all, you’ve no doubt had your inbox deluged with messages pitching aphrodisiacs, mortgages, junk stocks, pornography, and substances that claim to help you lose weight in your sleep. But don’t despair. Such messages don’t have to be part of the Internet experience. You can avoid them, or certainly reduce the annoyance level, with a few simple measures. Some spammers harvest e-mail addresses from the Internet by using a “spider” (also known as a robot or crawler)—a computer program that creeps through the World Wide Web collecting information you’d prefer to keep private. So the better you are at hiding your address from faceless prowlers, the less spam you will receive. 1. If your Internet Service Provider gives you the choice, create a long, fairly complicated address preceding the @; don’t just use your first name: donquixote@example.com is better than don@example.com. Better still is donquixotedelamancha@example. com. It may be unwieldy, but your friends can always use a nickname—or just click on your address. Happily, longer addresses confuse spammers, who—without having exact user accounts in hand—use a “dictionary attack” to find them, testing the validity of every possible address from lists of common words and names: arline@example.com, barbara@example.com, and so forth. 2. Again, unless some online service makes it mandatory, don’t use your e-mail address as part of a login name or identity. However convenient that might make it when logging in to eBay, it’s equally convenient for spammers. 3. Use a second, public address for nonpersonal mail and for public posting. Create a free account with Hotmail, Yahoo, or Excite, or set up another screen name if you use either AOL or another Internet Service Provider that allows you to have multiple addresses. This keeps your main address private and exposes only your public address to spammers. Check the public account at least occasionally, in case something innocent has come in. Then massively delete the rest. It’s important to learn how your e-mail client (the program you use to send and receive e-mail) handles thorough deleting; in Outlook Express, for example, you have to delete an e-mail you don’t want from your inbox, delete it from the “Deleted” folder, and then compact folders before you are genuinely rid of it.
Eight Simple Rules for Kid-friendly Computing
Authors: Pournelle Jerry
Published: November 2020

There’s no shortage of fear, uncertainty, and doubt when it comes to kids and computers. If your children don’t have access to a computer, the conventional wisdom goes, they won’t learn the skills they need to do well in college and to get a good job. If they do have access to a computer, they are at risk of being exposed to everything from predatory Internet creeps to spam, viruses, and lawsuits from the RIAA. There are, however, a few common-sense guidelines that you can follow to help make sure your children’s computer use is as safe and as rewarding as possible. 1. Make sure the computer area is set up correctly for little bodies. If you share a computer and desk with your children, make sure that they can change the height of the chair or keyboard tray, or even swap out your full-size keyboard and mouse for one made for smaller hands. Make sure your children learn good ergonomic habits early—they should take regular breaks from the computer. (There are quite a few programs you can download that give gentle and regular reminders to take a break.) 2. Keep the computer where you can keep an eye on both it and your kids. Many experts suggest that family computers be kept in open or common areas of the house, not in a child’s bedroom. This lets you be aware of what’s on the screen—an IM session? A game? A report for school? Or a questionable website? (FYI: if you see the acronym “POS” on the screen in an IM window as you walk by, it means “Parent Over Shoulder.”) 3. Spend some time using the computer with your children. Even if it’s only losing to them in their favorite game, spending time together lets you model good computer use. Show them your favorite Web site, or ask them to help you shop online for a present. Check the weather where you are, or where their grandparents are. Look up the lyrics to a song they like. Ask them what their favorite sites are, and visit them together. If they are at home while you are at work, IM them or send them e-mail.
A Quick Guide to Writing Online English
Authors: Pournelle Jerry
Published: November 2020

What is Online English? Online English is simply the English that people use online. That’s it. That’s all. Unfortunately, “Online English” when described that way, seems to bring with it an air of either trepidation or disdain. Trepidation, in that many people believe that they will not be able to understand what “these kids today” are writing online, or disdain, in that they can’t imagine why anyone would care what “these kids today” are writing online. The mental image is of a chatroom screen filled with TLAs (three-letter acronyms), emoticons, and enough exclamation points to outfit an entire shelf of melodramatic novels. The emoticons and acronyms are but a small part of Online English. The secret of Online English is this: it’s very close to a language you already know, and know well: Informal English. The confusion comes about because, offline, you speak Informal English much more than you write it. Sure, you might dash off a quick postcard to a friend, or leave a sticky note on a co-worker’s chair, but for the most part, when you are using Informal English, you’re speaking it. Online, of course, you write much more than you talk—it’s just that your online writing is (or should be, for the most part) much like conversation. The different kinds of Online English can be described much like the different kinds of conversation. At the most formal, Online English can be like the conversation at a professional meeting, with prepared remarks and considered dialogue. Many blogs and academic discussion groups have this tone. The point of these online discussions is to get ideas across clearly and succinctly, with a certain amount of style—not stiltedly or slangily, but certainly with the end goal of clarity and mutual understanding. Many blogs, if printed out and divorced from their web associations, would read just as well as many newspaper op-ed columns. No emoticons here! Think of this level as being the same as an informal business memo.
History of the Children’s Aid Society Model
Authors: Moses C. Warren
Published: November 2020

The Children’s Aid Society’s concept of community schools came to life in February 1992 with the opening of the Salomé Ureña de Henriquez Middle Academies (Intermediate School [IS] 218) and the opening in March 1993 of the Ellen Lurie School (Primary School [PS] 5). These were the first community schools operated by The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) in partnership with New York City’s Board of Education. PS 5 is an elementary school whose students advance to middle school at IS 218. The model has evolved into a well-integrated, multidimensional community school involving CAS, the Board (now Department) of Education, and the parents and many other partners from the broader community. Before the two schools opened, several years were spent in preparation and planning. Initially, CAS surveyed New York City communities to identify those that would benefit most from CAS’s services. This was part of an ongoing effort on CAS’s part to examine its current programs in order to modify them to meet current social and familial needs. The survey led to the selection of the Washington Heights community, which was characterized by a large influx of recent immigrants, substantial poverty, large families, and a dearth of services. A more intensive study conducted by CAS in 1987 had documented the dramatic needs of families in this community and the shortage of services available to them. The school system ranked 32nd of 32 districts in nearly every category. The type of poverty that characterizes new immigrants was endemic: very low-wage jobs, two and three families sharing one apartment, and a reluctance to accept outside help. Washington Heights was the substance- abuse and drug-trafficking hub for the tri-state area and had the city’s highest homicide rate. Teenage pregnancy rates were also among the city’s highest. This community is not unlike those that CAS has traditionally served throughout its 150-year history. What was to be strikingly different was how CAS would address these problems. In setting out to plan a service model, CAS drew on its long and rich history of operating community centers in low-income neighborhoods.
Early Childhood Programs
Authors: Seltzer Andrew
Published: November 2020

The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) early childhood initiative is located in two of our New York City community schools, Primary School (PS) 5 and PS 8, in the Washington Heights section of northern Manhattan. This initiative was conceived as a partnership between the New York City Board of Education and CAS. The collaboration brought newborns and their families into the schools in which the children would complete fifth grade. The initiative began in 1994 and has been in full operation since 1996. Since then, the need for such a project has been confirmed and experience has provided insights into how a program for pregnant women and children through age five (often called a Zero to Five Program) can be effectively implemented within a public school. The CAS Zero to Five model connects two federally funded programs—Early Head Start (birth to age three) and Head Start (ages three to five)—to provide comprehensive educational and social services to low-income families and their children. The population attending the Zero to Five Program confronts the obstacles facing all new immigrant families living in poverty in an urban setting. In both schools more than 75% of the families are from the Dominican Republic; another 20% come from other Central and South American countries. The parents’ language is Spanish, and language barriers and acculturation issues result in social isolation. In addition, because many residents lack legal documentation, they are reluctant to access health and social services. The few early childhood programs in the neighborhood all have long waiting lists. A majority of the families share overcrowded apartments with other families or extended family; whole families often live in one bedroom where books and age-appropriate toys are scarce and there may be little child-centered language interaction. However, in spite of the difficulties, these parents have a drive to succeed and they understand the importance of education. By combining and linking Early Head Start and Head Start programs and integrating them into a community school, the CAS Zero to Five Program provides children and families with quality educational, health, and social services, after which the children transition into public school classes within the same building.
Evaluation of Children’s Aid Society Community Schools
Authors: Clark Heléne , Grimaldi Clareann
Published: November 2020

Evaluation has been a central part of the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) community schools work since the opening of the first school. From 1993 through 1999, a collaborative team from Fordham University’s Schools of Education and Social Services conducted process and outcome evaluations of the CAS work, with a focus on the first two schools, Intermediate School (IS) 218 and Primary School (PS) 5. Subsequently, CAS hired ActKnowledge, an independent research firm affiliated with the Center for Human Environments at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), to continue the evaluative work by building on the Fordham findings while using a different (theory of change) approach. Concurrent with the hiring of Act Knowledge, CAS contracted with a technical group called CitySpan Technologies to provide a data management system designed to organize accurate and current information for both program improvement and evaluation. This chapter will review the approach and findings of the earlier Fordham evaluation and then describe the current community schools evaluation, with a focus on its data management system and theory of change approach. CAS began evaluation at the start of implementation because they believed then, as now, that community schools are a model for education reform and that sustainability depended on learning lessons from the start.
Introduction
Authors: Dryfoos Joy G.
Published: November 2020

All of the contributors to this book are clearly in favor of community schools. We would like to see this movement grow rapidly or, as we often say, “go to scale.” This would mean that communities with high needs and low performance would be assisted in transforming their schools. The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) work is one of the streams that have come together to create a new field of full-service community schools. The CAS model has been strengthened by many adaptations throughout the country and overseas. A National Technical Assistance Center for Community Schools has been set up at Intermediate School (IS) 218 with facilities for orientation and training. More than 6,000 policy makers and practitioners from all over the world have taken the tour and observed the rich climate at this pilot school. The concepts of community schools do not necessarily sink in at first encounter; it sometimes takes a while for people to “get it.” The question often arises: Do you really expect the schools to do all of that? It is not well understood that the idea behind the community school movement is for schools to do less, not more! Partners such as CAS come into the building and take responsibility for health, social services, extended hours, and parent and community involvement. However, some school superintendents do get it; Thomas Payzant is a good example (see ch. 15 in this volume). Arne Duncan, head of the Chicago Public Schools, is another strong advocate: “We started with 20 community [school] centers this year [and] we want to add 20 each of the next five years so we will get up to 100 over five years. . . . [T]he Chicago School System cannot do this alone. . . . We have universities, local Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA’s, Jane Addams’ Hull House . . . helping to run our program with us.” The quest for appropriate space within schools for the core components is being addressed in large new school building initiatives around the country.
French Beans and Food Scares
Authors: Freidberg Susanne
Published: November 2020

From mad cows to McDonaldization to genetically modified maize, European food scares and controversies at the turn of the millennium provoked anxieties about the perils hidden in an increasingly industrialized, internationalized food supply. These food fears have cast a shadow as long as Africa, where farmers struggle to meet European demand for the certifiably clean green bean. But the trade in fresh foods between Africa and Europe is hardly uniform. Britain and France still do business mostly with their former colonies, in ways that differ as dramatically as their national cuisines. The British buy their "baby veg" from industrial-scale farms, pre-packaged and pre-trimmed; the French, meanwhile, prefer their green beans naked, and produced by peasants. Managers and technologists coordinate the baby veg trade between Anglophone Africa and Britain, whereas an assortment of commercants and self-styled agro-entrepreneurs run the French bean trade. Globalization, then, has not erased cultural difference in the world of food and trade, but instead has stretched it to a transnational scale. French Beans and Food Scares explores the cultural economies of two "non-traditional" commodity trades between Africa and Europe--one anglophone, the other francophone--in order to show not only why they differ but also how both have felt the fall-out of the wealthy world's food scares. In a voyage that begins in the mid-19th century and ends in the early 21st, passing by way of Paris, London, Burkina Faso and Zambia, French Beans and Food Scares illuminates the daily work of exporters, importers and other invisible intermediaries in the global fresh food economy. These intermediaries' accounts provide a unique perspective on the practical and ethical challenges of globalized food trading in an anxious age. They also show how postcolonial ties shape not only different societies' geographies of food supply, but also their very ideas about what makes food good.
Beginnings
Authors: Parini Jay
Published: November 2020

Beginnings. One of the things I have most prized about working in the academy is the sense of beginnings. There is always a fresh start, with new students, new colleagues, new courses. Even old colleagues somehow look new in September, when the light of the sun seems especially bright, gearing up for a final summery blast before the inevitable decline, what Robert Frost in “The Oven Bird” called “that other fall we name the fall.” It has always seemed ironic to me that one begins anything in the fall, or that a sense of starting over should connect, visually, with the blood-bright failure of so much greenery. Emotionally, the school year ought to open in springtime, when the buds do: there would be a feeling in the air of everything starting over. But it doesn’t work that way. Somewhere, long ago, somebody thought up the notion that academic terms should begin in the fall: probably when the work of harvesting was over, so that farm boys could study with impunity. I often think of “Spring and Fall,” a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. In it, the narrator happens upon a young girl, Margaret, who stands amid a typical autumn scene, with the golden leaves tumbling around her. For unknown reasons, she is weeping. The poet, more to himself than to the girl, concludes: . . . Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow’s springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. . . . In other words, Margaret (like the narrator as well as the poem’s readers) must go the way of all leaves, whether or not she consciously knows it. When we feel sorry in the autumn, we are mourning our own mutability. On the other hand, the rhythm of the academic world runs counter to this natural grieving, so aptly symbolized by the seasons.
Family Issues When a Child Is on Treatment for Cancer
Authors: Alderfer Melissa A. , Kazak Anne E.
Published: November 2020

When a child is diagnosed with cancer, his or her entire family is affected. Parents are shocked and devastated when they learn of the cancer diagnosis and soon after diagnosis are responsible for making difficult treatment decisions that may cause their child pain and fear. Siblings may witness the physical and emotional pain of their brother or sister and their parents and experience sudden, extended separations from them. Family roles and responsibilities shift to accommodate cancer treatment and to attend to the needs of the ill child. These new demands must be balanced with the family’s previous dynamics and their implicit goals of fostering growth and development within the family. Furthermore, the reactions of individual family members have an impact on each other and can influence the way in which the child approaches cancer treatment (i.e., procedure-related distress and adherence). The purpose of this chapter is to discuss issues pertinent to the family when a child is on treatment for cancer. Like all childhood illnesses, childhood cancers occur within a complex network of social systems, such as health care, school/peers, and the family (Kazak, Rourke, & Crump, 2003). A helpful framework for conceptualizing the important social contexts that influence and are influenced by a developing child is the social ecology model (Bronfrenbrenner, 1977). This model proposes that the child is at the center of many nested social systems, typically depicted as a series of concentric circles surrounding the child. Large macrosystems such as culture and societal values comprise the outermost circle, and smaller, more immediate microsystems such as the family, neighborhood, and school are depicted nearer to the child. Although all of these systems are important in the development of a child and useful for understanding adaptation of children with chronic illnesses (Kazak, 1989; Kazak & Christakis, 1996), the most important and immediate social system that involves the child is his or her family. Our most basic conceptualizations of the ways in which families work stem from biologically based general systems theory (Engle, 1980; von Bertalanffy, 1968). Systems theory is inherently integrative and complex and highlights principles of organization and interrelatedness.
Psychosocial Adaptation of Children and Adolescents With Sickle Cell Disease
Authors: Barakat Lamia P. , Lash Laurie A.
Published: November 2020

Sickle cell disease (SCD), a chronic genetic disorder, can produce a host of potentially life-threatening complications that may have an impact on the physical integrity and psychosocial adaptation of the affected child or adolescent. The nature of SCD presents many risk factors, particularly for those children with the most severe form, sickle cell anemia (hemoglobin [Hb] SS). Most common and significant is that SCD involves recurrent, unpredictable pain that can interfere with daily functioning, including social activities and school attendance. Treatment for SCD varies in intensity and invasiveness depending on severity of complications. It may involve daily management (i.e., hydration, restrictions on activities, prophylactic antibiotics, and pain management) as well as preventive follow-up care. Regular blood transfusions are required for children who have had stroke, are at risk for stroke, or experience severe pain crises. Alternative solutions for those with the most severe disease include hydroxyurea and bone marrow transplant. Children with SCD experience pain episodes that vary in severity, duration, and frequency (Brown, Doepke, & Kaslow, 1993). In children with SCD, intense pain episodes often result in repeated hospitalizations and absences from school (Brown, Doepke, et al., 1993). In addition, some forms of pain management, including limitation of physical activity, may interfere with children’s ability to participate in sport activities or to engage in peer relations when they are experiencing a pain crisis. Moreover, the occurrence of cerebrovascular accidents (CVAs) or stroke can have an impact on academic achievement and long-term occupational outcomes (Lemanek, Buckloh, Woods, & Butler, 1995). Although comparisons to other pediatric populations may be useful for understanding processes involved in adaptation, there are aspects of the lives of children and adolescents with SCD, and of their disease, that require a specifically modified approach to the investigation of psychosocial adaptation and application of the current pediatric literature. These issues include the genetic nature of this life-threatening and life-shortening disease, the high prevalence of the disease in African American individuals in the United States, and the multiple stressors faced by children and adolescents with SCD.
Songs and Whispers
Authors: Thomson Peter
Published: November 2020

Acrumpled and broken strand of asphalt rises at the northern edge of Ulan-Ude, wanders through the dark woods of the Khamar-Daban Mountains, and finally settles into a band of fertile bottom land in a narrow stretch of coastal plain approaching the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. A rattly old Toyota van skitters along the road, passing lonely farms and tiny villages that gather up out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, domed churches that seem miles from any worshipers, and an occasional solitary babushka by the side of the road selling whatever she’s been able to squeeze from the earth or gather in the woods. There are seven of us riding this highway on this raw morning in October of 2000, crammed into the van and bobbing like buoys to its irregular rhythms—James and me from Boston, our guide Andrei Suknev, his colleague Igor and our driver Kim, all from the city of Ulan-Ude, and two young women who have also signed on with Andrei for a few days—Elisa, from France, and Chanda, from Canada. We’re all eating pine nuts that we bought from one of those women at a wide spot in the road—they’re called orekhi here—and washing them down with lemon soda from a huge plastic bottle. Andrei is showing us how to crack open the nuts’ hard shells with our front teeth and excavate their soft and pungent meat with our tongues. At an austere restaurant in a tiny village that Andrei tells us is called “Noisy Place,” we eat a lunch of rice and some sort of meat, dry bread, and a peculiar variation on borshch, and we pee in an outhouse across the road. We get back in the van and rumble on. We’re heading for a remote national park on Baikal’s eastern shore, but at the moment I’m not quite sure where we’re going. I’d asked Andrei to take us hiking and camping on the lakeshore, to introduce us to local residents, communities, and culture. He’s promised to do that, but he hasn’t provided much beyond the barest details, and none of us has been asking for more.
On the Trail with Pod Boy and Monkey Mind
Authors: Thomson Peter
Published: November 2020

We are stretched out along the Holy Nose trail, the five of us, clinging to the steep hillside above Chivyrkuysky Gulf. The trail has narrowed even further, and it struggles to get around big trees and through thick brush. Andrei is ahead, as usual, but not as far as before and at a more relaxed pace. Elisa and Chanda walk together, talking. James and I walk separately, not talking. Not not talking as in pissed off at each other not talking, just not talking as in keeping our thoughts to ourselves and being alone here not talking, which we both do a lot. Baikal inspires many things in many people, but it has not yet inspired in either of us the gift of gab. Halfway around the world, cut loose from everything and everyone we’ve ever known, we’re still the same old us—both reserved, contemplative, a little anxious, and more than a little self-conscious. We both have a hard time letting loose and opening up. We are eighteen years apart, we’re only half-brothers, but we’re very much alike, in ways that I’m only now beginning to recognize. In the early part of the trip, James played around with the recording equipment I’d brought, and when I listened back to his recordings later I was stunned to find that sometimes I couldn’t tell who was talking—him or me. And I’m a radio journalist, a guy who listens to his own voice for a living. I should know who’s me and who isn’t. It was more than weird. James and I had different mothers and separate childhoods, but listening to these recordings, I realized that our voices have the same tone and cadence, that we use the same peculiar idioms and even stop and start our conversations in the same way. That we don’t just talk alike but that in some basic ways we clearly even think alike. I still can’t figure out how this happened, but it’s probably why this joint venture is working so well. I would not have done this trip alone, and I don’t think I could have done it with anyone other than James.
Righteousness, Uncertainty, and the Point of No Return
Authors: Thomson Peter
Published: November 2020

Life in Russia is littered with small humiliations and labyrinthine obstacles to everyday tasks, and seems to have always been. And when you notice this, which is pretty much right away, you begin to understand the fatalism and stoicism that permeates this country. To get to the offices of the Baikal Environmental Wave, you have to squeeze into a cramped and rattletrap city bus, which hurtles along a dusty avenue through Irkutsk’s drab Akademgorodok, or university district, on the western bank of the Angara. Above the kerchiefs and caps bobbing around you, you might notice a color-coded route map, and you might initially be surprised at this little flash of consideration for the rider—we don’t even have route maps on the buses in Boston. But as the crowd shifts and you move closer, you discover that this speck of civility is merely an illusion. Instead of Russian, the names on the map are in German, and instead of Irkutsk, the bus system depicted is that of Potsdam. The bus is second hand, a castoff from Russia’s former satellite state of East Germany, no less, and local officials didn’t even bother to try to disguise the fact. Getting off the bus, you spot your destination—a new building that’s not yet finished but already looks old, sprouting up amid a scattering of other older structures that look as if they were never completed. You’ve been told that the office you’re looking for is toward the front of the building, right next to the street, but to get to it you have to take a circuitous path up the side and around the back, through the courtyards of neighboring buildings, under a darkened archway and through a construction site to an unmarked side door. You feel like little Billy Whatshisname from that insipid Sunday comic strip The Family Circus, forever taking the most roundabout route home through whatever trouble and mess he can get into, except that here you’re certainly not looking to get into trouble, but there is no short, straight line to your destination, and you’re pretty sure there never will be.
160°
Authors: Thomson Peter
Published: November 2020

If you missed the fences and the swath of open land in the woods that mark the border, you can’t help but notice that you’ve finally left Russia because the human presence beyond the windows of the train is no longer disheveled. Finland shares a long history of tension with its huge and powerful neighbor to the east, but I wonder if having to share such a long border with Russia galls the Finns most of all because everything in their country is so orderly, while everything in Russia is such a mess. The immediate difference crossing between these two countries may well be more stark than between any two others on the planet. We are out of Russia and into suddenly more familiar and comforting territory, and James and I are suddenly giddy and joking about everything— about how the damn Finns have a ridiculous word like Hei for hello instead of the far simpler Russian Zdravstvuite, about how the Finns must long for a life without lawn mowers, a social contract, and more than one color of paint, about how surprised we are that the Finns and the European Union allow Russian trains to use their filthy open toilets within their territory but have perhaps granted a special temporary exemption to trains originating in SDCs—shit-dumping countries. . . . Russia recedes beyond the Gulf of Finland, beyond the lovely decompression chamber of Helsinki, beyond the soothingly smooth and comfortable trains and beds of Western Europe and all its polite people who almost always seem to speak English, and with every passing hour and kilometer we are at once more relaxed and more glad to be rid of the place and more and more sorry that we are not still there. Russia grabs hold of you tight, and if it often feels as if it’s choking the life out of you and making you want to flee, its suffocating embrace is also powerfully seductive. If it often seems to be going to extraordinary lengths to make itself infuriating and impenetrable—almost challenging you just to give up on it and turn your attention elsewhere—it also makes it impossible for you to turn away, and ultimately makes the whole exhausting and exhilarating encounter worth it.
What Brown Awakened
Authors: Minow Martha
Published: November 2020

Brown v. Board of Education established equality as a central commitment of American schools but launched more than a half century of debate over whether students from different racial, religious, gender, and ethnic backgrounds, and other lines of difference must be taught in the same classrooms. Brown explicitly rejected state-ordered racial segregation, yet neither law nor practice has produced a norm of racially integrated classrooms. Courts restrict modest voluntary efforts to achieve racially mixed schools. Schools in fact are now more racially segregated than they were at the height of the desegregation effort. Talk of this disappointing development dominated the events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision. Instead of looking at the composition of schools and classrooms, policy-makers measure racial equality in American schooling by efforts to reduce racial differentials in student performance on achievement tests, and those efforts have yielded minimal success. Historians question whether the lawyers litigating Brown undermined social changes already in the works or so narrowed reforms to the focus on schools that they turned away from the pursuit of economic justice. Commentators have even questioned whether the Court’s decision itself ever produced real civil rights reform. Although Brown focused on racial equality, it also inspired social movements to pursue equal schooling beyond racial differences, and it yielded successful legal and policy changes addressing the treatment of students’ language, gender, disability, immigration status, socioeconomic status, religion, and sexual orientation. These developments are themselves still news, inadequately acknowledged and appreciated as another key legacy of Brown. Yet here, too, judges, legislators, school officials, experts, and parents disagree over whether and when equality calls for teaching together, in the same classrooms, students who are or who are perceived to be different from one another. Parents and educators have at times pushed for separate instruction and at times for instructing different students side by side. As the twenty-first century proceeds, equality in law and policy in the United States increasingly calls for mixing English-language learners with English-speaking students and disabled with non-disabled students, but students’ residential segregation and school assignments often produce schools and classrooms divided along lines of race, ethnicity, and socio-economic class.
Reverberations for American Indians, Native Hawai’ians, and Group Rights
Authors: Minow Martha
Published: November 2020

Usually left out of discussions of school desegregation, the historic treatments of American Indians and Native Hawai’ians in the development of schooling in the United States was a corollary of conquest and colonialism. As late as the 1950s, forced assimilation and eradication of indigenous cultures pervaded what was considered the “education” of students in these groups. The social, political, and legal civil rights initiatives surrounding Brown helped to inspire a rights consciousness among Indian and Native Hawai’ian reformers and activists, who embraced the ideal of equal opportunity while reclaiming cultural traditions. Between the 1960s and 2007, complex fights over ethnic classification, separation, integration, and self-determination emerged for both American Indians and Native Hawai’ians. Their struggles, crucial in themselves, also bring to the fore a challenging underlying problem: are distinct individuals or groups the proper unit of analysis and protection in the pursuit of equality? The centrality of the individual to law and culture in the United States tends to mute this question. Yet in this country as well as elsewhere, equal treatment or equal opportunity has two faces: promoting individual development and liberty, regardless of race, culture, religion, gender, or other group-based characteristic, and protection for groups that afford their members meaning and identity. Nowhere is the tension between these two alternatives more apparent than in schooling, which involves socialization of each new generation in the values and expectations of their elders. Will that socialization direct each individual to a common world focused on the academic and social mobility of distinct individuals or will it inculcate traditions and values associated with particular groups? Even in the United States, devoted to inclusive individualism, the Supreme Court rejected a statute requiring students to attend schools run by the government and created exemptions from compulsory school fines when they burdened a group’s practices and hopes for their children. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Court respected the rights of parents to select private schooling in order to inculcate a religious identity or other “additional obligations.”
On Other Shores: When is Separate Inherently Unequal?,
Authors: Minow Martha
Published: November 2020

Even before it was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education had a global profile. Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in a work that the Carnegie Corporation commissioned in 1944 in search of an unbiased view of American race relations, supplied a searing indictment of America’s treatment of the “Negro,” and his work, An American Dilemma, became a key citation in the Court’s famous footnote eleven. Initially, President Dwight D. Eisenhower showed no sympathy for the school integration project and expressed suspicion that the United Nations and international economic and social rights activists were betraying socialist or even communist leanings in supporting the brief. But as the United States tried to position itself as a leader in human rights and supporter of the United Nations, the Cold War orientation of President Eisenhower’s Republican administration gave rise to interest in ending official segregation, lynchings, and cross burnings in order to elevate the American image internationally. The Department of Justice consulted with the State Department on the drafting of an amicus brief in Brown that argued that ending racially segregated schools would halt the Soviet critique of racial abuses tolerated by the U.S. system of government and thereby help combat global communism. Ending segregation emerged as part of a strategy to win more influence than the Soviet Union in the “Third World.” African-American civil rights leader and journalist Roger Wilkins later recalled that ending official segregation became urgent as black ambassadors started to visit Washington, D.C., and the United Nations in New York City. Tracking the influence of Brown in other countries is thornier than tracking its influence inside the United States where the topic has motivated a cottage industry in academic scholarship. As this book has considered, the litigation has by now a well-known and complicated relationship to actual racial integration within American schools. Some argue that the case exacerbated tensions and slowed gradual reform that was already under way.
Schooling America
Authors: Graham Patricia Albjerg
Published: November 2020

In this informative volume, Patricia Graham, one of America's most esteemed historians of education, offers a vibrant history of American education in the last century. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from government reports to colorful anecdotes, Graham skillfully illustrates Americans' changing demands for our schools, and how schools have responded by providing what critics want, though never as completely or as quickly as they would like. In 1900, as waves of immigrants arrived, the American public wanted schools to assimilate students into American life, combining the basics of English and arithmetic with emphasis on patriotism, hard work, fair play, and honesty. In the 1920s, the focus shifted from schools serving a national need to serving individual needs; education was to help children adjust to life. By 1954 the emphasis moved to access, particularly for African-American children to desegregated classrooms, but also access to special programs for the gifted, the poor, the disabled, and non-English speakers. Now Americans want achievement for all, defined as higher test scores. While presenting this intricate history, Graham introduces us to the passionate educators, scholars, and journalists who drove particular agendas, as well as her own family, starting with her immigrant father's first day of school and ending with her own experiences as a teacher. Invaluable background in the ongoing debate on education in the United States, this book offers an insightful look at what the public has sought from its educational institutions, what educators have delivered, and what remains to be done.