Everyone knows that schools in the United States have been struggling for years. Expenditures rise, but test scores fall. There are many competing lines of thought about problems and remedies in c...
by Jay Mathews
This summer I moved back to my boyhood house in San Mateo, California, after 48 years living elsewhere, mostly on the east coast and in China. My California-born wife and I are G...
After Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson, pundits spent extensive time wringing their hands over the lack of civility in American political discourse. While some American elected offi...
We used to have people who were knowledgeable. They relied on facts, on books, on accumulated expertise. If you had questions about their field, they had answers. Today, though, everyone is a knowledg...
Jennifer Ouellette was an English major who long “avoided all math,” as she put it. Today, the science writer and author of The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypserecalled asking her math teacher what every student wants to know: why does math matter in every day life? “He gave the usual stock answers,” she said. “But when you start to see where calculus is in the real world, that’s when you start to see where it’s useful.” Ouellette dropped by Zocalo’s offices to chat about how calculus can help you win in Vegas, anticipate the next dip or turn of a roller coaster, and why we should all aim for mathematical literacy to give us a richer view of the world around us.
The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America
by Mae Ngai
Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.
