Archive for October, 2011

Educators, Get Ready to Fight

Posted By Zócalo On October 27, 2011

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 contemporary education, but only some of these dispute lead to all-out policy battles. And of these policy battles, some are more important than others. So, in advance of Steven Brill’s visit to Zócalo to discuss the future of America’s public schools, we asked education experts what policy battle matters most to the future of American education. …

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Good Gizmos and Good Governance

Posted By Zócalo On October 25, 2011

Our increasing connectedness has been affecting our lives in dramatic ways. It’s also been shaping our politics. In 2008, for instance, new technology helped to vault a non-leading presidential candidate, Barack Obama, into first place. But is the new ease of connectivity likely to lead to improvements in how we approach our politics? In advance of the Zócalo event “Can Technology Save California Governments?”, several authors and scholars weigh in on the political opportunities and pitfalls of our new technologies. Will they encourage better political engagement?…

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There’s An App For That

Posted By Zócalo On October 25, 2011

by April Manatt and Joe Mathews

Richard Price, the fire chief in San Ramon, was having a lunch at a deli when he heard an emergency vehicle approach the restaurant. The emergency crew parked in the deli’s lot, and went to a business next door where there had been a report of a heart attack. …

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Legislating Better Teachers

Posted By Zócalo On October 25, 2011

America’s public education system is foundering. U.S. test scores in most subjects are significantly lower than those of students in other developed countries: “The brutal truth [is] that we’re being out-educated,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said. But more often than not, the search for solutions is bringing teachers, policymakers, administrators, and parents into conflict rather than bringing real change to the students who need it most. Media mogul and writer Steven Brill visits Zócalo to discuss how much of the blame rests on the shoulders of teachers’ unions, and to offer his own prescription for how to save the country’s public schools. The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Brill’s new book, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools. …

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You Wanna Make Phoenix Green?

Posted By Zócalo On October 25, 2011

“If Phoenix can become sustainable, then it can be done anywhere,” declared writer and cultural analyst Andrew Ross. This was the inspiration behind his new book, Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City, which explores the past, present, and future of the green movement in the Phoenix area.

Ross was speaking at a Zócalo event co-sponsored by Arizona State University, and many members of the large and rapt audience at the city’s Heard Museum were among the 200 “influential and thoughtful citizens”—lawmakers and urban planners, artists and activists—Ross had interviewed as part of his research. They, and he, recognize that the challenges to greening Phoenix are many, but by no means is the city’s battle against climate change lost. …

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Feuilleton
Friday, December 3, 2010
How One Family Created Chinese America
Zócalo

The Lucky Ones, by Mae Ngai 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.

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