Word: commonness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What the meetings can do, however, is create an atmosphere of respect and cooperation. If both sides acknowledge that improving the workplace at Harvard is a common interest, then they can work together for common goals, in solving individual grievances and addressing broader concerns such as campus security and improved child care. With this tone, there will be much less interest in confrontational encounters, such as strikes or refusing to come to the table...
...never been more clear that Harvard and the NFL have nothing in common except Pat McInally (the former Harvard gridder who played with the Cincinnati Bengals). Harvard's defiance of the ways of the nation has already forced many students to miss the inauguration of the President of the United States. Worse, it has forced many to forego that most American of rituals--the Super Bowl...
Hirsch defines literacy as "the ability to communicate effectively with strangers," and claims that only through educational conservatism can "grandparents communicate with grandchildren, southerners with midwesterners, whites with Blacks..." Does Hirsch really believe that the only way a Black can converse with a white is by appealing to their common knowledge of Herodotus? Communication is more than diverse individuals exchanging stored facts...
HIRSCH'S argument, a summary of the educational philosophy he espoused in his previous best-seller, Cultural Literacy, centers on the idea that common knowledge eases communication and creates a national culture. The dictionary catalogues this particular information, excluding whatever Hirsch considers too specialized, generalized, regional or transient. He claims that widespread study of this body of knowledge can reverse the American educational decline. Apparently, meager teacher's salaries, budget cuts in public schooling, drugs and escalating drop-out rates are merely secondary causes of this decline. If teachers promised to pepper their lectures with proverbs, Biblical references and other...
...parents around the country have filed more than a dozen Ritalin-related lawsuits against doctors, teachers and school districts. In one such suit, a Washington woman claimed that the drug led her six-year-old son to attempt suicide. Complaints about depression, listlessness and insomnia in medicated % children are common. Valerie Jesson, of Derry, N.H., says her son Casey, 10, became a zombie while on Ritalin: "It knocked him into next week. His eyes would glaze, and he would just sit staring." Jesson is currently locked in a legal battle with New Hampshire's department of education over whether...