Word: mckibben
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gardner is first to decide on the facts and procedures a teacher wants a student to understand, and then to figure out how best to present this information, given the student's strengths and weaknesses. Jean McKibben, a fifth-grade teacher at Coyote Creek, provided an example of such an approach when she described a project her students did about the European settlement of the Americas. Among other things, she wanted them to learn about the boats that were used...
...subject is touchy, and McKibben goes on at length to show that only children are, on average, perfectly O.K., normal, not lonely and unsocialized, and even likely to do better in school, presumably because of more adult attention. He cites research, some of it a bit woozy-sounding, asserting that "only children show more interest in science, music, math and literature, while kids with siblings care more for...mechanical and technical work, skilled trades, and labor." Yeah, yeah, thinks the reader, concluding (as does McKibben, in fact) that only children are a lot like the rest of us. If your...
...fret over McKibben's projections of population and resources. U.S. population growth is slowing, but at the current birth rate of just under two children for each woman--a bit under replacement rate--the population will swell from its present 270 million to about 400 million before it levels off around 2050. That is a horde of people, too many for anyone who worries about future food and water supply, air quality and energy depletion (but not too many for contrarian scientists, energy-company spinmeisters and idealogues who rejoice that each new human being is a potential Mozart...
...half of U.S. couples had only one child, and the rest none, two or more, then, says McKibben, the population would plateau around 2020, and drop by 2050 to about 230 million, which was the figure two decades ago. McKibben says this plan would require cuts in immigration too. And it wouldn't save the world, but in McKibben's view it would give the nation some breathing space in what he sees as the cramped and critical next half-century. He cites familiar horrifying statistics: each year the nation paves over an area the size of Delaware; the average...
...McKibben can sound preachy; he and his wife agonized over having a child and decided to have just one ("the light of my life"), after which he had a vasectomy, which he describes at great length. Journalist Margaret Talbot, who erupted at this in the New Republic last week, is unconvinced by "population doomsayers" and rejects a "politically correct family size." Of the author, whom she describes as a "yuppie yogi," she says, "He is irritating not only because he is so wrong, but also because he is so sanctimonious." Irritating but driven by an impulse to keep us from...