Word: preps
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...small-town, 1940s Arkansas was shaped by a mother who worked as a nurse and played at the racetrack, and an alcoholic stepfather. Gates, by contrast, was born into the Seattle upper crust, his father a lawyer and his mother president of the Junior League. Gates was a skinny prep school kid who spent all his free time in the computer lab--a nerd before the term was invented, a former teacher once said. Clinton, even in his schoolboy days, was the smooth saxophone player who used his music to meet women...
...could mean more mindless at-home drudgery for kids. But not necessarily. When Taylor Hoss, 10, of Vancouver, Wash., came home last year with packets of extra homework assigned in preparation for the state's new mandatory assessment exams, his parents shuddered. But as they worked through the test-prep material, the Hosses were pleased with the degree of critical thinking the questions required. "I was very impressed," says Taylor's dad Schuyler. "It makes you connect the dots...
...couples in the market for smart-kid genes regularly place advertisements in the newspapers of their own Ivy League alma maters offering female undergraduates $7,500 for a donated egg. Before I could get that news comfortably digested, I came across an article in the Magazine section describing SAT prep courses for which parents spend thousands in the hope of raising their child's test scores enough to make admission to an Ivy League college possible. So how can people who have found a potential egg donor at an Ivy League college tell whether the donor carries genuine smart...
...donor herself may not even be aware that such a distinction exists. After years of expensive private schooling and math tutors and tennis camps and SAT prep courses and letters of recommendation from important family friends, she's been told that, unlike beneficiaries of affirmative action, she got into an Ivy League college on pure merit...
Especially when the price of creativity can be a slap back at the teacher. For the past three years, the San Jose, Calif., school district has had Always Running, a memoir of growing up poor and Hispanic, on an optional list for some college-prep reading. Because of its scenes of drug use, sex and gangs, parents were notified and offered alternative works if need be. But this spring a parent demanded that the book be removed from all schools--ignoring the district's challenge process and taking her case to talk radio. The book survived, but now parents have...