Word: school
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Glee, the hit show about a high school Glee club, has very sharp claws, which is one reason kids like it so much. It is routinely, if hilariously, cruel (the sweet jock is described as so dumb, "he's cheating off a girl who thinks the square root of 4 is rainbows"). But no darker current--let alone motivation for parental monitoring--had occurred to me until I recently heard a bright, earnest youth minister tell a group of high school kids that he thought Glee was "anti-Christian...
...they'll take that as permission to do the same themselves. The fact that Glee is about a club full of misfits already makes it ripe gospel ground; Jesus was not likely to be sitting at the cool kids' table in the cafeteria. And it's set in high school, meaning it's about a journey not just to college and career but to identity and conviction, the price of popularity, the compromises we must make between what we want and what we need...
...loved the illustration of the Chinese educational system as told through the story of 7-year-old Liu. Although Liu's parents work, he is met each afternoon by his grandparents, who are active participants in his after-school activities. Liu was surrounded by his extended family at his great-grandmother's 90th birthday party before he headed to his Saturday classes. I was struck by how enriched he must be--not just by his teachers but also by his family...
...Postcard: Minneapolis," about kids learning Mandarin, brought back memories of high school, when we built bomb shelters to survive a Soviet nuclear attack and gasped at communist atrocities in China. With the U.S. over its head in debt, knowing Mandarin might be a good idea. What a difference a half-century makes...
SABAR MINA, an 8-year-old Pakistani girl who, instead of attending school, is forced to work for pennies smuggling food across the Afghanistan border...