Bronson Alcott continues, “…and in thus leading the mind by its own light to the perception of truth.” Using discussion questions to develop ideas instead of using the rote learning method to reinforce “the” right ideas was considered outrageous in the 1820s. In fact, Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott) … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“More often than we think, our limits are self-imposed.”
I once asked the director of our program for non-traditional college students what the biggest challenge was for these students. Was it ability? “No,” she said. “It’s their perception of their abilities. They don’t think they’re smart enough. Then they give up because they think they won’t make it.” These … Read More
“When I was younger, anxiety sometimes flat-out crippled my ability to work.”
In every class I teach, there is at least one student who will talk with me at some point about how high levels of anxiety are preventing him or her from completing assignments. This memoir by Andrea Petersen provides a vivid account of what living with anxiety entails. She writes, … Read More
“The Hopper painting hung on the wall with an indifference so vast it began to feel personal, as though it had been painted for this moment”
The passage continues: “Your troubles are huge and meaningless, it seemed to say, there is only the sun on the side of the house.” The troubles of the people in this illuminating book are vast indeed: no novelist, including Charles Dickens, reveals more clearly the grim scars of poverty and … Read More
“The truth is that my greatest enemies stand not within the crowd outside . . “
What will happen when the reigning 92-year-old queen of England, Elizabeth II, dies and her son Charles, Prince of Wales, becomes king? This play by Mike Bartlett, which PBS presented last Sunday, speculates that Charles will make a desperate attempt to protect one of the hallmarks of democracy, namely, … Read More
“We have to keep making choices, keep transforming.”
Some memoirists see themselves as products of their times. Others see themselves in terms of the obstacles they surmounted or movements they created. Samantha Ellis measures herself against the strongest women who live between the covers of novels. Her approach – which the Guardian calls “biblio-autobiography” – is … Read More
So what about Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind”?
Tony Beck, who wrote his dissertation for Cambridge University on Bob Dylan, notes that Dylan “borrowed extensively” from the English poets Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley and Bryon, who also used the “wind” as a central image in their poems. For them, the wind often symbolized change and freedom. It probably … Read More
“While most children are proof of their parents’ love, I was the proof of their criminality.”
Trevor Noah’s mother was black and his father was white, which was a problem in South Africa in 1984. The Immorality Act of 1927 prohibited “illicit carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives” and said that such acts could result in imprisonment. Until the laws changed when Noah was six, … Read More
“It tells the stories of two revolutions.”
Revolutions, indeed. This book is about Revolutionary War era hero Alexander Hamilton, whose picture is on our ten-dollar bill. It’s also about the revolutionary way his story is told by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who uses hip-hop, harpsichords, and a largely non-Caucasian cast in his Broadway production of Hamilton. Unlike any … Read More
“Until recently, we simply didn’t know how immense this problem was, or how serious the consequences, unless we had suffered them ourselves.”
When Matthew Desmond was growing up, money was tight. Sometimes the gas got shut off, and his parents eventually lost their home to foreclosure. This week, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction book Evicted, which is about eight families in Milwaukee and their evictions. Vivid and unsettling: … Read More
“It comes over him in a wave: He’s been wrong about his Tempest, wrong for twelve years.”
Anyone can retell as classic story, but changing a play by Shakespeare while remaining true to the themes and lessons of the original requires skill. Changes were needed, Margaret Atwood told a standing-room-only crowd in Madison, Wisconsin this week, to make Miranda (the daughter who grows up on a deserted … Read More
The students felt that a few could carry the discussion for the rest of the class . . .
. . . while the majority of students adhered to a ‘norm of silence’ – not perceiving themselves as obligated to participate in the conversation (50). Jay R. Howard, a sociologist, calls this the norm of “the consolidation of responsibility,” which tends to be the default setting in the college … Read More
“What’s past is prologue”
At first glance, this line from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” suggests that history repeats itself. This view is written in stone – literally – on the base of the National Archives’ sculpture. The Harvard Gazette and the University of Chicago Magazine use this quote in articles about the ways … Read More
“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
This famous assertion from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Heroism,” published in 1841, floated to the top of my mind while – of all things! – attending a technology conference. The keynote speaker, author of the upcoming book Strive: How Doing the Things Most Uncomfortable Leads to Success, made … Read More
“My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.”
That the poet Walt Whitman was a rebel who celebrated democracy, nature, love and friendship is well known. What isn’t well known is that Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb who assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, felt inspired by Whitman. Let’s think about that. Could it be that poetry played a … Read More