Critical Issues in Literature

"What should we do to improve the lives of children growing up in adversity? From the best-selling author of How Children Succeed, a handbook to guide readers through the new science of success."

"How to raise successful kids - without over-parenting," is live on the TED.com website after airing on PBS stations nationwide as part of the program "TED Talks: Education Revolution." It clocks in just under 15 minutes long, and (in accordance with the message of How to Raise an Adult) makes the case for parents to stop defining their children's success via grades and test scores and focus on loving our kids unconditionally for who they are."

"In the tradition of Paul Tough's How Children Succeed and Wendy Mogel's The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, this groundbreaking manifesto focuses on the critical school years when parents must learn to allow their children to experience the disappointment and frustration that occur from life's inevitable problems so that they can grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adults."

"I came to the conclusion that wonderful people are made, not born - that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue, built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments. If we wanted to be gimmicky, we could say these accomplishments amounted to a moral bucket list, the experiences one should have on the way toward the richest possible inner life. Here, quickly, are some of them:"

"We seek to cultivate a new American dream-one that emphasizes community, ecological sustainability, and a celebration of non-material values."

"In one of my most popular articles, 30 Fundamentals of a Wonderful Life, I stressed the importance of forming your own definition of success. If you don't, there is a good chance you will waste a lot of time and energy chasing someone else's version of the word. To help you, I have found 10 quotes that each, in my opinion, give a key insight into what success really means."

"One of the hardest things for many of us to answer is "Who am I?" Help students explore this question by having them do an "Ingredients of Me" activity. We did this in my class, and my students' answers looked a bit like this. This activity helped my students explore what they care about, who is in their immediate life, and what they do on a daily basis. Sharing our answers with a small group allowed students to understand who their classmates are, and what responsibilities they had outside of the classroom. However, what's so special about this activity is that students started to see how many things in common they had with their peers. They started to have side conversations about their interests. Exploring identity in the classroom should be practiced regularly throughout the year. The teacher can take the above activity and extend the conversation by asking other questions focused on the theme of identity and knowing oneself."

"When you engage in one task at a time, the prefrontal cortex works in harmony with other parts of the brain, but when you toss in another task it forces the left and right sides of the brain to work independently. The process of splitting our attention usually leads to mistakes. In other words, each time our eyes glance away from our computer monitor to sneak a peak at a text message, the brain takes in new information, which reduces our primary focus. We think the mind can juggle two or three activities successfully at once,  but Gazzaley says we woefully overestimate our ability to multitask."

"But if pluralism is the thing that gives a golden age its sheen, it's impossible to deny that rap inhabits an exceptionally lustrous space right now. Sink your ears into the entirety of it, and you'll hear joy and fury, faith and panic, introspection and fulmination - a gush of contradicting truths that feel as edifying and unfathomable as reality. "

"A new study published in the journal Memory looks into the process of "cognitive offloading," or relying on Google, GPS, and other external devices for what we used to use our memories for. It considers the impact on learning and problem solving as well."

"In season three we discover that even in the midst of technological forces beyond our control, the individual is still free-to strive to reject the oppressive, to stop being a hamster on a wheel as in "Nosedive," or to break on through to the other side as in "San Junipero." And most importantly, succeed or fail, the individual still has the choice to pursue an ethical path over giving in to darkness. "Hated in the Nation," may be "dark"-as if somehow the real world right now is a continual laugh riot-but it features characters with a strong moral compass who possess a dogged endurance in the face of unspeakable bee-drone horrors."

"Studies show the personal health benefits of sharing your private hopes and fears with trusted confidantes. But what if you feel alone?"

"Until now, scientists have generally tried to keep genetically engineered creatures from spreading their DNA - to prevent them from inadvertently damaging the natural world. But a gene drive is designed to spread - and to spread quickly. The technology is so powerful that Hammond and his colleagues are hopeful they can do something humanity has been trying to do for decades: Wipe out malaria. Scientists are exploring how gene drives could be used to fight other diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks. Two groups of researchers in California, for instance, are using gene drives to modify mosquitoes to fight dengue, Zika, chikungunya and also malaria. Many scientists think gene drives could have their biggest impact on agriculture. Gene drives might, for example, enable researchers to quickly transform entire crops so that farmers don't need to use polluting pesticides. "This is our chance to solve some of the world's most pressing problems using biology," says Kevin Esvelt, a gene-drive researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But critics worry gene drives are just too powerful and could easily produce unintended consequences. "It's a tool that has never been in our hands before," says Ricarda Steinbrecher, who works at EcoNexis, a watchdog group based in Oxford, England. "It is a high-risk technology." Ecosystems are complex and unpredictable, she says. She worries that eliminating an entire species could set off a cascade of unexpected effects that could result in the "collapse of ecosystems.""