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Just recently, the French and Belgian authorities cooked up a massive bailout of the French bank Dexia, whose biggest trading partners included, surprise, surprise, Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Here's how the New York Times explained the bailout: To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer... When was the last time the government stepped into help you "avoid losses you might otherwise suffer?" But that's the reality we live in. When Joe Homeowner bought too much house, essentially betting that home prices would go up, and losing his bet when they dropped, he was an irresponsible putz who shouldn’t whine about being put on the street. But when banks bet billions on a firm like AIG that was heavily invested in mortgages, they were making the same bet that Joe Homeowner made, leaving themselves hugely exposed to a sudden drop in home prices. But instead of being asked to "suck it in and cope" when that bet failed, the banks instead went straight to Washington for a bailout -- and got it.

Control, whether by threats or bribes, amounts to doing things to children rather than working with them. This ultimately frays relationships

The alternative to bribes and threats is to work toward creating a caring community whose members solve problems collaboratively and decide together how they want their classroom to be

grades in particular have been found to have a detrimental effect on creative thinking, long-term retention, interest in learning, and preference for challenging tasks

The idea that Eastern Europe was, or is, a passive recipient of influences coming from the West is not the way life works; there is always an encounter, often an uncomfortable one. In one of Father Józef Tischner’s essays there's a beautiful passage in which he says that the encounter is a moment that initiates a particular drama, the course of which cannot be foreseen. I think that what happened in 1989 was not the filling of an empty space but rather that kind of encounter.

Krytyka Polityczna.

notion of a socially engagé intelligentsia who believes that ideas are to be lived.

Four other studies (three of which are dissertations) assessed behavioral treatments forMPA on music students. Grishman (1989) and Mansberger (1988) used standard musclerelaxation techniques, Wardle (1969) compared insight/relaxation and systematic desensi-tisation techniques, and Deen (1999) used awareness and breathing techniques

A systematic review of all available treatment studies for music performance anxiety was undertaken.

reported that 24% of musicians frequently suffered stage fright, defined in this study as themost severe form of MPA, 13% experienced acute anxiety and 17% experienceddepression.

But evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts.

But when students are doing serious work with their minds, they have to have focus.”

“Young people have a wildly inflated idea of how many things they can attend to at once, and this demonstration helps drive the point home: If you’re paying attention to your phone, you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in class.”

Georgia HOPE scholarship has increased college attendance in Georgia

erit-based price discounts only help determine which school a student attends.

Where we put our attention is not only how we decide what we will learn, it is how we show what we value.

Distraction is contagious.

he myth of the moment is that multitasking is a good idea.

Learning to see all behavior as a form of communication, for example, is a key principle that helps when teachers are frustrated or confused by how students are acting. Even though students’ behavior can look bizarre or disruptive, their actions are purposeful and are their attempts to solve a problem.

About 10 percent of the school population—or 9–13 million children—struggle with mental health problems. In a typical classroom of 20, chances are good that one or two students are dealing with serious psychosocial stressors relating to poverty, domestic violence, abuse and neglect, or a psychiatric disorder. There is also growing evidence that the number of children suffering the effects of trauma and those with autism-related social deficits is also on the rise.