September 18, 2023
No Culture Wars, Please, We’re Academics
A few years ago, Melissa S. Kearney got into a taxi cab and asked the driver about a photo of a young girl on his dashboard. The driver confirmed it was his daughter and then proudly showed her more pictures. The girl lived with her mother, he explained. Kearney, a professor of economics at the…
August 14, 2023
What ‘Earth Mama’ Doesn’t Tell Us About Foster Care
There are plenty of movies that start in the middle of the story. But typically the director will eventually go back and tell you what happened at the beginning. This is not true of “Earth Mama,” a recently released film by first-time director Savanah Leaf. The story is about a pregnant woman, Gia, whose two…
August 13, 2023
‘The Death of Public School’ Review: Find a Place to Learn
What is a public school? Is it an institution that is paid for by the public? One staffed by government employees? One that teaches a publicly approved curriculum? One that educates a broad swath of the public’s children? In the view of Cara Fitzpatrick, the author of “The Death of Public School,” it possesses all…
August 12, 2023
Why Ending Child Services Is the New Defund the Police
Can you imagine if the New York Police Department invited Defund the Police activists to train their officers? That’s what the New York State Family Court and the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) are doing. In a June webinar for almost 400 ACS workers, parents, child attorneys and family court judges, advocates who want to…
August 3, 2023
Philanthropists Discover the Value of “Sunsetting”
This year, the William E. Simon Foundation is closing its doors, or “sunsetting,” in the parlance of modern philanthropy. Since it was founded in 1967 by former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon and his wife Carol, the foundation has given away almost $300 million to the causes that mattered to them—faith, family and education. It…
August 1, 2023
Can AI Make People Want to Have Children?
Self-help gurus love to tell people to visualize their goals. Tony Robbins says, “Starting your day without visualizing your goal is like starting your day without breakfast.” In this space, it’s not just about figuring out where you’re going, but actually picturing your future self — how that person will feel, what that person might…
July 25, 2023
What Relationship Outsourcing Says About Our Culture
How many of our relationships can we outsource? Apparently, there’s no end. A recent article in The New York Times describes a new kind of professional, a “surrogate partner,” who helps people become more comfortable with intimate relationships. As the article notes, “Unlike in more traditional forms of therapy, in which practitioners are usually careful…
July 17, 2023
The Problem with Lived Experience
“The shift among nonprofits and funders towards valuing lived experience has been a journey,” Anna Verghese, executive director of the Audacious Group, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy earlier this spring. Verghese, whose group includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MacKenzie Scott, and the Skoll Foundation, says this shift has been “the result of generations…
July 16, 2023
When Office Perks Become Perils
If you want to understand the downside of seeing your work as a “calling,” just look at zookeepers. In his book, The Good Enough Job, Simone Stolzoff writes: “It’s a job where the money is short and the hours are long. The majority of zookeepers have college degrees but the annual salary is less than $40,000…
July 15, 2023
Yonkers’ Only Charter School Illustrates Just How Broken the System Is
To what lengths will teachers’ unions and their allies go to destroy charter schools? Eduardo LaGuerre and Sobeida Cruz are in the process of finding out. The couple raised their three children in Yonkers. It wasn’t the best public school district, but they hired tutors to fill in the gaps. Two decades ago — when…