#217 Silicon Valley’s Dystopian Vision for Schools
As Silicon Valley’s tentacles reach ever more deeply into the nation’s public schools, a provocative new book sounds an emphatic “stop”! We talk to Tim Scott, author of Schooling for Silicon Valley, a...
24 Apr 41min
#216 The Blue State Blues
It isn’t just red states where books are being pulled from schools. In blue states, books have given way to out-of-context passages in the name of test and career prep. Add in new literacy laws that s...
3 Apr 47min
#215 The Fight Over Sex Education
What should kids learn about sex? Who should teach them? And if they learn too much, will they become deviants? According to Margaret Myers, the author of The Fight for Sex Ed, we’ve been fighting ove...
19 Mar 33min
#214 These Conservatives Are Furious About School Vouchers
Forget about ‘education freedom’ and ‘school choice.’ These conservative see the expansion of school vouchers as a government takeover of private and home schools. We head to Texas, where opposition t...
5 Mar 44min
#213 The Kids are Alright
Decades before high school students were walking out of school to protest ICE, they embraced political activism against the Vietnam War and in favor of school desegration and expanding civil rights. I...
19 Feb 45min
#212 We’re at each other’s throats. Schools can help.
Our ability to disagree has turned toxic, and frayed relationships are leaving Americans more isolated and lonely than ever. Can schools help? Educational psychologist Hunter Gehlbach is convinced tha...
5 Feb 44min
#211 Silicon Valley’s Vision for Schools is Trapped in a Cold War Fantasy
In the schools of the (near) future, teachers will be replaced by robots and learning will be personalized, allowing each student to move at their own pace. AI refuser and self-described ‘ed tech Cass...
22 Jan 46min
#210 The Curious Case of Kindergarten
Every year more than 3 million kids march off to kindergarten, a mysterious world about which adults know very little. Research psychologist Susan Engel, who has spent a lifetime studying how children...
8 Jan 46min
