How do you make sense of the senseless? As soon as I logged-on to The Washington Post Saturday morning, I stared in disbelief at a headline reporting that the latest school shooting had occurred just twenty minutes from where I live. From late Friday night to Monday morning, our small community continues to be shaken by the fact that we have joined...

According to a survey by the Gallup organization (Aug. 2013), “Most Americans (80 percent) believe that today’s schools should teach… critical thinking… to children.” “Critical thinking,” as defined by The Critical Thinking Community, “is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide...

Confession: I once cheated, big time, on a college Astronomy test, but I had several good reasons. 1. The text was over-the-top incomprehensible. 2. The teacher was over-the-top boring. 3. The class was held at 7:00 in the morning! (Mornings are notmy best time.) Fortunately, I had a friend who was “over-the-top” crazy about astronomy. So,  » Read more about: Cheating  »...

That’s the question a friend recently asked. I decided that it might make an interesting assignment for Professor Stephen Ambra and Sarah Hébert’s ethics class at The New Hampshire Technical Institute. Clearly the wording appears a bit cynical, suggesting that if we live in unfair surroundings we are somehow absolved from acting rightly, and many student responses reflected this idea....

Last Month (Nov. 15), I wrote how Corbett Middle School football Coach Randy Burbach (pictured), over the objections from school officials, took his team to a local Hooters restaurant and bar for an end-of-season celebration. After learning of the location in advance, Corbett School District Athletic Director Jean-Paul Soulagnet asked Burbach to change the location. When he refused, Soulagnet sent a letter to...

You are the athletic director of a middle school whose football team just finished a winning season. You just learned that the coach wants to celebrate by taking the entire team to… the local Hooters restaurant to celebrate. What do you do? Well, if you’re Corbett School District Athletic Director Jean-Paul Soulagnet, you send a letter to parents informing them that...

Utah Union High School football Coach Matt Labrum believes “…the most important thing is that we build character.” Labrum backed up that belief with action. Immediately after last Friday’s game, the coach sat his players down in the locker room and told them that after learning of reports that many of them had skipped class, received poor grades and allegedly...

This is what inspiration looks like. Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists for campaigning for women’s education, delivered another moving speech at the opening of a library in Birmingham, England. In a voice both settled and soothing, the young woman spoke to a small crowd with simple, confident words. In light of...

I have never heard such calm, yet resolute wisdom in the words of a sixteen-year-old. “I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.” Nine months after a Taliban terrorist shot her in the head returning home from school, Malala Yousafzai addressed a gathering of students from...

Among the papers I received from my New Hampshire students, this touching essay was written by a daughter about her father. Her paper reminds us that sometimes the “everyday” moments in life can have the greatest impact. Today, I was asked to write a paper on “the most ethical person I know,” and explain why. “In my 33 years of...