Multimedia

Paul Peterson discusses the profound importance of reducing achievement gaps in communities like the Twin Cities – where they’re larger than virtually anyplace in the nation. What’s been tried? What needs trying next?

Prof. Wilfred McClay discusses intriguing issues like these: Ever since the time of its Founding, our American nation has been understood as a great experiment, both by ourselves and by the world. But what does it mean to think of a nation as an “experiment”? Does it mean that everything about our society and government is open to constant revision, so that change is the only constant? Or is the idea of America as an experiment actually a deeply conservative idea, one which gives us insight into what American conservatism has been, and what it needs to become in the 21st Century?

Psychologist David Walsh mines new developments in brain science to spotlight the often malignant power of media on young people—video games very much included. David Walsh is founder and president of the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family, the country's leading organization examining the impact of electronic media on families.

Citing reams of empirical evidence, Jay Greene discusses his new book, Education Myths, and how "much of what policy makers and parents believe today about education is as mythological as anything Homer or Aesop, even if it isn't nearly as poetic."