Life in Junior High, Part 2

Last week, I contrasted the cliché junior high classroom–of raucous teenagers throwing spitballs, passing love notes, and giggling at lewd jokes–with a VanDamme Academy junior high classroom–of young adults in raptures over Cyrano de Bergerac. How we...

Potter’s Morals vs. Bible’s Magic

Christians have it backward. If you’re worried about your child obsessing over magic, it’s not Harry Potter you should guard against; it’s the Bible. Author J.K. Rowling doesn’t bill her writing as anything other than fiction. Youngsters are...

Life In Junior High, Part 1

When I tell people that I teach literature to junior high students, the response is nearly universal: an expression of profound sympathy. Teaching junior high is regarded as a martyr’s job, to be taken on only by those with such a selfless commitment to children...

Losing Sleep over the Trade Deficit?

I’m told to worry about the trade deficit. Commentators and populist politicians are wringing their hands. The trade deficit is a “malignant tumor in the intestines of the U.S. economy,” says Pat Buchanan. Lou Dobbs is very upset that...

Trade Deficits: Good or Bad?

Two recent articles ought to give pause to current political and journalistic ignorance, perhaps demagoguery, about our international trade deficit. In a December Wall Street Journal article titled “Embrace the Deficit,” Bear Stearns’ chief economist...