by Jeff Bryant | Jan 6, 2012 | Blog, Education
I remember the day that the poor kids showed up at our school. It was in 1964. Classes had already started, and I was in second grade, surrounded by my familiar friends from my mostly white, mostly well-to-do, suburban neighborhood in North Dallas. Their bus showed up...
by Jeff Bryant | Dec 27, 2011 | Blog, Education
For a ten-year stretch in my life I was fortunate to spend every Christmas in Jamaica. In Jamaica, Christmas is a far more modest affair than it is here in the US. For sure, during the days leading up to “the Christmas,” the markets are packed with shoppers and the...
by Jeff Bryant | Dec 21, 2011 | Blog, Education
One good thing you can say about 2011 is that it is a year in which lots of wrong-headed undertakings finally came to their ignominious conclusions -- including, among others, the Iraq War, the Gadhafi regime, the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, and "The Oprah...
by Jeff Bryant | Dec 15, 2011 | Blog, Education, Minimum Wage
When you call yourself a "historian," you create the implication that you can speak authoritatively about, well, history. But last Friday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich defied that common sense. Speaking at one of America's top institutions of...
by Jeff Bryant | Dec 14, 2011 | Blog, Education
Heard the term "edu-bubble" yet? Chances are you will soon. No doubt you've heard of the "dot-com bubble." And if you're like millions of Americans, you may be currently experiencing the ravages of the "housing bubble." But the edu-bubble? During the dot-com bubble,...
by Jeff Bryant | Dec 8, 2011 | Blog, Education
Normally, it would be apparent to all that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich forgot the first rule of holes when he recently doubled-down on his proposal to solve the problem of poor urban schools by recruiting impoverished children into the janitorial...