During the past school year, I tutored math and language arts in a local fifth-grade class, so when Public School Success Team (PSST), the homegrown 
non-profit that ran the tutoring program, decided to encourage a continuing flow of student enthusiasm over the summer, I volunteered to lead a course. Conducted al fresco in my backyard, it consisted of six weekly sessions in close textual analysis. I called it Curious Readers.
My plan was Continue reading “Curious Readers”
Scores of articles have been written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. One of the most interesting appeared in the February 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine. I reprint it here in its entirety. The images and links are my choices.
Lincoln’s Contested LegacyGreat Emancipator or unreconstructed racist? Defender of civil liberties or subverter of the Constitution? Each generation evokes a different Lincoln. But who was he?
From the time of his death in 1865 to the 200th anniversary of his birth, February 12, 2009, there has never been a decade in which Abraham Lincoln‘s influence has not been felt. Yet it has not been a smooth, unfolding history, but a jagged narrative filled with contention and revisionism. Lincoln’s legacy has shifted again and again as different groups have interpreted Continue reading “Lincoln’s Contested Legacy”