Elsewhere

Christian Science Monitor: “About 34 percent of the 50,000 undergraduates at 900 institutions surveyed earned C’s and D’s or worse.”

Women’s E-News: “[C]ompanies have gotten a lot savvier putting mentoring programs in place” for women, says Tuck’s Ella Bell.

The Cranky Professor: Commentary on the case of a Dartmouth ’99 who, because of mental illness, will be graduating this year – after nine years in Hanover:

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act she has been provided with the help and facilities necessary to complete her degree.

NPR interviewed at least one person – a Harvard administrator – who asked if the run-of-the-mill psychological support services were being neglected in favor of the traumatic cases – kind of the question people ask about ‘special education’ in government elementary and secondary education.

No one asked about academics. The brave young woman at Dartmouth said that one of the best things about the support she has received is that on those days when she’s so depressed she just doesn’t feel like getting out of bed she doesn’t feel so guilty about skipping class.

So what do I, the classroom teacher do?

(The original NPR story is here.)

The Professor makes a raises a good point, albeit inconclusively. Any responses? Yes, we can post correspondance anonymously; just ask.

The Weekly Standard:

Competition under the new SAT will be fairer, at least in that everyone will know that the college entrance exam is an achievement test and that the best preparation truly is studying hard in a demanding high school and reading and writing as much as possible. Still, as long as there is unequal access to excellent college preparatory schools, equal opportunity as Conant conceived it will not be realized.

Salon: “[W]hen we recognize how relatively easy it is for ordinary people to become involved in [genocide], that just takes the discussion to a different place,” says (Correction) Whitworth College’s James Waller. “Susannah Heschel from Dartmouth College…[tells] us two things. One is there were a lot more female perpetrators in the camp systems in Nazi Germany than we ever thought before. Thousands more. The second thing is that these female perpetrators had the capacity to be just as brutal, just as sadistic, as any of the male perpetrators that we have records of.”