Samar > Recent Status Updates

As long as society picks and chooses which problem to resolve in crisis— usually the one that has propelled the family to a particular agency for help— another crisis is likely to follow, and another.

Incompetent, insensitive teachers can be found in wealthy school districts, just as inspired teaching also occurs in classrooms of impoverished children. But youngsters from affluent, highly educated familieshave a safety net. If they don’t understand, they can get help at home. If they have learning disabilities, their parents can hire tutors and consultants and even lawyers

Poverty leads to health and housing problems. Poor health and housing lead to cognitive deficiencies and school problems. Educational failure leads to poverty.

Such a dynamic has been observed in adopted children, many of whose IQs end up closer to those of their adoptive parents than to those of their biological parents.

“Children from highly stressed environments are at increased risk for a variety of developmental and behavioral problems, including poorer performance on developmental tests at eight months, lower IQ scores and impaired language development at four years.”

A child who is sexually abused is invaded by a sense of helplessness. If that feeling continues into adulthood, as many victims testify it does, it may break the belief that life can be controlled. Lost is the very notion that real choice exists, that decisions taken now can make a difference later.

Surrounded by constant advertising from television sets that are almost always turned on, many Americans acquire wants that turn into needs."

"But the American Myth also provides a means of laying blame. In the Puritan legacy, hard work is not merely practical but also moral; its absence suggests an ethical lapse... If a person’sdiligent work leads to prosperity, if work is a moral virtue, and if anyone in the society can attain prosperity through work, then the failure to do so is a fall from righteousness."

"He constantly teased reality, reminding the audience that they were not in the real world but in a theatre, as when he asked in Henry V, 'Can this cockpit hold the vasite fields or France?'

"In the rush to entertain masess of people the rules of presentation became exceedingly elastic. In classical drama, plays were strictly either comedies or tragedies. Elizabethan playwrights refused to be bound, and put comic scenes in tragedies thus invented comic relief..Plays before Shakespeare were governed by "the Unities" of Aristotle: that dramas should take place in 1 day,1 place, and have 1 plot."

"His success was not, it must be said, without its shortcuts. Shakespeare didn't scruple to steal plots, dialogue, names and titles- whatever suited his purpose. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare was a wonderful tell er of stories so long as someone else had told them first."

"It was not heart surgery, but neither was it weapons manufacture. In a modest way he had increased the happiness of a small part of the population."

Just a bunch of theatrics really....

Some useful tips, but gets tedious to read after a while.

"I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but- just as in a dream- I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy."

Full of good tips. Simple enough for students to read and understand.

"The cruel reality of revision is that you sometimes have to dump what you love most."

"If you sense something soft and mushy in your writing, check for a verb that's been nouned."

"Ideas spread quickly in a dense environment."

"Cities are much better for the environments than leafy living." I find this startling..and wonder what environmentalists would think.

He answers questions I had, as a graduate student in literature, that my professors were unable to address....and I was turned off literature

are cities really all that great? Is everything a matter of supply and demand?

Reminding me a lot of Virginia Woolf

logical, informative, delightful