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Education
 
 
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Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 10:00 am

Forget the SATs. Forget the “top college” rat race and high-priced American schools. Writer Maya Frost says it’s time for American students to go global, look abroad, and get a global education, for less.

Comments [122]
 
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 10:00 am

The class of 2009. They’ve got degrees, lots of enthusiasm, but few have found jobs. We’ll hear from them and experts on what the future holds.

Comments [57]
 
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Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:00 am

Former Senator Bob Graham says democracy has become a spectator sport, and he’s on a crusade to get young Americans back into the game.

Comments [43]
 
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 11:00 am

Hoop dreams, pushing ever-younger, and the story of one 13-year-old now groomed for basketball stardom.

Comments [16]
 
Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 3:51 pm

The education world is now listening carefully to the words of President Obama’s point man, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and trying to figure out how exactly the administration might reform No Child Left Behind.

Comments [13]
 
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Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 10:00 am

We talk with Arne Duncan, the new U.S. Secretary of Education, about President Obama’s big plans to revitalize the nation’s schools.

Comments [91]
 
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 11:00 am

Young Americans borrow 90 billion dollars a year to go to college. We’ll look at a student loan system one critic calls a “scam.”

Comments [161]
 
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Monday, December 8, 2008 at 11:00 am

American colleges in trouble. Students and families strapped by recession, endowments crushed. Costs, soaring. Is academia headed for Chapter 11?

Comments [27]
 
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Friday, November 14, 2008 at 11:00 am

Teenage students from West Philly High are competing for the X-Prize in hybrid-car design — and challenging the pros.

Comments [14]
 
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:00 am

Forget lipstick. We’re talking issues. This time: education, and what Barack Obama and John McCain would offer the country at school.

Comments [37]
 
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 11:00 am

The waiting list cases are wrapping up now. The acceptance and rejection letters are up on the fridge or in the trash. But the college admissions season of 2008 is one for the record books.
At 3.3 million, the high school class that just scrambled through admission hoops is the nation’s largest since 1977 — the [...]

 
Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 10:00 am

Here’s a headline you may have missed: a truce has been declared in the great American “Math War.”
For 20-odd years, mathematicians, parents, and teachers have been arguing over the best way to teach your children math. Well, a national panel formed by President Bush two years ago has just issued its findings, and is pushing [...]

 
Monday, February 25, 2008 at 11:00 am

It’s a globalized world, but that doesn’t mean we all live the same. Take high school students in the U.S., China and India. Different worlds.
A new documentary takes the two million minutes of high school life and compares them — in Indiana, Shanghai and Bangalore.
It’s a little shocking to see. Bright American kids on Xbox [...]

 
Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 10:00 am

The day-to-day news feed out of Iraq misses one of the country’s saddest, and most important, stories: the exodus of Iraq’s intellectual class.
While tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees are heading back, many professionals will never return. And they leave an enormous void — one that hurts the prospects for stability.
We’ll talk to three prominent [...]

 
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 10:00 am

After World War II, some 8 million veterans came home and went to college on the GI Bill, helping create the American middle class. Now, the latest generation of vets — battle-tried in Iraq and Afghanistan — is coming home, and many are going to college.
They’ve got less help from Uncle Sam, but they are [...]

 
Thursday, November 1, 2007 at 10:00 am

By host Tom Ashbrook:
At 8 am, do you know where your three-year-old is? Your four-year-old? A big new movement wants to put them — all the nation’s tiny tots — in school. Universal pre-kindergarten, it’s called. And it’s catching on fast, in red states and blue. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia — all leaders.
Now, the [...]

 
Friday, October 26, 2007 at 11:00 am

Sometimes a novel’s plot is unlikely. Sometimes it’s ripped straight from life — or life we can easily imagine. Novelist Tom Perrotta’s latest book, “The Abstinence Teacher,” is the second type.
Ruth is a broad-minded sex-ed teacher at the local high school — in a suburb where evangelical Christians are taking charge of the local culture. [...]

 
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 10:00 am

School shootings and the shadow of youth violence around them are very much in the news these days. In the last decade — from Columbine, to Amish country, to last week’s deadly shooting in a Cleveland school and images of an angry Philadelphia teen’s shocking arsenal — the headlines have become almost routine.
Gun. School. Mayhem. [...]

 
Monday, October 15, 2007 at 11:00 am

Every parent knows kids need a good night’s sleep to be at their best. And still, young Americans from elementary school age through high school, are sleeping significantly less today than they did thirty years ago.
With homework and TV and the Internet and video games and parents getting home later from work, it’s easy to [...]

 
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 11:00 am

Back in the day, American business schools had a tough time fighting their way onto American university campuses. Academics didn’t see what they taught as a serious profession worthy of a spot.
B-schools made their case, arguing they had a science of management and the nation’s greater good at heart. And a million M.B.A.s were born.
Now, [...]

 
On Point Today
Hour 2
Chemicals in Our Bodies
Monday, July 6, 2009 image

Scientists report that widely used chemicals — endocrine disruptors — are causing serious health problems in humans. We ask what the government is, and is not, doing about it.

Comments [31]
 
Hour 1
Sarah Palin’s Surprise
Monday, July 6, 2009 image

Alaksa Governor Sarah Palin’s out-of-the-blue resignation. We ask what it means for her future — and for the GOP.

Comments [55]

Recent Shows
Crooked Still
Friday, July 3, 2009 image

Tunes from old Appalachia with a new bluegrass twist. The hit folk band “Crooked Still” plays for us in our studio.

Comments [6]
 
Week in the News
Friday, July 3, 2009 image

A U.S. offensive in Afghanistan. Al Franken heads to the Senate. Mark Sanford keeps talking. And unemployment keeps rising. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Comments [25]
On Point Blog
India, China and the Climate

The passage of the House climate bill – discussed in our first hour today – has been greeted with enthusiasm in many quarters. But in some ways, the real question is whether a global framework can be established in Copenhagen in December, when countries will negotiate a new international treaty to curb greenhouse gases.

More » | Comments [1]
 
Michael, Ed, and Farrah

The week-in-the-news roundtable always involves tough choices on sound clips – what to include, what to leave out. Amid all the pressing hard news, we often give a nod to a notable person who’s passed away. But this week brought, well, a ridiculous range of choices.

More » | Comments [2]
 
Planet Money, On Point — Your Questions!

On Wednesday night, June 24, On Point will tape a show before an audience in Boston with two stars of NPR’s “Planet Money,” Adam Davidson and David Kestenbaum. We need your online questions to put to them — about anything from the roots of the economic crisis to NPR’s coverage.

More » | Comments [18]