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American education dooms young boys to failure

It would be better for boys if society stopped expecting them to act like girls. A Texas mom recently shared a video of her son at his kindergarten graduation. The clip shows him squirming in his chair, playing with his hands and stretching over his seat. She captioned the video, “You’re six and the ceremony enters minute 37.” The footage went viral because the boy is cute, and the situation is so relatable for parents. But for boys, moments like this are no laughing matter. Think about most modern early elementary classrooms. Many teachers want students to spend hours a ...

Ohio SB 113 is not good legislation

Opponent testimony is piling up against Ohio Senate Bill 113, and rightly so. The effort to “prohibit diversity, equity and inclusion in public school,” was primarily sponsored by state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, who introduced the measure last year but has since lost his Republican primary race. “This bill is frustratingly vague about what does and doesn’t qualify as prohibited diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper said during last week’s Ohio Senate Education Committee meeting, according to a report by ...

Does it really matter what Helen of Troy looked like?

It’s the controversy that has launched a thousand X posts. Elon Musk, who is a fan of Homer, has kicked up a fuss by objecting to filmmaker Christopher Nolan casting the black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his forthcoming movie version of “The Odyssey.” The epic production presumably won’t rise or fall based on its depiction of Helen, the legendary beauty who precipitated the Trojan War. That conflict is portrayed in “The Iliad,” while “The Odyssey” follows the Greek warrior Odysseus on his return home after the war, a story that doesn’t feature ...

Dems ruminate over an autopsy when they should get to work

It seemed to take forever, but on Thursday the Democratic National Committee finally released the autopsy of its ill-fated 2024 presidential campaign. It’s bitter medicine, my Dem friends, but, as Momma used to say, take a spoonful; it’ll do you good. As midterm elections loom, Democrats would do well to recall the great humorist Will Rogers’ assessment of their 1924 convention, remembered as the longest and “wildest” in the nation’s history. Although the Democrats that year initially saw opportunity in the division and corruption plaguing incumbent President Calvin ...

Scrappers score respect, support from the Valley

As June begins to bust out all over on this sunny Monday, that must mean the Mahoning Valley’s boys of summer soon will be busting out all over the 7 17 Credit Union Field at Eastwood — to the delight of tens of thousands. Yes, Tuesday marks the start of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers’ 28th glorious year as an organization and its sixth season as a member of Major League Baseball’s increasingly respected Draft League. We suspect a full house will be on hand at the newly named stadium in the Eastwood Mall Complex in Niles when the first pitch against the State College (Pa.) ...

Remove dangerous dams for conservation, public safety

I stood on the riverbank in Milltown, Indiana, with Allen Pursell of the Sam Shine Foundation. We watched young people fishing on either side of the low-head dam on Blue River. May 31 was National Dam Safety Awareness Day, and I wanted to learn why the Sam Shine Foundation was committed to dam removal. Milltown’s dam is not one that will come out anytime soon, but it is the first one Allen and his colleague Cassie Hauswald considered. It all started about 10 years ago when the Nature Conservancy, a global environmental nonprofit, received an unrestricted gift for freshwater ...