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This film was produced by a Liberty University student in a Cinematic Arts Department program. Check us out at https://www.liberty.edu/arts/cinematic-arts/ for more information! Film Synopsis: David, a withdrawn cello teacher, struggles to finish a duet he and his daughter had been writing before she died of cancer. Only one of his students is stubborn enough to join his song.
Live With Robert Pondiscio, Nick Gillespie, and Zach Weissmueller.An “unbearable bleakness” has overtaken childhood education as a “pedagogy of the depressed” pushes a simplistic vision of “America the Problematic” on impressionable young students, wrote Robert Pondiscio in Commentary last year.A former teacher, Pondiscio is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of the 2019 book How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice (Avery), a behind-the-scenes account of Success Academy, one of America’s most accomplished (and controversial) charter school networks. (Watch Reason’s interview with Pondiscio about that book.)Public schools have failed to teach kids to read and write because they use approaches that aren’t based on proven techniques based on phonics. Many schools have been influenced by the work of Columbia University’s Lucy Calkins, who is the subject of a new podcast series from American Public Media, Sold a Story, “an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences—children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.””The South Bronx elementary school where I taught 5th grade for several years was a proponent of Calkins’ approach,” Pondiscio wrote in a 2022 New York Post op-ed. “We adopted her teaching methods and employed her literacy coaches for years, to very little effect. Her greatest sin against literacy comes after kids learn to ‘decode’ the written word, whether or not they are taught with phonics, which is just the starting line for reading.”How did this happen? Is the solution school choice—a system in which parents can opt out of traditional public schools and their flawed approaches to teaching reading? As Pondiscio argues, is withdrawing “concern for traditional public schools” equivalent to withdrawing “concern for our republic”?Join Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller for a live discussion with Robert Pondiscio on all these questions and more this Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. Watch and leave questions for Pondiscio on the YouTube video above or on Reason’s Facebook page.
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Why are educational institutions in real life more like the one in Carrie than the one in Harry Potter?https://reason.com/video/2023/01/25/3-schools-in-movies-we-all-wanted-to-attend/_________________Have you ever noticed that most of the schools we see in movies and TV, read about in novels, or even hear about in songs are terrible, rotten places where you’re likely to get pig blood dumped on you at prom, punched out on the playground, or humiliated by classmates and teachers alike?We take for granted that attending K-12 education is like living in Orwell’s 1984 or serving a prison sentence.But there are exceptions—in fiction and in real life. Generally speaking, when you get to choose where you go to school, you’re guaranteed a better experience because you’ve picked a place where you actually want to be—and that will treat you well because they know you can leave if you want. That’s reflected in parental satisfaction rates, which are consistently higher for public schools of choice and private schools than assigned public schools. Currently, only about a quarter of K-12 students attend something other than their local, assigned public schools—alternatives ranging from charters and magnets to private schools and being homeschooled. If more kids and their parents had more choices, schools would do a better job of responding to students’ specific interests and needs and helping them become the best version of themselves. There’s no one-size-fits-all in education any more than there is when it comes to clothing or shoes.Here are three fictional schools, which are great not because they’re right for everyone but because they meet the unique needs of their particular students. Xavier’s School for Gifted YoungstersEntry to this academy of superpowered mutants in the X-Men series is by invitation only, but it comes with a full ride—and a promise to learn how to control and master each student’s special powers. Professor X and his faculty hold everyone to exacting, high standards but also make sure that nobody slips through the cracks, the sort of attention that is all too lacking in schools that take students—and the tuition dollars they represent—for granted. Sky HighThe 2005 movie Sky High showcased another superhero high school, one filled with comic takes on traditional school drama, but it also featured gym classes that actually seemed worth taking. The students are quickly assigned to either a “hero track” if they display superpowers or a “sidekick” track if they lack them, but unlike too many real-life schools, the kids are able to change courses if they demonstrate new abilities. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and WizardryAnd then there’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the school at the center of the Harry Potter series. Modeled on hidebound British boarding schools and centuries-old universities like Oxford and Cambridge, Hogwarts is filled with bullies, arbitrary rules, customs, and demanding teachers. But in the end, what makes this institution unique is the philosophy of its headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, who forces his greatest pupil to master not only all the magical arts but also a basic philosophical maxim about human action too.These places are wonderful because they don’t take their students for granted. Instead, they take their charges seriously and push them toward excellence and accomplishment while treating them as unique individuals. Schools don’t need to be dreary, downbeat hellholes—in movies or in real life. If more of us get to choose where we go, we’ll be smarter, happier, and maybe even better adjusted. And our movies will eventually reflect that.Produced by Nick Gillespie and Justin Zuckerman; Sound editing by Ian Keyser; Additional graphics by Danielle Thompson and Isaac Reese
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A documentary short about a woman who takes ayahuasca to alleviate the pain caused by addiction.https://reason.com/video/2023/01/24/heroin-addiction-psychedelics-ayahuasca-therapy/______In 2020, a woman named Serene (she asked that we not use her last name to protect her privacy) reached out to two brothers named Rory and Ryan Van Tuinen after reading an article about their Waterbury, Vermont-based nonprofit Cultivating Connections. The Van Tuinens discussed using psychedelics as part of treatment to overcome addiction and improve mental health. Serene had struggled for years with an addiction to heroin and was ready to try anything.As the article explained, Rory had taken the drug ayahuasca in 2019 as “a last-ditch attempt to overcome” a decadelong heroin addiction that had derailed his life. Though “neither Ryan nor Rory believe that hallucinogens are a cure-all,” they say that without the ayahuasca, Rory would either still be “using” or he would be “dead.” The key to recovery, they believe, was to accompany using the drug in concert with the “cultivation of meaningful human relationships.”Over five weeks, Serene participated in a series of preparatory meetings with the Van Tuinens. The next step was to travel to a cabin in the woods, where she would try ayahuasca and see if this new approach to treating addiction could put her life back on track.Although the Van Tuinens have no official training or licensing, they are part of a broader movement. Therapists and researchers increasingly see psychedelics as an effective way of treating addiction and related issues, and the Food and Drug Administration is nearing approval of MDMA, psilocybin, and other substances in therapeutic settings.”Our core beliefs, our behaviors, our patterns of relating, our patterns of coping get encoded in neural networks, which is why they are so difficult to change,” says psychologist Andrew Tatarsky, the founder and director of the New York City–based Center for Optimal Living, where he specializes in addiction and harm-reduction therapy. “Psychedelic substances have this really interesting and unique capacity to loosen those structures and, in some cases, dissolve them so that people have the opportunity to rework their relationship to themselves and the world.”But Tatarsky also warns that psychedelics can be damaging to psychologically vulnerable individuals when administered by untrained practitioners such as the Van Tuinens. “If you face a traumatic experience and it’s overwhelming to you and you don’t have the support to titrate and manage the emotional intensity that comes up, it can actually be itself another traumatic experience.”Was Serene’s ayahuasca use the beginning of her recovery—or a new problem to confront?Directed by Arthur Nazaryan & Qinling Li / Dec8 Productions; Produced by Arthur Nazaryan and Caroline Klewinowski; Camera by Arthur Nazaryan; Edited by Qinling Li and Mike Shum; Assistant editor, Phoebe McFarb; Additional cameras by Kevin Alexander and Jim Epstein; Audio mix by Ian Keyser; Color correction by Danielle Thompson
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What do the confidential emails obtained by Reason’s Robby Soave reveal about the relationship between Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)? The social media giant’s moderators were “in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines,” writes Soave.Join Soave and Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller for a live discussion of the documents this Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Watch and leave questions and comments on the YouTube video above or on Reason’s Facebook page.Show notes:State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Biden, et al. – New Civil Liberties Alliance – https://nclalegal.org/state-of-missouri-ex-rel-schmitt-et-al-v-biden-et-al/Robby Soave’s publication of the CDC/Facebook emails at Reason.com – https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covid-vaccines-censorship/Facebook’s ban of the lab leak theory -https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/#removing-more-false-claimsThe Media’s Lab Leak Debacle Shows Why Banning ‘Misinformation’ Is a Terrible Idea -https://reason.com/2021/06/04/lab-leak-misinformation-media-fauci-covid-19/“Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act” https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8752/text
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie consider the revelation that, like former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden also had a stash of classified documents in his private office and residence.00:00 – President Biden also had classified materials in his house10:35: House GOP introduces the Curriculum Review of Teachings, or CRT, Transparency Act31:33: Weekly Listener Question:I have long held what I consider to be a libertarian position on college admissions and affirmative action: that private colleges ought to be able to control their own admissions policies and that those who don’t like those policies can seek admission elsewhere. I am somewhat surprised that I do not find any libertarians making this argument. It seems to me that if the Supreme Court makes a determination that affirmative action is illegal, as well as other types of arguably discriminatory admissions policies such as preferences for alumni and attempts to achieve geographic diversity in the student body, then we are in for a tsunami of lawsuits in which every damn college applicant in the country who is turned down by her top college pick will argue that she was the victim of discrimination. Where does it end? I’m an alumnus of Wesleyan University. I always accepted that racial diversity is a laudable goal in assembling a student body, as is geographical diversity (although I read recently that a desire for geographic diversity is just a scheme to keep out Jews; I didn’t know I was antisemitic), or a distribution of interests in the arts versus the sciences, or a wide variety of extracurricular activities. So it touched my heart when today’s New York Times ran a headline, “If Affirmative Action Ends, College Admissions May Be Changed Forever,” with a picture of my dear old alma mater, Wesleyan. What does the panel think? By what logic are the details of private college admissions policies a matter for the courts? How does the Constitution say that the courts need to make these decisions? How did we get here? And again, where will it all end?47:21: This week’s cultural recommendationsMentioned in this podcast:”With Classified Documents, the Real Divide Is Between the Powerful and the Rest of Us,” by J.D. Tuccille”Biden Looks Careless, Shady, and Hypocritical After the Revelations About His Handling of Classified Material,” by Jacob Sullum”Like Trump, Biden Had a Private Stash of Secret Documents, but It Was Much Less Impressive,” by Jacob Sullum”The Redacted Mar-a-Lago Search Warrant Affidavit Sheds Light on the FBI’s Concerns and Trump’s Defense,” by Jacob Sullum”Corey DeAngelis: How COVID Has Changed the Face of Education Forever,” by Nick Gillespie”Florida All in for Assault on Academic Freedom,” by Keith E. Whittington”Chris Rufo’s Battle To ‘Stop Woke’,” by Zack Weissmueller and Nick Gillespie”Time To End Affirmative Action? Live With David Bernstein and Kenny Xu,” by Zach Weissmueller and Nick Gillespie”Want To Stop School Book Battles? Give Parents Real Choice in Education,” by Nick GillespieSend your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.Today’s sponsor:When you’re at your best, you can do great things. But sometimes life gets you bogged down, and you may feel overwhelmed or like you’re not showing up in the way that you want to. Working with a therapist can help you get closer to the best version of you. Because when you feel empowered, you’re more prepared to take on everything life throws at you. If you’re thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It’s convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists any time for no additional charge. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp.com/roundtable today to get 10 percent off your first month.Audio production by Ian KeyserAssistant production by Hunt BeatyMusic: “Angeline,” by The Brothers Steve
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