Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article by Bror Saxberg calling for more involvement of learning scientists in the design of instructional technology.  Learning science is still relatively new but is gaining popularity in graduate education.  It is an interdisciplinary field that draws from curricula studies, computer science, instructional technology, and cognitive science.  Saxberg makes a number of excellent points:

“I wandered around the South by Southwest ed-tech conference, listening to excited chatter about how digital technology would revolutionize learning. I think valuable change is coming, but I was struck by the lack of discussion about what I see as a key problem: Almost no one who is involved in creating learning materials or large-scale educational experiences relies on the evidence from learning science.

We are missing a job category: Where are our talented, creative, user-­centric “learning engineers” — professionals who understand the research about learning, test it, and apply it to help more students learn more effectively?

…I am not suggesting that all subject-matter experts (meaning faculty members) need to become learning engineers, although some might. However, students and faculty members alike would benefit from increased collaboration between faculty members and learning experts — specialists who would respect each other’s expertise — rather than relying on a single craftsman in the classroom, which is often the case in higher education today…

…technology has only a chance to help — there is no guarantee. While we hope that only the best instructors are engaged with technology, imagine your worst college professor. In the old days, that person damaged just a few hundred students per year. Thanks to video on demand and other wonders of technology, today that person might damage a few hundred thousand students — a weapon of mass destruction. Not exactly a win for technology and learning.

…Technology is not the problem. As Richard E. Clark suggested in his book Learning From Media: Arguments, Analysis, and Evidence, education technology serves only as a delivery vehicle. All technologies can deliver effective or ineffective instruction. The key question is what you ask students to do and how you help them do it, not what tools you use.

After decades of experimental work by cognitive scientists and others, we now know a lot about how people learn. Neurons do not follow Moore’s law, the prediction by Gordon Moore in the 1960s that semiconductors would double in capacity every two years. Since our brains’ cognitive machinery does not change year after year, the good news is that investing in learning science will have long-lasting benefits.”

Lots of good insights in this article.  Well-worth a read!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In what is mostly a symbolic action, six Democrats (three in the Senate and three in the House) issued a joint resolution yesterday calling for debt-free public college education.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“A group of congressional Democrats introduced a resolution on Tuesday seeking to ensure that students who attend public colleges and universities can graduate without debt.

The Senate resolution was introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), while Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) introduced the House version.

The lawmakers support plans to increase financial aid, help states lower tuition and make it possible for students to earn degrees in less time…

The debt-free resolution is backed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is hosting events at town halls at several public colleges and universities across the country this week. Some of those events are scheduled at schools in Iowa and New Hampshire, as the committee hopes to make debt-free college a key issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

A paper co-authored by the PCCC and Demos, a liberal think tank, argues that debt can be reduced through a combination of educational offerings and accountability measures. The groups’ suggestions include increasing the number of advanced placement courses and early college high school programs that are offered, ensuring that schools aren’t using federal money for advertising and requiring schools with large endowments to guarantee debt-free college.”

The specific wording of the resolution was as follows:

Resolved, that the Senate supports efforts—

(1) to ensure that, through a combination of efforts, all students have access to debt-free higher  education, defined to mean having no debt upon  graduation from all public institutions of higher education;

(2) to provide support to States so States can  make increased investments in higher education that will result in lower tuition and costs for students;

(3) to increase financial aid to students to help them afford the total cost of college attendance without taking on debt;

(4) to encourage innovation by States and institutions of higher education to cut costs for students and make college more affordable by increasing efficiency and enabling speedy and less-costly degree completion; and

(5) to reduce the burden of existing student loan debt.

Just as President Obama’s call earlier this year for tuition-free public community college did not go very far in the Republican-controlled Congress, this resolution likewise has little chance of being enacted in the near future.  However, at some point when the Congressional and White House political stars align more favorably, it is possible that legislation establishing some form of free public college education will see the light of day.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning analyzing the actions of national and local teacher unions in fighting testing, teacher evaluations, and the Common Core.  Professor Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was quoted as stating:

“…the unions’ strategy on testing follows years in which they have been under assault, by conservative leaders and by the bipartisan education-reform movement that has painted unions as a central obstacle to improving schools…testing, Mr. Lichtenstein said, offers unions a way to join forces both with parents who object to testing and with Republicans who oppose the Common Core standards as a federalization of education.

“It is a powerful issue, by virtue of the fact that the right is also against it,” he said.

The article goes on to quote several teacher union leaders:

“Secky Fascione, director of organizing for the National Education Association, the largest nationwide teachers’ union, said reining in testing was the union’s top organizing priority. In the past month, Ms. Fascione said, chapters in 27 states have organized against testing, including holding rallies; petition drives; showings of “Standardized,” a documentary critical of testing; and sessions telling parents they have a right to keep their children from taking tests, as tens of thousands of parents around the country have done.

“Does it give us a platform?” said Karen E. Magee, the president of New York State United Teachers. “Absolutely.”

The Democratic Party, historically aligned with the teachers unions, should be careful with testing, teacher evaluation, and Common Core issues.   It does not want the unions and the teachers against their candidates.  In fact, given the closeness of elections in many states, it needs strong support from teachers and parent groups.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, posted a message yesterday congratulating the negotiations on a rewrite of No Child Left Behind while criticizing Governor Andrew’s Cuomo’s education proposals in New York.  She sees Washington lawmakers and specifically the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under the leadership of Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) as listening to their constituents including business leaders, community partners, civil rights activists, parents and educators.  On the other hand, Cuomo “has bought into his hedge fund backers’ idea: that the correlation between teachers and their students’ test scores is the only thing that matters.”

Ms. Weingarten is right in her comments but I am seeing glimmers of hope that Cuomo is backing away from his most stringent positions about teachers and testing.  He has been running TV ads nightly during the past couple of weeks that comment on his accomplishments as Governor of New York.  On education, his message has been much more tempered and even than it was after the November election and during budget negotiations in January.  We will see if his message mirrors his actions.

The full text is Randi Weingarten’s message is below.

Tony

======================

A Step Forward in Washington – A Step Backward in New York!

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers

April 19, 2015

Something stunning happened this week in Congress. The Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 22-0 to overhaul No Child Left Behind. That’s right, policymakers from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) listened to the people they’re sworn to represent and found common ground on public education.

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) led the charge. They’re the ultimate Odd Couple — he served as President George H. W. Bush’s secretary of education; she was known as the “mom in tennis shoes” who entered politics to save her local preschool.

Together, they listened to business leaders, community partners, civil rights activists, parents and educators — including nearly 20,000 AFT members. Overwhelmingly, the message was: Instead of obsessing over test scores, let’s give our students what they need to climb the ladder of opportunity and succeed. Schools should be places of learning and joy, not testing and agita. And, let’s give our teachers the latitude, supports and resources necessary to do their jobs well.

The outcome is promising: While not perfect — no compromise is — their bill restores the original intent of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as NCLB was first known, to address poverty and educational inequality with targeted funding for poor children. It moves away from the counterproductive focus on sanctions and high-stakes tests, and ends federalized teacher evaluations and school closings.

Meanwhile, in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is going down a different (albeit well-worn) path, ramming through ideology as part of his budget, ignoring those closest to the classroom.

Across the state, students, teachers, parents and community members pleaded with the governor to listen to their concerns and visit their schools. Sixty public forums were held. Thousands rallied. But the governor refused to listen. He hasn’t visited a public school in his second term. It just seems he won’t have an honest conversation about what New York’s children and families are facing.

Systemic underfunding is denying generations of New York students their right to a sound basic education. Local communities have gone through tough economic times. The courts have said that the state owes schools in high-need districts 2.3 times more in per-pupil funding than schools in wealthy districts. Yet Gov. Cuomo fails to close this gap, which is among the worst in the nation. At the same time, New York schools are the most segregated in the nation, another issue that the governor ignores.

Instead, the governor, who’s really too smart to operate in an evidence-free zone, has bought into his hedge fund backers‘ idea: that the correlation between teachers and their students’ test scores is the only thing that matters. We saw this idea play out in NCLB and Race to the Top, where the over-reliance on high-stakes testing may not have been the intention, but it’s been the end result.

Pretty much everyone agrees that it hasn’t worked. And it’s no wonder: As important a role as teachers play, they ultimately account for 10 percent of the variance in test scores, according to economists. But while most policymakers are trying to strike a new balance by addressing the other 90 percent, Gov. Cuomo is doubling down on testing and sanctions.

Thankfully, the State Assembly and some in the state Senate have stuck to their values, fighting for more funding and moving some decisions to the Board of Regents, a board with educational expertise. Still, the governor’s actions are just plain wrong. New Yorkers, who, despite their calls to curb sanctions, despite already being put through the ringer with the fixation on high-stakes testing, continue to be ignored. That’s why we’re seeing so many parents choose to opt their children out of these tests.

I’ve worked in public education for 30 years — as a teacher, a lawyer and union leader. I’ve visited hundreds of schools and districts. I’ve seen leaders from the classroom to the national stage who have been willing to set aside their differences and do the hard work that’s necessary to create real, enduring change.

It might be surprising that this kind of leadership is wilting in a state like New York, while blooming in the most unlikely of places: Congress. The U.S. Senate bill represents an important step forward and the most positive development we’ve seen in public education policy in years — because of both the bill’s content and the committee’s very intentional move to leave partisanship and politics at the door.

There’s no silver bullet when it comes to helping all children achieve. Great public schools are our best shot. But until we have more leaders willing to look past ideology, listen to those closest to the classroom, and find common ground, we won’t move forward. And, in a welcome change, it’s the U.S. Senate that has shown us what’s possible.

Dear Commons Community,

It’s been twenty years since the peace of Oklahoma City was shattered by a truck bomb that destroyed 168 lives and impacted thousands more. It remains the worst act of home-grown terror on American soil. On this anniversary, we remember those who died senselessly and we offer comfort to their families and friends.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

At this weekend’s Republican Party conference in New Hampshire, Rand Paul criticized GOP candidates for their criticism of Hillary Clinton.  Aiming specifically at Republican military hawks, Paul said:

“The other Republicans will criticize the president and Hillary Clinton for their foreign policy, but they would just have done the same thing — just 10 times over,” Paul said on the closing day of a New Hampshire GOP conference that brought about 20 presidential prospects to the first-in-the-nation primary state.

“There’s a group of folks in our party who would have troops in six countries right now, maybe more,” Paul said.

Foreign policy looms large in the presidential race as the U.S. struggles to resolve diplomatic and military conflicts across the globe.

The GOP presidential class regularly rails against President Barack Obama’s leadership on the world stage, yet some would-be contenders have yet to articulate their own positions, while others offered sharply different visions.

The GOP’s hawks were well represented at the event, led by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and several lesser-known White House prospects.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham addressed the question of putting U.S. troops directly in the battle against the Islamic State group militants by saying there is only one way to defeat the militants: “You go over there and you fight them so they don’t come here.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz suggested an aggressive approach as well. “The way to defeat ISIS is a simple and clear military objective,” he said. “We will destroy them.”

New York Rep. Peter King said: “If America becomes isolationist, if America sits back from its responsibilities, that gap is going to be filled by enemies.”

Graham, Cruz, and King are out of touch and Paul is absolutely right in his position.  The majority of the American people do not want U.S. entanglements abroad unless a case is made that there is a direct threat to our security.  It is painfully obvious from Iraq and Afghanistan that we do not win anything other than ill-will by deploying troops to fight and die in the Middle East.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Hunter College received accolades in today’s Daily News editorial for its collaboration with Weill Cornell Medical College at the new Belfer Research facility.  Here is the editorial:

Hunter’s bold leap: A CUNY college reaches for the stars with a gleaming new biotech research center!

“The evolution of City University into a top institution of higher education that also schools the masses has crossed a new threshold in laboratories on Manhattan’s East Side.

Hunter College professors and students have taken up residence in a state-of-the-art medical and biotechnology research center, along with fellow brainiacs from Weill Cornell Medical College. That would be the Cornell of the Ivy League.

By smartly purchasing a floor in Cornell’s newly opened Belfer Research Building on E. 69th St., Hunter vaulted its talent to the forefront of New York’s growth as a center for innovation. As good as anyone anywhere, they circulate among the very best, including Nobel Prize laureates.

Students and professors come from around the world, with plenty of them — root, root, root for the home team — from city high schools and colleges.

Among other things, they’re building infinitesimal structures for delivering targeted medicines, exploring the venom of marine snails as the basis for a superpowerful non-addictive painkiller, analyzing vast amounts of genomic data, developing a technique for rapidly diagnosing colorectal cancer with minimal side effects and searching for a variety of anti-cancer breakthroughs.

By happenstance, they discovered that a compound prevalent in virgin olive oil really does kill cancer cells. Who knows where that might lead?

At its founding, Hunter College had the then-revolutionary mission of educating women to work as teachers. Under President Jennifer Raab, the school is now moving into the science revolution of tomorrow.

Just what the doctor ordered.”

Congratulations, Hunter!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education with the assistance of the Huron Consulting Group has just issued a report entitled, The Value Equation: Measuring & Communicating the Return on Investment of a College Degree, that is based on a survey (N=801) of college leaders in December 2014. The survey population included vice presidents, deans, and executive directors at private, not-for-profit four-year, public four-year, and public two-year institutions.

Among the findings:

VALUE OF DEGREE. Overall, some 40 percent of college leaders believe their institutions provide an excellent value for the money parents and students spend. Officials at public colleges are more likely than those at private institutions to say that they provide the best value for the dollar.

STUDENT OUTCOMES. About a quarter of institutions surveyed make job preparation for their graduates a “very high” priority. Private four-year colleges were more likely to report job readiness as a high priority, largely because students and parents at those institutions demand a return on their hefty tuition investments.

SKILLS FOR SUCCESS. While parents and employers often want students to graduate from college with specific skills, those who run colleges believe their job is to provide a well-rounded education that gives graduates an appreciation for the value of lifelong learning.

STUDENT DEBT. Survey respondents had varied answers to what should constitute “minimal debt” for graduates. Some measured debt by the amount of time it should take to pay it off. About a third of respondents used a dollar amount, and among them, a majority said that a graduate’s debt should be under $25,000. (The average graduate of the Class of 2014 left with about $33,000 in debt, according to Edvisors, a web site about planning and paying for college.)

OUTCOMES DATA. By and large, college officials were opposed to publishing career and salary outcomes of their graduates either on their own or under government mandate. Overall, only a third of respondents said it was reasonable for the federal government to require outcomes data.

CAREER SERVICES. Close to half of the surveyed respondents reported a budget increase in career planning and placement services over the past five years. A notable 14 percent of institutions increased the budget for career services by more than 25 percent.

The Executive Summary is below.

Tony

 ==============================

Executive Summary

As the global economy increasingly demands a knowledge-based workforce, the value of a college degree is growing exponentially. The so-called wage premium of a college degree now is higher than ever before: A typical bachelor’s-degree recipient earns 80 percent more than a high school graduate during a 40-year career, more than $500,000 over a lifetime. That wage premium has resulted in an enrollment surge in the past decade for American colleges and universities. The number of students on campuses has grown by more than one-third since the early 2000s, and institutions have responded with a bevy of new academic programs to serve this market hungry for new skills. The number of college majors tracked by the U.S. Department of Education has increased by some 20 percent just since 2000. Student demand also has allowed colleges to continue increasing their tuition prices. When the recession of 2008 hit, average tuition in the U.S. consumed some 40 percent of median earnings in the United States, up from less than a quarter of income eight years earlier. But as student debt surpassed more than $1 trillion in 2011, students and their parents started to question what they were getting in return for the high cost of a college degree. While the value of higher education remains undisputed, prospective students and their parents—armed with new tools that track the career and earnings outcomes of graduates—are beginning to cast doubt on the return on investment of certain majors and particular colleges.

In response, colleges are focusing more on the outcomes of their education and are putting in place programs to better prepare their undergraduates for the job market. In an extensive survey of college leaders, conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education in the fall of 2014, six in 10 of them reported an increase in discussions about job preparation for their graduates in just the past three years. The survey, completed by some 800 vice presidents, deans, and directors at two-year and four year colleges, focused on their attitudes about the value of their degrees, strategies to measure the outcomes of their graduates, and what skills higher education should provide to students. Among the highlights from the survey:

VALUE OF DEGREE. Overall, some 40 percent of college leaders believe their institutions provide an excellent value for the money parents and students spend. Officials at public colleges are more likely than those at private institutions to say that they provide the best value for the dollar.

STUDENT OUTCOMES. About a quarter of institutions surveyed make job preparation for their graduates a “very high” priority. Private four-year colleges were more likely to report job readiness as a high priority, largely because students and parents at those institutions demand a return on their hefty tuition investments.

SKILLS FOR SUCCESS. While parents and employers often want students to graduate from college with specific skills, those who run colleges believe their job is to provide a well-rounded education that gives graduates an appreciation for the value of lifelong learning.

STUDENT DEBT. Survey respondents had varied answers to what should constitute “minimal debt” for graduates. Some measured debt by the amount of time it should take to pay it off. About a third of respondents used a dollar amount, and among them, a majority said that a graduate’s debt should be under $25,000. (The average graduate of the Class of 2014 left with about $33,000 in debt, according to Edvisors, a web site about planning and paying for college.)

OUTCOMES DATA. By and large, college officials were opposed to publishing career and salary outcomes of their graduates either on their own or under government mandate. Overall, only a third of respondents said it was reasonable for the federal government to require outcomes data.

CAREER SERVICES. Close to half of the surveyed respondents reported a budget increase in career planning and placement services over the past five years. A notable 14 percent of institutions increased the budget for career services by more than 25 percent.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today (see below for full text) focuses on the growing chorus of states that are urging the U.S. Department of Education to forgive the loans of students victimized by unscrupulous for-profit higher education providers such as Corinthian Colleges.  On April 9, state attorneys general sent a letter to the Department of Education, asking it to provide restitution — and help fix the problem — by forgiving the federal student loans of people harmed by crooked schools. The letter makes a strong case for prompt action.  The editorial comments:

“The idea of forgiving these loans altogether gained traction when a group of former Corinthian students refused to repay their loans, which they claimed were often the product of a predatory private lending scheme. The group, part of an organization called the Debt Collective, noted that the Department of Education had broad authority to forgive debt in cases where schools had committed wrongdoing. The department could then force the offending schools to reimburse the government.

In December, 13 Senate Democrats urged the department to immediately forgive loans for Corinthian borrowers covered by lawsuits filed at the federal or state levels. In the April 9 letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, state attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington lent their voices to the forgiveness campaign, urging the department to “immediately relieve borrowers of the obligation to repay federal student loans that were incurred as a result of violations of state law by Corinthian Colleges, Inc.”

The letter said: “These cases against Corinthian have unmasked a school that relentlessly pursued potential students — including veterans, single parents, and first-time higher education seekers — promising jobs and high earnings, and preying on their hopes in an effort to secure federal funds.”

The complaint from the attorneys general went beyond Corinthian to a systemwide problem: “Our greatest concern comes from certain large, predatory for-profit schools that are actively undermining our federal loan programs, depriving students of the education they promise and that the students deserve. These institutions seem to exist largely to capture federal loan dollars and aggressively market their programs to veterans and low-income Americans.”

The attorneys general promised to help the federal government recoup loan balances from schools that violated state laws or benefited from unlawful deception.”

Arne Duncan should seriously consider this request and help the students and their families who were victimized.  However, it does not solve the larger problem of continued deceptive practices on the part of a number of major players in the for-profit college industry.

Tony

===============================================

New York Times Editorial

April 17, 2015

State attorneys general have long served on the front lines of the struggle to control and discipline predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crippling debt while granting them useless degrees, or no degrees at all. On April 9, nine of them who know firsthand how people can be deceived and bled dry sent a letter to the Department of Education, asking it to provide restitution — and help fix the problem — by forgiving the federal student loans of people harmed by crooked schools. The letter makes a strong case for prompt action.

The problem of nonprofit schools received national exposure last year when Corinthian Colleges, one of the nation’s largest operators of for-profit colleges and trade schools, collapsed in the midst of a federal investigation. The company agreed to shut down or sell about 100 campuses. Earlier this week, the Department of Education fined Corinthian $30 million for misrepresenting job placement rates in one of the chains it owns, saying that the company had “violated students’ and taxpayers’ trust.”

Corinthian was already facing a lawsuit brought by the California attorney general,

Kamala Harris, who accused the company of a host of wrongs, including lying to students and investors about job placement programs. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau subsequently sued Corinthian on grounds that it had “lured tens of thousands of students to take out private loans to cover expensive tuition costs by advertising bogus job prospects and career services.”

The idea of forgiving these loans altogether gained traction when a group of former Corinthian students refused to repay their loans, which they claimed were often the product of a predatory private lending scheme. The group, part of an organization called the Debt Collective, noted that the Department of Education had broad authority to forgive debt in cases where schools had committed wrongdoing. The department could then force the offending schools to reimburse the government.

In December, 13 Senate Democrats urged the department to immediately forgive loans for Corinthian borrowers covered by lawsuits filed at the federal or state levels. In the April 9 letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, state attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington lent their voices to the forgiveness campaign, urging the department to “immediately relieve borrowers of the obligation to repay federal student loans that were incurred as a result of violations of state law by Corinthian Colleges, Inc.”

The letter said: “These cases against Corinthian have unmasked a school that relentlessly pursued potential students — including veterans, single parents, and first-time higher education seekers — promising jobs and high earnings, and preying on their hopes in an effort to secure federal funds.”

The complaint from the attorneys general went beyond Corinthian to a systemwide problem: “Our greatest concern comes from certain large, predatory for-profit schools that are actively undermining our federal loan programs, depriving students of the education they promise and that the students deserve. These institutions seem to exist largely to capture federal loan dollars and aggressively market their programs to veterans and low-income Americans.”

The attorneys general promised to help the federal government recoup loan balances from schools that violated state laws or benefited from unlawful deception.

Over the last 20 years, the Department of Education has received only a handful of requests from borrowers seeking to escape repayment on grounds of wrongdoing by schools. Evaluating many such requests will be difficult. But the evidence shows that such a system is needed and that relief is long overdue.

Dear Commons Community,

Nicholas Kristoph in his New York Times column today, opens with E.O Wilson’s quote:  “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”   He then goes on to make the case for why more college students should be taking course in the humanities:

“…E.O. Wilson captures the dilemma of our era. Yet the solution of some folks is to disdain wisdom.

“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?” Rick Scott, the Florida governor,once asked. A leader of a prominent Internet company once told me that the firm regards admission to Harvard as a useful heuristic of talent, but a college education itself as useless.

Parents and students themselves are acting on these principles, retreating from the humanities. Among college graduates in 1971, there were about two business majors for each English major. Now there are seven times as many.

Kristoph then provides three reasons for studying the humanities:

“First, liberal arts equip students with communications and interpersonal skills that are valuable and genuinely rewarded in the labor force, especially when accompanied by technical abilities…

Second, We need people conversant with the humanities to help reach wise public policy decisions, even about the sciences…

Third, wherever our careers lie, much of our happiness depends upon our interactions with those around us, and there’s some evidence that literature nurtures a richer emotional intelligence.

He concludes:

“Literature also builds bridges of understanding. Toni Morrison has helped all America understand African-American life. Jhumpa Lahiri illuminated immigrant contradictions. Khaled Hosseini opened windows on Afghanistan.

In short, it makes eminent sense to study coding and statistics today, but also history and literature.”

Wisdom indeed!

Tony