If your daughter happens to open a Teen Cosmo anytime soon, she’ll be bombarded with tips on “getting a white smile for prom,” finding out “Kim Kardashian’s hair secret,” and learning to “dress for her body type,” be it Apple, Pear, or Slim/Athletic.

She’ll also see image after image like the one to the right, of women who are already unusually tall and thin and have been made to look more so. Continue reading »

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Technology is changing the classroom in all sorts of questionable ways this week. This latest innovation is not nearly as nefarious as schools using webcams to check up on students at home, but it does raise some serious ethical questions.

Macmillan, one of the nation’s largest textbook publishers, is launching new software called DynamicBooks, which will allow professors to customize online textbooks. Continue reading »

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Think of just one thing you did in your bedroom yesterday that you wouldn’t want anyone else, except maybe your spouse, to see. Now imagine that you found out that your boss and all of your coworkers had the ability to see into your bedroom from the comfort of their own homes at any time, without your knowledge.

Let’s exactly what’s going on in a Philadelphia suburb, except the people being spied on are minors and the peeping toms are their educators. Has your head exploded yet? Continue reading »

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As a high school student desperate to graduate, I remember thinking that there just had to be a better way to go about this whole public school thing. I was miserable; my friends were miserable; the teachers seemed miserable. Did we really just have to accept high school as a necessary evil?

Well, several administrators and consultants are hoping the answer is no. First, the Obama Administration unrolled an ambitious plan to completely remake the country’s worst schools. And now eight states are offering new coursework that would allow high school students to graduate after their sophomore year. Continue reading »

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The Obama Administration is betting–billions of dollars–that there is.

In what TIME calls Extreme Makeover: School Edition, the Obama Administration is planning to give the nation’s 5,000 worst schools $4 billion, which they will be expected to use to make sweeping reforms over the next four years.  Continue reading »

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A 911 dispatcher-in-training from Olympia, Washington recently faced the ultimate test of keeping his cool under pressure when he recognized the voice of a hysterical woman on the other end of the phone as that of his own wife. Continue reading »

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If you know anyone who stutters, it’s likely that you’ve noticed that at least one of his relatives shares the disorder. Now there’s a scientific explanation for this intuitive sense that “stuttering runs in the family.” Continue reading »

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