March 19, 2010 Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes) Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel March 18, 2010 Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America? JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes) Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum March 17, 2010 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth? March 16, 2010 Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes) Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel March 15, 2010 The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes) Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT March 12, 2010 Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes) Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades March 11, 2010 Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes) The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing March 10, 2010 Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE) Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S. March 9, 2010 Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES) David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral March 8, 2010 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss? JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES) Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion March 5, 2010 Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES) Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause March 4, 2010 Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses? JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES) Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative March 3, 2010 Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: NEVER!!! JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES) The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub March 2, 2010 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo? March 1, 2010 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Lender responsibility JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES) Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute Feb. 26, 2010 Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES) Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost Feb. 25, 2010 The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES) Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives Feb. 24, 2010 Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’ Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack Feb. 23, 2010 Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No! JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES) Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes Feb. 22, 2010 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically? JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES) Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk Feb. 19, 2010 Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us? JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES) Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State Feb. 18, 2010 Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain? JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES) Everything's Relative By Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel : The altruist in hell Feb. 17, 2010 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Entitlement Vs. Charity JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES) Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah Feb. 16, 2010 Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES) Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief Feb. 15, 2010 Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES) Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review August 21, 2008 20 Menachem-Av 5768 Where Paternalism Makes the Grade By George Will http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | OAKLAND, Calif. — Seated at a solitary desk in the hall outside a classroom, the slender 13-year-old boy with a smile like a sunrise earnestly does remedial algebra, assisted by a paid tutor. She, too, is 13. Both wear the uniform — white polo shirt, khaki slacks — of a school that has not yet admitted the boy. It will, because he refuses to go away. The son of Indian immigrants from Mexico, the boy decided he is going to be a doctor, heard about the American Indian Public Charter School here and started showing up. Ben Chavis, AIPCS' benevolent dictator, told the boy that although he was doing well at school, he was not up to the rigors of AIPCS, which is decorated with photographs of the many students it has sent to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. So the boy asked, what must I do? Telling young people what they must do is what Chavis does. With close- cropped hair and a short beard flecked with gray, he looks somewhat like Lenin, but is less democratic. A Lumbee Indian from North Carolina, he ran track, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, got rich in real estate ("I wanted to buy back America and lease it to the whites") and decided to fix the world, beginning with AIPCS. FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. Founded in 1996, it swiftly became a multiculturalists' playground where much was tolerated and little was learned. Chavis arrived in 2000 to reverse that condition. Charter schools are not unionized, so he could trim the dead wood, which included all but one staff member. David Whitman, in his book Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism," reports that in Chicago, from 2003 through 2006, just three of every 1,000 teachers received an "unsatisfactory" rating in annual evaluations; in 87 "failing schools" — with below average and declining test scores — 69 had no teachers rated unsatisfactory; in all of Chicago, just nine teachers received more than one unsatisfactory rating and none of them was dismissed. Chavis' teachers come from places such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Columbia, Berkeley, Brown and Wesleyan. AIPCS is one of six highly prescriptive schools Whitman studied, where "noncognitive skills" — responsible behaviors such as self-discipline and cooperativeness — are part of the cultural capital the curriculum delivers. Many inner-city schools feature a monotonous chaos of disruption. AIPCS — Oakland's highest performing middle school — stresses obligation, not self-expression. Chavis, now "administrator emeritus," is adamant: "Everyone says we should 'preserve our culture.' There is a lot of our culture we should wipe out." A visitor to an AIPCS classroom notices that the children do not notice visitors. Students are taught to sit properly — no slumping — and keep their eyes on the teacher. No makeup, no jewelry, no electronic devices. AIPCS' 200 pupils take just 20 minutes for lunch and are with the same teacher in the same classroom all day. Rotating would consume at least 10 minutes, seven times a day. Seventy minutes a day in AIPCS' extra-long 196-day school year would be a lot of lost instruction. The school does not close for Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day or Cesar Chavez Day. Every student takes four pre-AP (advanced placement) classes. There are three weeks of summer math instruction, three hours of homework a night. Seventh-graders take the SAT. College is assumed. Paternalism is the restriction of freedom for the good of the person restricted. AIPCS acts in loco parentis because Chavis, who is cool toward parental involvement, wants an enveloping school culture that combats the culture of poverty and the streets. He and other practitioners of the new paternalism — once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism — are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish. Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing. Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism — teachers should be mere "enablers" of group learning; self-esteem is a prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other opponents are the teachers' unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic Party. Today's liberals favor paternalism — you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance — for everyone except children. Odd. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. George Will's latest book is "With a Happy Eye but: America and the World, 1997-2002" to purchase a copy, click here. Comment on this column by clicking here. Archives © 2006 WPWG

Arnold Ahlert  Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Froma Harrop  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works