Browsing PBH By Articles

The Touch-Screen Generation

The Article: The Touch-Screen Generation by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic.

The Text: On a chilly day last spring, a few dozen developers of children’s apps for phones and tablets gathered at an old beach resort in Monterey, California, to show off their games. One developer, a self-described “visionary for puzzles” who looked like a skateboarder-recently-turned-dad, displayed a jacked-up, interactive game called Puzzingo, intended for toddlers and inspired by his own son’s desire to build and smash. Two 30?something women were eagerly seeking feedback for an app called Knock Knock Family, aimed at 1-to-4-year-olds. “We want to make sure it’s easy enough for babies to understand,” one explained.

The gathering was organized by Warren Buckleitner, a longtime reviewer of interactive children’s media who likes to bring together developers, researchers, and interest groups—and often plenty of kids, some still in diapers. It went by the Harry Potter–ish name Dust or Magic, and was held in a drafty old stone-and-wood hall barely a mile from the sea, the kind of place where Bathilda Bagshot might retire after packing up her wand. Buckleitner spent the breaks testing whether his own remote-control helicopter could reach the hall’s second story, while various children who had come with their parents looked up in awe and delight. But mostly they looked down, at the iPads and other tablets displayed around the hall like so many open boxes of candy. I walked around and talked with developers, and several paraphrased a famous saying of Maria Montessori’s, a quote imported to ennoble a touch-screen age when very young kids, who once could be counted on only to chew on a square of aluminum, are now engaging with it in increasingly sophisticated ways: “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.”

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Chicago’s Losing Choice

The Article: Chicago’s Choice: Closing 50 Schools But Spending $100 Million On Basketball Arena by in The Contributor.

The Text: As we wrote in March, the city of Chicago unveiled plans two months ago to close over 50 schools, mostly in the poorest areas.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan has sparked fierce protests, with thousands of protesters hitting the streets last weekend to oppose the school closures –arguing that they would put children at risk by having to travel further to overcrowded schools.

But while the city insists it must close these schools to close budget gaps, it has just announced that it will be dedicated as much as $100 million in public funds for the construction of a new basketball arena at DePaul University — which is about a third of the cost of the project.

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Can Democrats Get A New Party, Too?

The Article: Can Democrats Get a New Party, Too? by Lawrence Lessig in The Atlantic.

The Text: It’s obvious to any sane Republican that the GOP needs to remake itself. The brand “rich, white, and male” may be fine for a fraternity (in 1953). It’s not so great for a political party today. If anything is certain about 2016, it is that the Republicans will survive only if the GOP becomes something more. Its followers, in other words, are about to get a new party.

But with Hillary Clinton seemingly poised to run for president and resume the Clinton dynasty’s reign, here’s the question Democrats need to ask: Can we get a new party too?

Our problem isn’t the Republicans’ — we’re not too exclusive. It’s the opposite: We are wildly too inclusive. The Democrats are indeed a rainbow coalition, courting every hue of American society. But the leaders of the party believe that at our core, there must be a dark shade of green. For at least 20 years, conventional Democratic wisdom has been that we can do nothing unless we give pride of place to large-dollar funders of Democratic campaigns. This money, most Democrats would concede, may well be evil, but it is a necessary evil. And the trick, we’ve been told again and again, is to pass as much policy as we can, subject to the constraints of raising big money.

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See Ya Later, Eight-Hour Work Day

The Article: They Want to Take Away the 8-Hour Day and 40-Hour Week by Dave Johnson in AlterNet.

The Text: Republicans are trying to pass an “alternative” to overtime pay. This is really about taking away the eight-hour workday and 40-hour workweek. Will weekends be next? What about an “alternative” to paying workers at all?

House Republicans are pushing a bill that takes away extra pay for overtime, substituting “comp” time instead. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is the law that brought us the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek. This law does not prohibit employers from requiring workers to work over 40 hours. Instead, it gives employers an incentive to instead pay extra or hire more people, and gives employees a premium if they do have to work longer. (Note that this is also the law that brought us a minimum wage and outlawed child labor.)

There is proof that overtime pay works: workers like domestic workers and agricultural workers – jobs not covered by the FLSA – are twice as likely to have to work more than 40 hours in a week. And even with this law, Americans already work more hours than in almost any other industrialized country.

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Obama’s Student Loan Policy Under Scrutiny

The Article: Obama Student Loan Policy Under Scrutiny As Congress Tackles Student Borrowing Costs by in The Huffington Post.

The Text: Congressional Democrats have pounced on a nonpartisan government report showing the Department of Education this year is forecast to earn a record $51 billion profit off student borrowers, denouncing the Obama administration and urging for structural reforms.

Members of the House of Representatives including George Miller (D-Calif.), John Tierney (D-Mass.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) cited news reports in The Huffington Post that highlighted the Tuesday estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, which showed that the Education Department was forecast to report higher earnings this year than Exxon Mobil and nearly as high as those of the four biggest U.S. banks by assets combined.

“We don’t see students or their parents as profit centers, and we don’t think it’s an appropriate concept to be acting like a market-driven bank here,” Tierney said.

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