This week on The Learning Curve, cohosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson spoke with Donald Graham, Chairman of Graham Holdings Company, previously The Washington Post Company. Mr. Graham discussed his family’s ownership of The Washington Post, their efforts to bring the paper to prominence and financial stability. He talked about his mother, Katharine Graham’s, history-changing achievements, including the Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal. Graham reflects upon how his military and police career informed his work as a journalist, his views on social media, and his work in higher education reform and philanthropy on behalf of immigrant youth.

This week on The Learning Curve, cohost Cara Candal and guest cohost Michael Bindas, senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, speak with noted constitutional law professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School. They discuss the legal basis for private and religious school choice, and how American constitutionalism supports parental choice in education. Prof. Hamburger explores the implications of recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and Carson v. Makin for the future of private and religious school litigation in America. Prof. Hamburger closes with a reading from his book Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom.

This week on The Learning Curve, guest cohost Jonathan Greenberg speaks with Loyola University Maryland professor and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Dr. Diana Schaub. They discuss America’s democratic civic culture and how Enlightenment thinkers shaped the Founders’ views about modern republican self-government. Prof. Schaub explores the legacies, speeches, and writings of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and how knowledge of U.S. history and primary sources can debunk revisionist approaches to teaching history and civics. Dr. Schaub closes the interview with a reading from her recent book, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation.

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard speak with Morehouse College’s Dr. Marisela Martinez-Cola, JD, about her book The Bricks before Brown: The Chinese American, Native American, and Mexican Americans’ Struggle for Educational Equality, about the long struggle for equal opportunity in American education. She discussed the many cases that preceded Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 decision that overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” established in the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. Dr. Martinez-Cola reviews the important, lesser-known legal challenges brought by Chinese American, Native American, and Mexican American plaintiffs, and how their efforts set the stage for Brown and continue to shape Americans’ understanding of civil rights and equality of educational opportunity.

This week on The Learning Curve, Gerard and guest cohost Alisha Searcy speak with Dr. Howard Fuller, Founder/Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University, about the state of education reform and the ongoing push to expand school choice and charter schools. Dr. Fuller discusses educational options available to minority students today, the role of charter schools in overall reform of urban education, and how the nation’s political, civic, and religious leaders can address racial divisions. He also shares with listeners highlights and frustrations from his long and remarkable career in education.

This week on The Learning Curve, guest cohosts Charlie Chieppo and Alisha Searcy speak with Dr. Eric Foner, Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. They discuss what educators and students today need to know about the post-Civil War era, Reconstruction, and the legacy of slavery. Professor Foner talks about emancipated slaves’ quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and the importance of studying and understanding the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He closes the interview with a reading from his book The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and guest cohost Charlie Chieppo speak with Dr. Carey Wright, former Mississippi state superintendent of education. They discuss the lessons she’s learned about education policymaking across her career, and the state leadership that was necessary to achieve dramatic improvements in fourth graders’ reading scores in Mississippi during her time there. Dr. Wright also talks about the role Mississippi’s great literature and blues music should play in the curriculum of K-12 schooling. She discusses the importance of early children education and literacy programs, as well as the lessons educators can draw from Mississippi’s heroes in the Civil Rights Movement, including Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer.

This week on The Learning Curve, Gerard and guest cohost Jay Greene discuss the history of modern China with Dr. Frank Dikötter, author of the People’s Trilogy, a landmark study of the impact of Communism on the ordinary people of China. Dr. Dikötter discusses Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward, China’s economic ascent under Deng Xiaoping, and the hard realities that the U.S. and the West must understand as they seek to engage with the rising economic and military power that is modern China. Prof. Dikötter closes the interview with a reading from his book, China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower.

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and guest cohost Jonathan Greenberg discuss the legacy of the Founding Fathers and the future of civics education with Lorraine Pangle, professor of political philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. They discuss how Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others were steeped in the classics and how ancient authors and thinkers, along with figures from the Enlightenment, helped shape America’s Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our nation’s understanding of the role of public education as a wellspring of republican self-government. Prof. Pangle concludes with a reading from her book, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders.

Stories of the Week:

In this special April Fools’ Day edition of The Learning Curve, guest host Mark Bauerlein chats with Robert McCrum, the definitive biographer of the English comic genius P.G. Wodehouse, whose whimsical satires featuring the brilliant valet Reginald Jeeves and the daffy English gentleman Bertie Wooster have delighted generations of readers. They discuss Wodehouse’s pitch-perfect sense of humor, inimitable prose style, and the gentle, much-needed humor he brought to Britain in the wake of
World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic. Mr. McCrum concludes the interview with a reading from his 2004 biography P.G. Wodehouse: A Life.

 

This week on The Learning Curve, cohosts Cara and Gerard speak with Ashley Soifer, Chief Innovation Officer of the National Microschooling Center. They discuss the rapid growth of these innovative schooling options, in which families and innovators are using a wide array of education choices that offer parents flexibility and greater control over how, where, what, and when their children learn. Soifer discusses how microschools predate the pandemic, saw rapid expansion during COVID-19, and are here to stay. She also touches on the role of technology in homeschooling, microschooling, and pod models, and how families, including many parents of color, are taking advantage of these exciting new approaches to K-12 education.

Stories of the Week:

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard speak with University of Virginia Professor Dan Willingham about cognitive psychology and K-12 education. Professor Willingham discusses the psychology of learning and the research that shaped his thinking and writing, including his advocacy of using scientific knowledge in classroom teaching and education policy and his critique of the “learning styles theory” of education. They explore what elements appear to be missing from American K-12 schooling and schools of education; his support of E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s Core Knowledge curricular work; and what must be done to improve students’ enjoyment of and performance in primary and secondary education.

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, guest cohosts Jay Greene and Mark Bauerlein interview renowned U.K. Oxford and ASU Shakespeare scholar Prof. Sir Jonathan Bate, discussing the timeless play Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. Sir Jonathan explains the Roman lessons for American constitutionalism, including warnings against the dangers of dictatorship and civil war. He explores the influence on Elizabethan England and Shakespeare of the classics, including the works of Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch. Sir Jonathan explains the differing rhetorical styles Shakespeare uses in the funeral orations of Marcus Brutus and Mark Antony, as well as Brutus’ noble though ultimately failed effort to preserve the Roman Republic.  Sir Jonathan concludes with a reading from his book How the Classics Made Shakespeare, focusing on Cicero’s idea of “the peculiarly heinous nature of civil war.”

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard mark Women’s History Month with Lauren Redniss, author of Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, the first work of visual nonfiction to be named a finalist for the National Book Award. They explore how Redniss wove together artistic images, writing, reporting, science, and history to create a book that tells a story, while educating readers about the remarkable life of Marie Sklodowska Curie, who was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. Redniss discusses her own education and experiences in STEM, how Curie overcame her era’s limitations on women, and what it is like for an author to see her work made into a major motion picture, Radioactive, starring Rosamund Pike. Ms. Redniss concludes the interview reading a passage from her book.

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard talk with Rachel Silber Devlin about her memoir, Snapshots of My Father, John Silber, which captures the wide-ranging and remarkable life of the late philosopher, teacher, and president of Boston University. Devlin discusses how her father became known as a vigorous proponent of a traditional liberal arts education, improved the prestige and endowment at B.U., and became a national leader in K-12 education reform. She offers listeners a unique, personal look at a man and an educational leader who had a deep commitment to academic quality, music, and the arts, and capped his career by authoring books on the absurdity of modern architectural fads and the ethics of Immanuel Kant.

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, Gerard and guest cohost Dr. Jay Greene interview Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, on understanding the links among education, skills, and innovation for students worldwide. Mr. Schleicher discusses the Cold War challenges that arrived with the launch of Sputnik; globalization and competitiveness; and how international testing has improved our understanding of educational performance. He also addresses the wider learning loss, educational impact, and financial implications that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on global K-12 education and competition among nations.

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard interview Gurcharan Das, author, public intellectual, and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India. Mr. Das gives a short history of the rise of India since independence in 1947 to become a thriving, incredibly diverse nation of 1.4 billion people—the world’s largest free-market democracy. He explains how the economic reforms of 1991 removed the restraints of a centralized, bureaucratic state, helping drive the economic dynamism of an IT and knowledge economy that has helped 415 million people escape poverty over the last 20 years. India’s remarkable story, Mr. Das notes, is showing the world an alternative to the Chinese model of autocratic, centralized control.

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, Gerard and guest cohost Daiana Lambrecht, Senior Director of Parent Leadership and Advocacy at Rocketship Public Schools, interview Dr. Deborah Plant, editor of the 2018 book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston. Dr. Plant discusses Hurston’s work as an anthropologist that told the story of one of the last survivors of the infamous Middle Passage. To mark Black History Month, she explores, through Hurston’s interviews with Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis), the enslavement and displacement of native West Africans over 50 years after the slave trade was outlawed in the U.S. Dr. Plant discusses enslaved Africans striving for education, freedom, and community in the U.S., and the importance for American schoolchildren today learning about and remembering these stories. She closes the interview with a reading from Barracoon.

Stories of the Week

This week on The Learning Curve, cohosts Cara and Gerard and guest host Patrick Wolf, distinguished professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, mark National Catholic Schools Week with George Weigel, author of the international bestselling, two-volume biography of Pope St. John Paul II. They explore how Karol Wojtyła’s education, deep faith, and experiences during World War II shaped his life as a spiritual leader and led him to play a pivotal role in the fall of Communism in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe. Pope John Paul II’s popularity among the world’s youth, Weigel explains, was grounded in a spirituality that defied contemporary culture and challenged young people to seek the “greatness that the grace of God makes possible in your life.” The interview concludes with Mr. Weigel reading from his biography of Pope St. John Paul II.

Stories of the Week

This week The Learning Curve podcast marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day with guest host Dr. Jay Greene of the Heritage Foundation and Laurence Rees, a former head of BBC TV History Programmes; founder, writer, and producer of the award-winning WW2History.com; and author of The Holocaust: A New History. Mr. Rees sheds light on the historical context of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, including the rise of the cultural and political conditions that led to the Holocaust. Rees discusses how the Nazis promulgated their anti-Semitic ideology and laws, and underscores the criminal realities of the Auschwitz concentration and death camp, as well as the Holocaust’s six million Jewish victims. Rees also talks about the fragility of both human life and political and cultural institutions. Mr. Rees closes the interview with a reading from his book on the Holocaust.

Guest: