For a very long time, schools and education in the Deep South were always ranked near or at the bottom of test score rankings and literacy rates. Times have changed. Public schools in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are now ranking higher than their counterparts in states like Oregon, Maryland, and Illinois. Tim Daly at The Free Press looks into why schools in politically red states are now outperforming those in politically blue states.
Most fans of Charles Dickens know that the child worker scene in David Copperfield was based on the author’s own experience, although it was never known during his lifetime. But his troubled childhood had more effects than that one scene, writes Peter Conrad at Literary Hub, in an excerpt from his recent book Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller.
At Real Clear History, Robert Curry describes how the three pillars of the American idea were forged and fused during the American Revolution. The three are unalienable rights, self-evident truths, and free market economics. Collectively, they’ve come to be known as “common sense realism.”
We’ve visited and thoroughly enjoyed what Anglotopia Magazine calls “a bit of Britain in the American Heartland.” The “bit” is St. Mary Aldermanbury Church, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and bombed during the German blitz of London in World War II. The church’s ruins were transported and rebuilt at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The basement houses America’s National Churchill Museum, as is fitting for the college’s historical status as the site where Churchill gave the “Iron Curtain” speech.
More Good Reads
America 250
One Frenchman and the American Revolution – Miguel Faria at Real Clear History.
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson – book review by Alec Rogers at Journal of the American Revolution.
Discovered: First Maps of the American Revolution – Edwin Grosvenor at American Heritage.
Visiting Parker’s Revenge – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
The Global Dimension of the American Revolution – John Ferling at Anglotopia Magazine (podcast).
Writing and Literature
Len Deighton and the Spy Novel and A Personal Selection – Paul Vidich at CrimeReads.
The Age of Genre Bending, Blending, and Juxtaposing – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.
Book Cover Images: An Author’s Guide to Using Stock Photos – Jonathan Green at Kindlepreneur.
Life and Culture
5 Takeaways from Data on Teens, Social Media, and Mental Health – Chris Martin at FYI.
Keeping a Culture: A Review of Thoroughness and Charm – Chrstine Norvell at Front Porch Republic.
My Education Solution – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.
A Pogrom is Brewing in Canada – Casey Babb at The Free Press.
Poetry
The Second World War had its poets, too – Jeremy Wikeley at Engelsberg’s Ideas.
From “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.
“The Lesson of the Moth” by Don Marquis – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Israel
The Gaza Famine Myth – Michael Ames at The Free Press.
Faith
The Enduring City of God – Regis Martin at The Imaginative Conservative.
Why I Have Faith in the Bible’s Authority – Rondall Reynoso at Faith on View.
She Forgot Our Names, But No Rock of Ages – A.W. Workman at Entrusted to the Dirt.
Living between D-Day and VE Day – Stephen Steele at Gentle Reformation.
Art
Tate Modern, the ‘cathedral to contemporary art,’ celebrates 25 years – Gareth Harris at The Art Newspaper.
British Stuff
Firefighters of the Blitz - Spitalfields Life.
More – Unorganized Hancock
Painting: The Bible Reader, oil on canvas (circa 1895) by Jozef Israels (1824-1911).
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