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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review Sept. 26, 2008 26 Elul 5768

The Pancake People

By Suzanne Fields


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | We have to forget about the end of history. It's the end of economic ideology as we know it that requires thinking outside the box. With conservatives cheering, or at least tolerating, big-government bailouts and more regulation of what was once the free market, and liberals conceding that this is no time to expand government-funded programs dear to their hearts, we're in a shake-up, not a meltdown.


History records many examples of ideologues blatantly contradicting themselves and forced to stop preaching and start acting. That pesky devil who hangs out in the details often forced a change in direction. Famous Stoics proud of their emotional discipline would turn on the waterworks when confronting personal tragedy. Baby boomers — radicals in the '60s who reveled in the gratifications of the sexual revolution and vowed never to trust anyone over 30 — became tough disciplinarians when their sons got the keys to the family car and their daughters hit puberty and junior high school. Specifics always trump theory.


Football coaches teach their athletes to adhere to the game plan, but they expect a good quarterback to know how to chuck it and call an audible at the line when an unexpected opportunity requires a different strategy. No size fits all, and both physical and mental training require flexibility. The strongest tree bends in the wind. (A good defensive line bends but doesn't break.)


This sounds like Conceptual Thinking 101, and it is — but we're faced with a technological revolution that offers no intellectual solutions to deal with problems outside narrow familiar frameworks. That can be deadly. When you fear for your pocketbook, economic security and a roof over your head, it's difficult to focus on the subtler dangers, but that doesn't mean they'll go away.


The shortcomings in the way our children are taught to obtain information doesn't have the urgency of an imminent Wall Street crisis, but how we respond to radical changes in how we learn about the world will gravely affect the ability to seek solutions in the future.


Mark Bauerlein, in his book "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future," describes the current model for educating our children as "information retrieval, not knowledge formation." An elementary school principal tells him that fifth-graders typically assigned to research for an essay will "go to Google, type keywords, download three relevant sites, cut and paste passages into a new document, add transitions of their own, print it up and turn it in." You don't have to be a Luddite (though you may feel like one) to realize that computers, wondrous as they are, can short circuit the thinking process needed to solve unexpected problems.


Teachers are forever on the alert for plagiarism, but plagiarism is increasingly difficult to detect because Internet Websites proliferate swiftly on an enormous variety of topics. Like hydra-headed monsters, one site is deleted and another grows in its place. Classic Comics and Cliff Notes, the cribs of earlier generations, by comparison require long attention spans.


Ay, there's the rub. Short attention spans have replaced hyperactivity as the malady of the moment. Children are reading less, and fewer boys than girls read for pleasure. As a result, publishers resort to shock appeal to get boys to read, offering them toilet-humor titles such as "The Day My Butt Went Psycho" or "Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger," with a "hero" who seeks the riddle of the foul wind as though it were the holy grail.


Ben Schrank, president of Penguin's Razorbill children's book imprint, tells The Wall Street Journal that these books "will pull a boy away from a videogame." (We must take it on faith that the book is better.)


Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and author of "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain," argues that how we read determines how we reason. We frame ideas in a different way when we read deeply in a book than when we simply decode information from the Internet. Consequently, we form different analytical connections and interpretations that affect the circuitry of our brains. Or to update Descartes, "How I read determines how I think."


Playwright Richard Foreman is colorfully blunter. "We are the pancake people," he writes, "spread wide and thin, as we connect with that vast network of information access by the mere touch of a button."


Like most things in life, what you get depends on whose buttons you push. But wisdom requires depth of understanding, not shallow data retrieval. That's what we have to teach our children to avoid the ultimate meltdown.

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.


Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.

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© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields

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