Featured Writers – Page 35 – The Pen Hustle With Brandy Cavalli

FEATURED POST: Poverty Is Quicksand

It’s hard to believe that anyone thinks the poor, in this country, have an easy, work-free life. There’s an assumption among a certain segment of the population that government benefits are enough to enable someone to ease back and voluntarily give up looking for a job. The reality is that poverty, especially now, is more like quicksand. Once you fall into it, it’s harder and harder to get out. Opportunity to improve one’s life has disappeared for most Americans, especially those who are poor. As The Atlantic wrote not long ago: “The American Dream isn’t dead. It just moved to Denmark.”

Who are the poor? Most of us. Research has shown that, more than half of all Americans, at some point in their lives, will spend a year either in poverty or close to it. Those in poverty don’t willingly choose to stay there. None find it easy. Charles Blow wrote a column in the New York Times recently that offered only a few of the many examples of how painful it is to be poor. He was responding to a Pew Research Center survey showing how many Americans believed that the poor now have it easy, thanks to government benefits that supplement whatever they are able to earn in minimum wage jobs.

Continue reading “FEATURED POST: Poverty Is Quicksand”

FEATURED POST: Why Children Need Chores

Today’s demands for measurable childhood success—from the Common Core to college placement—have chased household chores from the to-do lists of many young people. In a survey of 1,001 U.S. adults released last fall by Braun Research, 82% reported having regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they require their own children to do them. With students under pressure to learn Mandarin, run the chess club or get a varsity letter, chores have fallen victim to the imperatives of resume-building—though it is hardly clear that such activities are a better use of their time.

“Parents today want their kids spending time on things that can bring them success, but ironically, we’ve stopped doing one thing that’s actually been a proven predictor of success—and that’s household chores,” says Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist in Paradise Valley, Ariz., and co-author of the forthcoming book “Raising Can-Do Kids.” Decades of studies show the benefits of chores—academically, emotionally and even professionally. Continue reading “FEATURED POST: Why Children Need Chores”

FEATURED POST: There Is No ‘Proper English’

It’s a perpetual lament: The purity of the English language is under assault. These days we are told that our ever-texting teenagers can’t express themselves in grammatical sentences. The media delight in publicizing ostensibly incorrect usage. A few weeks ago, pundits and columnists lauded a Wikipedia editor in San Jose, Calif., who had rooted out and changed no fewer than 47,000 instances where contributors to the online encyclopedia had written “comprised of” rather than “composed of.” Does anyone doubt that our mother tongue is in deep decline?

Well, for one, I do. It is well past time to consign grammar pedantry to the history books. Continue reading “FEATURED POST: There Is No ‘Proper English’”