Sharing Study Abroad
The recent college admissions scandal has focused much of the nation on the competition for places at top U.S. universities, and the extreme measures that seemingly rational people will take to secure an advantage...
Opinion: Listen to Teachers
As teachers and students prepare for the new school year, many school administrators are scrambling to fill vacancies,...
A Letter of Apology and Hope from America to its People
To the people who gave me life,I have failed and hurt you. I have turned my back on my people when you needed me the most. And, in truth, I’ve tried to erase the...
This Dictionary Illuminates the Meaning of Everything
Richard Lederer celebrates “the most impressive collective achievement of our civilization”
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the greatest monument ever erected to the English language. In 1857, the idea of a comprehensive “dictionary...
Assessing Change
Our ability to adapt to new situations is key to success. However, change often happens too slowly for us to recognize it, so it takes a sudden, dramatic shift in circumstances to spur a...
The Creativity of Human Language
Richard Lederer marvels at our capacity to invent language
For most of us, language is like the air we breathe. Like air, language is invisible and all around us. We need it to live, yet...
Opinion: Ready for the World
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and its new superintendent, former Miami-Dade boss Alberto Carvalho, recently unveiled their new strategic plan for the next four years, titled “Ready for the World,” which...
End the System of School Segregation
One of the most disturbing realities of the U.S. education system is that schools remain largely segregated by race, ethnicity, and language more than 60 years after the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal”...
Keeping the Internet Real
Amid all the talk of fake news, misinformation, and abuse of personal information, the ongoing battle to save net neutrality has been pushed to...
What Does It Mean to Ask ‘How Does Ukrainian Compare with Russian?’
To ask “How does Ukrainian compare to Russian?” is to admit that you’ve heard of Russian but didn’t realize that Ukrainian was even a language. It is not your own fault, it’s a consequence...