Like me, you may have read about last month’s entrance examination at one of the most prestigious and renowned universities in France, where such extraordinary thinkers as Assia Djebar, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aimé Césaire and Michel Foucault once studied: the École Normale Supérieure, the most famous location of which lies
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“Entrepreneur” is a word of French origin, meaning in the strictest sense someone “who undertakes to effect an action, most often long and complex (Larousse Dictionary).” And whether we conclude that it was Richard Cantillon in 1755 or Jean-Baptiste Say in 1803 who first coined this term, there remains a strong connection between
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As all secondary students who enjoy lunch in our cafeteria will know, we decided last year to make this space entirely free of electronic devices between the hours of 11:00 and 2:00, in large part because we believe there is nothing more important than their interaction with each other, that face-to-face
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Following the announcement of our new strategic plan last January, students, faculty and families have been VERY excited about the makerspace we will soon be building for our primary and secondary schools. Those familiar with the concept of “making”, often because they have visited the “makerfaire” that takes place at
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Rare is the person who does not love the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” penned by cartoonist Bill Watterson, syndicated in the United States between 1985 and 1995, and the subject of more than 30 million books published over the last 30 years. This highly entertaining, mordant, insightful cartoon recounts the
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It was early morning. The sky billowed with snow, which fell like a whisper and packed itself like the wool of a loom being tightened. And as the sky scrapers of Manhattan gave way to the wooded hills of the Catskills, the words of American poet Mary Oliver came to
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For many, and I would agree with this perspective too, the most important dimension of art education is always the opportunity students have actually to be artists themselves, which means drawing, painting, sculpting, assembling, creating in their own right. That said, learning about art from more distance also has value. “I
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Leaving one’s “comfort zone” is not always easy, but doing so lies squarely at the heart of learning. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the notion of comfort zone can be defined as “1. the temperature range within which one is comfortable; 2. the level at which one functions with ease and
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The Music Lesson, by Charles West Cope (1869). Every so often, I will have a hallway conversation like the one I had this past week. Someone will mention that his or her daughter or son, typically in the upper grades of primary school or the lower grades of middle school, has been
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“Selfie” is a word from the 21st century which leaves few people indifferent. For some, including a few of the sharpest social commentators on either side of the Atlantic, it encapsulates what they consider to be the particular individualism, not to say selfishness of young people born circa or since the
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