Few parents who read (and reread) the Dr. Seuss classics to their kids probably recognize the political leitmotifs in these joyful rhyming books. Did you know, for example, that Yertle the Turtle was based on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and that the original drawings of the tyrannical reptile featured a Hitler mustache? Read the rest of this entry »

Early one recent Thursday morning, three bleary-eyed teenagers at the Emery School in a remote corner of southeastern South Dakota are struggling to concentrate on their Advanced Placement calculus course. Sensing that she’s losing her audience, veteran teacher Mary Cundy calls on Andrew Fluth, an 18-year-old senior, to show the class his solution to a particularly tricky problem. He walks to the front of the room and sets his calculator under a video camera, which broadcasts his equations (and his bright red T-shirt with “Your Mom’s Got It Going On” written across the chest) to Cundy–who is more than 250 miles away–and to his 20 distance-learning classmates at five locations around the state. Being on television every morning can be a drag, Fluth says, but the alternative would be not taking calculus at all. Read the rest of this entry »