Issues

January 1990

Teacher Magazine, Vol. 01, Issue 04
Education Opinion The Fourth Dimension
Climatologists pound a hollow stake into a dry Midwestern lake bed and extract a record of 10,000 years of history. The new insights that enable them to extract information from this record come from one of the most mysterious parts of mathematics, the geometry of higher dimensions.
Thomas Banchoff, June 6, 2019
16 min read
Education Expressions Of Discontent
Almost everyone whose first language is English understands the hundreds of idioms used in everyday speech, but for people learning English as a second language, idioms can be a difficult challenge.
Jeffrey Porro, June 6, 2019
3 min read
Education Opinion The ABC's Of Caring
Ruby Tellsworth still talks about the day she returned to her classroom after a break to find her 2nd graders sitting in a group, earnestly discussing something. When she asked what was going on, they told her a problem had come up during recess and they had convened a class meeting to work it out.
Alfie Kohn, June 6, 2019
20 min read
Education The Lure Of The Paycheck
High school teacher Mary Bicouvaris walks into her Newport News, Va., classroom each morning and wonders where her students went. She doesn't see many teenagers getting ready to learn. Instead, as she looks around at the many sleepy faces, she sees what she calls “little business people.”
Maria Mihalik, January 1, 1990
12 min read
Education TV Teachers Go The Distance
From behind a desk in his San Antonio “classroom,” David Marshall coaxes the handful of students in his summer school physical science class through the intricacies of chemical bonding.
Peter West, January 1, 1990
8 min read
Education A Worrisome Work Force
Two major business groups are lining up support for a plan to create a system that will assess the skills of high school graduates and make the results available to potential employers, a development that has wide-ranging implications for schools.
Robert Rothman, January 1, 1990
4 min read
Education Anatomy Of A Sting
Diploma mills often obtain fake accreditation in order to appear legitimate.
Lisa Jennings, January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Heyday On Payday
As disturbing as after-school work may be to teachers, equally irksome is what happens to all that money students earn once the paycheck is cashed. The average "little businessperson" rakes in $60 to $75 a week.
Maria Mihalik, January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education The Education of Business
The Public School Academy and the Chiron Middle School in Minneapolis are two examples, among thousands, of business involvement in schools—involvement that has escalated to unprecedented levels in the past decade.
Reagan Walker, January 1, 1990
7 min read
Education Opinion In Quotes
“They had no right to cut it. It was like a police state.”
January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Teacher Empowerment: A Deadly Virus
Read an excerpt from Privatization and Educational Choice, by Myron Lieberman, 1989.
January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Both Ends Against The Middle?
Only through explicit phonics instruction will such children learn to sound out words on their own, and be able to read independently without difficulty—a key factor in determining whether they can understand what they read, according to a report by the University of Illinois.
Robert Rothman, January 1, 1990
3 min read
Education Opinion Letters

Horror Stories


The September/October issue of Teacher Magazine says that Joe Clark's “story was the basis for the film Stand by Me.” In fact, Joe Clark's story was the basis for the movie Lean on Me. Stand by Me was based on Stephen King's short story, “The Body.” The two films are unrelated, though both contain elements of horror.
January 1, 1990
7 min read
Education 'The Dog Ate It'
Teachers aren't likely to be surprised by new research documenting that many students suffer from homework-related memory lapses. In a recent survey of 2,986 teachers, “I forgot” ranked number one among students' excuses for not doing homework.
Elizabeth Schulz, January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education The Diploma-Mill Scam
In 1981, Charlie Nichols, a 6th grade choral-music teacher in Nicholasville, Ky., decided it was time to go back to school. If he could earn his Ph.D., he would be eligible for an impressive salary increase—up to $8,000 a year.
Lisa Wolcott, January 1, 1990
11 min read
Education Curriculum Notes
Children taking algebra for the first time often have difficulty making the transition from arithmetic. In an effort to help them bridge the gap, the College Board and the Educational Testing Service have developed “Algebridge,” a package of instructional materials.
January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education The Gospel According To Cooper
Aldonia Cooper's first album of gospel songs, Look and Live, is sold out everywhere except in a few record stores in her hometown. So anyone who wants to hear her mighty voice sing praise to the Lord will have to attend one of her concerts—or drive alongside her car as she commutes to work.
Denise Foley, January 1, 1990
2 min read
Education 'Take Some Risks'
Two U.S. corporations have announced grants for education totaling $80 million. Added to multimillion dollar support from two other corporations, the gifts set new highs last year in corporate giving to public schools.
Ann Bradley, January 1, 1990
4 min read
Education Making Schools Their Business
When Larry Sawyer talks about public schools, he sounds like a corporate vice president who has been asked to slash spending and show some results—or else. Schools, he says, are like bloated bureaucracies; if you want to change them, you have to nudge them until you get a “positive outcome.”
David Hill, January 1, 1990
21 min read
Education Readings Of Note
A school superintendent and the president of a school board reveal how they won voter approval for a school bond issue: “School people rarely think of themselves as selling a product, but perhaps we should—especially at referendum time.
January 1, 1990
3 min read
Education Current Events
To help meet the growing demand for black and Hispanic teachers, six colleges and universities have launched an ambitious national program to single out 550 minority high school students and groom them for a career in teaching.
Debra Viadero, January 1, 1990
3 min read
Education How To Spot A Scam
If you are looking into nontraditional education programs, you can avoid diploma mills by asking yourself a few important questions.
Lisa Wolcott, January 1, 1990
1 min read
Education Epidemic In The Making
For the past several years, public-health experts have been warning that young people are especially vulnerable to AIDS. Now, an ominous report issued by the national Centers for Disease Control confirms that the AIDS virus is spreading rapidly among teenagers.
Ellen Flax, January 1, 1990
4 min read
Education Judging Schools: The Focus Shifts To Results
Spurred by political and business leaders, states and the federal government are moving rapidly toward what one leading educator calls a “paradigm shift” in the way schools are judged.
Robert Rothman, January 1, 1990
6 min read
Education How Best To Train Teachers?
In 1986, two landmark reports strongly recommended shifting the professional preparation of teachers from the undergraduate to the graduate level. The reports argued that such a move was critical in elevating the stature of the teaching profession.
Debra Viadero, January 1, 1990
6 min read
Education How Best To Train Teachers?
"As a primary national strategy, we're saying it makes an awful lot of sense to have students prepare for teaching while they're undergraduates,'' says Joseph Johnston Jr., the principal author of the 174-page report, Those Who Can: Undergraduate Programs To Prepare Arts and Sciences Majors for Teaching, released recently. "We think it's the most effective way to increase the number of students who go into teaching and improve the quality of their preparation.''
January 1, 1990
5 min read
Education Judging Schools: The Focus Shifts To Results
President Bush and the nation's governors signaled their support for this new view at their education "summit'' last fall. In a joint statement, the executives agreed to "establish clear measures of performance and then issue annual report cards on the progress of students, schools, the states, and the federal government.''
January 1, 1990
5 min read
Education Expressions Of Discontent

Such incidents are not rare, says Mick Fedullo, a language-development specialist in Indian education. And Fedullo believes they are a symptom of a major problem hampering Indian students' efforts to succeed academically.
January 1, 1990
2 min read
Education The Fourth Dimension
January 1, 1990
1 min read