From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model
0 CommentsAn educator from the Scandinavian country that ranks among the world’s leaders in school quality visited New York and explained his nation’s success....Read more
The Art of Destruction
YAFRAN, Libya — In a country where creativity was stifled to ensure the pre-eminence of one man, art can be the best revenge. Inside the gutted shell of a building that once housed a Qaddafi-regime intelligence unit, the paint of a new mural of a tree whose roots are feeding on the blood of fallen rebel fighters is drying on the wall. The house was half-destroyed in fighting between Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels who brought him down — and that’s exactly the way the artist Belgassem Grada hopes it will stay.The slight, wiry oil-field engineer never thought of himself as an artist — at most he used to doodle in his spare time. But today Grada, 47, has turned a former outpost of intimidation and symbol of Qaddafi’s stranglehold over Libya into Freedom House, a museum devoted to memorializing Libya’s civil war... Read more
Famous Authors’ Harshest Rejection Letters
It’s hard to imagine that the definitive icons of literature could have been subject to the same iciness of the high-gated publishing-house “no” machines that we know all too well. Of course, even down-to-earth publishers can miss a great work sitting on their desks; with thousands of titles of varying merit clogging editors’ mailboxes, it’s impossible to skim every page of every slush-pile manuscript, let alone give it its proper consideration. Furthermore, some of our most adored geniuses churned out well-spotted crap before maturing into the artists we remember.
Prescience is no hard science, but hindsight can be a kick in the shins nonetheless, especially for the editors who sent these rejection letters to writers who would later become the bestselling, influential giants of their day — and ours...Read More