Politics For Kids

John Lynch was a promising athlete, but at age 11 was struck by a crippling illness. He was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis (JA), a disease that affects 300,000 children, making them unable to live full-functioning, pain-free lives. John continued to seek new treatments, but not until age 53 was he given the “miracle drug” that enabled him to sustain a 30-year legal practice. During that time, he dedicated his life to helping others who suffered from JA and became a much-honored advocate for easing their distress.

Over the past decade, educational instruction has become increasingly digitized as districts rush to dole out laptops and iPads to every student. Yet the most important question, “Is this what is best for students?” is glossed over. Veteran teachers Joe Clement and Matt Miles have seen firsthand how damaging technology overuse and misuse has been to our kids. On a mission to educate and empower parents, they show how screen saturation at home and school has created a wide range of cognitive and social deficits in our young people.

If someone were to ask you what the leading cause of death is among American children today, what would you say? Cancer? Car accidents? Obesity? The answer is firearms. Guns kill more children in our country than anything else. It’s a shocking statistic, no matter your politics. So how do we solve it? Where can we find common ground on one of the most divisive issues in America? The solution, according to Dr. Gorelick, lies in public health.

Whatever became of the youth of the 60s, the turbulent era of sex, drugs and rock & roll? Kid Me Not, a new collection of intimate stories by women from the first generation ever to have access to The Pill, offers a unique perspective on the decade before Roe v. Wade, when free love wasn't always free. As the women's movement spread, these women faced a future of extraordinary possibilities possibilities seen by today's youth as commonplace.

In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker's experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America.

Kids Are Americans Too! And that means you have rights just like everybody else. But it's not enough to just say you have them. You have to know what those rights are...and are not! Luckily for you, Bill O'Reilly is back opining for kids on that very subject—your legal rights.

In a book that’s both accessible and enlightening, Rebecca Friedrichs recounts her 30-year odyssey as an elementary school teacher who comes face to face with the forces dividing and corrupting our schools and culture - state and national teachers’ unions. An exciting true story that features real-life testimonies of teachers, parents, and kids as well as political and social commentary, Rebecca’s journey leads her to the realization that the only hope for America’s schools and families is returning authority to parents and teachers while lessening the grip of state and national unions.

Every morning on CNBC's Squawk Box, Joe Kernen asks challenging questions. And at home he does the same with his young daughter, Blake. What are you learning in school? What TV shows do you like? What message did you get from that movie? When Blake was nine, her answers told Joe that she had already absorbed a distorted view of economics---from her school, pop culture (even animated movies!), and just about everywhere else.

In Those Who Wander, Vivian Ho delves deep into a rising subculture that’s changing the very fabric of her city and all of urban America. Moving beyond the disheartening statistics, she gives voices to these young people - victims of abuse, failed foster care, mental illness, and drug addiction. She also doesn’t ignore the threat they pose to themselves and to others as a dangerous dark side emerges. With alarming urgency, she asks what can be done to save the next generation of America’s vagabond youth.

Originally published in the hopes of children understanding their place in the world better, both in a geographic and global sense, these stories by Post foreign correspondents feature the real-life stories of kids all over the world. From Yuki who rides a subway train to school every day in Tokyo to Sayeed who guides tourists on camel rides in Egypt, these children's stories carry the underlying message that in the eyes of our children, there is far more that unites us than divides us.

Our increasingly fast-paced world is interfering with sound educational practices and harming kids both physically and mentally. Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids gives teachers, administrators, and parents the information, tools, and strategies needed to begin making immediate changes at school, in the community, and at home to benefit all students.

The unforgettable inspiring memoir of one extraordinary doctor who is saving lives in a most unconventional way, Ask Me Why I Hurt is the touching and revealing first-person account of the remarkable work of Dr. Randy Christensen. Trained as a pediatrician, he works not in a typical hospital setting but, rather, in a 38-foot Winnebago that has been refitted as a doctor's office on wheels. His patients are the city's homeless adolescents and children.

Nobody likes to be in an awkward moment of silence where everyone is just sitting at the table and doesn’t know what to talk about. That’s exactly when your trivia knowledge comes to play. Impress your friends with some insane facts, and you will find yourself in a heavy discussion within a few seconds. Not only will you feel like the smartest person in the room, but also will everyone be excited to enjoy your company as you always know something interesting to talk about.

Since its initial publication in hardcover in 2003, Fires in the Bathroom has been through multiple printings and received the attention of teachers across the country. Now, Kathleen Cushman's groundbreaking book offers original insights into teaching teenagers in today's hard-pressed urban high schools from the point of view of the students themselves. It speaks to both new and established teachers, giving them firsthand information about who their students are and what they need to succeed.

What if, instead of trying to predict the future, we could just pick the one we want - and then invent it? Well, we can. Think of the wealth of technological resources already available to us. The computing power in that smartphone in your pocket could have guided 120 million Apollo-era spacecraft to the Moon and back. A gigabyte of memory cost $300,000 in the 1980s - today, it costs a fraction of a penny. Now, try to imagine 2050, when your computing devices will be a million times more powerful or available at one-millionth of today's prices.

Striking the right balance between career and motherhood is one of the most stressful, heart-wrenching tasks facing women today. In Torn, 46 women examine the conflict between the need to nurture and the need to work, and reveal creative solutions for having the best of both worlds. The stories in the collection offer hope and inspiration, but they also reveal the messy realities of modern motherhood and life's inevitable crises, both small and large.

Kid Curry has been portrayed as a cold-blooded killer, without any compassion or conscience, and possessed of limited intelligence. Curry indeed was a dangerous man with a violent temperament, which was aggravated by alcoholic drink. Mark Smokov has researched extensively in areas significant to Curry's story and corrects the many false statements that have been written about him in the past. Curry was a cunning outlaw who planned and executed robberies.

It’s time to change the conversation—about work, life, and “balance.” Work and life are inextricably, intimately intertwined. We need to celebrate what we do give our children—even and especially in moments of imbalance—rather than apologizing for what we don’t. In this way, we can model for our children how we use our talents to help others and raise awareness about the issues closest to our hearts.

Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. Through personal anecdotes and original research, Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti reveal that in countries with increasing economic inequality, such as the United States, parents push harder to ensure their children have a path to security and success.

Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, All Day recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson's classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City's Rikers Island. A poet and an actress who had done occasional workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill prepared for a full-time stint teaching in the GED program for the incarcerated youths.