General Education Advice

I wrote Motivate Your Son in 2012.  I saw…. something… I did not want to sound alarmist but I was observing what I thought was a macro crisis: boys were floundering. My boy student-clients, mostly from the leafy suburbs of Madison and Guilford, at the time, were not thriving. I wondered how this would play out […]

James, a junior at Lyme-Old Lyme High School, thought he was not good at math.  So he didn’t try hard and since math has distinct answers, he often felt “stupid” (his word) when in math class. As I started working with James, I realized that he was not natively terrible in math.  He just never […]

“I get distracted.”  Chris, a sophomore at Valley Regional High School in Deep River,CT noted, as an explanation for why he “couldn’t study”. Chris’s mom had been an excellent student.  She did not understand that Chris’s natural way of studying was far different than hers.  Much like why great athletes are often not great coaches, […]

I spend some time working at The Brookings, the nation’s most well-known think tank.  As far as I could tell, the scholars working there were exceptional researchers who rarely spoke in hyperbole.  Their recent study, therefore, is particularly sobering. About a decade ago, I wrote Motivate Your Son.  I described the paths that I saw young […]

My youngest daughter wanted to become a teacher since she was age 5.  She headed to college believing that was her path.  During her senior year, she interned with the best teacher that I know – Jennifer Brodeur – from Old Saybrook.  She was also a natural.  She loves babysitting and teaches swim lessons.   I […]

Imagine you were a parent at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Explaining the practical world to your children would be a big problem.  Your world was changing and about to change in unprecedented ways.  How could you guide them?  You only knew about farming or other pre-Industrial occupations and pathways to financial independence. We […]

We live in a relative bubble.  The Connecticut coast is mostly filled with upper-middle-class and affluent families.  Most came of age when upward mobility was common.  Most probably have done as well or better or at least pretty close to as well as their parents.   Most have not witnessed first hand downward mobility.  Downward mobility […]

Through the years of giving presentations to students along Shoreline, Connecticut, I often ask: “When do you become an adult in America?” “18” a few mumble. I then ask if they’ll still be living at home at 18 and continue with the obvious point that not much will really change in their lives on when […]

Throughout history, the normal transition to adulthood went something like this: Boys become men by becoming soldiers or starting full-time farming or manual labor or, if lucky, taking a bigger role in a family of merchants. Girls become women by marrying some older guy that they barely knew. What if you took a time machine […]