AWOL from the Classroom
AWOL from the classroom The best teachers and a new curriculum can’t help a student who isn’t there. It might be an exaggeration to say that California has a truancy crisis, but state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris nonetheless made an important point last week about how schools mismanage troubling levels of absenteeism. Officials estimate that there are close to 1 million elementary school students in
American Exceptionalism, According to Oliver Stone
American Exceptionalism,
According to Oliver Stone
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Oliver Stone’s 10-hour documentary series, The Untold History of The United States, which first appeared on Showtime in 2012, is about to be rereleased this month on DVD with three new episodes and a post-series conversation between Stone and his frequent collaborator, author and activist Tariq Ali.
The series, which is remarkably free of talking heads and offers a treasure trove of historical footage, kicks off with an alternative narrative of the Cold War. Like many historians, Stone believes that, had Franklin Roosevelt lived, he might have avoided the Cold War. If the Democrats had not dumped Vice President Henry Wallace in favor of Harry Truman in 1944, Stone contends, Wallace would have carried on FDR’s policies and “there might have been no atomic bombings, no nuclear arms race and no cold war.
Untold History is full of such tantalizing what-ifs. What if Kennedy had lived? Would there have been a Vietnam War? What if George W. Bush had taken the advice of US intelligence operatives more seriously before the 9/11 attacks? Could the disasters in