Who wouldn’t love an easy explanation for autism, the heartbreaking brain disorder whose rates have been rising sharply and mysteriously over the past 30 years? History has served up many possibilities, beginning with a now discredited theory put forward by psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who famously attributed the condition to uncaring “refrigerator moms.” Today autism is thought to involve a genetic vulnerability that’s triggered by an unknown X factor, or factors, in the environment
Tag Archives: school
Dropout Nation
It’s lunchtime at Shelbyville High School, 30 miles southeast of Indianapolis, Ind., and more than 100 teenagers are buzzing over trays in the cafeteria. Like high schoolers everywhere, they have arranged themselves by type: jocks, preps, cheerleaders, dorks, punks and gamers, all with tables of their own.
Birth Control for Kids?
When the Portland, Maine, School Committee voted 7-2 Wednesday night to make birth control pills available to middle school girls as young as 11, the response provided the latest evidence that adults still have trouble talking about sex with each other, much less with our kids.
Making Time For A Baby
Listen to a successful woman discuss her failure to bear a child, and the grief comes in layers of bitterness and regret.
Foster Care: Extreme Edition
In many ways, Claire was a typical 14-year-old. Her favorite store was Forever 21, her favorite food was macaroni and cheese, and her favorite TV show was Bad Girls Club.
Diving into the Gene Pool
If they held a convention for racial purity, I would never make the guest list. Like most other Latin American families, mine is a multiethnic stew that has left me with the generic black-eyed and olive-skinned look typical of large swaths of the world’s population
Meet Ray Anderson, America’s Green Industrialist
Think of a green businessman and Ray Anderson isn’t likely to be the first to come to mind.
Fighting for Free Speech in Schools
The first morning of the 2005 school year held more than the typical jitters for Toni Kay Scott. One moment, the seventh-grader, known as T.K., was stepping from her mom’s Ford pickup to join friends in front of Redwood Middle School in Napa, Calif
Adoring A Vacuum
The baby hake on the menu at El Rodat in Javea, Spain, is a marvel of equilibrium. At once intensely flavorful and delicately light, it is the sort of exquisite dish you would expect from a chef who began his education at Barcelona’s top culinary school and later apprenticed with Alain Ducasse in Paris.
What You Need to Know About Staph
You’ve heard or read the headlines: that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is deadlier than AIDS; that the killer bug is alarmingly more widespread than anyone thought; that it’s in your kids’ locker rooms and at your gym. Stories abound of young high-school athletes becoming infected with MRSA and dying within weeks, and you’re starting to worry about whether that nick or scrape you just got could be your last