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Winners

Zoe Georgulas, 17, New Tech High @ Coppell: "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and " Thought Control, Trump-Style "

Is it really possible to control how people think? Today we are inundated with media from the moment we wake up: images, text messages, news stories. In school, students read articles, novels, and textbooks. If we took all of these stimulants away, would we still be able to think for ourselves, or would we lose the motivation to do so?

This theme is one at the forefront of Ray Bradbury's novel, "Fahrenheit 451," which I recently read for my Literature class. The story examines a dystopian society where books have been banned completely. The average people in this story seem to lack emotional complexity; they have no desire to read because they have been taught that books made people upset. In the novel, there are a few people who question the status quo, but the majority of people live in a state of blissful ignorance.

Though the novel is meant to depict a contemporary society that Bradbury could not have predicted, there are elements of its narrative that are uncannily similar to our world. Specifically, the mindset of our leaders. Following the mandate from the president disallowing the use of seven scientific words by the CDC in budget documents, I read an article in the New York Times called "Thought Control, Trump-Style" published on December 18, 2017. The Trump administration has almost completely erased any trace of the LGBT+ community on government websites and banned the phrase "climate change" from use by the Department of Agriculture. This virus has infected so many establishments that its ban on seven words in budget documents pales in comparison.

Why are our leaders seeking to control the media we consume? Even the controversy of "fake news" is an attempt to restrict the press we see to only one side of the story. Our government has become a Mind Flayer of sorts: it sees itself as a superior race of thinkers and feels a need to dominate other beings to the point of mind control. This evil and fantastical government is what Ray Bradbury was trying to warn against in his novel. Complacency only breeds complacency. Congress will surely be more effective in passing legislation that Republicans are in favor of if the only news consumed by the American public leans to the far right, but what good does it do us as a society to all agree?

American democracy is predicated on freedom of speech and the desire to seek knowledge. The very idea of precluding this information is a threat to our republic. It is scary to think that Bradbury saw signs of today's society almost seventy years ago. Perhaps even scarier is how many people in today's society have failed to become Guy Montags. It would be difficult to find someone who does not agree with the dangers presented in this book, but, unfortunately, it is not hard to find someone who agrees with the thought control of America's own Mind Flayer.

If complacency breeds complacency, will deliberate minds produce deliberate actions?

Samantha Jones, 16, Concord Carlisle Regional High School: "Walden" and " Dropping Out of College Into Life "

It is fairly well known that Henry David Thoreau ventured off into Walden Woods to live in solidarity for two years. The purpose of this endeavor was not only to rid himself of society's frivolities but to see what the woods could teach him. Thoreau's philosophy on education was a central theme to his books, and details that learning through experience is far more beneficial than in a classroom. This belief parallels in Rainesford Stauffer's "Dropping Out of College Into Life," which accounts for her decision to leave college and why it was crucial to her education. In the article Stauffer explains school does not prepare students for failure, and instead teaches them to avoid it at all costs. From this, students develop a complex fear of failure early on in their academic careers.

Stauffer's story begins her freshman year of college, when she remembers this paralyzing fear. She recalls going from a confident student; optimistic about the year, to a terrified, voiceless wreck. Her high school education had prepared her for the coursework but not the reality her actions impacted her future, and could possibly mean failure. Stauffer became so petrified that she stopped eating and participating in classes, dropped courses, lost weight, and eventually dropped out of college altogether. She'd failed, and her worst fear had become a reality.

Yet, somehow this wasn't as crushing as she thought it would be. Stauffer moved home, and inadvertently started seeking out education the same way Thoreau did: through experience. She found that the hands on experience of ballet and yoga studios and a nonprofit organization furthered her education more than any college course ever could. Eventually Stauffer found a way to finish her degree at the New School, a collection of universities that offered credit for real-life experience instead of academic courses. She went from the lowest point in her life to one of the highest, and all she had to do was fail.

The moral is clear: there are gaps in our education system, and because of these gaps students aren't adequately prepared for their own futures. In his book Walden, Thoreau elaborates on the ideas Stauffer touches on in her article. As stated before, he believed learning through experience was exponentially better than a in classroom. When a rigid curriculum with expectations is set in place, students aren't given the same hands on learning as they would be without one. Just as Stauffer embraced this learning style in the New School, Thoreau did so in Walden Woods. For that is all Walden really is; Thoreau learning from nature by immersing himself in it, instead of seeing it on the pages of a book. A quote from Walden most fitting is as follows, "We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe" (Walden 10/15/1859.)

Lily Langrind, 17, Concord Carlisle High School: "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh and " Checking My Male Privilege "

Most of the literature I have explored in my English classes have been novels and plays with sophisticated language and complex storylines, but this semester we read an eye-opening essay about racism- "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh-which finally made me realize that what my teachers say is true: the things we read and discuss do apply to the real world.

I read Charles Blow's editorials regularly. The effect of his words is sharp and impactful. When I came across "Checking My Male Privilege" after the deluge of sexual harassment accusations came out in Hollywood and Washington, the connection was obvious.In "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," McIntosh emphasizes how in our society, white privilege is so lethal because its beneficiaries are "carefully taught not to recognize [it]." How can racism be eradicated if the people with advantages don't even know they have them? Unless white people recognize all the ways our quality of life can be so much higher simply because of the color of our skin, we will forever have this invisible pack full of assets and protections secured tightly on our backs.

If we apply the same logic McIntosh uses in her essay to our discussions about sexual harassment in America, it's easy to see that most men are also conditioned to evade any blame whatsoever for the injustices so many women face. Just like the white people who attribute their success to their own merit and turn a blind eye to their privileges, the men who focus on the "good guys" who don't grope or whistle or slap are choosing to overlook the privilege of physical dominance. It seems simple, but men can enjoy the luxury of knowing that a vast majority of the time, women don't have the physical superiority to victimize or overpower men for unwanted sexual behavior.

In cases of both sexism and racism, privileges hurt both those without and with the privileges. White people might not condone racism, but their blindness to privilege leads them to believe that racism may not be as bad as the underprivileged make it seem. As Blow writes, it's extremely difficult to understand how bad something is if you never experience it firsthand, and so listening to people with fewer privileges is one of the best tools we can use to evaluate the state of discrimination black people and women are immersed in.

Alicia Li, 16, Livingston High School: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and " Will America Choose King's Dream or Trump's Nightmare? "

Beneath the shimmery surface of American ideals, from John Winthrop's iconic imagery of the country as a "city upon a hill" to the twentieth century metaphor of a "melting pot" accepting all cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities, recent events reveal the underlying racism of a nation claiming to be "post-racial." In George Yancy's "Will America Choose King's Dream or Trump's Nightmare?" the professor illustrates how Trump's offensive and racist statements pertaining to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations highlight America's deceptive façade as a beacon for civil liberty. A classic piece of American literature, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald unveils the flaws of high society during the Roaring Twenties, a period of both economic prosperity and unrivaled income inequality, through the narration of Nick Carraway. Reflecting current news, "The Great Gatsby" showcases how harsh reality is often hidden under a superficial exterior.

After moving to Long Island, Carraway optimistically believes in the American dream of working hard to be rewarded and achieve upward mobility. However, his encounters reveal the faults of the rich whose lifestyles and wealth are so widely admired. Tom Buchanan, a Yale graduate from a prominent family, has more than enough wealth to transport his polo ponies across the country while owning an elaborate mansion framed by French windows and half an acre of fresh roses. Despite Buchanan's dignified appearance and prestige, Carraway uncovers the truth of his racism, domestic violence, and immorality. At his own dinner party, Buchanan recommends a book claiming the importance of the dominance of the white race. That same night, a woman reveals his infidelity and the fact that everyone in town is aware of it. Not only is the man unabashedly unfaithful, but he frequently leaves bruises on his wife and breaks his mistress's nose during a disagreement. Meanwhile, the vanity of his wife and mistress is undeniable since Buchanan's exuberant wealth was the subject of their attraction. The sole genuinely magnanimous rich character, Jay Gatsby, is delusional and dependent on illegal means to maintain his lavish lifestyle.

Although written nearly a century later, Yancy's op-ed examines the same theme of reality contradicting American ideals. Ever since the Declaration of Independence affirmed equality for all men and the United States emerged as the land of liberty, the nation claimed to be a republic of moral justice and equality. Yet on January 11, President Donald J. Trump revealed the contradictory truth when he made a racist and derogatory statement condemning immigrants from several nonwhite countries. The representative of the United States allegedly using "shithole" to describe the homelands of foreign immigrants is contemptuous and clearly inconsistent with America's image of acceptance and tolerance.

In "The Great Gatsby," Fitzgerald warns readers against accepting society at face value, a lesson that Yancy emphasizes as well. To learn from the misplaced optimism of Nick Carraway, Americans today must remain unaffected by the country's idealistic rhetoric of freedom and equality to speak out against our president's bigotry, rather than silently accepting the unjust reality of racism.

Katherine LoBue, 16, Mamaroneck High School: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain and " The Other Inconvenient Truth "

Mark Twain was friends with abolitionist Frederick Douglass, yet he permitted grotesque drawings of escaped slave Jim in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Twain was a benefactor for African American students, yet he depicted Jim as helpless and inferior in the "anti-slavery" satire. Twain clearly had conflicting views regarding African Americans. In his New York Times op-ed, "The Other Inconvenient Truth," author Charles Blow states, "Just because one abhors violence and cruelty doesn't mean that one truly believes that all people are equal... Entertaining the notion of imbalance-that white people are inherently better than others in any way- is also white supremacy." Blow invents the term "soft white supremacy" to describe these beliefs. This concept offered me a way to navigate Twain's puzzling attitudes towards African Americans in Huck Finn.

When reading Twain's classic with my AP English class, I was confused as to why the text wasn't resolutely anti-slavery. In the novel, protagonist Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi to escape their lives in St. Petersburg, Missouri. It takes over 300 pages for Huck to realize Jim is a human being, and even then Huck infantilizes Jim by offering the grown man "help." In the book's last ten controversial chapters, Jim becomes subservient to Huck and Tom, refusing to stand up for himself even when made to complete ridiculous tasks. Jim's behavior in these chapters led me to suspect Twain believed slaves were too unintelligent and submissive to stand up to adolescents. Although Twain depicted Jim as a true human being, giving this book its "anti-slavery" reputation, subtleties in Huck's and Jim's attitudes make me wonder if Twain "entertained notions of imbalance" even though he didn't openly show it.

Most importantly, Blow showed me that "soft white supremacy" still plagues our current times, most notably in the executive branch of our government. In 2011, Trump said President Obama needed to show his birth certificate to prove he was American-born. When announcing his Presidential candidacy, Trump stated Mexicans were drug dealers, criminals, and rapists. Trump said of the white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville that violence had taken place "on many sides." No, he didn't openly support the supremacists, but yes, he didn't really condemn them either. Recently, Trump called Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," actively belittling her and Native Americans simultaneously.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Blow speak on January 7th and his words continued to enlighten my understanding of white supremacy. Passive white supremacy, he said, is more deadly than open white supremacy because these feelings can increase exponentially when sparked. Those who turn a blind eye to hateful events are the ones who allow extremism to grow.

I was disappointed that in the end of Twain's novel, Huck knows his Southern society has the wrong views about slavery yet he decides to turn his own blind eye. Huck's choice to escape to the West and ignore these issues on the final page is symbolic of the actions many in our country take today.

Ayden Nichol, 17, Concord-Carlisle Regional High School: "The Merchant of Venice" and " Louisiana's Big Step on Justice Reform "

It can be a terrifying thing to see decades of the pent-up rage of an oppressed person finally let out against their oppressor. This is the case in William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice," when the Jewish moneylender Shylock brings his nemesis and lifelong tormentor, the Christian merchant Antonio, to court over an unpaid loan. The punishment, as agreed upon between the two men as a condition of the deal, is that Shylock may remove a pound of Antonio's flesh. But before Shylock exacts this cruel retribution, a friend of Antonio's makes a fascinating appeal in his favor. Portia claims that the true sign of strength is not the ability to take revenge, but to show mercy. Mercy, she says, "blesseth him that gives, and him that takes ... 'tis mightiest in the mightiest" (Shakespeare IV.i.183-84). In June of 2017, half a millennium after Shakespeare's fictional court case, the Louisiana state legislature seemed to realize the same thing as Portia when they passed a series of unexpected but widespread criminal justice reform laws which aim to dramatically reduce the prison population and lower recidivism rates. Both instances show that the ability to have mercy gives the person in power an unparalleled opportunity to do good, and ultimately, to benefit themselves.

At its surface, the Louisiana reform package could appear purely as an act of mercy: an attempt to help those who have fallen victim to the state's brutal justice system. On some level, this is all it is; surely there were legislators for whom this was their sole motivation. But whether intended or not, Louisiana stands to receive enormous gains from this package - it truly is "twice blest." As well as expanded parole and prison alternatives, which aim to help those convicted, the state expects to see an improvement in public safety and save over $180 million. The monetary benefits from this merciful outreach will help the state in ways that would never be thought of as connected to improving an inmate's life.

However, conservative politicians, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, fail to see this link. They maintain that the best way to keep law and order among their constituents is to wield their power like a sword, striking down any who violate that peace. But Portia reminds us that mercy is what makes a ruler truly powerful; she calls it "an attribute to God himself" (Shakespeare IV.i.190). Sessions and others must reject this easy show of power by way of force and cruelty in the justice system, choosing instead a path that will benefit disadvantaged citizens and show the people that they are worthy of the power we grant them. In this time of political distrust, the American people could use an indication that our politicians are capable of the "awe and majesty" that Portia speaks of (Shakespeare IV.i.186). I am certain that if they chose to show mercy, we would know beyond a doubt that they are worthy of leading us.

Isabella Picillo, 17, Oceanside High School: "The Scarlet Letter" and " Judge Partially Lifts Trump Administration Ban on Refugees "

I stumble upon a New York Times article, "Judge Partially Lifts Trump Administration Ban on Refugees," that makes me wonder if Hawthorne, the literary genius, is wrong.

The article explains a recent case in which a judge, James Robart, lifted a Trump administration ban after hearing a compelling argument that Muslim refugees struggle to reunite with family members who have already legally settled in the U.S. due to discriminatory policies of the U.S. refugee program. Governmental lawyers counter-argued that the ban was necessary because it was in interests of national security.

I sit at the breakfast table wondering if xenophobia was always that pronounced in the United States. It appears to me that xenophobia underlined the governmental lawyers' arguments; an attorney called the ban "reasonable and appropriate." I do not understand how a ban that targets certain groups, specifically Muslims, can be "reasonable." I ask my father, who grew up in an Italian immigrant household if he recalls facing immense oppression. He says no. I often hear people casually declaring that Muslims should not be allowed in the U.S. because they will bomb our cities. When did Muslim refugees become synonymous with terrorism? The answer: recently. How may you ask? The death of our shadows.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" explores the concept of the shadow-self. The character Pearl is praised because she possesses no shadow. Hawthorne suggested that our world would be a better place if we did not have shadows, meaning our dark parts would be exposed to society. We live in Hawthorne's world, and it is not one of sublime beauty, rather it is one of chaos and disgust.

With recent changes in administration, more people have become comfortable vocalizing xenophobic, along with homophobic, racist, and sexist, thoughts. It has become more common to witness politicians share their dark, most discriminatory, comments to gain support. Those thoughts are normalized, causing the death of our shadows.

Shadows barricade impertinent comments and prevent xenophobia from manifesting itself into discriminatory policies like the ban seen in the New York Times article. Although Judge James Robart partially lifted the ban, part of it still exists, along with other similar policies. He's combating xenophobia, while others do little to eradicate discriminatory policies. By doing nothing, a shadow-less world exists. Perhaps if we had shadows, a ban would not exist to prevent Muslim families from reuniting. A Muslim father can watch his daughter blow out the candles on her birthday cake, and a Muslim mother can applaud when her son receives his high school diploma. But they can't.

Hawthorne is wrong. His envisioned world has its perils. It allows xenophobia to persist, causing the unjust discrimination of certain groups like the Muslim refugees mentioned in the article "Judge Partially Lifts Trump Administration Ban on Refugees." We can live again in Hawthorne's imperfect world, where shadows exist, even finding it to be not so imperfect. A shadow can only exist with light; there is no light in a shadow-less world.

Sayali Shelke, 19, Texas A&M University: Stereotype threat and " Careers for Women in Technology Companies Are a Global Challenge "

In the New York Times article, "Careers for Women in Technology Companies Are A Global Challenge," writer Alina Tugend discusses the similarities and differences for women around the world working in the tech field. Tech companies in the United States suffer from a male-dominated, "bro" culture that gives a cold shoulder to female coworkers. In other places, such as the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, the problem lies with class differences, leading to the alienation of middle-class and poor women. The article sums that, while the execution of these issues vary around the world, the underlying effect is still the same: women have a much harder time entering and remaining in the tech field.

The lack of female representation in STEM is not new. While there are many factors that lead to this problem, the one with the deepest consequence is negative stereotypes planted at a young age.

In psychology, we learned about the idea of stereotype threat: a phenomenon in which people are reminded of negative stereotypes of a group they belong to and hence perform on given tasks conforming to those stereotypes. In 1997, researcher Steven Spencer applied this idea to classrooms and discovered that equally intelligent women performed worse on a math exam than their male counterparts after being told that the test showed gender differences. This characterization evoked the negative stereotype of women's lack of math skills and led them to under-perform on the exam. In contrast, he found that if, before the test, participants were led to believe that both parties performed equally, women's scores were similar to the men's. Additional research post Spencer's experiment has further supported this idea, proving that negative stereotypes in gender as well as race and ethnicity reduces the performance of individuals.

This institutionalized idea that women are not as capable of performing mathematical or technical tasks as well as men is deeply rooted in our culture, starting in elementary schools all the way to professional work settings. Learning about stereotype threat was eye-opening because it allowed me to see the deeper effects of the way we teach children about careers and how it differs in males and females. Dr. Spencer's experiment involved one math exam; however, the negative stereotypes about women's lack of technical skills are prevalent universally. The most corrosive part of this narrative is that men are lead to believe these same ideas, so in the future they are equally as unwelcoming of women, a disheartening reality reflected in our companies today.

It is vital that we start debasing these myths and start encouraging women from young ages to be open about any career. Most importantly, we need to teach both men and women such values, so that men can also live in a world where the idea of women being empowered to work in any field is a standard, a world in which creativity and innovation need no gender classification.

Runners-Up

Update, Feb. 27: Several readers have asked to learn more about the connections students made, so w e've added a short excerpt from the work of each runner-up.
Andrea B., 17, St. Ignatius College Prep: "Beowulf" and "'Wonder Woman' Could Be the Superhero Women in Hollywood Need"

Whether heroes take the form of a mighty Anglo-Saxon warrior or a fierce Amazonian princess, the people who rise up to lead us out of the shadows of death are cultivated by the trials they face and the hope for a brighter future that we project upon them which are often rooted in the injustices we experience.

Sofie Brutsaert, 15, Jamesville-DeWitt High School: The Stanford Prison Experiment and " ESPN Fires Donovan McNabb and Eric Davis After Lawsuit "

A lot can be learned from the prisoners in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Despite the fact that they were innocent, not actual prisoners deserving of punishment, as the simulation progressed they increasingly accepted their abuse without protest. Of course while there are many factors contributing to the silence of sexual assault victims (social pressure, and the fear of losing their jobs among them), it is also true that many of these factors stem from the victim's powerless role, which is similar to the silence of the prisoners in Zimbardo's experiment. While the issue of sexual misconduct is complex and it is impossible to pinpoint any one cause, the findings of the SPE shed a startling light on the effect power has on both the victims and perpetrators of such a widespread epidemic.

Sharanya Datta, 14, Biotechnology High School: "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller and " 'Fake News': Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests "

In the world we live in, fake news is becoming a threat to credibility. With the assistance of the Internet, no one can be completely sure what they are reading is accurate...During the Salem Witch trials in which The Crucible took place, news of witchcraft had spread like ivy. Accusations against Goody Proctor and Rebecca Nurse were the talk of the town not only in Salem, but also in neighboring towns. However, in the 1600's, people were not very educated and did not have much sense of the world; the majority of the townspeople of Salem and the neighboring towns believed everything they heard about witchcraft.

Ian Derushia, 15, Hoggard High School: Genghis Khan and " What Experts Know About Men Who Rape "

Over the course of recent weeks, my AP World class has been conducting a mock trial to try Genghis Khan for being an uncivilized tyrant... As I did more research, not only for the trial but for a more personal understanding, I came across a New York Times article titled "What Experts Know About Men Who Rape" which went on to describe a study that took place to understand the science and psychology behind men that raped...Much like Genghis Khan, these men wanted power, especially if their sexual offenses were violent or aggressive. I believe that Genghis Khan was on a power trip and violated these poor innocent women to demean their societies and to show that he had enough power to do so.

Kendall Dunn, 18, New Tech High @ Coppell: "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and " My Year of No Shopping "

In the day and age of wealth, where consumerism is ubiquitous, it's become acceptable to compulsively fill desires through material gains, such as new clothes or electronics. After all, if we have the capability to harmlessly buy whatever we desire, then what's wrong with instant satisfaction?The problem is that we constantly reward ourselves, which in turn causes us to feel less grateful for items we receive. Just like the inhabitants of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, we seek products to provide short bursts of satisfaction and often ignore more wholesome alternatives. Similar to the imaginary civilians in Brave New World, we are surrounded by consumables that are marketed for being quick: Amazon Prime, faster internet, minute-microwave rice, etc. Even subpar TV dinner can seem more attractive than a home cooked meal because of its immediate nature. However, better things come to those who wait.

Jackson Edwards, Wesley Gow, Jack Trent, Jaya Krishnan, 17, St. John's School: "Invisible Man" and " A Rebel, a Warrior and a Race Fiend "

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison's bildungsroman centered around an unnamed black protagonist (written to be symbolic of any black man), should not be relevant today. Ideally, Invisible Man should serve as a dated reminder of America's dark racial history; unfortunately, its underlying themes remain just as prevalent in today's world as they were when Ellison first released the novel 66 years ago. Charles M. Blow's Op-Ed "A Rebel, a Warrior and a Race Fiend" particularly highlights the similarities between the nameless protagonist's struggles and the deeply-embedded racism that still plagues modern America. Blow uses the racially-charged language of President Donald Trump towards black professional athletes to make a broader point about the "racial inequities fused to the DNA of power in this country." The similarities drawn between Ellison's work, written in an overtly racist America, and Blow's contemporary opinion piece convey a depressing message regarding the glacial rate of social progress.

Sera Eviner, 16, Oceanside High School: Newton's Laws and " The #MeToo Moment: No Longer Complicit "

Why is this [#MeToo] happening now? Why are all of these women all of a sudden sharing their stories? These questions seem to puzzle many, yet there is a simple answer: Newton's first two laws of motion can easily explain the growth of the #MeToo movement. Newton's first law states that an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force...While the initial force is debatable - whether it be President Trump's locker room talk, the growing women's rights movement, or simply women banding together against Harvey Weinstein - it is evident that a strong force had pushed this moment into action. The once silenced women now gained courage and support to speak up; this cause which was once at rest, is now in motion and will remain in motion.

Shane George, 15, New Milford High School: "Othello" by William Shakespeare and " Harvey Weinstein Expelled From Television Academy Over Abuse Claims "

The unequal power dynamic that can exist between the oftentime male offender and female victim in these situations has been a pattern that has existed for generations, going as far back as Shakespearean times. This discussion of male power exerted over women plays out in Othello as we watch high-ranking, socially-influential men manipulate this power dynamic in their favor. As we see the mistakes of Venetian society, we remember our own as well.

Jeong-In Ha, 16, Bergen County Academies: "Troilus and Cressida" by William Shakespeare and " Japan Balks at Calls for New Apology to South Korea Over 'Comfort Women '"

My junior year lit class focused on Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the explicit objectification of women present throughout the play. The romance between idealistic Troilus and rational Cressida abruptly ends when Cressida is sold off forcefully to the enemy troop. In the fourth act however, the Greek soldiers welcome Cressida to the camp by doting her with compliments and kisses. The soldiers refer to her as "my fair lady" and "sweet lady", neglecting the fact that they had ripped her out of her home and relationship against her will. This polite diction makes readers believe that Cressida is enjoying her time at the Greek camp, and we oversee the emotional torture she was forced to endure.

Similar to Shakespeare's play, the reference to the sex slaves as "comfort women" and "halmonies" impose a positive connotation on a subject that dare not be taken lightly, as we sometimes come to disregard the injustices these women endured.

Betsy Jenifer, 18, Women's Christian College: "Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe and " You'll Never Be Famous - And That's O.K. "

Considering that this play was written in the sixteenth century, during the Renaissance period, it is surprising and even baffling, that it is more relevant now than ever before. Today, everybody wants to be famous. Everyone wants to be noticed, loved and desired by everyone else. They want to raise eyebrows and swivel heads the moment they walk into a room and be important enough to make people stop chewing their food at the mention of their name.

In Christopher Marlowe's play, Faustus' unbridled ambitions tragically lead to his downfall. After twenty-four years of enjoying all worldly pleasures, Lucifer along with his armada of devils drag Faustus into Hell for eternity as he cries out gut-wrenchingly.

Victoria Li, 16, Livingston High School: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and " The Heartbeat of Racism Is Denial "

Sinking into pillows with a pair of fuzzy socks hugging my feet and the delicious aroma of cacao permeating the air, I lost myself in the world of "The Great Gatsby." Beyond the ball gowns and fancy cars, a sense of déjà vu washed over me, and it wasn't due to the fact that I spent most of winter break in a similar position: curled up in bed, sipping hot chocolate. The real explanation was much less pleasant, as I realized that the same issues F. Scott Fitzgerald was commenting on in 1925 still exist today. We live in a society suffering from a severe lack of authenticity. There is no substance beneath our shiny exterior of purported principles. Maybe some of our historical documents provide a gilded barrier between what we say we represent and what we actually are. The article "The Heartbeat of Racism is Denial" addresses this disparity between our stated beliefs and the reality of our condition.

Zoe Maisel, 17, South Forsyth High School: "The History Teacher" by Billy Collins and "'To Kill a Mockingbird' Removed From School in Mississippi "

This poem describes a teacher who largely downplays the brutal and gruesome truths within history and even changes some history in order to protect the children's innocence. He describes the Ice Age as "The Chilly Age" (3) and teaches that the "Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan" (12-13). This seems harmless and appears to keep the children happy and in a world of white picket fences, but the children in the poem are later on the playground "tormenting the weak and the smart" (15-16). The teacher's simplistic and inaccurate accounts of history is producing adverse effects on the children- information that is necessary for their educational growth and development has been kept from them, thus breeding ignorance, hatred, and violence.

This same phenomenon is happening in current times as books are being banned from schools. This is a robbery of information, as most books that are banned include great lessons for children about the world and themselves.

Emily Pinheiro, 16, Arlington High School: Foreign-language study in school and " Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He's the Only One. "

In Intuto, Peru, Amadeo García García is the last man to speak the language of Taushiro, a language dating back centuries from the jungles of the Amazon. He hasn't had anyone to speak the language with, and it is highly likely that the language and culture will die with him. The last person Amadeo has spoken with in his native language was his brother, Juan, who died, along with his parents and others in his village, due to diseases such as malaria. Now that he is the last one, there is pressure on Amadeo to retain his culture and language.

...Learning a foreign language and learning the culture of another country will always have tremendous benefit, in all aspects of life and careers. We should never force someone to be in the position Amadeo is now in; we should work to maintain cultural diversity in order to benefit society and future generations.

Izi Potter, 18, University of Oregon: "The Blank Page" by Karen Blixen and " My Worst Columns "

At the end of stories with important messages, there is a silence that speaks. Danish writer Karen Blixen's short story, The Blank Page, teaches this profound lesson. An old woman relays the advice her grandmother gave when teaching how to tell stories, "Where the storyteller is loyal...there, in the end, silence will speak." ...While in this tale the reluctance to represent every story comes from a place of shame, there are numerous reasons why some stories don't get told.

These days, with access to thousands of news stories at any given moment, people have a nearly endless choice of what narratives to follow. In Nicholas Kristof's article My Worst Columns he writes about his least "clicked on" pieces for the New York Times website. All of his "worst columns" feature stories of injustice or of situations needing humanitarian attention. These are stories with a silence that speaks, but not that many people have ever read them.

...When Americans avoid reading stories that place, as Kristof puts it, "...a spotlight on injustice or humanitarian need," they never get the silence that speaks, and choose instead brash, superficial noise. This is the narrative of 2017 America which focuses on the distracting, at-home crisis of Trump and disregards issues of worldly injustice.

Andrew Reilly, 18, South Forsyth High School: "Tulip Mania" in 17th century Holland and Bitcoin

Bitcoin's price has risen 2000% in 2017; the newfound attention associated with this rise has brought record traffic levels to many cryptocurrency exchanges, many of them buckling under the pressure of thousands of market orders during highly volatile periods of trading. This meteoric and unsustainable rise has drawn many comparisons to famous speculative bubbles throughout history, but the most commonly referenced is the Tulip Mania experienced in 17th century Holland.

...While the comparison between Tulip Mania and Bitcoin may seem reasonable at first, given the unprecedented rise in bitcoin price combined with the hyper-speculative nature of Bitcoin itself, what sets bitcoin apart from the Tulip Bubble is its utility and widespread distribution. Unlike a Tulip a Bitcoin can be fractionalized, making it accessible to common folk even as the price increases. It can also be traded throughout the globe near-instantaneously using the blockchain, an incorruptible cloud based ledger system that records transactions in real time, all while continuously analyzing itself for errors...The comparison between Bitcoin and Tulip Mania is overblown and irresponsible for the press to be touting as it is a poor comparison to the history behind Tulip Mania.

Julia Swicionis, 16, Saint Ignatius College Prep: "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare and " Mueller's Facts and Trump's Make-Believe "

A recent opinion editorial piece titled "Mueller's Facts and Trump's Make-Believe" discusses Donald Trump's contempt for the truth, especially in regards to maintaining his power, and how other political figures are influenced by his words and actions. This piece was written by Roger Cohen, published on December 5, 2017, and gives a general synopsis of the current state of Trump's presidency. However, it conveys the leader of the United States as a delusional, lying, and power driven similar to how Shakespeare conveyed Macbeth in his 17th century drama, Macbeth. The only difference between Cohen's portrayal of Trump and Shakespeare's portrayal of Macbeth is, Macbeth is a fictional character while Trump is actually the President of the United States.

Abby VanLonkhuyzen, 16, Yarmouth High School: The Chinese Exclusion Act and " Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries "

The motivations behind the Chinese Exclusion Act and President Trump's executive order are shockingly similar. Both were designed to limit the immigration of one particular ethnic group so those immigrants did not take jobs from the American population. But unlike the Chinese Exclusion Act, the president's executive order faced harsh criticism and was challenged in court on several occasions. It was repealed and replaced with another, less harsh version based on similar principles, which has again been challenged several times in court, eventually making its way up to the Supreme Court .Despite similarities between the two laws, the American people have learned a lot in the last 136 years. We've learned that immigration doesn't hurt the economy - it might even help it. We've learned that, true to American beliefs, the color of a person's skin or the religion they practice does not matter. In a time when increasing diversity and the equality of all people under the law is considered a good thing, Americans are unafraid to speak out for what they believe in and against what they don't.

Honorable Mentions

Anushka Agarwal, 16, Livingston High School: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and " Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News "

Troy Barlow, 16, Duxbury High School: "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens and "Teacher Arrested at School Board Meeting After Questioning Superintendent Contract "

Alexis Batista, Jonathan Ricaldy, Lleayem Nazario-Johnson, Oleg Kamen, 18, Classical High School: "1984" by George Orwell and " Iran Bans English in Primary Schools to Block 'Cultural Invasion' "

Robert Biehler, 17, Cosby High School: The Civil War and " F.C.C. Plans Net Neutrality Repeal in a Victory for Telecoms "

Margarita Bogdanova-Shapkina, 15, Oceanside High School: The Industrial Revolution and " Hard-Liners and Reformers Tapped Iranians' Ire. Now, Both Are Protest Targets "

Bronwyn, Jack, Landon, 16, Greenwood College School: "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and " To Make Prisons 'Safer,' Some Are Banning ... Books "

Elizabeth Buerkle, 14, Oceanside High School: Orchestra class arrangements for modern music and " A Symphony Breathes Life Into 400 Broken School Instruments "

Avery Crumlish and Isabel Benson, 14, St. Michael's Episcopal School: The geology concept of the rock cycle and " The Best Era for Working Women Was 20 Years Ago "

Nathan Davidov, 17, New Milford High School: "Othello" by William Shakespeare and " 10 Ways to Love Better "

Diego Diaz, 17, Sandra Day O'Connor High School: "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli and " When Elites Get a Taste of Their Own Medicine "

Sawyer Doeg, 13, Asheville Catholic: The Indian Removal Act and " Trump Slashes Size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments "

Odin Doolittle, 16, Concord Carlisle High School: "The Wretched of the Earth" by Franz Fannon and " Rohingya Militants in Myanmar Claim Responsibility for Attack "

Nathanie Doralus, 16, Wekiva High School: "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare and " The Warp-Speed Presidency "

Jeric Duro, 17, New Milford High School: "Othello" by William Shakespeare and " Air Force General Addresses Racial Slurs on Campus: 'You Should Be Outraged' "

Isabella Eckler, 16, Concord Carlisle Regional High School: "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe and " Iran Bans English in Primary Schools to Block 'Cultural Invasion' "

Britney Ellman, 16, Arlington High School: Women's rights movements in the Antebellum period and " How a Fractious Women's Movement Came to Lead the Left "

Stacy Fernandes, 18, Eunoia Junior College: "Woman in Mind" by Alan Ayckbourn and " When 'Not Guilty' Is a Life Sentence "

Katrina Fisher, 18, New Tech High at Coppell: "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and " In Breakthrough, Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation From Genes in Human Embryos "

Shane George, 17, New Milford High School: "Othello" by William Shakespeare and " Harvey Weinstein Expelled From Television Academy Over Abuse Claims "

Jenny Huang, 16, North Carolina School of Science and Math: "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and " The Reckoning: Women and Power in the Workplace "

Marcel Johnican, 17, CICS Ralph Ellison: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston and this photograph

Morgan Lafont, 16, Garden City High School: "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley and " How Evil Is Tech? "

Laura Liao, 14, West Windsor Plainsboro High School North: "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë and " At the Golden Globes, Stars and Their Activist Guests Talk About Why They Fight "

Sarah Lyons, 16, Concord Carlisle High School: "The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and " Seeing Danger in a Face "

Emme Magliato, 16, Arlington High School: Injustice to Native Americans and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and " Trump Is Vandalizing Our Wild Heritage "

Vidhisha Mahesh, 16, Folsom High School: "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare and " How the Myth of the Artistic Genius Excuses the Abuse of Women "

Colin Mangan, 16, Oceanside High School: Election and presidency of Andrew Jackson and " The Glory of Democracy "

Caitlin McCarthy, 17, Concord Carlisle Regional High School: "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe and " The World Celebrates New Year's Eve "

Sofia Olivares, 15: Climate change and " No One Is Coming to Save Us From Trump's Racism "

Sarina Patel, 14, C. Leon King High School: The French Revolution and " Open Letter From Time's Up "

Katie Remaklus, 16, The Seven Hills School: "Beowulf" and " Trump's Twitter Threats Put American Credibility on the Line "

Olivia Rockrohr, 17, Arlington High School: The California gold rush and " Google's War Over the Sexes "

Dylan Rosenthal, 16, North Broward Preparatory School: "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare and " With Manicures and Makeup, Japan's 'Genderless' Blur Line Between Pink and Blue "

Santhosh Saravanan, 17, South Forsyth High School: "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri and " Finding Myself Through My College Major "

Ardi Saunders, 17, New Tech High School @ Coppell: "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and " Free Speech, Personified "

Caitlin Terpstra, 16, Concord Carlisle High School: South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and " After the Pain, a Chance to Meet and Forgive "

Sophie Tully, 16, Cosby High School: The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and " Amber Tamblyn: Redefining the Red Carpet "

Crystella Wagner, 16, Sandra Day O'Connor High School: "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli and " Stalin, Hitler and the Temptations of Totalitarianism "

Anne-Kinsey Wash and Claire McCann, 13, St. Michael's Episcopal School: The 1885-1908 rubber craze in Congo and " Apple Report Expects New iPhones to Jump-Start Growth "

Emma Wigington, 17, South Forsyth High School: "Southern Cop" by Sterling Brown and " When Will Black Lives Matter in St. Louis? "

Sydney Yan, 15, Biotechnology High School: The Chandrasekhar Limit (the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star) and " American Dreamers "

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Related Lessons and Webinars
Thank you, as always, to the teachers and students who took the time to participate. Teachers, if you're interested, please let us know how you used the challenge in your class by writing to LNFeedback@nytimes.com Thank you also to our judges, who included Learning Network staff Shannon Doyne, Caroline Gilpin, Michael Gonchar and Natalie Proulx, as well as teacher-contributors to our site, Amanda Christy Brown and Annissa Hambouz.

* The lesson plan that accompanied this challenge: Making It Relevant: Helping Students Connect Their Studies to the World Today

* Our Text to Text series, in which The Learning Network matches often-taught literary, historical and scientific texts with Times articles past and present.

* O ur on-demand webinar, "Ripped From the Headlines and Applied to the Classics: Pairing Often-Taught Literary and History Texts With Times Articles and Multimedia," which explores more ideas for helping students make connections like these.

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Making Connections: 50 Teenagers Suggest Creative Ways to Link Classic Texts to the World Today

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Winners Zoe Georgulas, 17, New Tech High @ Coppell: "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and " Thought Control, Trump-Style " Is it really possible to control how people think? Today we are inundated with media from the moment we wake up: images, text messages, news stories. In school, students read articles, novels, and textbooks.

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'The Prince' and 'Why Machiavelli Still Matters Today'

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'The Prince' and 'Why Machiavelli Still Matters Today'

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The political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" as a manual on leadership and governing during the late Italian Renaissance, a time of feuding family dynasties and warring city-states. But even though 500 years have passed, and the world is a very different place, "The Prince" somehow feels as relevant as ever in modern culture and politics.

In this Text to Text, we pair Machiavelli's "The Prince" with the Times Opinion article "Why Machiavelli Still Matters" by John T. Scott and Robert Zaretsky.

Background: Machiavelli is typically maligned as being the author of a playbook for autocrats and tyrants who use evil means to hold onto power. He is often remembered as the political philosopher who counseled that it was better to be feared than loved and that ends justify means - in fact, these notions are the basis for the less-than-flattering term "Machiavellian." But Machiavelli's how-to manual is more complex than these oversimplifications can capture.

Machiavelli does not embrace meanness and violence for their own sake; he uses examples from history to make his case that sometimes these devices are necessary for the good of the republic. Machiavelli counsels that a ruler must act on "the real truth of the matter" rather than "the imagination of it," because in reality people do not always do what is right and virtuous. He argues that "a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil." Machiavelli's views can be seen as cynical, callous and tyrannical. Or they can be judged to be pragmatic and sound advice for an effective democratic and just leader.

John T. Scott and Robert Zaretsky argue that contemporary Americans, perhaps more than anyone else, could learn a lesson or two from Machiavelli. "Like the political moralizers Machiavelli aims to subvert, we still believe a leader should be virtuous: generous and merciful, honest and faithful," they write. "Yet Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good."

Below, we selected passages from four chapters in Machiavelli's "The Prince" that relate most to Mr. Scott's and Mr. Zaretsky's Opinion piece. You can find the entire book online at Project Gutenberg. In Excerpt 2, we republish the second half of "Why Machiavelli Still Matters." Read both, and then decide for yourself what Machiavelli is really saying, and why you think "The Prince" is relevant today.

Key Question: Why does Machiavelli still matter?

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:
Excerpt 1: From "The Prince," by Niccolò Machiavelli

Concerning Things for Which Men, and Especially Princes, Are Praised or Blamed
It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.

Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible, from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity....

Concerning Liberality and Meanness
Commencing then with the first of the above-named characteristics, I say that it would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless, liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it, injures you; for if one exercises it honestly and as it should be exercised, it may not become known, and you will not avoid the reproach of its opposite. Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is affected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the first danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.

Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few....

Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Than Feared
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women....

Concerning the Way in Which Princes Should Keep Faith
Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,(*) the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them....

Excerpt 2: From "Why Machiavelli Still Matters," by John T. Scott and Robert Zaretsky

..."The Prince" is a manual for those who wish to win and keep power. The Renaissance was awash in such how-to guides, but Machiavelli's was different. To be sure, he counsels a prince on how to act toward his enemies, using force and fraud in war. But his true novelty resides in how we should think about our friends. It is at the book's heart, in the chapter devoted to this issue, that Machiavelli proclaims his originality.

Set aside what you would like to imagine about politics, Machiavelli writes, and instead go straight to the truth of how things really work, or what he calls the "effectual truth." You will see that allies in politics, whether at home or abroad, are not friends.

Perhaps others had been deluded about the distinction because the same word in Italian - "amici" - is used for both concepts. Whoever imagines allies are friends, Machiavelli warns, ensures his ruin rather than his preservation.
There may be no students more in need of this insight, yet less likely to accept it, than contemporary Americans, both in and outside the government. Like the political moralizers Machiavelli aims to subvert, we still believe a leader should be virtuous: generous and merciful, honest and faithful.

Yet Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.

For such a leader, allies are friends when it is in their interest to be. (We can, with difficulty, accept this lesson when embodied by a Charles de Gaulle; we have even greater difficulty when it is taught by, say, Hamid Karzai.) What's more, Machiavelli says, leaders must at times inspire fear not only in their foes but even in their allies - and even in their own ministers.

What would Machiavelli have thought when President Obama apologized for the fiasco of his health care rollout? Far from earning respect, he would say, all he received was contempt. As one of Machiavelli's favorite exemplars, Cesare Borgia, grasped, heads must sometimes roll. (Though in Borgia's case, he meant it quite literally, though he preferred slicing bodies in half and leaving them in a public square.)

Machiavelli has long been called a teacher of evil. But the author of "The Prince" never urged evil for evil's sake. The proper aim of a leader is to maintain his state (and, not incidentally, his job). Politics is an arena where following virtue often leads to the ruin of a state, whereas pursuing what appears to be vice results in security and well-being. In short, there are never easy choices, and prudence consists of knowing how to recognize the qualities of the hard decisions you face and choosing the less bad as what is the most good.

Those of us who see the world, if not in Manichaean, at least in Hollywoodian terms, will recoil at such claims. Perhaps we are right to do so, but we would be wrong to dismiss them out of hand. If Machiavelli's teaching concerning friends and allies in politics is deeply disconcerting, it is because it goes to the bone of our religious convictions and moral conventions. This explains why he remains as reviled, but also as revered, today as he was in his own age.
Read entire article "

For Writing or Discussion

1. What advice does Machiavelli offer to a prince? Give at least four examples.

2. How does Machiavelli justify why a prince should not always act based on ideals of virtue?

3. What pieces of Machiavelli's advice do you agree with? What ones do you disagree with? Why?

4. Why do John T. Scott and Robert Zaretsky argue that Machiavelli is still relevant?

5. According to them, why does Machiavelli remain "as reviled, but also as revered, today as he was in his own age?"

Going Further
1. Reappraising Machiavelli: Is Machiavelli maligned undeservedly? Should the term "Machiavellian" be redefined? The political philosopher is often remembered as the author of "ends justify the means" and "it is better to be feared than loved," but these catchy sayings are oversimplifications of the lessons Machiavelli was trying to impart.

Read the above excerpts from "The Prince," or read the entire book, and attempt to boil down Machiavelli's political philosophy as concisely as possible without oversimplifying it or twisting his meaning.

You may want to watch the above interview with the writer Salman Rushdie, who argues that Machiavelli does not deserve the bad reputation he has been assigned.

2. Machiavellian Pen-Pal Activity: What current or historical leaders seem to follow the Machiavellian playbook? What leaders could use some advice from Machiavelli? In the Wall Street Journal Opinion article "Dear Vladimir: Congratulations. You Read My Book," Josef Joffe introduces his satirical piece with: "Niccolò Machiavelli, the father of realpolitik, has sent a message from beyond the grave to Russian President Vladimir Putin following his grab of Crimea. Through divine inspiration and the services of an elite medium, your correspondent has obtained the document, reprinted below." He follows with Machiavelli's "letter" to President Putin. Here is an excerpt:

Yet you, Mr. President, have been both ruthless and prudent - just what I prescribed in "The Prince." You Russians have distilled my wisdom into a pithy phrase: Kto kovo - who dominates whom? And you have beautifully executed my central idea. I never preached violence to the max, but the "economy of force" - how to get more with less. The Crimean caper was a masterpiece of smart power politics.

Do you agree with Mr. Joffe's analysis comparing President Putin's playbook in Crimea with Machiavelli's advice in "The Prince"? Do you agree with the cautionary words at the end of the letter, that "a nation's true greatness comes from responsibility?" Is this in line with what Machiavelli believed about governing?

Ten days before Mr. Joffe wrote his article, David Brooks wrote a different satire in The Times: "Fake Putin Diary!" The two pieces together almost work like a pen-pal exchange. Mr. Brooks writes:

Machiavelli was right. Fortune is a woman; only the audacious win her love. That's why my technique has always been to create facts on the ground. Act first, while everyone else dithers. Force them to react to my reality. That's why I alone am Mr. Big on the world stage. Heroes drive history, and I will not be ignored!

The naïve Westerners (forgive the redundancy) think Ukraine is about democratic ideals, or whether the country will turn West or East. Please. There is no room for ideals in my worldview. People are motivated by money and fear.

What connection does Mr. Brooks see between President Putin and Machiavelli?

After reading both articles, write your own letter exchange between Machiavelli and a world leader, either current or historical. You can do this activity with a partner or on your own. You may want to choose a leader who could be considered "Machiavellian," or someone who you think could learn something from Machiavelli. Include evidence from current events or history to support what you have to say and to connect to Machiavelli's writing.

3. Debating Machiavelli: Machiavelli's political philosophy may be oversimplified in today's culture, but there is no denying that he is a pragmatist who advocates doing what's necessary over doing what's right. Read the excerpts above, or the entire book, and debate the ideas that Machiavelli lays out in "The Prince." When do you agree with his arguments? When do you disagree?

You can hold this intellectual conversation as a class Socratic seminar or debate, or as a written dialogue or letter exchange between you and Machiavelli.

4. Machiavelli in Popular Culture: How does Machiavelli appear in music, movies and art? Choose a way that he has been appropriated or depicted, and write a commentary about whether this use of Machiavelli does justice to the political philosopher's writings. Below are some Machiavelli references in popular culture:

Tupac Shakur adopted the stage name of Makaveli and used the moniker in some of his lyrics.

Tony Soprano from "The Sopranos" and Lord Varys and Lord Baelish from "Game of Thrones," among other characters in television, film and literature, have referred to Machiavelli or have been described as Machiavellian.

Assassin's Creed, the popular video game, features Machiavelli as a leader of a secret order of Assassins.

Or just do a news search of how Machiavelli is being applied in today's news.

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Text to Text | 'The Prince' and 'Why Machiavelli Still Matters'

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The political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" as a manual on leadership and governing during the late Italian Renaissance, a time of feuding family dynasties and warring city-states. But even though 500 years have passed, and the world is a very different place, "The Prince" somehow feels as relevant as ever in modern culture and politics.

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Plato's Allegory of the Cave and 'In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction'

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Plato's Allegory of the Cave and 'In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction'

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Philosophy - the study of knowledge and truth - can change lives. Just ask Peg O'Connor, a college professor who writes about how philosophy gave her the tools and concepts to battle alcoholism.

In this Text to Text lesson, we pair her essay "In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction" with Plato's well-known allegory of the cave from "The Republic." Further down, we offer additional teaching ideas for exploring Plato's allegory in more detail.

Background: In Book VII of "The Republic," Plato paints a picture of ordinary people imprisoned in a shadow-world cave, unaware of the true reality hidden from them. When a prisoner is released from the cave, he initially suffers from the sun's blinding brightness, yet as his eyes adjust he begins to see the truth. If he were to return underground to enlighten his former fellow prisoners, they would not believe him, for they couldn't even imagine a world beyond the shadows dominating their existence.

Plato's allegory is a powerful metaphor for contemplating a divide between ignorance and enlightenment - between the "visible" world and the "intelligible" realm - and writers have applied it to all sorts of subjects. Ms. O'Connor, a professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, uses Plato's allegory to better understand and explain the crisis of the addicted individual. In her essay, which appeared in The Times in January 2012, she writes:

I introduce the notion of addiction as a subject of philosophical inquiry here for a reason. I am a philosopher, yes, but I am also an alcoholic who has been sober for more than 24 years ― only the last four of them as part of a recovery program. I am often asked how I got and stayed sober for those first 19 years; it was because of philosophy, which engendered in me a commitment to living an examined life, and gave me the tools and concepts to do so. My training in moral philosophy made it natural for me to wrestle with issues of character, responsibility, freedom, care and compassion in both work and life.

Below, we offer excerpts from both texts along with links to the original sources - plus discussion and writing questions. Then, in the Going Further section, we suggest additional teaching ideas, such as asking students to illustrate the allegory of the cave through film or images.

Key Question: How can Plato's allegory of the cave offer the potential for better understanding real-life issues?

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:
Excerpt 1: From Book VII of "The Republic," by Plato

[Socrates is speaking with Glaucon.]

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:-Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

I see.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.

And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.

And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

No question, he replied.

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

That is certain.

The allegory continues until these lines:

This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed - whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

Read entire allegory " Excerpt 2: From "In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction" by Peg O'Connor, 2012

... This allegory is richly wonderful for understanding addiction, relapse and recovery. Most people who become addicted become enchained to their drug of choice. The word "addiction" comes from the Latin verb "addicere," which means to give over, dedicate or surrender. In the case of many alcoholics, for instance, including my own, this is just what happens. What had perhaps started as fun and harmless use begins to grow troubling, painful and difficult to stop. The alcoholic becomes chained to alcohol in a way different from others who "drink normally."

In various scenarios of addiction, the addicted person's fixation on a shadow reality - one that does not conform to the world outside his or her use - is apparent to others. When the personal cost of drinking or drug use becomes noticeable, it can still be written off or excused as merely atypical. Addicts tend to orient their activities around their addictive behavior; they may forgo friends and activities where drinking or drug use is not featured. Some may isolate themselves; others may change their circle of friends in order to be with people who drink or use in the same way they do. They engage in faulty yet persuasive alcoholic reasoning, willing to take anything as evidence that they do not have a problem; no amount of reasoning will persuade them otherwise. Each time the addict makes a promise to cut down or stop but does not, the chains get more constricting.

Yet for many reasons, some people begin to wriggle against the chains of addiction. Whether it is because they have experiences that scare them to death (not uncommon) or lose something that really matters (also not uncommon), some people begin to work themselves out of the chains. People whose descent into addiction came later in life have more memories of what life can be like sober. Some will be able to turn and see the fire and the half wall and recognize the puppets causing the shadows. Those whose use started so young that it is all they really know will often experience the fear and confusion that Plato described. But as sometimes happens in recovery, they can start to come out of the cave, too.

The brightness of the light can be painful, as many alcoholic or drug dependent people realize once their use stops. Those who drank or used drugs to numb feelings or avoid painful memories may feel defenseless. This is why they will retreat back to the familiar darkness of the cave. Back with their drinking friends, they will find comfort. This is one way to understand relapse.

Others will make it farther out of the cave and have their eyes adjust. They will struggle to stay sober and balanced. So many of their old coping behaviors will not work, and they are faced with a seemingly endless task of learning how to rebuild their emotional lives. Some will stay clean and sober for a good while and later relapse. People relapse for all sorts of reasons, and often these have to do with old patterned ways of thinking and behaving that make a roaring comeback. When people who have had some sobriety relapse and go back to the darkness of the cave, they may be met with derision ― an "I told you so" attitude.

Those who do make it out of the cave and manage never to relapse again are few and far between. They know just how precarious their sobriety is and what they need to do to maintain it. People with long-term sobriety are often the ones who need to go back down into the cave, not as saviors, but for their own survival. People with years of sobriety often say that newcomers help them to stay sober because their pain, loss and confusion are so fresh. Their stories remind old timers of enchained life in the cave. Old timers can share their stories too and in the process show them different ways to be in the world. ...

Read entire essay " For Writing or Discussion

1. How do the prisoners trapped in Plato's cave perceive reality?

2. What happens when a prisoner is released from the cave?

3. What would happen if a former prisoner returned to the cave after experiencing enlightenment?

4. How did Plato's allegory of the cave help Ms. O'Connor understand and explain her alcoholism?

5. How can the various stages of addiction and sobriety correspond to symbols in Plato's allegory, according to the essay?

6. What else in our modern world can Plato's allegory help us better understand?

Going Further
1. Apply the Allegory to Real-Life Issues: Ms. O'Connor is not the only philosopher and writer who has used Plato's allegory to better understand and explain complex topics in our modern world. In The Times, writers have used the allegory of the cave to symbolize the modern surveillance state and the oppression of poverty. Think of a topic where people might mistake a shadow world for true reality, and then write an essay detailing how the symbolism in Plato's allegory can help readers gain a deeper insight.

2. Illustrate the Allegory: After reading Plato's allegory, students can create a visual representation of the text as a way to both deepen and demonstrate their understanding. Before starting they can watch different interpretations on the Web, such as this animated film narrated by Orson Welles, this clay-animation movie or this humorous student production. Or, they can look at illustrated depictions of Plato's allegory, such as this comic. Then they can create their own short film, storyboard or comic depicting Plato's allegory.

3. Look for Cultural Influences: George Orwell's "1984" and the dystopian thriller "The Matrix" both model a shadow world where perceived reality differs from the truth. Other modern works, such as Emma Donoghue's novel "Room" or Mumford and Sons' hit single "The Cave," also contain parallels to Plato's allegory. Have students make connections between "The Republic" and these modern interpretations of a shadow reality. Or, encourage them to look for other ways that Plato's allegory has been influential in literature and art.

4. Explore More Philosophy: Ms. O'Connor's essay about addiction appeared in The Stone, a forum in The Times that features writing about philosophy. Teachers and students alike can uncover other philosophical discussions that relate to contemporary issues or age-old topics, such as religion, Ferguson, Mo., and the war on terror.

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Text to Text: Plato's Allegory of the Cave and 'In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction'

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Philosophy - the study of knowledge and truth - can change lives. Just ask Peg O'Connor, a college professor who writes about how philosophy gave her the tools and concepts to battle alcoholism. In this Text to Text lesson, we pair her essay "In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction" with Plato's well-known allegory of the cave from "The Republic."

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'Antigone' and Noche Flamenca's 'Antigona'

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'Antigone' and Noche Flamenca's 'Antigona'

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How far would you go to follow your moral beliefs if they conflicted with the laws of the state?

Sophocles' Greek tragedy "Antigone," which has been called " the most powerful political play ever written," has posed this question in performances around the world for over 2,000 years, and continues to be just as relevant today as when it was written in 441 B.C.

Though we offer options for considering the play through adaptations from many other times and places, in this Text to Text we focus primarily on pairing Sophocles' work with the work of a contemporary Spanish flamenco dance company. "Antigona" reanimates the play in all its roiling passion, despair and sacrifice - through flamenco as well as through the street-dance style of krumping.

As the Times reviewer wrote in December:

Accustomed to expressing high passion and fatalistic ideas through music and movement, flamenco companies are better equipped than most theatrical troupes to take on Greek tragedy. [In this performance] the forms combine so naturally that you might wonder why they aren't married more often.

How do you teach "Antigone"? How do you make it relevant to your students? Let us know.

Background
Antigone is a universal hero for all times. Pitted against the paternalistic society of Ancient Greece, she is unwavering in her commitment to her own principles, and determined to bury her brother despite her uncle, King Creon's, decree that any who do so will be put to death.

The play comes alive through the intense passion and emotion of Noche Flamenca dance, which combines traditional flamenco with krumping, a form of street dance integrated by the artistic director Martín Santangelo.

With Mr. Santangelo's wife, Soledad Barrio, in the title role, "Antigona" was inspired by the oppression felt in Spain under Francisco Franco, whose regime authorized the executions and mass burials of thousands, robbing families of providing proper burials for their loved ones.

"Antigona" is a mix of dance and theater, and has been reviewed in The Times under both categories. Below, some ideas for teaching and learning about the play and this adaptation, as well as art criticism and the creative process.
Key Questions: When is it right for an individual's principles and conscience to supersede the laws of man, or of the state?
Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:
Text 1: Excerpt from "Antigone," translated by George Theodoridis

Creon: To Antigone

You! You with the head to the ground! Do you admit your guilt?

Antigone:

I admit, my guilt. Yes, I did it!

Creon: To the guard

You! You can go now! Go anywhere you like. You are free from every suspicion

To Antigone:

You again! Tell me with a few, quick words. Were you aware of the proclamation that forbade anyone from burying Polyneices?

Antigone:

Of course I did. Everyone did.

Creon:

And you had the audacity to break that law?

Antigone:

Yes, because this was not a law decreed by Zeus, nor by Zeus' daughter, Justice, who rules with the gods of the Underworld. Nor do I believe that your decrees have the power to override those unwritten and immutable laws decreed by the gods.

These are laws which were decreed neither yesterday nor today but from a time when no man saw their birth; they are eternal! How could I be afraid to disobey laws decreed by any man when I know that I'd have to answer to the gods below if I had disobeyed the laws written by the gods, after I died?

I knew that my death was imminent, of course I did and even if it came sooner, I would still think it a good thing because when one lives in such a dreadful misery why should he not think death to be a good thing?

There is no pain in this death but the sight of the body of my mother's son, dead and unburied would be a painful thing for me for me to endure.

Nothing else hurts me and if you think I'm a mindless woman then perhaps it's a mindless man who recognizes a mindless woman.

Text 2: Videos from performances of "Antigona" Text 3: Excerpt from the Times review, " 'Antigona' Is Noche Flamenca's Teeming Take on the Greek Tragedy"

Accustomed to expressing high passion and fatalistic ideas through music and movement, flamenco companies are better equipped than most theatrical troupes to take on Greek tragedy. In "Antigona," an adaptation of Sophocles' "Antigone" by Noche Flamenca, the forms combine so naturally that you might wonder why they aren't married more often.

At West Park Presbyterian Church, where the 90-minute production has returned after a four-week run last summer, an 18-person ensemble of musicians and dancers serves as a vibrant, teeming chorus. Add some simple props - masks, fabric - and all the requisite elements are in place.

For much of its first half, though, the production undercuts itself with cartoonishness: Antigone's sister talks like a Valley Girl; Antigone's brothers feebly face off with krumping and pelvis-thrusting flamenco; musicians play kazoos. Aiming for a fourth-wall-dissolving informality, the direction of Martín Santangelo exposes amateurishness and awkwardness instead.

Fortunately, the show finds its bearings, focusing on the searing performance of its star, Soledad Barrio, in the title role. Relying on her is the fail-safe method of all Noche Flamenca productions, although this one counts as a breakthrough in terms of group choreography. Merely decorative in previous shows, the dancers framing Ms. Barrio here subtly mirror and amplify her emotions with cutting shapes and percussive exclamations. In this Greek mode, the group has discovered a better way of handling its greatest asset and liability: the overpowering force of Ms. Barrio.

She is as extraordinary as ever, her tragic intensity perfectly matched to the part. Sentenced to death for disobeying the king's order not to bury one of her brothers, she takes off her shoes to step into the river of Acheron. A barefoot Ms. Barrio is a newly vulnerable one. Exiled in a cave, she dances a long solo of anguish, an aria of lament that leads inexorably to her suicide, exerting a gravitational pull that makes the terrible, sudden pileup of suicides in its wake seem inevitable. That's how Greek tragedy is supposed to work.

For Writing and Discussion
1. What is your reaction to the dance performances in these videos? What do they capture about the play, the characters and the themes, and how?

2. Is Antigone a tragic hero, in the traditional literary sense? Is Creon, King of Thebes? Is either character simply rash, hasty and impetuous rather than principled and upright? How does Sophocles use Antigone's sister Ismene as a counterpoint to Antigone in the play? How does he juxtapose Creon and his son, Haemon, Antigone's fiancé?

3. How does the dance version of the play portray Creon? Are Antigone's decisions validated in light of Creon's regret and his change of mind?

4. To what extent do individuals bear responsibility for breaking a law they feel is unjust? In what circumstances, if any, might this be forgiven?

5. In what ways does a reinterpretation of an ancient text through more modern forms of media, dance and performance change the work? Does it make it more relevant? Is a full analysis of the original text easier when paired with another form of art like dance?

6. How does this play resonate today? What local, national or international events echo some of the themes or ideas in it? How?
Going Further Greek Tragedy Today
What makes Greek tragedy effective? Why is "Antigone," in particular, still so meaningful and accessible 2,500 years after it was written? How does setting heighten the themes and ideas?

Watch the video above to see members of the National Theater talk about the choices they made for this 2012 production - one the Times reviewer wrote "stir[s] emotions that run very deep, indeed." How might the setting of an underground nuclear bunker affect your understanding of the themes?

What other settings in the world right now might be especially appropriate for a production of "Antigone"? Why?

To think further about that, consider the 2013 essay " Antigone in Damascus," in which Ronald Sokol uses literature - including Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and Camus' "The Fall," as well as "Antigone" - to think through the legal justification for intervening in Syria.

He writes that Antigone "utters words that might profitably be studied by legal advisers to nations that embrace the rule of law." Yet the essay ends with this paragraph:

In the case of Syria there exists moral agreement that the use of chemical weapons was an atrocity, and perhaps even that Syria committed it, but no consensus will be reached about who should be the 21st century Antigone who must go to Damascus, or what rites need be performed once she gets there.

What has happened in Syria since 2013? Has there been a "21st century Antigone" to protest?
"The Most Powerful Political Play Ever Written": Adaptations of "Antigone" Across the World
Here are three of the best-known modern adaptations of "Antigone." Students might consider why and how the themes of the play resonated in these times and places as they continue to think about how "Antigone" speaks to our world today:
Jean Anouilh's "Antigone"

Jean Anouilh's "Antigone" is a tragedy inspired by Sophocles' play and first performed in Paris in 1944 under the Nazi Occupation.

Anouilh softened the play to pass Nazi censorship rules, but the parallel to French Resistance under Nazi tyrannical control was clear, and was inspirational to French citizens during World War II.

In 2002, The Times reviewed a version of the play in " A Timeless Rebel Afire With a Doomed Cause ":

Antigone's defiance of Creon has exerted a particular hold on audiences in times of oppression. (Jean Anouilh's version was written during World War II as an allegory of the Vichy government.) And you can see why - more than the usual tragic heroes - Antigone appeals to students who are forced to dip into classical literature. She is a radiant rebel with a cause, standing up to the establishment with both thin-skinned sensitivity and an obdurate sense of right.

Athol Fugard's "The Island"
"The Island" is a 1973 play about the the effort to stage "Antigone" as a protest by two men in the South African prison where Nelson Mandela and other political dissidents were held during apartheid. In 'Antigone' as a Protest Tactic, The Times wrote about a 2003 production by the white South African dramatist Athol Fugard:

According to Mr. Fugard, performing "Antigone" in South Africa was just as dangerous as performing "The Island." " 'Antigone' is the most powerful political play ever written," Mr. Fugard said by telephone from what he calls his "home away from home" in San Diego. "It is the first play that raised the issue of standing up and being counted in a situation that involved oppression and injustice. The entire time we were working on it, the government was harassing us, barging into rehearsals and confiscating manuscripts. Several members of the group were arrested and sent to Robben Island on trumped-up charges."

Seamus Heaney's "The Burial at Thebes"
This play was first written as a response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2004, Garry Wills reviewed the work:

Most later critics find it hard to think of Antigone and Creon as equally right and equally wrong. The seer Teiresias demonstrates that the gods are angry at the denial of burial for Polyneices, apparently tipping the scale toward Antigone. But she and Creon are still thought of as emblems of opposite principles - of freedom versus tyranny, perhaps, or individuality versus mass pressure, or conscience versus coercion, or religion versus irreligion or just plain right versus wrong. Seamus Heaney, in this new translation of "Antigone," makes it clear that he thinks in such stark polarities. He tells us in a note to "The Burial at Thebes" that "the situation that pertains in Sophocles' play was being re-enacted in our own world" as he was writing. "Just as Creon forced the citizens of Thebes into an either/or situation in relation to Antigone, the Bush administration in the White House was using the same tactic to forward its argument for war on Iraq." The result is a black-and-white picture, with Antigone all purity and Creon sheer taint. There are good reasons for opposing the invasion of Iraq, but none that Sophocles can provide.

Though the reviewer writes that "those who take a black-and-white approach to these characters turn tragedy into propaganda," he also says that "Though Heaney lets ideology interfere with tragedy, he has nonetheless composed a poem full of brilliant strokes."

You can find a study guide to this play here, via the UMass Amherst Department of Theater.
More Interpretations
If you search "Antigone" in The Times, you can find articles and reviews of productions from as early as the 1890s, as well as videos like the one above of Juliette Binoche in the title role at BAM.

Below, news of just a few contemporary productions. As the actress Lydia Koniordou says in this 2002 article:

"People want to hear 'Antigone' again and again," said Lydia Koniordou, the much-admired actress who is playing the title role. Speaking backstage after the end of a swift 90 minutes that is performed without an intermission, Ms. Koniordou expanded on that thought.

"The audience knows what the play is about," she said, "but they're not just here for the story. They're here for the poetry that comes out and for the depth of the thought as regards ideas and problems and dilemmas that are part of our civilization today." ...

The narrative, Ms. Koniordou said backstage in Aigaleo, is "so simple that even a child can follow it": a sister (Antigone) tries desperately to bury her outlawed brother (Polynices) and, in so doing, becomes an enemy of the state, embodied by Creon.

But in an interview that was punctuated by steady knocking on her dressing room door as people came backstage to offer congratulations, Ms. Koniordou spoke about the layers of meaning beneath the apparently straightforward moral conflict. For one thing, the actress said, it was a mistake to sanctify Antigone as simply a youthful martyr confronted with an evil she cannot overthrow.

"The play doesn't divide the world into black and white," said Ms. Koniordou, a striking and stylish performer who has an intensity similar to the Oscar-winning Greek actress Katina Paxinou.

Instead, Ms. Koniordou said, speaking in flawless English, "Antigone" "shows the conflict between different worlds." As a result, she continued, "I wanted to take away all these veils of heroism and idealism and onesidedness that Antigone traditionally has in our minds. The play sounds simple, but it's really so multilayered." Which may be why the German philosopher Hegel is said to have described the text with wonderful succinctness as "the battle between right and right."

2002 | An Ancient Drama Whose Wisdom Is Always Modern 2004 | Five Faces of Antigone, From Surfer Babe to Widow 2004 | Look Out, Antigone, Creon Still Means What He Says 2012 | New York Fringe Festival Report: 'Antigone Unearthed' 2015 | In 'Antigone' at BAM, Agony and Despair in Inexorable Motion Inviting Student Reinterpretations Just one of many teenage reinterpretations we found on YouTube
Now that your students have seen the many different ways "Antigone" has been staged to respond to the politics of other times and places, ask them how they can bring this ancient text alive. What does it have to say to us today?

How can they make the central question - When is it right for an individual's principles and conscience to supersede the laws of man, or of the state? - resonate with people their own age? Where do they see people taking courageous stands against what they believe are unjust laws?

Challenge your students to perform the play in a modern setting, whether remaining faithful to the original language or rewriting it to fit their new production. Or, as Noche Flamenca did in "Antigona," have them reinterpret the play through another form of art, whether dance, poetry, rap, opera, collage, journalism, film or anything else.

Finally, have them write a reflection on the creative process: What did they learn about the way artists can make ancient texts meaningful? What other ancient texts speak as urgently to us today?
Caroline Crosson Gilpin is a former newspaper reporter for The Scarsdale Inquirer who currently works as an English teacher at an Orthodox Jewish girls' high school in New York City. This Text to Text grew out of a lesson she recently taught there.

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Caroline Crosson Gilpin and Katherine Schulten

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Text to Text | 'Antigone' and Noche Flamenca's 'Antigona'

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How far would you go to follow your moral beliefs if they conflicted with the laws of the state? Sophocles' Greek tragedy "Antigone," which has been called " the most powerful political play ever written," has posed this question in performances around the world for over 2,000 years, and continues to be just as relevant today as when it was written in 441 B.C.

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'The Glass Castle' t and 'Life on the Streets'

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'The Glass Castle' t and 'Life on the Streets'

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Key Question
How do personal accounts shape our views of homelessness?

_________

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

_________
Text 1: Excerpt from "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

Mom and Dad called regularly from pay phones to check up on us, and once or twice a month, we'd all get together at Lori's.

"It's not such a bad life," Mom told us after they'd been homeless for a couple of months.

"Don't you worry a lick about us," Dad added. "We've always been able to fend for ourselves."

Use the following link to Google Books to continue reading the excerpt. It ends with the passage below.

"I think that maybe sometimes people get the lives they want."

"Are you saying homeless people want to live on the streets?" Professor Fuchs asked. "Are you saying they don't want warm beds and roofs over their heads?"

"Not exactly," I said. I was fumbling for words. "They do. But if some of them were willing to work hard and make compromises, they might not have ideal lives, but they could make ends meet."

Professor Fuchs walked around from behind her lectern. "What do you know about the lives of the underprivileged?" she asked. She was practically trembling with agitation. "What do you know about the hardships and obstacles that the underclass face?"

The other students were staring at me.

"You have a point," I said.

_______
Text 2: Excerpts from "Life on the Streets" by Nate Schweber C. J. and Tiffany Dillinger

C. J. and Tiffany Dillinger cut a tender image in the midst of hard circumstance early on Thursday as they spooned together on Broadway on a bed made from pedestrian plaza chairs that they had dressed with a foam mat, sheets and pillows, cocooned in corrugated cardboard.

They were shaken awake just before 7 a.m. by a security guard for the Gramercy District Alliance. As they stuffed their pillows and blankets into a ratty rolling suitcase, they said they had been homeless since their house in Old Bridge, N.J., was foreclosed on a year ago.

They had fallen behind on their mortgage. Then they were both laid off. She had a shipping and receiving position. He was a construction worker.

"We're trying to get some housing," Ms. Dillinger said. "I don't want to be separated from him."

They married 16 years ago, and homelessness is the hardest challenge they have faced, Ms. Dillinger said. They started taking public transportation into New York City in July because they heard it was a more manageable place to be homeless.

"Believe it or not, there's more resources here," Ms. Dillinger said. "Soup kitchens, places to eat. We came because we heard about a couples' shelter."

When they tried to get into the couples' shelter, however, they were denied. But Ms. Dillinger said, "I'd rather be out here than in shelters."

As Mr. Dillinger turned the walls from their previous night's room back into flattened cardboard and dropped it beside a curbside trash can, Ms. Dillinger's eyes misted.

"There's more resources for survival here," she said. "But I wouldn't call it living."

Jason Jones

"Being sober - it just didn't work for me," said Jason Jones, who is married and has a daughter on Long Island.

Mr. Jones said he served in the Army and once did a stint as a fund-raiser for a congressional candidate. It was around 2006 that alcohol began to take control of his life, he said, along with what he described as a desire to be more aware of "what's really going on in the world, like in Rwanda," rather than the mundane daily duties of working a job and tending to his family.

He bounced around the homes of family members and girlfriends before finally winding up in the city shelter system, but he hated it. He spent time in the Wards Island shelter, and went on to share a house with other men from the shelter.

One of the roommates took him on a walk through McCarren Park, where he met a group of people who hang out around the northwest corner. He fell in with them quickly and has spent his summer with them. But he is already thinking about the winter, and said he intended to enroll in a back-to-work program and either make amends with family or re-enter the shelter system.

"If you're willing to work with the people inside it's not that bad," he said. "It is just perseverance, with the winos."

Jerelyn Fisher

Jerelyn Fisher sat in a wheelchair early on Thursday under a building scaffolding, bathed in bright light, with newspapers spread across her lap. She rested her bare, badly swollen feet on a black suitcase. Trash bags were piled high around her, nearly bursting with her belongings.

Ms. Fisher lived for years in an apartment on Avenue D and Third Street. She taught sewing classes in New York City public housing and also in a fabric store until 2003.

"I just couldn't find another job," she said. "I became homeless and discovered a whole new way of living."

She has avoided the shelter system because she says she finds the other residents challenging.

"There are a lot of people who are upset and angry because they are homeless," she said.

She turned to religion to deal with the stresses of being homeless and now preaches to others.

"The biggest thing I've learned is how Satan has mistreated humans," she said. "I've learned that God Jehovah lives above us and you have to know how to pray if you're going to survive in this world."

Her plan for the winter is to wrap herself in double plastic bags, as she has done for years.

"It insulates you from the cold," she said. "Sometimes you get so hot inside you have to take off one of the bags."

Jose Morales

Jose Morales and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Kimberly Williams, who is five months pregnant, had built a shelter out of a blanket tethered to a fence, underneath the No. 4 train.

Mr. Morales said he grew up in a troubled home in the Bronx and eventually attended high school at a residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction. When he got out, he went into foster care with a family in Brooklyn, because his mother had been sent to prison on drug charges. He rebelled.

"I didn't want to listen, I didn't want to do no chores, I didn't want to obey no curfew," he said. "If I was able to go back right now, I'd apologize and fix it."

He was sent to another foster home in the Bronx. That was when he met Ms. Williams over Facebook. When she was kicked out of her home on Long Island after a fight with her grandmother, Mr. Morales allowed her to stay with him - a violation of house rules. They were both evicted.

They squatted on a rooftop in Brooklyn before taking up residence in their current location. They went to the city intake center in the Bronx for homeless families, but learned they were ineligible because they were not married or in a domestic partnership.

On Wednesday night, they huddled together on the sidewalk and watched a praying mantis crawl on the fence above their bed.

"I go around, I ask for a job here and there, but nobody's hiring," Mr. Morales said. "This isn't good for her, it isn't good for me."

_______
Questions for Writing and Discussion
1. What kinds of stereotypes exist about homeless people? Why do you think this is? How are they portrayed in media such as movies and television shows? How, if at all, do real people's stories differ from fictional portrayals?

2. Why do you think some critics have described Jeannette Walls's portrayal of homelessness as "complicated"? Do you agree? Why or why not? How would you describe Rex and Rose Mary Walls's experience of homelessness as it is described in this chapter? How does it compare to the people profiled in the "Life on the Street" feature?

3. Which "Life on the Street" profile elicited the strongest reaction for you? Why? Do the photos tell any stories that the profiles do not?

4. What are some of the issues and circumstances in the lives of the people featured in both texts that contributed to losing their permanent dwellings? What impression of homeless shelters do the texts offer? What other unifying themes or issues do you notice in the texts?

5. Both texts are written in the third person - Ms. Walls writes about her parents, not herself, in this section of the memoir, and Mr. Schweber chronicles his interviews with people on the street. Do you think these writings would have a different impact on the reader if they had been written in the first person? Why or why not?

6. Some readers of "The Glass Castle" have discussed the connections between homelessness, alcoholism and mental illness. When asked if her mother was mentally ill Ms. Walls responded that she doesn't know. What are your thoughts and impressions on this topic, based on what you have read?

_________
Going Further 1. Exploring New Forms of Itinerant Life: Millennial Homeless Culture

Investigate the new wave of young people who are homeless by choice. Many of them are skeptical of the system that they feel has left their parents high and dry, and they are rejecting conventional models of work, the trappings of materialism and consumerism, and the traditional notion of "home" to forge a new way of life.
2. On Memoir and Truth
Teach all or part of the lesson plan " In Service of the Story? Exploring Questions of Truth and Memoir." Discuss memoirs and family secrets, perhaps in light of these prompts:

* the quote from a 2013 New York Times Magazine interview in which Rose Mary Walls says of her daughter's memoir: "I enjoyed it," she said. "Though it has a completely different perspective from me."

* a recent book that explores what sometimes happens to memoirists after they have revealed the most intimate details of their lives.

* a recent article that notes, "[T]he family memoir genre reveals an ethical minefield of sibling conflicts, clashing memories and unwanted exposés."
3. Homeless Veterans
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that 49,933 veterans are homeless on any given night. Why are the numbers so high? What kind of programs are in place to serve veterans in need? Investigate and report on current federal government plans to end homelessness among veterans.
4. Homelessness and Mental Illness
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness. The streets of New York City and other cities in the United States are home to thousands of people who suffer from mental illness, as well as alcoholism and other forms of addiction. As the number of homeless people rises, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking for solutions to help get people off the streets for good.

Debate the pros and cons of the mayor's supportive housing initiatives.
5. Squatters' Rights
In "The Glass Castle," once Jeannette's parents became squatters, she writes, "Mom thought I should be writing exposés about oppressive landlords, social injustice and the class struggle on the Lower East Side." Examine the history of squatters' rights, from the mid-1990s squatter evictions in New York City to the modern-day squatters who are forging new ways of life around the world.
6. "Glass Castle" as a Banned Book

More librarians read banned books for #BannedBooksWeek - THE GLASS CASTLE, by Jeannette Walls #TLCReadsBannedBooks pic.twitter.com/jQVMvbgBdo
- BuncombeTLC (@BuncombeTLC) Sept. 23, 2014

Take a look at some of the places that have banned this book, and their reasons for doing so.

One of them is a 2014 incident in which a high school in Dallas, Tex. banned "The Glass Castle" from its reading list, along with Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha," Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" and others.

Here is what Ms. Walls said about the ban to the Dallas Morning News:

"My book has ugly elements to it, but it's about hope and resilience, and I don't know why that wouldn't be an important message," she said. "Sometimes you have to walk through the muck to get to the message."

Walls said teenage readers have told her the book gave them courage to overcome their own troubled childhood or seek help.

"A lot of teachers told me someone reported an abusive relative after reading it in my book. How valuable is that?" she said. "People tell me about their drug-addicted parents. There are so many complicated situations out there. And we can begin to give kids the tools they need to deal with it, if only to say, 'You are not alone.'"

But she said she respects and admires the

What do you think? Do you think your opinion might change if you were a parent, a teacher, or a school board member instead of a student?

Find many more resources for learning about banned books here.
_________ Related Resources
The American Place Theater "The Glass Castle" Teacher's Resource Guide (PDF)
"The Glass Castle" Reading Group Guide Jeannette Walls: By the Book The New York Times Topics Page: Homelessness

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Text to Text | 'The Glass Castle' and 'Life on the Streets'

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Key Question How do personal accounts shape our views of homelessness?

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John Milton's 'When I Consider How My Light Is Spent' and 'Today's Exhausted Superkids'

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John Milton's 'When I Consider How My Light Is Spent' and 'Today's Exhausted Superkids'

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While Milton is concerned with how best to live his life to please God, students tie themselves in knots to win the approval from the gods of college admission. In a perfect world, the reflection demanded by the college application process would prompt students to confront themselves, consider their role in the world beyond their high schools and hometowns, and meditate on what gives life meaning, just as blindness prompted Milton to question the meaning of his life. This authenticity can get lost in the mania of the box-checking and hoop-jumping that students feel is what schools want. As Milton believes God to have high standards for his servants, so students believe colleges want the impossible.

To help students consider these deeper questions before or after you take on the poem and the Times Op-Ed, you might engage them in conversation, as professors at the Stanford Design School do, about what it means to really live.

They might consider these stories about people "sprinting, strolling, or tumbling" into careers. Or this essay, from The Stone, about going beyond the clichéd idea "do what you love." Ask them, too, to think about why they want to go to college. What is college for? Would a gap year give them a chance to step back and look at how they want to spend their life?

To give them even more perspective, in the way blindness causes Milton to re-examine his life's purpose, have them look at what the elderly say about what gives their lives meaning.

________
Key Question: How do you "spend your light?" What do you consider a life well-lived?
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Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

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Text 1: "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" by John Milton

Text 2: Excerpt from "Today's Exhausted Superkids" by Frank Bruni For Writing and Discussion

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

_________

There's a unifying theme: Enough is enough.

"At some point, you have to say, 'Whoa! This is too crazy,' " Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford, told me.

Sleep deprivation is just a part of the craziness, but it's a perfect shorthand for childhoods bereft of spontaneity, stripped of real play and haunted by the "pressure of perfection," to quote the headline on a story by Julie Scelfo in The Times this week.

Scelfo wrote about six suicides in a 13-month period at the University of Pennsylvania; about the prevalence of anxiety and depression on college campuses; about many star students' inability to cope with even minor setbacks, which are foreign and impermissible.

Those students almost certainly need more sleep. In a study in the medical journal Pediatrics this year, about 55 percent of American teenagers from the ages of 14 to 17 reported that they were getting less than seven hours a night, though the National Sleep Foundation counsels 8 to 10.

"I've got kids on a regular basis telling me that they're getting five hours," Pope said. That endangers their mental and physical health.

Smartphones and tablets aggravate the problem, keeping kids connected and distracted long after lights out. But in communities where academic expectations run highest, the real culprit is panic: about acing the exam, burnishing the transcript, keeping up with high-achieving peers.

I've talked with many parents in these places. They say that they'd love to pull their children off such a fast track, but won't the other children wind up ahead?

They might - if "ahead" is measured only by a spot in U-Penn's freshman class and if securing that is all that matters.

But what about giving a kid the wiggle room to find genuine passions, the freedom to discover true independence, the space to screw up and bounce back? Shouldn't that matter as much?

"No one is arguing for a generation of mediocre or underachieving kids - but plenty of people have begun arguing for a redefinition of what it means to achieve at all," wrote Jeffrey Kluger in Time magazine last week. He noted, rightly, that "somewhere between the self-esteem building of going for the gold and the self-esteem crushing of the Ivy-or-die ethos, there has to be a place where kids can breathe."

And where they can tumble gently into sleep, which is a gateway, not an impediment, to dreams.

_________

1. Scholars claim the poem "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" shows Milton grappling with his increasing blindness. Look carefully at references to light and dark in the poem. How is this claim grounded in the language of the poem?

2. In the poem, Milton personifies "Patience." What wisdom does patience offer about how he might best live his life in service of God?

3. In what way does Milton use "light" metaphorically, as well as literally here?
Going Further Imagine Losing Something You Take for Granted
4. How much sleep do you get each night? What aspects of the panic that Mr. Bruni discusses in his article do you experience?

5. What parallels do you see between the poem and the point Mr. Bruni makes in the article excerpt?

6. What gives your life meaning? What would it look like for you to follow your dreams?
Take Stock
_________

When Milton wrote "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent," he was losing his eyesight. What might it feel like to lose something so integral to our existence, yet something most of us take for granted?
Write Your Own Way
In 1983, after years of deteriorating vision, the writer and theologian John Hull lost the last traces of light sensation. For the next three years, he kept a diary on audiocassette of his interior world of blindness. The film " Notes on Blindness" is a dramatization that uses his original recordings, and the virtual-reality " Acoustic Space " is an immersive recreation of Mr. Hull's description of his acoustic perception of a simple day in the park.

Students can experience one or both of these Op-Docs, and then ponder: How might life be different if you lost one or more of your senses? What do you think you might miss the most? What might you appreciate even more? Does having a window into Mr. Hull's inner thoughts about losing his eyesight give you any additional insight into what's most important in your own life?
Related Resources
Ask students to keep a journal for three days about how they spend their time. Then, ask them to complete a time wheel, an exercise described in the book " Overloaded and Underprepared " mentioned in Mr. Bruni's article. In this activity, students draw a circle to represent 24 hours in their lives. Then, they divide the "pie," as it were, into pieces that represent how many hours they spend on things like sleep, homework, athletics, family time, chores, work, media, etc. Using the data from their journal, have students illustrate their typical day.
Learning Network Lesson Collection | Adolescent Health: Mental health, Stress, and Sleep 2015 Times Column | Best, Brightest - and Saddest? 2016 Times Article | What Keeps Kids Up at Night? Cellphones and Tablets Learning Network Lesson Plan | Figuratively Speaking: Exploring How Metaphors Make Meaning
As a class, talk about the ramifications of how they spend their time. What do they wish they could change? Are they getting as much sleep as the experts recommend? How could the school help? (You might talk about homework or sleep and school start times here - perhaps even having students look at the research and make some recommendations to the administration.) What could they do immediately to create more space to do what gives their lives meaning?

Many writers, like Thoreau, have used the essay form to share their ideas about what constitutes a life well-lived. Invite students to use the personal essay form to explore what gives their own life meaning. We offer many prompts to help jump-start reflection and writing. In addition, we offer models and guidance for student writing, whether they are examining their lives for themselves or for college.

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Edutopia | Put the Awe Back in "Awesome" - Helping Students Develop Purpose

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Text to Text: John Milton's 'When I Consider How My Light Is Spent' and 'Today's Exhausted Superkids'

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While Milton is concerned with how best to live his life to please God, students tie themselves in knots to win the approval from the gods of college admission.

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'Life on Mars' and Ray Bradbury's 'All Summer in a Day'

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'Life on Mars' and Ray Bradbury's 'All Summer in a Day'

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Bradbury's short story was written at a time when space exploration was gaining significant momentum, as the Cold War raged and the space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. picked up speed. Just 15 years after "All Summer in a Day" was published, the 1969 Apollo 11 mission succeeded in sending the first humans to the moon.

"All Summer in a Day" fast-forwards past the time-consuming, resource-intensive process of scientific research and plops the reader into an already well-established society on Venus. As is typical of much of Bradbury's writing, the author takes a cautionary view of the sacrifices needed to achieve sustained life on other planets. His story reveals that despite advances in technology and science, human nature and human relationships are still fraught with age-old conflicts and hardship.

_________

Key Questions

*How do we judge if a sacrifice is worthwhile when the outcome is unknown?

*What truths can we learn about ourselves in extreme, dangerous, or unusual situations?

_________

Activity Sheets

As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

_________

Text 1: Five videos from "Life on Mars" 360 video series by Niko Koppel, Nick Capezzera and Veda Shastri.

Note: As of publication, there are six videos in the series.

_________
Episode 1: Preparing for the Red Planet
In the first episode of "Life on Mars," we join the HI-SEAS Mission 5 crew during the training before their eight-month isolation begins. They meet mission support and learn about their new home, a structure they call "the habitat." During their mission, they will have to wear spacesuits any time they leave the habitat. Their only communication with the outside world will be by email with a 20-minute delay, about the length of time it would take for a transmission from Mars to reach Earth.
Episode 2: Get to Know the Crew
On Jan. 19, the scientists celebrate the start of their mission. Their days are filled with geological fieldwork, personal research projects and upkeep of the habitat. In the second episode of "Life on Mars" we find out how they are settling in - and how they clean the toilet.
Episode 3: At Home in the Habitat
The crew has been in isolation for more than four months, the halfway point of their mission. In the third episode of "Life on Mars," the crew shows us around the 1,200-square-foot habitat, which is outfitted with more than 150 sensors that collect data on water usage, battery power, carbon dioxide levels and other resources. These are analyzed by researchers and monitored by mission support to assess the well-being of the crew.
Episode 4: The Crew Answers Your Questions
In the fourth episode of this 360-video series, the crew answers select audience questions, including what they miss most during their eight-month isolation, how they resolve conflict and if they still would go to Mars.
Episode 5: Mirages of Earth
In the fifth episode of the series, see how the crew uses virtual reality as a coping mechanism for stress caused by isolation. The scenes are meant to relax crew members through exposure to natural and urban environments.

_________

"Ready?"

"Ready."

"Now?"

"Soon."

"Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?

"Look, look; see for yourself!"

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

It rained. It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

"It's stopping. It's stopping!"

"Yes, yes!"

Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

The story continues:

"You're lying, you don't remember!" cried the children.

But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.

There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.

"Get away!" The boy gave her another push. "What're you waiting for?"

Then for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes. "Well, don't wait around here!" cried the boy savagely. "You won't see nothing!"

"Oh, but," Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know, the sun . . ."

"All a joke!" said the boy, and seized her roughly. "Hey, everyone, let's put her in a closet before teacher comes!"

"No," said Margot, falling back.

They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

"Ready, children?" She glanced at her watch.

"Yes!" said everyone.

"Are we all here?"

"Yes!"

The rain slackened still more.

They crowded to the huge door.

The rain stopped.

_________

Questions For Writing and Discussion

1. How are the sacrifices made by the Hi-SEAS participants and Bradbury's characters in "All Summer in a Day" similar and different? Do you think these sacrifices are worthwhile given that what is gained as a result is not fully known? How should sacrifices be evaluated differently for adults (who make choices willingly and knowingly) compared to children, whose choices are restricted (based on the decisions of their parents)? In the story, is it better or worse that the Venus-born children don't really understand what they're missing? How might this scenario be similar for a future Mars-born generation?

2. How do the settings of both texts play a central role in the conflicts the participants and characters experience? If you were in the world of "All Summer in a Day" or living in "the habitat" on Mauna Loa volcano, how would these environments affect you? What might you learn about yourself and how would you overcome these circumstantial challenges? Given that the purpose of the Hi-SEAS mission is to help determine what personal qualities are necessary for long-duration space travel, what traits can you identify that are necessary for surviving, even thriving, in such an extreme setting?

3. Despite the unique settings of both texts, how are some of the social dynamics similar to those experienced in everyday life on Earth? Why does Margot feel isolated and distant from the other Venus-born children, and how does this effect how she is treated by them? In what ways do the Hi-SEAS group members deal with isolation and interpersonal conflict? Why are isolation and loneliness such common themes in literature and across the human experience? For whom do you think Bradbury wrote "All Summer in a Day"?

4. What can we learn from the way the Venus civilization was established as we begin research and development for a possible future Mars community? What steps have the Hi-SEAS team members taken to make their mission a success? From your perspective, what are some non-negotiables for setting up a healthy community and way of life for people in a new and potentially challenging setting? Why is it important to look at the experiences of others as you make decisions about your own life trajectory?

5. Across these texts, the tone varies from excitement and hope in what is humanly possible, to cynicism about the lack of human progress. Why it is important to balance ambition and hope with caution? How can naïveté obstruct people's chances to succeed in their endeavors? What advice might Ray Bradbury give to scientists engaged in research for Mars exploration? What recommendations might Elon Musk give to the leaders of the imaginary Venus civilization?

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Going Further
Fact or Fiction?
For centuries, authors have taken a fantastic and speculative approach to writing stories about life beyond Earth's bounds. The "red planet" and its many fictive Martian characters have served to supply the content of many science fiction stories over the years.

In addition to Venus-based "All Summer in a Day," Bradbury also wrote a more substantial series of short stories compiled as "The Martian Chronicles." The stories tell of a Mars colonized by Earthmen, marked by moments when both the Martian population and Earth's population face near-extinction. At the time of Bradbury's death in 2012, the Times coverage returned to this collection to highlight its strong environmental theme.

More recently author Andy Weir chronicled a tale of Mars explorers that reflects more accurately the challenges astronauts would face today. "The Martian" follows the life and struggle of the sole survivor of the first manned mission to Mars. Similar to how Bradbury originally published the stories of "The Martian Chronicles" in serial form, "The Martian" by Mr. Weir was first released one chapter at a time on his personal blog, which he later compiled and self-published in 2011 as an e-book on Amazon.com at the lowest possible price - 99¢. After quickly rising to the top of Amazon's science fiction best seller list, it was picked up by Crown Publishing Group. By 2014 "The Martian" debuted on the Times best seller list. At the time of debut, Mr. Weir was already in negotiations with 20th Century Fox over the story's film rights. Starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, the movie version premiered in 2015, eventually won two Golden Globes and was nominated for seven Oscars. See the official trailer, below.

The Times spoke with its director, Ridley Scott, about the production of the film. Just as the Hi-SEAS developers chose a Hawaiian volcano for its mission, Mr. Scott shot much of the film in Wadi Rum in Jordan to mimic the Mars-like conditions.

Because we can only speculate about life on other planets, what must science fiction authors consider when writing human stories in fantastic settings? How did the available sources of information about space vary when Bradbury wrote his science fiction stories in the 1950s compared to what was available to Mr. Weir as he was writing in the 21st century? To make their work compelling and accessible to the reader, how must authors walk the line between fantasy and the familiar? Is science-fiction a genre that is appealing to you? Why or why not?

_________
Support for Space Exploration from One Administration to the Next

Early NASA initiatives received robust support during the 1960s because of the political climate. The Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union created an environment where advances in space exploration represented both military dominance as well as social and cultural prowess. The space race was a way that these two countries could flex their muscles without heating up the rivalry to outright war with one another.

But in the decades that followed, funding for NASA's programs declined and leveled out to less than $20 billion annually, approximately 0.5 percent of the federal budget. At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama spoke boldly about reviving our commitment to interplanetary efforts, specifically with Mars in mind. Less than a year into the Trump administration, it's still too early to tell whether the he will leave a noteworthy mark on space research and travel.

The Times explored the question of where NASA will go under the Trump administration in the weeks following the 2016 election. Since taking office, President Trump advocated for manned missions of deep-space travel, but NASA concluded that this would cause extensive delays and significantly increase the price tag of their current efforts to get its new Space Launch System off the ground.

Based on what you read in these articles, compare and contrast Mr. Obama's and Mr. Trump's commitments to NASA's endeavors. To what extent do you think the federal government should invest in advances in space exploration and technology? What is there to gain from looking beyond Earth's bounds? Could this allotment of the federal budget be well-spent elsewhere?

_________
Seeking Applicants for Space Travel
While initially the space exploration industry was dominated by government efforts, now companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, as well as the Dutch nonprofit Mars-One, all compete for a piece of the space-business pie.

At the International Astronautical Congress last fall, Mr. Musk roused excitement and curiosity in sharing his plans to develop a rocket that would take passengers to Mars as early as 2024. Mr. Musk's long-term plan is for SpaceX vehicles to take 100 passengers at a time to Mars, with the hope of eventually establishing a self-sustaining civilization there. He argues this would enable humans to become a "multiplanetary species" and ensure our survival in the event of possible future catastrophes on Earth, such as an asteroid strike.

Traveling as far as Mars may be too risky and isolating for some, so why not just travel around the moon and back? SpaceX also recently announced plans to send two tourists on just such a trip by late 2018. Such space tourism, while still new, isn't entirely unprecedented. Between 2001 and 2009, seven civilians traveled beyond Earth's atmosphere with Space Adventures, Ltd. in conjunction with the Russian Space Agency.

Is space travel, as tourist or as an explorer, something that interests you? Do you think you fit the bill to be a space traveler? After reading these articles, analyze what motivates people to take such exhilarating but risky journeys. Review Mars-One's list of qualifications for applicants, and evaluate whether these traits are necessary for someone wanting to take a one-way trip to Mars.

_________
Write Your Own Science Fiction

What can you learn about science from fiction? What can you learn about the elements of fiction from stories about the work of real scientists? In our lesson plan Lab Lit: Writing Fiction Based on Real Science, students learn about the genre of "lab lit," then choose from a number of activities to explore an area of science by creating their own.
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Related Resources
Student Opinion | Will Humans Live on Mars Someday? Picture Prompt | A Trip to Mars Article of the Day | 'Visions of Life on Mars in Earth's Depths' On This Day: Men Walk On Moon Teaching Science with the 'Trilobites' Column Questions for: 'SpaceX Launches a Satellite With a Partly Used Rocket' Brooke Mackin teaches sixth and seventh grade E.N.L. (English as a New Language) at I.S. 230 in Jackson Heights, Queens.

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Text to Text | "Life on Mars" and Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day"

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Bradbury's short story was written at a time when space exploration was gaining significant momentum, as the Cold War raged and the space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. picked up speed. Just 15 years after "All Summer in a Day" was published, the 1969 Apollo 11 mission succeeded in sending the first humans to the moon.

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Guy de Maupassant's 'The Necklace' and 'Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme'

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Guy de Maupassant's 'The Necklace' and 'Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme'

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Supreme is a fashion clothing brand that prides itself on the scarcity of its stock and the discomfort of its shopping experience within its store. Supreme's limited-run clothes are sold in intimidating environments where customers feel acutely aware of being scrutinized, and from resellers who charge upward of six times the original price for an item. The limited quantity of the goods and time-targeted releases, or "drops," add a level of frenzied excitement for buyers. Supreme's casual disregard for appealing to mainstream tastemakers only strengthens its appeal. By a cultish exclusivity, the clothes become highly coveted, and take on symbolic roles of rarity and prestige.

Have students read both " The Necklace," as well as The Times's " Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme." Then, prompt students to answer the questions below, which first address each text individually, and then address shared concerns between the texts.

_________
Key Questions:
* Does presumed rarity and luxury give material things transformative power? If so, does celebrity brand or buy-in increase that power? How?

* Is the nature of one's "high-class" status subjective? Explain how, if so, and why not, if not.

_________

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

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Text 1: Excerpt from Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" (1884). It Text 2: Excerpt from the 2012 Times article "Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme": begins: For Writing and Discussion:

She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education.

She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and distracted dreams. She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the 5 o'clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose attentions all women envied and desired.

When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu. I don't know anything better than that," she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairylike forest; she was thinking of exquisite dishes, served in marvelous platters, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail. She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after.

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For much of its 18-year existence, Supreme was confined to the in-crowd, a scruffy clubhouse for a select crew of blunt-puffing skate urchins, graffiti artists, underground filmmakers and rappers.

"It is a little club, a secret society," said Tyler, the Creator, the rapper with the group Odd Future, who showed up at last year's MTV Video Music Awards decked out in Supreme.

Word, though, is getting out. Once dismissed as skate-wear by fashion people, Supreme has been embraced by a new global tribe eager to crack its code.

Huge lines, once endemic to its New York flagship in SoHo, now form at satellite stores in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and other cities. The current issue of British GQ Style, a men's fashion bible, hails Supreme as "the coolest streetwear brand in the world right now." And the Berlin culture magazine O32c called it "the Holy Grail of high youth street culture." The Business of Fashion site called it "the Chanel of downtown streetwear."

On the red carpet, Supreme has become a certifiable thing for rappers and pop stars. At the recent Paris Fashion Week, Kanye West arrived at the Céline show wearing a green-camouflage pullover field jacket by Supreme. In September, Frank Ocean performed on " Saturday Night Live " wearing a Supreme hockey jersey adorned with a Southwestern-style thunderbird.

For any other brand, such sightings would be considered a P.R. coup. But they are beside the point for Supreme, which is so fiercely protective of its anarchic downtown heritage that it would rather be ignored by the masses than misunderstood.

"Most businesses just have a goal of getting as big as possible," said Glenn O'Brien, the style writer. But Supreme does not "try to be in every department store in the world," preferring instead to stay underground and boutique.

"Supreme is a company that refuses to sell out," he said.

Supreme is also a company that plays hard to get. That uncompromising spirit starts with the stores themselves.

Opened in 1994 by its press-shy founder, James Jebbia, the Lafayette Street store pioneered an art-gallery-cum-storage-facility chic, with its white walls and plywood shelving.

The Container Store this was not. The retail experience - from the Bad Brains blaring overhead, to the store clerks who sized up visitors with blank stares - could be forbidding.

Shoppers could look but not touch, especially during the early days, recalled Aaron Bondaroff, a founder of Ohwow gallery who worked at the shop in the 1990s. Anyone who mussed the folded T-shirts could expect a scolding.

The subtext was clear: One had to earn the right to shop there.

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1. Do you think the actual value of "The Necklace" in question matters? Was it the necklace, and its presumed value, that allowed Mathilde to metamorphose at the ball? What was the necklace's "value," in your opinion?

2. Do you think Mathilde's brief respite from her life of normalcy was, or could have been, beneficial? Why or why not?

3. How would you describe Supreme's marketing strategy? How does it relate to the process of acquiring items? Is it hard or easy to do so? Why or why not?

4. Do you think the limited runs of clothing, store atmosphere, and long lines for "drops" make Supreme more desirable? Why or why not?

5. What has changed since Mathilde's day in terms of clothing and exclusivity?

6. What's more important for clothing - their practical use (in other words, clothes to keep you warm or cool) or their role in broadcasting a message or belief a person wishes others to know? Why?

7. Why do some people seek to own clothing or jewelry that is beyond their means to afford it? How does this desire seem to affect people in both of these texts?
_________ Going Further
8. Have you ever had an experience buying or borrowing an item of apparel that was either very expensive or very desirable? What happened? What, if anything, did you learn from the experience?

9. Are esteemed objects that are attained with difficulty positive forces of temporary elevation, or ultimately damaging?

10. What are the costs of social aspiration in the pursuit of unobtainable luxury?

The following Times articles and student activities address further themes of beauty, commodity, self-identification by clothing, and recent fashion trends generally.
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Kylie Jenner, of the Kardashian clan, has built a business empire based in part on her unique adaptation to internet trends and technology. Her branded merchandise is offered exclusively on her website, and, like the merchandise offered by Supreme, is available only for brief spells, "while supplies last." The exact release, or "drop," of the items is hinted at by clues on Ms. Jenner's Snapchat, adding a social media flair.

Have students read this recent Times article about Ms. Jenner's use of the "drop." Then, have students watch the YouTube video from Clevver News, below, featuring Ms. Jenner's 2016 Holiday Gift Set drop, first previewed on Snapchat, and then reported on YouTube.

Invite students to write a personal reflection on how the video affected them. Even if they aren't in the market for lip gloss, what is their reaction in general to advertising through YouTube or Snapchat? What is the effect of inducements like this that bypass glossy commercial production? How does featuring the products briefly, especially in a temporary video that will expire, enhance their allure?

This first-person piece from The Times, " The Mom Who Wore Supreme," is by a mother in her 40s who ventures into the decidedly youthful phenomenon of Supreme. She mentions the sometimes pleasurable tension in her choosing between a penchant for youthful men's wear and the "professional" attire her work and environment seem to dictate.

Have students read the piece, then find an article of clothing, either in their own possession or online, that they once desired but now have trouble relating to or would be uncomfortable wearing.

Have them photograph the item, then bring the image to class, along with a short description of what it was about the article of clothing, and what it expressed, that appealed to them. What about them do they think changed so that they no longer desire these qualities?

Alternately, have students bring to class an article of clothing that they had become uninterested in wearing, but then rediscovered and now enjoy again. Why did they start wearing it again? Does it somehow have a "magic," or talismanic, quality?

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The slide show above from The Times offers a year in review of 2016 "street style" - natural looks of actual people on the street, not models.
More Learning Network Literature Collections
Have students stage their own street-style slide shows, either by taking photos outside themselves, or by curating images from their Instagram or other social feeds. What do their choices say about their own taste, about fashion, and about presentation? Why?
Casey Michael Henry taught writing and American literature for several years at the City University of New York (CUNY). Currently, he works as a writer and editor in New York City.
Together, students might then reflect on how their attire represents where they live and who they are. Are the values, interests, politics and cultures of the various groups and communities to which they belong reflected in what they wear? If so, how? What images from their slide shows might show that especially well?

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We have many more collections like this one that match Times articles with often-taught authors and works of literature, including:

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Text to Text | Guy de Maupassant's 'The Necklace' and 'Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme'

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Supreme is a fashion clothing brand that prides itself on the scarcity of its stock and the discomfort of its shopping experience within its store. Supreme's limited-run clothes are sold in intimidating environments where customers feel acutely aware of being scrutinized, and from resellers who charge upward of six times the original price for an item.

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Henry David Thoreau's 'Walking' and 'Time to Write? Go Outside.'

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Henry David Thoreau's 'Walking' and 'Time to Write? Go Outside.'

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Thoreau expounded on the benefits of unhurried walking in fields and the woods, and he viewed walking as a self-reflective act that yields self-knowledge unavailable elsewhere. Thoreau wrote that in most men, the desire for society is stronger than the desire for being alone in nature, and he sought balance between man's need to be outdoors and his need for society. Thoreau felt strongly that human beings need "wild and dusky knowledge" gotten outdoors to be satisfied and whole, and he worried about a day when unlimited woods might become scarce.

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Key Questions:
* What role does nature play in our lives?

* How can nature help us be better students and better human beings?

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Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

_________

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour, or four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for - I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together ...

But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours - as the swinging of dumbbells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."

Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character - will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough - that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

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Text 2: Excerpt from "Time to Write? Go Outside" by Carol Kaufmann. She writes, in part:

Back in the 1970s, two pioneering environmental psychologists, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, began investigating nature's healing effect on the mind. Decades later, their studies concluded that connections with nature could help us shirk mental fatigue, restore drifting attention and sharpen thinking. Even in an urban environment, a little green stimulates our senses, they report.

Nature immersion also helps us feel alive. Another series of studies published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 2010 concluded that being in nature made people feel energetic and less lethargic, all essential ingredients for writing stories that exude telling details and narrative tension. After all, you just can't tell a good story when half asleep.

Nor can you do so when surrounded by the beeps and dings and hums of any number of devices. The author and journalist Richard Louv has thought a lot about technological distractions. Mr. Louv has long studied and proclaimed the benefits that humans can reap from being in nature. His wildly popular "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder" includes evidence that exposure to nature is essential not just to children's mental and physical health, but to everyone's. Adults are just as susceptible to a "Vitamin N" deficiency he explains in his more recent "The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age." I asked him about my writing-outside theory.

"It's likely you find it easier to write outside not only because of nature's direct impact, but because of the absence of so many distractions, most of them technological." says Mr. Louv, who also finds his writing better when he does it by a lake or in the woods. "The info-blitzkrieg has spawned a new field called 'interruption science' and a newly minted condition: continuous partial attention." Constant electronic intrusions, he says, leave anyone trying to work frustrated, stressed and certainly less creative.

Amen. And though this seems like an obvious conclusion, how often are we writers victims of indoor inertia? Why do we try to write while held hostage by cookie-cutter offices, zapped by overhead fluorescence and pinged by electronic apps of varying degrees of annoyance? This, truly, is writing with only a partial mind, because our mind lies in too many different realms.

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For Writing and Discussion:
1. Thoreau says that he cannot stay in his house for an entire day without "acquiring some rust," and as a result must spend time walking each day. How does he feel about people who stay indoors all day because of their jobs and responsibilities?

2. How much time do you spend indoors on average? Would Thoreau approve of your time spent inside vs. outside? Why or why not?

3. When Thoreau discusses walking, is he extolling its benefits for physical exercise, transportation, or something else? How do you know, based on the reading?

4. Ms. Kaufmann discusses a study that found time spent outside "could help us shirk mental fatigue, restore drifting attention and sharpen thinking." Have you found that spending time outdoors improves your ability to focus on tasks? If so, how? If you have never tried spending time outside, are you interested in doing so? Why or why not?

5. What is the difference between "wilderness" and a garden or park? Use textual evidence from both works to support your answer.

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Going Further:
- Read this Times article on unusual college courses, specifically "The Art of Walking" at Centre College, where students read philosophy and go on hikes to discuss man's essential nature. How often do you spend time outside during school? Do you think time outdoors helps you think, or learn better? Why or why not? What is it about walking that improves the way the brain works? Have you seen evidence of this in your own life, and if so, where and when?

- What if we can't get outside? Can technology bring nature to us? What about viewing artwork of nature or listening to nature sounds on tape? Will it have the same effects? Have students watch this video of the author and philosopher Alain de Button and then answer the following: Would looking at photos or pictures of nature and listening to audiotapes of streams and birds have the same effect as walking in the woods? Why or why not?

- Carol Kaufmann extols the virtues of getting away from distractions like computers and cellphones, while Thoreau said, "When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?" Have students watch this video (embedded above) by the writer and illustrator Maira Kalman, about how walking clears the mind, and ask them to write a reflection on what they heard. Does walking in the city offer the same benefits as walking in the woods? What would Thoreau and Kaufmann think? What do you think, and why?

- In the Times article " In 'Walden' Video Game, the Challenge Is Stillness," Robin Pogrebin looks at a new Thoreau-based video game. Have students watch some of the video game below and answer the following: Do you think going to the "virtual woods" can satisfy our need for nature? What would Thoreau think of this game? What makes you think so?

- Two related Times articles from the Well blog focus on the benefits of nature and greenery for children and adolescents. The first, a 2016 article, reports that spending time outside can make teenagers less stressed and help them retain information better. The second, a 2015 article, focuses on how nature changes the brain and can help improve mood. Teachers frequently lament how students struggle to pay attention in class, but the classroom environment, despite the best decorating efforts, is often dull and boring, and students are sedentary. Have students read the articles as a class and then have them look around their classroom and answer the following: How much of nature is visible from your classroom? Do you see cinder block walls, fluorescent lighting and tiny windows? Do you think you would benefit from spending more time outdoors before, during or after school? What if students went outside to read? To journal? To work on collaborative projects? How much would it benefit learning, and why?

- This Times article reports on preschools that focus on nature, with students spending a large part of their day, if not all of it, outside. Have students look at the slide show above and then answer: Do you think middle schools and high schools should do this, too? How would it look in your school? Then have students check out The Nerdy Book Club for ideas to get students outside. Ask students: Would you like to read any of these books? If so, which ones? Would you enjoy reading these books, or any books, outside during English class? Elaborate on your answer.

- In a 2017 Times Op-Ed, David George Haskell says, "Springtime strolls around our homes are more than pleasant diversions. They are the raw material of our collective memory, the seeds of the stories we'll tell in the future." In his newest book, "The Songs of Trees," he observes the complicated relationship between trees and humans. Look around your school or home - are there any trees? Do you have memories tied to trees in your neighborhood?

- For more inspiration, see these other Learning Network lessons designed around Thoreau's work: " Trees and Transcendentalists" and " A Lesson Lovely as a Tree: Defining and Appreciating Trees."

- Have students view the slide show above of visitors to Walden Pond, where Thoreau lived and worked. What do they notice about the images? What would Thoreau think about the goings-on at Walden Pond today? Have students support their answers with lines from Thoreau's essay.

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Would you like more Learning Network lesson plans on often-taught authors and works? Here is what we have so far, and the collection is always growing:

Maya Angelou, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,""Antigone," "The Book Thief," "The Catcher in the Rye," "The Crucible,""Death of a Salesman," Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, "Enrique's Journey,""Frankenstein," "The Giver," "The Glass Castle," "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Great Gatsby," "Harry Potter," "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," "The Hunger Games," "The Kite Runner," "Lord of the Flies," "Of Mice and Men," John Milton, "The Necklace," "Orwell and "1984", "The Outsiders," "A Raisin in the Sun," Shakespeare, Mark Twain and "Huckleberry Finn," "The Scarlet Letter," "Speak" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."

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Text to Text | Henry David Thoreau's 'Walking' and 'Time to Write? Go Outside.'

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Thoreau expounded on the benefits of unhurried walking in fields and the woods, and he viewed walking as a self-reflective act that yields self-knowledge unavailable elsewhere. Thoreau wrote that in most men, the desire for society is stronger than the desire for being alone in nature, and he sought balance between man's need to be outdoors and his need for society.

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'Wonder' and 'Stories About Disabilities Don't Have To Be Sad'

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'Wonder' and 'Stories About Disabilities Don't Have To Be Sad'

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Activity Sheets
As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

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Text 1: Excerpt from Part Two of R. J. Palacio's 'Wonder,' narrated by Auggie's sister, Via:

Does August see how other people see him, or has he gotten so good at pretending not to see that it doesn't bother him? Or does it bother him? When he looks in the mirror, does he see the Auggie Mom and Dad see, or does he see the Auggie everyone else sees? Or is there another August he sees, someone in his dreams behind the misshapen head and face? Sometimes when I looked at Grans, I could see the pretty girl she used to be underneath the wrinkles. I could see the girl from Ipanema inside the old-lady walk. Does August see himself as he might have looked without that single gene that caused the catastrophe of his face?

I wish I could ask him this stuff. I wish he would tell me how he feels. He used to be easier to read before the surgeries. You knew that when his eyes squinted, he was happy. When his mouth went straight, he was being mischievous. When his cheeks trembled, he was about to cry. He looks better now, no doubt about that, but the signs we used to gauge his moods are all gone. There are new ones, or course. Mom and Dad can read every single one. But I'm having trouble keeping up. And there's part of me that doesn't want to keep trying: why can't he just say what he's feeling like everyone else? He doesn't have a trache tube in his mouth anymore that keeps him from talking. His jaw's not wired shut. He's ten years old. He can use his words. But we circle around him like he's still the baby he used to be. We change plans, go to plan B, interrupt conversations, go back on promises depending on his moods, his whims, his needs. But he needs to grow up now. We need to let him, help him, make him grow up. Here's what I think: we've all spent so much time trying to make August think he's normal that he actually thinks he's normal. And the problem is, he's not.

Text 2: Excerpt from Melissa Shang's 'Stories About Disability Don't Have To Be Sad'
_________

I was inspired to take matters into my own hands and write a book of my own, starring a girl with a disability. I knew exactly what genre of book I wanted to write. I've never been a fan of "great children's literature" that was somber or tragic. My friends and I have loved the Cupcake Diaries series, paperbacks with pink covers that described four best friends and their adventures together, making cupcakes. Not exactly heavy stuff, but fun to read. I wanted to write something like the Cupcake Diaries, but starring a middle-school girl with a disability and her filmmaking adventures with her best friends. Instead of making cupcakes, they would make special-effect YouTube videos.

My older sister Eva helped me set up a Kickstarter campaign to hire an editor. We wrote the first draft of the book, called "Mia Lee Is Wheeling Through Middle School," and found a literary agent. Using our money from our Kickstarter campaign, we hired someone to help us edit our draft into a polished copy, then sent it out to publishing houses.

When the responses started to come in, they were almost all the same: For a girl who was in a wheelchair with a degenerative nerve disease, Mia Lee was just too happy.

"I keep expecting more from the plotline than what's currently here," one publisher wrote. "What if it was about sisters who were twins, and one had Charcot-Marie-Tooth and one didn't? That would create a more important conflict." Another said that Mia Lee's character didn't seem suited for a lighthearted story. Finally, my agent told me, "I just don't think people are ready for this type of story for this type of character."

What she meant is that Mia Lee, my sassy, YouTube-loving heroine, differed too much from the convention of what a disabled kid is supposed to be like. There are very few stories about kids in wheelchairs, and there are even fewer with a disabled person who is cheerful and happy. Disability is always seen as a misfortune, and disabled characters are simply opportunities to demonstrate the kindness of the able-bodied protagonists.

For once, I want to see the disabled kids not in the hospital, but in the school cafeteria eating lunch with their friends. I wanted young readers to think of disabled kids not as miserable people to be pitied, but as people living normal lives in spite of their challenges. I want young readers to see disabled kids as friends, people to gossip with, to take selfies with and to go see movies with on the weekends. Not having books that show disability in a lighthearted way makes it harder for everyone else to see disability as a normal part of life.

For Writing and Discussion
_________

1. What do these passages have to say about how a person with a disability might feel about the concept of "normal"?

2. How do Melissa and Auggie find happiness in spite of their challenges in life? What helps them to be resilient?

3. In both the book and the opinion piece, a sibling plays an important role. What similarities do you see? What differences?

4. Melissa refers to American Girl dolls and the Cupcake Diaries books as contributing to her happy childhood. How do toys and imagination play a role in Auggie's childhood experiences? How have they played a role in your childhood? How do you think imaginative play helps us to grow?

5. "Wonder" has inspired a "Choose Kind" movement on Tumblr and the hashtag #thewonderofwonder. Melissa cites Change.org, Kickstarter and Amazon self-publishing as being instrumental in getting her message out to the world. How has the internet helped people with disabilities change perceptions in the wider world?

6. The comments on Melissa's article reveal that her experience and attitude strike a chord with an array of readers who want to support her positive outlook. Which of the comments are most interesting to you? Why? Where does Auggie find support for himself in the novel? What obstacles does he need to overcome to find it?

7. Compare and contrast the cover art from "Wonder" with the Dadu Shin artwork on the Times piece. What do these visual representations of each text convey wordlessly? How well do they fit the texts?

8. Based on this article, do you think Melissa would be a fan of the book "Wonder"? Use evidence from the text to support your claim.

9. How do you think Auggie would answer either or both of the "key questions" we pose above? How would you answer them?
Going Further
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- Each person's experience with disability is different, as The Times's Disability column makes clear. Skim some of the pieces recently published there and choose one to read in depth. How does your chosen piece differ from Melissa Shang's essay in terms of tone, content, writing style or some other respect? What does it add to your understanding of how people experience life with disabilities? How does it challenge your assumptions? Finally, what can you observe and learn from these articles as a writer yourself?

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- In an interview with NPR, R. J. Palacio said she found it more interesting to write about acts of kindness from young people than acts of meanness. This led her to introspection about her own junior high school experience. "Could I have been nicer?" she wonders.

Was I nice? I think somewhere in between nice and not nice is where many people are. It's funny because a lot of people have told me that they identify with the book not because they have experienced bullying, but because when they were younger they remember that there were times when they could've been nicer.

Consider your own life. Where do you fall "in between nice and not nice"? Write a journal entry using specific examples from your life to investigate the answer to this question.

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- Ms. Palacio followed up her first novel with " 365 Days of Wonder." This book collects and shares precepts that she imagines Mr. Browne, the fictional teacher from "Wonder," would share with his class. Using a site such as Brainy Quote, collect 10 precepts you would consider adding to Mr. Browne's collection, or create some of your own precepts to submit via the Choose Kind Tumblr page.

- Read this 40-year-old article from The New York Times's archive, " Surgical Teamwork Gives Disease Victims a New Life," featuring the stories of two young people with severe facial abnormalities. In 1977, what new advances were offering exciting possibilities to the author and readers of this article? In what ways had the situation improved for people with disabilities over previous generations? What do you notice about the word choice in the writing? How have our way of speaking and writing about disability changed since 1977? Look at this article with the eye of a 21st-century newspaper editor. Highlight wording that would need to change to publish this article in a respected newspaper today and revise those passages.

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- The New York Times features a Health Guide section that gives an overview of various illnesses or disabilities such as Auggie's condition, Treacher-Collins syndrome, and Melissa Shang's condition, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Consider a different chronic illness or disability that someone in your life faces and research it using a Times Health Guide. Then, respectfully ask that person to share a little bit of their personal experience with you via email, video chat or perhaps even an audio recording such as in The Times's Patient Voices feature. (Here is another link to personal experiences with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease examples.)

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- Auggie's experience involves starting at a new school and trying to build friendships, a challenge many students face each year. In this New York Times article from 2015, the Yale professor Nicholas A. Christakis writes about college freshmen establishing friendships:

It turns out that we are hard-wired to seek and make friends in novel, stressful circumstances. Students naturally assemble themselves into elaborate social networks - and not just Snapchat, Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter. Our modern technology is merely put into the service of more ancient and powerful impulses.

Compile a list of tips that you think would help a new student adapt to life and build friendships in your school. Additionally, this article begins with a graphic called a sociogram (explained here and exemplified here) that maps the relationships among a set of students. Create a sociogram for the characters in "Wonder" or for another young adult book you have recently read. Do the relationship structures in the novel seem realistic and authentic?

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- This Picture Prompt asks you to think about whether you are an optimist or a pessimist using an illustration of the classic "glass half full or half empty" metaphor. Which are you? To what extent do you think happiness is something that comes from within, and to what extent do you think it is determined by outside events? Why?

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- Mr. Browne is a memorable character from "Wonder" who influences the way his students think about themselves and their world. Does he remind you of any teachers in your own life? Consider this Student Opinion question, then follow it up with a note to a favorite teacher, past or present, who has successfully changed your mind-set about your own abilities.

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More Learning Network Lesson Plans on Often-Taught Literature

Here is what we have so far, and the collection is always growing:

Maya Angelou, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,""Antigone," "The Book Thief," "The Catcher in the Rye," "The Crucible,""Death of a Salesman," Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, "Enrique's Journey,""Frankenstein," "The Giver," "The Glass Castle," "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Great Gatsby," "Harry Potter," "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," "The Hunger Games," "The Kite Runner," "Lord of the Flies," "Of Mice and Men," John Milton, "The Necklace," "Orwell and "1984", "The Outsiders," "A Raisin in the Sun," Shakespeare, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and "Huckleberry Finn," "The Scarlet Letter," "Speak" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."

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Text to Text | 'Wonder' and 'Stories About Disability Don't Have to Be Sad'

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Activity Sheets As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

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An often-taught text paired with a Times article that echoes, extends or challenges its themes or ideas.

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'The Outsiders' and 'Bored, Broke, and Armed'

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'The Outsiders' and 'Bored, Broke, and Armed'

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As Ms. Hinton put it in a recent interview, "That concept of the 'in crowd' and the 'out crowd' is universal. The names of the groups may change, but kids still see their own lives in what happens to Ponyboy and his friends."

Ponyboy's story has spoken to so many over the decades because balancing on a precipice between hope and despair is, for many young people, a daily reality. For most young people coming-of-age, learning to fit in and find their place in the world is a big enough challenge. But for the young men in these texts, gangs, with their promise of brotherhood and belonging, add additional allure and danger.

Ms. Hinton wrote the book as a high school student, living the conflicts that became central to her book. Times reporter John Eligon wrote about Chicago gangs after spending weeks with current and former members. Both pieces raise questions about identity and belonging, manhood and respect - and introduce us to young men who "defy easy caricature" as they wrestle with those issues.

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Key Question: What can we learn by seeing the world through the eyes of outsiders?
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Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

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Text 1: Excerpt from The Outsiders, Chapter 7

... As I lit up, the Socs who had jumped Johnny and me at the park hopped out of the Mustang. I recognized Randy Adderson, Marcia's boyfriend, and the tall guy that had almost drowned me. I hated them. It was their fault Bob was dead; their fault Johnny was dying; their fault Soda and I might get put in a boys' home. I hated them as bitterly and as contemptuously as Dally Winston hated.

Two-Bit put an elbow on my shoulder and leaned against me, dragging on his cigarette. "You know the rules. No jazz before the rumble," he said to the Socs.

"We know," Randy said. He looked at me. "Come here. I want to talk to you."

I glanced at Two-Bit. He shrugged. I followed Randy over to his car, out of earshot of the rest. We sat there in his car for a second, silent. Golly, that was the tuffest car I've ever been in.

"I read about you in the paper," Randy said finally. "How come?"

"I don't know. Maybe I felt like playing hero."

"I wouldn't have. I would have let those kids burn to death."

"You might not have. You might have done the same thing."

Randy pulled out a cigarette and pressed in the car lighter. "I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. I would never have believed a greaser could pull something like that."

" 'Greaser' didn't have anything to do with it. My buddy over there wouldn't have done it. Maybe you would have done the same thing, maybe a friend of yours wouldn't have. It's the individual."

"I'm not going to show at the rumble tonight," Randy said slowly.

I took a good look at him. He was seventeen or so, but he was already old. Like Dallas was old. Cherry had said her friends were too cool to feel anything, and yet she could remember watching sunsets. Randy was supposed to be too cool to feel anything, and yet there was pain in his eyes.

"I'm sick of all this. Sick and tired. Bob was a good guy. He was the best buddy a guy ever had. I mean, he was a good fighter and tuff and everything, but he was a real person too. You dig?"

I nodded.

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Text 2: Excerpt from "Bored, Broke, and Armed"

The young men who call themselves Gangster Disciples skirted by an empty lot. They marched past a "Stop the Violence" mural painted on a corner store, coming to a halt when they saw members of a rival gang, the Black Disciples.

It was late September on a busy South Side intersection, and now tensions were escalating, gang members who were there recalled.

There were glares, they said. Then words.

"You're a rat," a Black Disciple said to one of the Gangster Disciples who he believed had given the police information about him.

Things were about to blow.

It had been exactly 90 days since some of these same men had sat across from one another in an airy church hall to broker peace and confront a hard truth: The gang war they had inherited and were viciously continuing was helping to unravel parts of this city, where the levels of violence were reaching horrific new heights.

... The Times spent several weeks this fall with gang members to get a better understanding of what it means to be in a gang. They were often days of boredom, punctuated by bursts of drama and bravado. Gang life means animated debates over whether the guys on the next block meant to insult you or not. It means worrying over how to make enough for your next meal or your next high. And it means mourning the loss of loved ones, retaliating in their honor, yet wanting the cycle to stop.

Ron, a 23-year-old Black Disciple who uses the nickname Kaos, and for safety reasons asked that his last name not be used, explained the relentless cycle of violence: I've already lost friends. If we are making money, I can ignore the urge to retaliate. "But if we're sitting here bored, getting high and we got guns around, it ain't nothing else to do," he added.

Still, these are young men who defy easy caricature. They are the sales associates who help you find shoes at a sportswear store or factory workers next to you on the assembly line. They kiss their young children on the lips and cry when someone close to them dies.

And, yes, they do use and sell drugs, and sometimes lash out in inexplicable bursts of violence over disputes like a battle for a girl's attention, or disrespectful words uttered on a rap video posted to YouTube.

Or, as was the case in front of the corner store in late September, over an insult hurled on a busy intersection.

For Writing and Discussion
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1. The article observes that gang members are "young men who defy easy caricature" and that boredom contributes to the cycle of violence in Chicago's neighborhoods. Where do you see similar themes in the novel? What other parallels do you see?

2. Both "Bored, Broke and Armed" and "The Outsiders" are based on firsthand observations. An adage for writers advises us to "write what you know." Why might that be especially important when telling the stories of cultural outsiders? What other outsider narratives can you think of? How were they told?

3. R esearch shows that, for many, belonging to a gang can fill the role of family. How do both the article and the novel show this? What lines or scenes from the article on this theme echo lines or scenes from the novel? How?

4. In describing how gangs emerged in Chicago neighborhoods, Mr. Eligon writes, "Boys, with little supervision, money or education, formed cliques. They hung out socially, and got into fights and other petty trouble. He continues: "Now they were everywhere and nowhere - gangsters by name, but kings only of corners and blocks." How do power and powerlessness play a part in these two texts? How do these power dynamics contribute to cycles of violence? What questions do the texts raise about manhood? Why?

5. In a section of "Bored, Broke and Armed" called "A Red Hoodie on Enemy Turf," Mr. Eligon writes:

The clique worried that the war was about to flare again, said Antwine White, 24, a Gangster Disciple who is called Weedy. "You just get prepared for the worst," he said. "They can walk over here. We can think it's cool. They shoot."

That defines day-to-day gang life in Chicago. The young men bound around with their chests out, but their heads are on constant swivels, eyeing everything around them.

What does the article reveal about how perceptions and expectations can contribute to cycles of violence? Do you see similar attitudes playing a role in cycles of violence elsewhere, whether in your own personal experience or as you read headlines in the newspaper about conflicts around the world? How?
_________ Going Further Gangs and Law Enforcement
6. How do both the article and the novel feature people who defy stereotypes of gang members? What can you learn from them?

The Times recently reported that shootings in New York had fallen to the lowest number since the '90s, with most of the credit going to new policing tactics that increase focus on gang-related issues. But in one town in Long Island, gang violence is running rampant - and drawing attention to the effects of gangs even on young people who are trying to avoid them.

Based on what you read in these two articles, list specific steps that law enforcement might take to improve life in communities troubled with a history of gang violence. Which of these steps might make good immediate priorities and which make better long-term goals? Which might work best in a community near you?

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Writing in the Book Review in 2007, Dale Peck re assessed "The Outsiders" on its 40th anniversary. He pointed out that Ms. Hinton's book was in many ways fresh, original, and exciting for young readers, changing the Young Adult genre forever:

Hinton, earnest teenager that she was, wrote to reveal the universality of her Greasers, just as Wright and Ellison did for African-Americans, or Paley and Roth did for Jews.

The review noted, however, that Ms. Hinton also borrowed techniques from other classic books. Mr. Peck writes that these "echoes ... soften the challenging nature of the book's subject matter by wrapping it in references, tropes and language familiar to its adolescent readers, even as they alleviate the fears of those readers' too-earnest parents."

For readers in 2017, is Ms. Hinton's novel still relevant?

Read the essay Ms. Hinton wrote for The Times in 1967 about young adult fiction, and see how much of it still rings true. Then, create an annotated bibliography or a library display of contemporary Y.A. novels that owe a debt to her work because they capture the realities of life for today's 21st-century teenagers, or for "outsiders" or any kind. What would you include? Why?
Stay Gold
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Part of what takes Ponyboy and Johnny beyond stereotypes of gang members is their sensitivity, manifest most memorably in their allusion to Robert Frost's " Nothing Gold Can Stay."

How has Johnny's advice to " stay gold" come to permeate our pop culture? Use Google's search to look at the many ways this phrase has been used to imagine, advertise, joke and encourage. What patterns do you observe in these homages? (Note: if you want to stay in the author's good graces, never say "stay golden.")

Then, consider how poetry still resonates with young people today. For example, watch this video from Favorite Poem Project, in which a young man from South Boston reads a Gwendolyn Brooks poem that shares some of the themes in this lesson plan.

What are your favorite poems? How do they resonate with things you see around you in the world today? Our long-running Poetry Pairing series matches classic poems with Times reporting. What poem and Times article would you pair?
Defying Stereotypes
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When "The Outsiders" first came out, the publishers did not want to use S. E. Hinton's first name, Susan, because it might put off boys who would not normally read books written by women. To this day, many readers assume that because the voice of the novel is male, so is the author.

_________ Outsiders in the World Today
In what ways have you, like the characters in "The Outsiders" and Ms. Hinton herself, defied stereotypes - of your age group, race, religion, gender or anything else that contributes to who you are? Write a personal essay, or create something, like this artist did, that confronts those expectations.

Who are the outsiders in your community? In the world at large right now? How can "outsider thinking" enhance or endanger a community?

To investigate questions like these, put the word " outsider" or " outsiders" into Times search and see what comes up. You might find anything from an article about The New High School Outsiders to a video about innovation called The Power of Outsiders to an Op-Ed called Enter the Age of the Outsiders to a review of the annual Outsider Art Fair in New York City.

Discuss your findings with a small group. What do you notice? What patterns or clichés do you find in these reports about those identified as outsiders? Which of these pieces seem most interesting? What stories seem to be missing?

Finally, consider what stories of outsiders in your own community need telling, and brainstorm ways they could be told.
'Sometimes the Tough Teen is Quietly Writing Stories'
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Hey guys, here's an essay I wrote for NPR . . . Via @nprnews: Sometimes The 'Tough Teen' Is Quietly Writing Stories http://t.co/uKx4xfPJPN
- Matt de la Pena (@mattdelapena) Nov. 11, 2013

Part of what makes the ending of "The Outsiders " so memorable is that we discover Ponyboy is writing his own story to save his grade in high school and to give an untold perspective he believes people must hear.

The Young Adult author Matt de la Peña helps us see from a similar perspective in more contemporary times in his piece " Sometimes The Tough Teen Is Quietly Writing Stories." In it, he tells a story about a boy he meets when he does a reading at a school - someone the principal calls "a real instigator":

After the session, Joshua came to the front of the stage and asked to speak with me in private. He told me he was born in a prison and that he'd been held back in school. Twice. He didn't belong in junior high anymore. It made him feel like a loser. But he wanted me to know that he wrote stories sometimes. About San Antonio gangs. When he asked if I'd be willing to read the one he'd just finished, I told him I'd love to. "But you'll have to get it to me quick," I said. "They're about to shuttle me to the next school."

What questions would you like to ask Mr. de la Pe ñ a? Ms. Hinton? Both are active on Twitter, though it might be a good idea to scroll through their feeds first before you pose questions they may have answered many times in the past.
Curating an "Outsiders" Museum
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"Once you're a fan of 'The Outsiders,' you're always a fan of 'The Outsiders,' writes Hayley Krischer in " Why 'The Outsiders' Lives On: A Teenage Novel Turns 50."

In fact, one 48-year-old fan loves the book so much he wants to turn the house pictured above into an "Outsiders" museum:

On a particularly windy day in the Crutchfield neighborhood here, the writer S. E. Hinton was touring the renovations of the future Outsiders House museum. The rundown Craftsman bungalow was where the Curtis brothers - Darry, Sodapop and Ponyboy - lived in the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola movie based on Ms. Hinton's book "The Outsiders."

The book, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, was arguably one of the most influential young adult books of its time, and leading this tour was the self-described fanboy Danny O'Connor, 48, who made his own contribution to pop-culture history as a member of the 1990s hip-hop group House of Pain.

Mr. O'Connor has been on a quest to find artifacts to include in the museum, amassing a collection of memorabilia from the movie, vintage photographs and hard-to-find editions of the book. Next on his search list, he told Ms. Hinton, 68, was a claw-foot tub like the one 18-year-old Rob Lowe (Sodapop Curtis in the movie) stepped out of with just a towel wrapped around his waist.

Friends and Family
If you were curator of the "Outsiders" museum, what would you want to feature? What exhibits would you have? How would you set it up? What special events might you offer? Sketch your ideal "Outsiders" museum, or create a sample exhibit for it. How might your museum or exhibit both satisfy longtime fans of the novel and pique the interest of a new generation?

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In a post entitled " When Friends Are Like Family," Deborah Tannen illuminates why, like the characters in "The Outsiders," we take some friends into our closest circle and how they become like family. As Ms. Tannen points out, "Holes left by rejected (or rejecting) relatives - or left by relatives lost to distance, death or circumstance - can be filled by friends who are like family."
Related: 'Speak' and 'Waking Up to the Enduring Memory of Rape' 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian' and 'On the Reservation and Off, Schools See a Changing Tide' 'The Giver' and 'The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction' 'The Catcher in the Rye' and 'The Case for Delayed Adulthood' 'The Book Thief' and 'Auschwitz Shifts From Memorializing to Teaching' 'Lord of the Flies' and 'A Fight Club for Flies'
Write a personal letter to a friend who has become like a family member to you. Just like Ms. Tannen does in her article, use specific anecdotes and memories to express to this person why you see them as family.
More About "The Outsiders" and S.E. Hinton
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Timeline | Fifty Years Ago, a Teenager Wrote the Best-Selling Young Adult Novel of All Time The New Yorker | S. E. Hinton and the Y.A. Debate
Do you have ideas for matching an excerpt from an often-taught work of literature with a Times article? Let us know in the comments.

Fifty years ago, a teenager wrote the best selling young adult novel of all time https://t.co/ZSWoPqXXUl via @Timeline_Now pic.twitter.com/fh5Wq0rEBL
- NCTE (@ncte) March 8, 2017

Letters of Note | 'The Outsiders '

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Brett Vogelsinger and Katherine Schulten

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Text to Text: 'The Outsiders' and 'Bored, Broke and Armed'

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As Ms. Hinton put it in a recent interview, "That concept of the 'in crowd' and the 'out crowd' is universal. The names of the groups may change, but kids still see their own lives in what happens to Ponyboy and his friends."

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In a 2000 review, Grace Glueck described Hopper as a "master of loneliness" whose barren landscapes, silent interiors, and pensive figures convey "a haunting emptiness." The desolation becomes most unsettling in those pieces that depict ostensibly intimate situations; Hopper veils his couples' expressions from us and one another with his indistinct brush strokes and moody shadows.

Edward Hopper suggests rather than conveys, and his characteristic restraint compels us to rifle through the oppressive ambiguity for unspoken truths or hidden secrets. In Roberta Smith's review of 'Hopper Drawing' at the Whitney, she explains how viewers want "to get behind the curtain of Hopper's stillness and figure out what's going on," which explains why countless artists, filmmakers, and writers have been riffing on Hopper's work for years.

It is also what makes Hopper so appealing in a high school E.L.A. classroom. Integrating any art into literacy instruction is easy because it so effectively proves to students that the more they look, the more they see - an essential point that is less easily made with written text. Hopper's work in particular is a gold mine for readers who need to practice inferencing, because the truths are whispered, not shouted, and students really need to lean in to hear them.

To model for students the process of intertwining visual art and storytelling, we pair Hopper's "Room in New York" (1932) with Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter." Dahl's juxtaposition of domestic banality with an unforeseen act of violence is pure Hopper, and students love it.

For one thing, they don't have to look too far to recognize the many inter-textual connections. Like Hopper's "Room in New York" couple, Dahl's characters are in a relationship that is both insufferably claustrophobic and deeply disengaged. Hopper's couple could have modeled for Dahl's twisted tale of vengeance. Readers don't see any of it coming, and neither do the characters.

Both pieces poke at what simmers beneath the placid surface of ordinary lives, and what they unearth is darkly disturbing. How well can we really know the people with whom we share our lives? What secrets are they concealing from us? If familiarity breeds contempt, as these two texts suggest, is being alone really the worst thing? Maybe not, if the alternative is living with someone who decides to smash your head in with a slab of frozen meat.

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Key Questions:
* What causes people to close themselves off from the world and each other?
* What truths are buried in silence? * Is it ever possible to truly know our loved ones?
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Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

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Text 1: Edward Hopper's "Room in New York," 1932. _________ A Master, Between the Lines - 'Hopper Drawing,' at the Whitney Museum"

There's not much action in the art of Edward Hopper, who revealed the American soul by freezing and monumentalizing the American scene. His paintings give quiet moments of everyday life an Egyptian stillness; they are fixed in an eternal present, shorn of superfluous detail, rendered as if carved in stone. Their blocky immobility is part of their psychological weight.

In Hopper's work it is emotion, not motion, that counts, the feelings that roil beneath the surfaces of his images. These are conveyed but not explicit in the figures; the isolated buildings and houses; the offices, coffee shops and bedrooms; the empty roads and deserted gas stations; the honeyed annunciating light and the very atmosphere. And then there are the feelings the images arouse in us.

Sometimes it seems that Hopper (1882-1967) could have eternized almost any undistinguished moment of introspection or inaction in anyone's life. That's why his paintings can make us wonder about the opportunities for consciousness and revelation we have been blind to in ourselves. It is also why we strive to get behind the curtain of Hopper's stillness and figure out what's going on.

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Text 3: Excerpt from "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl. (Find the complete story here.)

"Listen," he said. "I've got something to tell you."

"What is it, darling? What's the matter?"

He had now become absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down so that the light from the lamp beside him fell across the upper part of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow. She noticed there was a little muscle moving near the corner of his left eye.

"This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I'm afraid," he said. "But I've thought about it a good deal and I've decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you won't blame me too much."

And he told her. It didn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.

"So there it is," he added. "And I know it's kind of a bad time to be telling you, but there simply wasn't any other way. Of course I'll give you money and see you're looked after. But there needn't really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn't be very good for my job."

Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn't even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadn't been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again, she might find none of it had ever happened.

"I'll get the supper," she managed to whisper, and this time he didn't stop her.

When she walked across the room she couldn't feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn't feel anything at all - except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now - down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at it again.

A leg of lamb.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.

"For God's sake," he said, hearing her, but not turning round. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

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For Writing and Discussion
1. In what ways do the texts reinforce stereotypical gender roles? In what ways do they defy them?

2. Do the artists appear to be supporting or criticizing these stereotypes? Do you believe one gender is portrayed more sympathetically? Explain.

3. With whom do you identify most in both the painting? The story? Are we meant to sympathize with Mrs. Maloney or be horrified by her, or somewhere in between? What about Mr. Maloney? Does the way Hopper depicts the figures in "Room in New York" make them more or less appealing to you? Discuss how each artist uses point of view to add meaning to his text.

4. Why do you suppose Dahl doesn't provide a definitive cause for the breakdown in the Maloney's relationship? And why would Hopper obscure the facial expressions of the figures in his paintings? Do these omissions make the texts more or less satisfying to you as a reader? Why?

5. Both texts depict intimate relationships at varying stages of disintegration. In what ways might these unhappy couples suggest broader sociological commentary about divisions in the world beyond our homes?

6. Does the Times review help you to understand Hopper and what he is trying to convey? What lines from the review apply especially well to "Room in New York"? How? Do any of them also apply to "Lamb to the Slaughter"?
Going Further
Both Hopper and Dahl created work that depicts the emotional toll of social alienation and estrangement. The following articles discuss the considerable impact isolation can have on physical health at all stages of life.

" The Toll of a Solitary Life"

" Having Friends is Good for You, Starting in Your Teens"

" Meet, Mingle and Stay Healthy "

For many people, however, social exclusion is sadly not a choice. And still others are natural introverts for whom forced social interactions are in themselves stressful.

Ask students to construct an argument in response to the following questions, conjoining evidence from the articles with their own thoughts on the subject.

* Can articles like these cause more harm than benefit? And can social isolation even be quantified?

* How many friendships are enough to stave off the damaging effects of loneliness? Is this a fixed number, or does it vary from person to person?

Then, invite them to think about how art conveys emotion, the way Hopper, the "master of loneliness," conveys a sense of isolation. Have students click through the slide show from the 'Hopper Drawing' exhibit, at the top of this post, and describe what specific features suggest this to them. What do these paintings add to their discussion about loneliness? What is the distinction between loneliness and solitude? Is it possible to live a fulfilling life completely alone? Why or why not?

Then, challenge students to make some art of their own - inspired by the Dahl story or one of Hopper's paintings. Students can create poetry, drama, song lyrics, video, or use any other genre of creative expression. To help, teachers may want to use these two assignment worksheets (both Word documents):
Crime Story Outline Art Imitates Life
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Does Digital Connectedness Count?
Few would argue that technology has transformed our social interactions and behaviors in profound ways. Though it is creating new opportunities as well as shrinking boundaries and facilitating relationships, at what costs have we embraced the digital revolution?

Have students look around on the subway, at the park, or in just about any public space. How many people have their faces buried in their electronic devices, oblivious to everyone and everything around them?

Then, invite students to use the arguments that appear in the Room for Debate: "Is Digital Connectedness Good or Bad for People?" to construct a response to the following questions, or some of their own.

* To what extent does your own mobile device interfere with your desire or ability to interact with others in close proximity to you?

* What might you be missing out on, if anything?

* Are human beings actually becoming more isolated from each other than ever before, or has technology improved our capacity for connection?

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The Importance of Being Needed
After reading "Lamb to the Slaughter," one wonders if Patrick Maloney's palpable disdain for his wife's compulsive desperation to serve him ultimately prompted her murderous rage. And in Hopper's "Room in New York," the male figure's imperviousness toward his lonely female companion is similarly painful to witness.

Students might read one or both of the pieces suggested below, and answer the related questions.

1. In an Times Op-Ed entitled " Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded," published a few days before the 2016 presidential election, the Dalai Lama argues that "we all need to be needed," and that "the more we are one with the rest of humanity, the better we feel." Though he concedes that our political leaders have a particular responsibility to ensure more compassionate, inclusive societies, he stresses that on a personal level, we can all satisfy "the universal human hunger to be needed."

After reading, ask students:

*In what simple, practical ways can you behave more inclusively or compassionately in your own daily interactions with others?

*When passing a casual acquaintance in a school hall, or when locking eyes with a stranger on the subway, what is your typical reaction? Do you quickly look away, bury your face in your phone, or do you smile and say hello?

* For one day, can you adjust your responses to better align with the advice given by the Dalai Lama, and record any differences you experience in your mood or state of mind as a result? What conclusions can you draw about how consciously connecting with others affects your own emotional well being?

* Use your own data to formally respond to the following prompt: Do you believe it is more effective to enact social change on a personal level through your own choices and daily interactions with others, or via large-scale social and political activism, such as the recent Women's Marches?

2. In "Lamb to the Slaughter," Mary Maloney dotes on her husband. This can be interpreted as alternately nurturing and solicitous, or cloying and suffocating, a dynamic often replicated between parents and their adolescent children.

In "My U-Turn From Isolation to Intimacy," single mother Michelle Fiordaliso examines the poignant dissolution of emotional intimacy in her life as her teenage son grows up and away from her.

After reading the article, have students consider the following questions:

* With whom do you most identify in the article, the mother or her teenage son? Explain.

* How can you remain emotionally connected with your parents while simultaneously maintaining your own independence?

* How can you establish boundaries in your relationships without pushing away too hard or hurting a parent's feelings?

* Is it even your responsibility to make your parents feel better about your need for autonomy?

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Hopper as a Muse
Few Hopper paintings are as recognizable as "Nighthawks" (1942), which has been endlessly studied, investigated, and reproduced by countless artists, and also parodied by American cultural icons such as "The Simpsons," "Sesame Street," "Peanuts" and ""Star Wars" to name a few.

According to Hopper biographer Gail Levin, "Nighthawks" was inspired by a 1927 Ernest Hemingway short story, "The Killers," which in turn spawned the 1946 film noir classic by the same name, directed by Robert Siodmak.

Students can study these interconnected texts to better understand how artists and writers speak to each other across genres and time periods, and to discuss what about "Nighthawks" makes it so universal and iconic.

Though he died in 1967, Hopper's moody ambiguity and unspoken truths continue to beckon artists, writers, and musicians to this day. Here are a few of the many examples:

" At Edward Hopper's Home, Legally This Time"

In 2013, internationally renown multimedia artist Tony Oursler staged a site-specific art installation at Hopper's childhood home in Nyack, N.Y., where he once broke in as a child when it was unoccupied and in disrepair.

" If Hopper's Freeze-Frame Magic Sprang to Life"

In 2008, the University of Maryland and the National Gallery of Art in Washington jointly produced a one-act opera inspired by five Hopper paintings called "Later the Same Evening." Included in the show are the dysfunctional couple depicted in "Room in New York."

" Gustav Deutsch Brings Hopper's Paintings Alive"

Inspired by a 2004 retrospective of Hopper's work in Europe, Austrian filmmaker Gustav Deutsch transformed 13 Hopper paintings into a live-action, feature-length film in 2014 called " Shirley, Visions of Reality."

Invite your students to find more examples, in The Times and elsewhere.

Finally, you might invite students to craft their own fictional narratives inspired by one of his pieces. This construct has been replicated often, with the latest iteration released in December 2016: In "In Sunlight or in Shadow" is an anthology of Hopper-inspired short stories written by authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King. What stories might your students write?

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Additional Learning Network Resources for Visual Arts & Literary Instruction
* Our Monday What's Going On in This Picture? live-discussion feature invites students to do the same kind of close-reading and inference-making as they do with Edward Hopper, above.

* Our ongoing series about teaching the elements of art with images and articles from The Times has lessons on texture, color, shape, form and line so far.
Jeanne Coffey-Chun teaches English at Wallkill Senior High School in Wallkill, N.Y., where she taught this lesson to her 11th grade classes.

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Text to Text | Edward Hopper and Roald Dahl

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In a 2000 review, Grace Glueck described Hopper as a "master of loneliness" whose barren landscapes, silent interiors, and pensive figures convey "a haunting emptiness." The desolation becomes most unsettling in those pieces that depict ostensibly intimate situations; Hopper veils his couples' expressions from us and one another with his indistinct brush strokes and moody shadows.

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Have you ever gone to visit a person or a place and left feeling refreshed for one reason or another? Maybe it was the beauty of the encounter or, perhaps, the exact opposite of that. Maybe its harshness offered you the chance to think about how people find the strength to persevere. Or maybe you read a story, listened to a song or viewed a documentary that ignited your thinking about the plight of another person, someone different from you. The ideas and questioning that come from life experiences like this can lead to the development of empathy.

Ms. Boylan's essay addresses empathy from two perspectives. She weaves her experience of losing her hearing with the experience of being hated as a transgender person. She tells a story both about judging and being judged in the absence of empathy - and how being forced to imagine what another is feeling or experiencing can ultimately open our hearts and yield compassion.

Nicholas Kristof writes his column out of frustration. He is upset about what he calls "one of this country's fundamental problems" - an empathy gap - and he sets out to describe what researchers know about empathy and how to nurture it. This piece picks up where an earlier Op-Ed, " Where's the Empathy? ", leaves off. In it, Mr. Kristof writes about his friend, Kevin Green, "a warm and helpful man who floundered in a tough job market, hurt his back and died at the age of 54." The column was a call for empathy for those who are struggling, but, predictably, scolds complained that Kevin's problems were of his own making. It makes him ask the question, "So what do we know about empathy and how to nurture it?"

By pairing these two texts, we encourage students to think about what responsibility people have to try to empathize with others different from themselves, and how it may - or may not - help make the world a better place.

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Key Questions
* What responsibility do we have to try to empathize with others who are different from us? Is it even possible to truly do so?

* Can empathy make the world a better place? Or, is empathy overrated?

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

_________
Text 1: Excerpt from "Bring Moral Imagination Back in Style," Jennifer Finney Boylan, The New York Times, July 22, 2016

I came back from the beach one day to find my grandmother and her nearly deaf friend Hilda playing gin and drinking vodka. "She's Not There," by the Zombies, was playing on the radio. This was a little strange.

"Why is Hilda listening to WFIL?" I asked.

"Shh," my grandmother replied. "She thinks it's classical."

I've told this story lots of times since it happened, back in 1968. It always gets a laugh. But lately it doesn't seem so funny.

Not long ago I was searing a steak in my apartment when the place filled with smoke and the fire alarm went off. I stood on a chair to try to turn it off. I had to do this about a half-dozen times before the thing stayed off, and each time I climbed up, my ears - already damaged from a lifetime of playing in rock 'n' roll bands - were less than two feet from the piercing alarm.

When the noise finally stopped, my hearing was "traumatized," as the otolaryngologist later described it. A high-pitched ringing began that night that has not ceased, a sound somewhere between the howling of wind and a chorus of crickets. I've also lost about 60 percent of the upper register of the sound spectrum, and what I do hear resembles the buzzing from a blown-out speaker.

I have been fitted with hearing aids. I am learning to read lips. Why yes, it does suck, thanks for asking.

Now I keep thinking about Hilda, whose handicap struck me more as the stuff of comedy than of compassion.

It wasn't that I didn't understand that she suffered, back when she was old and deaf and I was young and not. It's that whatever she suffered from was something I didn't need to be concerned with. It didn't occur to me that imagining the humanity of people other than myself was my responsibility. And yet the root cause of so much grief is our failure to do just that.

Edmund Burke called this the "moral imagination," the idea that our ethics should transcend our own personal experience and embrace the dignity of the human race.

In May, I appeared on the MSNBC show "Hardball With Chris Matthews" with a representative from the Family Research Council. The F.R.C. spokesman was asked by Mr. Matthews what bathroom I - a transgender woman - should use. Even though I "pass" as a woman and have female anatomy and ID, North Carolina law holds that I should use the men's room (since my birth certificate says M).

My adversary was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of a woman like me in the men's room; at the same time he did not want to budge from his talking point that people like me shouldn't be allowed in the women's room, either, because he was convinced that we constitute some sort of threat to children. In the end, he didn't have an answer for the question, because the idea that I am human - and do occasionally need to use the restroom - was really not one that had given him much concern.
Read the full piece here.
Text 2: Excerpt from "How Do We Increase Empathy," Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, January 29, 2015

So how do we increase empathy?

Dacher Keltner, who runs the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley, says that having people think about suffering activates the vagus nerve, which is linked to compassion. He also cites evidence that uplifting stories about sacrifice boost empathy, as do various kinds of contemplation - prayer, meditation, yoga.

Keltner says that going out into nature also appears to encourage greater compassion. Feelings of awe, such as those generated by incredible images from space, seem to do the same thing, he says.

Professor Pinker, in his superb book "The Better Angels of Our Nature," explores whether the spread of affordable fiction and journalism beginning in the 18th century expanded empathy by making it easier for people to imagine themselves in the shoes of others. Researchers have found that reading literary fiction by the likes of Don DeLillo or Alice Munro - but not beach fiction or nonfiction - can promote empathy.

I used to be cynical about student service projects, partly because they seemed so often to be about dressing up a college application, and trips so often involve countries with great beaches. (Everyone wants to help Costa Rica!) Then there was The Washington Post's report about the Mexican church that was painted six times over the course of a summer by successive waves of visitors.

Yet I've come to believe that service trips do open eyes and remind students of their good fortune. In short, they build empathy.

So let's escape the insulation of our comfort zones. Let's encourage student service projects and travel to distant countries and to needy areas nearby. Whatever the impact on others, volunteering may at least help the volunteer. Let's teach Dickens and DeLillo in schools, along with literature that humanizes minority groups and builds understanding.

Above all, let's remember that compassion and rationality are not effete markers of weakness, but signs of civilization.
Read the full piece here.
_________ For Writing and Discussion
1. Ms. Boylan suggests that much of the despair and grief in the world may come from a lack of empathy. Do you agree? And, do you consider it your responsibility to "imagine the humanity" of others? Should our ethics "transcend our own personal experience and embrace the dignity of the human race"? Why might this be difficult?

2. Have you ever been "otherized" - made to feel alien or different - through teasing, bullying or cyberbullying? Have you ever made someone else feel that way? Do you think a lack of empathy is at the heart of this kind of behavior?

3. Mr. Kristof mentions how empathy entrepreneurs can take advantage of the human inclination to empathize more with some people (or animals) than others. "The biggest empathy generator is cuteness," one expert tells him, "which is why so many charities feature photos of children and why so many conservation organizations feature pandas." Another expert agrees: "It is subject to bias - both laboratory studies and anecdotal experiences show that empathy flows most for those who look like us, who are attractive and who are nonthreatening and familiar." How can we counteract the inherent bias that seems to be hard-wired in our empathy muscle?

4. Mr. Kristof suggests a number of ways to cultivate empathy, such as being present in the natural world or reading literary fiction. Have these methods ever worked for you? For example, has a book or movie ever made you feel empathetic toward others?

5. Who should be teaching children how to cultivate empathy and "moral imagination"? Is it the responsibility of families, schools, churches or community centers, for example? Do you think purposeful programs, projects or even just conversations might help to create empathy and sensitivity toward others? How might we prevent these initiatives from feeling forced?
_________ Going Further 1. Read Books or Watch Films to Strengthen Your Empathy Muscle
Mr. Kristof writes about a study published in the journal Science that found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence - skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone's body language or gauge what they might be thinking. Here are the reading selections the study used.
2. Travel Outside Your Comfort Zone
Common Sense Media also has a list of movies and a list of books that inspire empathy. Watch one of the films or read one of the books on these lists and write a reflection that explores the main conflict and struggle in the story, as well as your thoughts on whether or how reading or watching helped you cultivate empathy.

Or, make your own list. What books and films have helped you feel empathy toward others? How?

For example, the award-winning young adult novel " Rebels by Accident" offers readers a chance to slip into ever changing world of Mariam, a 16-year-old Egyptian-American narrator grappling with issues of cultural identity and belonging. The book's author, Patricia Dunn, views empathy as a critical theme in the text: "My main character develops empathy for others but also for herself. She's really internalized the anti-Muslim/Arab speak she gets from other kids and the media until she goes to Egypt and learns about who she is and who she comes from." What comes to mind when you think about Egypt today? Explore Ms. Dunn's work, get to know Mariam's story and determine if your ideas about this country and this region shift or widen as a result of your reading.

The poet Maya Angelou, like Ms. Finney Boylan and Mr. Kristof, encouraged risk-taking when it comes to comfort zones. In her collection of essays "Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now," she writes:

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

3. Consider Empathy in Advertising
Do you agree that travel can foster understanding and empathy? Why?

Do you think when Ms. Angelou refers to "travel," that she only means traveling to foreign countries? Might she also mean traveling closer to home, to unfamiliar cities, towns or neighborhoods that might make us feel a little uncomfortable because they are different from our own? How can you travel, near or far, to try to understand other people?

In his column, Mr. Kristof shares his evolving opinion on service projects and trips. What do you think about these experiences? Does undertaking community service foster empathy for the volunteer? Have you ever participated in a service project? What effects experience have on you?
5. Cultivate Empathy, One Person at a Time
Can you locate places where you could give your "person power" to a meaningful project that may benefit others, whether near or far? Weeding a community garden in the next neighborhood? Working at a camp or a school in a place where extra help is welcomed and needed? We have many ideas in our lesson plan Making a Difference: Ideas for Giving, Service Learning and Social Action.

Famous for his provocative advertising campaigns, Kenneth Cole introduced a series of ads in 2008 that served as a bold message about the power of empathy.

Do you support the use of images in advertising that make for a highly emotional experience? Or, is it manipulative for companies to try to use empathy to sell products?

Name some examples of groups, companies or products that you think have been successful in eliciting an emotional response from viewers. Can you name any that may have crossed a line?

In his farewell speech on Jan. 10, 2017, President Barack Obama suggested, using an example from Harper Lee's classic work of literature, that progress happens when a nation's people embrace the value of empathy:

But laws alone won't be enough. Hearts must change. It won't change overnight. Social attitudes oftentimes take generations to change. But if our democracy is to work the way it should in this increasingly diverse nation, then each one of us need to try to heed the advice of a great character in American fiction, Atticus Finch, who said "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

6. Practice Empathy as You Follow Divisive Issues in the News This idea is from our lesson "Talking Across Divides: 10 Ways to Encourage Civil Classroom Conversation On Difficult Issues." We published it as part of our Civil Conversation Challenge for teenagers in the fall of 2016 that challenged young people to speak respectfully, and empathetically, to each other about controversial issues across political, geographic and demographic divides. You can read our reflections on the fascinating and successful results here.
When have you tried to consider things from another point of view? When have you climbed into someone else's skin and walked around in it?

Do you agree with President Obama that increasing empathy will gradually help to heal the divisions in our society?

Then, think about what might make it easier or harder to be an empathetic person in our modern society? Think about daily life and culture. What in our society do you think helps to build empathy between people of different groups (divided by race, social class or sexual orientation, for example)? What helps to get in the way of empathy?

Now, think about what you can do in your own life to step outside the familiar and try to understand someone different from yourself.
7. Is Empathy Overrated?
Do you know who Glenn Beck is? He is a conservative radio host and media personality who surprised many this summer when he urged his fellow conservatives to understand the Black Lives Matter movement. He then published an Op-Ed essay in The Times that begins:

In a recent speech to a group of conservatives, I made what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial point about the commonalities between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter activists. I thought this was a simple idea, but the criticism was immediate and sharp: How dare I try to understand the "other side"?

But as people, wouldn't we all benefit from trying to empathize with people we disagree with?

Read what he has to say - and read some of the 919 comments Times readers made in response. What do you think of the argument he makes?

What divisive issues in the news right now do you feel passionate about? How might you use empathy to seek to understand an opposing point of view on the issue?

Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, tells Mr. Kristof, "Probably the biggest empathy generator is cuteness: paedomorphic features such as large eyes, a large head, and a small lower face. Professional empathy entrepreneurs have long known this, of course, which is why so many charities feature photos of children and why so many conservation organizations feature pandas. Prettier children are more likely to be adopted, and baby-faced defendants get lighter sentences."

Paul Bloom agrees with this point about empathy: "It is subject to bias - both laboratory studies and anecdotal experiences show that empathy flows most for those who look like us, who are attractive and who are nonthreatening and familiar."

If empathy is inherently swayed by bias, is it therefore overrated as a skill to possess and nurture?

Mr. Bloom argues that it is. He makes the case that what we need is a combination of rationality and compassion to be good people.

"When we appreciate that skin color does not determine who we should care about, for example, or that a crisis such as climate change has great significance - even though it is an abstract threat - we are transcending empathy. A good policy maker makes decisions using reason, aspiring toward the sort of fairness and impartiality empathy doesn't provide."

What do you think? This Room for Debate forum, "Does Empathy Guide or Hinder Moral Action?", is a conversation between Mr. Bloom and Jamil Zaki, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University, who takes a different point of view.

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Text to Text: On Empathy and 'Moral Imagination'

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Have you ever gone to visit a person or a place and left feeling refreshed for one reason or another? Maybe it was the beauty of the encounter or, perhaps, the exact opposite of that. Maybe its harshness offered you the chance to think about how people find the strength to persevere.

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Soliloquies from 'Hamlet' and 'Les Miserables'

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Soliloquies from 'Hamlet' and 'Les Miserables'

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In a soliloquy, the speech is kept private from the other characters in the play, and, although the audience is privy to the character's thoughts, the character is talking to him or herself alone. Soliloquies can create dramatic irony, because the audience is made aware of thoughts and events that the other characters in the play are not.

"Hamlet" has captured the imaginations of audiences for four centuries. It is Shakespeare's most performed play around the world - and, of course, one of the most-taught works of literature in high school and college classrooms. In fact, Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech is the best-known soliloquy in the world.

"Les Misérables" is Victor Hugo's 1862 historical classic about Jean Valjean, imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread, and his life of compassion and contribution after his release. The novel has been adapted countless times for film, television, radio, musicals, plays and concerts.

The French stage musical by Claude-Michel Schonberg premiered in Paris in 1980. French lyrics for the musical were written by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, and English lyrics were written by Herbert Kretzmer. The musical is the longest-running show in London, and the second longest-running musical in the world (after " The Fantasticks "). The stage musical inspired the most recent film version - the popular 2012 film directed by Tom Hooper and starring Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.

In the soliloquies we pair here, Hamlet and Jean Valjean are each at a crossroads in their lives, and each wrestles mightily with his conscience. Both characters seek moral clarity, both struggle with existential questions, and both argue with themselves in an effort to come to some realization. At the end of each speech, each character is closer to a path forward.

To work with the two texts, you might first discuss the conventions, requirements and standards of a soliloquy, and, using this video, compare them to a monologue and an "aside." Ask students, what different conditions within the play might cause a playwright to use a soliloquy, a monologue or an aside? Are they interchangeable? Why or why not?

Students might also view - or act out themselves - different interpretations of the "To be or not to be" speech. They can begin with the video of Laurence Olivier embedded at the top of this lesson, then view this video of five actors giving different interpretations. (And, possibly, an additional one, here). Which is their favorite? Why? How would they compare the actors' deliveries? How can different readings change the meaning of a soliloquy? What examples can they give?

Finally, as they watch and read the two speeches together, you might ask students to think about how Hamlet and Jean Valjean think about the following questions: What happens after death? What is the best way to live, or die, morally, in the eyes of God? Is it better to act or to remain inactive? Is existence worth the pain? Where does a man's responsibility to himself, and to others, begin and end?

The outcomes for Hamlet and Jean Valjean are different, but for each, his soliloquy expresses a pivotal moment in determining how to live the rest of his life.
_________ Key Questions
* How do soliloquies work as a literary device to illuminate characters and themes?

* What do these two soliloquies in particular reveal about the characters speaking them and the themes of the works they are from as a whole?
_________ Activity Sheets
As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature, which matches often-taught texts with Times articles and other content.

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions
_________ Text One: HAMLET SOLILOQUY ACT 3, SCENE 1

_________ Text Two: Anatomy of a Scene: Les Misérables
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?-To die,-to sleep,-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,-to sleep;-
To sleep: perchance to dream:-ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,-puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
_________ Questions for Writing and Discussion
What have I done,
Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
Become a thief in the night
Become a dog on the run
And have I fallen so far
And as the hour so late
That nothing remains but the cry of my hate
The cries in the dark that nobody hears
Here where I stand at the turning of the years
If there's another way to go
I missed it twenty long years ago
My life was a war that could never be won
They gave me a number and they murdered Valjean
When they chained me and left me for dead
Just for stealing a mouthful of bread
Yet why did I allow this man
to touch my soul and teach me love?
He treated me like any other
He gave me his trust
He called me brother
My life he claims for God above
Can such things be
For I had come to hate the world
This world that always hated me
Take an eye for an eye
Turn your heart into stone
This is all I have lived for
This is all I have known
One word from and I'd be back
beneath the lash, upon the rack
Instead he offers me my freedom
I feel my shame inside me like a knife
He told me that I have a soul
How does he know
What spirit comes to move my life
Is there another way to go
I am reaching, but I fall
and the night is closing in
As I stare into the void
to the whirlpool of my sin
I'll escape now from that world
From the world of Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean is nothing now
Another story must begin!

1. What is the rhetorical question Hamlet addresses in his soliloquy? What is the rhetorical question Jean Valjean addresses? What are the inner arguments each character wrestles with, and why?

2. How is each soliloquy both a rant and a reflection? What emotions are revealed by Hamlet? By Jean Valjean? How do they change within the soliloquy?

3. How does each soliloquy move from the general to the specific, from the abstract to the concrete, and back again?

4. How - and where - do the authors weave figurative language, from imagery to hyperbole, metaphor, allusions, simile, symbolism, irony and puns, into their soliloquies? How do those literary devices seem to help the character understand himself more clearly, as he speaks aloud?

5. How do shifts in tone for both Hamlet and Jean Valjean help make meaning for the audience? Where do those shifts in tone occur for each soliloquy?

6. How do Hamlet and Jean Valjean each reach an increased self awareness, and then a resolution of sorts, by the end of their speeches? How does each man arrive at his decision - or at his acceptance of indecision?
_________ Going Further Memorize a Monologue or Soliloquy...
7. To what extent is the presentation itself important when considering the effectiveness of the two soliloquies? Does a soliloquy that is sung, in the case of Jean Valjean in this adaptation of "Les Misérables," add or detract from that meaning, and how? Could Hamlet's soliloquy be sung, or be staged in another way? How?

In " Memorize That Poem! " Molly Worthen argues that, though "poetry memorization has become deeply unfashionable," memorizing and reciting can be "highly expressive" acts. Her piece begins:

Late one night this spring, Justin Snider, an assistant dean at Columbia University, was riding the uptown No. 2 in Manhattan when the train ground to a halt. After about 15 minutes - with little information about the delay and no cell service - everyone in the car was getting restless. Suddenly, inspiration struck. "I asked neighboring passengers if they wanted to hear some Shakespeare, and no one objected," Mr. Snider told me.

He had memorized Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech more than 15 years earlier, to pass the time on a cross-country bike trip. "I was definitely nervous because I'd never performed publicly before," he said. Although his jaded audience neglected to clap when he finished - they did applaud when the train started to move again - Mr. Snider was pleased that he didn't forget a line.

The soliloquy was fixed in the architecture of his brain, ready to serve in a moment of boredom or underground anxiety. It's no coincidence that Mr. Snider has asked students to memorize poetry many times in his career in education.

_________ ...and Then Perform It
Have students read the article and then memorize the soliloquy or monologue of their choice. Then, debrief the class on the experience: How difficult was it for them to memorize? What benefits did they find? For instance, did they feel it helped them understand the text or character better? How? What did they begin to notice about the language and ideas?

In 2013, The New York Times asked high school and college students to use Instagram to record short videos of lines from Shakespeare's tale of royal intrigue and revenge, and nearly 500 seized the opportunity. This piece calls out some of the most interesting results.

Many teachers use performance as a way to get students to connect with and embody the text. After your students have memorized a monologue or soliloquy, invite them to get the words "on their feet" by staging a monologue slam patterned after the one described in the short news clip above.

To learn more, have them read this article about the competition and how it got started:

Aspiring actors are accustomed to having doors slammed in their faces, but lately in a modest club in the East Village, a few have been doing some slamming of their own.

At a frenetic monthly competition called the Manhattan Monologue Slam, performers looking for that fabled big break, or even a small break, are squaring off against one another in a flurry of three-minute monologues, with a casting director or other industry professional sitting as judge. First prize is a one-on-one meeting with that judge for career input - the kind of meeting many struggling actors can only fantasize about.

The slam, patterned after a poetry slam and with the same mutually supportive, raucous atmosphere, is the creation of Robert and Philip Galinsky, brothers who know the struggling-Village-actor life from firsthand experience.

"We were sitting in my living room one afternoon, thinking about how could we control our destiny and not just be another actor trying to get the head shot onto somebody's desk," Robert Galinsky, 40, said, recalling how the first slam came about in April 2003. "After we brainstormed a little bit, we came up with, 'Hey, let's do the structure of a poetry slam, but do it for actors with monologues.' And that was it."

__________ "Les Misérables" Adapted
How can you stage your own monologue/soliloquy slam? Can other classes in your school get involved? Could your drama department help students prepare?

"Rarely has any work of literature received such a pummeling at the hands of a succession of publishers, translators, filmmakers and musical impresarios," writes The Times about "Les Misérables" in a review of a book about the life of this classic work. Though the review argues that "perhaps the most damaging deformation belongs to the all-conquering stage musical 'Les Miz,'" it is likely that it is through that musical that students know the work best.

For an in-depth look at the novel's transformation to a Broadway musical, have students read this 1987 Times review by Frank Rich. He acknowledges that:

The evening may not appeal to those enraptured by the 1,300-page edition of Hugo. The musical thinks nothing of condensing chapters of exposition or philosophical debate into a single quatrain or unambiguous confrontation; encyclopedic digressions and whole episodes are thrown out.

But, he argues, "While facts and psychological nuances are lost and even the plot is often relegated to a program synopsis, the thematic spirit of the original is preserved. Sequence after sequence speaks of Hugo's compassion for society's outcasts and his faith in God's offer of redemption." And he ends his review, "The stirring sentiments belong to hallowed 19th-century literature, to be sure, but the fresh charge generated by this 'Miserables' has everything to do with the electrifying showmanship of the 20th-century musical."

What do your students think? If they have read the novel and seen the musical or any of the films, what do they think of the adaptations? What, in their opinion, is essential to preserve across adaptations about the original? Why?

Even if your students have not read the book, they may enjoy watching some of the musical. Here is Philip Quast, playing the policeman Javert, in a video from the musical's 10th anniversary. To extend their study of the soliloquy, have them read the lyrics of his song "Stars," and consider as they watch and read: Does Javert's song fit the criteria of a formal soliloquy? Why or why not?

What does Javert reveal, and what is he certain of at the end of his speech? To what extent is his inner character revealed to the audience, and to himself, by the end of the song? To what extent does Javert wrestle with the same questions of death, life, suicide, revenge and vengeance that Jean Valjean does in his soliloquy? How does each character justify or base his actions on his personal version of morality, and why?
Write Your Own Soliloquies
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Have students try their hands at writing a soliloquy themselves, taking care to include all the formal elements.

They might choose to write one from the point of view of a character in a book or play they have read, studied and discussed. Or, students could write this speech from the point of view of someone currently in the news, whether a political figure, an actor or an athlete.

You might set requirements like these:

Your soliloquies must:

* be written in first person

* be written in unrhymed or blank verse

* begin with a rhetorical question

* incorporate at least three poetic or literary devices

Students should remember they are writing something intended to be spoken, so should try to hear the words as they write.

The soliloquy can be written factually, using the explicit conditions, events, characters and plot of the book and character they have selected, or the real-life figure they have chosen. Or, the soliloquy can be inferential, even fabricated. It can address something that is not explicitly stated in a text - or, in the case of a real-life figure, something that hasn't happened in real life but that students can infer from actual events, plot, characters or tone.
_________ Consider the Monologues of Late Night Hosts as Mentor Texts
After writing, students should read their soliloquies to the class and have classmates guess who is speaking, and what play, film, novel or political figure was selected. Students can critique one another's work in small groups, and then make revisions based on classmates' suggestions.

Among other Times coverage, the "Best of Late Night" by Giovanni Russonello reports on late night talk show hosts and their monologues. Have students compare and contrast several of the monologuists below, and decide which person - and which specific speech - is most persuasive, funny, or effective - and why.

Ask students, "How does the monologuist turn the personal into the political, and what does that strategy do for the monologue?"

They can start with The Times's coverage of Jimmy Kimmel's emotional monologue about his new son's heart condition, or his monologue on gun laws, which begins:

"This morning, we have children without parents and fathers without sons, mothers without daughters. We lost two police officers. We lost a nurse from Tennessee. A special-ed teacher from a local school here in Manhattan Beach. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to throw up or give up. It's too much to even process - all these devastated families who now have to live with this pain forever because one person with a violent and insane voice in his head managed to stockpile a collection of high-powered rifles and use them to shoot people." - JIMMY KIMMEL

Another option is to read this 2016 Times article, with a transcript of Chris Rock's opening monologue for the Oscars, or Trevor Noah's November 2017 monologue on the Republican tax bill.

Students can also get inspired looking at highlights of the 2017 "Best of Late Night" wrap up.

Another excellent source for the question above is Times coverage of Ste p h en Colbert and his monologue on the New York City subway bomber, which begins:
Hear Shakespeare's Words in New Contexts

Clearly relishing the opportunity, Mr. Colbert lit into a string of jokes about the resiliency of New York commuters - and the travails of having to travel on the subway every day.

"But I've got something to say to this guy. Seriously? You tried to terrorize New York subway commuters? Nice try. Nice try. New York commuters don't even flinch when the subway breakdancers kick two inches away from their face. They have to battle rats for the seat - which, for the record, you should only give up if the rat is pregnant. Come on. Come on. You tried to sow chaos and confusion in the Port Authority bus station? That is the normal state of affairs at the Port Authority bus station. There's a pretty good chance your little explosion may have scoured some of the grime off the wall, thanks. Now you're going to jail for a long, long, long time. And all New Yorkers want to know is, does that mean your apartment is free? And is it rent-controlled?" - STEPHEN COLBERT

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A March 2017 Times article, " Using Shakespeare to Ease the Trauma of War," speaks to the ways that Shakespeare's words can resonate outside their original context, to help veterans heal. The piece begins:
_________ Related Resources from The Learning Network Shakespeare: Celebrate Shakespeare on His 450th Birthday: Seven Ideas for Teaching and Learning Teaching Shakespeare With The New York Times Other Authors and Works:

Stephan Wolfert was drunk when he hopped off an Amtrak train somewhere in Montana, toting a rucksack of clothes and a cooler stocked with ice, peanut butter, bread and Miller High Life - bottles, not cans. It was 1991, he was 24, and he had recently seen his best friend fatally wounded in a military training exercise.

His mind in need of a salve, he went to a play: "Richard III," the story of a king who was also a soldier. In Shakespeare 's words, he heard an echo of his own experience, and though he had been raised to believe that being a tough guy was the only way to be a man, something cracked open inside him.

"I was sobbing," Mr. Wolfert, now 50 and an actor, said recently over coffee in Chelsea. "I didn't know you could have emotions out loud."

That road-to-Damascus moment - not coming to Jesus, but coming to Shakespeare - is part of the story that Mr. Wolfert tells in his solo show, "Cry Havoc!," which starts performances Wednesday, March 15, at the New Ohio Theater. Taking its title from Mark Antony's speech over the slain Caesar in "Julius Caesar," it intercuts Mr. Wolfert's own memories with text borrowed from Shakespeare. Decoupling those lines from their plays, Mr. Wolfert uses them to explore strength and duty, bravery and trauma, examining what it is to be in the military and what it is to carry that experience back into civilian life.

Challenge students to reread some of the Shakespearean soliloquies they have studied and consider what resonance they have today. Do they parallel anything happening in our world, or to a particular group of people? To whom might particular lines or speeches offer solace or instruction, the way the "If it were done when 'tis done" soliloquy, Macbeth's debate with himself about whether to kill Duncan, the king, is meaningful to one veteran described in this piece?

Here is what we have so far, and the collection is always growing:

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," "All Summer in a Day," Maya Angelou, "Antigone," Jane Austen, "The Book Thief," "The Catcher in the Rye," "The Crucible," "Death of a Salesman," Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, "Enrique's Journey," "Frankenstein," "The Giver," "The Glass Castle," "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Great Gatsby," "Harry Potter," "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," "The Hunger Games," "The Kite Runner," "Lord of the Flies," "Of Mice and Men," John Milton, "The Necklace," Orwell and "1984," "The Outsiders," "A Raisin in the Sun," Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and "Huckleberry Finn," "The Scarlet Letter," "Speak", "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Wonder."

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Text to Text | Soliloquies From 'Hamlet' and 'Les Misérables'

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In a soliloquy, the speech is kept private from the other characters in the play, and, although the audience is privy to the character's thoughts, the character is talking to him or herself alone. Soliloquies can create dramatic irony, because the audience is made aware of thoughts and events that the other characters in the play are not.

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'The Fault in our Stars' and 'You May Want to Marry My Husband'

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'The Fault in our Stars' and 'You May Want to Marry My Husband'

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Ms. Rosenthal also wrote 28 children's picture books herself, as well as two memoirs ("Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal," in 2016, and an alphabetized "Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life," in 2005); delivered TED Talks and NPR commentaries; and produced short films and YouTube videos of what she called social experiments, with titles like "ATM: Always Trust Magic," "The Money Tree" and "The Beckoning of Lovely." But with the publication of her Modern Love essay, she found a new audience, as her Times obituary recounts:

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific children's book author, memoirist and public speaker who, dying of cancer, found an extraordinarily large readership this month with a column in The New York Times titled "You May Want to Marry My Husband," died on Monday at her home in Chicago. She was 51.

The cause was ovarian cancer, which she learned she had in September 2015, her agent, Amy Rennert, said.

Ms. Rosenthal's bittersweet paean to her spouse of 26 years appeared as a Modern Love column in the online Style section of The Times on March 3 and in the Sunday newspaper section on March 5.

The column has drawn almost four and a half million readers online.

"I want more time with Jason," she wrote. "I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?

In the video below, you can learn about one of her "social experiments":

__________

For most teenagers, Mr. Green needs no introduction.

As the article " A Novelist and His Brother Sell Out Carnegie Hall " described it in 2013, his is a "multiplatform world with few boundaries":

The sold-out show put on full view Mr. Green's uncanny knack for channeling the voice of marginalized but smart, self-identifying nerds, a gift he has turned into a YouTube empire. The core of his online presence is the VlogBrothers channel, where once a week he and Hank exchange slightly manic but humorous and sincere riffs on science and life.

He and his brother also use the Internet to raise money for charity and broadcast "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries," a video adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." They also teach what they describe as advanced courses aimed at high school students online.

The followers of the VlogBrothers call themselves Nerdfighters - not because they fight nerds but because they "un-ironically" and "passionately" embrace being smart and having eccentric interests.

In addition to "The Fault in Our Stars," Mr. Green is the author of three other young adult novels, and while he says that a Venn diagram of his fans of his novels and of his video enterprises might show only a 40 percent overlap, it is big enough that one drives traffic to the other with - in VlogBrother parlance - awesome results.

Preorders pushed "The Fault in Our Stars" to the top of the sales lists on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble Web sites after Mr. Green announced its title to VlogBrother fans in June 2011. Penguin pushed the release date up by six months to last January. The book, about two teenagers dealing with cancer, now has 950,000 digital and print copies and has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 52 weeks.

This video, created to accompany the article, explores Mr. Green as online sensation, and looks at how that has impacted his writing career:

And via this New Yorker piece, " The Teen Whisperer," students can learn much more, from the origin of "nerdfighters" to the fact that the main character in "The Fault in Our Stars" was inspired by one of his fans, Esther Grace Earl:

Esther had thyroid cancer, as Hazel does in the book, and was dependent on an oxygen tank. Green got to be friends with her online, and later visited her in person. Green is careful to say that Hazel - whose middle name is Grace - is not Esther, but Esther's father and sister have spoken, appreciatively, of how much Green's creation reminds them of her. Esther died in 2010, at the age of sixteen. "I could not have written it without her friendship," Green said, adding that "there is definitely something weird about her not being here to give her blessing or not."

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Key Questions:

* What can readers, and writers, learn from stories of those who are confronting their own mortality?

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Activity Sheets

As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

_________

Text 1: Excerpt from Chapter 10, "The Fault in Our Stars"

"How many dead people do you think there are?"

"Like, how many fictional people died in that fictional movie? Not enough," he joked.

"No, I mean, like, ever. Like, how many people do you think have ever died?"

"I happen to know the answer to that question," he said. "There are seven billion people, and about ninety-eight billion dead people."

"Oh," I said. I'd thought that maybe since population growth had been so fast, there were more people alive than all the dead combined.

"There are about fourteen dead people for every living person," he said ... "I did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everyone could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?"

"And are there?"

"Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare, and no one ends up remembering who he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about."

"Yeah," I said.

It was quiet for a minute, and then he asked, "You want to read or something?" I said sure. I was reading this long poem called Howl by Allen Ginsberg for my poetry class, and Gus was rereading An Imperial Affliction.

After a while he said, "Is it any good?"

"The poem?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, it's great. The guys in this poem take even more drugs than I do. How's A IA?"

"Still perfect," he said. "Read to me."

"This isn't really a poem to read aloud when you are sitting next to your sleeping mother. It has, like, sodomy and angel dust in it," I said.

"You just named two of my favorite pastimes," he said. "Okay, read me something else then?"

"Um," I said. "I don't have anything else?"

"That's too bad. I am so in the mood for poetry. Do you have anything memorized?"

"'Let us go then, you and I,'" I started nervously, "'When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.'"

"Slower," he said.

I felt bashful, like I had when I'd first told him of An Imperial Affliction. "Um, okay. Okay. 'Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / A nd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . / Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit.'"

"I'm in love with you," he said. He was staring at me and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."

"Augustus," I said again, not knowing what else to say. I felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I couldn't say anything back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed, and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window.

_________

By the end of dinner, I knew I wanted to marry him.

Jason? He knew a year later.

I have never been on Tinder, Bumble or eHarmony, but I'm going to create a general profile for Jason right here, based on my experience of coexisting in the same house with him for, like, 9,490 days.

First, the basics: He is 5-foot-10, 160 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes.

The following list of attributes is in no particular order because everything feels important to me in some way.

He is a sharp dresser. Our young adult sons, Justin and Miles, often borrow his clothes. Those who know him - or just happen to glance down at the gap between his dress slacks and dress shoes - know that he has a flair for fabulous socks. He is fit and enjoys keeping in shape.

If our home could speak, it would add that Jason is uncannily handy. On the subject of food - man, can he cook. After a long day, there is no sweeter joy than seeing him walk in the door, plop a grocery bag down on the counter, and woo me with olives and some yummy cheese he has procured before he gets to work on the evening's meal.

Jason loves listening to live music; it's our favorite thing to do together. I should also add that our 19-year-old daughter, Paris, would rather go to a concert with him than anyone else.

When I was working on my first memoir, I kept circling sections my editor wanted me to expand upon. She would say, "I'd like to see more of this character."

Of course, I would agree - he was indeed a captivating character. But it was funny because she could have just said: "Jason. Let's add more about Jason."

_________

Questions for Writing and Discussion

1. "You May Want to Marry My Husband" garnered over 1,600 comments online, many of them echoing a woman who wrote, "I was beyond touched by your article." "The Fault in Our Stars" is, of course, similarly heart-rending, so much so that the Times critic A.O. Scott described the movie version as "an expertly built machine for the mass production of tears." Why do these two pieces affect readers so deeply, and how do both authors manage to make them romantic but not maudlin?

2. In her essay, Ms. Rosenthal shares lots of small personal details that make her husband the "extraordinary" man she knows. She mentions his socks, his cooking, his humorous arrangements of utensils. How do these seemingly tiny details contribute to the overall effect of this essay for you as a reader? What can you learn about good writing from her use of specific detail?

3. In both passages, one person is sure of their love before the other. What challenges does it create in relationships when two people are not ready to say "I love you" to each other at the same time?

4. In Mr. Green's Crash Course video, above, he refers to Hazel and Augustus as "star-crossed lovers" comparing them to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Why do you think readers through the ages are so drawn to stories of lovers whose stories end in loss?

5. Ms. Rosenthal writes: "I have been married to the most extraordinary man for 26 years. I was planning on at least another 26 together." This is markedly different than the brief time Hazel and Augustus share together in "The Fault in Our Stars." Had a terminal illness not been part of their shared experience, do you think Hazel and Augustus would still have had the qualities to last as a couple? What details in the story suggest that they have or do not have the qualities of an enduring love?

6. Study the Brian Rea illustration that is paired with Ms. Rosenthal's essay and is pictured at the top of this lesson. What do you notice? If you gave this piece of artwork a title, what would it be? Do you think it was crafted after the artist read this essay, or paired with the essay by an editor? What leads you to this conclusion? (The Learning Network has also used the illustration as a picture prompt, inviting readers to "Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story inspired by this illustration, and post it in the comments." What story would you write?)

7. One of the most memorable features of Hazel Grace's narrative voice in "The Fault in Our Stars" is her sardonic sense of humor. A Times review of the book calls the characters "improbably witty ... the kind of people you wish you knew." How does Ms. Rosenthal similarly imbue her piece with humor? What lines show this best?

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Going Further
Learning From Other Works About Facing Death
What other books, movies, poems, short stories or songs do your students know that deal with living in the face of death? For instance, they may be familiar with nonfiction best-sellers like Mitch Albom's " Tuesdays With Morrie," Dr. Paul Kalanithi's " When Breath Becomes Air" or Randy Pausch's " The Last Lecture."

As a class, create a library or classroom display, or an annotated bibliography of selections, perhaps even summarizing some of the best advice or insights from each. In what ways does confronting death change our perspective on life in the present? What can we learn from those living in the face of a terminal illness?

Students might also read an Op-Ed piece by Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter called " First, Sex Ed. Then Death Ed. " She writes:

I am a passionate advocate for educating teenagers to be responsible about their sexuality. And I believe it is past time for us to educate them also about death, an equally important stage of life, and one for which the consequences of poor preparedness are as bad, arguably worse. Ideally this education would come early, well before it's likely to be needed.

I propose that we teach death ed in all of our high schools. I see this curriculum as a civic responsibility. I understand that might sound radical, but bear with me. Why should death be considered more taboo than sex? Both are a natural part of life. We may think death is too scary for kids to talk about, but I believe the consequences of a bad death are far scarier. A death ed program would aim to normalize this passage of life and encourage students to prepare for it, whenever it might come - for them, or for their families.

Do your students agree? Why do they think such a curriculum might be needed, and what do they imagine it could look like?

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Reading Book Reviews, Writing Book Reviews
Are your students John Green fanatics? Have they read not only "Fault in Our Stars" but also his earlier novels and his most recent, "Turtles All the Way Down"?

Whether they have read the books in question or not, invite them to see how Times reviewers have written about them. All but his first novel, "Looking for Alaska," has been reviewed here:

" The Fault in Our Stars "

" Turtles All the Way Down "

" Paper Towns"

" An Abundance of Katherines "

" Will Grayson, Will Grayson "

If students have not yet read the book, you might have them preview the novel by reading the review and completing the "Reading Reviews With a Critical Eye" handout (PDF). Then ask: Did this critic's piece make you want to read the book? Would you be more likely to select a book based on a peer's recommendation or based on the opinion of a professional reviewer?

If students have already read the book, invite them to consider how they would rate it. What are its strengths? Are there weaknesses they would point to? Would they recommend it to others? As they read the review, ask students to classify the opinions as positive or critical. Some may be ambiguous, such as these statements from Jennifer Senior's review of "Turtles All the Way Down":

· In some ways [the novel] is very much a John Green production.

· [Green] seems to have made a decision: If Aza can't find relief, neither can we.

Over all, how would they characterize the critic's opinion of the book - positive, negative or somewhere in between? With which of the critic's points do you agree? With which do you disagree? Did the review impact your opinion of the book in any way?

Finally, invite students to create their own review of the book - either in the form of a written review or as a video or podcast. You might use the handout Advice from Three New York Times Critics (PDF) as well as our lesson plan on Reading and Writing Culture Reviews to guide them.

Another idea? Consider Mr. Green as a reviewer himself, as the English teacher Rebekah O'Dell does in her lesson plan " Writing Book Reports With Help From New York Times Book Reviews " that draws on his piece reviewing "The Hunger Games."

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Adapting a Beloved Novel for the Screen
The 2014 film version of "The Fault in Our Stars" is, the Times critic A.O. Scott writes, "directed by Josh Boone with scrupulous respect for John Green's best-selling young-adult novel." Would your students agree? In what ways does the film respect the novel? In what ways does it take liberties? Which, in their view, is better - novel or movie? Why? Should movie versions of beloved novels always be as faithful to the original as possible? Why or why not? What examples of successful adaptations can they name? What novel-to-film adaptations have, in their opinions, been unsuccessful?

In The Times's Anatomy of a Scene series, film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. Invite students to watch the edition embedded above, about shooting a scene in "The Fault in Our Stars." How well does it translate the same scene from the novel? Then, invite them to analyze another scene from the film by comparing it with the version in the novel. If they were to write a voice-over like Josh Boone's in the "Anatomy of a Scene" video explaining what they imagine were his directorial choices, what would they say? Why?

_________ Honoring the Important People in Your Life
After Ms. Rosenthal died, Mr. Green told The Chicago Sun-Times, "It's hard to imagine what my professional life or my personal life would look like without Amy's influence."

Who has been that person for you?

After Ms. Rosenthal's essay was published in The Times, The Learning Network used it for one of our daily Student Opinion questions, asking, "What Does the World Need to Know About an Important Person in Your Life?"

Here is how we framed it:

If you could write a speech, a poem, a song, even a dating profile of a loved one so that others could know what makes him or her so special, what would you say?

What are the stories about this person that are truly worth telling?

In the Modern Love column " You May Want to Marry My Husband," Amy Krouse Rosenthal, facing her own imminent death, pays tribute to her husband of 26 years in the forms of an online dating profile she imagines he could use to ensure that he gets, as she closes the essay the "fresh start" that he and the right person who comes along deserve.

Several students wrote in with their thoughts. For instance, Mia O from Arizona wrote:

My best friend, Ray. Always there for me and somehow always knows how to make it seem like even the sun is smiling. I love the living heck out of her, everything she is amazes me. She is my absolute sunshine. I love the way she talks about Eyewitness and Voltron, her nerdy tendencies make her one of the cutest people I've ever met in my whole life. She doesn't get really dressy but her t-shirts and sweatpants make up for it. She really can make me laugh up a storm, and it the greatest when I'm having a bad day. She makes my heart beat a hundred miles a minute, and her soul keeps me warm. I love her so so much.

What would you say? Feel free to post your answer as a comment here.

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John Green and "Turtles All the Way Down"
Mr. Green's latest novel, "Turtles All the Way Down," debuted in October 2017 and, like "The Fault in Our Stars," was an immediate best seller. On the surface, the book is about two friends' attempt to solve a mystery for a cash reward. But as with his other novels, the book also tackles weightier material. The book's narrator, the 16-year-old Aza Holmes, suffers from terrible anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. Much of the novel is spent inside Aza's head as she navigates typical teenage preoccupations as well as debilitating anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts.

In her review of "Turtles All the Way Down," the New York Times book critic Jennifer Senior writes, "This novel is by far his most difficult to read. It's also his most astonishing." Another article, published the day of the book's release, called it his "most personal book yet."

Like the novel's narrator Aza, Mr. Green has struggled with severe anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder for as long as he can remember:

Mr. Green was about 6 years old when he first became aware of his obsessive thought patterns. He was often afraid that his food was contaminated, and would only eat certain foods at particular times of day.

As he got older, he was able to keep his anxiety in check, with the right mix of medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. But every once in a while, uncontrollable thoughts can overwhelm him.

In a video he posted before the book's release, Mr. Green discussed how his experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder led him to write his latest novel. "I wanted to try to find form and expression for this way-down non-sensorial experience of living inside of thought spirals," he said.

As students watch the video and read the article, encourage them to note ways in which Aza's experience and thoughts echo those of the author. To get started, students might focus on excerpts from the book like the following. What parallels can they find in what Mr. Green says about his own experience?
On how language fails to capture abstract feelings, like pain:
[During a session with Dr. Karen Singh, Aza's therapist]

"You often try to understand your experience through metaphor, Aza: It's like a demon inside of you; you'll call your consciousness a bus, or a prison cell, or a spiral, or a whirlpool, or a loop, or a - I think you once called it a scribbled circle, which I found interesting ... One of the challenges with pain - physical or psychic - is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can't be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language."

On romanticizing mental illness:

You hear a lot about the benefits of insanity or whatever - like, Dr. Karen Singh had once told me this Edgar Allan Poe quote: "The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence." I guess she was trying to make me feel better, but I find mental disorders to be vastly overrated. Madness, in my admittedly limited experience, is accompanied by no superpowers; being mentally unwell doesn't make you loftily intelligent any more than having the flu does.

On the - often-unrealistic - expectation that illness is something you overcome:

I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.

On intrusive thoughts:

I have these thoughts that Dr. Karen Singh calls "intrusives," but the first time she said it, I heard "invasives," which I like better, because, like invasive weeds, these thoughts seem to arrive at my biosphere from some faraway land, and then they spread out of control.

Supposedly everyone has them-you look out from over a bridge or whatever and it occurs to you out of nowhere that you could just jump. And then if you're most people, you think, Well, that was a weird thought, and move on with your life. But for some people, the invasive can kind of take over, crowding out all the other thoughts until it's the only one you're able to have, the thought you're perpetually either thinking or distracting yourself from.

After they're done, you might ask students some of these questions:

* To write authentically about the experience of living with obsessive compulsive disorder, was it necessary for Mr. Green to have lived with the mental illness himself?

* Is it helpful for readers to know about an author's personal connection to the content of a novel? Or is there a case to be made for separating a work from the author's experience?

* Mr. Green's editor called the book an "unbelievable act of translation." Do you agree that the book "gives readers a glimpse of what it's like to suffer from mental illness"? If so, how is this accomplished?

* If you were writing a novel, would you model the main character after yourself in any way? Why or why not?

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Read, Kids, Read
In an Op-Ed headlined " Read, Kids, Read," the columnist Frank Bruni writes:

I'm incessantly asking my nephews and nieces what they're reading and why they're not reading more. I'm reliably hurling novels at them, and also at friends' kids. I may well be responsible for 10 percent of all sales of "The Fault in Our Stars," a teenage love story to be released as a movie next month. Never have I spent money with fewer regrets, because I believe in reading - not just in its power to transport but in its power to transform.

So I was crestfallen on Monday, when a new report by Common Sense Media came out. It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they "hardly ever" or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure "almost every day." Back in 1984, 31 percent did. What a marked and depressing change.

Mr. Bruni goes on to talk about the intensity of connection one can feel to a favorite novel. He writes:

That observation brought to mind a moment in "The Fault in Our Stars" when one of the protagonists says that sometimes, "You read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book."

Books are personal, passionate. They stir emotions and spark thoughts in a manner all their own, and I'm convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.

What books do your students feel this way about? Invite them to share the titles that they have loved over the course of their lives - including those read to them as children. Together, challenge them to come up with a list of books that they think "all living humans" should read, along with explanations for why. Or, have them interview school community members of all ages about the books that have meant the most to them, then post the list on the school's website, in the school library or newspaper, or make it part of an email home to parents.

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Suzanne Zimbler, a former New York City public and charter-school teacher and editor at Time Inc., contributed to this lesson plan.
Related Learning Network Lesson Plans

We regularly create lesson plans about teaching literature with The New York Times. Here is what we have now, and the collection is always growing:

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," "All Summer in a Day," Maya Angelou, "Antigone," Jane Austen, "The Book Thief," "The Catcher in the Rye," "The Crucible," "Death of a Salesman," Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, "Enrique's Journey," "Frankenstein," "The Giver," "The Glass Castle," "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Great Gatsby," "Harry Potter," "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," "The Hunger Games," "The Kite Runner," "Lord of the Flies," "Of Mice and Men," John Milton, "The Necklace," Orwell and "1984," "The Outsiders," "A Raisin in the Sun,"Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and "Huckleberry Finn," "The Scarlet Letter," "Speak", "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Wonder."

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Text to Text | 'The Fault in Our Stars' and 'You May Want to Marry My Husband'

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Ms. Rosenthal also wrote 28 children's picture books herself, as well as two memoirs ("Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal," in 2016, and an alphabetized "Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life," in 2005); delivered TED Talks and NPR commentaries; and produced short films and YouTube videos of what she called social experiments, with titles like "ATM: Always Trust Magic," "The Money Tree" and "The Beckoning of Lovely."

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'The Real Campus Scourge' and 'My College Transition'

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'The Real Campus Scourge' and 'My College Transition'

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In talking about his book on college admissions mania, Bruni shares his concerns about the long-term effects of focusing on what colleges want at the expense of what students might need. He says:

Such polishing concentrates kids' efforts on a very narrow spectrum of pursuits that play to their strengths and that are mastered with pure discipline, diligence and plotting. It doesn't necessarily foster or reward creativity. It doesn't acknowledge the importance of spontaneity, serendipity, setback, resilience and (to use the coinage du jour) grit in life and in eventual success. I think frequently of something that a former admissions director at Pomona said to me, because it's something that other elite-school faculty members and administrators have also told me: They recruit and admit young men and women who are fantastic on paper but who are in fact very fragile, because they've flourished in a very particular way and in a very particular climate, with the illusion of complete control, and they don't know how to pivot to new circumstances and turn on a dime.

Students find themselves at a loss when thrust into a reality that doesn't match up with their expectations. They fear failure, and sometimes lack the skills they need to survive and thrive in a new environment.

Social media can further complicate early college experiences. For one, students have been shaped, for better or worse, by growing up with smart technology at their fingertips. Not only are parents a text away, but so are high school friends. Their expectations of college, too, have been shaped by sunny emails from schools during application season and carefully curated Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat stories of fun and friends posted by peers. Many students find themselves connected virtually but feeling alone - and convinced everyone else has it all figured out.

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Key Questions

* How can the buildup to college lead to loneliness during freshman year?

* How does social media both reflect and shape our expectations of reality?

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Activity Sheets

As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:
* Comparing Two or More Texts * Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading * Document Analysis Questions
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Across the country, college freshmen are settling into their new lives and grappling with something that doesn't compete with protests and political correctness for the media's attention, something that no one prepared them for, something that has nothing to do with being "snowflakes" and everything to do with being human.

They're lonely.

In a sea of people, they find themselves adrift. The technology that keeps them connected to parents and high school friends only reminds them of their physical separation from just about everyone they know best. That estrangement can be a gateway to binge drinking and other self-destructive behavior. And it's as likely to derail their ambitions as almost anything else.

Brett Epstein felt it. "I spent my first night in the dorm and it hit me like a pile of bricks: It's just me here," Epstein, a 21-year-old senior at the College of Charleston, told me about his start there three years ago. "I was completely freaked out."

Clara Nguyen felt it, too. "It's a lot more difficult to make friends than people make it out to be," Nguyen, a 19-year-old sophomore at U.C.L.A., told me about her experience last year. "I didn't know how to be someone new while at the same time being who I always was."

The problem sounds so ordinary, so obvious: People in an unfamiliar location confront dislocation. On their own two legs for the first time, they're wobbly. Who would expect otherwise?

Well, most of them did, because college isn't sold to teenagers as just any place or passage. It's a gaudily painted promise. The time of their lives! The disparity between myth and reality stuns many of them, and various facets of youth today - from social media to a secondary-school narrative that frames admission to college as the end of all worry - worsen the impact.

Harry Rockland-Miller, who just retired as the director for the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me the emblematic story of a freshman he treated:

"He was 18. He came to school and was invited to a party his first weekend, and he didn't know anybody. So he started to drink. He drank way too much and ended up lying on a bench in his residential hall, feeling very sick. Nobody stopped and said, 'How are you doing? Are you O.K.?' And he felt so isolated. When he came in to speak with me the next day, the thing that struck him - what he said - was, 'There I was, alone, with all these people around.'"

Alone, with all these people around. In a survey of nearly 28,000 students on 51 campuses by the American College Health Association last year, more than 60 percent said that they had "felt very lonely" in the previous 12 months. Nearly 30 percent said that they had felt that way in the previous two weeks.

Victor Schwartz, the medical director of the Jed Foundation, which is one of the nation's leading advocacy groups for the mental health of teenagers and young adults, said that those findings were consistent with his own observation of college students today. "While they expected that academics and finances would be sources of stress," he told me, "many students were lonely and thought this was sort of unique to them, because no one talked about it."

Their peers in fact do something that mine couldn't back in the 1980s, when I attended college: use Facebook and Instagram to perform pantomimes of uninterrupted fun and unalloyed fabulousness. And these "highly curated selves," as the U.C.L.A. psychologist Elizabeth Gong-Guy called them, "amplify the fact that you're sitting in your residence hall alone."

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For Writing or Discussion

1. According to Frank Bruni, what are some of the root causes of loneliness on campus?

2. To echo Emery Bergmann's words, in what way do phones "suck"? In her view, how do they contribute to loneliness on campus?

3. How are colleges responding to this "epidemic"?

4. How might secondary schools better prepare students for the realities of college?

5. How does Ms. Bergmann's video offer a correction to other media portrayals of college life? In what way is this useful?

6. What gives Ms. Bergmann hope? Why?

7. What lines in the Op-Ed echo moments in the video? What moments in the video might be illustrations for lines in the Op-Ed? Why?
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Going Further
The Buildup to College
How does the buildup to college lead to the kind of loneliness Mr. Bruni and Ms. Bergmann describe?

Look at a sample of recent college brochures. What expectations do the images promote? Brainstorm a list. Why might these images seem particularly attractive to high school students? What challenges might accompany the freedoms the college advertise? What's missing from these photos? How do you go about getting an authentic read on a college as part of figuring out where you want to go?

Once you get there, where do you find your people in a partly virtual world where there aren't necessarily physical places to look? How do you define yourself in a completely new place in the absence of the people and activities that once helped define you?

Talk about these questions in pairs or small groups, then write personal essays - with your name, or posted anonymously - about your own process and questions. You might also work with others to create a list of recommendations for their college guidance office that helps anticipate some of the transition issues they have identified.
Social Media and Loneliness
Social media gives us the illusion that we are never alone, and yet research suggests that time spent on screens doesn't make us happy.

In her essay " Happiness Is Other People," Ruth Whippman notes that today's teenagers spend less time hanging out with their friends, "replacing real-world interaction with smartphones." Why go out and make new friends if you can hang out with friends from secondary school virtually?

Consider your social media use. How much time do you spend alone with your phone versus physically hanging out with your friends? What role does your phone play when you are with your friends? Does it augment relationships? Or does it distract from them? Do you agree with Jean M. Twenge's argument in The Atlantic that smartphones have "destroyed" your generation? Why or why not?

You might then try to answer the big question we pose at the top of this lesson: How does social media both reflect and shape our expectations of reality in general? How do you think that plays out specifically in the context of going to college?

Some commenters on Mr. Bruni's Op-Ed attacked these students as "snowflakes," dismissing their loneliness as a normal part of going to a new place.

Several argued that teenagers who have been sheltered by their parents and programmed their whole lives do not have the inner resources necessary to cope with normal parts of growing up and becoming adults.

Talk back to these critics. Are they wrong? How? What might they have right? What might they not fully understand? If you've been away from home, what have you learned from homesickness and managing new freedoms? What value lies in the struggle? Have you learned to be more self-reliant? More resilient?

How can parents foster more resilience in their children, better preparing them for the unknowns of the world beyond their homes?
An Issue of Privilege? Related Article: First-Generation Students Unite
In what ways is the kind of loneliness Frank Bruni describes related to privilege?

For example, how might the loneliness faced by DACA students or first-generation college students at universities be different? What specific challenges do these college students face? For example, here are the opening paragraphs of a 2015 piece, " First-Generation Students Unite."

Ana Barros grew up in a two-family house built by Habitat for Humanity, hard by the boarded-up buildings and vacant lots of Newark. Neither parent attended college, but she was a star student. With a 2200 on her SATs, she expected to fit in at Harvard.

Yet here she was at a lecture for a sociology course called, paradoxically, "Poverty in America," as a classmate opened her laptop and planned a multicountry spring break trip to Europe. (Ms. Barros can't afford textbooks; she borrows from the library.) On the sidewalks of Cambridge, students brush past her in their $700 Canada Goose parkas and $1,000 Moncler puffer jackets. (Ms. Barros saved up for two years for good boots.) On an elite campus, income inequality can be in your face.

A professor once described how hardships become inscribed on one's body, and Ms. Barros thought of her father, a janitor at a home for troubled boys, and the wrinkles carved in his face from worrying about money and her mother's health. Majoring in sociology, she says, "has made me hyperaware of class differences here."

Weary of trying to pass as middle class, Ms. Barros decided to "come out," borrowing the phrase from the gay community. She joined and now leads the two-year-old Harvard College First Generation Student Union, which has 300 on its email list. "This is a movement," she said. "We are not ashamed of taking on this identity."

What can colleges learn about how to support all students during their college transitions by borrowing ideas from programs created for these and other marginalized groups?

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Related Learning Network Resources

Learning Network Lesson: Text to Text: John Milton's "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" and "Today's Exhausted Superkids"

Learning Network Resource: Applying to College With The New York Times

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What Worries Do You Have About College? What Qualities Would You Look For in a College Roommate? Does It Matter Where You Go to College? Should Emotional Support Animals Be Allowed on College Campuses? What Is the Point of College? Is the College Admissions Process Fair? Do College Rankings Really Matter? What Specialty College Would You Create?

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Text to Text | 'The Real Campus Scourge' and 'My College Transition'

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In talking about his book on college admissions mania, Bruni shares his concerns about the long-term effects of focusing on what colleges want at the expense of what students might need. He says: Such polishing concentrates kids' efforts on a very narrow spectrum of pursuits that play to their strengths and that are mastered with pure discipline, diligence and plotting.