Opinion Archives | Page 73 of 84

What Part of Mediocre Don’t We Get?

We hear it all the time. We hear it from the podium and the pulpit, from policymakers and pundits: Children are...

Secret to Success: Deliver Meaning

Accomplishment. Beauty. Community. Creation. Duty. Those are five of the 15 “meanings” identified in a hot new business book about the bottom-line...

Forget Hip-Hop; Get YCC

A civil war is brewing in youth work force development centers. It pits many veteran youth workers against a younger crowd that...

MySpace.com Menaces Teens? C’mon!

Many parents think their children are safe in one of our most hallowed institutions, until they discover its dark side: violence, sexual...

Age of Aquarius Meets Era of Accountability

I recently participated in back-to-back meetings about outcomes of community schools and after-school programs. At each event, leaders in the field gathered...

Private Pays, but Not for Kids

The business section of The New York Times ran a feature story in August titled, “A Business Built on the Troubles of...

France Could Learn From U.S. Youth Riots

Last month’s youth riots in France raised many important questions, including what that country must do to tackle chronic youth alienation and...

Medellin’s Murdered Children … and Ours

“Just light sprinkles,” the pilot rasped as my flight from Medellin, Colombia, descended through Miami’s murky skies. “In a few hours, it’ll...

Wanted: Bipartisan Leadership

By Karen Pittman I thought nothing could be more sobering than the photos and stories that continue to pour forth from...

Message in a Bottle

Sometimes you have to cross the ocean to get a clearer picture of what is happening in your own country. I just...

Getting Out of Our Funk

I’m in a funk. I’ll bet you are, too. Those of us who value young people, who give our all in the...

Aged Out of After-School

As youth workers, we face similar challenges when it comes to keeping older teens enrolled in our programs. By the time our...

Abstinence Ed: Why the Fuss?

To abstain or not to abstain – that is a question many young people are asking themselves. Most adults and youth, and...

Psychologists, Mental Health and Youth Development

Many professional groups comprise the tapestry of what Youth Today readers call “youth work”: Educators, health professionals, managers with MBAs, sociologists and...

Dishonest Youth Videos

The avalanche of videos and program materials proposing to deter American youths from acting like American adults – that is, indulging sex,...

Back to School

September is back-to-school month. And for the first time in the nation’s history, many communities are beginning to get an accurate sense...

Business Leaders May Have the Wrong Stuff

There is a great scene in the first half of the movie The Right Stuff. A group of men is crowded around...

Summer of Service: An American Rite of Passage?

In many cultures, the transition from childhood into the teen years is marked by a rite of passage in which the young...

A Tale of Two Studies

The recently released final report on Mathematica’s study of after-school programs (“When Schools Stay Open Late: The National Evaluation of the 21st...