Failing Our Brightest Kids, Peanuts

Failing Our Brightest Kids (1:03) Guests: Chester Finn, PhD, and Brandon Wright, JD, Co-Authors of “Failing our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students”; Cindy Taylor, Fifth-Grade Teacher at the Center for Accelerated Studies in the Provo School District  The term “gifted and talented” evokes strong feelings, doesn’t it?  For some it smacks of elitism or others maybe the isolation of being treated differently than your classmates. Not to mention the implication that if some are gifted and talented, then others are not, and therefore lesser in some way.  We tend to prize equality over excellence when it comes to our education system. At least that’s the assessment of two experts who’ve written a book about the many ways we are failing to help our smartest kids reach their potential. They say our national preoccupation with closing the achievement gap in schools has resulted in raising the floor, but not the ceiling.  Peanuts (52:15) Guests: Stephen J Lind, PhD, Author of “A Charlie Brown Religion: Exploring the Spiritual Life and Work of Charles M. Shulz”; Amy Schulz Johnson, Daughter of Charles Schulz  “Peanuts” is back on the big screen in beautiful CGI and 3D - there’s the bossy girl named Lucy, tom-boy Peppermint Patty, a dreamy-eyed dog named Snoopy, a wise-for-his-age-but-still-carries-a-security-blanket tot named Linus and, of course, the angsty Charlie Brown who can never seem to do anything right and it just eats him up.  Peanuts is possibly the best known and most -successful comic strip of all time and Charles Schulz drew it for 50 years – up until the final frame published on the day he died in 2000. But Peanuts was groundbreaking in another, less-appreciated way: it was the first mainstream comic strip to openly address religious themes – and even spout scripture on occasion. nd sound bites.