Enrichment Classes Quotes

Some of life's best pleasures are simplest ones. Enrich your life with more of them and your heart will be happy.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.

Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves. The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellowmen, giving time, trouble, care and concern to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need.

Let's be clear. The debate over health care in this country is not a debate about medical treatment or the best way to prevent disease. It is a debate about economics and class politics. Either we maintain a profit-driven health care system whose main function is to enrich certain individuals and institutions, or we develop a nonprofit, cost-effective system that provides quality health care for all people as a right of citizenship.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano’s class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...

If time has taught me anything, it’s that our differences are what make this life unique. None of us are exactly like the other, and that is a good thing because there’s no right way to be. The room mom, the working mother, the woman without children, the retired grandma, the mom who co-sleeps, the mama who bottle-fed her baby, the strict mom, the hipster mom, the one who lets her kid go shoeless, or the one who enrolls her baby in music enrichment classes at birth—whoever, whatever you are, you’re adding spice and texture and nuance into this big beautiful soup of modern-day parenting. I can look at other mamas and learn from them. I can also leave the things that don’t strike me as authentic or practical for our family. You can do the same for your own. That is the beauty of growing and learning and figuring out exactly who you are.

Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just summary recall of where one’s roots are, where one comes from. It requires knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one’s past that have enabled and do enable one’s self-development in the present, that sustain and support, that enrich. One must also honestly confront barriers that do exist, aspects of that past that do diminish.

I refuse to denounce social media as a terrible evil that is plaguing young people today. Maybe because I sort of grew up on it and I think the Internet has enriched my life--I've made friends on social media, I've laughed until I've cried at a perfectly constructed tweet and I've learned more about gender, race, sexuality, class, and politics online than I have anywhere else.

The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.

Although you won’t find it in their party platform, the GOP’s mission is to protect and further enrich America’s plutocracy. The party’s caterwauling about deficits and debt is so much eyewash to blind the public. In reality, Republicans act as bellhops for corporate America and the superrich behind those corporations.

The time and emotional energy they spent making rent, delaying eviction, or finding another place to live when homeless could instead be spent on things that enriched their lives: community college classes, exercise, finding a good job, maybe a good man too. But our current state of affairs “reduces to poverty people born for better things.

Unfortunately, that basic sense of fairness and goodwill toward others is under threat in a society like ours that increasingly enriches the richest and abandons the rest to the vagaries of global competition. More and more our media and our school systems emphasize material success and the importance of triumphing over others both athletically and in the classroom. More and more, in an atmosphere of increased competitiveness, middle- and upper-class parents seem driven to greater and greater extremes to give their offspring whatever perceived “edge” they can find. This constant emphasis on competition drowns out the lessons of cooperation, empathy and altruism that are critical for human mental health and social cohesion.

It is worth distilling this message in order to fully appreciate the irony. The story was that after decades of New Deal–era federal subsidies had created a white middle class, reinforced a segregated black underclass, and created cyclic poverty that made it difficult for many to find shelter and food without government aid, it was black people who were being unjustly enriched by the overly generous hand of the state.

Throw Them All Out,

Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a proprietor and a farmer at the same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor cultivated for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed down from generation to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness; but unless those fortunes are territorial, there is no true aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the poor.

Machiavelli declared that it was better to be feared than loved as a leader, but you did not want to be hated. Hatred led to conspiracy. And conspiracy, he warned, could bring down governments.

First the child attempts to keep up with other children. When these efforts fail, for whatever reason, discouragement sets in. The child stops trying as hard as the children who meet with success and encouragement. The next phase is acting out, making disruptive noises or pranks to attract attention. Every child needs attention, even if it is negative. The disruptions can be aggressive, but eventually the child realizes that nothing good is happening. Acting out leads to disapproval and punishment. So he enters the final phase, which is sullen silence. He makes no more effort to keep up in class. Other children mark him as slow or stupid, an outsider. School has turned into a stifling prison rather than an enriching place. It’s not hard to see how this cycle of behavior affects the brain.

Only three of the naturally occurring elements were manufactured in the big bang. The rest were forged in the high-temperature hearts and explosive remains of dying stars, enabling subsequent generations of star systems to incorporate this enrichment, forming planets and, in our case, people. For many, the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements is a forgotten oddity—a chart of boxes filled with mysterious, cryptic letters last encountered on the wall of high school chemistry class. As the organizing principle for the chemical behavior of all known and yet-to-be-discovered elements in the universe, the table instead ought to be a cultural icon, a testimony to the enterprise of science as an international human adventure conducted in laboratories, particle accelerators, and on the frontier of the cosmos itself.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius's inert body on my back.

So while the Obama administration was laying out the challenge posed by China in the global minerals race, the son of the vice president and a confidant of the secretary of state were invested in deals that would help Beijing win that resource race.

In short, this is corruption by proxy. It is essentially a form of “political arbitrage,” where friends and family members of powerful political figures have positioned themselves to serve as conduits or middle men between those seeking influence and those who possess political power.

What Hunter Biden, the son of America’s vice president, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (later to be secretary of state) were creating was an international private equity firm. It was anchored by the Heinz family alternative investment fund, Rosemont Capital.

Sometimes, politicians will literally offshore corruption by moving the location of the deal, the entities, and the players involved, abroad. Other times, they offshore corruption metaphorically by shifting the cronyism out of their own hands and into those of their children or a close friend to leverage from afar and avoid detection.

Both the nature of the settings and the choices available to individuals are influenced considerably by their status in society: for example, gender and class. Individuals growing up in poverty will spend their time in settings characterized by deprivation – poor housing, inadequately resourced schools, deprived neighbourhoods – while individuals growing up with privileged backgrounds will spend their time in enriched settings.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians—I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians—go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians—alas, they are many—whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves. The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob, For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor-spending and being spent—to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others—and not just their own friends—in whatever way there seems need. There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be. If God in mercy revives us, one of the things he will do will be to work more of this spirit in our hearts and lives. If we desire spiritual quickening for ourselves individually, one step we should take is to seek to cultivate this spirit. “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Ps 119:32 KJV).

In America, straightforward talk about class inequality is all but impossible, indeed taboo. Political appeals to the economic self-interest of ordinary voters, as distinct from their wealthy compatriots, court instant branding and disfigurement in the press as divisive “economic populism” or even “class warfare.”39 On the other hand, divisive political appeals composed in a different register, sometimes called “cultural populism,” enlist voters’ self-concept in place of their self-interest; appealing, in other words, to who they are and are not, rather than to what they require and why. Thus, the policies of the 1980s radically redistributed income upward. Then, with “economic populism” shooed from the public arena, “cultural populism” fielded something akin to a marching band. It had a simple melody about the need to enrich the “investing” classes (said to “create jobs”), and an encoded percussion: “culture wars”; “welfare mothers”; “underclass”; “race-and-IQ”; “black-on-black crime”; “criminal gene”; on and on.40 Halfway through the decade, as the band played on, a huge economic revolution from above had got well under way. The poorest 40 percent of American families were sharing 15.5 percent of household income, while the share of the richest 20 percent of families had risen to a record 43.7 percent, and the trend appeared to be (and has turned out to be) more and more of the same.41 The

Paleolithic communities had probably been egalitarian because hunter-gathers could not support a privileged class that did not share the hardship and danger of the hunt. Because these small communities lived at near-subsistence level and produced no economic surplus, inequity of wealth was impossible. The tribe could survive only if everybody shared what food they had. Government by coercion was not feasible because all able-bodied males had exactly the same weapons and fighting skills. Anthropologists have noted that modern hunter-gatherer societies are classless, that their economy is "a sort of communism," and that people are honored for skills and qualities, such as generosity, kindness, and even-temperedness, that benefit the community as a whole. But in societies that produce more than they need, it is possible for a small group to exploit this surplus for its own enrichment, gain a monopoly of violence, dominate the rest of the population.

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

*Africans, Embrace One Another* -------------------------- My fellow African, when you look at another African, what do you see? Do you not see the reflection of yourself? Do you not see someone who was once a victim of the dark past? Someone who has now emerged as a survivor at last; just as your forefathers did before the shadows enslaved your kins! Do you not see the same colour of your skin? Do you not see the same texture of your hair? Yes, you see yourself, it's clear. Now, since you're looking at your reflection, don't you wish to cover yourself with affection? Beloved Africans, you were once the victims of confusion in the past. But you shouldn't remain in that disillusioned class. Today you're free and enriched with resources to maintain yourselves. Let the victim mentality go as a start. Like the three wise men, embrace your survivor status. Be wise and be resourceful. Africans, you have the permission to celebrate your roots, your heritage, and the teachings of your books. Go on and heal your bodies with your traditional herbs. And teach your children the secrets of your ancestors. Tell your children that your ancestors were self-sufficient. Efficient, your ancestors lived well — with little to nothing. Yet, they were the happiest. The merriest. Embrace the secrets of your traditions, just like the seas. You're safe and free.

Even if there is no connection between diversity and international influence, some people would argue that immigration brings cultural enrichment. This may seem to be an attractive argument, but the culture of Americans remains almost completely untouched by millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants. They may have heard of Cinco de Mayo or Chinese New Year, but unless they have lived abroad or have studied foreign affairs, the white inhabitants of Los Angeles are likely to have only the most superficial knowledge of Mexico or China despite the presence of many foreigners. Nor is it immigrants who introduce us to Cervantes, Puccini, Alexander Dumas, or Octavio Paz. Real high culture crosses borders by itself, not in the back pockets of tomato pickers, refugees, or even the most accomplished immigrants. What has Yo-Yo Ma taught Americans about China? What have we learned from Seiji Ozawa or Ichiro about Japan? Immigration and the transmission of culture are hardly the same thing. Nearly every good-sized American city has an opera company, but that does not require Italian immigrants. Miami is now nearly 70 percent Hispanic, but what, in the way of authentic culture enrichment, has this brought the city? Are the art galleries, concerts, museums, and literature of Los Angeles improved by diversity? Has the culture of Detroit benefited from a majority-black population? If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of the country that are being “enriched”? It is true that Latin American immigration has inspired more American school children to study Spanish, but fewer now study French, German, or Latin. If anything, Hispanic immigration reduces what little linguistic diversity is to be found among native-born Americans. [...] [M]any people study Spanish, not because they love Hispanic culture or Spanish literature but for fear they may not be able to work in America unless they speak the language of Mexico. Another argument in favor of diversity is that it is good for people—especially young people —to come into contact with people unlike themselves because they will come to understand and appreciate each other. Stereotyped and uncomplimentary views about other races or cultures are supposed to crumble upon contact. This, of course, is just another version of the “contact theory” that was supposed to justify school integration. Do ex-cons and the graduates—and numerous dropouts—of Los Angeles high schools come away with a deep appreciation of people of other races? More than half a century ago, George Orwell noted that: 'During the war of 1914-18 the English working class were in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely possible. The sole result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans, whose courage they admired.

MY PROCESS I got bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I learned how to take a punch and how to put up a good fight. God used that. I am not afraid of spiritual “violence” or of facing spiritual fights. My Dad was drafted during Vietnam and I grew up an Army brat, moving around frequently. God used that. I am very spiritually mobile, adaptable, and flexible. My parents used to hand me a Bible and make me go look up what I did wrong. God used that, as well. I knew the Word before I knew the Lord, so studying Scripture is not intimidating to me. I was admitted into a learning enrichment program in junior high. They taught me critical thinking skills, logic, and Greek Mythology. God used that, too. In seventh grade I was in school band and choir. God used that. At 14, before I even got saved, a youth pastor at my parents’ church taught me to play guitar. God used that. My best buddies in school were a druggie, a Jewish kid, and an Irish soccer player. God used that. I broke my back my senior year and had to take theatre instead of wrestling. God used that. I used to sleep on the couch outside of the Dean’s office between classes. God used that. My parents sent me to a Christian college for a semester in hopes of getting me saved. God used that. I majored in art, advertising, astronomy, pre-med, and finally English. God used all of that. I made a woman I loved get an abortion. God used (and redeemed) that. I got my teaching certification. I got plugged into a group of sincere Christian young adults. I took courses for ministry credentials. I worked as an autism therapist. I taught emotionally disabled kids. And God used each of those things. I married a pastor’s daughter. God really used that. Are you getting the picture? San Antonio led me to Houston, Houston led me to El Paso, El Paso led me to Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leonard Wood led me back to San Antonio, which led me to Austin, then to Kentucky, then to Belton, then to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to Dallas, to Alabama, which led me to Fort Worth. With thousands of smaller journeys in between. The reason that I am able to do the things that I do today is because of the process that God walked me through yesterday. Our lives are cumulative. No day stands alone. Each builds upon the foundation of the last—just like a stairway, each layer bringing us closer to Him. God uses each experience, each lesson, each relationship, even our traumas and tragedies as steps in the process of becoming the people He made us to be. They are steps in the process of achieving the destinies that He has encoded into the weave of each of our lives. We are journeymen, finding the way home. What is the value of the journey? If the journey makes us who we are, then the journey is priceless.

This economy is based upon consumption, which ultimately serves, not the ordinary consumers, but a tiny class of excessively wealthy people for whose further enrichment the economy is understood (by them) to exist. For the purpose of their further enrichment, these plutocrats and the great corporations that serve them have controlled the economy by the purchase of political power. The purchased governments do not act in the interest of the governed and their country; they act instead as agents for the corporations.

schools). Don’t try to plan your entire college career in advance, because some of the most pivotal moments can be completely unexpected. Be sure to do something you like outside of class, but don’t spread yourself too thin. Travel far and wide. Studying, living, or working abroad can immensely widen your perspective of the world. Keep your focus on the big picture. Learn soft skills (people skills) as well as hard skills (technical skills). Socializing and collaborating sincerely can enrich and reward you more than comparing and competing obsessively. Connect, share, listen, discuss, learn, and work together open-mindedly with purpose and some humility. Conversing

This book is a song for my fathers—the white one who sired, raised, and coached me, and the black ones who inspired and encouraged me, and enriched my life beyond measure. It also recounts the life and times of a middle-class white boy growing up in New Orleans in the 1950s and ’60s. New Orleans is more than a backdrop to this drama; it is perhaps the central player, for this story could not have taken place in any other city in the world. The

The starvation of children does not happen simply because of pov-erty and famine. Other human forces, too, roil our world, forces shaped by globalization and media. Neighbors slaughter neighbors in ethnic conflicts. Religious leaders plant discord that pits believers against one another. Cor-rupt rulers foment internecine warfare while enriching their own coffers. Pirates, drug lords, and militias still prowl villages and seas. Companies rape the environment and rob the land of its ability to nurture and support. Obscenely rich classes lead extravagant, wasteful lives while others wither in their shadows. We will see how human actors have shaped globalization and media to construct such a world. We cannot yet celebrate.

With our busy lives, for most of us, relaxation is not a priority. When to do nothing.” I ask people in yoga classes what they do to relax, a common answer is our —J. B. Priestley contemporary types of “relaxation”—watching TV, competitive and spectator sports events, walking, reading, and so on.

People today, no longer attached to one another by any ties of caste, class, guild or family, are all too inclined to be preoccupied with their own private interests, too given to looking out for themselves alone and withdrawing into a narrow individualism where all public virtues are smothered. Despotism, rather than struggle against this tendency, makes it irresistible, because it takes away from citizens all common feeling, all common needs, all need for communication, all occasion for common action. It walls them up inside their private lives. They already tend to keep themselves apart from one another: despotism isolates them; it chills their relations; it freezes them. In these kinds of societies, where nothing is fixed, everyone is constantly tormented by the fear of falling and by the ambition to rise...The desire to enrich oneself at any price, the preference for business, the love of profit, the search for material pleasure and comfort are therefore the most widespread desires. These desires spread easily among all classes, even among those previously most distant from them, and if nothing stops theme they soon succeed in demoralizing and degrading the entire nation. But it is the very essence of despotism to favor and extend them. These debilitating passions help despotism, they occupy men’s minds and turn them away from public affairs, while making them tremble at the very idea of revolution. Despotism alone can furnish these passions with the secrecy and shadow which make greed feel at home, and let it reap its dishonest profits despite dishonor. Without despotism these passions would have been strong, with it they are all-powerful.

What social value have Democrats like Warren, Obama, Clinton or Biden created in exchange for the wealth they have obtained? Virtually none. Essentially, they have used their political name and office to enrich themselves. They—not entrepreneurs—are the greedy, selfish bastards. They are the ones playing the system and skirting the law. This is the progressive, socialist parasitic class, feeding off the wealth of society while reviling the free market system that produced that wealth. If anyone deserves to be horsewhipped, it’s these progressive and socialist Democrats. As for entrepreneurs, we need more of them. If the socialists are helping to destroy the country, entrepreneurs are helping to make America great again.

Nor was this disaffected spirit confined to those who were actually concerned in the conspiracy; for the whole of the common people, from a desire of change, favored the projects of Catiline. This they seemed to do in accordance with their general character; for, in every state, they that are poor envy those of a better class, and endeavor to exalt the factious; they dislike the established condition of things, and long for something new; they are discontented with their own circumstances, and desire a general alteration; they can support themselves amid tumult and sedition, without anxiety, since poverty does not easily suffer loss. As for the populace of the city, they had become disaffected from various causes. In the first place, such as every where took the lead in crime and profligacy, with others who had squandered their fortunes in dissipation, and, in a word, all whom vice and villainy had driven from their homes, had flocked to Rome as a general receptacle of impurity. In the next place, many, who thought of the success of Sylla, when they had seen some raised from common soldiers into senators, and others so enriched as to live in regal luxury and pomp, hoped, each for himself, similar results from victory, if they should once take up arms. In addition to this, the youth, who, in the country, had earned a scanty livelihood by manual labor, tempted by public and private largesses, had preferred idleness in the city to unwelcome toil in the field. To these, and all others of similar character, public disorders would furnish subsistence. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that men in distress, of dissolute principles and extravagant expectations, should have consulted the interest of the state no further than as it was subservient to their own. Besides, those whose parents, by the victory of Sylla, had been proscribed, whose property had been confiscated, and whose civil rights had been curtailed, looked forward to the event of a war with precisely the same feelings. All those, too, who were of any party opposed to that of the senate, were desirous rather that the state should be embroiled, than that they themselves should be out of power. This was an evil, which, after many years, had returned upon the community to the extent to which it now prevailed.

As Rosie expected, Chef Petit said they were starting with pâtisserie. Specifically, with classic French tarts, and today, with the tart shells. With the three most widely used different kinds of crust. Finally, something Rosie knew! Her hand shot in the air, and Rosie noticed that the only other person in the room with his hand in the air was Bodie Tal. But Chef Petit must have recognized her, too, because he called on her, not Bodie. And she felt like Hermione, rattling off the differences between pâté brisée, a standard, unsweetened dough for sweet or savory fillings; pâté sucrée, a sugared dough achieved by creaming the butter and sugar; and pâté sablée, a crumbly, delicate, almost cookielike dough, sometimes enriched with almond flour. Ten points to Rosie! She felt flush with triumph. Finally, she wasn't an idiot. "Excellent," Chef Petit said genially, and he began two expound further upon what Rosie said. "What a bloody showoff," Priya said, teasing. Rosie bumped her with her shoulder. Chef Petit wrote the ingredients for pâté brisée on the whiteboard, informing them that they'd be making all three doughs today, then setting them in the fridge to chill until tomorrow- all crust, no matter what you did with it, was improved by a good chilling. Tomorrow, they'd do quiche, and tarte au citron, and a fresh fruit tart with crème pâtissière, and they'd move on to puff pastry and tarte tatin, and Rosie could barely restrain the shout of joy that threatened to erupt from her chest. But she restrained it, and moved through the kitchen as sedately as possible, collecting her ingredients and measuring cups.

In Maya culture, the holy lords had a responsibility to keep the cosmos in order and appease the gods through ceremonies and rituals. The commoners were willing to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: “We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities.” (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.)

From Reconstruction to the civil rights era, southern school boards spent as little as one-tenth the money on black schools as for white schools, openly starving them of resources that might afford them a chance to compete on level ground. School terms for black students were made shorter by months, giving them less time in class and more time in the field for the enrichment of the ruling caste.

And then … the working-class hero in the Oval Office delivered a landmark tax cut for the rich. Trump deregulated Wall Street banks, too. With his attacks on Obamacare, the president did his part to make our capitalist system just a little more brutal and Darwinian for ordinary people. He turned over the judiciary to the elites of the Federalist Society. He turned over the economy to the Chamber of Commerce. He turned the EPA over to polluters. He ran the U.S. government in a way designed to enrich and empower himself. The one leadership task to which Trump took with enthusiasm—rolling back the regulatory state—is essentially an attack on one of the few institutions in Washington designed to help working-class Americans. If this is populism, the word has truly come to mean nothing.

to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: “We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities.” (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.)

I recently heard of a real estate professional who LOVES to cook. So, her niche market? Foodies. She attends local restaurant events and cooking classes and turns strangers into friends and clients. Her closing gift to new homeowners? A recipe box. Then she sends new recipe postcards every month to tuck inside. Isn’t that a smart way to stay connected in a meaningful way?

In our high-tech world today, there are unlimited ways with which you can search for people, places, and events to connect you with like-minded people. Food enthusiasts? There are local cooking classes. Gardening fans? There are flower shows and garden expos. Kids in school? Join the PTA and get involved. There are clubs and groups for almost any interest these days and venturing out to make those connections is a powerful way to expand your insights, your network, and even your business.

This strategy, together with the partial dismantling of measures to fight poverty, partly explains the continuous rise of inequalities in India. However, some of the rich have become richer for other reasons as well, including the close relationship between the Modi government and industrialists. FROM CRONY CAPITALISM TO COLLUSIVE CAPITALISM While the Modi government is not responsible for the enrichment of Indian tycoons, which began in most cases prior to the BJP victory in 2014, it continued to help them. In Gujarat, the Modi government had apparently granted unwarranted advantages to industrialists, including the sale of land below market prices, dispensations from environmental standards, unjustified tax rebates, interest-free loans, and so on.136 After forming the central government, the NDA government allegedly shielded Indian industrialists from banks to which these men owed billions. Such collusion has contributed to destabilizing a banking system undermined by dubious debts—particularly those held by these big investors, who do not pay back their loans.137 Even if the problem began under the previous government, it has persisted in part owing to collusion between businessmen and the ruling class. The government’s cronies continued to receive huge loans from public-sector banks (whose heads have trouble disobeying the government),138 which they proved unable to pay back. In May 2018, nonperforming assets (NPAs) vested in public banks—in other words, loans for which the borrower had not made payment on either the interest or the principal in at least ninety days—accounted for 12.65 billion dollars, or about 14 percent of their total loans (compared to 12.5 percent in March the previous year139 and only 3 percent in March 2012).140 A small number of borrowers were largely responsible for this evolution, among whom were prominent large industrialists.141 In 2015, in a fifty-seven-page document, Credit Suisse gave a detailed analysis of the astounding level of debt of ten Indian corporations that continued to borrow even though all the red flags had gone up.142 In 2018, 84 percent of the dubious loans were owed by major corporations, and twelve of them accounted for 25 percent of the outstanding NPAs.143 Among them is the group owned by Gautam Adani, a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2002.144 In 2015, the group increased its debt level by 16 percent to acquire a seaport and two power plants. Consequently, its debt soared to 840 billion rupees (11.2 billion USD), compared to only 331 billion rupees (4.41 billion dollars) in 2011.145

Asoka World School is a reputed international school in Kochi affiliated with CBSE. We have a student-friendly environment and has a very interesting syllabus. The STEM enriched curriculum helps to provide an in-depth learning experience for the students. We have a wide range of extracurricular activities for nurturing and developing a child’s creativity and imagination. Asoka World School can be an ideal option for your child. Here are some key reasons why Asoka World School is the best for your kid. Individualized attention in classes: Our student-teacher ratio arrangement is standardised in such a way that teachers are able to give individual attention to each child. Our teachers are well educated, experienced and constantly inspires their students. We follow the golden teacher-student ratio of 1:20. This helps students to gain the concepts of each subject easily hence they become more confident. This also enriches their knowledge, and they get more quality time to interact with their teachers. image Child Safe Environment: At Asoka World School, you will find your child is in extremely safe hands. Our classrooms are aesthetically designed and technologically equipped to disseminate learning through very many fun ways. Asoka World School has a world-class building design, infrastructure, fully integrated wireless network, climate-controlled smart classrooms, security features and no compromise hygiene and safeguarding policy that offers everything you have been dreaming for your child. Updated Curriculums: We have 4 levels of programmes prepared for our children. Foundational - KG - IInd Preparatory - IIIrd - Vth Middle School - VIth - VIIIth Senior School - IXth - XIIth These programs are framed by our school to focus on developing various vital skills in the students. Our teachers adopt a customised teaching approach that can help students of every category. Our flexible curriculum enhances the communication between the teachers and students to a great extent. Our school has result-oriented teaching methods, qualified and responsible teaching staff to help facilitate a learning environment that is both safe and nurturing. As the best CBSE school in Kochi, Asoka World School is a leader in its sector and we hope to continue rising and come out as the best school in Kochi.

But just as important to his education was Alec's understanding that both of his teachers were like him. This enriched his knowledge of himself and his kind: of himself, because he found he possessed this particular insight by nature; of his kind, because he now saw there were many of his sort, throughout all livelihoods and social classes, as different from one another as were folks who called themselves normal.

The methodology, admitted openly and without embarrassment at the time, was to identify promising talent at a young age, and to make special provisions for its development. These provisions included a great degree of educational segregation. Bright young people were conspicuously set apart from their contemporaries. They were placed in special, enriched classes and sent into extracurricular programs that only admitted those of comparable talent. It was assumed that, as they moved through the educational stream, they would maintain a rather close-knit formation, associating primarily with their intellectual peers and with mentors drawn from the ranks of accomplished sci- entists.8 The operating hypothesis was that talent, whatever its origins in genetic endowment or early childhood experience, is a relatively rare resource, that positive measures are necessary to seek it out, and that once found it requires and deserves special treatment.

Reading The Wealth of Nations as an attack against lobbying from special interest groups and cronyism suggests that for Smith the violence and inefficiencies of rent seeking mercantilist policies cause harm and are unjust. For Smith, rent seeking and state capture by special interest groups is not only inefficient, but uses the (actual) "blood and treasure" of fellow citizens to enrich a few merchants under the false pretence of enriching the country. The Wealth of Nations can therefore be read as a moral condemnation of mercantilist policies: unjust policies are also inefficient policies.

When studies using mental ability test scores from children are considered, the heritability of mental ability is typically found to be about .40, and the effect of the common or shared environment is found to be almost as strong, about .35. In contrast, when studies using mental ability test scores from adults (or older adolescents) are considered, estimates of the heritability of mental ability are much higher, typically about .65, whereas estimates of common or shared environment effects are much lower, probably under .20 (see review by Haworth et al., 2010). These findings indicate that differences among children in their levels of mental ability are attributable almost as much to their common environment—that is, to features of their family or household circumstances—as to their genetic inheritances. However, the findings also suggest that as children grow up, the differences among them in mental ability become less strongly related to the features of their common environments, and more strongly related to their genetic inheritances. In other words, the effect on one's mental ability of the family or household in which one is reared tends to become less important as one grows up, so that by adulthood one's level of mental ability is heavily dependent on one's genetic characteristics. It is as if one's level of mental ability—relative to that of other persons of the same age—can be raised (or lowered) during childhood by a particularly good (or poor) home environment, but then gradually returns to the level that one's genes tend to produce. The aforementioned findings are based mainly on samples of participants who belong to the broad middle class of modern Western countries. There is some evidence, though, that the heritability of IQ tends to be somewhat lower (at least until young adulthood, and perhaps beyond) when studies are conducted using participants of less enriched environments, such as those in economically underdeveloped countries or in the lowest socioeconomic classes of some Western countries (see review by Nisbett et al., 2012). One recent study (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016) found that in the United States, additive genetic influences had a weaker influence on IQ among persons of low socioeconomic status than among persons of high socioeconomic status. (Interestingly, Tucker-Drob and Bates did not find this effect in western European countries or in Australia, where socioeconomic status differences tend to be smaller.) The above findings suggest that whenever the heritability of IQ is discussed, it is important to consider the ages of the persons being examined as well as their socioeconomic status and their country.

In April 2012, The New York Times published a heart-wrenching essay by Claire Needell Hollander, a middle school English teacher in the New York City public schools. Under the headline “Teach the Books, Touch the Heart,” she began with an anecdote about teaching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. As her class read the end together out loud in class, her “toughest boy,” she wrote, “wept a little, and so did I.” A girl in the class edged out of her chair to get a closer look and asked Hollander if she was crying. “I am,” she said, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.” Hollander, a reading enrichment teacher, shaped her lessons around robust literature—her classes met in small groups and talked informally about what they had read. Her students did not “read from the expected perspective,” as she described it. They concluded (not unreasonably) that Holden Caulfield “was a punk, unfairly dismissive of parents who had given him every advantage.” One student read Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies as raps. Another, having been inspired by Of Mice and Men, went on to read The Grapes of Wrath on his own and told Hollander how amazed he was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” She knew that these classes were enhancing her students’ reading levels, their understanding of the world, their souls. But she had to stop offering them to all but her highest-achieving eighth-graders. Everyone else had to take instruction specifically targeted to boost their standardized test scores. Hollander felt she had no choice. Reading scores on standardized tests in her school had gone up in the years she maintained her reading group, but not consistently enough. “Until recently, given the students’ enthusiasm for the reading groups, I was able to play down that data,” she wrote. “But last year, for the first time since I can remember, our test scores declined in relation to comparable schools in the city. Because I play a leadership role in the English department, I felt increased pressure to bring this year’s scores up. All the teachers are increasing their number of test-preparation sessions and practice tests, so I have done the same, cutting two of my three classic book groups and replacing them with a test preparation tutorial program.” Instead of Steinbeck and Shakespeare, her students read “watered-down news articles or biographies, bastardized novels, memos or brochures.” They studied vocabulary words, drilled on how to write sentences, and practiced taking multiple-choice tests. The overall impact of such instruction, Hollander said, is to “bleed our English classes dry.” So

The five subsequent volumes, as planned by the author, will consist primarily of source material, that is, they will contain the transliterated texts of the restored Sumerian compositions, together with a translation and commentary as well as the autograph copies of all the pertinent uncopied material in the University Museum utilized for the reconstruction of the texts. Each of these five volumes will be devoted to a particular class of Sumerian composition: (1) epics; (2) myths; (3) hymns; (4) lamentations; (5) "wisdom." It cannot be too strongly stressed that on the day this task is completed and Sumerian literature is restored and made available to scholar and layman, the humanities will be enriched by one of the most magnificent groups of documents ever brought to light. As the earliest creative writings, these documents hold a unique position in the history of civilization. Moreover, because of their profound and enduring influence on the spiritual and religious development of the entire Near East, they are veritable untapped mines and treasure-houses of significant source material and invaluable data ready for exploitation by all the relevant humanities.

She is the author of The Happy Kid Handbook: How to Raise Joyful Children in a Stressful World. She offers four strategies for helping your children pursue their passions.2 Know your child’s unique interests. Avoid plugging her into the local soccer program or Chinese class because that’s what all of your neighbors are doing. Watch instead (especially when she is playing) for signs of serious interests in particular pursuits. Think outside the box. Passion is not limited to playing fields and theatrical stages. It can exist in the kitchen, in the workshop, in the woods outside your back door, or in any number of other places. Parents are understandably anxious to offer enrichment to their children, but enrichment doesn’t automatically equate with large, organized programs. Nurture optimism. “Optimistic kids are more willing to take healthy risks, become better problem-solvers and experience positive relationships,” she notes. Since failure is a fact of life and your children will certainly have their share of setbacks, help them look optimistically at what they do. Avoid judgment. When you offer a negative judgment of your child’s expressed area of interest, you run the risk of stealing much of the joy from that pursuit. Not only is your child unique and different from every other child in the world, he is also unique from you. If you stomp on his potential passions or push him toward a pursuit he doesn’t particularly like, you’re likely to cause him a great deal of internal conflict.

When you create enriched environments of positive stress and high demand, your motivation to succeed is sky-high without any conscious effort on your part. You are not in conflict with your environment but being pulled forward by it. The specific strategies detailed in this chapter for outsourcing your motivation to enriched environments included: Installing several layers of external pressure and accountability; Making your goals public; Setting high expectations for customers and fans; Investing up front on your projects and scheduling them in advance; Surrounding yourself with people who have higher personal standards than you have; Competing with people who have a much higher skill level than you do by viewing competition as a form of collaboration; Making a commitment and then practicing or performing these in public settings. The external pressure of performing for others only heightens your internal pressure to succeed; Getting enough clarity to move forward a few steps toward your goal; Hiring a mentor who is world-class at what you want to do; and Joining a mastermind group filled with role models and people who will help you elevate your life.

Clinton Cash,

Talk of equality of educational opportunity is hollow so long as hard economic reality reminds you that society considers you inferior. Beyond what it buys, pay is a symbol of social status; and a levelling of pay will produce a revolution in self-esteem. Increased comfort and security for the mass of working class people would be accompanied by a rise in their expectations for themselves and their children. If society values people equally in terms of money, it encourages them to aspire to equality in terms of education and culture. Education is an enrichment that goes beyond money, but ‘to him that hath shall be given’. At present educational opportunity runs alongside money. Once working-class people win economic equality they will have the confidence to seek cultural and educational equality for themselves and their children. In the process a huge economic potential will be liberated. Human creativity and ingenuity is our ultimate resource—develop that through education and economic progress follows. 

The weirdness never stops! Help! With the Recess Enrichment Program, A.J. and the gang have to take classes even during recess! The new teacher, Mrs. Lizzy, teaches how to make balloon animals, how to compost worms, and lots of other weird useless skills that nobody would ever want to know in a million hundred years!