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The truth is coming to light. Yesterday, I overheard a public school teacher and mother of several children express an honest opinion about education during the pandemic. Schoolwork varies by teacher and school district, she noted, with some doing almost nothing at all, while others send out huge packets of worksheets. About the latter, she disgustedly said, “It’s just busywork!” She doesn’t seem to be the only parent noticing this. As the period of makeshift education at home lengthens from weeks to months, more parents are letting school slide, Leslie Brody explains in The Wall Street Journal. Among other things, parents are frustrated with hovering teachers who continually remind children to wash their hands or get to class, or math classes that...

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of commencement addresses commissioned by The Atlantic for students who will not be able to attend their graduations because of the pandemic. You bastards stood me up!You invited me to give this commencement months ago. You never told me it was cancelled. So I drove across the country, got up early this morning and put this scratchy graduation gown over my Ramones t-shirt, and now I find myself standing in an empty stadium with a Very Important Speech in my hands!The speech I was going to give fully lives up to the extremely mediocre norms of this genre. You invited me because I’m a person who has achieved some career success...

Hello! My name is Zachary and I am a biter! I know, “What? Rehab? What kind of father sends him toddler off to a place like that?”, I hear you asking. Well, the kind that can’t handle the embarrassment of being the father of the zombie biter at the local nursery. The one who continually signs forms to acknowledge that his son mounted another child, bit their heads without permission and showed no remorse. My lovely son, Zachary, was born in the wrong era; had he been born million years ago in the Jurassic period, he would have fit in perfectly with his cavemen predecessors. This large Neanderthal toddler who was born at almost ten pounds is a head taller...

Remember the "Tide Pod Challenge?" That horrendous time at the beginning of 2018 when adolescents filmed themselves ingesting laundry detergent? While it was a funny (albeit dangerous) start to the new year, this small boost of infamy was a PR mess for the detergent brand in question, Tide, whose crisis communication team had to figure out how to respond to America's teens swallowing their toxic product. Tide's parent company, Procter & Gamble, was swift in their response, thanks in large part to their communication plan. Communication plans can help you clarify the purpose of a product launch or new initiative and officially determine the messages you want to deliver to your intended audience(s). Additionally, a communication plan can help your...

Ignorance is one of the causes of unintended consequences listed by Robert Merton in “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action” (the others being error, short-term vs long-term interests, basic values, and the self-defeating prophecy). Let’s look at what ignorance is, why we have it, and how it impacts us in unexpected ways. Ignorance is defined quite loosely as lacking knowledge or comprehension. This definition also explains why this item on Merton’s list above is different from the others. How are we to avoid some degree of ignorance? There is always some part of ignorance in any piece of knowledge. Instead, we can think of ignorance as having several forms, including ignorance by unawareness, ignorance from lack of usefulness, ability...