The Top 5: Luddites, school tech rules, & teaching girls in Afghanistan
Welcome to your weekly edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation! Please also consider becoming a paid subscriber if this is one of those newsletters you open up all the time or look forward to each week.
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“We’ve Lost the Plot” (The Atlantic)
Because Michael has been writing and thinking about “politics as entertainment” and the pop culturization of politics for many years, and Megan Garber hits on this and other cultural trends in this excellent essay.
A weather app recently sent me a push notification offering to tell me about “interesting storms.” I didn’t know I needed my storms to be interesting. Or consider an email I received from TurboTax. It informed me, cheerily, that “we’ve pulled together this year’s best tax moments and created your own personalized tax story.” Here was the entertainment imperative at its most absurd: Even my Form 1040 comes with a highlight reel. Such examples may seem trivial, harmless—brands being brands. But each invitation to be entertained reinforces an impulse: to seek diversion whenever possible, to avoid tedium at all costs, to privilege the dramatized version of events over the actual one. To live in the metaverse is to expect that life should play out as it does on our screens. And the stakes are anything but trivial. In the metaverse, it is not shocking but entirely fitting that a game-show host and Twitter personality would become president of the United States.
“How Parenting Today Is Different, and Harder” (NYT)
Because we resonate a lot with these studies and statistics around parenting in 2023.
…research has found, today’s parents feel intense pressure to constantly teach and interact with their children, whereas previous generations spent more time doing adult activities when their children were around. While this increased attention used to be an upper-middle-class goal, more recent research shows that people across class divides believe it’s the best way to parent.
“Fighting for Girls’ Education No Matter What” (The International Correspondent)
Because one woman, “Neda,” is operating a network of underground schools for girls and women in Afghanistan, even under stricter Taliban rule.
We opened the center and for 2-3 days we were so scared that the Taliban might show up. The children were scared. I thought to myself: If the Taliban can manipulate and trick women into staying inside their homes rather than risk getting an education, I might be able to trick them as well. I went and bought a huge Taliban flag and hung it on the wall just inside the center. It only took a few hours for them to show up.
“The Teenager Leading the Smartphone Liberation Movement” (NYT)
Because teen Logan Lane stopped using her smart phone and then started a school club for other “luddites.” It’s a great podcast interview and follow-up to NYT’s December article on kids eschewing smartphones. Lane’s comments on how social media changes up a school’s dynamics of popularity were particularly fascinating.
“If you worry about library books, think about what kids can see on school-issued iPads” (Dallas Morning News)
Because economist Abby McCloskey found out her six year old’s school-provided tablet came with zero guidelines and protocols from her school and district, and the growing use of technology in schools needs more care and attention.
ICYMI on Wear We Are
Episode 52: Preview the State of the Union with us!
The Morning Five: January 30, 2023
The Morning Five: January 31, 2023