The Donella Meadows Archive

Why Would Anyone Want to Play Starpower?

When leaders in socialist countries wonder why their people are disaffected, when my conservative friends tell me how lazy and undeserving the poor are, when...

score:9, 12/04/1986, ,

When We're Ready for Fusion Energy, It's Ready for Us

If the chemists at the University of Utah have indeed achieved nuclear fusion in a bottle on a tabletop, their discovery could open a new...

score:9, 05/04/1989, ,

Ok Kids, Time to Turn to Your Snickers Lesson

The scariest article I have read in a long time appeared in the September 21 issue of The Nation. It was written by Jonathan Kozol...

score:9, 10/01/1992, ,

You Are What You Put Through Your Mind

Scores on the Scholastic Achievement Tests -- the SATs that determine which of our high-school seniors go to college -- have been going down so steadily...

score:9, 08/25/1994, ,

What's Wrong with the Schools?

Maybe it's just that I was a kid, but I remember my public school in a middle-class Midwest town as the center of...

score:9, 03/06/1997, ,

The Land Doesn't Put the Kids in the Schools

Vermont is in a tizzy over a set of gnarled-together problems that plague every state -- schools, land, property tax. I don't suppose any...

score:9, 04/10/1997, ,

A Building Can Be a Teacher

David Orr, head of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College, understands that young people learn from everything they do and everything around them. Even...

score:9, 10/30/1997, ,

Hurray! We Get to Revise Our Education Funding System!

Following a national trend, poor school districts in Vermont and New Hampshire sued for the equality of education promised in their state constitutions, and they...

score:9, 03/05/1998, ,

How Did We Ever Let Tv Get So Bad?

The principal stands on the roof of the school building, his suit coat flapping in the wind, all the kids and teachers, arrayed in a...

score:9, 06/25/1998, ,

Newt Has Some Right Ideas for the Wrong Reasons

I hate to admit that Newt Gingrich is right about anything, but I think it's a great idea to have moments of silence in...

score:8, 12/08/1994, ,

The Academics Meet the Army to Plan Century 21

When I was invited to a weekend workshop to help the U.S. Army think through its 30-year plan, I almost didn't go...

score:7, 03/10/1988, ,

Politically Correct, Academically Correct, Scientifically Correct, Bigotedly Correct

Young people are now streaming back to universities all over the nation, where they will be shot down by the label "politically correct" whenever they...

score:6, 09/12/1991, ,

What Happened to the Geographer?

May is "sweeps month" in the world of commercial television. Sample counts of how many people watch which programs determine advertising rates for the coming...

score:6, 05/16/1995, ,

Beyond Divestment and Sanctions

"I can't decide whether to go to crew practice or to the anti-apartheid rally," one of the freshmen in my class sighed, very...

score:3, 08/14/1986, ,