Anya Kamenetz

Finally, an evidence-based, don't-panic guide to what to do about kids and screens. Today's babies often make their debut on social media with the very first sonogram. They begin interacting with screens at around four months old. But is this good news or bad news? A wonderful opportunity to connect around the world? Or the first step in creating a generation of addled screen zombies? Many have been quick to declare this the dawn of a neurological and emotional crisis, but solid science on the subject is surprisingly hard to come by. In The Art of Screen Time, Anya Kamenetz--an expert on education and technology, as well as a mother of two young children--takes a refreshingly practical look at the subject. Surveying hundreds of fellow parents on their practices and ideas, and cutting through a thicket of inconclusive studies and overblown claims, she hones a simple message, a riff on Michael Pollan's well-known "food rules": Enjoy Screens. Not too much. Mostly with others. This brief but powerful dictum forms the backbone of a philosophy that will help parents moderate technology in their children's lives, curb their own anxiety, and create room for a happy, healthy family life with and without screens.

How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life

The Art of Screen Time

Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education

DIY U

Standardized assessments test our children, our teachers, our schools—and increasingly, our patience. Your child is more than a score. But in the last twenty years, schools have dramatically increased standardized testing, sacrificing hours of classroom time. What is the cost to students, teachers, and families? How do we preserve space for self-directed learning and development—especially when we still want all children to hit the mark? The Test explores all sides of this problem—where these tests came from, their limitations and flaws, and ultimately what parents, teachers, and concerned citizens can do. It recounts the shocking history and tempestuous politics of testing and borrows strategies from fields as diverse as games, neuroscience, and ancient philosophy to help children cope. It presents the stories of families, teachers, and schools maneuvering within and beyond the existing educational system, playing and winning the testing game. And it offers a glimpse into a future of better tests. With an expert’s depth, a writer’s flair, and a hacker’s creativity, Anya Kamenetz has written an essential book for any parent who has wondered: what do I do about all these tests?

Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized TestingÐBut You DonÕt Have to Be

The Test

A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist draws on her research with experts in economics, education, the health-care industry, and other fields to identify the sources of massive debt among young adults, in an account that explores such factors as college loans, poor employee benefits, and threats to social security. 40,000 first printing.

Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young

Generation Debt

How COVID Changed Children's Lives, and Where We Go Now

Stolen Year

An NPR education reporter shows how the last true social safety net-- the public school system--was decimated by the pandemic, and how years of short-sighted political decisions have failed to put our children first. School has long meant much more than an education in America. 30 million children depend on free school meals. Schools are, statistically, the safest physical places for children to be. They are the best chance many children have at finding basics like eye exams, safe housing, mental health counseling, or simply a caring adult. Flawed, inequitable, underfunded, and segregated, they remain the most important engine of social mobility and the crucible of our democracy. The cost of closing our schools for so long during COVID, made with good intentions, has not yet been fully reckoned with. In The Stolen Year, NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz shows that the roots of our crisis run far deeper than COVID. She follows families across the country as they lived through the pandemic. But she also dives deep into the political history that brought us to this point: Why we have no childcare system to speak of, why subsidies for families were cut to the bone, how children became the group most likely to live in poverty, how we overpolice and separate families of color, and how we are content to let the unpaid and underpaid labor of women, especially women of color and immigrants, stand in for a void of public and collective concern for children. Kamenetz makes the case that 2020 wasn't a lost year--it was taken from our children, by years of neglect and bad faith. We have failed to put them first. The American Rescue Plan offers new tax benefits for families and new funding for schools. But if progress stops there, and we revert to cutting funding and laying off school staff, another crisis will surely come. The Stolen Year is a passionately argued and emotional story, but also a demand for recompense.

Anya Kamenetz

About

Books

Join the club