Robert Putnam
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Giving hope to the hopeless dominates the stories in Seattle, Washington and Columbus, Ohio. Among those spotlighted in this video is a program to reform the foster care system and an organization that reunites children with parents who were incarcerated. Too many poor youths end up in the juvenile justice system, and The Echo Glen facility hopes to heal, rather than punish, young incarcerated teens.
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In this segment of Our Kids, the importance of mentors is illustrated through stories that feature individuals in their own communities. By highlighting a police officer who started a free judo school to help kids get on a better path, a revolutionary accelerated kindergarten program that propels disadvantaged children by celebrating their smartness, and a young girl who expresses her pride and determination in song-despite living in a homeless shelter-we...
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Highlighting the deteriorating classroom conditions and the worst test scores in the nation, this alarming segment of Our Kids casts its eye on the current educational crisis in Detroit, Michigan. This cautionary tale discusses how both public and unregulated charter schools suffer from high teacher turnover, a shortage of up-to-date textbooks, a lack of funding, and financial accountability. We visit with students, teachers, parents, and educational...
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Underserved children need extra services to be competitive with children who are financially and emotionally secure. Children who live in fractured homes are extremely disadvantaged when it comes to achieving what others around them do. In this segment, we take a look at communities in Duluth, Minnesota; Boston, Massachusetts; Springfield, Missouri; and Nashville, Tennessee where grade schools are offering wrap-around services to their students including...
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"An eminent political scientist's brilliant synthesis of social and political trends over the past century that shows how we have gone from an individualistic society to a more communitarian society and then back again -- and how we can use that experience to overcome once again the individualism that currently weakens our country"--
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Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet--the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today's fractured America. Twenty years ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small...
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"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--
"What has happened to the Land of Opportunity? The promise of the American Dream is that anyone, regardless of his or her origins, can have a fair start in life. If we work hard, we can get a good education and achieve...