The lack of common compassion and understanding in our country is ever more alarming. Between Monday and Friday of last week an angry, alienated man mailed 14 pipe bombs to elected officials and government employees; on Saturday a different angry, alienated man murdered 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue; we awoke to news Friday that Union Temple, in Prospect Heights, was vandalized the previous night.

Religion forms a large part of the American experience. Public schools may lean on the first amendment to duck teaching about faith, but belief and dissent are at the core of the nation’s foundation. In the depths of his 1990s dispair, New York rock icon Lou Reed sang, “You need a busload of faith to get by.”

For some, however, religious faith is not a part of their identity. Not that they would explicitly discriminate against believers. Maybe they just find the supernatural less relevant to their lives. God seems a bit ‘old school,’ and believers a bit curious.

We must guard against this bias, especially if we are progressive.

A common fear about cultural literacy is that the stories and experiences we teach are part of the Western Canon; 'dead white men' as postmodernists like to say. Setting aside the issue of whether and how children in America are taught the history and culture at the foundation of their country, the assertion is incorrect.

The Canon is ever-evolving and ever-moving.

In 1948 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that "education has a two-fold function to perform... one is utility and the other is culture." At ICS we refer to these functions as knowledge and socio-emotional learning On the wall outside the music room our children see that King warned us that "intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education."

This advice came to mind when my younger daughter took a Tae Kwan Do belt test in Friday night.

Psalm 13 begins by asking "How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?" The question seems apposite in light of the latest study from the New School, publishers of the popular InsideSchools website that helps many parents to pick schools. The Times covered it today, noting:

the poorer students were, the lower they tended to score on the test, even when they went to the same school as wealthier children.

Stanford University announced the very sad news that Professor Maryam Mirzakhani passed away on Friday, due to breast cancer. She was 40. She leaves a husband and a daughter.

In 1971 Robert Plant wrote a poem about a lady who was reading a sign on a wall. She was careful about her understanding 'cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.

Liz Harris has a story in the Times this week about the opening of a Women's History center inside the New York Historical Society. Having dispensed with Black History in February, we're on to Women's History in March. My friend Mark asks, with evident frustration, "how about if we just teach history? Period." He's got a point, but as Liz, herself the mother of a little girl, points out we've got museums for all kinds of other folks, including Bigfoot! Isn't it long-past time women got their due?

Embracing one's origin while 'becoming' American is a challenge many ICS children share. Just this morning a new student began school with us; until he was four, he spoke his mother's language, Bahasa. Now that he's in kindergarten, he too tells her he only speaks English. But we know that, in time, our students will come to appreciate their unique stories and traditions.

A friend recently sent me a copy of Angela Duckworth's book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.Duckworth teaches psychology at Penn and has had a following among educators since 2011 when her work was featured in the New York Times. Boiling her (brilliant) career and research down to a phrase I'd say: tenacity trumps talent.

Duckworth's research identifies the importance of grit and ways in which we can measure it more accurately. But, she cautions, we still don't know as much as we would like about how to make kids 'gritty.'

On Thursday, The Times reported that US Education Secretary Arnie Duncan told states they "could delay the use of test results in teacher-performance ratings by another year, an acknowledgment, in effect, of the enormous pressures mounting on the nation’s teachers because of new academic standards and more rigorous standardized testing." I've written frequently on this blog about accountability; our obligation to parents and the broader Brooklyn community to show whether we are using taxpayer dollars effectively.