Daniel Shotkin is a senior at Westwood Regional High School in New Jersey. Born in New York, he lived in Bangkok for the first fourteen years of his life. Back in the United States, he has made repeated attempts at non-fiction writing. Among other things, his work has received a national medal in journalism at the Scholastic Writing Awards. Outside of writing, his favorite book is Nabokov’s Pale Fire and you can find him listening to João Gilberto. He hopes to contribute a younger perspective to 3 Quarks Daily. Email: dshotkinjr [at] gmail.com
by Daniel Shotkin I was in 9th grade when I first heard the name Rudyard Kipling mentioned in school. My history teacher had decided to inaugurate a unit on imperialism, and Kipling’s zealous verses soon rang loudly through the classroom: Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your…
by Daniel Shotkin This week marks one year since Affirmative Action was repealed by the Supreme Court. The landmark ruling was a watershed moment in how we think of race and social mobility in the United States. But for high schoolers, the crux of the case lies somewhere else entirely. Like many others, getting admission…
by Daniel Shotkin In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau prophetically declared that “we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty.” Two hundred and fifty years later, Rousseau’s words seem clairvoyant in their relevancy to schooling in the United States. Education has come to the forefront of the array of issues emerging in…