999 words

No Child Left Behind Act: history, impact, and controversy

The article summarizes the history of the "No Child Left Behind" act (NCLB), its original intent, support from the Bush administration and Senator Edward Kennedy, the bill's impact on improving education standards, its slide into discontent among teachers, and, finally, President Obama's stance on…

~5 min read

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629 words

A teacher's recommendation letter for Benjamin's university application

I have had the pleasure of presiding over Benjamin's education for that past few years and I have come to find him to be a young man of exceptional character and achievement. He will undoubtedly make a wonderful addition to your prestigious institution.

~4 min read

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977 words

The history and settlement of Mississippi from pre-colonial times to statehood

Mississippi has had a long and interesting history. The Mississippi River, one of the state's most notable features, was created more than 12,000 years ago, as Ice Age glaciers began to recede and carved its channel. A few thousand years later, human habitation is recorded in the Upper Mississippi.

~5 min read

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1,749 words

Tolkien's judicious word choice in The Lord of the Rings

Although the recent motion picture adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, was not the first such enterprise, it did go a long way towards attracting a new generation of readers to the trilogy and its prologue in The Hobbit.

~9 min read

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4,390 words

Machiavelli and Hobbes on capitalism's boom and bust cycles

The transition from a feudal serf economy to a capitalist market economy was one of the fundamental shifts which have produced modernity as we know it.

~22 min read

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2,667 words

Literary methodologies for interpreting J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan

Peter Pan is ostensibly a legendary children's book but through the years it has been poked, prodded, sniffed at, devoured, stripped naked and examined for those mysterious hidden -- or obvious -- meanings and rumored dark metaphors. The authors, critics, scholars and others who have dissected J.M.

~14 min read

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1,525 words

Thomas Merton's conversion to Catholicism and spiritual journey

Thomas Merton (1915 -- 1968) was a prominent Catholic figure and one of the most important spiritual writers of the previous century, renowned for some of his influential works on Christian living, the first one of them being an autobiographical account called "The Seven Storey Mountain." This work…

~8 min read

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1,639 words

Cross-cultural communication challenges in international business

Nowadays, with almost every country going global, cross-cultural communication has become an integral part of business.

~9 min read

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4,788 words

Immigration and migration effects on Britain's economy

Does immigration and migration from a country really affect the economy of the country? Britain is not new to both. For over two centuries Britain was the centre of an empire where the sun never set.

~24 min read

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1,621 words

Interpreting cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment

Even in the contemporary world, one of the most fundamental issues before the Supreme Court involves the meaning and interpretation of the Eightn Amendment to the United States Constitution.

~9 min read

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