What Advice Would You Give Younger Kids About Middle or High School?

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

In an Op-Ed called "Ditch Your Laptop, Dump Your Boyfriend," several young adults give pithy advice to those just starting college as freshmen. Looking back on your own experiences, what advice would you give kids just starting either middle school or high school?

One of the Op-Ed contributors, Tim Novikoff, a Ph.D. students in applied mathematics at Cornell, writes :

College is your chance to see what you've been missing, both in the outside world and within yourself. Use this time to explore as much as you can.

[...]Somewhere in your childhood is a gaping hole. Fill this hole. Don't know what classical music is all about? That's bad. Don't know who Lady Gaga is? That's worse. If you were raised in a protected cocoon, this is the time to experience the world beyond.

College is also a chance to learn new things about yourself. Never been much of a leader? Try forming a club or a band.

Students: Tell us what advice you'd give younger students for making the most of middle or high school. Does Mr. Novikoff's advice apply to those levels too? What would you tell them that is based on what worked for you? What might you advise based on what didn't work for you? Why?

Obituaries

What Do You Want Your Obituary to Say?

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

 

Do you ever read Times obituaries or look through the annual "Lives They Lived" issue of The Times Magazine? Recently, there have been obituaries about a female spy in World War II, the man whose name inspired the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd and the inventor of the Club antitheft device. If The Times were to write your obituary someday, what would you want it to say?

In a 2008 edition of Talk to the Newsroom, Bruce Weber, an obituary writer, answered questions from readers. Here are some excerpts that might help you shape your answer:

Q. Occasionally an obit is really funny, reflecting, I suppose, the life that's been lived. How much leeway do you have in reporting some of the wackier aspects of a person's life?

A. The general outlook of the obituary department is that our articles are about lives that have been lived, not deaths that have occurred. The idea is to appreciate the character of the subject to the degree that that's possible, usually based on what we know that person has accomplished and on what we can glean from interviews with family members and others. You never want to make fun of anyone, but you do want to appreciate eccentricities, record unusual events and relay humorous incidents or comments. In that way, a good obituary can be like a good eulogy.

Q. How do you choose [whom to write about]?

A. … Sometimes the details of a person's life may not add up to "important," but they add up to interesting. Case in point: The typewriter man, Martin Tytell, whose vocation was so eccentric and he was so good at it that the details of his craft and life were reader candy.

Students: Given that The Times writes obituaries only about people who are important or interesting for some reason, what would you like a Times obit about you to say? For example, you might try writing just a single paragraph of an obituary that might appear when you're 98 years old. What would it say about your life and accomplishments?

 

Should Books Be Banned?

Are There Books That Should Be Banned From Your School Library?

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Do you think there are books that you and your friends are not mature enough to read? Are there books that contain sexual or violent content, profanity, racial slurs, or religious or political messages that should not be available at your school? If so, how should that be decided? The last week of September is Banned Books Week, and we invite you to scan this list of Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for 2000-2009 and think about the questions we pose here. Please post your responses below.

In our "10 Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week," you can learn about why everything from classics like "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Huckleberry Finn" to current favorites like the "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" series have been banned by schools and districts. Here is what we write about a recent challenge:

This week, a university professor, Wesley Scroggins, attacked Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak" as "soft pornography" in The Springfield News-Leader of Missouri. Ms. Halse Anderson responded on her blog, as did the teacher and blogger Donalyn Miller on The Book Whisperer Blog. Read the blog posts and discuss both positions. What is "soft pornography"? Should teenagers, as novelist and Harvard student Isabel Kaplan argues in her Huffington Post post, read books with such content?

Students: Tell us what you think about this issue. Are there books that should be banned from your school library? If so, who should decide? How? Of the books on this banned books list, how many have you read? How did they affect you?