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High School Hasn’t Changed in 100 Years. That’s a Problem.

Reimagine and redesign with us.

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10.05.15

This message is in partnership with XQ Institute.

The first American public high school opened its doors 200 years ago. It was based upon the belief that high school, if free and available to all, would develop graduates who would be able to contribute to culture, society and the economy.

About 100 years after its inception, the system was overhauled to meet the demands of an industrialized, factory-based society. And it has stayed frozen in time ever since.

Radical and meaningful change is long overdue. We need to rethink the beliefs and the models upon which we’ve built these schools. We need to plan for a future where ideas are currency, where knowledge is highly valued.

XQ is a movement to challenge these old definitions of school, to illuminate how stagnant our system is, and most importantly, to create new thinking against entirely new models. It is a movement with one end goal: to create great interest on the part of all Americans to redefine the ways we prepare our students for the future.

XQ The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine — and then design — the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite to rethink and build schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life in a rapidly changing global economy.

Over the next few months, we will accept proposals, and then a year from now, we will give the best of them the expert support and resources needed to become Super Schools.

Let’s rethink high school together.

education
Videos

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It's easy to blame technology and the way our increasingly online lives have further isolated us from "real" human interactions. The Internet once held seemingly limitless promise for bringing us together but seems to be doing just the opposite.

Except that's apparently not true at all. A major study from Cigna on loneliness found that feelings of isolation and loneliness are on the rise amongst Americans but the numbers are nearly identical amongst those who use social media and those who don't. Perhaps more importantly, the study found five common traits amongst those who don't feel lonely.

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He risked his life to leave a "historical record of our martyrdom."

via Yad Vashem and Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007

In September 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. By April 1940, the gates closed on the Lodz Ghetto, the second largest in the country after Warsaw.

Throughout the war, over 210,000 people would be imprisoned in Lodz.

Among those held captive was Henryk Ross. He was a Jewish sports photographer before the Nazi invasion and worked for the the ghetto's Department of Statistics during the war. As part of his official job, he took identification photos of the prisoners and propaganda shots of Lodz' textile and leather factories.

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Communities

Pizza guy whose quick thinking saved a woman's life gets the reward of a lifetime

WITI Milwaukee

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"I gave him his pizza and then I noticed behind him was his girlfriend," Grundl told WITI Milwaukee. "She pointed to a black eye that was quite visible. She mouthed the words, 'Call the police.'"

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Good News

Airport security worker fired after giving traveler 'You Ugly' note


Rochester NY Airport Security passing insulting notes to travelers caught on tape www.youtube.com

Neil Strassner was just passing through airport security, something he does on a weekly basis as part of his job. That's when a contract airport security employee handed him a small piece of folded cardboard. Strassner, 40, took the paper and continued on his way. He only paused when he heard the security employee shouting back at him, "You going to open the note?"

When he unfolded the small piece of paper, Strassner was greeted with an unprompted insult. "You ugly!!!"

According to Strassner, and in newly released CCTV of the incident, the woman who handed him the note began laughing loudly.

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popular

A single dad became an internet hero after taking a cosmetology lesson to style his daughter's hair

What if the tables were turned?


Facebook: kktv11news

A post on the Murdered by Words subreddit is going viral for the perfect way a poster shut down a knee-jerk "double-standard!" claim.

It began when a Redditor posted a 2015 Buzzfeed article story about a single dad who took cosmetology lessons to learn how to do his daughter's hair.

Most people would see the story as something positive. A dad goes out of his way to learn a skill that makes his daughter look fabulous.

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Lifestyle