LAUSD Classes Begin; TV Family Programming Less Family-Friendly; B.B. King; Jonathan Kozol on New Teachers; Gina Nahai on the Lives of Iranian Women
LAUSD Classes Begin
Classes begin Wednesday for almost 500,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students. Larry Mantle talks with LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer and board member Monica Garcia, about their plans for the upcoming school year. They also discuss the deal recently reached with Mayor Villaraigosa to partner in the management of a small group of low-achieving schools.
TV Family Programming Less Family-Friendly
According to the Parents Television Council, family hour television programming is less family-frindly than ever. The group studied 180 hours of original programming on six broadcast networks during three two-week ratings sweeps periods in 2006 and 2007. It found that instances of violence had increased 52.4% compared with a similar study in 2000-2001 and that sexual content had increased 22.1%. Larry Mantle talks with Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council and takes listener calls.
B.B. King
Larry Mantle talks with legendary blues musician B.B. King about his long and illustrious career in music and his appearance at the Hollywood Bowl Wednesday.
Jonathan Kozol on New Teachers
Author and education advocate Jonathan Kozol joins Larry Mantle to talk about the challenges facing novice teachers in public schools in America. In his new book, Letters to a Young Teacher (Crown), Kozol writes to Francesca, a first grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, describing his repeated visits to her classroom while recounting his own personal stories of the years he spent in public schools.
Gina Nahai on the Lives of Iranian Women
In her fourth novel, Iranian-born author Gina Nahai explores the struggles of an Iranian family in the tenuous decade before the Islamic revolution and examines the hidden world of Iran where a woman's destiny is completely out of her control. Larry talks with Nahai about her new book, Caspian Rain(MacAdam/Cage).