Education

Activist Greg Mortenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Central Asia Institute. Since 1993, the organization has opened schools and provided an education for over 4000 girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The schools promote literacy, women vocational skills, public health and environmental awareness. Mortenson splits his time between Central Asia and Montana.

Writer/producer Judd Apatow. His new series for FOX is called Undeclared. He's billed as the creator/executive producer. It's about a group of geeky college freshmen. Apatow also worked on the Emmy award winners Freaks and Geeks and The Ben Stiller Show. He was a writer for The Larry Sanders Show. He began as a stand-up comic and he wrote jokes for Roseanne, Jim Carrey and Garry Shandling.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Dying Animal by Philip Roth.

The Kansas board of Education decided recently to leave evolution out if its required curriculum. Linguist Geoff Nunberg examines how the language of the controversy has changed over the century.

Journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker Nicholas Lemann is the author of the new book "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy" (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). It's a social history of how reformers in the mid 1940s set upon universal testing criteria (the Educational Testing Service, purveyors of the SAT) as a way of creating a new democratic elite, drawn from every section and every background of America. And it's about how that 50 year old system has failed.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Fall of a Sparrow," a new novel by Robert Hellenga.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews James Hynes collection of stories, "Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror."

Russo gained critic's recognition for his portrayal of life in a declining upstate New York mill town with his novels Mohawk and The Risk Pool. His latest novel His book "Nobody's Fool" was adapted into a film starring Paul Newman. His latest novel is "Straight Man." It is published by Random House.

Teacher Ron Whitehorn has also involved himself and his students in the restoration of Fair Hill. A teacher at the Julia De Borgeos Middle School, Whithorn has tried to help urban children overcome the odds and add to their own community. He is joined by 12 year-old Sofia Gonzales, a student who has been active in the program. She is tired of the image of North Philadelphia as an urban wasteland and wants to prove that she lives in a neighborhood where people care.

Bill Ayers is probably best known as a leader of the 1960's radical group the Weatherman. It was the militant arm of the Students for Democratic Society movement. But now Ayers focuses his efforts to reform the nation's schools and its juvenile court system. His latest book "A Kind and Just Parent" (Beacon Press) is a close look at Chicago's Juvenile Court system. Ayers is a professor at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Journalist and College Professor Anne Matthews talks about why college tuition is skyrocketing, and how campus culture and student expectations have changed over the years. Her new book is called "Bright College Years."

Commentator Gerald Early considers the past and future of Fisk University.

The Fresh Air commentator has been writing about the historically black institution, where he currently teachers, and shares these thoughts.

Commentator Gerald Early reflects on the black community and historically black colleges and universities.

Commentator Dagoberto Gilb has some thoughts on his son and college.

New York magazine film critic David Denby is interviewed by Fresh Air's Book Critic Maureen Corrigan about his new book "Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World." It comes from Denby's recent return to Columbia University to take two western civilization classes. He wanted to explore the current debate in literature of whether these classic books should be required reading in today's multi-cultural society.

A new monologue by the NPR commentator, playwright, and housecleaner. "Drama Bug" was featured on This American Life, a nationally broadcast radio program hosted by Ira Glass and produced at WBEZ in Chicago. Sedaris is known nationally for his humor writing; he launched his radio commentator career with his "SantaLand Diaries," broadcast during NPR's "Morning Edition in 1992.

Performance poet Sapphire has written a new novel, "Push," in the voice of a 16 year-old black girl named Precious Jones, who is pregnant for the second time by her father. Her world opens up when a teacher encourages her to learn to read and write. Sapphire taught reading and writing to teenagers and adults in Harlem and the Bronx for eight years. There's also a new edition of her book of poetry, "American Dreams."

Actor Eric Stoltz. He's gotten a reputation playing parts in films like "Killing Zoe," "Pulp Fiction," and "The Waterdance," "Some Kind of Wonderful," and many other films.