BEST OF THE GIST: Labor Day Weekend Edition

The globe may be warming, but that doesn’t stop summer from coming to an end. So, in honor of the long weekend which symbolizes the transition from summer vacation to back-to-school, we dug up a couple gems from The Gist’s archives. First up, to honor the return to school, we are replaying Mike’s 2017 interview with Lenora Chu, author of Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve, which tells the story of her American family’s rude awakening to Chinese education practices. When Chu moved her family to Shanghai, she eagerly enrolled her young son into an elite Chinese public school. She expected academic rigor and an emphasis on work ethic. But she was surprised to find authoritarian teachers and desperate, obsequious parents. Then, to honor the long weekend, an encouragement to watch some 80s movies this weekend in the form of Mike’s 2016 interview with Hadley Freeman, author of Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies (and Why We Don’t Learn Them From Movies Anymore).

Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara 

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