Columns by Tamim Ansary

Columnist Tamim Ansary

Tamim Ansary offers unique perspectives on society, education, and some of life's mysteries.

Tamim is author of the critically acclaimed memoir "West of Kabul, East of New York" and 38 nonfiction books for children.

Featured Column:

Why learn another language (Image credit: Corbis)

Why Learn a Second Language?

If you speak English, why bother learning a second language? Learning a language isn't merely about ordering a meal in a foreign country. It's about perspective.

Other featured columns by Tamim Ansary:

•	Education Standards: An Impossible Goal?

•	Entertainer-in-Chief?

•	Literature: Why Read the Classics?

•	The Steam Engine and Women's Rights

Tamim in Your Head

Explore the wonders of the human brain:

•	12 Memory Tricks

•	Can You Increase Your Willpower?

•	How Your Memory Works

•	Inside the World of Dreams

•	Is Memorization Dead?

•	Making Sense of Dreams

•	Many Kinds of Smart

•	Power Learning: Can You Beef Up Your Brain?

•	What's Your IQ?

Archive

Education

•	6 Things That Are Right with Schools

•	A Better Nation Through Education

•	America's Best College

•	Are Teachers Overpaid?

•	Back to School: 3 Resolutions for the 'Other New Year'

•	Blogs Invade Classrooms!

•	Can Leadership Be Learned?

•	Computers in Schools: Are We There Yet?

•	Debate Secrets and Embarrassing Lessons

•	Do Better Schools Make a Better Nation?

•	Education Standards: An Impossible Goal?

•	Homework: Too Much of a Good Thing?

•	How College Costs Could Lead to a Market Crash

•	Kids and After-School Time: Filling the Void

•	Kids Today: Dumb and Dumber?

•	Know It All: What Should Everyone Learn?

•	Learning for Fun

•	Literature: Why Read the Classics?

•	Majoring in Leadership

•	Mirror, Mirror, What Should We Teach?

•	More Art, Better Schools

•	Myth of America's Failing Schools

•	No Adult Left Behind?

•	Power Learning: Can You Beef Up Your Brain?

•	Say So Long to Summer: Is More School Better School?

•	Should College Teach a Trade?

•	The Case for Liberal Arts

•	Top 10 Richest Colleges

•	The Trouble with Testing

•	Unlocking the Mysteries of Great Teaching

•	What Community Colleges Mean to Democracy

•	What Is a Leader?

•	Who Can Test a Test?

•	Why Tuition Keeps Soaring

Miscellaneous

•	9 Monsters Rated: Which is Scariest?

•	10 Great Scientific Discoveries

•	A Teen's Taxing Questions

•	Conspiracy Theory: Who's Controlling History?

•	Great Inventions of the Next Fifty Years

•	Is This an Age of Invention?

•	Meat on Legs: The Story of the Turkey

•	The 10 Greatest Inventions

•	The Secret Truth Behind Groundhog Day

•	The Truth About UFOs

•	'Tis the Season to be Sickly

•	What Makes a Sport 'Olympic'?

•	Why Are Stocks Worth Anything?

•	Why We Decorate Trees, and Other Christmas Questions

•	You Asked For It: Tamim Answers Reader Questions

On Society

Perspectives on current issues:

•	2 Political Parties? Why Not 50?

•	9/11 Revisited: An Afghan American Perspective

•	Backup Presidents

•	Are Old Languages Worth Saving?

•	Are Political Campaigns Getting Nastier?

•	Best and Worst Political Slogans

•	Can Technology Save Our Elections?

•	Deconstructing Freedom

•	Entertainer-in-Chief?

•	Have Sports Records Become Unbreakable?

•	History's Great Peacemakers

•	Is There Life After Oil?

•	Madam President: Women Have Ruled Other Countries -- Why Not the U.S.?

•	Not Your Founding Fathers' Democracy

•	September 11th and Beyond: What Do We Teach the Kids?

•	The Electoral College Exposed

•	The Steam Engine and Women's Rights

•	What Does It Mean to Be Patriotic?

•	What Does It Mean to Be 'Presidential'?

•	Who Needs Politicians?

•	Who Was the Greatest President?

•	Who's Got Nuclear Weapons?

•	Why Constitutions Fail

•	Why Learn a Second Language?

•	Women Who Rule: 10 Firsts

Want More Tamim?

•	Visit his personal homepage!

•	Check out his book:

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