Viewpoint: How Libya Became a French and British War

As the military action against Libya to give teeth to U.N. Security Resolution 1973 began, one question kept nagging away: Why, precisely, were the governments of Britain and France in the lead? Why were their armed forces taking part in the military action, and why had their diplomats done the grunt work in the negotiations that led to the adoption of Resolution 1973?

It is not an easy question to answer. British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the military action against Muammar Gaddafi was "necessary, it is legal and it is right." Right, "because I don't believe that we should stand aside while this dictator murders his own people." French President Sarkozy said "If we intervene on the side of the Arab nations it is because of a universal conscience that cannot tolerate such crimes." I'm not one of those cynics who assumes that such statements are devoid of content; in any event, they are grounded in language that was already quite condemnatory of Libya in Res. 1973. But the rhetoric doesn't really answer the question: Why intervene? (See why Gaddafi is determined to keep power at all costs.)

Is what happens in Libya of direct national interest to Britain and France? To be sure, Libya is across the Mediterranean Sea from Europe, and its trade is directed mainly there. But Libya is a nation of only 6.5m people. For comparison, that is a bit more than El Salvador, a bit less than Honduras, and whatever happened in the Cold War, it is a while since U.S. policy makers have argued that what goes on in Central American nations is of such pressing national interest to the U.S. that it would legitimize armed intervention there.

Libya has oil and gas, yes — but less than 2% of the world's oil reserves, while technology is about to make gas available in such abundance that it hardly matters which country has it. It's hard to make the case that there is some pressing commercial reason for Britain and France to take the lead in the way that they have done, which will not stop those who see oil companies behind every foreign military adventure doing so.

Immigration? Yes, instability in the Maghreb tends to produce flows of migrants north. And in the case of Libya, even if those fleeing the fighting go first to Italy, they can make their way eventually to other nations of the European Union. But it's pretty hard to imagine that there would be some unmanageable refugee crisis in North Africa if Muammar Gaddafi held on to power in Libya. The Mediterranean is a wide sea; it's not a border that you can just walk across. (See TIME's photos of Libya in revolt.)

History? Britain, despite its rapprochement with Gaddafi under the government of Tony Blair, has little reason to love or trust the Libyan leader — Libyan agents were responsible for the downing of PanAm Flight 103 over Scotland, and a London policewoman, Yvonne Fletcher, was shot dead from the Libyan embassy in 1984. But horrible though those crimes were, nobody is suggesting that their memory is a reason to go to war.

Getting back in people's good books? Sarkozy started off on the wrong side of the Arab spring, his government staying cozily entwined with that of Tunisia when the street had turned against it. I've heard it suggested that he's taking the lead on Libya so as to recover France's reputation in the Arab world. If so, this is a mighty risky way of going about it: military intervention in Libya is not guaranteed to be a success, and nor is it uniformly popular among Arabs, even those who have been demonstrating for democracy around the region.

What about delusions of grandeur? There will be those who argue that France and Britain are behaving the way they are simply because they think their history entitles them to, because they want to show that they are still great powers. But assuming that Cameron and Sarkozy are rational decision makers (I do) that just doesn't fly. Both Britain and France are democracies. In neither of them is military adventurism popular with voters.

That leaves two factors that might go some way to explain the Franco-British policy. First, I suspect that there is a genuine belief in both governments that while the U.S. is still the world's balance wheel, the indispensable nation, it cannot do everything and should not be asked to — that the world is a more secure place if other democracies help the U.S. carry the diplomatic and military load of ensuring global stability. To be sure, such a policy can go disastrously wrong, as most British observers would say was true of their country's alliance with the U.S. in the Iraq war. But that does not mean that the principle is worthless. (Watch the passionate rebels in action.)

Second, it would not surprise me if both governments — and that of the U.S. — came to a conclusion that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair elaborated in an article in The Times of London and Wall Street Journal. When faced with a crisis like that of Libya, Blair argued, "Inaction is a decision, a policy with consequences. The wish to keep out of it all is entirely understandable; but it is every bit as much of a decision as acting."

Britain, France, the U.S., and every nation under the sun, could — I suppose — had said nothing at all when Gaddafi started turning on those demonstrating against his rule three weeks ago. But they did not. They condemned him out of hand. To have done nothing now, when it seemed as if Gaddafi was going to win Libya's civil war would have been a decision in and of itself, and one, moreover, that would have exposed the weakness of those who had so recently called for him to go.

Looked at in that light, the decision to start military action in Libya — however wise or unwise that turns out to be — starts at least to be comprehensible.

Libya: How a No-Fly Zone Can Become a Red Hot Mess

Libya's monthlong revolt became an international conflict on Saturday as U.S. and British warships fired 110 Tomahawk missiles at 20 military targets in the country, in the first foreign military action ostensibly designed to stop Muammar Gaddafi's army from inflicting more damage on rebel strongholds and Libyan civilians. But the likely consequence of such an action was also emerging, that it would be the beginning of a campaign to drive Gaddafi out of rebel-held eastern Libya — and ultimately to force him from office after nearly 42 years in power. It also has the capacity to become a messy, prolonged war, further complicating the atmosphere around the revolutions in the Middle East.

As U.S., European and Arab officials met in Paris to coordinate military strategy, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters that Gaddafi had "totally ignored the warning" to halt his war against the rebels. "In Libya a peaceful civilian population demanding nothing more than the right to choose its own destiny is in mortal danger," said Sarkozy mid-afternoon, just as French jets took to the skies, destroying four of Gaddafi's military vehicles in the opening salvo by the new coalition. "It is our duty to respond to their anguished appeal." Barely an hour after Sarkozy spoke, French planes reportedly opened fire on four Libyan tanks. (See why Gaddafi won't step down quietly.)

At the end of a grueling day, Gaddafi went on state-run television at midnight, vowing to "open the arms depots" to ordinary Libyan citizens in order to defend the country. He also warned that "Western interests will be targeted from now on." He did not specify which interests. Some of the West's biggest oil companies operate in Libya.

After huddling with Arab and European officials in Paris, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Paris late Saturday afternoon that no U.S. troops would deploy to Libya, but would contribute unspecified military assets to the coalition. "The aggressive actions by Gaddafi's forces continue in many places in the country," she said. "We have seen no real effort on the part of the Gaddafi forces to abide by a ceasefire, despite the rhetoric." CNN reported that U.S. AWACS surveillance planes would be made available.

Barely a month since Libya's security forces opened fire on a small demonstration in the country's second city Benghazi, Libya is now the center of what could be a protracted international war — something which seemed highly implausible when the revolt began. Pinned down in Libya's north-east in the country's second-biggest city Benghazi, the poorly trained and lightly equipped rebel force has suffered a string of defeats over the past two weeks. And until Thursday, it looked certain to suffer a rapid, crushing defeat. Then came the U.N. Security Council decision to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, and to authorize "all necessary measures" to stop Gaddafi's military from attacking rebel positions — meaning that Western military forces could conduct air strikes against Libyan tanks and troops if Gaddafi ordered his military to close in on the rebel headquarters of Benghazi. His forces are now at the city's southern districts.

Led by Britain and France, and backed by the U.S., the U.N. vote came five days after a vote to support no-fly zone by the Arab League, an apparent attempt to characterize the anti-Gaddafi initiative as a global effort, rather than one crafted by Gaddafi's long-time foes in the West. The Arab League vote "changed the diplomatic landscape," Clinton told reporters on Saturday. "We look to them for continued leadership as well as active participation going forward." Officials from Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates joined the Paris meeting, although there is no sign yet that their militaries will be involved in air strikes or reconnaissance missions. (See photos of the unrest in Libya.)

Arab support for the Libya campaign has been dismissed by Gaddafi, however. He has over the past week repeatedly accused the West of trying to take over Libya, in order to control its huge oil reserves. "Who gave you the right to intervene in our internal affairs?" he wrote in an enraged letter to Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon on Saturday. "You will regret it." Indeed, while public opinion in the broader Arab world may now support a no-fly zone, it may shift dramatically when the first Libyan civilians are killed by Western air forces taking out Gaddafi assets on the ground in order to police that zone.

Clearly stunned by the vote, Gaddafi on Friday declared an immediate ceasefire. Yet that appeared to be an attempt to ward off imminent international military action. On Saturday, a fighter jet — which rebels claimed belonged to them — exploded in the sky near Benghazi, brought down by a missile, which rebels believed had come from the regime's forces. In Misratah, the rebel-held city closest to the capital, a resident told Reuters that a sniper killed two people on Saturday. Many in Benghazi had opted to flee the city on Saturday after being jolted awake by explosions and automatic gunfire. President Barack Obama told reporters in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia that "the use of force is not our first choice," but that he could "not stand idly by" while Gaddafi launched attacks against the rebels. And shortly before, Cameron said on the BBC that Gaddafi "continues to slaughter his own civilians," adding, "we have to make him stop."

Still, the road to quagmire is often paved with good intentions. As the sun set over Libya on Saturday, it was not yet clear how this new coalition might halt the country's civil war, nor how long it would take, or at what cost. At 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, cable news networks reported a loud boom was heard in Tripoli and anti-aircraft fire lit up the sky, emanating from Gaddafi's fortified headquarters. Retired U.S. general Wesley Clark, who oversaw the Bosnia campaign in the 1990s as NATO's top military commander, told CNN on Saturday that the new coalition on Libya was now on "the slippery slope of intervention," saying, "Once you start this you have to finish." Saturday afternoon was the start.

Why Some People Will Pay $20,000 For a Date

There's no upside to setting people up. At best, you're stuck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of Selective Search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20,000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20,000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.

I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work. (See what single men and women want.)

But Barbie is a former executive recruiter, so she and vice president Nicole Wall gave me a 15-page form to fill out for each client that included questions about charity work, health, exercise habits and past relationships. There was another form for me to fill out after each prospective date left, and it included blank lines for items like Rate her face on a scale of 1 to 10, How is her skin?, What size do you estimate she is on top? and What size do you estimate she is on bottom? This system has led to 1,221 marriages and 417 babies; 88% of Barbie's clients meet their eventual spouse in the first nine months. These are, unbelievably, even better results than ABC's The Bachelor gets.

Normally, it would take a year of training before I got to set anyone up, and then I would spend many hours interviewing the client before combing through the 140,000 women in the company's database and reinterviewing some of them with him in mind. But I'm not normal people. In 10 hours, without a break for food, I interviewed eight women and two men. The women don't pay anything, but they aren't assured of a date, just like in the real world. To my shock, none of them seemed like gold diggers. They had great jobs, went to impressive colleges and had other priorities — namely, that they would under no circumstance date a man under 6 ft. (180 cm) tall. He could be bald, fat and jobless as long as he was at least one standard deviation above average height. It makes absolutely no sense that we're the gender that doesn't wear high heels. (See the top online dating sites.)

Before my interviewees entered or left my office, I had to call the receptionist to run traffic control to make sure that no one else saw them. Barbie said this was done to ensure client privacy, but I think it was just so I could stop women as they went to leave and estimate how big they were on bottom. I, by the way, have no idea what scale is used to measure on bottom. I didn't know if it was just an S-M-L thing or if there was a number or if I was supposed to use terms I heard in Sir Mix-A-Lot songs. I wound up just trying to draw something.

More shocking than the non-gold-digging women, however, were the men. Who were hot. And socially well adjusted. With M bottoms. Basically, they were older guys, often divorced, who were serious about getting married and having kids and hated dating. Ironically, because of all the gold diggers. A divorced real estate developer told me, "My first reaction was, I'd never pay $20,000 for a date. Then I thought about what I normally spend $20,000 on." I was falling in love.

People were really honest. The developer said that not only did his marriage become sexless after he and his wife had children, but she refused for more than 10 years to go on vacation without the kids. He also said he liked Brazilian butts. (See the best songs for lovers.)

The next morning, I went back to the office, sure of which woman to set the developer up with. But Barbie and Nicole were positive I was going to suggest this other woman since she and the developer both had kids and she was South American with an L butt. They accused me of being attracted to the woman I was suggesting, which, while true, deeply offended my professionalism after a long day of staring at women as they walked away.

I agreed to go with their professional opinion. But I had trouble sleeping that night, thinking I was cheating two people out of true love and one person out of $20,000. Yes, the woman was missing lots of things on his wish list — like an L butt — but they had similar temperaments, shared a sense of quiet confidence, and seemed as though they would banter and go on adventures and challenge each other. Barbie was so impressed by my dedication that she said she would give my choice a shot. They've been on six dates so far. If I have to write a speech for their wedding, I'm going to be pissed.

This article originally appeared in the March 28, 2011 issue of TIME.

The Wrong Type of Talk Therapy

CONSUMER review sites like Yelp are a wonderful resource if you’re trying to find a reliable plumber or good hair salon. And they provide a great forum for customers looking to rant or rave. However, as these sites begin to cover more aspects of consumer life, complications arise — as, for instance, when people review confidential mental health care services.

As a psychologist, I worry that these reviews have the potential to harm both the provider and the patient.

It’s one thing to write online about your experience hiring a housecleaner, but posting about the treatment of addictions, sexual abuse, depression or chronic illness is a different matter. What patients might feel comfortable sharing today they might, tomorrow, wish they’d kept private. And while a reviewer can almost always delete or edit his post, it’s impossible to know who has already read it, or whether that information has been stored someplace else.

Of course, no one wants to be the subject of a bad review, but psychotherapy services are special. If you wait an hour for an appetizer, chances are that other diners will have a similarly bad experience. But unless a therapist regularly falls asleep during sessions, patients’ experiences in psychotherapy are more subjective. A certain treatment might help one person but not another. Something that works for one patient at a particular point in therapy might not work for him later, when his needs change. What makes one patient upset enough to write a bad review might not bother — in fact, might even help — another.

And psychotherapy can often bring up upsetting emotions. It’s important for patients to discuss their reactions, positive and negative, directly with their therapists. Even when someone decides not to return to a certain therapist, telling the therapist why can provide closure.

If a patient does post a bad review, a therapist, unlike a regular business owner, is unable to respond in any way that could violate patient confidentiality. Equally problematic: just the fact of a practitioner being listed on a review site can look like a solicitation for patient testimonials or ratings, which is forbidden by every ethics code in the mental health professional’s book.

I’ve run into this problem myself. As far as I know, I’ve never been reviewed by any patients, and yet my practice can be found on Yelp. (Presumably this is because the site combs search engines for businesses and posts the results to invite reviews.) I tried to get Yelp to remove my listing, but was told that it was public information. I know other colleagues who have been similarly dismayed to see their practices listed on the site.

Some doctors address this problem by requiring their patients to sign forms promising not to post reviews of services on Web sites. A company called Medical Justice, which helps doctors fend off malpractice suits, has encouraged its clients to have patients sign agreements giving the doctors control over Web postings mentioning their practices.

Neither of these approaches seems legally or ethically sound to me. One solution is for doctors to offer patients customer satisfaction forms, so they don’t feel that the only medium to express grievances is a public one. But people should be able to find good mental health care providers online, and to warn other consumers about bad ones. The popular consumer sites that already host reviews of these services just need to take more responsibility for protecting patients and doctors.

Such sites should create separate forums devoted to health-related services, modeled after health-specific review sites like HealthGrades. These sections should offer reviewers additional protections when sharing personal information, particularly by allowing them to post anonymously without linking to their regular profiles. This might also allow practitioners more freedom to respond to reviews without compromising patient identity.

The sites could also require users to include more meaningful data, such as the duration of their treatment, what they sought care for, how long they have had their particular health concern and whether they addressed any complaints with the care provider. In addition, it would be useful to know how many other practitioners they sought treatment from, and whether they eventually found successful treatment elsewhere. This information would help those seeking care for a similar problem, as well as put a bad review in context. Finally, the sites should direct visitors to their states’ licensing boards, in case a formal complaint is called for.

Consumer review sites have helped goad many businesses to make improvements. But in this case, they could use some improvements of their own.

Keely Kolmes is a psychologist.

Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You

NOBODY calls me anymore — and that’s just fine. With the exception of immediate family members, who mostly phone to discuss medical symptoms and arrange child care, and the Roundabout Theater fund-raising team, which takes a diabolical delight in phoning me every few weeks at precisely the moment I am tucking in my children, people just don’t call. 

It’s at the point where when the phone does ring — and it’s not my mom, dad, husband or baby sitter — my first thought is: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” My second thought is: “Isn’t it weird to just call like that? Out of the blue? With no e-mailed warning?”

I don’t think it’s just me. Sure, teenagers gave up the phone call eons ago. But I’m a long way away from my teenage years, back when the key rite of passage was getting a phone in your bedroom or (cue Molly Ringwald gasp) a line of your own.

In the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.

“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.”

“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”

Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.”

Though the beast has been somewhat tamed by voice mail and caller ID, the phone caller still insists, Ms. Martin explained, “that we should drop whatever we’re doing and listen to me.”

Even at work, where people once managed to look busy by wearing a headset or constantly parrying calls back and forth via a harried assistant, the offices are silent. The reasons are multifold. Nobody has assistants anymore to handle telecommunications. And in today’s nearly door-free workplaces, unless everyone is on the phone, calls are disruptive and, in a tight warren of cubicles, distressingly public. Does anyone want to hear me detail to the dentist the havoc six-year molars have wreaked on my daughter?

“When I walk around the office, nobody is on the phone,” said Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher at HarperCollins. The nature of the rare business call has also changed. “Phone calls used to be everything: serious, light, heavy, funny,” Mr. Burnham said. “But now they tend to be things that are very focused. And almost everyone e-mails first and asks, ‘Is it O.K. if I call?’ ”

Even in fields where workers of various stripes (publicists, agents, salespeople) traditionally conducted much of their business by phone, hoping to catch a coveted decision-maker off-guard or in a down moment, the phone stays on the hook. When Matthew Ballast, an executive director for publicity at Grand Central Publishing, began working in book publicity 12 years ago, he would go down his list of people to cold call, then follow up two or three times, also by phone. “I remember five years ago, I had a pad with a list of calls I had to return,” he said. Now, he talks by phone two or three times a day.

“You pretty much call people on the phone when you don’t understand their e-mail,” he said. 

Phone call appointments have become common in the workplace. Without them, there’s no guarantee your call will be returned. “Only people I’ve ruthlessly hounded call me back,” said Mary Roach, author of “Packing for Mars.” Writers and others who work alone can find the silence isolating. “But if I called my editor and agent every time I wanted to chat, I think they’d say, ‘Oh no, Mary Roach is calling again.’ So I’ve pulled back, just like everyone else.”

Whereas people once received and made calls with friends on a regular basis, we now coordinate such events via e-mail or text. When college roommates used to call (at least two reunions ago), I would welcome their vaguely familiar voices. Now, were one of them to call on a Tuesday evening, my first reaction would be alarm. Phone calls from anyone other than immediate family tend to signal bad news.

Receiving calls on the cellphone can be a particular annoyance. First, there’s the assumption that you’re carrying the thing at all times. For those in homes with stairs, the cellphone siren can send a person scrambling up and down flights of steps in desperate pursuit. Having the cellphone in hand doesn’t necessarily lessen the burden. After all, someone might actually be using the phone: someone who is in the middle of scrolling through a Facebook photo album. Someone who is playing Cut the Rope. Someone who is in the process of painstakingly touch-tapping an important e-mail.

For the most part, assiduous commenting on a friend’s Facebook updates and periodically e-mailing promises to “catch up by phone soon” substitute for actual conversation. With friends who merit face time, arrangements are carried out via electronic transmission. “We do everything by text and e-mail,” said Laurie David, a Hollywood producer and author. “It would be strange at this point to try figuring all that out by phone.”

Of course, immediate family members still phone occasionally. “It’s useful for catching up on parenting issues with your ex-husband,” said Ms. David, who used to be married to Larry David, the star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “Sometimes when you don’t want to type it all, it’s just easier to talk.”

But even sons, husbands and daughters don’t always want to chat. In our text-heavy world, mothers report yearning for the sound of their teenage and adult children’s voices. “I’m sort of missing the phone,” said Lisa Birnbach, author of “True Prep” and mother of three teenagers. “It’s warmer and more honest.”

That said, her landline “has become a kind of vestigial part of my house like the intercom buttons once used in my prewar building to contact the ‘servants quarters.’ ” When the phone rings, 9 times out of 10, it’s her mother.

There are holdouts. Radhika Jones, an assistant managing editor at Time magazine, still has a core group of friends she talks to by phone. “I’ve always been a big phone hound,” she said. “My parents can tell you about the days before call waiting.” Yet even she has slipped into new habits: Voice mails from her husband may not get listened to until end of day. Phone messages are returned by e-mail. “At least you’re responding!”

But heaven forbid you actually have to listen — especially to voice mail. The standard “let the audience know this person is a loser” scene in movies where the forlorn heroine returns from a night of cat-sitting to an answering machine that bleats “you have no messages” would cause confusion with contemporary viewers. Who doesn’t heave a huge sigh of relief to find there’s no voice mail? Is it worth punching in a protracted series of codes and passwords to listen to some three-hour-old voice say, “call me” when you could glance at caller ID and return the call — or better yet, e-mail back instead?

Many people don’t even know how their voice mail works. “I’ve lost that skill,” Ms. Birnbach said.

“I have no idea how to check it,” Ms. David admitted. “I can stay in a hotel for three days with that little red light blinking and never listen. I figure, if someone needs to reach me, they’ll e-mail.”

“I don’t check these messages often,” intoned a discouraging recorded voice, urging callers to try e-mail. And this is the voice-mail recording of Claude S. Fischer, author of a book on the history of the telephone and more recently, “Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970.”

“When the telephone first appeared, there were all kinds of etiquette issues over whom to call and who should answer and how,” Dr. Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me when finally reached by phone. Among the upper classes, for example, it was thought that the butler should answer calls. For a long time, inviting a person to dinner by telephone was beyond the pale; later, the rules softened and it was O.K. to call to ask someone to lunch.

Telephones were first sold exclusively for business purposes and only later as a kind of practical device for the home. Husbands could phone wives when traveling on business, and wives could order their groceries delivered. Almost immediately, however, people began using the telephone for social interactions. “The phone companies tried to stop that for about 30 years because it was considered improper usage,” Dr. Fischer said.

We may be returning to the phone’s original intentions — and impact. “I can tell you exactly the last time someone picked up the phone when I called,” Mary Roach said. “It was two months ago and I said: ‘Whoa! You answered your phone!’ It was a P.R. person. She said, ‘Yeah, I like to answer the phone.’ ” Both were startled to be voice-to-voice with another unknown, unseen human being.

Let Kids Rule the School

New Marlborough, Mass.

IN a speech last week, President Obama said it was unacceptable that “as many as a quarter of American students are not finishing high school.” But our current educational approach doesn’t just fail to prepare teenagers for graduation or for college academics; it fails to prepare them, in a profound way, for adult life.

We want young people to become independent and capable, yet we structure their days to the minute and give them few opportunities to do anything but answer multiple-choice questions, follow instructions and memorize information. We cast social interaction as an impediment to learning, yet all evidence points to the huge role it plays in their psychological development.

That’s why we need to rethink the very nature of high school itself.

I recently followed a group of eight public high school students, aged 15 to 17, in western Massachusetts as they designed and ran their own school within a school. They represented the usual range: two were close to dropping out before they started the project, while others were honors students. They named their school the Independent Project.

Their guidance counselor was their adviser, consulting with them when the group flagged in energy or encountered an obstacle. Though they sought advice from English, math and science teachers, they were responsible for monitoring one another’s work and giving one another feedback. There were no grades, but at the end of the semester, the students wrote evaluations of their classmates.

The students also designed their own curriculum, deciding to split their September-to-January term into two halves.

During the first half, they formulated and then answered questions about the natural and social world, including “Are the plant cells at the bottom of a nearby mountain different than those at the top of the mountain?” and “Why we do we cry?” They not only critiqued one another’s queries, but also the answers they came up with. Along the way, they acquired essential tools of inquiry, like how to devise good methods for gathering various kinds of data.

During the second half, the group practiced what they called “the literary and mathematical arts.” They chose eight novels — including works by Kurt Vonnegut, William Faulkner and Oscar Wilde — to read in eight weeks. That is more than the school’s A.P. English class reads in an entire year.

Meanwhile, each of them focused on specific mathematical topics, from quadratic equations to the numbers behind poker. They sought the help of full-time math teachers, consulted books and online sources and, whenever possible, taught one another.

They also each undertook an “individual endeavor,” learning to play the piano or to cook, writing a novel or making a podcast about domestic violence. At the end of the term, they performed these new skills in front of the entire student body and faculty.

Finally, they embarked on a collective endeavor, which they agreed had to have social significance. Because they felt the whole experience had been so life-changing, they ended up making a film showing how other students could start and run their own schools.

The results of their experiment have been transformative. An Independence Project student who had once considered dropping out of school found he couldn’t bear to stop focusing on his current history question but didn’t want to miss out on exploring a new one. When he asked the group if it would be O.K. to pursue both, another student answered, “Yeah, I think that’s what they call learning.”

One student who had failed all of his previous math courses spent three weeks teaching the others about probability. Another said: “I did well before. But I had forgotten what I actually like doing.” They have all returned to the conventional curriculum and are doing well. Two of the seniors are applying to highly selective liberal arts colleges.

The students in the Independent Project are remarkable but not because they are exceptionally motivated or unusually talented. They are remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience, when they learn things that matter to them and when they learn together. In such a setting, school capitalizes on rather than thwarts the intensity and engagement that teenagers usually reserve for sports, protest or friendship.

Schools everywhere could initiate an Independent Project. All it takes are serious, committed students and a supportive faculty. These projects might not be exactly alike: students might apportion their time differently, or add another discipline to the mix. But if the Independent Project students are any indication, participants will end up more accomplished, more engaged and more knowledgeable than they would have been taking regular courses.

We have tried making the school day longer and blanketing students with standardized tests. But perhaps children don’t need another reform imposed on them. Instead, they need to be the authors of their own education.

Susan Engel is the author of “Red Flags or Red Herrings: Predicting Who Your Child Will Become.”

Fire at Fourth Reactor: Is Worse Yet to Come in the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster?

Chernobyl, the infamous atomic power plant in northern Ukraine, is getting ready for an anniversary. It will be 25 years next month since Reactor No. 4 exploded, causing the worst nuclear disaster in human history. A huge section of Europe was covered in a carcinogenic haze after the April 1986 explosion; and the towns and villages around the power station are still practically uninhabitable. Thousands are thought to have died of cancer as a result of the fallout. Now the world is faced with another nuclear nightmare at Japan's Fukushima Dainichi power plant, which has been brought to the brink of a meltdown by the earthquake and tsumani that struck Japan on March 11.

In an interview with TIME, the engineer in charge of dealing with the fallout from Chernobyl, Andrei Savin, warns that history could indeed be repeating itself in Japan. He says the government in Tokyo is clearly underestimating the scale of the disaster, which will likely require years of work to cleanse the surrounding buildings, topsoil and vegetation of radioactive particles — and that's only if the situation does not get any worse. (See photos of the devastation in Japan.)

"Right now the situation around the [Fukushima] power station is already much more serious than what we have today around Chernobyl," says Savin, the chief engineer of Project Uktrytiye, or Enclosure, the group of scientists charged with the continuing effort to seal off and clear out the radiation from Chernobyl. "Walking around Chernobyl is much more safe than being anywhere near the damaged plant in Japan right now. So the risk to human health there is already serious."

That is mainly because of the radioactive iodine that has already been detected around Fukushima after the explosions and fires it sustained in the past several days. "The human body absorbs these particles very easily. They get into the thyroid gland and gradually destroy the immune system," says Ivan Blokov, program director of Greenpeace Russia and an expert on nuclear accidents. "In Chernobyl that was the main cause of illness in the immediate aftermath, the radioactive iodine," which is especially dangerous for women and children.

But this toxin naturally dissolves after around eight days, meaning that the long term threat of radiation would come from other substances, such as cesium, which has already been detected around Fukushima, and plutonium, which poses the greatest danger if the nuclear fuel rods inside the reactors melt. (See inside Japan's nuclear hazard.)

Savin, speaking by phone on Tuesday from the Enclosure Project's headquarters in the Ukrainian town of Slavutych, about 50 kilometers northeast of Chernobyl, says the explosions in three of the reactors at Fukushima make it almost certain that the fuel rods have started melting. "This means that cesium has likely been thrown into the atmosphere already," Savin says. "If it stops there, then after a certain period of time it will settle along the path of the radiation cloud and the situation will stabilize."

The nightmare scenario, however, would unfold if rescue workers fail in their frantic attempts to cool the fuel rods, as they've been trying to do for several days. "The likelihood is low but it still exists," Savin says. "If one reactor has a full meltdown, and you reach a critical mass of melted nuclear fuel built up inside the reactor, it could cause an atomic explosion." Other experts say they wouldn't use the word "explosion" for such an incident. Says Alexander Uvarov, the editor of Atominfo, a Russian online journal on the nuclear industry: "I wouldn't personally use that phrase, simply because in the public mind that phrase evokes the image of Hiroshima. But yes, it is an explosion, or perhaps more like a very large burst."

Such a blast would certainly not have nearly as much force as an atom bomb, Savin agrees, but it would pump a large radioactive cloud into the atmosphere that could then be carried by the wind. "That's when the situation would start to look a lot more like Chernobyl for many years to come." Adds Uvarov: "The best way to prevent that is by covering the fuel with a thick layer of water, as they've been trying to do [at Fukushima]. Of course that water will continue to steam away from the super-hot fuel, but if the layer is thick enough you would not have that explosion." But, he adds, "if the melted fuel does gather inside the reactor and is exposed to the air, it could indeed explode, and that would spray all kinds of nasty particles into the atmosphere." (See "Fukushima: Chernobyl Redux?")

This prospect, as well as the series of explosions at the Fukushima complex over the past four days, makes the Japanese government's treatment of the disaster seem reminiscent of the Soviet government's head-in-the-sand response to the Chernobyl meltdown back in 1986. At first, Moscow initiated a cover-up, and only informed the world when a nuclear plant in Sweden noticed a radiation spike in its atmosphere more than 1,000 kilometers away.

Japanese authorities have been much more forthright, but on March 13, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency classified the explosions as a Level 4 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale, meaning it is an accident with local consequences. Chernobyl was the only one in history to be labeled a Level 7 event, the worst possible, and three Russian experts interviewed on Tuesday say Fukushima deserves at least a Level 5, or even a Level 6 rating, as was assigned on Tuesday by the French nuclear safety authority. (See the health risks of radiation exposure.)

"There is the sense that the Japanese were either unprepared or had serious flaws in their contingency plans," says Uvarov. "There has not been full disclosure about the situation there. Of course I can understand the desire to contain panic, and to save the ugly details for a better time. But that leaves experts to draw conclusions from available facts, which are so far not encouraging."

At the very least, the facts suggest that a quarter century after Chernobyl, the world has still not immunized itself from the threat of such disasters. They are the price the world inevitably pays for nuclear energy, and now it is Japan's tragic turn to foot the bill. The total cost — in human lives, sickness and environmental devastation — will only become fully clear years from now, once the fallout from Fukushima runs its course.

Japanese Stiff-Upper Lip: Please Avoid Fukinshin

My mother's golf pro called to tell her he was going home to Canada for two weeks. A server at a restaurant heavily frequented by expatriates told me foreigners were showing up with their suitcases and having one last meal before flying out. Some foreign companies and embassies were advising their staff to leave. I suppose all of that is not surprising with three explosions at nuclear power plants and predictions of major aftershocks. In fact, just as I began to write this, my CD rack started rattling and ceiling lamp swaying. Another temblor.

But my family just canceled an opportunity to get away from our country. Several months ago my parents had arranged for my son and me, along with my brother's family who lives in New York, to join them on a visit to their friend's beach home in the Philippines. How lovely it would have been to relax in that oasis, not to mention take a break from the anxiety-raising tremors and fear of radiation exposure. (See pictures of the aftermath from the Japan quake.)

Such reveries were far from my parents' mind, however. "I don't know about the Philippines," said my mother the night after the earthquake struck on Friday. Huh? Having spent close to half of my life overseas, I didn't immediately get the connection between the devastation up north and our holiday plans.

Over the next few days, my mother frequently used the word fukinshin which roughly translates as indiscreet or inappropriate. It would not be right for me to wear fancy clothes, like the kimono I had planned to put on, for example, to my son's upcoming elementary school graduation ceremony. We shouldn't rejoice, and certainly should not display our joy, when others are suffering so much. (The school must have agreed with her mentality because the entire event was canceled.) (See pictures of Fukushima on the brink of disaster.)

My mother also didn't want to inconvenience her neighbors. She said her sister, who lives next door, would not be pleased if she had to deal with any possible earthquake damage to my parents' home in addition to her own. Along those lines, my mother felt that I, too, should refrain from going away so I could hold down the fort of my apartment. Her thoughts reminded me of the TV images I saw of female employees in a shop desperately leaning up against shelves to keep items from flying off while the building shook wildly and furniture crashed about. I supposed it would be bad if I were not around to clean up a water leak or fallen planter that infringed on someone else's property.

My father also joined the reluctant travelers. "The nuclear situation is very serious," he said. And he didn't mean he was worried about himself getting radiation sickness. Rather, as a former prominent executive who remains respected in the business community, he felt he should be on hand, just in case a corporate matter relating to nuclear energy or the power companies arose that he could advise on. (See how to tend to Japan's psychological scars.)

Foreigners might think that my parents' attitude sniffs a bit of the self-important of a martyr complex. But I believe it is that kind of extreme respect for others that has kept our country so calm during this turmoil. From early on, I was confident we would have no looting. The closest I have seen to disorderly conduct was one man cutting into a long line to board a commuter train. Of course everyone around was too polite to protest.

How did we make a final decision on our trip? My brother, who is American in mentality from his many years residing in the U.S., really wanted to go but he pulled out as well. He concluded it was too much trouble to fly to Japan where he was going to join us, considering the chaos at the airport from all the expats fleeing.

Study: Having a Bad Job Is Worse than No Job For Mental Health

Maybe unemployment isn't so bad after all. A new study says that, income notwithstanding, having a demanding, unstable and thankless job may make you even unhappier than not having a job at all.

Given that a paid position gives workers purpose and a structured role, researchers had long thought that having any job would make a person happier than being unemployed. That turns out to be true if you move into a high-quality job — but taking a bad job is detrimental to mental health.

Australian National University researchers looked at how various psychosocial work attributes affect well-being. They found that poor-quality jobs — those with high demands, low control over decision making, high job insecurity and an effort-reward imbalance — had more adverse effects on mental health than joblessness. (More on Time.com: Why the Recession May Trigger More Depression Among Men)

The researchers analyzed seven years of data from more than 7,000 respondents of an Australian labor survey for their Occupational and Environmental Medicine study in which they wrote:

As hypothesized, we found that those respondents who were unemployed had significantly poorer mental health than those who were employed. However, the mental health of those who were unemployed was comparable or more often superior to those in jobs of the poorest psychosocial quality... The current results therefore suggest that employment strategies seeking to promote positive outcomes for unemployed individuals need to also take account of job design and workplace policy.

Moving from unemployment to a job with high psychosocial quality was associated with improvements in mental health, the authors said. Meanwhile, the mental health of people in the least-satisfying jobs declined the most over time — and the worse the job, the more it affected workers' well-being.

Unemployed people in the Australian study had a mental-health score (based on the five-item Mental Health Inventory, which measures depression, anxiety and positive well-being in the previous month) of 68.5. Employed people had an average score of  75.1. The researchers found that moving from unemployment to a good job raised workers' scores by 3.3 points, but taking a bad job led to a 5.6-point drop below average. That was worse than remaining unemployed, which led to decline of about one point.

These findings underscore the importance of employment to a person's well-being. Rather than seeking any new job, the study suggests, people who are unemployed or stuck doing lousy work should seek new positions that offer more security, autonomy and a reasonable workload. But that's a lot easier said than done. (More on Time.com: Among American workers, fear of losing your job is linked to health problems)

Perhaps employers could be persuaded to be more mindful of the mental health of their workers — happier employees are a benefit to their employers. "The erosion of work conditions," the researchers noted, "may incur a health cost, which over the longer term will be both economically and socially counterproductive."

Another Inside Job

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: March 13, 2011 

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary “Inside Job” win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008, whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of Americans, didn’t just happen — it was made possible by bad behavior on the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

What the film didn’t point out, however, is that the crisis has spawned a whole new set of abuses, many of them illegal as well as immoral. And leading political figures are, at long last, showing some outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is directed, not at banking abuses, but at those trying to hold banks accountable for these abuses.

The immediate flashpoint is a proposed settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry. That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.

All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

To get an idea of what we’re talking about here, look at the complaint filed by Nevada’s attorney general against Bank of America. The complaint charges the bank with luring families into its loan-modification program — supposedly to help them keep their homes — under false pretenses; with giving false information about the program’s requirements (for example, telling them that they had to default on their mortgages before receiving a modification); with stringing families along with promises of action, then “sending foreclosure notices, scheduling auction dates, and even selling consumers’ homes while they waited for decisions”; and, in general, with exploiting the program to enrich itself at those families’ expense.

The end result, the complaint charges, was that “many Nevada consumers continued to make mortgage payments they could not afford, running through their savings, their retirement funds, or their children’s education funds. Additionally, due to Bank of America’s misleading assurances, consumers deferred short-sales and passed on other attempts to mitigate their losses. And they waited anxiously, month after month, calling Bank of America and submitting their paperwork again and again, not knowing whether or when they would lose their homes.”

Still, things like this only happen to losers who can’t keep up their mortgage payments, right? Wrong. Recently Dana Milbank, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his own experience: a routine mortgage refinance with Citibank somehow turned into a nightmare of misquoted rates, improper interest charges, and frozen bank accounts. And all the evidence suggests that Mr. Milbank’s experience wasn’t unusual.

Notice, by the way, that we’re not talking about the business practices of fly-by-night operators; we’re talking about two of our three largest financial companies, with roughly $2 trillion each in assets. Yet politicians would have you believe that any attempt to get these abusive banking giants to make modest restitution is a “shakedown.” The only real question is whether the proposed settlement lets them off far too lightly.

What about the argument that placing any demand on the banks would endanger the recovery? There’s a lot to be said about that argument, none of it good. But let me emphasize two points.

First, the proposed settlement only calls for loan modifications that would produce a greater “net present value” than foreclosure — that is, for offering deals that are in the interest of both homeowners and investors. The outrageous truth is that in many cases banks are blocking such mutually beneficial deals, so that they can continue to extract fees. How could ending this highway robbery be bad for the economy?

Second, the biggest obstacle to recovery isn’t the financial condition of major banks, which were bailed out once and are now profiting from the widespread perception that they’ll be bailed out again if anything goes wrong. It is, instead, the overhang of household debt combined with paralysis in the housing market. Getting banks to clear up mortgage debts — instead of stringing families along to extract a few more dollars — would help, not hurt, the economy.

In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll see pro-banker politicians denounce the proposed settlement, asserting that it’s all about defending the rule of law. But what they’re actually defending is the exact opposite — a system in which only the little people have to obey the law, while the rich, and bankers especially, can cheat and defraud without consequences.