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Porn is everywhere. So much so that new live-in summer camps have cropped up to help teens fight porn addictions with camping, fishing, horseback riding and one-on-one therapy.

“It’s chronic with most of these kids,” said [Mount Pleasant program director Manuel] Zizumbo. “By the time they come here, they’re like, ‘I have a problem. I don’t know what to do and I can’t control it. I can’t quit.’”

At $6,500 per month, Mount Pleasant accommodates boys as young as 12 for up to nine months. It was founded this year after issues with pornography kept emerging in other treatment centers for troubled boys.

“We realized we had to create something specific,” Zizumbo said.

Lax lending rules caused college students to take on debt they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford, according to a new government report.  The report, released Friday by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Department of Education, compares the boom-and-bust cycle in private student loans to the mortgage collapse in 2008 that ushered in a global recession. “Subprime-style lending went to college and now students are paying the price,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Lax lending rules caused college students to take on debt they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford, according to a new government report. 

The report, released Friday by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Department of Education, compares the boom-and-bust cycle in private student loans to the mortgage collapse in 2008 that ushered in a global recession.

“Subprime-style lending went to college and now students are paying the price,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

College life is getting a reality check! A new study finds that students are giving up expensive schools and living at home instead of on campus in order to manage the sprawling cost of a college education. 

The average amount families are spending on college is down by 5 percent, and more parents and students are choosing a college based on cost, according to the annual report conducted for Sallie Mae, the country’s largest lender to students.

“This really reflects the economic conditions that we see today,” said Sarah Ducich, a senior vice president at Sallie Mae. “We are seeing families make adjustments, saving more money and being more cost-conscious.”

School is way too easy — and kids will tell you so themselves! A new study found students are bored and not being challenged by their schoolwork.  Three out of 10 eighth-graders think their math work is too easy, for example, and more than a third of seniors report they hardly ever write about what they read in class, according to a new study of student surveys conducted by the Center for American Progress, an education think tank. Besides bored kids, researchers Ulrich Boser and Lindsay Rosenthal found frustrated ones. More than 70 percent of middle schoolers aren’t being taught engineering and other key technology classes and 36 percent of seniors hardly ever understand what their teacher is asking.

School is way too easy — and kids will tell you so themselves! A new study found students are bored and not being challenged by their schoolwork. 

Three out of 10 eighth-graders think their math work is too easy, for example, and more than a third of seniors report they hardly ever write about what they read in class, according to a new study of student surveys conducted by the Center for American Progress, an education think tank.

Besides bored kids, researchers Ulrich Boser and Lindsay Rosenthal found frustrated ones. More than 70 percent of middle schoolers aren’t being taught engineering and other key technology classes and 36 percent of seniors hardly ever understand what their teacher is asking.

Los Angeles public schools paid nearly half a million dollars for a tutoring program with close ties to Scientology — and students who attended actually did worse on standardized tests, The Daily has learned.  The city spent $49.5 million on all after-school tutoring in the 2009-2010 school year and $52.2 million in 2010-2011. Mora said there have been no complaints about proselytizing during class. At the same time, a report released last year showed that students who attended the Applied Scholastics tutoring in the 2009-2010 school year fared worse on standardized math and language tests compared with those who did not attend. The difference was particularly noticeable for the math scores, according to the report.

Los Angeles public schools paid nearly half a million dollars for a tutoring program with close ties to Scientology — and students who attended actually did worse on standardized tests, The Daily has learned. 

The city spent $49.5 million on all after-school tutoring in the 2009-2010 school year and $52.2 million in 2010-2011. Mora said there have been no complaints about proselytizing during class.

At the same time, a report released last year showed that students who attended the Applied Scholastics tutoring in the 2009-2010 school year fared worse on standardized math and language tests compared with those who did not attend. The difference was particularly noticeable for the math scores, according to the report.

theatlantic: How Good Books Can Change You Summer’s here and time for summer reading at the beach, in a hammock or on the porch. Books are great for passing the time on lazy summer afternoons. And according to Ohio State researchers, the books you read from childhood on can also change who you are. They do this by a process the researchers called experience taking. More than just understanding a character, it’s taking a little of them inside of you and changing yourself in the process. It’s not something that you plan on, it happens spontaneously. Good writing helps, but there’s much more involved. Read more. [Image: Alexandre Dulaunoy/Flickr]

theatlantic:

How Good Books Can Change You

Summer’s here and time for summer reading at the beach, in a hammock or on the porch. Books are great for passing the time on lazy summer afternoons. And according to Ohio State researchers, the books you read from childhood on can also change who you are.

They do this by a process the researchers called experience taking. More than just understanding a character, it’s taking a little of them inside of you and changing yourself in the process. It’s not something that you plan on, it happens spontaneously. Good writing helps, but there’s much more involved.

Read more. [Image: Alexandre Dulaunoy/Flickr]

Turns out elementary school lunches in the most and least obese counties in the nation look exactly as you’d expect. The lunch on top hails from America’s obesity capital: Greene County, Alabama. The one below — the one that looks like a nutrition ad — is from Routt County, Colorado, the fittest county in the U.S.

Photos by Bryan Bedder for The Daily

857 empty schools desks — representing the staggering number of students who drop out of school ever hour, every day — were placed on the National Mall in front of Congress yesterday.  Check out the whole scene on the Mall with our interactive 360 degree photo! 360 photo by Kris Connor for The Daily

857 empty schools desks — representing the staggering number of students who drop out of school ever hour, every day — were placed on the National Mall in front of Congress yesterday. 

Check out the whole scene on the Mall with our interactive 360 degree photo!

360 photo by Kris Connor for The Daily

Confidence in U.S. public schools plunged to a scary new all-time low — just 29 percent! And schools aren’t alone. Across the board, it looks like Americans are losing faith in institutions.  Other record lows were recorded for the church or organized religion, 44 percent; banks, 21 percent; and television news, 21 percent. Congress ranked last — as it has for the last three years — at 13 percent.

Confidence in U.S. public schools plunged to a scary new all-time low — just 29 percent! And schools aren’t alone. Across the board, it looks like Americans are losing faith in institutions. 

Other record lows were recorded for the church or organized religion, 44 percent; banks, 21 percent; and television news, 21 percent.

Congress ranked last — as it has for the last three years — at 13 percent.

Do you have $43,000? Good, because you can afford to send your child to one of the most expensive four-year private colleges — including Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University — for a single year. In other news, the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York City, which teaches acupuncture and other traditional East Asian medical practices, is the most expensive four-year, for-profit college in the country, at $49,116 a year.

Do you have $43,000? Good, because you can afford to send your child to one of the most expensive four-year private colleges — including Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University — for a single year.

In other news, the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York City, which teaches acupuncture and other traditional East Asian medical practices, is the most expensive four-year, for-profit college in the country, at $49,116 a year.