No se trata, dicen las conclusiones, de que el ordenador tenga algún tipo de efecto mágico, es decir, que el modelo en sí sea más efectivo, sino que el uso de esas herramientas en la educación suele implicar que el alumno dedica más tiempo al estudio, que busca información adicional por su cuenta, la comparte, colabora y, en definitiva, es más propenso a tomar las riendas de su propio aprendizaje en lugar de ser un sujeto pasivo y muchas veces anónimo en medio de una clase llena (a veces excesivamente) de alumnos. Objetivos que, por otra parte, lleva décadas reclamando la investigación educativa para la enseñanza en general, recuerda el experto en educación Rodrigo Juan García.

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Asignándoles valores a las diferencias de aprendizaje (medidos mediante test fiables) de cada uno, el resultado es que la enseñanza puramente online produjo un efecto ligeramente mejor que la presencial (una desviación favorable de 0.14 medida entre 0 y 1) en los resultados, pero que la combinación de elementos online y presenciales es significativamente más efectiva (con una desviación de 0.35).

Both the quest for purity and the quest for unity are misguided. This is because modern conservatism in general and certainly American conservatism in particular is a paradoxical orientation. The central paradox pervades the writing of Edmund Burke. Rightly recognized as having informally and unofficially but powerfully launched modern conservatism in 1790 with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke cherished two fundamental goods, liberty and tradition, that do not obviously cohere and sometimes ovbiously conflict. Constitutional government in America intensifies the paradox. Insofar as American conseratism involves the conservation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution —and how could it now?— it puts a revolutionary doctrine and a founding document, forged by men in the heat of the political moment and constructed with numerous painful compromises, at the heart of the conservative mission.

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Allitt does not seek to go beyond his role as a historian. Yet his learned and fair-minded reconstruction lends support to the view that the proper way forward for conservatives is neither greater purity nor a more perfect unity, but a richer appreciation of the paradoxes of modern conservatism and a more assiduous cultivation of the moderation that is necessary to hold conservatism's diverse elements, frequently both complementary and conflicitng, in proper balance.

According to Allitt, conservatism is, first, "an attitude to social and political chance that looks for support to the ideas, beliefs, and habits of the past and puts more faith in the lessons of history than in the abstractions of political philospophy." Second, it involves "a suspicion of democracy and equality." This can be divided into a concern that the formal equality of men before God and law not be confused with equality in all things, particularly virtue, and that too much government power not be placed directly in the people's hands. Third, conservatism reflects "the view that civilization is fragile and easily disrupted" and therefore it teaches that "the survival of the republic presupposes the virtue of citizens" and calls for "a highly educated elite as guardians of civilization."

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Like all traditions, the conservative one has harbored hypocrisy and spawned characteristic vices. Conservatives, Allitt notes, have over the years exploited and betrayed their principles, using them as a pretext to defend social station and inherited wealth. And conservatives are particularly susceptible, he notes, to the vices of "pessimism and complacency." But unlike so many partisan critics of conservatism who are only too happy to define conservatism by and dilate upon its worst moments, Allitt, without sweeping its lapses and bad tendencies under the rug, seeks to understand conservatism in light of its most thoughtful expounders and influential practitioners.

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Whether one views the New Deal "as a coordinated plan to rescue American capitalism," or "as a set of ad hoc experiments to find ways of reducing unemployment and stimulating recovery," or "as a project to transform permanently the balance of power between state and federal governments, augmenting government control over all aspects of national life," it provoked, Allitt maintains, a remarkable change in the meaning of conservatism as well as liberalism:

Until then, the term liberal had connoted giving citizens the greatest possible liberty to pursue their own concerns while minimizing government. From the New Deal onward, liberalism came to mean assigning an ever larger role to government in promoting equality and protecting citizens' health, welfare, education, employment, and access to justice.

Moreover, "by the 1930s the defense of old-style or classical liberalism —the heritage of Adam Smith and John Stuart mill— had become a form of conservatism." One sees this in former president Herbert Hoover and Ohio Senator Robert Taft, progressive Republicans who criticized FDR's massive expansion of the federal government as a grave threat to constitutional principles. And in the writings of Alfred Jay Nock (1870-1945), particularly in the conservative classics Our Enemy the State (1935) and Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), one sees as well a harsh critique of state intervention in the economy coupled with a celebration of high culture and aristocratic virtue, a coupling that would become a hallmark of the new conservatism of the 1950s and 1960s.

A self-consciously conservative movement in America came into existence in the years following World War II. These conservatives were from the outset a fractious bunch. Libertarians such as Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), Murray Rothbard (1926-2005), and Milton Friedman (1912-2006) focused on conserving the idea of limited government (as a defend of freedom, Friedman considered himself a liberal, and Hayek went so far as to deny that he was conservative). Traditionalists such as Richard Weaver (1910-1963), Russell Kirk (1918-1994), and Peter Viereck (1916-2006) were devoted to conserving religious faith and conventional morality. The contending elements of the new conservatism were united in though by opposition to the New Deal and to Soviet communism.

And they were united in practice by William F. Buckley (1925-2008), perhaps the pivotal figure in making conservatism in America a respectable intellectual force. With National Review, which he launched in 1955, he sought to "set up a big tent, bringing in as many types of conservatives as possible, and to keep them together despite their differences." He succeeded marvelously, avoiding the quest for purity and for unity. In the early years in particular his big tent excluded only isolationaists, which, Allitt, shewdly points out, "put National Review in the paradoxical position of hating big government in all areas except the one in which it was becoming biggest of all, defense."

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The struggle over these vexing matters drew new conservative factions into the fray. Having come of age on the left in the 1940s and 1950s, the first generation of intellectuals subsequently known as neoconservatives modified their ideas in response to the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. Led by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, they became forceful critics of Johnson's Great Society initiatives, arguing that the empirical evidence showed that government programs designed to help the poor were in fact creating a culture of dependency which further mired its supposed beneficiaries in poverty. And they were foreign policy hawks, animated by a conservative sense of the dangerousness of the world and the vulnerability of civilization and therefore the need for a strong military, while also inspired by a progressive belief that America ought to promote liberty and democracy abroad.

Around the same time the new Christian Right rose to prominence. These mostly evangelical Protestants found their political voice in opposition to the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade. Focusing on social values, especially marriage, children, and the family, the Christian right established itself as an important player in national politics through its role in 1980 in electing Ronald Reagan president.

In reality, the "Reagan Revolution," the culmination of 30 years of conservative ideas and activism, was not a revolution a tall: It left the New Deal largely intact, at best slowing the rate at which government continued to grow. But it did provide a reinvigorated defense of free-market capitalism, the political expression of which was the 1981 tax cuts, which ushered in three decades of vigorous economic growth. It rejected peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, which Reaganf amously dubbed the "evil empire," in favor of pursuit of victory in the Cold War, a pursuit that was rewarded in 1989 with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and in 1991 with the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. And with the help of a cadre of intellectuals nourished by conservative think tanks, which were themselves supported by a network of conservative philantropists, it renewed an appreciation for the wisdom and relevance of the founders' understanding of the Constitution and the enduring principles of self-government.

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By the time, President George H. W. Bush left office in 1992, the two greatest issues that had occupied the new conservatives since the 1950s had been resolved. One —the defeat of communism— represented, from the conservative perspective, a glorious triumph. The other —the entrenchment of the New Deal as part of the American tradition— represented for most conservatives an unfortunate reality that needed to be accepted and dealt with even as many continued to wish, sometimes aloud, that the reality were otherwise.

By the time President George W. Bush exited the White house, conservatives seemed as confused as they had ever been about how to conserve the competing elements of their tradition. If the history of conservative thought and politics in America is a good guide about how to remain faifhtul to conservative spriti, then conservatives ought to find the self-restraint to resist the delusive lures of sectarian purity and harmonious unity. The ambition to respect both liberty and tradition, and to moderate the paradoxes that it brings, are as old as America. Indeed, they are challenges inherent in a free and democratic self-government. To conserve well, conservatives must renew that ambition and cultivate the moderation that allows them to prosper with the paradoxes that it generates.

The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America's schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on.

In New York City many public and private elementary schools and some middle schools alaready employ versions of reading workshop. Starting this fall, the school district in Chappaqua, N.Y., is setting aside 40 minutes every other day for all sixth, seventh and eighth graders to read books of their own choosing.

In September students in Seattle's public middle schools will also begin choosing most of their own books. And in Chicago the public school district has had a pilot program in place since 2006 in 31 of its 483 elementary schools to give students in grades 6, 7 and 8 more control over what they read. Chicago officials will consider whether to expand the program once they review its results.

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Critics of the approach say that reading as a group generally leads to more meaningful insights, and they question whether teachers can really keep up with a roomful of children reading different books. Even more important, they say, is the loss of a common body of knowledge based on the literary classics —often difficult books that children are unlikely to choose for themselves.

"What child is going to pick up Moby Dick?" said Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University who was assistant education secretary under President George H. W. Bush. "Kids will pick things that are trendy and popular. But that's what you should do in your free time."

Indeed, some school districts are moving in the opposite direction. Boston is developing a core curriculum that will designate specific books for sixth grade and is considering assigned texts for each grade through the 12th.

Joan Dabrowski, director of literacy for Boston's public schools, said teachers would still be urged to give students some choices. Many schools in fact take that combination approach, dictating some titles while letting students select others.

...acabo de pasar unas semanas, con todas mis defensas críticas de lector arrasadas por la fuerza ciclónica de una historia, leyendo los tres voluminosos tomos de Millennium, unas 2.100 páginas, la trilogía de Stieg Larsson, con la felicidad y la excitación febril con que de niño y adolescente leí la serie de Dumas sobre los mosqueteros o las novelas de Dickens y de Víctor Hugo, preguntándome a cada vuelta de página "¿Y ahora qué, qué va a pasar?" y demorando la lectura por la angustia premonitoria de saber que aquella historia se iba a terminar pronto sumiéndome en la orfandad. ¿Qué mejor prueba que la novela es el género impuro por excelencia, el que nunca alcanzará la perfección que puede llegar a tener la poesía? Por eso es posible que una novela sea formalmente imperfecta, y, al mismo tiempo, excepcional. Comprendo que a millones de lectores en el mundo entero les haya ocurrido, les esté ocurriendo y les vaya a ocurrir lo mismo que a mí y sólo deploro que su autor, ese infortunado escribidor sueco, Stieg Larsson, se muriera antes de saber la fantástica hazaña narrativa que había realizado.

Repito, sin ninuna vergüenza: fantástica. La novela no está bien escrita (o acaso en la traducción el abiso de jerga madrileña en boca de los personajes suecos suena algo falsa) y su estructura es con frecuencia defectuosa, pero no importa nada, porque el vigor persuasivo de su argumento es tan poderoso y sus personajes tan nítidos, inesperados y hechiceros que el lector pasa por alto las deficiencias técnias, englosinado, dichoso, asustado y excitado con los percances, las intrigas, las audacias, las maldades y grandezas que a cada paso dan cuenta de una vida intensa, chisporroteante de aventuras y sorpresas, en la que, pese a la presencia sobrecogedora y ubicua del mal, el bien terminará siempre por triunfar.

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Si uno toma distancia de la historia que cuentan estas tres novelas y la examina fríamente, se pregunta: ¿cómo he podido creer de manera tan sumisa y beata en tantos hechos inverosímiles, esas coincidencias cinematográficas, esas proezas físicas tan improbables? La verosimilitud está lograda porque el instinto de Stieg Larsson resultaba infalible en adobar cada episodio de detalles realistas, direcciones, lugares, paisajes, que domicilian al lector en una realidad perfectamente reconocible y cotidiana de manera que toda esa escenofrafía lastrara de realidad y de verismo el suceso notable, la hazaña prodisiosa. Y porque, desde el comienzo de la novela, hay unas reglas de juego en lo que concierne a la acción que siempre se respetan: en el mundo de Millenium lo extraordinario es lo ordinario, lo inusual lo usual y lo imposible lo posible.