He was awake, and there was a giant rooster before him, no more than twenty yards away in the full glow of the raging fire.

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Twenty years ago, neuroscientists held that after a certain critical period, usually no more than the first 12 months of life, the entire visual system has become far too rigid for any real learning to take place.

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It is appropriate, yet also troubling, that no education-related issue took up more media and public interest in the last year than the ghastly murder of twenty first-graders and six adult staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.

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