Back to School: Activities With an Academic Twist

By Troy Segal

No matter what age you are, autumn is inevitably associated with the advent of school and education. This quintet of lectures, tours, and screenings make for a fascinatingly mixed curriculum.

Latino high school students face a particular set of challenges as they embark on adult life.  The Graduates/Los Graduados, a 2013 documentary film, explores these issues through the eyes of the six kids, their parents and their teachers. It’s showing at El Barrio Firehouse Community Media Center, Sept. 5.

The concept of childhood evolved greatly in the 1800s, and with it, ideas of proper schooling for both sexes. Get a crash course in 19th-century education at this Sept. 12 lunchtime lecture at the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden.

Kids get a chance to decorate a pencil pouch and other new school supplies with cityscapes — the Museum of the City of New York’s way of commemorating its new Cityscapes exhibit, a collection of early 20th-century artists’ views of NYC. Sept. 13 & 20.

Even after eight years, the issues embodied in Duke University lacrosse team scandal — teenage drinking, sexual misconduct and protections for college athletes — still push hot buttons, maintains writer William Cohan, whose book The Price of Silence analyzes the affair and its aftermath. At Hunter College, Sept. 22.

Once upon a time, there was a humble farm boy who emigrated from Norway to the U.S., made a fortune in the gold rush, and ended up founding a great center of learning — namely, the University of California at Berkeley. Hear this true-life fairy tale, which unfolds at Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America on Oct. 27.