Blog

October 19, 2020

Medical Inventions - Additional Resources

  Cotton Mather, Smallpox Inoculation, Boston, MA, 1721 Samuel Adams & John Hancock, First Medical Society, Boston, MA, 1781 Harvard Medical School, Early Medical School, Boston, MA, 1782 Massachusetts General Hospital/Ether Dome, Teaching Hospital, Boston, MA, 1811 William T.G. Morton & Dr....
October 15, 2020

In light of COVID-19, Massachusetts should rethink its convention center bureaucracy

Right before commercial real estate values in the U.S. started plummeting earlier this year, Massachusetts officials seemed to finally come to a consensus over the proposed sale of the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay. Privatization of the Back Bay property...
October 15, 2020

The Republic of Gadgets - America’s Great Inventors - 25 Resources for K-12 Education

Understanding the enduring public and private benefit that great inventors and their contraptions have made to our civilization is to better appreciate the connections between human necessity, creativity, and ingenuity. Yet, in American K-12 education very little focus is placed on studying who America’s great inventors were and the central role they’ve played in shaping our republic of gadgets. We’re offering a variety of links on the topic for parents, teachers, and schoolchildren to enjoy and better realize authentic innovators.
October 14, 2020

Additional Resources - The Republic of Gadgets - America’s Great Inventors

Benjamin Franklin, Kite Experiment, Philadelphia, PA, 1752 The Founding Fathers, the U.S. Constitution and the Experiment in Ordered Liberty, Philadelphia, PA, 1788 to the Present The United States Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C., 1790 to the Present Eli Whitney, the Cotton...

During construction, the Allston Mass. Pike project must address commuters' needs

As part of the state’s $1 billion reconfiguration of the Massachusetts Turnpike in Allston, Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack recently announced that a narrow strip of land known as “the throat,” will be considered for an at-grade option in addition to a proposal to rebuild the highway viaduct by Boston University.
October 9, 2020

The Houses of Great American Writers - 25 Resources for K-12 Education

According to the Brookings Institution research, teaching great fiction is declining across America’s K-12 education system, so we’re offering resources to help parents, teachers, and schoolchildren to better appreciate great American writers and the places where they wrote.
October 8, 2020

How do other countries avoid COVID infections as they loosen international travel restrictions?

For most of America, reopening the economy after COVID-19 means being able to go to a barbershop, a local gym, or restaurant – all relatively mundane activities that happen to involve small crowds of strangers gathering in an enclosed space. But for...
October 8, 2020

Getting Nursing Home Care Right

Pioneer Institute has long recognized that seniors deserve the best of care and that innovative policy solutions are necessary to ensure that this population enjoys a high quality of life in their later years. In the 1990s, early 2000s and most recently in 2017, the Institute dedicated Better Government Competition topics to policy issues related to aging in America. Our goal each time was to find solutions and to take advantage of new innovations that would improve the quality of life and care for the elderly.
October 7, 2020

Additional Resources (The Houses of Great American Writers - 25 Resources for K-12 Education)

  Washington Irving’s House, Sunnyside, Tarrytown, NY James Fenimore Cooper’s House, Otsego Hall, Cooperstown, NY (burned 1852) Edgar Allan Poe’s House, Baltimore, MD Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s House, Cambridge, MA The Old Manse, home to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Concord, MA...
October 6, 2020

With Sincere Thanks

A Message from Pioneer Institute Executive Director Jim Stergios: With the close of Pioneer Institute’s 2020 fiscal year on September 30th, I want to thank you. This has been an unprecedented year for the Institute in terms of our ability to improve the lives of citizens in Massachusetts and beyond.