Liberating Education

Thank you!

2009-11-11T09:00:03.823-06:00

Thank you!

refreshing

2009-11-10T19:40:17.433-06:00

refreshing

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of info...

2009-10-05T04:33:44.059-05:00

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
_____________________________

Dissertation Help

I think I might not have made clear what the artic...

2009-09-20T23:23:02.440-05:00

I think I might not have made clear what the article was about. The point of the article/research was to illustrate how scientists need to be careful about drawing simple conclusions from the data of fMRI, such as the conclusion that certain areas being lit on an fMRI means that that are of brain is functioning.

It's an excellent bit of research.

After getting a one year subscription to WIRED I n...

2009-09-20T20:53:03.120-05:00

After getting a one year subscription to WIRED I no longer bother to open the issue when it arrives.

Sorry to be so delayed in replying to your comment...

2009-09-11T02:07:29.754-05:00

Sorry to be so delayed in replying to your comment - I've been on vacation. That's terrific to hear how helpful this site has been to your children.

Why do you think it works so well?

I love KhanAcademy. My kids have been using it si...

2009-08-31T10:04:34.239-05:00

I love KhanAcademy.

My kids have been using it since Spring. My 15 year old used it to review Algebra and Geometry before he moved forward... he is just now beginning Algebra 2 level. My 13 year old has lapped him. Using Khan Academy just a few hours a week, she is well into Algebra 2.

So cool!

I only got as far as Trig in high school and took one college math, so this is extremely helpful.

I will be sending a donation!

The article didn't say! Sorry, I thought the link ...

2009-07-15T00:34:35.948-05:00

The article didn't say! Sorry, I thought the link worked...and I can't find a copy of the article on a non-subscription site.

Sorry -- I don't have a subscription to the Chroni...

2009-07-13T22:19:50.428-05:00

Sorry -- I don't have a subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Did the teacher eventually end her membership?

Susan, I guess your an example of one of those hi...

2009-07-03T03:38:58.552-05:00

Susan,

I guess your an example of one of those highly achieving immigrants!

That is just stunning & sad, given the paltry know...

2009-07-02T20:31:12.308-05:00

That is just stunning & sad, given the paltry knowledge required to pass. I know, as I seriously overstudied for my 10 question joke of a "test" a few years ago. I knew more American civics coming from Canada than most of the home grown Americans I now teach in college here!

Is that you Bert? Thanks for your informative comm...

2009-07-02T16:14:24.187-05:00

Is that you Bert? Thanks for your informative comments and link to the Great Heart Academy schools.

There's a movement especially among the conservatives, back to studying the classics. Also, the Association of College Trustees and Alumni (www.goacta.org) is working to institute more and more classics programs in colleges. They've commissioned quite a few studies of civic knowledge in colleges, and the results are frightening.

At the top schools, freshmen know more than seniors about civics, politics, American history, and economics.

That, unfortunately, is not surprising. I always ...

2009-07-02T14:56:34.728-05:00

That, unfortunately, is not surprising.

I always think of DeTocqueville when I hear about a lack of a knowledge of history and civics in the US. For him, it is the nature of the democratic historian to filter the history into simplistic story lines. When you combine an overly simplified story with the nihilist doctrines of public school textbooks I can imagine that history and civics lose all their passion. It makes me sad. There is so much to wonder at in our "Great Experiment."

At any rate, the passage I am referring to is in DeTocqueville's Democracy in America, Book 2, Chapter XX: Characteristics Of Historians In Democratic Ages. He says that "Historians who live in democratic ages, then, not only deny that the few have any power of acting upon the destiny of a people, but they deprive the people themselves of the power of modifying their own condition, and they subject them either to an inflexible Providence, or to some blind necessity. According to them, each nation is indissolubly bound by its position, its origin, its precedents, and its character, to a certain lot which no efforts can ever change. They involve generation in generation, and thus, going back from age to age, and from necessity to necessity, up to the origin of the world, they forge a close and enormous chain, which girds and binds the human race. To their minds it is not enough to show what events have occurred: they would fain show that events could not have occurred otherwise. They take a nation arrived at a certain stage of its history, and they affirm that it could not but follow the track which brought it thither."

Never conceiving and exploring the complex orders that caused the outcome to emerge.

I hope that the curve will shift in coming years. There is very good work being done at a chain of charter schools called the Great Hearts Academies, if you haven't looked into them, they might be a great feeder for your college. http://www.greatheartsaz.org/ Loving thoughts.

Interesting post & article. You might also find o...

2009-06-18T17:35:56.159-05:00

Interesting post & article. You might also find our commentary on fixing higher education/business schools pertinent. Read about it on the Acton MBA blog: http://actonmba.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/how-to-fix-business-schools/

I couldn't agree more, and it's such a shame. Plus...

2009-05-31T12:38:34.356-05:00

I couldn't agree more, and it's such a shame. Plus, so many know very little about what's necessary to teach well, and have no incentive to learn it.

I often felt that at big universities the professo...

2009-05-29T10:41:59.154-05:00

I often felt that at big universities the professors' attitudes were: "I teach in order to do research." While at smaller colleges, the attitude is more: "I do research in order to teach."

Many thanks for the kind words, Marsha. New reader...

2009-04-22T15:13:00.000-05:00

Many thanks for the kind words, Marsha. New readers who'd like to get a quick overview of the Collegiate Way website may want to start with the page of Four Foundations. News of the growing residential college movement around the world is available on the Collegiate Way's news blog, where people with a special interest in liberal education may particularly enjoy the subset of posts on "teaching with-out the curriculum."

Actually, I was making a comment to both or either...

2009-04-15T16:49:00.000-05:00

Actually, I was making a comment to both or either. I will need help in understanding how to test the financial feasibility of residential colleges (through support from alumni or other sources) in the arkly years, while the cultural traditions evolve.

Mr. Arsht, I wasn't sure if you were speaking to ...

2009-04-15T16:25:00.000-05:00

Mr. Arsht,

I wasn't sure if you were speaking to me or RJO - let me know.

I would be interested in providing the design, con...

2009-04-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

I would be interested in providing the design, construction and financing services for the residential colleges you mention through my company, M Space Holdings (based in NYC)which has a national capability in this general area. I am open to exploring the level of interest in such a venture but would need help in identifying a test university and assembling the right people in a working group.

Thanks for a very informative comment!

2009-04-14T22:58:00.000-05:00

Thanks for a very informative comment!

"My worry is that charter schools, under governmen...

2009-04-13T19:30:00.000-05:00

"My worry is that charter schools, under government bureaucracies, will not be able to flourish in the long run due to governmental control pressures."

Yes indeed, and that's a point where my analogy of charter schools and charter colleges doesn't match. The charter (residential) college idea I proposed was for residential societies that would be genuinely independent and not part of the university bureaucracy. In that sense they're just private organizations. But the similarity is that they exist in association with an existing university, which is their reason for coming into being in the first place.

"Am I understanding you to say that the English universities were started first, then residential colleges were opened as independent organizations which then developed a relationship to the universities?"

Yes, more or less. The university predates any of the existing colleges, and the colleges were established as independent private residences to provide food and lodging for students studying for university degrees. Over time (centuries) these private bodies did take on some teaching functions, but the awarding of degrees and the giving of examinations is and has always been solely a university function.

A modern comparison might be a fictional future for a place like UMass Boston (which I'm somewhat familiar with). It was established in the 1960s as a new urban university with no residences. The thinking was that people living anywhere in the city could come there to take classes. Well, in some sense this is what happens. But one could also imagine, over a hundred years or so, people getting together to buy or build charitable housing for poor students who wanted to live next to the campus -- perhaps students who lived far away. As a self-perpetuating corporate entity, such a boarding house -- a residential college -- would develop its own character over time. Over two or three hundred years one can imagine a dozen such residential houses being established, all independent of the university proper, which continues to provide lectures and award degrees. And over another couple hundred years one can imagine these residential societies hiring tutors to help students prepare for exams, improve their writing, etc. And generous alumni of these houses donate books to form libraries in each house, and so on. Eventually one can imagine UMass Boston being surrounded and intermingled with dozens of these independent houses. That's pretty much just what the thirty-plus Oxford colleges are.

From a structural point of view, the important point is that residential houses of this type could be freely created by anyone -- all you need is the money to do it. They could be nothing more than an apartment building of course, run as a business -- nothing wrong with that, but it's not of any particular educational interest. But, it would also be possible to create such a residential house as a non-profit educational organization -- a residential college -- that had important co-curricular educational elements built in, to support teaching with-out the curriculum.

It's not hypothetical, and examples do exist -- I point to some in my original post. But I think it's an under-replicated model, one that offers a way out of many current problems of university residential life and education.

That's an interesting comparison. Breaking up cent...

2009-04-13T14:30:00.000-05:00

That's an interesting comparison. Breaking up centralized systems into liveable components is an important step towards making higher - and lower - education more successful in truly educating students.

My worry is that charter schools, under government bureaucracies, will not be able to flourish in the long run due to governmental control pressures. The purpose of government bureaucracies is basically at odds with the goals and needs of students.

Jerry Kirkpatrick has an informative section on this issue in his book, Montessori,Dewey, and Capitalism, http://tljbooks.com/mdc/reviews.html.

Am I understanding you to say that the English universities were started first, then residential colleges were opened as independent organizations which then developed a relationship to the universities?

You might be interested in this recent post as wel...

2009-04-12T01:16:00.000-05:00

You might be interested in this recent post as well: From Charter Schools to Charter Colleges?

I compare the movement to establish charter schools with the movement to establish decentralized residential colleges (house systems) within larger universities. This is an analogy, not an identity, and there are important differences. But many of the motivating elements are similar, including a belief that breaking up centralized bureaucracies is usually a good thing. While in the US all residential college systems have been created within existing universities (and so still partake of centralization in that respect), it is entirely possible to create independent, non-profit residential colleges -- co-curricular, educational, residential membership societies -- in proximity to university campuses and to manage them as self-perpetuating charitable organizations. I point to a few existing successful examples as models.

This is how the Oxford-Cambridge colleges were established centuries ago. Perhaps that ancient pattern is due for a revival.

You said it,Jim!

2009-04-11T00:13:00.000-05:00

You said it,Jim!