Liberating Education

The College Tuition Bubble Starts to Deflate

2012-02-11T08:36:00.000-06:00

Six small colleges cut their tuition, reports Smart Money. Dusquesne University cuts it by 50%.

No Debate: Kids can learn by arguing

2012-02-04T14:14:00.000-06:00

Read about Diana Kuhn, Columbia University psychology professor's experiment teaching minority sixth graders how to discuss and debate in a philosophy class. They outperformed a traditionally-taught philosophy class hands-down in writing essays, while having far less experience.

More proof of the power of Socratic Seminars.

Teenage Problems

2012-01-28T10:03:00.000-06:00

In "What's wrong with the teenage mind?" researcher Alison Gopnik points out the essential "problem" of adolescence: teenagers are developmentally and motivationally ready and able to work, to engage with the real world, but we no longer make that possible for the most part.

Instead we warehouse them in endless classes where they must sit still and listen to adults tell them what to do and think. And our civilization is so rich that many don't have a real need to work, undermining their self-motivation to do so. Also, parents feel they must buy their children what they want, disincentivizing them to work as well.

Having recognized these deep needs of the adolescent almost a century ago, Montessori argued that adolescents should learn their academic subjects while being in charge of the crops, animals, buildings, and living needs of a farm. She knew that responsibility for the lives of plants and animals would motivate them to get out of bed in the morning. That helping things grow would make adolescents feel competent and valuable. That these experiences would prepare them for full, self-responsible adulthood, while teaching valuable practical skills such as carpentry, cooking, marketing of goods produced on the farm, self-organization and time-management.

And we can see all these benefits in the Montessori farm programs around the country, such as the Hershey Montessori Farm School in Huntsburg, OH.

The Best Business Education

2012-01-15T09:59:00.000-06:00

"The best way that business faculty (i.e,. academics who often have minimal business experience themselves) can utilize their intellectual capital is to have students read classic business writings (e.g., Smith, Keynes, and Friedman) and wrestle with difficult questions that cannot be answered with multiple-choice bubbles. For example, addressing the classic question, “Is the social responsibility of a business to earn a profit?” would give young adults practice in tackling future abstract challenges in the workplace. The real world has more than four answer choices, and there is no answer key. "

This is from John W. Pope Center's Jason Fertig lucid article about business education - and he harkens back to a 1959 book, Higher Education for Business by Robert Gordon and James Howell, a lengthy study sponsored by the Ford Foundation, in which they say:

"When ranking academic performance across disciplines, business students are near the bottom…Too many students seek a business degree for economic vis-à-vis educational gain…Classes in business schools are too vocational…Business students need a sound grounding in liberal arts, not training for their first job."

I couldn't agree more with both Fertig and Gordon and Howell. How ironic, that this was their concern in 1959 - and it's still a problem today.

New Evidence on Math Gap Between Genders

2012-01-11T23:47:00.000-06:00

Read the new study available at the Notices of the American Mathematical Society on the mathematical ability gap between boys and girls. Researchers Kane and Mertz find it's much smaller than imagined, and examine various theories about it.

In Montessori we've found that girls can do just as well as boys at mathematics, using our hundreds of mathematics materials, but most girls seem to need to use the materials longer than the boys. We start all children out using materials as three year olds and introduce them to more and more advanced mathematics materials up through middle school.

No Child Left Behind Leaves the Talented Behind

2012-01-04T12:49:00.000-06:00

City Journal writer Sol Stern explains how No Child Left Behind has caused talented students to do worse, and contributed to the decline of high-achieving math, science, and engineering American students.

“scientific innovation has generated as much as half of all U.S. economic growth over the past half-century, on some accounts....[but] bachelor’s degrees in engineering granted to Americans peaked in 1985 and are now 23 percent below that level.”

One of my favorite quotes, because these regulations make me furious: "Among the worst regulations is the prohibition against hiring instructors who, though they may have advanced science or math degrees, lack the useless graduate-level education courses needed to qualify for a state teaching license. "

Flourishing

2011-12-31T00:04:00.000-06:00

Flourishing has the latest theory based on research of Martin Seligman, one of the godfathers of the Positive Psychology movement. His other books, such as Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism are excellent, scientific, and extremely useful in improving individual lives.

I haven't read this, his first book in ten years, but it looks very good, promising "an electrifying new theory of what makes a good life." I'll be curious to see how much is truly new because what the summary proposes sounds very much like the excellent life as described by Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics.

Invest in the future through education

2011-12-29T13:09:00.000-06:00

Read about a young woman's mental transformation through The Great Connections Seminar.

"The Best Money I Ever Spent."

2011-12-28T17:12:00.000-06:00

Read why a student from Naperville North High School decided to spend his hard-earned money on our Great Connections seminar rather than go to Europe - and decided it was the best money he ever spent.

Two year olds can remember

2011-12-27T17:11:00.000-06:00

For years, developmental psychologists have claimed that children cannot remember much of anything before the age of three. New research shows that it varies by person, some remembering far earlier.

MITx and to Online or Not to Online

2011-12-22T16:33:00.000-06:00

MIT is launching a new educational initiative, MITx, which will offer courses with MIT credentialing. It's an extension of their Opencourseware offerings.

The game-changing aspect is: no admission process and no prerequisites required. You want to take it, you can. If you show mastery, you get the credential, for a small charge.

How they implement this will be crucial. In this New York Times article reviewing eight books on higher education, Anthony Graft makes the astute comment:

"Online courses, the other popular suggestion, can work well—so long as one also provides competent human supervision online, twenty-four hours a day, which makes such courses just as expensive as the traditional sort."

Online courses without "competent human supervision" can work well if:
1. You want to acquire knowledge or mastery of a specific set of facts, ideas, and/or skills.
2. You already know how to reason fairly well about the domain of knowledge you're studying.
3. You're good at working on your own.
4. You're good at coming up with questions on your own AND good at finding the answers.

Just some of the reasons why I think young people need in-person instruction.

Hattip Pat Peterson

Student Debt

2011-12-13T11:18:00.000-06:00

Very useful website on student debt, including a state-by-state map which opens to a list of average debt, tuition and other facts for EACH college in that state!

Hattip Vanessa Tomlinson Smyth of the Goodlark Educational Foundation.

"Don't Lecture Me"

2011-12-07T11:14:00.002-06:00

Good article about professors at the University of Maryland and Harvard using "peer instruction" in large classes to facilitate learning in physics and other subjects. This means the professor doesn't lecture, but proposes questions to answer about the text all students should have read, and then the students talk to each other about the question to come up with the answer.

It has a nice video example and links to the research supporting the methods.

"Mazur now teaches all of his classes using a “peer-instruction” approach. Rather than teaching by telling, he teaches by questioning. Mazur says it’s a particularly effective way to teach large classes."

"I don't go into the class lecturing on what I think they need, no they tell me what it is they want me to cover." "I find out from the students what they need "You can forget facts but you cannot forget understanding." He sounds like a fantastic teacher!

This is similar to the methods we use at the Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, called "Socratic Seminars." Here's a description of what a Socratic Seminar is, and why it works so well. And here's a short video in which you can see a bit about how it works.

Hattip Dave Saum.

How to Get More Out of Google

2011-12-06T21:53:00.001-06:00

Here's a great website, Infographic from "Hack College," that teaches students - and anyone else - how to do better, more efficient and successful searches on Google. It details how to use the Boolean search terms - "operators" - more successfully to find exactly what you need.

Hattip Rachel Davison.

Science Scares

2011-11-30T15:39:00.000-06:00

The American Council on Science and Health has published a study examining the National Resources Defense Council's claims of 13 disease cluster areas in 42 states around the U.S.

"a peer-reviewed analysis by ACSH, using well-established principles of scientific investigation, shows that only one of the 42 sites meets the scientific definition of a disease cluster...

"All but five of the purported clusters lack any supportive evidence at all;
"13 examples cited by NRDC as confirmed disease clusters are in fact places where investigations by public health officials are still ongoing;
"Several cases have already been ruled out by public health officials as disease clusters as no statistically significant elevations of any disease have been found;
"Only four of the NRDC-claimed sites are possible clusters, and just one of the 42 can actually be identified as a disease cluster based on the scientific definition."

What does this have to do with education? I see the rising number of specious claims about the links between disease and technology, medicine, and science as a result of poor science education and poor scientific thinking.

This kind of thinking can be difficult - it often doesn't follow intuitive human reasoning tendencies, especially conclusions based on statistically-based evidence. But good education in reasoning and especially reasoning about statistics would make a world of difference.

Someone who's been thinking a lot about how to improve students' "statistical literacy" is Professor Milo Schield at Augsburg College. Here he has a wealth of information and resources about this issue. I suspect the people at NRDC need a course from him - in the hope that they weren't bending the facts on purpose.

Rediscovery of What We Already Knew in Montessori

2011-11-29T17:14:00.000-06:00

Apparently the Erikson Institute's new program "The Early Mathematics Education Project," recently instituted at 300 Chicago public schools, incorporates real objects and events to teach young children the fundamentals of mathematics. This was reported today in the Wall Street Journal in an article titled "New Calculation: Math in Preschool."

According to the article, "Evidence is mounting about the importance of teaching math in preschool and kindergarten."

I'm glad they've just discovered this! But it's not a new calculation: Montessori schools have been teaching fundamental mathematical concepts in preschool (Children's House to us) for over 100 years, because Maria Montessori discovered the importance of doing so that long ago.

We use fabulous, beautiful materials, such as the Trinomial Cube. Here's the equation it represents:

And the Golden Bead materials teach the basics of addition and subtraction so that even 4 year olds can do equations to the millions.

The Montessori Method has dozens of carefully designed and tested mathematical materials to work with.

One of the first graduates from my school, Council Oak Montessori, is now a parent of a three year old there. He came to a parent meeting and described how the mathematics materials helped him in all his later school career (and even to today), by teaching him how to concretize and visualize mathematical operations. And he didn't start at our school until 2nd grade.

Ah well, it's great that the students at CPS are getting SOME mathematical concretization.

More on the "99%"

2011-11-27T12:45:00.000-06:00

Following up on my last post, I found a website, History is a Weapon, with the entire text of Zinn's People's History of the U.S. Here's a quote from Chapter 24 on this webpage:

"One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another...Against the reality of that desperate, bitter battle for resources made scarce by elite control, I am taking the liberty of uniting those 99 percent as 'the people.'"

Not only is it clear from the text that this is the origin of the Occupy movement's "99%" mantra, but the Occupy movement is advertising on the very webpage of the book which discusses this issue. No wonder: over 1 million copies of this textbook have been sold and used at high schools and universities across the country in the past 20 years.

Is Howard Zinn the originator of the "99%"?

2011-11-26T15:29:00.000-06:00

Researching some quotes of Howard Zinn, author of the widely used history text, The People's History of the United States, I came across a 2004 blog entry from historian Michael Kazin on George Mason University's History News Network about Zinn's book that said this:

"According to Zinn, '99 percent" of Americans share a "commonality" that is profoundly at odds with the interests of their rulers.' And knowledge of that awesome fact is 'exactly what the governments of the United States, and the wealthy elite allied to them--from the Founding Fathers to now--have tried their best to prevent.'"

Since many, many young people today are educated using Zinn's book - is this where they got the "we are the 99%" slogan?

Manipulating Happiness - Maria Montessori

2011-11-22T16:35:00.000-06:00

In this article , researcher Robert Biswas-Diener writes in the International Journal of Well-Being about the Montessori Method and its relation to optimal living:

"One Montessori teacher I interviewed told me that using the term "work" to describe the children's activites lends a sense of dignity and importance to what they do, and set up kids for a lifetime of believing that work can be fun, rewarding, and educational...When I asked Ella [a Montessori student] what, specifically, she liked about 'work,' her answer was immediate "I like that it is challenging.' Either Ella is being fed some excellent propaganda or she is participating in a school system which fosters enjoyment alongside learning. Which begs the tough question: Was Maria Montessori a happiness-‐‑enabler?"

"What's the little difference that makes the big difference" between apes and humans!

2011-11-17T12:27:00.000-06:00

Watching this NOVA special, Ape Genius, I almost fell over (while exercising!) when I heard one of the researchers say that in their quest to understand the apes and their relation to us, they were trying to find out "what's the little difference that makes the big difference."

And these were not neurologists, talking about brain anatomy/physiology differences! These were cognitive psychologists and anthropologists. I'm afraid it is yet another example of the deterioration of education.

"The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes"is Reason! Humankind's ability to conceptualize abstract ideas. It makes ALL the difference.

I suspect this ignorance on the part of the scientists is a result of the century+ attack on Reason and that attack's influence in the humanities and sciences.

"My Teacher is an App"

2011-11-13T23:02:00.000-06:00

Learning through the Internet reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica in his Foundation trilogy - all the knowledge available at one's fingertips. A life-altering resource of knowledge.

"My Teacher Is An App" discusses elementary schools using computers for most of the learning, or "hybrid" models in which children do some in-person work, often through a homeschool, but more work through computers.

It's good that their virtual experiences and activities are so much richer than the mere paper and pencil learning of traditional schools. But I worry that they will not get enough real-world experience through such systems to develop their senses, their motor abilities, their knowledge, and their imaginations well.

We are living animals and our reason is highly connected to the functioning of our bodies. In the '90's, Antonio Damasio began demonstrating how poorly reason operates without a well-functioning connection to emotion; reason cannot enable us to choose well if cut off from emotion which relay our deepest core values and needs to the reasoning mind.

This connection is developed through sensory-perceptual-motor experience, through physical interaction with the world, through interaction with other people. These experiences can be simulated on computer but not replaced.

What happens to a person's ability to reason well and wisely about life-choices if they don't have sufficient real-life experience?

The Montessori Mafia and India

2011-04-07T11:04:00.003-05:00

"But most highly creative achievers don’t begin with brilliant ideas, they discover them."

The Wall Street Journal had two immensely contrasting articles on education April 5th: "The Montessori Mafia" was one of them - reviewing the remarkable evidence for the creative advantages of a Montessori education.

In the same issue, April 5th, I was saddened to read the article "India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire," which featured some of the rampant corruption and cynicism in Indian colleges.

"I was not prepared at all to get a job," says Pradeep Singh, 23, who graduated last year from RKDF College of Engineering, one of the city of Bhopal's oldest engineering schools. He has been on five job interviews—none of which led to work."

"Mr. Singh and several other engineering graduates said they learned quickly that they needn't bother to go to some classes. "The faculty take it very casually, and the students take it very casually, like they've all agreed not to be bothered too much," Mr. Singh says. He says he routinely missed a couple of days of classes a week, and it took just three or four days of cramming from the textbook at the end of the semester to pass the exams."

What are such students thinking? Apparently, they have no idea that they need the engineering knowledge to perform on the job. The same kind of thinking that led to the Bhopal disaster years ago. What would lead to such an idea? (not that this is unique: plenty of U.S. students seem to act the same way).
Hattip John Gillis.

Thinking without the concept of number

2011-03-07T21:47:00.000-06:00

Read about the remarkably limited language of the Piraha Tribe of the Amazon in this article - they literally have no concept of number.

Further, "No one paints and there is no art."

"Whatever isn't important in the present is soon forgotten...Very few can remember the names of all four grandparents."

No wonder there's only about 350 of them - could their in-the-moment-only life support more? Very, very doubtful.

Bother me, I'm thinking

2011-02-27T10:16:00.000-06:00

This new research on the link between creativity and distractability should give all educators pause. It's another piece of the evidence that teachers should "follow the child" as Maria Montessori advised.

Jonah Lehrer on Distractions, ADHD and Creativity | Head Case - WSJ.com

Empathy in the Classroom

2011-02-21T22:42:00.000-06:00

Lila Jokanovic shared this documentary with me, "Children Full of Life" about a Japanese classroom with a teacher who nurtures the empathy between his students. It's fascinating how much more developed children can be in such an environment.

How Great Entrepreneurs Think

2011-02-10T00:10:00.001-06:00

Here's an article about a wonderful new study, detailing how great entrepreneurs think. Lots of material here with implications for education.

"Sarasvathy (the researcher) concluded that master entrepreneurs rely on what she calls effectual reasoning. Brilliant improvisers, the entrepreneurs don't start out with concrete goals. Instead, they constantly assess how to use their personal strengths and whatever resources they have at hand to develop goals on the fly, while creatively reacting to contingencies...This is not say entrepreneurs don't have goals, only that those goals are broad and--like luggage--may shift during flight."

Here are some of their attitudes: "I don't believe in market research. Instead of asking all the questions, I'd try and make some sales."

"Ultimately, the best test of any product is to go to your target market and pretend like it's a real business."

"I always live by the motto 'Ready, fire, aim.' I think if you spend too much time doing "ready, aim, aim, aim," you're never going to see all the good things that would happen if you actually started doing it. I think business plans are interesting, but they have no real meaning, because you can't put in all the positive things that will occur...if you know intrinsincally that this is possible, you just have to find out how to make it possible, which you can't do ahead of time."

Ah, here's the creator coming out in them: "if you know intrinsically that this is possible" - these people get an idea that some product or service would be valuable and then they find a way to make it work. They use their own creativity and independent judgment to determine whether something it's valuable.

One of the reasons even the best of market research doesn't always work is that people often don't know what they want or need, or whether they will like a product until they actually try it - especially something really new. Research shows that a small number of people accept a new product right away, but most take a while.

I suspect great entrepreneurs are at least intuitively aware of this, which is why they focus on getting the product out to market and selling it as soon as possible - let people try it, see if/that they like it, then spread the word.

What are the implications for education? Students need encouragement to try new things, to dare to come up with original combinations, and most of all, to rely on their own judgment. They need problems to solve with open-ended possibilities, not test answers.

Hattip John Enright via Tyler Cowen

How do innovators think?

2011-02-01T22:57:00.001-06:00

See this Harvard Business Review article in which researchers Fryer and Dyer discuss their 6-year, 3,000 person study of creative business executives. They discern some of the key characteristics to the creative in business...mentioning that how you get taught in kindergarten can make a difference for the rest of your life.

"A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity. To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different)."

Hattip to Mark Berger.

"Challenging the Left: The case for intellectual diversity"

2011-01-24T21:40:00.001-06:00

Well-written article from The New Individualist by Robert Bradley about the intellectual problems at his high school alma mater. The saddest statement was this:

"My advertised Interim Term class presents students with a different view on economics and business. I have a number of publications and have lectured at many colleges and universities. But never in my five years at Kinkaid has a teacher introduced himself/herself and engaged me in a discussion about my viewpoint. Not even a “Hello, I am …. Tell me about ….”"

Why? Because it reveals how the faculty is unintellectual. Yet, they're in charge of teaching students ideas!

I was very fortunate that when I went to high school in the '60's, one of my most interesting teachers was a lifelong Democrat, Mr. Woll. He made sure we students learned about the full range of the political spectrum, so we could make up our own minds. But then, he was highly intellectual, even ran "The Eggheads" club where we debated all kinds of ideas. I think he was unusual even in his day!

"To really learn, quit studying and take a test"

2011-01-22T09:48:00.001-06:00

A new study from Purdue, discussed in this New York Times article, finds that students who take a test about material they've learned have 50% more recall of the material than those who either repeatedly study the material, or those who study and draw diagrams of it.

I can see immediately two important learning principles operative in these results:

1. The test focuses attention and motivation, which always makes someone remember better and, as the writer mentioned, shows the person what they don't know, possibly interesting them in correcting their ignorance.

But do most students care about what they don't know? My observation is that many just want to get done with what they're studying to go on to the next requirement.

2. The article's analysis claims that testing requires active reconstruction of material, which helps recall. They used a free-form essay as the test in which the student reconstructed the material learned.

Actively reconstructing knowledge requires a person to not only recall what they've learned, but conceptually organize it and this does help with learning and retention.

But whether testing always helps is not clear to me. Multiple choice tests, so often used, require recognition of material rather than active recall and reconstruction. So the inference from this study, that testing results in better learning, is flawed.

In Montessori, students study through learning materials, such as these. They are designed to illustrate concepts through real objects - a better way to fix knowledge in memory than mere paper and pen, as it engages the senses and the students' activity.

And we use a three-period lesson to teach the student how to use each learning material:

1. Teacher names objects in material and demonstrates its use, with as few words as possible.

2. Student practices material, with teacher asking "show me this" etc.

3. Student demonstrates use of material/meaning to teacher, with the teacher asking "what's this" etc.

This last step requires the student to reconstruct his own knowledge in order to present it correctly - giving him an opportunity to see the gaps, like a test. When a child thinks he has mastered the material, he can ask the teacher to "test out" of it by demonstrating how much he knows about using it.

"Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses"

2011-01-19T12:06:00.000-06:00

Sickening but not surprising research findings from "an unusually large-scale study" are summarized in this article from the Chicago Tribune. The sad result of Progressive education's long history.

"Half of students did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week."

"information from 24 schools, meant to be a representative sample, which provided Collegiate Learning Assessment data on students who took the standardized test in their first semester in fall 2005 and at the end of their sophomore years in spring 2007. The schools took part on the condition that their institutions not be identified....After four years, 36 percent of students did not demonstrate significant improvement, compared to 45 percent after two...

"Students from families with different levels of parental education enter college with different learning levels but learn at about the same rates while attending college. The racial gap between black and white students going in, however, widens: Black students improve their assessment scores at lower levels than whites."

Hattip to John Enright.

Examining the Value of the Beleagured For-Profit Sector

2011-01-13T18:30:00.001-06:00

Peter Woods, president of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) has written a thoughtful article on the criticisms, attacks on, and value of for-profit colleges. NAS is concerned with supporting the value of a liberal arts education, so one wouldn't think they would be much concerned about most for-profits, which tend to be highly career-focused. But he says "But they are very much part of what I take to be the fundamental transformation of American post-secondary education—and that is very much a matter of concern to NAS and to anyone concerned with the survival of liberal education.

You can read it here in 4 installments:

Part I "For-Profit Colleges on the Brink."

Part II

Part III

Part IV "For Profits Break the Monopoly on What a College Can Be"

Teaching Statistics Delightfully

2011-01-09T11:17:00.001-06:00

Here's a brilliant lesson on health/wealth statistics by Hans Rosling: "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes." It underlines the power of the Internet to teach complex principles simply, if the product is done well. You can see more of his videos at the Open University here. What he demonstrates is the mental power to take numbers about a subject and embody them as meaningful information. If only statistics teachers did this more often...

The essence of leadership

2010-12-30T11:12:00.001-06:00

"How great leaders inspire action." Fabulous TED lecture by Simon Sinek - summarizing the fundamental importance for organizations of having a purpose which encapsulates a moral vision.

Hattip Lucy Hair and Eric Rhodes!

The wisdom of the "gap" year

2010-12-29T08:32:00.000-06:00

According the the Wall Street Journal's "Delaying college to fill in the gaps," more students are exploring the real world before heading off to college. Good for them! After the long infantilization of most schooling, some real-world experience will help them learn what's possible and good for them.

Udemy.com

2010-12-22T17:51:00.000-06:00

A reader of this blog asked me about udemy.com, a start up that seeks to provide an easy way for anyone to offer an online course. What a great idea! It has a vast array of courses offered already. Right off the bat I like the featured course "Ideas come from everywhere." And it's free!

It's an innovative permutation on the autodidact features of the internet, which is a truly liberating development of technology. Now, anyone with even some small access to a computer anywhere in the world has the world's knowledge at his or her fingertips. The market for knowledge is liberated.

With so much information available - and ambitious people around the globe - individuals will be able to bootstrap themselves into some levels of expertise formerly available only through schools.

This means, schools will have to offer something special to be worthwhile. But most are market dinosaurs.

What's going to happen?

Hattip to carterson2

Are Doctoral Degrees Worth It?

2010-12-22T02:00:00.000-06:00

Research with some surprises summarized in this article from The Economist "Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic."

Once again, I point a finger at government money which has encouraged a ridiculous amount of degree inflation. Do you ever wonder how Borders, Starbucks, and Whole Foods manage to have so many intelligent and highly educated people working for them?

Hattip to Stephen Hicks.

New thinking on the "problems" of adolescence

2010-12-03T23:01:00.000-06:00

A must-read article, "The Myth of the Teen Brain," re-thinking the way we think about adolescence.

I do think that some behavior of adolescents is highly influenced by their growing brains and rapidly fluctuating hormones - and that hotheadedness and foolhardiness has evidence of this since ancient times. But we should use Occam's Razor before proposing that something is "caused" by brain changes.

Maria Montessori thought that adolescents were striving to become adults and needed to do real work while they learned - that's why she thought they should attend high school on a farm that they worked.

The Hershey Montessori Farm School is a model of what she proposed. Students learn subjects like chemistry, physics, geometry, biology and botany while cooking, constructing buildings, and caring for animals and plants. They run a bed and breakfast and a business, selling their produce.

Hattip to Jim Peron.

Inside the Teenage Brain

2010-11-29T09:38:00.000-06:00

If you've ever wondered why adolescents do some of the odd, impulsive things they do, you'll like this article,
"Inside the Teenage Brain." It summarizes some of the neurological findings on brain development and how it reflects in behavior.

For example, one small study seems to show that teenagers rely on an older, pre-mammalian part of the brain, the amygdala, to understand facial expressions, whereas adults use the reasoning cortex.

Most important, the use-it-or-lose-it feature of the brain implies that the earlier adolescents work on reasoning skills, the better.

Why are there Shadow Scholars?

2010-11-19T16:05:00.000-06:00

This week the Chronicles of Higher Education featured an article that's been widely read around the internet: "The Shadow Scholar":

"In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company's staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.

You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students' writing. I have seen the word "desperate" misspelled every way you can imagine. And these students truly are desperate. They couldn't write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren't getting it."

"It is my hope that this essay will initiate such a conversation. As for me, I'm planning to retire. I'm tired of helping you make your students look competent."

Searing words.

My question: why is this happening? The author puts some blame on professors who can't/won't judge what's going on. Yes, that's a problem, but part of a bigger issue.

My hypothesis: this is a long-term effect of progressive, egalitarian education and the degree inflation caused by government-financed education. Progressive education teaching methods have left teachers incompetent and students ignorant. Now that "everyone" must have a college degree to get the most basic of jobs, many academically incompetent students are trying to graduate college, or even get graduate degrees.

For many, many students, learning has very little to do with going to college - getting through and getting the degree does. The Shadow Scholar is one solution.

Many of the ESL students he mentions could be very bright and even succeed in business or other fields that don't require mastery of English. In the big picture, going to college may be a complete waste of time and money for them, as well as other students, except for the fact that they need a degree to get most less-than-basic jobs.

Evidence in the article to support my thesis: business is booming in the recession. Why? The Feds are pouring money into student loans so out-of-work people can "go back to school."

It's a sorry, sorry situation.

Superman's arrived at some charter high schools

2010-11-16T13:15:00.000-06:00

Interesting study of charter high schools in Chicago by the Illinois Public Policy Institute here.

"Waiting for Superman" has put the spotlight on charter schools as an innovation tool. I'd love to see what goes on at some of them myself.

Is High School Making Your Kids College Ready?

2010-11-13T15:07:00.003-06:00

The Chicago Tribune found 8 of 10 public high school juniors in Illinois scoring below the college readiness measures of the ACT test, reported in this article. "The nonprofit ACT company stands by its readiness scores: at least 18 in English, 21 in reading, 22 in math and 24 in science. The top possible score is 36."

This includes students from high schools of high repute, like New Trier, where 94% go to college. Even there, 38% of juniors fell short of the readiness scores.

"In Lincolnshire and Naperville [posh and highly-regarded programs], more than half of juniors scored too low to reach the targets in English, reading, science, and math, though several hundred met three of four benchmarks, usually missing in science."

Sheesh.

Students Don't Know How to Think About Google

2010-11-11T18:30:00.000-06:00

Lead research anthropologist for the Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries Andrew Ascher found that students are highlyunskilled in performing searches.

“Student overuse of simple search leads to problems of having too much information or not enough information … both stemming from a lack of sufficient conceptual understanding of how information is organized,” he said. Even computer science students!

Read about his study of their use of Google and other tools in this Inside Higher Ed article.

"“they’re not getting adequate training as they’re going through the curriculum,” he said.

"Asher moved swiftly through a few slides featuring excerpts from interviews with students, each eliciting both chuckles and gasps from the audience of librarians and technologists. “I’m just trusting Google to know what are the good resources,” responded one sophomore biology student."

This alarming result--even among students who are academic achievers is what you get when education focuses on information and testing at the expense of cognitive development and independent thinking.

Another researcher suggested they get instruction on how to do searches. But the real problem lies in the fact that their minds are not conceptually organized--they don't know what is relevant or connected to a topic or idea and what is not. This is the serious deficit of education.

Employees Learn More, Forget Less With Videogames

2010-10-29T12:18:00.000-05:00

Much maligned in education and by teachers everywhere, read about a new study metastudy examining 65 studies and over 6,000 videogame trainees which finds that people learn better with videogames.

"A University of Colorado Denver Business School study found those trained on video games do their jobs better, have higher skills and retain information longer than workers learning in less interactive, more passive environments."

"games work best when they engage the user, rather than instruct them passively. She found 16 percent of the games she studied were too passive and no more effective than other teaching methods," said researcher Traci Sitzman.

Active engagement is key to the success of the Montessori Method also, using learning materials and self-directed activities.

To give teachers critical of videogames their due, students sometimes play these games so much that they miss important opportunities for real-world exploration and social interaction.

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of children work closely together on strategy and logical implications while playing videogames as a group, or online together.

Videogames can enable a person to engage in complex, multi-faceted, and/or exciting, dangerous activities, developing important cognitive and physical skills while remaining safe. They can develop skills through games that would be much more difficult to gain in the real world as a child or adolescent.

Bottom line: technology can result in good or ill, depending on how you use it.

College Tuition Rises with Pell Grants

2010-10-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

When will colleges be accountable to the market? In the midst of our major recession, they're hiking tuition fees again. As I reported in a previous post, if you want to see how out-of-whack college tuition is, compare it to inflation:

When I went to Northwestern University in the '70's, the tuition was a very high $3,000 a year;using 2 inflation calculators, I estimated that,last year, if tuition rose with inflation, if should have been between $12,000 and $16,000 a year. What's current NU tuition?

$40,223!

Here's a story from the Chicago Tribune that names what's going on: "Tuition, Pell Grants Rise in Tandem."

The "free" money of Pell grants drives their uneconomical use, and thus increases prices.

The decline of creativity in the United States

2010-10-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

Valuable article from The Virginia Gazette about the research of William and Mary Psychology professor Kyung Hee Kim on creativity. It has good suggestions for how to foster children's creativity - one's all parents should try to implement.

Read this and then listen to the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, talk about their experience in Montessori school:

Hattip to Bert Loan.

Waiting for Superman

2010-10-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

I recently saw the movie "Waiting for Superman" about public education. It's by Davis Guggenheim, director of "An Inconvenient Truth." Consequently, you'll understand that it's quite artfully done, and it's loaded with information.

Families desperate to get their children into lottery-selected charter schools scream and cry - when they win a place, or lose. It's pathetic and depressing. The message is powerful: children in public schools are being robbed of a good education by the system. The New York Public schools, the DC Schools, the Milwaukee schools, and the teachers' unions are featured.

Although not strident, the director seems to lay the blame on teachers' unions. And it's astonishing to hear that the DC union leadership did not even allow the members to vote on maverick DC Superintendent (recently resigned) Michelle Rhee's proposal to give merit pay. I'm surprised the membership didn't rebel - but then, what does that say?

However, I'm of two minds about this movie: the movie won a Sundance Film Festival award, and, apparently, the New York Times , theWashington Post, and other mainstream media outlets have taken an interest in it - unlike other worthy film attempts on the same topic, such "The Cartel." It's getting the problem to the attention of more people.

But the director makes NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of the school choice movement, i.e. vouchers or credits allowing students to go to private school.

This, while Guggenheim admits at the beginning of the movie that his own kids attend private school!

This, while he interviews the superintendent of the Milwaukee schools, which have a very successful voucher program!

This, while ignoring the successful voucher program in DC!

Within the world of his movie, it's public schools or charter schools for those who can't afford an alternative.

He can't be that ignorant. So why is he ignoring school choice? "Don't bother to examine a folly, ask yourself what it accomplishes."

"Old Dead White Men" Hip Hop Curriculum for Oklahoma

2010-10-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

Read about the "Flocabulary" history program which Oklahoma implemented with federal tax money.

And example of the text: "White men getting richer than Enron. They stepping on Indians, women and blacks. Era of Good Feeling doesn’t come with the facts."

Flocabulary’s CEO and co-founder Alex Rappaport told FoxNews.com: “Without engagement and motivation it’s very difficult to learn, so our main purpose is to create materials that will motivate the students that are least likely to succeed with traditional methods.”

More leftist indoctrination under the guise of an "edgy" curriculum which will get the attention of the students!

Hattip to Bob Meier

Why does college cost so much?

2010-10-13T12:12:00.000-05:00

See the Goldwater Institute's study on Administrative Bloat at American Universities for the answer.

Slate Crowdsourcing Project to Design 21st Century 5th Grade Classroom

2010-10-09T23:05:00.000-05:00

Slate launches a crowdsourcing project to design a 21st century classroom. Anyone can read the parameters and contribute here.

I'll be curious to see if anyone comes up with something entirely innovative; many of the suggestions so far we already do in Montessori schools.

The Hand as the Instrument of the Mind

2010-10-06T08:09:00.000-05:00

"Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development."

"How Handwriting Trains the Brain," in the Wall Street Journal, you can read about a "new" discovery we've known in the Montessori world for 100 years.

“The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.”
“The human hand allows the minds to reveal itself.”
“The mind and the hand are prepared separately for written language and follow different roads to the same goal.” Maria Montessori

Hence, the thousands of "hands-on" Montessori materials in a Montessori school.

College Starts in High School

2010-10-04T08:43:00.001-05:00

Story about a new trend, high school students enrolling in college courses:

"A record number of Illinois high school students enrolled in college courses this fall, racking up credits that fulfill high school requirements and also get them started on a college transcript, state records show."

Doubtless this is a new income stream for colleges. Is this also related to the dumbing-down of high school? In other words, students take college courses for a real challenge?

Many of the American Founders attended college at the age of 16 - James Madison nearly made himself sick by taking double classes at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). At The College of the United States program, we will welcome qualified 16 year olds for the full college program.

Rankling Rankings

2010-09-28T23:22:00.000-05:00

happy with it. Here's the story on the controversy from Inside Higher Ed, including a link to the study and a downloadable database of its information. You might be interested in what kind of criteria they use.

At least the problems show how difficult it is to rank such programs - in contrast to the way it might seem from the college rankings at U.S. News & World Report or others like it.

TED as the New Harvard

2010-09-13T22:05:00.000-05:00

Fastcompany article about the tremendous success of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference and videos and how people are learning from them all over the world.

"These two things -- great ideas and the human connections they create -- make TED a unique phenomenon."

A liberating education.

Hattip to Stephen Hicks.

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits

2010-09-09T23:20:00.000-05:00

This New York Times article reveals what good research shows actually works when studying. Result:

Moving locations and mixing up what you study. Not the usual advice! But very much in line with what goes on in a Montessori classroom!

I love what it said about cramming:

"Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.

“With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”" (emphasis mine)

Explaining Postmodernism

2010-08-21T14:14:00.000-05:00

I just read Professor Stephen Hicks of Rockford College's 2004 book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault for our book club meeting last Wednesday. As one review says, "should be in every student's backpack."

I'm taken with the brilliance of his softball approach to an ultimately devastating critique of Postmodernism and its progeny in history, literature, art, science - but most notably in politics.

Dr. Hicks briefly reviews Postmodernism's philosophical predecessors in Rousseau, Hume, Kant and others, and the path to present-day ideas in remarkably clear exposition any intelligent layman can understand. He then explains the internal "logic" of the Postmodernist positions, starting with their epistemology, which led to political correctness, identity politics and radical gender feminism. He also unearths why they use any manipulation of ideas and any ad hominem to silence opponents, especially those from the pro-reason, pro-liberty, limited government right.

At the climax of his argument, he answers the question: if Postmodernists believe there is no objectivity, no right and wrong, and that the values of all cultures are relative - why do they ALL believe in collectivism and statism? His careful historical and philosophical scholarship, combined with devastating logic, prove Ayn Rand's contention that irrationalist philosophies are systems of rationalization for beliefs and actions which the irrationalist does not want to admit. The book is a paean to philosophy's power.

Other members of our book club were shocked to read about how these ideas are affecting colleges and universities - and terribly worried for all the young people who's minds are being mangled by the Postmodernists.

If you want to understand what's happening in our culture and politics today, read this book! You can find an online PDF of it at Dr. Hicks' website here.

Induction and Modern Science

2010-08-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

See the excellent slides of Professor Milo Schield, Augsburg College, who gave a talk on the problem of induction and its consequences to modern science at our Great Connections Seminar July 18-25, 2010:

1. Induction in Science
    www.StatLit.org/pdf/2010Schield1Seminar6up.pdf
2. Formidable Challenge of Young-Earth Creationism
    www.StatLit.org/pdf/2010Schield2Seminar6up.pdf
3. Resolving the Problem of Induction
    www.StatLit.org/pdf/2010Schield3Seminar6up.pdf

He shows how the creationists are using the weaknesses of postmodernist science to undermine the theory of evolution. All with the tools of modern philosophy. What's happening to science at the fundamental level is scary and infiltrating the schools like crazy.

Thank you Dr. Schield!

Do you have to agree with your professor?

2010-07-20T14:15:00.001-05:00

"In response to the question, "On my campus, there are courses in which students feel they have to agree with the professor's views on the topic at hand in order to get a good grade,' 44.3 percent said yes. The answers, of course, don't prove that such agreement with a professor is in practice essential to being graded fairly, but the very fact of that perception should be of the most urgent concern to all faculty who care about critical thought and intellectual diversity...I hope that ACTA will keep the public informed of the response (or non-response) of colleges and universities in Illinois to that devastating finding."

That's Professor Alan Charles Kors, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, University of Pennsylvannia, quoted in the Association of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) journal in response to ACTA's report card on higher education in Illinois.

Too complicated for words

2010-06-28T09:05:00.002-05:00

Terry Teachout talks about James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Pierre Boulez and the research of Fred Lerdahl in this article. Lerdahl argues that modern art is too complicated for the human mind to comprehend.

My only complaint: he doesn't add that it's too complicated on purpose, the purpose being to make one feel that one's mind is incapable of comprehending, as a demonstration of pedestrian reason's impotence.

IMHO

Hattip to Joan Fencil.

"The End of the Best Friend"

2010-06-20T14:32:00.000-05:00

Frightening story about the deeply intrusive spread of egalitarianism by "child-rearing experts"- sounds like 1984 or "The Comprachicos."

"For many child-rearing experts, the ideal situation might well be that of Matthew and Margaret Guest, 12-year-old twins in suburban Atlanta, who almost always socialize in a pack."

Hattip Michael Richard Brown.

David Brooks on how the Liberal Arts can help your career

2010-06-11T23:55:00.002-05:00

Read an original take on the importance of the Liberal Arts in "History for Dollars" .

Plan B - Skip College

2010-05-31T23:24:00.000-05:00

Interesting New York Times article about researchers and public policy thinkers who see the revival of vocational training as a superior life-path for a large segment of students.

"Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)

For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.

That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it."

Hattip to Don Hauptman.

Shining Eyes

2010-05-17T08:40:00.000-05:00

Fantastic TED talk by music expert Benjamin Zander about how to teach understanding and appreciation of classical music. His comments on "shining eyes" should be the sine qua non of all teachers.

Hattip Liz Parker!

Father Guido Sarducci on College

2010-05-09T22:29:00.000-05:00

Saturday Night Live's Father Guido Sarducci on his Five Minute University: “In five minutes,” he suggests, “you learn what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she is out of school.”

Rating the "Top" Colleges and Universities

2010-04-24T11:35:00.000-05:00

Related to my previous post on forgotten history, take a look at the Association of College Trustees and Alumni - ACTA's - project to evaluate learning at the top-rated colleges and universities at the What Will They Learn website - it's not pretty.

For $38,361 tuition at my alma mater, Northwestern University, a student is not required to take any classes in economics, history, mathematics, science, or literature - only foreign language. University of Chicago requires courses in all but economics, history, and foreign language. The question is: what are they learning?

Another unhappy finding - the graduation rates at many of the institutions are abyssmal. Economically, these institutions are taking in millions in federal loans, yet their customers are not getting the full product. If a business did this, wouldn't everyone scream?

What happened in history class? The Great Unknown Depression of 1920.

2010-04-14T16:56:00.000-05:00

Unemployment at 11.7%, the stock market plummeted 50%, top income tax rates (thanks to Woodrow Wilson) were at 77% - and America was in the Great Depression of 1920. Although I never heard of it before yesterday!

Why not? It wasn't long enough???? We see the selective education we get.

President Warren Harding's free-market policies got us out of this depression in 18 months, and into the Roaring '20's.

Here's an article from Cato that discusses it - and I recommend Glenn Beck's April 12th show for it's summary of the issues.

The Myth of Public Education

2010-04-04T10:47:00.002-05:00

Through a Google alert, I came across this blog entry about liberating education. The first sentence stopped me:

"Since the creation of the Idea of Public Education, or Education for all, that education has slowly been moving away from the way Plato and Socrates would have envisioned it."

I'm not sure if the author is referring to public education in the U.S. or in general. However, here's what Richard Hofstadter, most definitely NOT a conservative or libertarian, says about public education in America in his 1962 book, Anti-Intellectualism in America, Chapter XII "The School and the Teacher":

"The criticism made by Horace Mann about one of the nation's best school systems [Massachussetts]...after 1837 are illuminating. Schoolhouses, he said were too small, and ill-situated...one portion of the community was so apathetic about education that it would do nothing for the school system, but the wealthier portion had given up on the common schools and were sending their children to private institutions...'the schools have retrograded with the last generation or half generation...' 'more than eleven-twelfths of all the children in the reading-classes in our schools do not understand the meaning of the words they read.'"

Apathy of some parents, wealthy children going to private schools, complaints of decreasing standards, poor reading skills - sound familiar???? Mann was saying this in 1837.

Hofstadter continues "The complaints continued, and the plaintive note spread from New England to the country at large. In 1870, when the country was on the eve of a great forward surge in secondary education, William Franklin Phelps, then head of a normal school in Winona, Minnesota, and later a president of the National Education Association, declared:

' [In the elementary schools] children are fed upon the mere husks of knowledge. They leave school for the broad theater of life without discipline; without mental power or moral stamina...Poor schools and poor teachers are in a majority througout the country...They afford the sad spectacle of ignorance engaged in the stupendous fraud of self-perpetuation at the public expense...Hundreds of our American schools are little less than undisciplined juvenile mobs.'"

Except for the comments about the poverty of the schools, he could be talking about today!

Hofstadter goes on for another page and a half with even more quotes from other experts, at later times in our history, with the same kinds of complaints.

I had to ask myself: why the same kinds of complaints since the beginning of public education? Since we have poured billions in recent years into public education, poverty of the system is obviously not the problem.

No - the root cause is at the very heart of a government-run service-system: a disjunction between the interests of the customer (parents and children) and the interests of the provider (the government, whether of a village or the whole country), embodied in the government bureaucracies.

The government employees running public school systems do not have the discipline of the market brought to bear on them - of satisfying their customers or failing - exercised on free-market businesses. Hence, they've been a problem - and had very much the same problems from day one until today.

Fortunately, the public is catching on to the problem - at least about education.

A Father-Daughter Bond, Page By Page

2010-03-29T22:00:00.002-05:00

Great story about the cultivation of a father-daughter relationship through reading.

Hattip to Don Hauptman.

The Montessori Way

2010-03-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

My review of Tim Seldin and Paul Epstein's book, The Montessori Way, on the Montessori approach to education, in which I connect biological, social, and political issues.

An Engineer's Incisive Take on Deconstructionism

2010-03-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

Read Chip Morningstar's trenchant analysis of deconstructionism. A naive engineer-scientist, he encountered it in spades at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace in Santa Cruz, CA, April 1991 from the humanities types attending the conference.

Shocked and perplexed by the mumbo-jumbo so many were taking seriously, he devoted serious time reading up on it. His analysis is dead-on.

Remember, this is the theory that many, many, many humanities professors use to teach our children, in high school and college - the brighter, the more likely they will be introduced to it and their minds deformed.

Hattip to John Enright.

Employers want 18th century skills

2010-03-12T14:06:00.001-06:00

New data reviewed by Mark Bauerlein in The Chronicle of Higher Education which argues for getting a high-level liberal arts education.

Hattip to Laurie Morrow.

The Philosophical Baby

2010-03-11T01:28:00.003-06:00

Researcher Alison Gopnik talks about the amazing findings on what babies grasp.

Hat tip to Anja Hartleb-Parsons.

Illiteracy in the Detroit Public Schools' Superintendent's Office

2010-03-05T21:49:00.002-06:00

If we had any doubts about root causes of Detroit's problems, this will help to dispel them:

Iliterate emails from Detroit Public School's Superintendent, Otis Mathis.

Hat tip to John Enright

Sam Adams on Education

2010-03-04T23:39:00.000-06:00

Samuel Adams

letter to James Warren

"If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great Security."

An Evaluation of Public Higher Ed in Illinois, Grade = F

2010-02-25T09:41:00.000-06:00

Read the Association of Trustees and Alumni/Illinois Policy Institute's "A Report Card on Public Higher Education in Illinois" - and weep. What's going on in Illinois is a crime, literally.

Cultivating Failure

2010-02-17T00:30:00.000-06:00

Passionate article about the latest crazed trend in California - chef Alice Waters' movement to make kids work in school gardens because "Gardens help students to learn the pleasure of physical work."

The article's point: these are largely immigrant and poor students who desperately need the knowledge and skills that will enable them to get better jobs than their parents. The author thinks they shouldn't be spending so much time doing physical labor - like their parents.

I couldn't agree more with the point, and I find Waters' Progressive approach is out of touch with their needs. It's too bad she didn't institute these gardens in schools - mostly populated by upper middle class students - where the parents are too busy to let their children play outside and learn about nature. Working in a garden, especially with a knowledgeable teacher to guide them, is one of the best ways to learn about biology and botany. Hands-on science, filled with the essential of science: first-hand observation.

First-hand observation and its attendant skills are sorely needed by most students these days, whether they go to an inner city public school or a upper class private school.

And, if these urban garden programs organized the work around science, as we do in Montessori classrooms, the immigrant and poor students would flourish. I'm not sure if the author realizes that many immigrant and poor students, once in the city, get little experience of nature.

Hattip to Aleks Kulczuga

Homeschooling a Crime in Europe

2010-02-11T23:18:00.000-06:00

I almost flipped reading this article in the Economist about a German family that needed asylum in the U.S....because they were homeschooling! The implications are mind-boggling.

The American Founders' Study of History

2010-02-04T16:09:00.000-06:00

"The founders’ immersion in ancient history had a profound effect upon their style of thought. They developed from the classics a suspicious cast of mind. They learned from the Greeks and Romans to fear conspiracies against liberty. Steeped in a literature whose perpetual theme was the steady encroachment of tyranny on liberty, the founders became virtually obsessed with spotting its approach, so that they might avoid the fate of their classical heroes. It has been said of the American Revolution that never was there a revolution with so little cause. Whatever his faults, George III was hardly Caligula or Nero; however illegitimate, the moderate British taxes were hardly equivalent to the mass executions of the emperors. But since the founders believed that the central lesson of the classics was that every illegitimate power, however small, ended in slavery, they were determined to resist every such power. Even legitimate authority should be exercised
sparingly, lest it grow into illegitimate powers. (pp. 118-19) Prof. Carl Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment

http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Classics-Greece-American-Enlightenment/dp/0674314263

Quoted in:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/31/whats-the-matter-with-you-americans/

(Hat tip John Enright)

"Professor Is A Label That Leans To The Left"

2010-01-23T11:47:00.001-06:00

This New York Times article reviews new research into why the Academy leans left. The researchers' conclusion: typecasting, which influences a young person's idea about what they want to be. The article reviews some other recent theories, also.

While I'm sure "typecasting" influences some, I'm waiting for someone to research the numbers of highly qualified academics who consider themselves libertarians, classical liberals, or economic conservatives and have not been able to get jobs in Academia. I know far too many, and their stories, for it to be a fluke.

"Hollywood and Howard Zin's Marxist Education Project"

2010-01-14T01:02:00.000-06:00

I shuddered when I read Michelle Malkin's report on the latest indoctrination efforts by leftist activist professor Howard Zin "The People Speak." Not only will this be aired on the History Channel, but Zinn has launched a related nationwide teaching project "Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change." Here's a few choice principles they promote:

"There is no such thing as pure fact."

In the "Rethinking Mathematics" part of their curriculum, "Short lessons, provocative cartoons and snippets of statistics" emphasize "racial profiling, unemployment calculation, the war in Iraq, environmental racism" etc., etc., etc.

It's a teacher's job to encourage students to "reach beyond [American] chauvinism" and "nurture student empathy" for U.S. enemies, such as the jihadists who attacked New York City on 9/11.

Parents - watch your children!

College Press Run by Students - Montessori-Style Pedagogy

2010-01-11T09:20:00.000-06:00

According to Inside Higher Ed's, January 11, 2010 article, Champlain College is opening a new press, to be run by the students. It's going to use technological bells and whistles such as podcasts and Facebook fan pages, but it's aim is to give writing students practical experience in publishing.

Although I doubt the project creator, Tim Brookes, realizes it, this is exactly the kind of activity which teachers help students to create in every classic Montessori classroom. And for the same reasons. If students are to become successful as adults, they need to develop practical knowledge and skills. Good thinking Professor Brookes!

Obvious, but often ignored in current education.

Are "Learning Styles" Relevant to Teaching?

2010-01-02T16:16:00.000-06:00

Some new research about student "learning styles" puts into question the belief that different students need to be taught different ways. The research implies that there is an optimal way to teach each subject, no matter the style of the learner. Some researchers dispute this article's conclusions.

I'm waiting for someone to have a unified theory of human learning to resolve these issues!

Hat tip to Iris Bell for the article.

Can Videogames Teach Kids?

2009-12-21T09:09:00.000-06:00

Here's a good, short article from Parade Magazine on how schools are using videogames for education. Not surprisingly, there are many creative applications of games, and these seem like a huge step up from the traditional way students are taught.

Games are especially wonderful for creating whole worlds in which people can learn, i.e. how to navigate, strategize, learn finance, see photos of far-off places - heck, I can't begin to summarize the numbers of things you can learn through games.

But young children and adolescents - well, even adults - need sensory and physical experience to adequately develop their minds. Virtual reality just isn't the same.

Since students don't get a lot of sensory and physical experience in the way knowledge is taught in traditional schools, games may not be worse than all the paper-and-pencil learning, in this respect. But there are far better ways to convey knowledge through sensory-motor and real-world experiences, such as the materials and experiences used in the Montessori Method.

In fact, at our school, Council Oak Montessori, we're seeing so many children who hardly get to play outside anymore. Their parents are too busy or worried about danger. This deprives them of essential experiences with nature and physical reality. What we do through the Montessori Method, then, is more important than ever.

Consequently, I'd like to see the use of games - but judiciously.

Reading and the Brain

2009-12-18T09:58:00.000-06:00

"Information, Please: Our species ancestors didn't have to follow recipes or digest 'Catcher in the Rye.' So how did the brain learn to read?" from the Wall Street Journal reviews neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene's new book Reading in the Brain. Looks like an excellent read - I've ordered it already.

One element I liked: the research on reading tests the commonly-held view that the brain functions "modularly" with little interaction between different modules. That theory has always flown in the face of human experience but it hasn't stopped it's advocates, who seem to argue that the experience of wholeness is an "illusion."

The Answer to Future Shock

2009-12-14T10:18:00.000-06:00

John Davis sent me a link to this fascinating video on the exponential changes happening right now, due to technology. It can leave a person with the feeling: how can I keep up with all this change and information?

As usual, that genius, Maria Montessori, had the answer - decades ago:

"It is not the accumulation of a direct knowledge of things which forms
the man of letters, the scientist, and the connoisseur; it is the
prepared order established in the mind which is to receive such
knowledge. On the other hand, the uncultivated person has only the
direct knowledge of objects; such a person may be a lady who spends a
great part of the night reading books, or a gardener who spends his
life making material distinctions between the plants in his garden.

"The knowledge of such uncultured minds is not only disorderly, but it
is confined to the objects with which it comes into direct contact,
whereas the knowledge of the scientist is infinite, because,
possessing the power of classifying the attributes of things, he can
recognize them all, and determine now the class, now the
relationships, now the origins of each; facts much more profound than
the actual things could of themselves reveal." Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method, 1917

Hat tip to Rachel Davison for the Montessori quote

Liberating Montessori Ideas on Social Skills

2009-12-08T09:33:00.000-06:00

Maria Montessori's thinking and work presents some of the most liberating ideas about education to be found on the planet.

Here's her answer to a question about how the set-up of her classrooms advances excellent social skills which prepare the child for a life of productive work, trade, collaboration, and individual expression. It's from the Association Montessori Internationale website, in the section under Montessori's articles and letters.

"This article was first published in the Call of Education Vol, 1. No. 1, 1924.

"If the children in a Montessori school work individually rather than collectively how will the be able to prepare themselves for social life?

"Social life does not consist of a group of individuals remaining close together, side by side, nor in their advancing en masse under the command of a captain like a regiment on the march, nor like an ordinary class of school children.

"The social life of man is founded upon work, harmoniously organised and upon social virtues - and these are the attitudes which develop to an exceptional degree amongst our children. Constancy in their work, patience when having to wait, the power of adapting themselves to the innumerable circumstances which present themselves in their daily contact with each other, reciprocal helpfulness and so on, are all exercises which represent a real and practical social life and which we see, for the first time, being organised amongst the children in a school. In fact, whereas schools used to be equipped only so as to accommodate children, seated passively side by side, who were expected to receive from the teacher (we might almost say in a parasitic manner), our schools, on the contrary, have an equipment which is adapted to all those forms of work which are necessary in an active and independent little community.

"The individual work in which the child is able to isolate himself and to concentrate, serves to perfect his individuality and the nearer man gets to perfection, the better is he able to associate harmoniously with others. A strong social movement cannot exist without prepared individuals, just as the members of an orchestra cannot play together harmoniously unless each individual has been thoroughly trained by repeated exercise when alone."

An advocate of individualism down to the root.

The War on Kids

2009-12-02T14:23:00.001-06:00

My friend and Marketing Advisor, Don Hauptman, highly recommends this new documentary. He described it as: "a scathing attack on American education—on everything from curricula and teaching methodology to draconian security measures to psychotropic drugging that turns normal children into zombies."

Currently playing only at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village, you can see a trailer at their website. I'm planning to get the DVD!

Does College Add to Human Capital?

2009-11-24T23:37:00.000-06:00

George Leef of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy questions whether a college education adds to human capital in his article "College: Investment or Vacation?" and asks if many students need to go to college to achieve a good life. Well worth the read.

National Education Association Loves Rules for Radicals

2009-11-22T15:18:00.002-06:00

If anyone has any doubt where the principles of the NEA lie, they've got to see the NEA website page which not only recommends, but sells Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
Here's a few excerpts from their webpage:

"Alinsky spends a lot of time critiquing the idea that "The end does not justify the means." What end? What means? He feels that there are circumstances where one can and should use means that in other circumstances would be unethical. "

Nice! And the NEA is recommending this book!! These are the people teaching your children! What can they justify doing to them? What have they justified doing to them? If you have any doubt that some of these people are willing to sacrifice the interests of children to further their desire for power and their collectivist ends...whether it be indoctrination, censorship, totalitarian control, or brutality, the following will straightened you out.

The NEA website goes on, reveling in Alinsky's New Left ideology at it's most strident. They comment, and then quote from Alinksy:

"Alinsky, the master political agitator, tactical planner and social organizer didn't mince words...
"'Liberals in their meetings utter bold works; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement 'which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.' They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still sit.'

"'The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. '"

Ah, here's the window where Alinsky throws objectivity out. That means throwing out facts, reason, logic, and rational argument. Then he continues:

"'He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. There is a saying that the Liberal is one who walks out of the room when the argument turns into a fight.

"Society has good reason to fear the Radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the Radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. "

Such as the radicals of the American Revolution? No, they were paragons of restraint, care for the individual, prudence, and the Enlightenment striving for objectivity. Alinsky is not thinking of them, he is thinking of the millions brutalized and slaughtered under totalitarian communist regimes when he says:

"'Conservative interests know that while Liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives."

Remember, since the ends justify the means, a "Conservative" could be anyone the Leftist Radical wants out of the way. That's how it has worked in every communist regime across the globe - it wouldn't be any different here.

"'Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action - by using power. Liberals may then timidly follow along or else, as in most cases, be swept forward along the course set by Radicals, but all because of forces unloosed by Radical action. They are forced to positive action only in spite of their desires ...'"

Celebrating and recommending Alinsky, the NEA has laid the gauntlet down - they will stop at nothing. Is there any wonder that in so many places, American education is not educating students, but indoctrinating them, straight-jacketing their minds with political correctness and destroying their ability to reason?

Once that's done, the Radical doesn't risk as much danger from resistance, as the sheep go to the slaughter.

Accreditation Catch-22

2009-11-18T10:07:00.000-06:00

See this informative article "A False Seal of Approval" by George Leef of the John H. Pope Center for Higher Education about the boondoggle of college accreditation. You might be surprised to learn that accreditation often has little to do with school quality, and mostly to do with government money.

Edu-Lu-Tion

2009-11-12T09:16:00.002-06:00

Thanks to cherapple for letting me know about this site, rich with resources
about education.

Education in Colonial America

2009-11-09T11:24:00.000-06:00

Read how children learned - even in the wilderness - before public education in this Freeman article.

Schiff on ridiculous college costs

2009-11-02T21:00:00.000-06:00

Peter Schiff succinctly summarizes why college costs have gone up astronomically in the last 30 years.

(This is not an endorsement of Peter Schiff for Senate.)

Hat tip to Cloud Downey.

Ignorant and Free

2009-11-02T14:17:00.001-06:00

In the process of researching this quote:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." by Thomas Jefferson, I came across this entry about the abyssmal ignorance of Oklahoma high school students on the "Leftagenda" blog:

http://leftagenda.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/ignorant-and-free-you-cant-be-both/

The author criticizes "No Child Left Behind," which is a failed, statist, top-down program for raising school standards implemented by the Bush presidency. In addition to Medicare Part D, I think it is one of the worst programs implemented by the Republicans - with good intentions. My teacher friends call it "No Child Left Standing."

However, what struck me was Leftagenda's apparent failure to undertstand that the causes of our students' abyssmal ignorance reach much farther back than the Bush administration - back to the leftist university-implemented teaching programs which emphasize "social justice" over reasoning and knowledge, and egalitarian ideas of "self-esteem" over achievement.

Too bad Leftagenda is ignorant about that.

"I like the university"

2009-10-26T22:52:00.003-05:00

Hilarious bit from "Ghostbusters" - only too often true! Hat tip to Quee Nelson.

The Neurology of the Montessori Method

2009-10-23T18:04:00.003-05:00

In the Montessori Method, we attempt to convey learning through as many senses and physical motions as possible, for more effective learning. Montessori captured this idea in her saying "The hand is the instrument of the mind." It's the basic reason we have so many materials for the children to work on.

I just discovered this blog with lots of information on the Montessori Method - and this informative post on neurological research which explains the basis of these principles.

And this article from the Dana Foundation "What dance can teach us about learning" summarizes research that's also relevant to this issue.

(Hat tip to Cynthia Gillis)

"The Uneducated American"

2009-10-14T10:03:00.003-05:00

Wonderful letter by Don Boudreaux in the New York Times about yet another article claiming the government doesn't spend enough on higher ed. As if!

"9 October 2009

Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

To the Editor:

Ever-loyal to leftist dogma, Paul Krugman believes that there is no domestic
problem (be it fact or fantasy) whose solution does not require more
government spending. And so it is with the alleged poor shape of American
higher education ("The Uneducated American," Oct. 9).

But how is it that wide swathes of our lives work so well without such
spending? Grocery retailing, for example, receives no handouts from
government and yet serves customers with extraordinary efficiency and
creativity. Ditto for restaurants, hardware stores, the press,
language-learning software suppliers, and myriad other industries not
suckling at the state's tit.

Why, then, can education - a service that yields enormous benefits to those
who purchase it AND one, like churches (another successful industry!), that
is largely tax-exempt - thrive only as a charity case?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030"

(Hat tip to Don Hauptman)

And we wonder why we're in this mess...

2009-10-04T20:44:00.004-05:00

Mises 1956 book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality: ""The essential charge brought by the progressives against capitalism is that the recurrence of crisis and depressions and mass unemployment are its inherent features. The demonstration that these phenomena are, on the contrary, the result of the interventionist attempts to regulate capitalism and to improve the conditions of the common man give the progressive ideology the finishing stroke. As the progressives are not in a position to advance any tenable objectiions to the teachings of the economists, they try to conceal them from the people and especially also from the intellectuals and the university students. Any mentioning of these heresies is strictly forbidden. Their authors are called names, and the studnets are dissuaded from reading their "crazy stuff."" (emphasis mine)

"The Cartel" - new movie about government schools

2009-10-02T11:44:00.003-05:00

See the trailer for a new Moving Picture Institute movie, "The Cartel," about government schools:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzIfTmD8UUc

What the public thinks of public schools

2009-09-28T22:10:00.004-05:00

Paul E. Peterson's chock-full-of-disturbing-facts article from the Wall Street Journal about the public's fairly accurate assessment of what's going on in the public schools.

A few highlights:

- High school graduation rates are lower today than they were in 1970.

- Our 15 year olds rate 24th in the world for math.

- Schools spend an average of $10,000 per pupil.

- Average teacher salaries are $47,000.

- $100 billion of the stimulus package went to K-12 education, doubling the federal contribution.

"No less than 25% of those polled by Education Next gave the schools either an F or a D. (In 2005, only 20% gave schools such low marks.)" Gee, I wonder why!

I applaud the US public for learning so fast - and all those commentators who have been bringing the sorry news to them.

Urban Prep Model Charter School

2009-09-23T11:29:00.003-05:00

While I'm not a fan of government schools, period, I must admit that charter schools in Chicago, at least, are offering innovations we haven't seen otherwise - and they're good for the students.

Here's a story through the Illinois Policy Institute about a strict charter prep school, Urban Prep, in one of Chicago's roughest neighborhoods, Englewood.

Englewood's one of those neighborhoods that has an accidental murder because of gang wars almost every week or so! (As my husband, John Enright says, the city should give the gang members shooting lessons so they stop accidentally murdering some innocent little girl washing her dog and the like.)

I'm so glad to hear that at least some of the kids in that area are getting an opportunity to break out of the failure mode.