"Old Dead White Men" Hip Hop Curriculum for Oklahoma

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?

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

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

"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

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

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

  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

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

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

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?

 "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

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"

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

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

Plan B - Skip College

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

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

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

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.

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

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.