Yet another dire warning about the need for workers who can “thrive in the global economy:”
[T]he Commission concludes that reform in mathematics and science will be possible only if we “do school differently” in ways that emphasize the centrality of math and science to educational improvement and innovation…. As a society, we must commit ourselves [...]
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The 21st century isn’t what it used to be. In 1991, before I joined the staff, my school was awarded a $748,500 grant from RJR Nabisco to develop “innovative programs to improve education” as part of an initiative called New Century Schools. Louis V. Gerstner Jr., chairman and chief executive of RJR Nabisco Inc. [...]
The internet is full of important and interesting things to know about, and it’s hard to manage the volume. Abundance easily becomes overload. I’ve been reading about the economy, Obama, Gaza, Arne Duncan, reading theory, Obama, poverty, and the economy. Oh, and every now and then, cats. I have no interest at all in cats.
Maybe [...]
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The last of my three articles for the NY Times Lesson Plans blog was posted yesterday. The deal was to write 3 or 4 pieces during September, and I managed to put three together, saying about as much as I have to say, for now at least, in that forum.
The second piece I wrote [...]
Here on the edge of the edge of the continent, my family’s view of the 2008 Olympic Games is a little fuzzy since we’re too far out of town for cable service, and the rabbit ears antenna won’t pull down the local broadcast signal. We do (as of 6 months ago) have a decent wireless [...]
Unlike David Brooks, I don’t believe that Education is The Biggest Issue – as he conceives it, anyway. Brooks says, “America’s lead over its economic rivals has been entirely forfeited, with many nations surging ahead in school attainment,” because of an “educational slowdown” around 1970, which resulted in too few skilled workers to meet the [...]
Artichoke’s post about metaphor and education, and creativity, has me thinking about the lines and tensions in teaching. She notes the contradiction for art teachers working in schools with “The emphasis of verbal communication in a subject which is often about an individual language that has nothing to do with words.” Her post was provocative, [...]
Sunday, December 16, 2007
It’s been a while since I’ve written here, mainly due to hassles managing a classroom full of 12-year-olds full of holiday cheer bent on early celebration. It’s exhausting to maintain a focus right now. We have another week to go, right up to Dec. 21. And despite pressure to join the merriment, I push [...]
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Tom Hoffman writes about a model for developing open source K-12 curriculum. He posted a link to the research base used in his example, and he offers a disclaimer:
…I’m not at all qualified to state whether this curriculum is actually any good or ideologically correct. There may be vast “Reading Wars” sub-texts here which are [...]
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Davis and Sumara’s book about complexity theory in education, mentions the Santa Fe Institute, a center for complexity research, but I’d never heard of it. They also referred to a book by M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, which as it turns out, tells the story [...]
