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Academia, Stuck To the Left |
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| Topic: Education |
2:59 pm EST, Nov 28, 2004 |
This gives rise to the "false consensus effect," which occurs when, because of institutional provincialism, "people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population." There also is "the law of group polarization": "when like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs." They become tone-deaf to the way they sound to others outside their closed circle of belief. American campuses have more insistently proclaimed their commitment to diversity as they have become more intellectually monochrome. They do indeed cultivate diversity -- in race, skin color, ethnicity, sexual preference. In everything but thought. Academia, Stuck To the Left |
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Give Thanks for Immigrants |
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| Topic: Education |
4:20 pm EST, Nov 26, 2004 |
Enjoy this holiday message from Rupert Murdoch. Our modern public school systems simply are not producing the talent the American economy needs to compete in the future. And it often seems that it is our immigrants who are holding the whole thing up. 60% of the top science students, and 65% of the top math students, are children of immigrants. More than half of engineers -- and 45% of math and computer scientists -- with PhDs now working in the US are foreign born. Asian Marines, Arab Marines, Latino Marines, all united in the mission of protecting the rest of us. Give Thanks for Immigrants |
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What's the difference between Harvard College and Harvard University? |
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| Topic: Education |
6:27 pm EDT, Aug 21, 2004 |
Harvard College is the undergraduate program at Harvard. It is part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and offers programs in the liberal arts. Harvard University refers to the entire educational institution, including the undergraduate college, the graduate and professional schools, research centers, administration, and affiliates. What's the difference between Harvard College and Harvard University? |
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Inspiration 101: How to Make Students Think |
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| Topic: Education |
9:35 am EDT, Jul 23, 2004 |
Here are a few of the letters to the editor in response to David Brooks' recent column. It is true that many professors aren't dedicated to teaching in a meaningful way. But it is also true that in today's universities, a Molly Worthen is as rare as a Charles Hill. Most students today are overprotected, uninterested and filled with a sense of entitlement. The obsession of parents and policy makers with quantifiable achievement has created a world in which measured results are all that matter. It is a world in which learning how to think and live has no place, a world that produces students that greet even great professors with blank stares and protestations about the "B" on their exam. Blame it on the Bubble. (Does that, by extension, blame it on Berners-Lee and Andreessen?) Inspiration 101: How to Make Students Think |
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Learning to Think, and Live |
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| Topic: Education |
8:57 am EDT, Jul 20, 2004 |
Why aren't there more scholars who teach students to be generalists, to see the great connections? Instead, the academy encourages squirrel-like specialization. Too many universities have become professionalized information-transmission systems, when teaching should instead be this sort of relationship between the experienced and the young, on whom little now is lost. Learning to Think, and Live |
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Alan Kay, on Powerful Ideas |
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| Topic: Education |
8:31 pm EDT, Jul 18, 2004 |
Recent studies have shown that less than 5% of American adults have learned to think fluently in modern non-story forms. In order to be completely enfranchised in the 21st century, it will be very important for children to get fluent in the three central forms of thinking that are now in use: "stories", "logical arguments", and "systems dynamics". The question is: "how?" A good rule of thumb for curriculum design is to aim at being idea based, not media based. Often, computers in the classroom are technology as a kind of junk food -- people love it but there is no nutrition to speak of. Television has become America's mass medium, and it is a very poor container for powerful ideas. Schools are very likely the last line of defence in the global trivialization of knowledge -- yet it appears that they have not yet learned enough about the new technologies and media to make the important distinctions between formal but meaningless activities with computers and networks and the fluencies needed for real 21st century thinking. We can't learn to see until we realize we are blind. The reason is that understanding -- like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors -- is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. And the main goal of helping children learn is to find ways to show them that great road which has no final destination, and that manner of traveling in which the journey itself is the reward. Alan Kay, on Powerful Ideas |
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What's the big idea? Toward a pedagogy of idea power |
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| Topic: Education |
6:17 pm EDT, Jul 18, 2004 |
One can take two approaches to renovating School -- or indeed anything else. The problem-solving approach identifies the many problems that afflict individual schools and tries to solve them. A systemic approach requires one to step back from the immediate problems and develop an understanding of how the whole thing works. Educators faced with day-to-day operation of schools are forced by circumstances to rely on problem solving for local fixes. They do not have time for "big ideas." This essay offers a big idea in a reflexive way: the most neglected big idea is the very idea of bigness of ideas. In brief, when ideas go to school they lose their power, thus creating a challenge for those who would improve learning to find ways to re-empower them. This need not be so. What I am suggesting here is a program of idea work for educators. Of course it is harder to think about ideas than to bring a programming language into a classroom. You have to mess with actual ideas. But this is the kind of hard that will make teaching more interesting, just as idea work will do this for learning. An article by Semour Papert published in a special issue of the IBM Systems Journal about the MIT Media Laboratory. What's the big idea? Toward a pedagogy of idea power |
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| Topic: Education |
11:36 am EDT, Jun 26, 2004 |
It starts at birth and follows children to college. It meshes those services into an interlocking web, and then it drops that web over an entire neighborhood. At a moment when each new attempt to solve the problem of poverty seems to fall apart, one after the next, what is going on in central Harlem is one of the biggest social experiments of our time. The programs all seem carefully planned and well run, but none of them, on their own, are particularly revolutionary. It is only when they are considered together, as a network, that they seem so new. The Harlem Children's Zone is to education as TiVo is to television. The Harlem Project |
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'04 Graduates Learned Lesson in Practicality |
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| Topic: Education |
3:11 pm EDT, May 29, 2004 |
Some fear that students' new pragmatism is detracting from their overall collegiate experience. "Many students have less orientation towards reflection and more orientation towards résumé-building than students a generation ago," said Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard. "I do worry. I do somehow wish that some students would smell the roses a little more and schedule fewer appointments." '04 Graduates Learned Lesson in Practicality |
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