What We Know
Mike Petrilli is a news machine today. ”Senate Democrats have stripped virtually all of the reform-friendly provisions out of the House stimulus bill,” he reports over at Flypaper. He also posts a “rumor” that Linda Darling-Hammond is going to be named the next Deputy Secretary of Education……Yes, yes, we know. Kids have too much homework. On the other hand, what else is my daughter supposed to do while I write this blog?
What We Want to Find Out
Was Taylor Swift a Core Knowledge student? The musical wunderkind’s ubiquitous hit “Love Story” alludes both to Shakespeare and Nathaniel Hawthorne……Do we need American Youth Corps? Everyone should have to complete two years of public service after high school, argues Dr. William A. Babcock, an ethics professor at Southern Illinois University……Who is the worst mother in the world? Is it the British mommy who wrote in the Daily Mail that she doesn’t love her child? Or another who has pleaded guilty to child cruelty for allowing her 3-year-old to smoke in front of her.
What We Have Learned
A Florida lawmaker wants to require that Florida parents be informed of their school’s turnover rate, The Gradebook reports…..A middle school competition challenges students to design a city of the future, to inspire them to consider engineering as a profession. D-Ed Reckoning is not impressed. Creative yes, says Ken DeRosa, but what are they learning?
How We Can Learn More
A study in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry purports to show that teachers who intervene in cases of bullying only “reinforce the status of victim and aggressor”……A Harvard study finds that it’s far more likely that children will be bullied by their peers than approached by an adult predator online. But some parents and lawmakers are upset by what they see as a false sense of security in the report.
One of the absolutely best projects I did in school was a urban design project in 8th grade — we called it “Joy City.” I’m not sure if it was something lots of schools did, but it was introduced to ours by a new Social Studies teacher.
What did I learn? How to apply math to real situations — the city was roughly modeled after NYC and I remember being taken aback to figure out that it would have about a million kids in its schools. Budgeting — we were supposed to figure out how to pay for everything we wanted to do, and had a fixed budget. My father introduced me to the idea of paying for capital projects with bonds, which helped the budgeting immensely.
The best part — and this is something that’s important in school, even if it can’t be the only thing — was learning how “real life” pulled together a lot of different things you learned, and skills you were developing.