by Robert Pondiscio
September 3rd, 2009
Posted in Education News | 5 Comments »
USA Today has a write-up of a new illustrated children’s book If America Were a Village, by retired Cambridge, Mass middle-school teacher David J. Smith. Greg Toppo notes the book ”tackles economic inequality” with its assertion that if America were a village of 100 people, five people would share more than half the country’s wealth; one person would control more than 30%, while the 60 poorest would share about 4%.
That sets off Matthew K. Tabor, whose blogging time seems to have moved almost completely over to Twitter of late. He goes after Toppo’s “puff piece” and Smith’s book in a series of Tweets. Toppo returns fire quipping “Sorry, i was blinded by socialism!”
I’m finding posting to Twitter fun, but the entertaining Toppo/Tabor dust-up notwithstanding, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the people I’m following on Twitter. It’s like reading a stock ticker. Suggestions on managing the overload?
by Robert Pondiscio
September 3rd, 2009
Posted in Students | 6 Comments »
The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss has debuted a new education blog. She floats a fun and intriguing idea for middle school reform: Blow up middle school as we know it and turn at least some of it into a “boot camp for life.”
Enough with “academic rigor.” No more projects on the Chesapeake Bay (or whatever body of water you happen to live near.) Stop testing them into submission. How about teaching nutrition and health through cooking classes? Nobody can argue that kid don’t need to learn more, not with the obesity epidemic among young people in this country. An added bonus: cooking can be a great way to teach chemical reactions and other scientific principles. Give kids things to take apart and to rebuild. Yes, bring back shop class. This sparks a curiosity that will drive them to want to learn the math and science necessary to take their tinkering to the next level.
An idea like this is intuitively appealing and makes a lot of sense if — it’s a big “if” — kids have been given a solid, well-rounded curriculum throughout their elementary years. Indeed, if you give kids a good foundation in the early years, you potentially open up an entire range of opportunities in middle school and beyond, of which Strauss’ idea is merely one. But our reluctance to make the best use of the K-5 years contributes to the joyless brand of catch-up ball most middle schools are forced to play.
“The developmental profile of these students–from age 11 to 14–is well established,” says Strauss, “and it doesn’t lend itself to great academic achievement.”
Strauss’s is one of our smartest ed reporters and her blog has jumped quickly from the starting block. See her Q&A with Dan Willingham, which ran earlier this week.
by Robert Pondiscio
September 3rd, 2009
Tags: unschooling
Posted in Education News | 3 Comments »
This morning’s Baltimore Sun piece on the “unschooling” movement alludes to an unschooling conference being held in Maryland this month. Unschoolers have conferences?
