In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life If contemporary culture were a school, with all the tasks and expectations meted out by modern life as its curriculum, would anyone graduate? In the spirit of a sympathetic teacher, Robert Kegan guides us through this tricky curriculum, assessing the fit between its complex demands and our mental capacities, and showing what happens when we find ourselves, as we so often do, in over our heads. In this dazzling intellectual tour, he completely reintroduces us to the psychological landscape of our private and public lives. No, Things Are Not...
Mr. Big, WordGirl, and Imagineering
Posted, too, at Schools Matter:Last evening Benjamin Barber was on with Bill Moyers talking about the imminent suicide in the works for American capitalism. While some capitalists work to create products that people actually need to make their lives more livable, the American model is based on using advertising to manufacture a need that no one has until they view the ad. See Elmo and IPhone.WordGirl, the PBS cartoon superhero actually has a great children's explanation of the phenomenon, but unfortunately, the villainous businessman, Mr. Big, is the only...
Leaving "No Child Left Behind" Behind
this is crossposted from Daily Kos, which will explain some of the dkos specific referencesOur No. 1 education program is incoherent, unworkable, and doomed. But the next president still can have a huge impact on improving American schooling. So says perhaps the most cogent writer on educational matters, Richard Rothstein, in a piece in he American Prospect whose title, like that of this diary, is Leaving "No Child Left Behind" Behind Before The New York Times lost its senses, Rothstein wrote columns regularly on educational matters. Those of us who try to help the general public and policy...
Ed Links (And Other Stuff)
Fascinating: African fractals, in buildings and braids "I am a mathematician, and I would like to stand on your roof." This is how Ron Eglash greeted many African families while researching the intriguing fractal patterns he noticed in villages across the continent. He talks about his work exploring the rigorous fractal math underpinning African architecture, art and even hair braiding. Animals Do the Cleverest Things The chimp who outwits humans; the dolphin who says it with seaweed; the existential dog -- the more we learn about other animals the harder it is to say we're the smartest species....
A 0.2% Raise Every Year for 25 Years: Why Poor People Feel Hopeless
From Boy, Have We Got an Inequality Problem:"After-tax income of the bottom 20% grew 6%, or $1,800 over these years (1979-2005, in 2005 dollars); the middle-class gained $11,000, up 21%, over these 26 years. The average income of the top 1%, more than tripled, up 228%, for a gain $781,00...
What would Nation X do?
(Cross-posted on my professional blog.) This morning, my morning paper had a column by Susan Taylor Martin, Finns set teachers free, with enviable results, discussing the secular, largely-standardized-testing-free Finnish schools that have enviable student outcomes by almost any measure. On the one hand, this argument is extraordinarily tempting: See what the Finns do? We need to do that: provide substantial social welfare, provide higher status for teachers, then leave them to do their jobs without the corrosive testing regime we have in the United States. But the historian in me says something...
Is One Laptop Per Child Insulting?
As far as I can tell, we really don’t have anyone with a broad international focus on this blog, and I wish we did (anyone want to join?). But let me say a little about a recent critique of the XO “$100 laptop” project. For those who don't know, the XO is a tiny laptop that consumes little energy, can be recharged in the field, can be easily fixed by local folks, has an incredible screen that can be read in direct sunlight, and more . . . . John Dvorak in PC Magazine went on the attack recently, arguing that One Laptop per Child Doesn't Change the World....
Ed Links
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids Hint: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life Are Whites More Likely to Support the Death Penalty When They Think Blacks Are Being Executed? The answer, it seems, is yes. In a 2001 survey conducted by Mark Peffley and John Hurwitz, a random subset of whites was asked: “Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?” Somewhat favor: 29%. Strongly favor: 36%. Another random subset of whites was asked:...
George Will Blames Lyndon Johnson for NCLB
With the colossal wreckage that NCLB has wrought in America's schools now apparent to anyone not in a coma, it is fun to watch the old cons and the neocons cutting and running on Bush Co.'s grand domestic disaster, while at the same time revising history to blame someone else for setting fire to the public schools.In looking for someone to blame for Bush's NCLB mess, Will goes all the way back past Bill Clinton, through Jimmy Carter, to Lyndon Johnson, whose support for the original ESEA in 1965 made it possible, obviously, for George Bush to totally screw it up 40 years later: NCLB was passed...
The Jobs of the Future
Writing in Thinking K-16, a journal published by the Education Trust, Patte Barth argues that “The Information Age set off a rush to find skilled workers in many occupations and simultaneously reduced the proportion of unskilled jobs.” She warns ominously, “The future holds grim prospects for young people who lack sufficient skills, for they are increasingly shut out of good, middle-income jobs. The occupations experiencing the largest growth are those that demand well-developed cognitive skills and postsecondary credentials.” That growth, reports Ed in 08 on a “fact sheet” entitled American...
Children on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
Posted, too, at Schools Matter.When John Locke observed the behavior of the homeless street urchins of 17th Century London, he noted their vigor, ruddy cheeks, and energy as they ran around barefoot and thinly clad, even in winter. Based on his observations, Locke recommended that middle class parents shod their young boys in leaky shoes, thin pants, and to keep their rooms icy at night in order to make them as tough as the street children. What Locke could not have known from his limited Experience is that he had been observing the lucky and uniquely hardy street children, the fortunate minority...
Ed Links (Now with Less Ed)
Chaim Soutine, “Return From School After the Storm” The Future in Academic Reading: iRex Iliad review We’re book people. The usual result is we’re laden down with overstuffed briefcases and bags every time we get on planes . . . . Since purchasing my Iliad, I’ve gotten this under control. Everything that I get in text format, I PDF in a big friendly font, and I upload to the Iliad before traveling. [I want one when they get cheaper and a little better, and got a two-side-at-once scanner for our Department...
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