tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51737838689327649252024-03-07T21:06:40.753-08:00Full EducationsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-30104325906500622332012-12-14T22:32:00.001-08:002012-12-14T22:32:13.215-08:00Obtaining Sentenced to Defensive school may be Fun <div style="text-align: justify;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-78091726569198031402012-07-29T08:51:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.135-07:00the on line education revolution: its all about the design<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <br /><div align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="Body"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Because on line education is booming there is a sense that something new and interesting is happening in education. In fact, what is new is the venue for education not the education itself. The courses that universities have always offered were meant to put people in seats efficiently so that less faculty could teach more students. On line education is simply an extension of that model. Arguments can be made for how this on line lecture-based model is better than the old classroom model, and arguments can be made for how it is worse than the old one. But, the new on line models really are not attempts to solve the real problems in education.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body"><br /></div><div class="Body"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What are the real problems?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -22.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What is being taught in universities is academic material derived from research intended to create students who can do research and become scholars.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -22.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The idea that a university education is meant to produce students who can immediately go to work because they have been taught employable skills is argued against at research universities and typically is seen as a second rate educational model.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -22.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The methodology of lecturing,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reading, essay writing and test taking, is in direct opposition to a learn by doing, experiential model of education where students go out and do things and learn from their mistakes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -22.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On line education allows, in principal, the creation of simulated experiences so that you don’t have to actually crash an airplane in order to learn how to fly nor do you have to bankrupt an actual business in order to learn how to run one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -22.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New models of education are explicitly rejected by university faculty, who, in general, do not spend much time on teaching and would rather do research. They don’t want new on line models that might force them to re-order their priorities. University faculty have a pretty nice life and will reject changes to their research-focused existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The real opportunity in on line education is to change what is taught and how it is taught, in order to create graduates who can be immediately be employed by a workplace that needs skilled workers rather than theoreticians and scholars.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We have been building on line learn by doing models for over 15 years. Universities are afraid of these<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>models because they are afraid of the faculty revolt that would ensue if these models became the standard. They are also expensive to build. Students love them however because they can get jobs immediately after graduation and because it is really a very enjoyable way to learn.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The mentored, teamwork, based model that XTOL (<a href="http://xtolmasters.com/">http://xtolmasters.com/</a>) uses depends upon building a detailed story and simulation of actual work experiences. This is not as easy to as it sounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">To start, there needs to be one or more subject matter experts who guide the development. But, such experts are typically professors and professors want to teach theories. So, finding the right subject matter experts can be difficult.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Even more difficult is the design process itself. We use a team of people who have been doing this kind of work, in some cases, for twenty years or more. All of our senior designers have been doing this for at least five years and as far as we can tell it takes three or four years of apprenticeship to actually be any good at it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The reason is easy to understand, Building an all day, full year, learning experience is somewhere between making a motion picture and writing a textbook. You don’t usually get it right the first time, in either case. Learning by doing is really how we learn and our people have been learning design by doing for a very long time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: #000090; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Teaching others to do this is the next step in the education revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-17235065764073487172012-07-19T12:25:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.095-07:00Innovation is now impossible in high school curriculum. Thank you Bill Gates.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It is has always been frustrating to work on trying to improve education. No one really likes to see changes in anything they are used to. I have written about this over the years but now I am really angry. Who am I angry at? Bill Gates.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I have finally been able to come close to producing a very novel solution to some of what ails education. I am a year away form launching an on line mentored learn by doing computer science high school. What this means is that that after four years in this high school students will be immediately employable in the software industry. (They could still got to college or do something else, but they would be at a professional level in programming.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Can I launch this school? No.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At least not in the United States. Why not? Because of Bill Gates (ironically).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bill Gates has championed the Common Core standards movement in the U.S. And now, one by one, each state is moving towards adopting it, which means there will be no innovation in the high school curriculum in any way. A school like the one I am building cannot exist in the U.S. because it wouldn’t meet the Common Core standards, which are all about the facts everyone should know which were decided upon by the Committee of Ten in 1892. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A new, modern, learning by doing high school that doesn’t teach algebra or literature? Not possible. Teach students to build mobile applications rather than memorize facts about history? Not possible. Teach students to how to launch a business on the internet rather than to memorize physics formulas? Not possible.<br /><br />Fortunately there are other countries in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Are you proud of what you have created Mr. Gates? No innovation is possible now in high school in the U.S. and you did it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Congratulations.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(If anyone who knows a state where what I am saying <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is not true, please let me know.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-64813559823826326142012-07-15T06:35:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.127-07:00Joe Paterno, rich alumni, and imminent demise of college campuses<br /><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When I arrived at Northwestern in 1989 the President was a man named Arnie Weber. He told me that his mother once asked him what he did as President. After he described his daily life to her she replied “ I didn’t raise my son to be a schnorrer.” (That word is Yiddish for “begger.”)</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">At a different moment he told me that the only real job of the President of a university was to provide ample parking for the faculty, nice dormitories for the students, and football for the alumni.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I am mentioning these things because I feel that a university-insider needs to put the Joe Paterno story in perspective. </span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">(For my non-US readers the short story on Joe Paterno is that he was a football coach at Penn State, regarded as a saint by nearly everyone, who turns out to have been protecting a pedophile on his staff from prosecution for years.)</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">We now are hearing about whether Penn State’s football program should be punished and we are hearing mea culpas from the Penn State Board of Trustees.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This is all nonsense of course. As usual the real problem is not being discussed.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Joe Paterno owned Penn State. The President of Penn State could not fire a man who was obviously too old to be a coach anymore and he could not fire him for protecting a pedophile. In fact he could not fire him for anything.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now it may seem that this was an unusual situation. Not that many schools have football coaches who did as much to make an obscure university well known and whose influence and general goodness was agreed upon by all.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But in fact universities the size of Penn State always have a Joe Paterno. The man who runs the show may not be the football coach, but he is almost certainly not the President either.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The man or men who run big universities are the very wealthy alumni. Universities the size of Penn State need tremendous amounts of operating capital to support the sheer number of buildings and acreage not to mention sports arenas. As I mentioned in my most recent column, universities are money hungry and will overcharge students if they can get away with it because they need a lot of money in order to operate. Who supplies this money? </span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Alumni donations are the number one issue on a college president’s mind. At Penn State it was Joe Paterno who supplied the money by winning football games and by getting massive numbers of people into State College, PA, six times a year to bolster the local economy.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Northwestern had a Joe Paterno when I was there. He wasn’t the football coach. He was just a local billionaire who got to decide whatever he wanted to decide at Northwestern. The basketball arena is named after him, the football field is named after him, and his not too bright relatives are on the board with him.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">He decides what goes on at Northwestern because he can give large amounts of money to the university and he can push his friends to do so as well.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What I am describing is especially true at any private university which has no public money but it is true at state owned universities as well.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The President of the University of Michigan once mentioned to me that he was being forced to admit a student who couldn’t read because powerful alumni wanted him on the football team.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There are some obvious conclusions here. One is that college football is a bad thing. Now I say this as someone who happens to love college football. I even played college football. But really,if football issues drive out reason and fairness at a university (the players live like royalty in comparison to other students for example) perhaps it should be abolished.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">People think that football produces revenue in terms of TV contracts and gate receipts and that is why it is there. The real revenue football produces is in the form of alumni donations which do indeed go up when the team wins.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It is alumni donations and the university's dependence upon them that is the real problem. Alumni at Penn State don’t know or care how good the Physics department is. Donations don’t go up when faculty win international recognition in research.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Universities are run by those who bring in money. At Northwestern, I brought in a lot of money for research. I got what I wanted when I wanted it. I understood how the system worked.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It is time to end this system. It is time to end the idea of the big college campus which is like a hungry animal that needs to be fed. </span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Local colleges are about as important as local bookstores or local movie theaters these days. Their time is over.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Education, like anything else these days, can be done without physical locations.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Unfortunately, on line education is awful. The reason for that is simple. The physical model of education (large lectures halls and long lectures -- a money saving idea if ever there were one) still serves as the model for on line education. But it won’t for long.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Penn State is doomed, not because of Joe Paterno but because the physical campus and alumni network that controls Penn State cannot last in the world of the Internet.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Campuses will go away. Get used to it. </span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It is our job to build on line education that is better than anything provided on campuses now. This can and should be done.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-59775716754812190612012-07-03T06:44:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.121-07:00Why are students willing to go into debt in order to pay large amounts of tuition in order to attend college?<br /><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Why are students willing to go into debt in order to pay large amounts of tuition in order to attend college? </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There are two questions here really.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Why does college cost so much?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Why do students want to attend college?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Let’s start with the first. Here are some important facts to get an idea about the costs:</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Stanford University, as an example owns 8000 acres of very highly valued real estate. They didn’t purchase it and they don’t pay taxes on it but there are hundreds of buildings and playing fields and parking lots and laboratories and streets all or which require massive expenses to maintain. Full professors make an average of $188,000 per year at Stanford.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I am not picking on Stanford here. Its neighbor UC Berkeley has a slightly smaller campus and pays its faculty slightly less, but really they are pretty similar, except that UC is a state owned institution.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">To run an operation of this size requires money, lots of it. Tuition does not actually even cover the cost. Universities must constantly ask for donations from alumni and rich people. In addition both of these universities are heavily subsidized by the Federal government in the form of research grants which pay astoundingly large amounts of overhead.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Even so, if they can get it they charge it, so like any business as long as there are customers who are willing to pay, tuition can keeping going up. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The real question is why are students willing to pay? Couldn’t someone offer a cheaper alternative? Does college really have to be this expensive?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The first thing to understand about all this is that Stanford (I was a faculty member there once upon a time, but they are all the same really) is not about students. A student may think that these campuses were built for them and maybe they were originally but Stanford faculty are not thinking about undergraduate education. Faculty at places like that are in the research business and faculty members have no choice but to look for research money and then do the research that will satisfy the funder and then get more money. This process does entail paying attention to one’s graduate students who are supported by that money, but undergraduate teaching is seen by nearly all Stanford faculty as an annoyance that one has to put up with and that it is best to buy one’s way out of if possible.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Faculty are happiest in the summer when the students have gone home and they are left with a beautiful peaceful campus in which to think great thoughts, work in their labs, and talk with colleagues.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So why do students go into debt in order to attend these institutions? A more interesting question is why undergraduate education is offered at all at places like Stanford and UC Berkeley (or Yale or Harvard.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Stanford likes the income of course, but could survive without it. (There are respected universities that do not take undergraduates. Usually the general public hasn’t heard of them because they don’t have football teams or elaborate campuses. One is Rockefeller University in New York.) What Rockefeller doesn’t have, that Harvard has, are alumni who would scream bloody murder (and stop giving money) if Harvard shut down its undergraduate program.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">If what I am saying is right, and believe me no faculty member would agree with me openly but most would privately, then why do undergraduates willingly go into debt in order to attend these schools?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In the case of Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, the answer is obvious. Saying you graduated from one of those schools, rightly or wrongly, will get you instant respect for the rest of your life.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But what about Florida Atlantic University, Elon College, Southern Connecticut State, Beloit College, De Paul University, or Texas A&M to name any of 3000 I could name?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Same big fees, and curiously, same curriculum more or less.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now I haven’t mentioned curriculum to this point but students go to college to take courses right? At least that is the common agreed upon reason.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now any professor knows that students are really there to get away from home, drink a lot, play sports and party on. But there are courses and students must come away with an education so it is all worth it right?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now here is a radical thought: Sitting in a classroom, or doing required reading, and parroting it all back on a multiple choice test or in some research essay is not actually education. It is school, but it is not real learning. Real learning would involve learning to do things one will do later on in life. Rarely does one write a research paper, or run an experiment, or take a multiple choice test, much less do we listen to lectures. College prepares you for nothing in actuality. (Yale’s graduates may become investment bankers but they didn’t learn that at all, they studied Classics.) Colleges say they do prepare their students and pay some homage to teaching them to think, and there actually are some specialized programs that actually do teach students to do things. But for the most part, your average English major or physics major has learned nothing that he will use in his later life except at cocktail parties.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The faculty don’t care. They care about their research. If you want to learn to be a researcher, Stanford is the place for you. The curriculum Stanford teaches is meant to get you ready to take advanced courses which are the ones that faculty actually like to teach. They are preparing students to do research because they like research and that is all they know how to do.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now this is less true of the smaller colleges and big state universities where there is less research going on, but even at those schools, the faculty desire to be researchers and they studied with researchers and they really want to try and get research grants and behave like their colleagues at fancier institutions.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So, in essence, they teach the same courses at Stanford as they do at BYU, or Northern Illinois.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What do the students get out of this? A big debt. A four year vacation (assuming they didn’t have to work while going to school) and not much else. Well, there is always graduate school.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Why do they put up with it? Because they feel they have no choice. Being a college gradate is seen as a big deal. It wouldn’t be seen that way if being a high school graduate meant anything at all, but it doesn’t. (And the peer pressure and parental pressure to go to college is enormous.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The solution to all this: build a high school system that teaches what college should be teaching: practical experiences that will prepare you to make a living or know how to live. (I am quoting John Adams and Ben Franklin here by the way.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This is why we need good on line universities (and good on line high schools.) When Stanford pretends to offer on line courses in order to get people off their backs they are simply doing what they have always done, ignoring the needs of the undergraduates.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It is time for on line universities that create real (or simulated) experiences through which students can learn to do things in the real world.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">We will be teaching people to work in the software industry through some on line programs we are developing (see XTOLmasters.com) in the coming months. Stanford could do that if it wanted to but it won’t. The faculty at Stanford are willing to teach students to do research or to be intellectuals. Teaching someone to be a programmer or how to open a business is beneath them. (I am not picking on Stanford here. This is true of any research university. It is also true of the other 3000 colleges in the US since their faculty typically haven’t had much real world experience to teach about.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, of course there are exceptions to all of this, but as I said the real villain is high school. We can fix that by building an on line high school outside of the control of government (and book publishers and test makers.) </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In the mean time, my advice to students: think twice before taking on an enormous debt to attend an institution that really just wants your money.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-83593175363921881612012-06-11T05:10:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.139-07:00drugs, school testing, ADHD, and baseballThis column was to be about (sort of) baseball. (For my non-US readers you can keep reading. All you need to know is that baseball requires athletic ability.)<br />I heard the announcer (Ron Darling from Yale - a student when I was a professor there, say that 100 major league baseball players had been diagnosed with ADHD and were now receiving treatment. He mentioned that one of them (who plays for the Mets the team I follow and the team for he announces) was doing much better this year now that he had been diagnosed an treated for ADHD.<br /><br />This is so sad and was said in such a matter of fact way that it needed a response. Players are doing better because they are being given speed. It focusses them. I am sure it does. What I am not sure about is why this isn't a scandal.<br /><br />Baseball went through a terrible scandal when it was discovered that its best players were taking steroids. They were quickly banned. Why not ADHD drugs?<br /><br />And then yesterday the New York wrote this on its front page:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/education/seeking-academic-edge-teenagers-abuse-stimulants.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1339415851-uybaArYQU0Gz0Z5z8IzNmw<br /><br />Kids are getting themselves ADHD drugs to help them do better on tests. Here is a paragraph of that article:<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;">The drug was not cocaine or heroin, but Adderall, an</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><a class="meta-classifier" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/amphetamines/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" style="color: #004276; text-decoration: underline;" title="Recent and archival health news about amphetamines.">amphetamine</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;">prescribed for</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><a class="meta-classifier" href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" style="color: #004276; text-decoration: underline;" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).">attention deficit hyperactivity disorder</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;">that the boy said he and his friends routinely shared to study late into the night, focus during tests and ultimately get the grades worthy of their prestigious high school in an affluent suburb of New York City. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m. SAT; it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of tests long known to make or break college applications.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><br /></span><br />Here is another:<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;">At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><a class="meta-classifier" href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/getting-a-prescription-filled/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" style="color: #004276; text-decoration: underline;" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Getting a prescription filled.">prescriptions</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;">.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">And I was getting upset about baseball!</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">We have created a society where is not ok to be bored in school (or you will diagnosed with ADHD and drugged into submission.) This has extended itself into sports were it is also OK to be drugged into focussing better apparently.</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">Now I don't really care if we want to make sick monsters of our athletes. Their choice. So they will hit the ball further. No one's issue but their own.</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">But when we have so many kids worried about getting good grades and getting into good colleges that we have made them crazy enough to drug themselves in order to do it, we have the makings of a very sick society.</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">I have been writing about the evils of ADHD diagnosis for 20 years and about the evils of testing for the same amount of time (at least).</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">I never made the connection before. Its almost as if the testing companies and the drug companies were in collusion. Nah. Not possible, right?</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 28px; line-height: 41px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">I sure hope not.</span></span><br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-44202473173552726362012-05-20T04:58:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.104-07:00High Schools should not exist; 50th reunions teach you more than high school ever did<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">I hated high school. I didn’t see anything good about it.</span><br /><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I still hate high school, but now as a person who has spent the last 30 years trying to understand what is wrong with our education system I understand why.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Here are five good reasons to hate high school.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The subjects taught are the subjects that were current in academic circles in 1892 </span></li><li style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">High school is about college prep these days. The prep that goes on is about AP tests and not about what a college student really needs. College professors can never assume their students learned anything important in high school. There is no reason for high schools to assume that role, except they are intimidated into it by parents.</li><li style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In high school, the other kids are a student’s biggest concern. KIds intimidate other kids in so many ways that most students can think about little else. </span></li><li style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There is no freedom in high school. You take what courses you are told to take for the most part and must be where they tell you to be. It is a lot like being in prison.</span></li><li style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Except for the extra curricula activities, high school just isn’t any fun. Kids should have fun and learning should be fun.</span></li></ol><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So, it is it in this context that I want to tell a personal story.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The invitation from the Stuyvesant High School class of 1962 50th reunion arrived via e-mail. I didn’t like Stuyvesant. As a smart kids science high school in New York City it had the so called best and brightest who were, of course, tremendously competitive. I hadn’t done particularly well in high school. I graduated ranked #322 in a class of 678. Notice how I remember that. I had been to my 25th reunion just to see old friends and because I happened to have a place in New York at that time, but none of my old friends showed up.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I had a wedding to attend that weekend. But it was in New York and I again have a place in New York, so I decided to attend one high school reunion event. I am glad I did, and here is why:</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I got an email about a month before the event saying that they were thinking about holding a special event and they thought they’d invite the three most successful members of the graduating class to talk about their views of the future. I get invitations to talk all the time, and I wasn’t surprised that I have done better than the other members of the class. (I had attended my 25th after all where I learned that the kids who had graduated #1 and #2 hadn’t done that much later on.)</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The shocker for me was whom the invitation came from. The writer opened the letter by saying that he was sure I didn’t remember him but...</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Oh, I remembered him. He had affected by entire life in high school and probably still does affect my life. (Remember reason #3 above.)</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This kid always wore a jacket and tie to school. Every day. He was in my homeroom, and he was not particularly friendly. He was dead serious. He intended to go to Harvard and he intended to become a doctor and he was going to do everything he could to get there. The jacket and tie was part of the plan.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Meeting him and hearing this plan when I was 13 years old convinced me not to study, not to even try in high school, and to spend my time out of school playing ball. If this was the competition I didn’t want to compete. And I didn’t. (Remember 322?) </span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I didn’t compete in college either where I graduated with an even worse class rank and with a C average. And I never wore a tie.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So there was some sweetness in getting this invitation from this particular guy. I had never forgotten him. I did wonder what had happened to him however. He did go to Harvard, but did not become a doctor. He is a PhD in some biological field which is close enough, but he was not one of the famous members of our class.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The event he was planning never came off. (It seems high school politics keep going on 50 years later.) I went to the reunion to meet him.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I was pleasantly surprised. He was certainly the smartest one of the people that I spoke with at the reunion. I told him my story and he admitted that maybe he had been a little up tight in high school and he apologized for intimidating me. Life had made him less arrogant it was easy to see.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There is a lesson in all this of course. The obvious one I have already stated. High school is a bad thing. We should stop having them. High school teaches many bad lessons. The one it taught me was that I wasn’t that smart and I shouldn’t try too hard.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But the good news is that my life taught me otherwise. I learned to trust my own intelligence and to be suspicious of people who are trying hard to be something they may not actually be.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And the reunion taught me that 50 years later real experiences can get you to revise your opinions of things. We are always learning, just not in school.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-14351601596999469212012-05-02T08:47:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.093-07:00Harvard and MIT announce free on line courses; this will change education?<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">On line education is certainly booming these days. Today MIT and Harvard announced a plan to provide free on line courses. I find this ironic given that I’ve advocated “virtual learning” for over twenty years – with little response. Universities I formerly worked at routinely showed scant interest in offering online degrees or serious online programs. Now, however, with the sudden appearance of for-profit ventures and the interest of venture capitalists, universities are being signed up to offer on line degrees, and have begun independently building and offering on line degrees.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Yet when you ask nearly anyone in academics about these degree programs, the overwhelming opinion is that they’re awful. Even the people promoting them seem to agree on that; in my last column I quoted the provost of the University of Michigan talking about his deal with Coursera:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Monaco; font-size: 14pt;">Our Coursera offerings will in no way replace the rich experiences our students obtain in classrooms, laboratories and studios here in Ann Arbor.</span><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Well, right. Because they are aren’t very good. Reaching 100,000 students on line may seem like a good idea, but we fail to ask the real question: what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kind</i> of educational experience is provided on line?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">I am writing about this today in particular because <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7072440028440011959" name="_GoBack"></a>my company, Socratic Arts, has just begun constructing four on line masters degree programs in Computer Science. We have a great deal of experience in doing this, of course, having built a number of masters programs for Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley campus ten years ago (that they still offer, but not on line.) We also recently launched an MBA program with La Salle University in Barcelona that’s soon to be available in a number of Eastern European countries as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Now, with the backing of investors, we have decided to start building additional on line degree programs. But – and this is a big “but” – these programs will do far more than replace the existing classroom offerings of major universities. At heart, they’re meant to seriously disrupt the very concept of how education is provided.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Getting universities to agree to work with us hasn’t been easy. Why do they prefer to work with 2Tor or Coursera or Udacity? This is very easy to answer. Those companies want to do what the existing universities already do. Universities do not want to change how they do things. They can’t eliminate lectures, for example, without eliminating the basic economic structure upon which a university is based. They cannot emphasize teaching over research when their financial stability depends on major research funding. They want to essentially copy their existing classroom courses, because they have no other choice. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Socratic Arts, on the other hand, wants to do it right. What does that mean? That means convincing faculty to re-think education in a serious way. To explain what I mean and to illustrate these differences, I’ve chosen eight arguments that faculty have against our methodology. Or, rather, that we have against theirs.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Theory before practice<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">In most university programs, they teach theory first and practice second. You wouldn’t teach the theory of walking to a two-year old, nor would you teach the theory of economics to someone who was opening a lemonade stand. No one sits still for theoretical discussions when they are ready to try to do something. No one except college students of course, who have no choice. Universities are wedded to theory first because they often don’t know how to actually teach practice, and because it is much easier to talk about something then to do it. But the real reason is that professors like talking and they like research and theory. It is what they do in their own lives. So that is what they teach.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Socratic Arts does it the other way around of course, that is, if we ever teach theory at all, which is often quite unnecessary.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Coverage<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Masters degree programs offer coverage. What does that mean? That means that the faculty have a wide range of research interests and when they sit down to design a masters program, everyone wants what they specialize in to be covered. For this reason, most masters degree programs are incoherent and unorganized. They are simply a list of courses to choose from that represent what the faculty has to teach. There is no end game. No one is thinking about what kind of person they are producing at the end of the program. No one asks what the student will be able to do when he or she is finished.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">That, by the way, is the first question Socratic Arts asks when it starts to work with a university. The question is usually met with blank stares.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Replicating the classroom<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Universities have classrooms and they think they should always have them because some deity must have wanted it that way. The idea that a classroom is a basically bad idea because it forces one teacher to talk and students to listen, is not discussed. Getting rid of the classroom in the era of easily findable information is sometimes thought about, but cannot actually be done without making professors do an entirely different job than they are used to doing. And professors are, in general, very conservative when it comes to changing the way they do things. More teaching responsibility is on no professor’s list of things to wish for.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Socratic Arts makes professors into mentors or coaches who help students as they need help with tasks they are interested in performing. Our idea of a teacher is much more like a normal idea of a parent -- there when you need him or her to help you figure it out for yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Teachers as information deliverers<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Get rid of lectures. No one remembers what they heard in a lecture a week later. They are there for ancient reasons. Most on line courses simply deliver the lecture on line and think they have done something miraculous. Nothing could be sillier. What can be conveyed by a lecture in an hour could take weeks of practice to actually learn.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">There are no lectures in Socratic Arts on line programs.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Discussion of experiences, not replication of experiences<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">We learn by doing. Plato said that. Dewey said that. Einstein said that. Almost every educational philosopher has said that. Education means providing experiences, real or simulated, that a student can make mistakes in; try again; think about what went wrong, and try again. While this does happen in PhD programs as a matter of course, it almost never happens in masters or undergraduate programs, or even in a typical college course.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">All Socratic Arts masters programs are experiential. They create experiences that lead to experiences that lead to more complex experiences. They are, for this reason, very engaging and fun. Professors know how to do this, but the very structure of a masters program tends to prevent it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Simultaneous courses<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">The structure that prevents it is the idea that a student must take four or five courses simultaneously. This structure exists so that professors can only teach three hours a week and then can go back to research. It also exists because it always has existed. Why high school students have fifty minute periods for every subject is incomprehensible.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">When we built our masters programs at Carnegie Mellon, we made the registrar crazy because all courses were sequential and thus no student was taking more than one course at a time, they started and stopped at odd times in the term, and grades were unavailable when the registrar wanted them. We managed by lying to the registrar. Disruption isn’t easy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">A properly constructed masters program would have students concentrating on doing something, and only when they complete what they’re doing will they start on something else that builds on the prior task. This is what I have called a Story Centered Curriculum since the entire masters program is delivered in the form of a story in which the student has many roles to play.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Use of outside experts<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Why is the professor the only teacher in a course? There are many experts in the world. On line experiences allow for many experts to be recorded and have the right expert pop up at the right time to share his or her wisdom about exactly the mistake you are making or the issue about which you are curious. Really, in the age of the internet shouldn’t there be hundreds of experts available to students who are working on something? Pre-recording expert stories and delivery just in time is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sine qua non</i> of on line education. At least it is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sine qua non</i> of Socratic Arts’ idea of education. As far as I know, no other on line courses do this.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">Deliverables not tests<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">In every masters programs we build, students have to produce real deliverables every week or so. They are judged on what they built, wrote, or presented, and the mentors then help them make it better. No tests. Any on line course that ends in a multiple choice test is simply a mockery that makes a sham of education. There are thousands of on line courses that end in multiple choice tests. They are useful for pretending we have convinced a bad driver to now be more careful. They don’t do that of course but authorities like to think they do. You learn nothing from studying for multiple choice tests except how to study for multiple choice tests. Real life requires real work. Students should be judged by the work they produce. Socratic Arts masters degree programs are built like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 16pt;">I am writing this diatribe for a simple reason. We now have a large amount for money available to start building masters degrees. I am seeking universities who want to work with us, but these universities need to abandon their old models in the new on line space. I would be happy to hear from people who think their university could do that. MIT and Harvard will continue to pretend they are doing something important but free courses are not free degrees and courses never really worked that well in the first place. Students don’t typically attend college because of all the great courses. Universities may like to think that but while a Harvard degree may well be worth a lot, Harvard courses are just a form of entertainment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-56905173612984071142012-04-18T10:52:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.117-07:00Coursera, Michigan, and why Provosts never want to do anything that might improve education<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Monaco; font-size: 24px;">Today the web was alive with the announcement that some major universities (including Michigan) have signed up with Coursera, a company that offers free massive on line courses.</span></span><br /><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The Provost of the University of Michigan explained this new development in these words:</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This is an exciting venture that opens up a new avenue for us to expand our public mission and share our expertise with tens of thousands of intensely</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">interested students all around the globe.</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Our Coursera offerings will in no way replace the rich experiences our students obtain in classrooms, laboratories and studios here in Ann Arbor.</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Instead, with Coursera, we will expand our public outreach, better connect with prospective students and with alumni, and develop online resources that</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">can supplement the learning experiences of our own students.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I have been part of the university system in one way or another for the last 50 years. I understand why provosts say what they say, and why universities do what they do.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The funniest part of this letter is the remark about not replacing rich classroom experiences. Does he mean the ones where 500 students listen to a lecture while using Facebook? Or does he mean the ones you can skip as long you can figure out to pass the multiple choice tests?</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There may be rich educational experiences at Michigan but they are certainly not in classrooms nor are they in courses any larger than say 10 or 20 students.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Why is Michigan doing this? Because they want to improve education? They could improve education by not actually offering courses in the first place. Any Michigan student can tell you how boring most lectures are and that they simply endure them because they want a degree.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Michigan figures they can make money and not have to change in any way to do it. Every provost wants to spend as little on teaching as possible. That is why there are large lecture halls in the first place. </span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And no provost at a research university wants to force faculty to change how they teach or he will soon be an ex-provost.</span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 32.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 24.0px Monaco; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Coursera, I fear, is yet another make believe venture like MIT's open courseware before it, that will allow universities to pretend they are changing while staying the same.</span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-7984174838277759262012-04-13T10:58:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.137-07:00Learning Wisdom (or why Khan Academy and MOOCs are a bad idea)<br /><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I was young (23) back in the hippie dippie days in California, I attended encounter groups, psycho-drama and other stuff like that, that was popular in those days. At one these, the guru leader said to me that he knew I was smart but asked “was I wise?” I knew that I was supposed to say “no” so I did. I was a professor at Stanford so of course I thought I was wise. The years have taught me that I certainly wasn’t wise then and that I am not so sure I am wise now, and that anyhow, I am not all that sure what it means to be wise.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was wise enough at that time to realize that the graduate course in Semantics that I was teaching was of no use to anyone who was taking it. (It was a requirement for the PhD in linguistics, so the students didn’t necessarily want to be there in any case.) Since then I have been thinking a great deal about teaching, about the mind ,and about universities in general, so I find myself asking two questions:</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What does it mean to be wise?</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How would teach someone to be wise?</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Notice I am not asking, what is wisdom and how do we teach it, because everyone (except maybe me) seems to know the answer to that question, namely tell everyone what wise people have said. (Of course, I think that this is nonsense but our university system is based on that idea.)</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am not sure what it means to be wise but I know it when I don’t see it. My children (who are older than I was when first pondered this), are not wise (I hope they are wise enough not be angry with me when they read this. My employees are typically not wise (same hope.)</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I say this because I spend a great deal of time advising them all on how to look at a problem, (technical or personal.) They are wise enough to ask however.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am asked for advise often so maybe they see me as being wise. I will admit to being wiser about their lives than they are, but I am not all that wise about my own life I think.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, what is wisdom then? I am not sure, but that won’t stop me from thinking about how to teach it.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How not to teach it is easy: don’t tell anyone anything any wise person has said. They won’t remember it and they won’t know how to use it.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Although I am a great believer in experiential learning and in some sense experience does make one wise. but one typically does not become wise as a result of one (or a few) experiences. Experiential learning doesn’t make one wise either.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What does make one wise? I think the answer is repeated failure of the same type followed by reflection. The great French philosopher Montaigne (whom I consider to have been very wise indeed) never left home without a phalanx of bodyguards. That is an example of wisdom learned from experience.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If my definition is correct, then how to teach wisdom becomes an interesting question. And, inducing colossal failure repeatedly is the obvious answer. But it is not a very practical answer.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We can’t take a class full of university students and put them in complex situations in which they might fail and then do it again and again, now can we?</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, of course, that is exactly what they army does on a regular basis with its soldiers. It is also what an aspiring entrepreneur has done who succeeds on his or her tenth try. And curiously, it is also what good teachers do after twenty years or so of teaching.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To put this another way, wisdom can be learned and so it can indeed be taught, but only if we are willing to re-conceptualize education.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We simply have to get over the idea of teaching wisdom as the transmission of information and we have to emphasize repeated tries and failure followed by reflection.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am assuming that the people who call me for advice are not actually calling for answers. (This is easy to believe since they don’t follow my advice all that often.) Rather they are asking me to help them become wiser through repeated reflection. I am being their mirror at that point.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Becoming wise requires repeated looks in the mirror.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Can education provide that mirror? It certainly would be nice if the education system took that idea more seriously.</span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #0b2280; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Khan Academy, Massive On Line Courses and other fashionable trends of the day are more or less the opposite of what I have in mind here.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-34376417711732508582012-03-29T08:34:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.101-07:00Milo and the Rhinoceros, part 2<br /><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In a previous column I wrote about a conversation I had with Milo, my six year old grandson. I asked him if he had learned anything interesting in school lately and he told he me that he had been learning about how the rhinoceros is an endangered species. We discussed that a bit and my reaction was to teach him that one person’s endangered species was someone else’s food. So when I visited him later on, we ate kangaroo, elk, wild boar, rabbit and pigeon (not all on the same day.) He loved them all.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I visited him again earlier this week and he handed me a piece of paper. It was a letter to parents jointly written by the kids in his class, asking for a donation to the “save the rhinoceros fund.” He had addressed his letter to me (and as an afterthought it seems, he included his mother as well.) I asked him why he was asking me for money for the rhinoceros, and he said it was because we had discussed it. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am, of course against indoctrination in school of any kind. I can think of a lot more important social problems to be concerned about than dying rhinoceroses. But this was “science” you see, and not social studies.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I may be morally opposed to indoctrination, but I am profoundly in favor of Milo learning to think hard, so I gave him five dollars to contribute to the fund. (His mother had earlier refused. “That’s my girl.”)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I then added that he could simply keep the five dollars for himself and buy whatever he wanted with it. His eyes lit up. He said he was confused about what to do. I said it was his decision.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today I learned that he kept the money. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another blow against school indoctrination.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-88262625452505611712012-03-19T07:42:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.141-07:00R.I.P. Encyclopedia Britanicca; Google to the rescue? Not so fast<br /><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Encyclopedia Britanicca (EB) announced last week that there would be no more printed versions of the Encyclopedia. The company also announced that they still were in business, presumably meaning the web site they are putting out.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">R.I.P. EB</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In this column, I usually rant and rave about some education silliness or other that I have just encountered, so, readers may be wondering why I care about the demise of EB. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In 1990 or so, I was asked to be on the editorial board of EB, presumably to bring some fresh ideas to a board whose average age at the time was over 80. I had just arrived in Chicago (where EB was headquartered) and had opened a new institute about computers and learning, so I guess they thought I might know something that might help them going forward. I was also hired as a personal consultant to the Chairman of the Board of EB. My job was mostly to have dinner with him and discuss the future.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He would ask me at every dinner: “will there be books in ten years?” And, at every dinner I would reply: “yes, but not EB.” (So I was off by a few years.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Am I sorry that the printed EB has died? Not really. EB represented an ancient concept of knowledge that is the very one that still haunts our school system. The board meetings at EB were something from another century. Scholars discussing what belonged and did not belong in EB. What was important truth and how much space did that truth need devoted to it?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I suggested that in the future they would not get to be the arbiters of the official truth, they objected. I was told sneeringly that soon “minds less well educated than our own would be in charge.” While I suspect the speaker of these words meant me, he was right. Wikipedia has overtaken EB and while those who write and edit the content of Wikipedia are certainly well meaning, probably things would be better if the people at EB were still in charge of truth.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The problem is that no one can or should be in charge of truth. Truth can be learned from folks wiser than you but you have to know whom to ask and you have to know what to ask.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">EB didn’t really answer the questions that actual people have. And while I knew the web would kill EB (even before there was a web) what has replaced EB is Google, and this is a problem. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is a program that enables me to see what questions people type into Google that land them at one of my Outrage columns. Here is a list of words (sometimes as questions) typed in the last few days. I assume this is typical of what is typed into Google. Google matches key words so the columns of mine that these questions uncover are quite often totally unrelated to the question the user typed. (What they typed is unedited.):</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>tell them what you want to tell them tell them tell them what you told them</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>why must i go to school</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>school is bad for children</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Eassy on why do students cheat?</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>what should i go to school for</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>questions measuring academic achievement</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>byu idaho college stories</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>essay on why do student cheat on their exam</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>remember something story</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>my textbook sucks</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>what do you want someone to remember about</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>is schizophrenia taught in schools</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>john stuart mill view on education</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>majoring in history</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>rick santorum education yesterday\</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>"makes a good college education"</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>someone telling a story about softball</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>pat tillman silenced</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>why education matters</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>do you think school and prison are alike</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>good editorial about math</b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So here is the real issue: People have stuff they want to know. EB really never answered their actual questions. (Only the John Stuart Mill question above would have been answered in EB.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, while the web may have killed EB it is has not done that particularly well. People have questions they want to ask and conversations they want to have. Also, as is clear from ethos question, they need help in even formulating their questions. The web is still not conversational and people are still not well educated but the good news is that many still want to know more. They typically are not trying to know more about what is taught in school, or what was in EB, as is clear from the above questions.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-60126591667735972782012-03-10T08:45:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.123-07:00What is all the fuss about online education? Do those who are designing it understand it?<br /><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I have a story I want to tell about online education but first it needs a small preface.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">These days I am working on the possibility of building online master’s degree programs with various universities which would be financed by Wall Street.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The reaction to my ideas about online master’s degree programs has changed a great deal in the last ten years. When I offered to do this for Carnegie Mellon (and built quite a few of them) I was asked by the provost if I wanted to put golden arches over the campus. (By which he meant “over a billion served.”) When I said "sure" he said that CMU wanted to preserve its elite brand name and would not offer what I built on line. (They still offer them in one way or another, but usually face to face.) These days I hear they are re-thinking this point of view.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I left CMU and then went to Trump University which said they wanted to build the next online university, but apparently Mr. Trump hadn’t calculated that this would cost actual money to do, so that “university” never went anywhere.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Then I met the folks at La Salle University in Barcelona, which to make a long story short, now offers two online masters that we built for them.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The Spanish economy being what it is, I figured it was time to talk to Wall St. and to talk to universities that would like to offer masters degrees on a worldwide basis, especially if they didn’t have to put up any money to do it. So, we have formed a new company XTOL to do just that, More on that here:</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #000099; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.socraticarts.com/XTOL.cfm">http://www.socraticarts.com/XTOL.cfm</a></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now to my story. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The university world has changed. Whereas ten years ago no one cared about on line education, now it seems that everyone does. Because of XTOL, I was visiting a well known university to talk about working with them. At this university, the decision had already been made for faculty to start to meet and discuss how to put their courses on line.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I met with a very reasonable faculty member at this school. I showed him the MBA program we had built for La Salle and it became clear that he realized that his faculty was never going to be able to build that kind of thing.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">He wrote to me a few days later after his faculty had met:</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 13.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“I'm curious to get your take on a statement I heard recently from a faculty member: "Moreover we still know very little about how students learn in online settings or about what models of online teaching work well for different types of content and student." Do you think this statement is true?”</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I replied that while those of us who had been working in the trenches for the last ten years certainly know the answers to these questions, his faculty would have a good time debating them (and many others) for several more years, before it actually did anything.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What is it about on line education that people don’t understand? As a guide, here are ten things to know about online education, all of which require some explanation: </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education has to involve teaching</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education can and therefore should be part of an actual experience</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education facilitates learning by doing</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education should not be the same old course that is now on line</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education should involved the use of video from experts but that video must be delivered just in time</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>The subject matter of online education needs to be defined differently than before because the same old university politics are dead</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Taking an online course can be a seriously lonely experience</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>The designers of online course ought not be professors</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online courses need to lead to degrees</b></span></li><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b> Courses are the problem in the first place</b></span></li></ol><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So, let’s take them one at a time.</span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Online education has to involve teaching</b></li></ol><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What do I mean by this? it is all too simple to take a course and put it on line. It is especially easy if that course is in computer science. In CS students learn to actually do something. So you can give them programs to write and it is easy to check if the program did what they were supposed to do. So this is why we hear such a racket these days about some the CS courses that Stanford is offering. Hundreds of thousand of students -- oh my. But are there say 100,000 teachers for these students? Of course not. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Here is a review of one of those courses that I found in the Chronicle of Higher Education written by someone who says he is affiliated with the Mathematics Department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; line-height: 21.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; line-height: 21.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The CS101 class focuses on <a href="http://www.python.org/"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Georgia; text-decoration: underline;">Python</span></a> and consists of seven one-week units. We just completed Unit 2, which focused on procedures, if-then statements, and loops. It’s been an interesting experience so far.</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; line-height: 21.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The pedagogy of the class is quite sound and well-designed. Each unit so far has consisted of 20-30 short lectures (averaging around 2-3 minutes in length) on YouTube, many of which are followed by quizzes that are either multiple choice (think: clicker questions) or exercises in writing code in an interpreter. The main body of student work comes from weekly homework sets, which consist primarily of code-writing exercises that are graded by scripts.</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; line-height: 21.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Maybe it’s my lack of programming skill, but I’m surprised at how rigorous the course has been. It’s not a cakewalk at all for people who are relative beginners — I’ve seen more than one “farewell” post on the discussion boards from students who just can’t keep up with the pace and are dropping out. The quizzes, although they entail no risk to my grade, have been quite challenging times, as have some of the homework problems. (One problem from Unit 1 — to write a procedure that rounds a number to the nearest integer using only string methods and basic arithmetic — took me multiple sessions to figure out.)</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Or, to put this another way, he could have used a good teacher, and like most professors, he knows nothing about sound pedagogy. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But massive numbers for online means eliminating teachers. Try eliminating teachers in a course where coming up with your own ideas and thinking and explaining is at the root of the subject matter.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education can and therefore should be part of an actual experience</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What is missing in most, but not all, education, is the lack of actual experiences. Computers offer the possibility of building simulated experiences. This is what makes online education worth doing. It can be a challenge and a real change with respect to what passes for education. It should eliminate lectures, not provide them online. There is really no reason to do online education if we can’t use the new medium to change the old message.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education facilitates learning by doing</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Scholars from Plato to Dewey have pointed out that we only learn by doing. The fact that universities have for the most part ignored this does not mean they can continue to do so, not in the online world in any case. Computer Science is often taught using learning by doing. Even so, when I built the online CMU courses, which were in Computer Science, many (but not all) of the CMU faculty objected because they wanted to continue to teach by lecturing. The amount of actual teaching I wanted them to do seemed to them like it would be a lot of work.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><br /></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education should not be the same old course that is now on line</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 17.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The actual goal ought not be to put courses on line. Courses are the problem in the first place in education. Taking five courses in five different subjects simultaneously fits the lives of faculty just fine since they don’t have to teach much. For students it is a disjointed set of experiences that don’t relate to each other. This model of education needs to be re-thought. Putting degree programs on line makes sense, but those programs should be a series of experiences, each of which builds upon the one before it.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online education should involved the use of video from experts but that video must be delivered just in time</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This means no online lectures. Experts should tell stories just in time to students as they need them. That expert story telling should be in short videos.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>The subject matter of online education needs to be defined differently than before because the same old university politics are dead</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Students need to take one from column A and one from column B in order to satisfy university degree requirements. Those requirements exists because every faculty member wants his or her specialty to be required so that they will have courses to teach. This concept of requirements by political consensus makes no sense in an online world unless you actually let the faculty of the department design the degree program, in which case you will get the same old stuff, but this time it will be online.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Taking an online course can be a seriously lonely experience</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My team and I have been doing this for a long time. We used to build simulations where one person interacted with a computer and nothing else. It is a lonely experience. Now we have students work in teams with mentors. Everyone is happier.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>The designers of online course ought not be professors</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">While professors all think they can design on line courses it really doesn’t work like that. You would have had to have thought seriously about learning, which is typically not the specialty of most professors. They just teach the way they were taught. Also you would have to know something about what you can and cannot easily do on a computer, which is again, why computer science courses are the first courses being put up at Stanford. Without a deep knowledge of learning and computers, faculty members will simply recreate what they have always done. It will be online, and it won’t matter.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Online courses need to lead to degrees</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Students want certification. That is why they go to school. Some want to learn but they are in the minority.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I saw this the other day from Cameron Wilson of the ACM:</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; line-height: 21.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Just to give you some sense of how the news around the Stanford/MIT online offerings is generating interest, I was at a Senate hearing yesterday on education and the economy:</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #000099; font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=a9d8260e-5056-9502-5d97-bcbec7f63d0c">http://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=a9d8260e-5056-9502-5d97-bcbec7f63d0c<span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"></span></a></span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It wasn't the main thrust of the hearing, but the President of the</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Committee for Economic Development raised the discussion around</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Stanford and MIT offerings as transformative for higher</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">education. This sparked clear interest among the Senators when they</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">heard the scope of students involved in these courses. Senator Enzi</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">engaged with the witnesses on this issue. It was one of the few new</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">points during the hearing as most of discussion was focused on the</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">same sets of education issues that have dominated debates for 30+</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">years.</span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Times New Roman; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It seems the Stanford offerings have confused everyone about educational change. Not too odd they that also confused the U.S. Senate.</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica;"><b> </b></span></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 17.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 17.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="color: #001f67; font: 14.0px Helvetica; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Courses are the problem in the first place</b></span></li></ol><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 25.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I will make it real simple. As long as we hear that courses are being put on line, no matter how many students have signed up, nothing important is happening. When we hear that whole new degree programs that offer experiences mentored by real teachers are being put on line, it will be time to take notice.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-48844569860952576212012-03-04T04:32:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.113-07:00How not to choose a college: don't ask Aunt Rose<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">When I was 16 my Aunt Rose helped me decide on what college to attend. This was a bit odd since I had no reason to believe that Aunt Rose (who was a substitute teacher in an elementary school) knew anything about colleges. But when she told me that Carnegie Tech was a very good school, I took it seriously.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I chose which schools to apply to by deciding that since I was good at math, I should be a math major and that since I liked real things, I should study math in an engineering school. I got a list of engineering schools and picked a few and applied. I got into them all so I needed to choose one. Aunt Rose cast the deciding vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I had visited most of them with my parents the previous summer and was impressed that the computer at Carnegie Tech was very big.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">What set me off thinking about this was a sign I passed while in a taxi yesterday in New York. It was billboard for St Joseph’s College, a school I have certainly never heard of, and it advertised that it was the “most affordable top-tier college in Brooklyn and Long Island.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I didn’t know there were any top tier colleges in Brooklyn or Long Island and have no idea which is the most affordable. But I couldn’t help but think about the unfortunate students who might take this billboard seriously. They would have been better off with Aunt Rose.<br /><br />What does it mean to be a top tier college I (or a very good school)? What is St Joseph’s in the top tier of? Unfortunately for American students, most people’s answer to that relies on US News and World Report, a magazine that ranks hundreds of colleges on the basis of average SAT scores and average class size and a range of other variables that tell one very little about the quality of the school.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">In some sense these rankings do a terrible disservice to the colleges they rank because they make them obsess about the variables tracked by the US News rather than obsessing about real quality. Still they manage to get Harvard and Yale and MIT at the top of the rankings and that probably isn’t all that wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Professors rank schools (not explicitly) by asking if they or their colleagues would rather be there than where they are. There is much agreement amongst them. It is analogous to asking if a minor league baseball player would like to join the Yankees. He would. And similarly, a professor at the University of Illinois would prefer to be at Harvard. But actually, that might not be true. There are departments at Illinois that are better than their counterparts at Harvard and there are probably plenty of professors there who would not accept an offer at Harvard.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">But when it comes to that top tier college called St Joseph’s, not so much. Although I know nothing about this school, it is safe to assume that the entire faculty would leave for Harvard in a New York minute.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Why am I writing all this?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Because when I was 16 I made a major decision in my life with no knowledge, no really useful advice, and I suffered for it. I had no business being a math major. It was not important that I attend an engineering school, and Carnegie Tech was not that great an experience for me. What was good about my decision was that Carnegie Tech had a large and first rate Artificial Intelligence faculty and that that attracted my attention and altered my career choices in a very positive way. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">This was all random of course. Apart from having seen a big computer there, I had no idea that this piece of serendipity would matter to me. In other words, I was lucky. Aunt Rose happened to be right, although she didn’t know why, because Carnegie Tech wasn’t a great place to study anthropology or linguistics for example, which became two of my interests.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Advising students that they must go to college, as is the rule these days, and advising them where to go via billboards or their Aunt Rose is simply absurd. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">These are important life choices and ranking in a magazine or nonsense about being top-tier should not be deciding factors.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">We need to start helping students make sensible choices about whether they should go college at all (my advice, take a few years off after high school, older students do better in college because they know what they want.) And, we need to help them find out who they are, whether college is for them, and what they would do when they get there. Colleges are very bad at helping with this. Changing the high school curriculum to something more diverse that is less about test scores and grades would help a lot in this regard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-63677788414541684662012-02-21T08:06:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.125-07:00John Stuart Mill and Rick Santorum agree: what is going on here?<br /><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In 1859, John Stuart Mill, an important English philosopher wrote this about education: </span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 21.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing. That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government. </span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 21.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Yesterday, It was reported in the New York Times, that Rick Santorum,</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 21.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Georgia; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">said the idea of schools run by the federal government or by state governments was “anachronistic.”</span></div><div style="font: 23.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 26.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The Times article goes on to say that:</span></div><div style="font: 23.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 26.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But it was the latest in a series of comments by the former Pennsylvania senator — who is tied in polls in the critical Ohio and Michigan primary contests — suggesting that he takes a dim view of public schooling. He and his wife home-schooled their children.</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. “Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.”</span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, I cannot say that I am a big fan of Rick Santorum (or truth be told any of the other candidates for President.) Presidential candidates tend to agree with each other about education when they are not simply lying about it.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Here is Barack Obama on the campaign trail four years ago:</span></div><div style="color: #333333; font: 13.0px Trebuchet MS; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 9.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test. I don't want teachers to the -- teaching to the test. I don't want them uninspired and I don't want our students uninspired. </span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">He doesn’t want students taking tests all day, eh? He has a funny way of showing it.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And here he is later on in the same speech actually quoting me (without mentioning my name):</span></div><div style="color: #333333; font: 13.0px Trebuchet MS; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 9.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">We'll teach our students not only math and science, but teamwork and critical thinking and communication skills, because that's how we'll make sure they're prepared for today's workplace.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Of course presidential candidates have never been too keen on the truth, so why am I surprised he never did any of this?</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But I am surprised by Sanatorium because he seems to actually mean it. He homeschools his own kids after all. So the real question is just how crazy an idea is this? Should the government get out of the eduction business?</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">To think about this correctly one has only to ask if countries run by dictators or by religious authorities would ever consider getting out of the education business? You can’t have a Communist country without an education system that teaches why your country is right and all other countries are wrong. You can’t really imagine that Iran isn’t controlling every word taught in their schools. Well, so are we. In a real democracy the government does not run the schools, nor produce the tests. The government must simply require as J.S. Mill said, that every child be educated.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">While people who believe in democracy hold up the schools of Stalin or Hitler as the very paradigm of education gone wrong, somehow we still think the government should be in charge of education. Here is my favorite quote by Mark Twain.</span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px; min-height: 21.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 24px/normal Arial; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div><div style="font: 13.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #000099; font: 13.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain131252.html"><b>Mark Twain</b></a></span></div><div style="color: #000ad0; font: 13.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="color: #000ad0; font: 13.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b></b></span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Government run schools are not a good idea. There is always a truth being taught whether that truth is importance of algebra and what passes for science or whether it is the proper things to believe about our leaders. Schools feel and look like factories and prisons because children and being made to conform and forced to be there. </span></div><div style="font: 18.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">We need to re-think education. The first step is re-thinking the role of government in education. Santorum is right about this and I am pleased to see a presidential candidate raise the real issues in education. Of course, the Media make fun of him for raising these issue simply because they cannot conceive of any alternative to government run education. (Possibly because they all attended government run schools that taught them the truth.) The media needs to get smarter so the conversation about education can get smarter. </span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-75453607555294530062012-02-12T06:17:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.131-07:00The real damage done by testing in the schools: a conversation with Milo<br /><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I had a long conversation with Milo, my six year old grandson, the other day. Milo is very smart. (Yes, I know. What grandfather wouldn’t say that? But trust me, he is.) </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I asked him what he had done that was fun recently and he told me about a game he had been playing with a friend, which was good to hear about since Milo went through a long obsession with chess that I am happy to hear is waning.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I then asked him about school. I asked him if he liked taking the tests (which are everywhere these days - even in first grade) and I also asked him if he had learned anything interesting lately. I know that he doesn’t find school that interesting from previous conversations with him and from my daughter’s (the “me” below) postings about him. Here is the most recent one:</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Milo: I wish they would teach real science in science class.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Me: What's real science?</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Milo: Like chemistry, biology, dissection.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Me: What kind of science do they teach instead?</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font: 13.0px Arial; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Milo: Paperwork.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Milo said he liked taking tests. He liked working out the problems and, of course, does well on them. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, I have been railing about these awful standardized tests for the last 25 years, long before NCLB made everyone aware of how awful testing really is. But, Milo made me realize that what I hate about testing is not the tests themselves. Milo made me realize that I liked taking the test as well when I was a child. I always liked contests and I liked winning. I am so against testing that I forgot that for a smart kid, they can be fun.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">While teachers and principals correctly argue that testing is ruining our schools, the reasons that they cite, all of which are correct in my opinion, often do not include the main reason that I am so opposed to testing.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I became vehemently anti-testing when I began to question the validity of the curriculum being taught in the schools. As I began to invent different kinds of experiences for kids on the computer in the 80’s and 90’s. I came to realize that my software would never be used. The reason was clear enough. I was building software that did not relate to the existing curriculum. “Broadcast News” was meant to teach how to analyze current events through pretending to be a newscaster. “Crisis in Krasnovia” was intended to teach how political decision making works. "Road Trip" was intended to allow kids to explore the country. My team built many programs like this and they were never used because they didn’t fit into the existing curriculum. Many factors make the curriculum intransigent: the colleges that insist on certain courses for their applicants, parents who think whatever was taught to them must be taught to their children, politicians who can’t think about education in any sensible way as well as many other factors. But the number one issue is the tests. If all that matters are test scores then you can’t really spend much time on any curriculum that doesn’t get tested. In other words the tests make it impossible to change the curriculum from the one Charles Eliot specified in 1892.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This is why NCLB and Common Core are so insidious. They allow no modification of the ancient idea of what constitutes an education.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This leads me to the second part of my conversation with Milo. I asked him if he had learned anything interesting in school lately and he told he me that he had been learning about how the rhinoceros is an endangered species. He said they were being killed for their horns and that that was very sad. I asked him if he would be upset if he found out that wasps were an endangered species and he said wasps sting people and they are bad so it would be okay if they all died. I asked if he knew what wasps ate and if he understood that if there would be a lot more of whatever nasty stuff they dine on if there were no wasps. Of course his teacher had not mentioned any idea like that so this was lost on him. I asked if he was upset that people killed chickens and he said no because you can eat chickens. I said that you could eat rhinoceros as well and this was, of course, news to him.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My point is that the school, even when it teaches something that might not be on the test, still doesn’t teach kids to think hard about what they are talking about. It teaches truth. So while rhinoceros extinction may not be in the Common Core, memorization of officially approved facts certainly is. School ought not be about the teaching of officially approved truth.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And that, then, is why standardized testing is so awful. They don't test creative thinking or reasoning from evidence or how to have an argument. They teach the truth. And the truth somehow always manages to include the quadratic formula but manages to exclude areas where the truth isn’t so clear.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-50654612147918405322012-02-04T06:58:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.115-07:00college is about status not education<br /><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have friend who I won’t name who went to a university I won’t name. He is very proud of having gone to this particular school. He insists that is son will go there. He attends their football games regularly. He brags that he is the only member of his family who was ever admitted to that school.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Whenever he says something I think is silly, I make fun of him for not knowing much because he went to this dumb school. Now in fact, I don’t think the school he went to is dumb and I don’t think he is dumb but my razzing gets to him and we are friends so it just a way that we talk to each other.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The other day he insisted that his school was ranked in the top 20 universities in the country. This being my business I assured him that it was not and he got very angry and then eventually looked it up and realized that on some lists his school didn’t appear even in the top 200. Recently he bet me that his school was in the top 10 hardest schools to get into. Of course it was no where near that hard to get into.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why am I telling this story? I do not believe that one receives a better education in one university than one receives in another (unless one is planning a research career in which case where you go to college may matter a great deal.) It doesn’t matter where he went to school, it does matter what he has done since school. But his alma mater matters to my friend a great deal.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I moved, as a professor, from Yale to Northwestern, I was always being asked why I would make a move like that. People perceived me as moving down in class. And, I succumbing to the status issue we all live with, will usually respond “Yale” when asked where I was a professor if I don’t have the time to list all the places I have been.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is the point. The obsession we have with going to college in this country, with test scores, with SATs, with rank in class, and so on is not an obsession about education at all. It is an obsession about status. If you can say you went to Harvard every one will say ooh and wow and suddenly people will believe you are very smart. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Having taught at places that are thought of that way I can tell you that there are smart kids and there are dumb kids at all these places. What they have in common is an ability to please their teachers and do well on tests.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is a very sad state of affairs that people spend tremendous amounts of money on exorbitant tuitions, push their kids from kindergarten onwards to get good grades, and obsess about test scores for small children, all in the name of status. Moreover, they attach status to schools that don’t even have that status. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the phrase “its a very good school” after having been told that someone’s kid went to some school no one ever heard of.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This isn’t just an American obsession of course. Exactly the same phenomenon exists in the UK down to even which college at Oxford is better than which other college and in France with the Grandes Ecoles and in every other country I know about.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I wish I could say it is all nonsense but it isn’t. Companies make hiring decisions based on which school one attended and your friends think about you differently based on which school you attended. But it is simply not about education in any way. A lecture is still boring everywhere. The same books and internet are available anywhere, and college has never actually been all that much about education any way. Graduate school maybe. College not so much.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We really have to start thinking about all this differently.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here are some numbers to think about. Yale and Harvard are top research universities. They are really about researchers teaching students to do research. One out every 64,000 people in the US are researchers. On the other hand, there are 1 million lawyers, 6 million teachers, and 12 million health care workers. Colleges do not teach these three, graduate schools (and technical schools) do that.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Stop worrying about what college your first grader will go to. Leave him alone. Let him have fun and learn what he wants. Most of us never attended Yale (including me) and have managed happy lives.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-48605334596484806752012-01-22T07:16:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.110-07:00Larry Summers Opines about the Future of Education: A response<br /><div style="color: #001f67; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Larry Summers, former President of Harvard and former member of both the Clinton and Obama Administrations has told us his thoughts on education in a recent article in the New York Times.</span></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/the-21st-century-education.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hpw</span></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Let’s look at what he has to say about the future of education. He makes six points. I will consider them one by one.</span></div><div style="color: #001f67; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i></i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Education will be more about how to process and use information and less about imparting it. </i></span></li></ol><div style="font: 23.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 26.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The naivete of this statement coming from a former President of Harvard is astounding. How exactly, Professor Summers do you expect that that this will happen? Will professors suddenly stop lecturing? Will classrooms cease to hold hundreds of students? Will Harvard no longer offer courses that are ‘Introduction to Whatever?” Will students no longer accumulate credits in order to graduate? Because if none of those things change, Harvard will continue to be about imparting information. Professors like to lecture. One of the primary reasons they like lecturing is that it requires very little effort and they can spend most of their time on research. Unless Harvard decides to no longer value research as its top priority in the hiring of faculty the incentives will not change. If the incentives for faculty do not change, students will continue to be treated like bodies in the seats in all but the most advanced classes, And, as any professor or can tell you, that means talking at them. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Further, you are assuming that faculty actually know how to use the information they teach. Unless faculty spend serious amounts of time as practitioners in the real world, which the vast majority of them do not, the actual use of what is done with the information they have taught is typically unknown to them. Ask your faculty what students do with the information they have learned at Harvard after they graduate and see if you get any realistic answers. The faculty typically doesn't know.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>2. An inevitable consequence of the knowledge explosion is that tasks will be carried out with far more collaboration</i></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I am sure that is true. Now let’s think about Harvard. The kids who get into Harvard have learned to do everything but cooperate in order to get into Harvard and in order to succeed at Harvard. They fight to be number one in their classes in high school. They kill themselves to win the SAT competition. They cram for tests night and day all through school. At Harvard cooperation isn’t quite the right description. Anyone who saw ‘The Social Network” (the movie about Facebook) got the idea what really goes on when a new project is being worked on at Harvard. And, professors don’t really like cooperation because then they can’t figure out which member of the team really deserved which grade. As long as there are grades and tests and valedictorians there won’t be much cooperation. The workplace may well need it. Harvard isn’t teaching it. Neither, I might add, is the government for which you toiled all those years. Even Obama’s cabinet, of which you were a part, couldn’t cooperate which is more or less why you are no longer part of it as I understand it.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>3. New technologies will profoundly alter the way knowledge is conveyed. Electronic readers allow </i><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/textbooks/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Georgia; text-decoration: underline;"><i>textbooks</i></span></a><i> to be constantly revised, and to incorporate audio and visual effects. </i></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Wow. You are so out of touch that you don’t even realize that textbooks wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for the constant lobbying efforts of textbook manufacturers. Textbooks are very last century. We have them because legislators can’t and won’t stop their sale. Most faculty use them to avoid teaching. Students mostly ignore them in any case no matter how many glitzy pictures they may now have in them. </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">You are right that new technologies will alter the way learning happens but not because they will alter how knowledge is conveyed. That whole idea that knowledge is conveyed is exactly the problem. Knowledge was conveyed by Monks when they were the only ones who could read, so they lectured about what they had read. The fact that faculty still do this in the modern era is ridiculous. No one can remember very much of what they heard in a lecture.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And, it isn’t the conveying of knowledge that is the issue in education in any case. Real education means helping students attain new abilities, enabling them to do new things. And, yes, new technologies can and will help that happen, but that will happen by bypassing the existing university system unless that system decides to adapt to the new technologies, an unlikely event at Harvard I would think.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>4. “Active learning classrooms” — which cluster students at tables, with furniture that can be rearranged and integrated technology — help professors interact with their students through the use of media and collaborative experiences. </i></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Really isn’t that a nice idea? The last two Administrations, in one of which you had plenty of opportunity to speak, has basically killed that idea and replaced it by testing testing and more testing so that no one does anything but memorize. How dare you quote ideas from cognitive science when all that has happened in the last 12 years is the ignoring of those ideas in favor of more rote learning?</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>5. The world is much more open, and events abroad affect the lives of Americans more than ever before.</i></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So? Is that going to make Harvard’s Psychology department stop teaching statistics and how to run an experiment? Is that going to make Harvard’s Computer Science department stop teaching theoretical computer science? There are already plenty of study abroad programs and language courses at Harvard.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 22.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>6. Courses of study will place much more emphasis on the analysis of data.</i></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now this is just silly. Scientists have always relied on data. Baseball owners haven’t so maybe you are right about Moneyball. You leave out the absurd use of data like the article in the Times written by Harvard Economists </span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #000099; font: 20.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/16/can-a-few-years-data-reveal-bad-teachers/the-value-of-data-in-teacher-evaluations?scp=2&sq=economists%20test%20scores&st=cse"><b>http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/16/can-a-few-years-data-reveal-bad-teachers/the-value-of-data-in-teacher-evaluations?scp=2&sq=economists%20test%20scores&st=cse</b></a></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">saying how testing is relevant to evaluating teachers, an article that relied on the assumption that test scores were important in the first place.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I feel obligated to say that for someone who ran a university you really don’t know much about education. I offered some years ago to help you learn about education (through a mutual friend) but you weren’t interested. Maybe you should stop writing about a subject you don’t understand and go back to economics, a subject nobody understands.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-575567763162360362012-01-02T08:15:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.119-07:00If you want someone to remember something, tell them a story.<div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">As I have mentioned in this space before, when I am in Florida, I play in a couple of old guy’s softball leagues most weekday mornings. I have been playing in one league for about four years but the retired Marine drill sergeant who runs the league (and picks the teams every day) has never learned my name. Now there are more than 100 guys playing so this is understandable but last week I decided to fix the problem.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I decided to tell him the story of my name.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My parents were both Army Air Corps (now the USAF) officers during World War II. Pilots speaking over the radio on US planes when given an order always respond “Roger Wilco” which means “understood, will comply.” My father thought it would be a laugh riot to call me Roger Wilco Schank. My mother didn’t think that was all that funny. But he called the New York Times anyway and told them two air force officers had a son called Roger Wilco. He said if the Times printed the story on the front page, it stayed. I was told that they did print it, but not on the front page, so I got a more normal middle name.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The ex-Marine team picker loved this story and, this morning, he called me by my name when he picked me, muttering “RW” as he selected me.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I am telling this story because it has an important educational message. I have been talking about story telling for more than 20 years (since I wrote “Tell Me a Story.”) And, I am tempted to say, that the schools haven’t been listening, but it is not true.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Propagandists always knew the power of story telling for getting people to remember a message, which is why we all know the story of George Washington who never told a lie, but fail to remember the George Washington who married a rich widow to get her money and her 300 slaves.</span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 22.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="color: #002d99; font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">If you want someone to remember something, tell them a story.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-20673373528450400282011-12-12T07:08:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.099-07:00Career Choices: Please don't make me be a dentist!<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I attended a family occasion the other day. I saw people from one side of my family most of whom I hadn’t seen in some years. I was introduced by my first cousin to her grandson. I was told that he was graduating college and would soon be attending dental school.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I broke out laughing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Behind him were his two younger brothers. I asked if they would be going to dental school as well. At this point his mother chimed in that she certainly hoped so.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now I was just sad.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, rest assured that I have nothing against dentists or dental school. A fine career choice I am sure. I have left out some information here. The mother of this boy is a dentist. I also left out that his father is a dentist. I also left out that his grandfather is a dentist. And, I left out that he (and I) have other cousins who are dentists as well. My uncle was dentist. His son is a dentist. His sister married a dentist. Her son is a dentist.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">All these dentists are perfectly fine human beings and they all seem to be living well. It is funny to come from a family of dentists but really, so what?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At some point in the party we were all attending, as the music blasted and people danced, I saw that the young man whom I had first been introduced to had sat down next to me. He said that his grandfather had told him that I was some kind of professor and he asked me what I taught. After some chit chat I asked him if he really wanted to be a dentist.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He said that he had worked hard in college, struggling through required science courses and that it would soon all be worth it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I asked him if had ever considered any other profession. He said ‘No.” I asked him why not and he said that there had been a lot of pressure from his family to be a dentist. I asked why and he said they had had good experiences and it had worked for them and they thought it was a great life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I asked if there was anything else he could imagine being. He replied that he really wanted to work with people and that he liked talking to people and as he went on I got the idea that it wasn’t the teeth part of people that he was referring to.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I told him that when I taught at Yale I devoted one class every term to the subject of what the kids in the class wanted to be when they grew up. I challenged them to be something other than what their parents wanted them to be. But for the most part, the children of doctors were going to be doctors and the children of lawyers were going to be lawyers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We don’t realize as parents how much we talk with children about what they are going to be when they grow up and how much we limit their choices by talking about the limited things we actually know about or by inadvertently putting pressure on them to look at the world in a certain way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I suggested that this young man not make any choice right now except simply deciding to decide all this in a few years while trying some other stuff out, he was mostly concerned about how he would explain this to his parents.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, usually I am writing about schooling in this column and this one is no exception. Except for my weird one day class, students at Yale got no real career counseling. They only get role models (who are all professional academics) or they get pressure from their parents, or advice from their peers about what is a hot choice right now. Why aren’t we teaching our children how to think about making career choices, or life choices for that matter? Because we are too busy teaching them calculus or macro-economics.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Governments complain about the lack of skilled workers but they don’t try to help in any way except to push more math and science courses which are irrelevant and in no way help one understand one’s career options. Calculus is not a career choice.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Schools need to start helping kids figure out what they can do in life or else the advisors will all be parents who are limited in their world view.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-46299001767044119752011-11-28T06:56:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.108-07:00Jeffrey Sachs, The Stanford on line AI course point to why it is so difficult to reform education<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:16px;"> </span></span>My attention was drawn to this blog post:<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs184/English">http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs184/English</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">which was written by a very well respected professor at Columbia University, named Jeffrey Sachs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In it, he asserts that productivity is improving in our society and he cites the following as evidence of this in education:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;">1. At eight on Tuesday mornings, we turn on a computer at Columbia University and join in a “global classroom” with 20 other campuses around the world. A professor or a development expert somewhere gives a talk, and many hundreds of students listen in through videoconferencing.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;">2. At Stanford University this fall, two computer-science professors put their courses online for students anywhere in the world; now they have an enrollment of 58,000.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I found these pieces of evidence of hopefulness astonishing in their naïveté. Of course the man is an economist and not someone who thinks much about education one would assume. But still.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have often said the that the main problem in fixing education is professors. “We have met the enemy and it is us” applies very well to why education is so hard to reform. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Really Professor Sachs? You are excited by that fact that more people can listen to your lectures? Ask any college students what he can recall from a lecture an hour after he has listened to it and see how much he remembers and how much he simply remembers wrong. Lecturing is a completely archaic way of teaching. It exists today at top universities only people because hot shot professors at top universities (of which I was one) think that their time is better spent doing almost anything else except teaching. Talking 3 hours a week seems like a pretty good deal enabling them to go back to doing what they really like. No one learns in a lecture. If you cared about education you would stop lecturing. But you care more about research which is fine, so did I when I was a professor. But recognize that you are the problem in education and video conferencing is the solution to nothing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sachs makes the same point twice when he cites the Stanford course. The Stanford on line AI course has gotten a lot of media attention. AI is my field (and one of the instructors was a PhD student of a PhD student of mine.) I don’t know what is in the course and I don’t care. The media doesn’t care either, nor does Sachs. They just like the 50,000 number. What if I said that a former student of mine was a great parent and so he was now raising 50,000 children on line? Would anyone think that was a good idea? This may seems like a silly analogy unless you really think about it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Teaching, as I point out in my new book:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Minds-Cognitive-Science-Schools/dp/0807752665/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322491382&sr=1-1">http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Minds-Cognitive-Science-Schools/dp/0807752665/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322491382&sr=1-1</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">is basically a one on one affair and is about opening new worlds to students and then helping them do things in that world. This will not happen in a 50,000 person course any more than it happens in a 100 person course. Lecture courses are just rites of passage that we force students to endure so they can eventually start working with a good professor in a closer relationship (at least this what happens at in a good university.) A book would do as well for this, better would be a well constructed learning by doing on line course.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But what is happening in today’s world is that the action in educational change is all about getting bigger numbers on line without trying to improve quality. Stanford is making a lot of noise with this course but nothing good can come form this.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Professors need to stop and really think about education. Of course, the problem is that they have no motivation to do so. They are well paid and having a good time. Only the students suffer.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-75977100129878535632011-11-07T05:17:00.000-08:002012-08-06T02:32:24.133-07:00The King of Spain, classrooms and subjects<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Last week I was interviewed by phone from Spain. I was talking to authorities who were preparing a report for the King of Spain on how education might be improved in Spain. I am well known in Spain so it is not odd that they were calling me. They were certainly calling many others as well.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I started by saying that I am really radical and they said they already knew that. I then talked with them for about a half an hour about the kinds of improvements to education that I have been writing about for years in my columns and of course in my latest book:</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#000099;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Minds-Cognitive-Science-Schools/dp/0807752665/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320670980&sr=1-1">http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Minds-Cognitive-Science-Schools/dp/0807752665/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320670980&sr=1-1</a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">They seemed to be enjoying talking to me and hearing what I had to say. Then, they asked one final question: “if you could just say one thing that need to be changed, what would it be?” </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">It is easy to imagine that they wanted a one liner for an executive summary here. I don’t think I gave them what they wanted, judging from their reaction.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I said “just eliminate classrooms.”</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">They audibly gasped. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Why?</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">First why did I say it?</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Because if you eliminate classrooms everything else follows. No teacher talking to kids who aren’t listening. No tests to see if they were listening. No kids distracting other kids who are bored by what is going one. No subjects that in no way relate to the interests of the child. Instead, without a classroom you can re-invent. We can think about how individuals can learn and while doing that we would need to confront the fact that not all individuals want to learn the same things. We would have to eliminate the the “one size fits all” curriculum. We would need to create curricula that met kids interests. We would be able to let kids learn by doing instead of vainly attempting to have them learn by listening. We could eliminate academic subjects. We could make learning fun. Classrooms are never fun.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Why did they gasp?</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; min-height: 22.0pxcolor:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; color:#002d99;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Because they can’t do it. They knew it and I knew it. They don’t really want to fix education. They want to make schools function better. And schools have classrooms. And that my friends is the beginning and end of the problem.</span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-74599747707971678092011-10-26T04:58:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.128-07:00Mr Obama wants big ideas? Here are 10 in education<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;font-size:14.0pt;">At a fundraiser yesterday in San Francisco, President Obama said that "We have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge..."<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Geneva;font-size:19px;">No, Mr. President, it isn’t “we” it is you. There are plenty of good ambitious ideas out there, you just aren’t listening.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Geneva;font-size:19px;">Here, off the top of my head, are ten outrageous big ideas about education. You will listen to none of them. You have considered none of them. You haven’t even tried to understand them. Yes, they sound crazy, as do all new ideas.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi- font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi- font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family:Geneva;">Ten Big Ideas In Education</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi- font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">1.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Shut down high schools<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">2.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Stop preparing students for college<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">3.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Stop insisting everyone go to college<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">4.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Re-focus colleges away from academics<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">5.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Eliminate all testing<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">6.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Get big business out of education<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">7.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Make learning fun again<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">8.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Let children choose what they want to learn about<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">9.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Help children find mentors who will help them learn what they want to learn<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:41.0pt;mso-add-space:auto; text-indent:-23.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva; mso-fareast-font-family:Geneva;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">10.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">Build on line experiences that engage students and that teach thinking skills<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.25in"><span style="font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi- font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">I have written about these ideas in more detail elsewhere and won’t repeat myself here. Suffice it to say that a high school system designed for the elite in 1892 could not possibly be right-headed today, yet instead of changing it you are making sure that we test every students to tears to make sure they have memorized the Quadratic formula, disregarding the fact that hardly any adult actually uses it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family:Geneva;">Re-think what you are doing in education, Mr. Obama. You have become the problem.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi- font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi- font-family:Geneva;font-size:12.0pt;color:#1F497D;">There are plenty of ideas out there.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173783868932764925.post-38229473524140699032011-09-15T06:03:00.000-07:002012-08-06T02:32:24.103-07:00Pat Tillman, truth, stories, and why our education system is the way it is<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">About the last thing I am likely to do in this space is to write about a movie. But, as it happened, I chanced upon a movie on TV in which I had no interest. Yet it had an impact on me anyway. The movie is “The Tillman Story” which would mean nothing to non-U.S. people and maybe very little to many in the U.S. as well. Pat Tillman was a U.S. football star who suddenly left the National Football League and his millions of dollars of salary to enlist to fight in Iraq after 2001.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The politicians in Washington loved this story since it justified the “all American hero fighting for his country” story that Bush and his cronies were trying to sell at the time. They played the story up in all the media. Tillman was killed in Afghanistan after some years and Bush and his buddies were busy touting the “our hero died for his country” line they love so much. The problem was that after some investigation on the part of Tillman’s family, it seems he wasn’t killed while fighting the enemy. Instead he was killed by U.S. troops who just seemed to be having fun shooting anything that moved one day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The movie details how the family fought back and uncovered the cover up that the Army had created to obscure what really happened. The movie is unkind to the Army, but, as someone who has worked with the Army for a long time, I was skeptical that the Army would be that involved in telling such an elaborate lie. Eventually the movie points the finger at Donald Rumsfeld who appears to have been calling the shots and makes it clear that George W. Bush would have had to have been involved as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My first reaction was that it says something that they were allowed to make this movie at all. A repressive government doesn't let you make anti-government movies. The U.S. government may have many faults, but freedom of speech still exists here.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But then, my thoughts turned to the real subjects that always interest me which are stories, and the general stupidity of the American public.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The lengths to which Bush and friends went to tell the Tillman story that they wanted to tell and to cover up the real story are well documented in this film. Why? Why lie, cover up, misinform, hush people up, manipulate the media, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>and otherwise be hysterical about the fact that a soldier was killed by his own troops? This happens all the time. It is called the fog of war.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The answer is that stories matter. Politicians love to tell stories and the stories they tell often have little relation to the truth. They get away with this because stories are simple and easy to understand. The truth is often much more complex. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This points to one reason why politicians all seem to agree on testing and generally making our education system about memorization of facts (otherwise known as “official stories.”) What we want students to learn is what the true stories are. We want them to know the facts about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Pat Tillman. We really don't care if those facts are true. In all nations, the job of education is the telling of official government-approved stories about everything from history to economics to how to be a success and why to fight for your country. No one cares about the truth all that much. They just care about having good stories to tell.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We are all susceptible to a good story. (That is why we like to watch movies in the first place.) It is not just poorly educated who like simple stories. We all do. It is part of being human. But how do we learn to determine if a story is true?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We wouldn’t have known the truth about Pat Tillman if it hadn’t been for his family being smarter than your average family and really wanting to know what happened. They were capable of separating truth from fiction. But this is a skill which we are more or less explicitly taught not to do in our schools.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What can be done? Ask students to think instead of memorize? I have been saying that for years, but, no surprise, no government official is ever on my side on that one. They like being able to tell simple stories that remain unexamined by their listeners.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14014439307418885702noreply@blogger.com0