Many years ago I wrote an article with the title The Carrot and the Cattleprod. It’s so long ago that although I wrote it on a word processor I no longer have an electronic copy. It’s buried and yellowing deep in a file cabinet somewhere in the basement. So I don’t know where it is but I do remember what…
On the last day of the year, time to show an affirming flame as another low dishonest decade ends. I’ll leave all the best and worst and top ten lists to others, but merely remark – that for all the base mendacity in the real world, life in school remains a place of joy and possibility. The words and phrases…
Turns out that we may be hard wired to co-operate and help out. And this behavior occurs in children before, and in the absence of, specific training and in babies as early as twelve months. Biologists are concluding that even infants are innately sociable and helpful to others. And it’s not a matter of etiquette and social training and it’s…
From the Poughkeepsie New Yorker (Over 78,000 Read-Round-the-Clock 35 Cents Weekly) December 1941 came this news item about Poughkeepsie Day School. It was the annual Christmas Festival “with many of the school’s alumni present, as well as parents and friends.” It was a community event. There were student made decorations including a clay figures and ornaments that were donated to…
In Teaching in a Knowledge Society Andy Hargreaves has a cautionary tale – Education off the Rails – about the effects of applied performance standards that push people all too easily into quick fixes rather than sustainable improvement. His analogy concerns a stay he had in the UK and a railway meltdown. In that case, emphasis on standards turned into…
When a new technology comes along and knocks you off the old one – in this case a motor car and a canary-colored horse-drawn cart – are you more of a Toad, Mole or Rat? ‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad, never offering to move. ‘The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here to-day–in…
What’s the point of school?
Created by Online Education
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery There’s good provocative thinking from Umair Haque on the Harvard Business Review blog: The Builders’ Manifesto: 20th century leadership is what’s stopping 21st century…
“Our children, every day, come to school and spread their dreams at our feet. We should tread softly.” Ken Robinson.
This summer I visited the quite wonderful Hancock Shaker Village. It’s where in craft and design, form meets function with simplicity and beauty. So many interesting things to see and pay attention to. Of course – I had to visit the schoolhouse, now separated from the main buildings by a busy highway. The school room was bright and well lit…
What’s changed? Pretty much everything. A question to get going with: Shopping and information then and now: If you want the best dishwasher or digital camera or know how to remove turmeric stains from linen or why there’s a sudden infestation of ladybugs – where would you go to figure it out? And for most people the answer would be:…
Enjoy the drawing. But but then read this: Shifting Ground from Chris Lehmann. From the Chicago Tribune 1958. (But only one child distracted by the flying machine outside the classroom?)
When I’m in the car I listen to WAMC, and yesterday I heard Roland Fryer’s Dowmel lecture. His specialty is race-based economic issues, and his research projects seek to answer the question of why African-Americans are harder hit by poverty than other demographic groups in America The focus was education and the data dismal. Fryer is a brilliant economist, an…