Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Education Off The Rails: Standards Train Wreck

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…

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Books, Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

When it comes to technology and change: Are you Toad, Mole, or Rat?

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…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Mission and The Builders Manifesto

“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…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

School of the Past: School of the Future

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…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What’s Changed?

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:…

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Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Locked out of Learning

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…

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Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Whatever it takes ….

Is this what we mean by that current refrain “Whatever it takes”? This is from another era – 1991. Anything much changed? More well-intentioned (mostly) but misguided reformy ideas. And it’s always worth remembering the Latin roots of the word “inculcate” meaning to grind in with the heel.

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

State of Play

So the debate on the purpose of play in early childhood simmers on. It popped up on my Facebook page yesterday with this from the ASCD: Play is problem solving That then led me to the The Playtime’s the Thing from the Washington Post. The pressure is on to raise achievement scores and this puts the squeeze on time for…

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Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Publish! And democratize learning.

Interesting post from The Innovative Educator: 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It! Read the post to hear what happened when she put out the word via Twitter and also to see her suggestions for making it happen in the classroom. Meanwhile – here is one of the slides from a presentation by C.K. Prahalad*…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Dangerous Praise

Good reminder about how not to praise from Stephen Currie in a recent post to the PDS Math Guy Blog. It’s all to do with the effort effect and how to talk to kids about their work. Researcher Carol Dweck’s work has shown that  praise for being smart is a great demotivator. Here are the researcher’s tips for a better…

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