TED talk by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a computer-aided math teaching tool. This looks like a huge breakthru in both pedagogy and (indirectly) a window into how minds develop.
TED talk by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a computer-aided math teaching tool. This looks like a huge breakthru in both pedagogy and (indirectly) a window into how minds develop.
You and I did it ass-backwards; we learned engineering/physics/science stuff, and only belatedly connected it to real life useful things, like diagnosing and fixing broken cars and explaining to Lazy8 why libertarianism won't do my laundry.
I think some of it is just plain maturity level. That said, there is nothing like mowing lawns all summer, in the Deep South, to focus concentration on one's studies...
lol. That worked for me too. Landscaping one summer made my up the anti and take more classes the next summer.
And as a fan of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you probably remember that Pirsig made this same suggestion. Rather than forcing unmotivated kids to go to college and sleepwalk through four pointless years, get out and get a trade job so that you might discover why learning all that college stuff could be useful to you. You and I did it ass-backwards; we learned engineering/physics/science stuff, and only belatedly connected it to real life useful things, like diagnosing and fixing broken cars and explaining to Lazy8 why libertarianism won't do my laundry.
Strange, I never even read that book (though a lot of my friends did), but I have always encouraged and hope that my son becomes a mechanic because it is a useful and at least for awhile an absolutely necessary service and career that will bring independence and security without having to get on the stress wheel of corporate America.
I think some of it is just plain maturity level. That said, there is nothing like mowing lawns all summer, in the Deep South, to focus concentration on one's studies...
Holding a cold wrench outside in a Colorado winter helped me a lot.
And as a fan of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you probably remember that Pirsig made this same suggestion. Rather than forcing unmotivated kids to go to college and sleepwalk through four pointless years, get out and get a trade job so that you might discover why learning all that college stuff could be useful to you. You and I did it ass-backwards; we learned engineering/physics/science stuff, and only belatedly connected it to real life useful things, like diagnosing and fixing broken cars and explaining to Lazy8 why libertarianism won't do my laundry.
Indeed. That book is just full of gems, ain't it?
I think some of it is just plain maturity level. That said, there is nothing like mowing lawns all summer, in the Deep South, to focus concentration on one's studies...
I did it all - screwed around right out of high school until I figured out that I wanted a good job instead of serving people with good jobs. Went to school for a while util I ran out of money, so stopped for a bit and worked trade jobs while saving and going to night school. A couple years of sore back and frozen toes and an office gig looked pretty good. A few years into my "career" layoffs and recession 1.0 (or maybe 2.0 depending on where you start) landed me in entrepreneur land. All in all, it's been the most rewarding learning experience that I never planned on.
I've always thought that trades don't get the respect/ legitimacy they deserve. After years in various industries, I also think that degrees/certificates get more respect/ legitimacy than they deserve. The ratio of good/bad/average/slacker/rockstar in each is about the same. I think a lot of people would be happier if they realized that they had options, and that they tried some of them out. I've often felt that I would like to send some of my younger employees away for a month or two at the competition or the local restaurant/labor shop. I think the exposure would help them a lot on many fronts.
But life goes the way it goes. Plan all you want, life will get in the way. In the end Hunter Thompson sums it up best:
And as a fan of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you probably remember that Pirsig made this same suggestion. Rather than forcing unmotivated kids to go to college and sleepwalk through four pointless years, get out and get a trade job so that you might discover why learning all that college stuff could be useful to you. You and I did it ass-backwards; we learned engineering/physics/science stuff, and only belatedly connected it to real life useful things, like diagnosing and fixing broken cars and explaining to Lazy8 why libertarianism won't do my laundry.
I did it all - screwed around right out of high school until I figured out that I wanted a good job instead of serving people with good jobs. Went to school for a while util I ran out of money, so stopped for a bit and worked trade jobs while saving and going to night school. A couple years of sore back and frozen toes and an office gig looked pretty good. A few years into my "career" layoffs and recession 1.0 (or maybe 2.0 depending on where you start) landed me in entrepreneur land. All in all, it's been the most rewarding learning experience that I never planned on.
I've always thought that trades don't get the respect/ legitimacy they deserve. After years in various industries, I also think that degrees/certificates get more respect/ legitimacy than they deserve. The ratio of good/bad/average/slacker/rockstar in each is about the same. I think a lot of people would be happier if they realized that they had options, and that they tried some of them out. I've often felt that I would like to send some of my younger employees away for a month or two at the competition or the local restaurant/labor shop. I think the exposure would help them a lot on many fronts.
But life goes the way it goes. Plan all you want, life will get in the way. In the end Hunter Thompson sums it up best:
Point is, the time and money spent on college, might be better spent pursuing a technical trade, at least in the short term. Get a marketable skill, make some money at it, develop your knowledge and abilities, and if you still want to go to college after that, okay.
And as a fan of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you probably remember that Pirsig made this same suggestion. Rather than forcing unmotivated kids to go to college and sleepwalk through four pointless years, get out and get a trade job so that you might discover why learning all that college stuff could be useful to you. You and I did it ass-backwards; we learned engineering/physics/science stuff, and only belatedly connected it to real life useful things, like diagnosing and fixing broken cars and explaining to Lazy8 why libertarianism won't do my laundry.
How true. We've got a ludicrous situation over this side of the pond where c. 50% of kids go on to do degrees, yet 20/30 years ago there were only just sufficient graduate jobs for 5 to 10% of youngsters - and that's when we had industry and all the opportunities go with it (now all but gone). Rather than having 50% graduating, magically somehow creating jobs for all the graduates which seems to be the theory, jobs that are little more than office juniors are now requiring degrees. Apart from the expense, it must be soul destroying for the graduates to find that they would have been far better off, financially and probably career-wise, to have trained to be a plumber etc.
That's a good point that needs to be reinforced. Tradespeople can make good money, and those jobs cannot be shipped overseas. We have neglected education in the trades, in favor of university education, which often does not prepare people to enter the workforce. Professional trades are also a great way to get into an industry, THEN go back to school for a college degree. I think we need more incentive for people to train in the professional trades: plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC, machinists, mechanics, etc. Those are good-paying jobs that require technical knowledge and ability, not grunt-work manual labor.
As a college-educated engineer with a lot of experience, I probably do not make much more, if any, than a licensed tradesperson with similar experience. And career opportunities in engineering have gone offshore in droves, keeping salaries flat or receding, since long before the current financial crises.
Point is, the time and money spent on college, might be better spent pursuing a technical trade, at least in the short term. Get a marketable skill, make some money at it, develop your knowledge and abilities, and if you still want to go to college after that, okay.
A better-educated workforce is widely touted as the panacea for every economic problem. Education is said to be the cure both for unemployment and income inequality. To hear leaders of the financial sector talk, the underlying problem with the economy has not been a runaway financial sector but an unqualified workforce. In a recent Reuters special report on the U.S. economy, Diane Swonk, an oft-quoted financial-sector economist, said, "The recession merely revealed a reality that has been with us for a long time. We faced a growing gap in education and skills that we tried to fill with debt and credit, which gave us the illusion of growth . . .
This is very comfortable reasoning for the very comfortable class. It identifies "failing" schools and dumb workers for the economic calamity actually caused by a deregulated financial sector following a massive redistribution of income and wealth. This shift was driven by corporate political power that allowed the top 1 percent to capture some 56 percent of all the income growth over the two decades preceding the Great Recession . . .
It is remarkable that anyone can claim that today's high unemployment is primarily due to a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and the available jobs. After all, most of those who are unemployed today were productively employed just a year or two ago. The notion that production processes have radically changed is hard to square with the absence of a surge in productivity or investment. There have been roughly five unemployed people for every job opening, roughly twice the ratio at the worst moments of the last recession, which, recall, was considered a jobless recovery . . .
Moreover, the percentage of unemployed who have been out of work for at least six months is the same across all education groups. In other words, unemployed college graduates bear the same risk of long-term unemployment as those with high school degrees. In sum, we do not have unemployment because of weak skills or poor schools: Rather, we have a serious shortfall in demand due to a loss of housing and stock wealth and recession-caused income losses compounded by the de-leveraging of our household and business sectors . . .
Despite frequent claims, it is simply untrue that we have seen a three decades-long radical increase in employers' demand for four-year college graduates. The widespread (even before the recession) utilization of college students and graduates working as unpaid (many unlawfully so) "interns" is evidence enough — if employers desperately needed these workers, they would pay them . . . (SNIP)
How true. We've got a ludicrous situation over this side of the pond where c. 50% of kids go on to do degrees, yet 20/30 years ago there were only just sufficient graduate jobs for 5 to 10% of youngsters - and that's when we had industry and all the opportunities go with it (now all but gone). Rather than having 50% graduating, magically somehow creating jobs for all the graduates which seems to be the theory, jobs that are little more than office juniors are now requiring degrees. Apart from the expense, it must be soul destroying for the graduates to find that they would have been far better off, financially and probably career-wise, to have trained to be a plumber etc.
A better-educated workforce is widely touted as the panacea for every economic problem. Education is said to be the cure both for unemployment and income inequality. To hear leaders of the financial sector talk, the underlying problem with the economy has not been a runaway financial sector but an unqualified workforce. In a recent Reuters special report on the U.S. economy, Diane Swonk, an oft-quoted financial-sector economist, said, "The recession merely revealed a reality that has been with us for a long time. We faced a growing gap in education and skills that we tried to fill with debt and credit, which gave us the illusion of growth . . .
This is very comfortable reasoning for the very comfortable class. It identifies "failing" schools and dumb workers for the economic calamity actually caused by a deregulated financial sector following a massive redistribution of income and wealth. This shift was driven by corporate political power that allowed the top 1 percent to capture some 56 percent of all the income growth over the two decades preceding the Great Recession . . .
It is remarkable that anyone can claim that today's high unemployment is primarily due to a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and the available jobs. After all, most of those who are unemployed today were productively employed just a year or two ago. The notion that production processes have radically changed is hard to square with the absence of a surge in productivity or investment. There have been roughly five unemployed people for every job opening, roughly twice the ratio at the worst moments of the last recession, which, recall, was considered a jobless recovery . . .
Moreover, the percentage of unemployed who have been out of work for at least six months is the same across all education groups. In other words, unemployed college graduates bear the same risk of long-term unemployment as those with high school degrees. In sum, we do not have unemployment because of weak skills or poor schools: Rather, we have a serious shortfall in demand due to a loss of housing and stock wealth and recession-caused income losses compounded by the de-leveraging of our household and business sectors . . .
Despite frequent claims, it is simply untrue that we have seen a three decades-long radical increase in employers' demand for four-year college graduates. The widespread (even before the recession) utilization of college students and graduates working as unpaid (many unlawfully so) "interns" is evidence enough — if employers desperately needed these workers, they would pay them . . . (SNIP)
There seems to be a renewed onslaught of educational privatization supporters these days. Checker Finn, Milton Friedman and Paul Peterson have mostly been replaced by people like Michele Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein (although Eric Hanushek is still at it, appearing in Waiting for Superman). Sadly, Sec. of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama seem to be in favor of this madness.
Check out Diane Ravitch's excellent review of recent movies touting privatization and charters here:
THE MYTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS Ravitch was a key player in the Bush Dept. of Ed who was at one time a strong supporter of high stakes testing and charters. She has since come to change her views in light of the damage the last 10 years of testing mania has done to public schools.
Rhee and Klein recently had a propaganda piece that ran in the Washington Post, entitled "Manifesto" (that's right, comrade, Manifesto!)
There have been numerous thorough debunkings of this piece published online, but perhaps the most thorough and thoughtful comes from former NY Times Education reporter Richard Rothstein:
Note also that although former DC Superintendent Arlene Ackerman is listed as a signatory of Rhee et al.'s Manifesto, she has in fact withdrawn her support because the document published in the Post was not the one she claims to have endorsed:
Here in Arizona the acceptance of charter schools has been a godsend. The horrid state of public 'education' has been challenged by the opening of numerous charter schools. The families with children in these schools are supplied applied vouchers concurrent in value with the state allotment per child as in the public schools (as abuysmally low as it is). Charter schools in the state of Arizona are forbidden to have a religious theme. Religion-based schools are private and do not qualify for state vouchers. The greatest hindrance to the effectiveness of charter schools came, however, with Bush's NCLB program and the mandatory graade-by-grade tests that were forced upon the schools. This limited the style and method of teaching, cramming, as it did, the determinaton of 'effectiveness' into a narrow spectrum of the very worst fundamental determinants that have caused the school systems to fail in the first place.
Scary? Stalin would be proud! Re-writing history to match political dogma, that's unbelievable. I was aware that there have been some issues with Darwin and such. I guess it explains American's rather interesting version of world history.
Sorry if that's upset anyone, but I can't believe anyone can accept anything other than complete objectivity (as far as possible) in education. It's got to be a joke, right?
There seems to be a renewed onslaught of educational privatization supporters these days. Checker Finn, Milton Friedman and Paul Peterson have mostly been replaced by people like Michele Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein (although Eric Hanushek is still at it, appearing in Waiting for Superman). Sadly, Sec. of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama seem to be in favor of this madness.
Check out Diane Ravitch's excellent review of recent movies touting privatization and charters here:
THE MYTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS Ravitch was a key player in the Bush Dept. of Ed who was at one time a strong supporter of high stakes testing and charters. She has since come to change her views in light of the damage the last 10 years of testing mania has done to public schools.
Rhee and Klein recently had a propaganda piece that ran in the Washington Post, entitled "Manifesto" (that's right, comrade, Manifesto!)
There have been numerous thorough debunkings of this piece published online, but perhaps the most thorough and thoughtful comes from former NY Times Education reporter Richard Rothstein:
Note also that although former DC Superintendent Arlene Ackerman is listed as a signatory of Rhee et al.'s Manifesto, she has in fact withdrawn her support because the document published in the Post was not the one she claims to have endorsed:
Scary stuff