While watching Miss Teen South Carolina give such a horrendous answer during the national competition when asked why so many people can't find the USA on a map was both mind blowing and sad. At least now someone is stepping up to address the lack of maps in the US. Over at MapsForUs, users can submit maps of all sorts to help America’s youth locate just about anything. Please help the cause and donate a map today.
P.S. I’m submitting a great map of my trip to Maui from earlier this year.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Maps for the Kids
Monday, July 09, 2007
Chrildren's TV Program Kills Off Its Main Character
On Friday, a children’s television show call “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” aired its final episode. Showing on Hamas satellite television, the show features a character named Farfur – an Islamic version of Mickey Mouse.
The show’s finale was more like something I would’ve expected in the Soprano’s finale than in a kid’s show.
Basically the show turns Farfur into a martyr that died at the hands of a Jewish “terrorist” that wanted to take Farfur’s land from him. While disturbing at this might sound in a child’s show. Here is a translated excerpt of a call from a three year old child that was aired on the program:
Saraa' to the child caller: "You saw that the Jews let Farfur die as a Shahid. What do you want to say to the Jews?"
Three-year-old on the phone: "We don't like the Jews because they are dogs! We will fight them!"
Saraa': "No, the Jews are good...the Jews are our friends and we play with them. Isn't that so?"
Child: "They killed Farfur!"
Saraa: "That's right...the Jews are criminals and enemies. We must expel them from our land."
I remember my favorite childhood shows in great clarity. I know they had a great impact on the way I viewed the world at that point in my life. Kids are extremely impressionable – period. And people wonder why there’s such instilled hatred between certain groups in the world. Well, I’d say here a pretty good example.
Friday, June 22, 2007
I wish I were an engineer
So I went into college looking to earn a degree in computer engineering and walk out with a Bachelors in Journalism - oops. But I have to say, as a kid I loved building things. I still kind of do. This video was created by Hydo, a Scandinavian producer of oil, gas and aluminum. It's goal? To get kids interested in engineering. If I saw this spot when I was a tike, I might be building computers today rather than writing on them. You can see the second spot here.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
How to Save Higher Education
One of several reasons I left academe was the game-playing that students, faculty, and administrators played with grading. The school was funded on full-time equivalent students, which meant that, while lip service was paid to quality, it was only coincidental and randomly associated with the real task--making sure students didn't drop out of school or classes. The students understood and the administration made sure the faculty did. So anyone daring to be "hard" would lose students and pud classes became the norm. "Pud" meant either average grades for no work or A's for everyone. Grades, GPAs, and education became meaningless.
Well, finally someone has not only glommed onto the problem but has figured out a way to deal with it. Instead of grading the traditional way, where no one can tell how hard a class was or how the students mixed talent-wise, do it this way: statistically account for the level of students in the class (entering standardized test scores, school and/or major GPA) and the grades given in it so that getting an A in a class filled with dullards (and yes, this is elitist, and yes, these classes exist) who also get As won't count as much on the GPA as an A in a class that demands something and has good students in it. Getting a B in such a class might even count more than an A in the too-close-to-the-truth basketweaving class. Students just there to party on parents' dimes (and yes, they exist in large numbers) might not care one way or the other, but on the margin you would discourage the sluffing off of brighter kids afraid to challenge themselves or learn important things for fear of a later grade point that might keep them out of grad school or a great job. Of course, some of them at U of NC where this is being considered are griping already but tough. College is there for the purpose of serving this society and our communities, not students, and the decline of higher ed began when we forgot that a few decades back.
But more important than anything else in this, and not mentioned in the article: how do you get employers to actually start basing decisions on that GPA? Grad schools aren't enough, although they would be a good start. In any case, this brightened my mood more than anything I've read in a long time. Which means I need to do a "Weather, Water, Energy" post and get back to normal.
Friday, April 27, 2007
No Teacher Left Behind?
Read this and tell me how requiring schools to test higher will solve the problems the story details. A great example of “on high” reform that doesn’t get close to reality in the classroom and why and how our national cluelessness on this is just greasing our skids.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Somewhere berlin niebuhr is crying...
…that, or saying “This is what I’ve been saying!” (via C&L).
Twelth-graders' reading skills have hit a new low, but their grades continue to climb, according to federal officials who suspect the nation's schools are inflating grades.This is one of the thousands of examples in this country in which only a major change—one that will cause short-term pain/confusion/annoyance—can fix a system that is broken. Here’s my question: has major change of this scale—where you have to completely change a collective mindset—ever actually taken place? Pearl Harbor and WWII completely changed the way Americans thought about sacrifice (though 9/11 sure as hell didn’t). Anything else? And what would be the Pearl Harbor of the education system?
Thursday, February 22, 2007
No Skill Left Behind
Okay, here's the evidence that schools have gone off track that we've mentioned before. National math and reading tests find students with high grade points who nevertheless test badly. Not really a shock. I got out of higher ed in great part because of the disconnect between the grades we were expected to give to keep our numbers up and the needs for students to be graded accurately. But there are a couple of things in this article that I think need pointing out.
I've blasted the "testing" obsession that states and the feds have for a variety of reasons. I'm not opposed, however, to standard NATIONAL tests that can't be coached specifically. I do object to teachers or schools being judged on the results, but, used for specified purposes, the tests can tell us when the games like the ones in the first paragraph are happening. And what do I mean by "specified purposes"? Well, if we were starting public education from scratch today, like "Lost" or something, we surely wouldn't start with what we have now, historically based and sadly insufficient. I would propose that we dump grade levels and assignment by age completely. I would set subjects in developmental order and have students move from one level to a higher level in the subject once they had demonstrated the requisite knowledge.
This is where the tests would come in. If a student showed "basic" levels of knowledge, then s/he would get that designation in it, "proficient" if higher, and "mastery" if highest, sorta like the article describes near the end. So, at any point in time and at any age, a student would have a "report card" that would show whether and at what level s/he had achieved in a subject. Not dependent on age or any certain level of achievement, just a record of what the student can actually be shown to know or be able to do. When the student is legally able to work, s/he would have a record of performance. If the levels are high enough, no matter what age, s/he could go on to post-secondary education. Gone would be social promotion, flunking, grade points, etc. The tests would show the students' learning to all.
Yes, yes. Not gunna happen. Where's the implementation plan? What about sports or other extracurricular? Yada, yada. You're free to come up with your own. My point is that we have a dysfunctional educational structure, based on tradition and inertia rather than maxing student potential or demonstrating true learning. Proof? Grade points that say students know what they don't. Sure, mine is crazy. Like what we've got is so good. And no "No Child Left Behind" stuff will really change it. Now that's crazy.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Looking Forward to the Future
How long can a nation retain its world leadership with stupid citizens? Not rhetorical. Check this out.
"The lowest-ranking country in terms of discounting evolution is Turkey. The United States is next," said Miller, who has analyzed surveys on belief in evolution from around the world. "The way we characterize religious fundamentalists in Turkey and in the U.S. is that they are both one-book religions.
"Fundamentalists in this country say everything you need to know is in the Bible, period. Islamists say everything you need to know is in the Koran, period," said Miller, a professor in political science.
That Turkey. Quite a partner, huh? And could this finding have anything to do with this--the growing health care (or lack of it) in this nation?
What is clear is that the problem is getting worse, not diminishing, she warns. The fragmented, uncoordinated healthcare system is plagued by high administrative costs and missed opportunities to control chronic conditions and prevent life threatening conditions.
If the US hopes to achieve a high performance health system that is value for money, it will have to tackle the perplexing problems of access, quality, and cost, and overcome considerable political and economic obstacles, as well as institutional resistance to change.
We'll hop right on that as soon as we get folks to agree on how bacteria and germs become resistant to our drugs, right?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Doing Education Reform Wrong
The geniuses who gave us No Child Left Behind, including Teddy "Most Overrated Senator in US History" Kennedy, are at it again. This is not completely stupid but the dumbass dwarfs the smart. Here's one reason why. I was sentenced to nine years on a school board once, and we feared every other year reporting of state test scores. Why? Because a little town to the south had twins who were test-crunching giants. Every year they took a test in a grade, that town would beat the rest of us like the AFC thumping the NFC and we would have to explain why we weren't doing as well as that little nothing place. Of course, since testing then was every other grade, in the off years the little town scored what you might expect and we were the kings. Nothing changed but who was taking the tests. And the twins' teacher in any given year would earn a bonus for their demonstrably superior teaching . . . until the next year when they would be up for firing for their decline.
So you see, the problems with this proposal go well beyond teaching to test. Grading teachers on what group of kids (and parents, community, activities, etc.) are available each year is seriously challenged and threatens not just stopping learning just to take tests but also the corruption and stupidly we're seeing more and more already. Learning happens not just with a teacher and you have to take all the factors into account when making judgments. If you don’t baseline the kids the teacher has, then the numbers mean little or nothing. For example, rarely is any formal effort made to match kids with teachers best suited to their learning skills, to link this year’s teacher with last year’s or next year’s.
These outcomes are typical “top down” BS that sounds good on paper but will not work in practice, like Merit Pay where teachers judged by admins who were rarely great teachers and proved not committed to it by moving to admin. This new proposal is an educational Iraq—go into it with imperial imperatives and watch disaster happen. You want to get better results? Put money into drawing and keeping good minds into the profession and making sure they’re kept up-to-date on their subject and pedagogy. Make the effort to match students to teachers and curricula. It's not wrong to demand demonstration of student achievement in subjects but, if you do, don’t insist on the traditional “grade” system and then get mad when kids don’t get socially promoted. Base records on student mastery of subject at achieved basics, mastered subject, and excelled, and let kids progress based on “achieving” and then picking how much further they want to go—no more age-based grades. And employers and colleges have to make clear what mastery is necessary for what they want and need. Most of all, we need to encourage “bottom up” efforts that innovate and test new ideas and then disseminate the ones that do—completely the opposite of what these mandated, top-down, “DC knows best” idiocies pull. This isn't rocket science but it does take sense and recognition that people at the top have rarely made things better. You seeing any of that?
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