Imagine if we acted on these insights?
Are We Putting the (Knowledge) Cart Before the (Emotional) Horse?
What would you say if I told you that all of our current national efforts to improve public education were blind to the actual way people learned and interacted with the world? Depressing, right? But it’s true. To prove it, watch this short video — just 100 seconds long — and be prepared to describe to yourself what you see: … Read More
Digging For Education
I remember once when I was little, trying to dig a hole in the yard deep enough to stand in and look around me at ground-level. Silly and odd, I know. But I wanted to. So I started digging and soon I did have a pretty deep hole, but I was tired and my muscles had begun hurting so I … Read More
The Many Faces of Thea
It wasn’t until the end of her tragically short life that Thea Leopoulos first discovered the depth of her talent as an artist. A buoyant, beautiful girl with dark eyebrows and sharp brown eyes, Thea spent her childhood believing the experts who first told her, back in third grade, she was unworthy of acceptance to the local program for “gifted … Read More
The Three Most Important Questions in Education
It’s graduation season again – yet nobody seems to be celebrating. On college campuses, graduates are entering an economy in which the stable career paths of yesteryear are disappearing – and the specialized job opportunities of tomorrow have yet to appear. And in communities across the country, parents and young people are left wondering what exactly those past four years … Read More
Let's Scrap the High School Diploma
This month, schools across the country are hard at work preparing auditoriums, printing programs, checking commencement speeches, and readying for the arrival of one of our society’s most cherished rites of passage – the high school graduation ceremony. Perhaps by this time next year, we can do our students an even greater service and scrap the high school diploma altogether. … Read More
Those Who Can Teach; Life Lessons Learned
He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches ~ George Bernard Shaw [Man and Superman, 1903] "A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." ~ George Bernard Shaw I heard the words for as long as I recall. The meaning was intricately woven into my mind. I, as all little children … Read More
How to piss the world off!!!
Almost two, I stand there watching and listening, trying to learn to talk. It’s like I knew what was being said but could not say it. Frustrated as people would tease, say mama or dada I would try, but it always came out wrong. Over and over, the tongue twisters made me madder and madder until some days I just … Read More
What Joel Klein Doesn't Understand About Teaching — and What We Should Do Instead
In case you missed it, former NYC Schools Chief Joel Klein had an Op-Ed in this weekend’s Washington Post in which he, rightly, urges us to do what it takes to establish a true long-term teaching profession. His recipe for doing so, however, reveals the extent to which he has misdiagnosed both the problem and its potential solutions. Klein begins … Read More
