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Darcy Goshorn

Myths and Legends from E2BN - 0 views

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    way cool
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    Create your own myths and legends
Jason Christiansen

The Sun Magazine | Why Schools Don't Educate - 1 views

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    "Laments about our schools are nothing new; everyone is an expert, it seems, when it comes to education. While most critics point to the lack of funding or the shortage of teachers, John Taylor Gatto insists the problem goes deeper; we've turned our schools, he says, into "torture chambers." If that sounds abrasively radical, consider this: Gatto, with almost thirty years' experience as a public-school teacher, has just been named New York City's Teacher of the Year for 1989. Gatto teaches seventh grade at Junior High School 54 on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Something of a local legend, he's a chess player and a songwriter - and he grows garlic. He was once named Citizen of the Week for coming to the aid of a woman who had been robbed. He has lectured on James Joyce's Ulysses at Cornell University and has taught philosophy at California State College. Perhaps it's not surprising that he's been approached by a film company interested in making a movie of his life. Gatto once ran for the New York State Senate on the Conservative Party ticket, and some of his ideas are quite traditional: he stresses "family values" and questions increased funds for education. But he's too much of a maverick to be easily labeled. At a recent hearing in New York, he castigated the school system for "the murder of 1 million black and Latino children," and was met with a standing ovation. What follows is the text of the speech he gave upon being named Teacher of the Year."
anonymous

Crap Detection 101 : Howard Rheingold : City Brights - 5 views

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    " The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge - the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part - the part a machine can do. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: "spamming.""
Anne Van Meter

Ed schools vs. education - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - 5 views

  • "The achievement gap between the U.S. and the world's top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession," Mr. Hanushek wrote for Education Next.
    • anonymous
       
      What are your thoughts on this?
  • Today we lead the world only in how much we spend per pupil.
    • anonymous
       
      There are many reasons for this, of course. But, why do you suppose we're not getting the achievement?
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      Is it because we are forcing all kids to fit the same standards rather than develop different standards for different needs of the students?
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      Not in % of GDP we spend... Of course, those other countries spend on pupil support: extended parental leave, full health care...
  • Far and away the most important factor in student learning is the quality of teachers. If we got rid of just the bottom 5 percent to 7 percent of teachers, that alone would lift our kids to Canadian levels, Mr. Hanushek calculates.
    • anonymous
       
      This is a delicate subject. But, we all know folks who don't put forth the effort that they should. What IF we did this?
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      How do you compare this? In my school, I will have 183 students in my classes this year, and none will be considered advanced math students. Our calc teacher will have a majority of the advanced students and his enrollment numbers are at 93. How does this compare?
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      I only teach the lower level students (no complaints about that, I'm good at what I do) but they will not hit "advanced"!!
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Our teachers "do not know anything," according to Terrence Moore, who teaches history at Hillsdale College. That's largely because most have degrees in education rather than in the subjects they teach.
    • anonymous
       
      This statement just TICKS.ME.OFF!
    • anonymous
       
      Teachers are constrained by many different influences. Creativity is stifled, we teacher to the lowest common "core" denominator. Schools are not bold but old. We are rewarded by passing many useless measures, which unfortunately this article is based off of. Standardized test scores have blinded the public to what is important. Being able to problem solve and to be creative has always been the mark of an American, but that is being stripped of this generation b/c of the drive to wards testing.
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      And what are elementary teachers supposed to have degrees in? Do you really want a second grade teacher with a major in history? Or chemistry? In college, I took engineering and business calculus classes, business statistics and accounting, in addition to my education math classes. Does it matter that I didn't get a degree in math? Isn't it better that I also have courses in ancient near eastern history? And Arthurian legends? And American and English literature and American government?
  • "Future teachers are better served by getting good grounding in academic subject matter."
    • anonymous
       
      Is that true? Or, is it better to learn how to teach and to use technology for what its capable of doing, etc etc?
  • Ed schools seem to think knowing stuff isn't important.
    • anonymous
       
      Humbug!
  • "If you confront [teachers] with the fact that they, just as their students, can tell you nothing about the first 10 presidents or the use of the gerund, they will blithely respond that it is not so important for them to know things as to know 'how to know things,' " said Mr. Moore.
    • anonymous
       
      What do you think?
  • The reform needed is to remove state "certification" requirements. The reason for them, we're told, is to guarantee that only the qualified teach. Their real purpose is to keep the knowledgeable out of the classroom.
    • anonymous
       
      This is sounding more and more like a rant instead of a thoughtful argument.
  • "Yet these education schools," Mr. Moore points out, "not only do not impart real knowledge of academic subjects; they are actively hostile to it."
    • anonymous
       
      I need to see facts to support this.
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      The first three out of four years in college were spent taking more non-education courses than education related. We all had to take the full math/English/history/science core courses, then added psychology and sociology in addition to the education courses and several internships as well.
  • If instead of being forced to hire the certified, schools were free to hire the qualified, colleges of education would wither away -- and learning would blossom.
    • anonymous
       
      Many qualified folks lost their positions when they weren't deemed 'highly qualified.' 
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      Isn't that what certification is? An official statement that the person is indeed qualified?
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      But, wasn't he just complaining several paragraphs ago that 60% of teachers are certified in their subjects? And he wants to add more uncertified teachers?
  • Students learn a lot from the teacher who knows a lot," Mr. Moore said. "They learn nothing from the teacher who knows nothing."
    • anonymous
       
      Now, that's profound.
  • they aren't allowed to teach.
    • anonymous
       
      Why would they? The work is difficult, the pay is terrible and everyone outside of education thinks you're lazy.
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      A medical doctor teaching in HS? What, around their appointments with patients? 
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      And politicians take cushy jobs as lobbyists. I can't think of many teachers who only need to teach civics. It's only a small part of the full curriculum.
  • Not so many years ago, our schools were the best in the world
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      I'd like to see the supporting evidence on this.
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    An interesting article, and certainly not without other opinions.
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    An interesting article, and certainly not without other opinions.
Melissa Fedigan

Greek Mythology : Classical Gods, Goddesses, Legends from Homer's Greece - 0 views

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    Mythology site
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