When experimental results appear that can't be explained, they're often discounted as being useless. The researchers might say that the experiment was designed badly, the equipment faulty, and so on.It may indeed be the case the faults occurred, but it could also be the case when consistent information...
Let's face it, science is boring
This is why I bailed out of biology after completing the degree (okay, mostly). Fascinating to know. Stultifying to do.It is now time to come clean. This glittering depiction of the quest for knowledge is... well, perhaps not an outright lie, but certainly a highly edited version of the truth. Science...
Ritalin Cures Next Picasso
WORCESTER, MA—Area 7-year-old Douglas Castellano's unbridled energy and creativity are no longer a problem thanks to Ritalin, doctors for the child announced Monday. "After years of failed attempts to stop Douglas' uncontrollable bouts of self-expression, we have finally found success with Ritalin,"...
Have a Problem, Kid? Here, Take This Anti-Psychotic
New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions...
In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap
Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing...
Thanks for lives past and present
crossposted from Daily KosI was, perhaps appropriately, listening to a recording of the Brahms Requiem when I saw the email: Greg Kannerstein had passed away. Let me quote two paragraphs from Haverford College President Steve Emerson's ('74) email: A mentor, student, teacher, colleague, coach and...
Creating a Democratic Learning Community
is the focus of a new book by Sam Chaltain, National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy. Sam previously worked with the First Amendment Schools Project, an experience that helped shaped this book. He is also founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, which is a community educators,...
Feeling Technical?
I have an enormous problem communicating with the academic liberals--particularly the social scientists. I'm not talking about the sociologists who have creative, seminal minds like David Riesman or Robert Park. I'm talking about the ones who are just sort of electronic accessories to computers....
An open letter to President Obama on schools, education and teaching
Dear Mr. President,I am writing to you as a National Board Certified Social Studies Teacher who voted for your as President even despite my concerns about your approach to educational policy. You were not my first choice, precisely because I, like many educators I know, were concerned both about your...
Racism and Education Reform
A question for all you foundations experts. On another blog we were having a discussion about the relationship between racism/classism and the belief that education reform is the key to social and economic change for the poor. I wondered whether a focus on education reform is a PC way for liberals...
We Need Fewer Science Majors Not More
It's an article of faith: the United States needs more native-born students in science and other technical fields. The National Academies' influential Rising Above the Gathering Storm report in 2006 said the nation should "enlarge the pipeline of students who are prepared to enter college and graduate...
Bad Economy: Sharp Rise in Runaways
Over the past two years, government officials and experts have seen an increasing number of children leave home for life on the streets, including many under 13. Foreclosures, layoffs, rising food and fuel prices and inadequate supplies of low-cost housing have stretched families to the extreme, and...
To Remember is to Forget: Rethinking Memory
“Having a memory that is too accurate is not always good” [from an evolutionary standpoint] . . . Put another way, memory and imagination are two sides of the same coin. Like memory, imagination allows you to put yourself in a time and place other than the one we actually occupy. This isn’t just a...
Another Misleading Report About High School Dropouts and Income
So, below I have reproduced the take home table in a new report on the social/economic loss resulting from high school dropouts in America, and the major gains we could make if we could just get people to graduate. Of course, this argument is totally ridiculous. Among other things, it assumes the...
The Lost Generation
Only 46% of people aged 16-24 had jobs in September, the lowest since the government began counting in 194...
The Encultured Brain: Why Neuroanthropology? Why Now?
Why Neuroanthropology? Why Now?By Greg Downey and Daniel LendeNeuroanthropology also has direct implications for anthropology and neuroscience. It demonstrates the necessity of theorizing culture and human experience in ways that are not ignorant of or wholly inconsistent with discoveries about human...
Tuition Tax Credits
The right is always bleating about the need to have pilot programs that test their market-based approaches to educational reform. How’s this for a test?http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/27/the-fraud-of-gop-tax-and-school-choice-policy-shown-in-arizona/The state's Private School Tuition Tax...
I’m currently taking a doctoral level course on education and economics. At our first meeting, the professor (whose PhD is in Economics) noted that the past two decades have seen the increasing influence of economic theory on education policy, with a sharply rising curve in the 21st century. I asked...
Human Evolution and The Slow Development of Symbolic Thought
Fascinating FREE article at PLOS arguing that in human evolution symbolic thought evolved much later than the biological substrate that would have allowed it. I have no idea how generally accepted this is, but it's a fascinating idea with maybe some implications for human learning and theories of discourse.Evidently,...
How Fiction Reading Affects Empathy
Through a series of studies, we have discovered that fiction at its best isn't just enjoyable. It measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.h/t Neuroanthropolo...
Think you can't trust the President?? At least trust the kids!
Cross-posted from Social Issues (the blog of the John Dewey Society Commission on Social Issues) http://deweycsi.blogspot.comI was greeted early yesterday morning by a local newspaper article noting that some folks (specifically, "conservatives," but it's hard to know who that refers to)...
Two teachers on using test scores to evaluate teachers
One of the more controversial aspects of the Obama Education Department's approach has been its insistence upon using student test scores as a means of evaluating teachers for merit pay. This is in fact something Sec. Duncan has posed as a non-negotiable requirement for a state to be eligible for...
Lost Decade for Young Workers: The Job Situation for Our Graduating Students
Some of the report’s key findings include: * 31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it. * Strikingly, one in three young workers...
Incompetence as a Signalling Device: Academia in Italy
You can never complain about the US tenure process again . . ....
Teach for America vs. National Board Certification
If pressed to name my ultimate professional passion and goal—the thing I was put on earth to do—it might be something like “elevate the ideas and voices of excellent teachers.” Like many people in America, I think we can do a vastly better job of educating all our kids, across the socio-economic spectrum....
Education: LISTEN TO THIS MAN!
How do you personally feel about the future of American education?I’m panicked, I’m worried. I think if we continue along the path that we’re going, our greatest days are behind us. But, I still believe we can turn it around. That’s why I’m still in the classroom, and I’m gonna do my best. But as...
Childhood Food Insecurity / 10% of US Population Now on Food Stamps
Food StampsA record 32.2 million Americans are receiving food stamp assistance. As the economy grows bleak, 10 percent of the U.S. population fall below the threshold.Food Insecurity The states with the highest rates of food insecure children under 5 years of age. Food Insecure: unable to consistently...
More from the Textbook Wars
[Houston Chronicle] Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks. . . [read...
Race and Diversity in the Age of Obama
Wide ranging summary of current research on race, "assimilation," immigration, and inequality in America, by Orlando Patterson.h/t Neuroanthropolo...
NYT: Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?
Our new dean mentioned this posting to our college this week.http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pa...
How can we use bad measures in decisionmaking?
Reposted from my personal blog:I had about 20 minutes of between-events time Thursday morning and used it to catch up on two interesting papers on value-added assessment and teacher evaluation--the Jesse Rothstein piece using North Carolina data and the Koedel-Betts replication-and-more with San Diego...