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| The genius-beasts of reform education and their technological "advances" |
Welcome to the Sunday Education Reader for 06.10.12. Tweets of the week include the oft-dismissed learning discipline of memorization, the joys of using social media in the classroom, the harm to the brain using social media, stress reducing behaviors by students because of high stakes testing...and a story coming out of a science fiction novel (or a Bill Gates grant) on how to determine teacher effectiveness. This last tweet is really unbelievable.
- The British system believes fairy tales and memorization of poetry is important in curriculum. Doesn't sound like American Common Core standards and the emphasis on factual reading....Primary school children to be expected to learn and recite poetry http://gu.com/p/387nm/tf
- (The principal) replaced the school's "static, boring" website with what has become a heavily used Facebook page, and his teachers encourage students to research, write, edit, perform and publish their work online. I hope students' jobs are never boring...it will be quite a shock to the students and expectations of life...Making students literate in the digital age http://buff.ly/p7v5M8
- Is too much social media a bad thing?....BBC News - Texting at night 'disrupts children's sleep and memory' http://bbc.in/KTmgFl
- “Now I have to worry about this, too? Really? This shouldn’t be what they need to do to get where they want to, ” said Dodi Sklar, after listening to her ninth-grade son, Jonathan, describe how some classmates abuse stimulants....Seeking Academic Edge, Teenagers Abuse Stimulants: At high schools across the United States, pressure over g... http://nyti.ms/K9RoB4 nyt
- And you thought Polar Go Fit bracelets providing student information was invasive? Now your human capital can wear a bracelet providing information on bodily reaction to teaching methods. Schools may not have to rely on those assessments after all to determine who is a good teacher or a bad teacher....Is the Galvanic Skin Response bracelet the best education reform idea yet? http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/09/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get-crazier/
The return to grammar and poetry in England is certainly an improvement. I'm very happy to see that Latin and Greek were among the second languages on the table as possibilities for the students. Rightly taught, classical languages give the student a huge advantage in the study of grammar and syntax, and thus improve reading comprehension.
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