The cowardice of the Chronicle

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 Posted in Education | 2 Comments »

So The Chronicle of Higher Education has seen fit to fire Naomi Schaefer Riley for criticizing the state of what passes for "Black Studies" in American universities. There's no need to break that down here, Jonathan Last has a telling ...

Expert Offense

Friday, January 27th, 2012 Posted in Education | No Comments »

Some of you may like my latest Image post, even though (or maybe because) it ranges from E.O. Wilson to homosexuality to Michael Polanyi to engineers to literature to the Dewey Decimal System to sparking revolution with bedtime stories. Here's ...

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll love ya, tomorrow

Thursday, December 16th, 2010 Posted in Education | 1 Comment »

Persistently underperforming schools are unlikely to change, a new study finds, or to get shut down. Which means we've found yet another way to throw even more money at the problem without substantively changing any of the underlying variables. Although that ...

Pay for performance, not pedigree

Monday, November 22nd, 2010 Posted in Education | 4 Comments »

It's nice to see both the U.S. Secretary of Education and billionaire Bill Gates call attention to the insanity of rewarding teachers for getting master's degrees (at a cost of $300 million per year in Gates's state of Washington alone), ...

Outsourced

Thursday, November 18th, 2010 Posted in Education | 3 Comments »

If what college students are reading doesn't depress you, perhaps hearing from the person who's writing their term papers will: "You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, ...

Tarnishing educators

Thursday, November 11th, 2010 Posted in Education | 1 Comment »

How fitting. I get so busy for a couple of days and nights that I don't have time to post, and then the first news item I come to is this Education Week piece about New Jersey governor Chris Christie's ...

School spending

Monday, November 8th, 2010 Posted in Education | 6 Comments »

It is nice to see teachers dedicated enough to spend their own money on school supplies, with which this home-schooler can empathize, though I have the added indignity of paying property taxes for schools I don't use. The real problem here ...

Friday, October 29th, 2010 Posted in Education | 1 Comment »

Washington Monthly lambastes university "dropout factories:" "This sort of indifference sets the stage for dismal institutions like Chicago State to prey on underserved communities, not just for years but for decades, without anyone really noticing. When a prestigious school such as ...

Cutting to the bone

Friday, October 29th, 2010 Posted in Education | No Comments »

Public school teachers in Buffalo, NY do their part to balance the budget by agreeing to forego state-financed plastic surgery, which totaled $9 million last year. It's nice to see everyone making sacrifices, isn't it? HT: Steve C.

Test overkill?

Thursday, October 28th, 2010 Posted in Education, The Art of Parenting | 1 Comment »

One parent's experience with schooling in a test-heavy, No Child Left Behind environment: "Then third grade--an absolute disaster. Worksheet after worksheet after worksheet. My smart little boy was slowly disappearing. I am totally against medicating a child to concentrate - but ...

We was never much for ur books n such

Thursday, October 28th, 2010 Posted in Education | 1 Comment »

Not only do high schools not teach literature well, they rarely require students to write research papers. Thus do we continue to skip gaily down the path toward a post-literate society.

Sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s fire

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 Posted in Education | 2 Comments »

Now that a teacher in Idaho is charged with sexually abusing a child, officials are reconsidering whether to ignore misdemeanor convictions in background checks, because the accused had four of them, for theft. Theft seems to have little to do ...

The benefits and costs of college sports

Monday, October 25th, 2010 Posted in Education | 2 Comments »

Charles Clotfelter waxes eloquent on the many benefits of big sports enterprises to universities, tossing in the whole kitchen sink, everything from civic pride to desegregation. It's not until the penultimate paragraph, however, that he hits on a persuasive, data-supported ...

If not higher education, at least a higher price

Monday, October 25th, 2010 Posted in Education | No Comments »

Richard Vedder questions whether seventeen million young people need to waste four or more years in college: "Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people ...

You do not have a right to inflict your stupidity on others

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 Posted in Education, Judo Chops | No Comments »

An appeals court in Ohio tells a teacher she doesn't have a First Amendment right to give her students Heather Has Two Mommies in the face of parental and school-board opposition. Perhaps her punishment can be to actually familiarize herself ...

Another reason nobody reads anything worthwhile any more

Friday, October 22nd, 2010 Posted in Education, The Artful Life | 2 Comments »

More evidence of the paucity of literary education in high schools, from professors at the University of Arkansas, and reported by Mark Bauerlein: "First, the content of the literature and reading curriculum for students in standard or honors courses is no ...

Culture’s catechism

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 Posted in Education, Theology | No Comments »

Archbishop Chaput of Denver on the subtle catechesis of culture: "Our culture is doing catechesis every day. It works like water dripping on a stone, eroding people’s moral and religious sensibilities, and leaving a hole where their convictions used to be. Haugaard’s ...

Better build more jail cells first

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 Posted in Education | No Comments »

A prosecutor in Detroit has an interesting idea about how to get parents more involved in their children's education. Wife taught there for several years, and she never had trouble getting parents to show up. Then again, she's way cuter ...

The University of Lake Wobegon

Monday, October 18th, 2010 Posted in Education | 19 Comments »

I feel like a great big jerk for asking, but is it really wise to send young people with Down Syndrome to college, and further, to ask professors to modify their teaching methods to accommodate these students? Maybe a different way ...

Are you sure your school is up to snuff?

Monday, October 18th, 2010 Posted in Education | 2 Comments »

I've heard more than once that the reason we continue to tolerate poor schools and shoddy politicians is that, while we believe the overall system is a mess, many of us imagine that our particular schools or congressmen are actually ...

On the problem of expecting steak from a sausage grinder

Friday, October 15th, 2010 Posted in Education | No Comments »

Pre-eminent consulting firm McKinsey offers another reason for stagnant U.S. student performance: most teachers were mediocre students. While other nations populate their teaching ranks with students who are in the top third, academically, at their universities, only about a fifth ...