Tag Archives: education

A Good Thing a Catholic Congregation is Doing in South Africa

Congregants recently pulled together enough funds to send to university 31 promising students from some of the poorest townships in South Africa: __________ I personally know of a Catholic priest in Southern California who is doing something similar (raising tuition … Continue reading

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Do MOOCs Spell the End of the Traditional College Experience?

At The American Interest Nathan Harden, playing prophet, makes a pretty alarming prediction: In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology … Continue reading

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Not Waving, But Drowning

At the Daily Beast, Megan McArdle sees college as the American middle class’s last desperate bet for economic security in the fast-shifting global economy: If employers have mostly been using college degrees to weed out the inept and the unmotivated, then … Continue reading

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Blessed are the Ignorant: Rick Santorum Adds a Beatitude to the Sermon on the Mount

“Blessed are ye who lack degrees, for such is the Party of God.” And they applauded. What manner of man is this? _____ “But woe unto those that are educated, for they art snobs.” Here’s a transcript of Rick Santorum’s exact … Continue reading

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The Bright American Future

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Salman Khan’s TED Talk and Website

______ And here’s his exciting website.

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Changing the Education Paradigm

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Critical Thinking Quote Watch: Derek Bok on the Primary Goal of a College Education (and Higher Education’s General Failure at Reaching It)

The following quote comes from Derek Bok’s book, Our Underachieving Colleges (Princeton 2006, p. 8): Many [college] seniors graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers. Many cannot reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, … Continue reading

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At Last, an Honest Budget: Why I’m Glad Jerry Brown is Governor of California

When Jerry Brown ran for governor last year, I voted for him. One reason I did so was because I believed that he would be likely to keep everything above-board, budget-wise. He has delivered in spades. After recently vetoing a budget … Continue reading

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Community Colleges, the Enrollment Bottleneck, and a Dirty Little Secret

On April 8, 2011, the New York Times ran a piece on students making: . . . a strategic financial decision to attend community college first as a cost saving measure. The cost savings can be large (perhaps somewhere in the … Continue reading

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Critical Thinking in the Classroom Watch: What Miguel Aguilar Does

In the Los Angeles Times this weekend is an article about an unusually successful 5th grade teacher in LA Unified, Miguel Aguilar, and I notice that he very specifically teaches critical thinking to his students. Here, for example, is how the Times describes … Continue reading

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What’s an undergraduate education for?

I like the way Tim Lee, a CATO Institute scholar, thinks about undergraduate education: [T]he primary function of an undergraduate education is to allow the student to join a scholarly community, and in the process to soak up the values and attitudes … Continue reading

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Two Questions for Professors: Are You Demanding and Do You Teach Critical Thinking?

The following is in Salon today: [W]hat if the downward trend in learning extends into the echelons of higher education? That’s what Richard Arum argues in “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.” Arum, a sociology and education professor at … Continue reading

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The Decline and Fall of the Male Empire

Hanna Rosin charts it:

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California Budget Crisis Watch: As Jerry Brown Assumes the Governorship, Education Braces for Big Spending Cuts

The State of California faces a $28-billion funding deficit over the next 18 months, and education costs consume 40% of the state’s budget. That means that cuts to education are coming. Big cuts. Here’s the Los Angeles Times today: Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who … Continue reading

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The Case against Dumbing Down

I don’t know about you, but I’m totally against dumbing down subjects or language use before my students. I believe, for example, that if the undergraduates sitting before me in a class have limited vocabularies (and they all invariably do), it’s … Continue reading

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Sarah Palin’s America

The Sarah Palin life model is internalized by a child:

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Sarah Palin Shows Disdain for a Middle Class Teacher

In the following clip, Sarah Palin doesn’t even try to conceal her contempt for a teacher (that is, someone devoted to developing the life of the mind and a love of books in her young charges). It’s as if Sarah Palin were saying to this … Continue reading

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Why Read Literature or Watch Good Films? Martha Nussbaum on the Role of the Imagination in the Cultivation of Empathy

Here’s a great quote from Martha Nussbaum’s new book, From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law  (Oxford 2010, xvii): That ‘terrified’ gay teenager needs, and deserves, equal respect, and a sphere of liberty equal to that enjoyed by … Continue reading

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A great Henry David Thoreau quote

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what … Continue reading

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