a FRUITful education

“The union has also appealed to Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett for state aid, but he has turned down the teachers’ requests. The state’s education secretary, Ron Tomalis, has said that because the district mismanaged its money, its employees shouldn’t expect any help.”

The teachers are extraordinarily admirable, but don’t you think there’s a little bit of a problem here?

(Source: educatedtodeath)

Please read this article. It’s brilliant and expresses so much. Once, I attended a discussion with a panel of Education Professors and former teachers. After two hours of speaking about the problems of our education system, I asked “So what is being done to fix all of these problems then?” They all (about 8 of them) looked at one another, stunned. Finally one replied: “Well, it’s just so hard so nobody tries.” TRY. We can get our voices heard.

AMEN!

educatedtodeath:

jtotheizzoe:

Can These Simple Cartoons Help Redesign Education? 

If you’ve ever wondered “What’s Joe’s motivation in life, and this whole Tumblr science blog thing he does?” … this would be a good place to start.

We owe it to ourselves to do more with to unlock the immense potential that currently sits in our classrooms. Adolescence is one of the most creative periods in life, we are hard-wired to test our limits during that time in our lives. So why stifle that in regimented, standardized classroom settings? I’m sure we can do better.

Were you bored in school? Guess what, so was Einstein! Does that make you a genius, too? Not likely, but according to a new project called Born to Learn, it does suggest that our educational practices might need a rethink. The project’s main thrust is a series of short, simple animations aimed at raising awareness about how the minds of young humans are “born to learn”—but not necessarily “be taught.” 

“Your brain is the planet’s most powerful learning machine. But our current systems of education aren’t doing enough to unlock our true potential. This is what Born to Learn is all about,” the site proclaims. The short films (there are two so far) “sum up over 20 years of rigorous and complex research” culled from history and evolutionary psychology. The main thrust seems to be that a) contrary to what Fight Club says, you are a beautiful and unique snowflake; and b) everything would be better if we taught kids by doing instead of memorizing, and trained them to see connections and “the big picture” rather than isolated pieces of problems with no clear purpose.

“Adolescence is not a problem, it’s an opportunity.”

(via Co.Design)

Take a moment and watch this on the value of adolescence. #edreform #learning

An experiment in Western Kenya had parent groups give prizes to teachers whose students performed best on standardized tests. Test scores of students covered by the program initially rose, but subsequent monitoring of these students found that they quickly regressed back to the same level as those students not covered by the program. Teachers were apparently ‘teaching to the test,’ with no lasting impact on student performance.” – William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden. Page 374.

Interesting that this is frowned upon in Kenya even though teachers are made to “teach to the test” in the United States with all its standardized testing. If Kenyan students don’t retaining information “taught to the test,” do American students?

nikkilikewhoa:

Best Teacher I Ever Had
by David Owen
(Source: Reader’s Digest - Asian Edition - , April 1991, pp. 47-48)

Mr. Whitson taught sixth-grade science. On the first day of class, he gave us a lecture about a creature called the cattywampus, an ill-adapted nocturnal animal that was wiped out…

SO GOOD.

alexainslie:

Taylor Mali on “What Teachers Make” (by jacklefttown via Clem)