Education

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Better Questions Afford Better Solutions

There seems to be a debate over the use of standardized test results for accountability as the way to improve student achievement, and thus our education system.  Effectually, this debate is turning attention away from understanding the concrete educational experience toward the abstract measures.  No wonder teachers and children have to be incentivized to respectively teach and learn! Continue reading →

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Reformer Education

A recent Huffington Post article describes the agreement and disagreement between Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education) and Dennis Van Roekel (President of National Teachers Association) over the preparation and evaluation of teachers respectively.  Sadly what is not being discussed—as can be inferred from the article—is the very process of learning. Continue reading →

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Is This the Way We Want to Roll?

Like all other animals we are equipped with the capacity for sight smell taste touch and hearing as ways of sensing the immediate environment.  So as long as danger and opportunity are within arms’ reach, earshot, in line of sight or so close we could taste them we can react to them quite well. Continue reading →

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Democracy’s Viability Depends on Education

According to a recent Newsweek survey among 1,000 U.S. citizens, “29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.”  As Andrew Romano, the author of the Newsweek article noted, “…the world has changed. And unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more inhospitable to incurious know-nothings—like us.”  To quote Plato, “the price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”  The need for a curiosity of mind in all human endeavors, particularly in business, education and government, should be clear. Continue reading →

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Statistically Speaking

Quantum physicists tell us that at the subatomic level there is indeterminacy to the interactions and interconnections of particles—that they do not take place at a definite place and time—and thus (they) exhibit a likelihood of occurring; reality is associated with a statistical probability distribution.  In other words, variation is an inherent phenomenon characteristic of reality. Continue reading →

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Insights from the Impoverished

In a recent HuffingtonPost article David Chura brings to light the affect that poverty, despair and hopelessness have on people, especially during the formative years.  When individuals grow up in an environment within which such dark currents flow, they feel trapped and, as David Chura relates, a way out is likely imperceptible. Continue reading →