Education Reform: New School

tltgroup.org

As previously discussed, I believe we are at the dawn of a revolution in education. The example from Stanford is just the tip of the iceberg. The Khan Academy is another example that is more established.

Education reform: unbundling the university

KaplanInternational.com

A revolution in education is coming. This article from The Atlantic discusses alternate higher education. 

For a long time now, universities have flourished by offering a bundled package of knowledge and credentialing. People attended university in order to learn stuff that they couldn't learn elsewhere -- because the experts weren't elsewhere -- and to be certified by those experts as having actually learned said stuff. The bundle has been a culturally powerful one.

Harvard Econ on Taxes

NY Times

Economist Greg Mankiw of Greg Mankiw's blog suggests four keys to a better tax system:

• Broaden the base and lower the rates
• Tax consumption
• Tax bads rather than goods
• Keep it simple 

Studying teenager web use

The NYT has a piece about a 34 year old Phd who is studying children's use of social media. I'm glad someone is doing it. 

Dr. [Danah] Boyd — a senior researcher at Microsoft, an assistant professor at New York University and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

“The single most important thing about Danah is that she’s the first anthropologist we’ve got who comes from the tribe she’s studying,”

News Flash: PE teachers are dumb

The Education Testing Service (ETS) keeps all kinds of stats and apparently PE teachers come from the low end of the already low average that make up teaching majors.

"What 10,000 Harvard MBAs think"

Inc. has a story about the results of a "Survey on US competitiveness":

The alums fingered a complicated tax code, an inefficient political system, a struggling K-12 education system, and persistent pressure from abroad as reasons why the U.S. will become less competitive over the next three years–something 71 percent think will happen.

Duty in Afghanistan, and Afghanis

A guest post on TBD about soldiers dealing with Afghanis and Alexander the Great:

Of Alexander, gods and bathrooms

Motivation and Talent

Two interesting articles about personal development and expertise:

To Develop Expertise, Motivation is Necessary but Insufficient

Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters

Video: History of the Modern World

Niall Ferguson's TED talk: the 6 Killer Aps of prosperity

COL Yingling is retiring to teach

Why an Army colonel is retiring early — to become a high school teacher

A better way to teach science

An interesting article from Discover Mag:

“overwhelming” evidence that lectures are an ineffective way for universities to achieve the educational objectives they set.

"Dear Student...

...I don't lie awake at night thinking of ways to ruin your life."

An economist, and Forbes contributor, wrote this letter to students everywhere. I like his point.

Maryland Schools #1

I had no idea. I don't know if this is good for MD or bad for the country.

Be curious...

...like the Tako!

"Young children are like sponges, full of optimistic curiosity that fuels their confidence to be creative. But as they get older, they lose that magical openness, and, for many, the door to creativity closes very early."

How do the rich earn their livings?

An interesting post from Greg Mankiw's blog:

of the Top 0.1% earners of the polulation:

• 18 percent are financial professionals.
• 42 percent are executives, managers, or supervisors in nonfinancial businesses. More than half of those are in closely-held (presumably often small) businesses.
• 7 percent are lawyers.
• 6 percent are in medicine.
• 3 percent are in arts, media, or sports.
• Less than 1 percent are professors or scientists.  :(

Is guessing not attempting?

A post from our good friends at the Freakonomics blog describes a teacher who subtracts a 1/4 point for wrong answers, but gives 1/4 point for answering "I don't know" (full text below). I think I understand the reasoning but to me it feels like a reward for quiting. Do the benefits for knowing when to say IDK outweigh the confidence one can get from attempting and succeeding at something risky? I think no, but I don't know.

"In my classroom, students lose 1/4 point for wrong answers on quizzes. But for writing “I don’t know,” they get 1/4 point. (A correct answer is 1 point). The rationale is that if someone is in a medical emergency, and someone asks me what should be done, the answer “I don’t know” is much preferable to a guess. “I don’t know” leads the questioner to ask someone who hopefully is knowledgeable.
Part of why “I don’t know is so hard to say” stems from an education system based on attempting every single question, whether you know the answer or not.
P.S.: End-of-year student survey showed students strongly supported the +1/4 point IDK and -1/4 point wrong-answer system."