teaching + learning
Why English Is Tough in Japan | A New Japan
An interesting article on English education in Japan over at The Diplomat. Referring to the Japanese government’s making English classes compulsory in 5th and 6th grade (that’s the last two years of primary school for you non-U.S. readers) onwards, law-school graduate Hiroki Ogawa writes, The reality is that raw English ability alone is unlikely to [...]
Key ideas – a list in progress
Camouflaged ! Originally uploaded by Kamala L See the picture? Can you help her pick out the handful of items that she really needs to keep? What are the key ideas in the field you are teaching? If you are teaching American history or culture or literature, what are the key ideas that you think [...]
How to raise entrepreneurs (TED talk)
Cameron Herold didn’t do well in school. Fortunately, his dad knew what to do about that.
A good speaker tells stories
Lawrence W. Reed, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), here gives a talk on his seven principles of public policy. Sounds (yawn) fascinating. It’s actually a good example of how to give an interesting talk. Reed tells stories, and these stories elucidate, educate, enlighten. First off, there’s his funny story about the property [...]
New York public schools do not enforce discipline
Cover of The Blackboard Jungle: A Novel David Roemer writes: I was a teacher at three public high schools in New York City. Students got an excellent education at two (Edward R. Murrow and Midwood) and a poor education at one (Erasmus). The reason was that there is in NYC a two-tier system. At good [...]
Book Notes – The Shadow University (2)
Following on… Catherine MacKinnon and Stanley Fish… are explicit in their disdain for the First Amendment‘s absolutist and noncontextual approach. In her influential book Only Words, MacKinnon, a feminist legal scholar at the University of Michigan, introduced her chapter “Equality and Speech” with the blunt statement that “the law of equality and the law of [...]
Book Notes – Deschooling Society (2)
Image via Wikipedia Following on… For most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. ((From the introduction.) the existence of the university is necessary to guarantee continued social criticism (p. 37) The man addicted to being taught seeks his security in compulsive teaching. (p. 39) once the self-taught man [...]
Book Notes – Deschooling society
Image via Wikipedia Here are some quotes from chapter 1 of Ivan Illich‘s classic Deschooling Society, which I recently re-read. The quotes are sentences or ideas that caught my attention. They are not necessarily representative, either of the book itself, nor of Illich’s or my thinking; that is, you won’t get an objective summary of [...]
“The students will not tolerate the teacher having power in the classroom”
This is a reply to a comment kindly left by OldAndrew of Scenes from the Battleground blog, which was a reply to this blog entry. I originally just replied to OldAndrew’s comment in a comment, but my reply got too long for a comment. if students object to the very idea of the teacher being [...]
Scenes from the Battleground responds
Image by Getty Images via Daylife OldAndrew, blogger of Scenes from the Battleground, took the trouble to comment on my earlier post (his comment is here, my original blog post is here). Thank you, OldAndrew. I’ve been reading more of his blog posts. At first, it was horrified fascination that kept me reading his stuff, [...]
