More on education
Image via Wikipedia I wrote earlier about whether universities have a future, a subject I’m obviously interested in as a I work in one. After writing that entry, I came across these quotes from the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises on the subject of education and schooling: It is often asserted that the poor man’s [...]
The end of universities
Image via Wikipedia Been finding a few articles on the end of universities recently. 1) Universities will be “irrelevant” by 2020, says professor. This doesn’t say much that is new (“institutions that do not adapt will will out to those that do”), and I’m still waiting for all these universities to go belly-up and for [...]
Teaching in Japan: the Way of the Dragon
Image via Wikipedia The scene: a highschool gym which also serves as assembly hall. The hall is filled with rowdy students. A stranger takes the podium. No-one pays him the slightest attention. He stands there gazing around at the chattering students. “Why don’t you say something?” asks a girl at the front, “you peed in [...]
What is the value of schooling?
Image via Wikipedia I have been visiting the Mises.org website daily since I discovered it a few months ago. Today, I came across this blog entry by Tim Swanson, Is there a future for b-schools? (= business schools) which led me to this article Did Joseph Wharton Cause the US Financial Meltdown?(Oct. 21, 2008). I [...]
Digital pens and intrusive pedagogy (or good and bad advertising)
Recently I attended a demonstration of a digital pen by Hitachi (sorry, Japanese-language only) at my university. The plan is to distribute 100 of these digital pens to various teachers and students and see what they come up with in terms of evaluations of its usefulness or new ideas for exploiting this technology. Altho the [...]
Compulsory sex education in UK
Startling statistics in this BBC article about sex and relationship education in schools in the UK. Lessons about personal, social and health matters including sex and relationships will be compulsory in all England’s schools from ages five to 16… A BBC poll of more than 1,000 people found two thirds would support sex lessons from [...]
Revisiting “A Vision of students Today”
I’ve been an admirer of Mike Wesch, anthropology prof at Kansas State University, ever since I saw his very cool and slick video The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version) He then had some of his Cultural Anthropology students help him make another YouTube video to tell the world what they think of their education: [...]
Japan news: over 100 teachers opt for demotion
For one of the classes I teach, I need to find news items in English about Japan (especially items that look at Japanese society from an unusual or non-Japanese point of view), and Japan Probe is a good source of such news. Japan Probe is a Japan news blog in English that focusses on general-interest [...]
Is evolution a fact or a theory?
School Gate is a (UK) Times Online blog about schools and schooling in Britain. I read it to keep abreast of what is going on in British education. Today’s entry is This Science expert says that children should be taught creationism at school The comments are particularly interesting and mostly well informed, but even more [...]
