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The Girl Wars : Terrible Mother on Offsprung.com It seems like half the interactions between women can be classified as Girl Wars. Do we ever get out of this? And why the hell are girls so vicious to each other? When did they start this? Just a few years ago, Thing One was small and…
Read more →I got an A in Phallus 101 - Los Angeles Times The problem that the Young America's Foundation list, first issued in 1995, highlights isn't simply the hollowing-out of the traditional humanities and social sciences disciplines at colleges and their replacement by crude indoctrination sessions in whatever is ideologically fashionable — although that's a serious…
Read more →Limp language leaves kids with an awesome paucity of speech [Teenagers on which the author eavesdrops] They've got one all-purpose word -- "awesome" -- to cover everything from mild approval to exhilaration. When they're indignant or angry, they have to fall back on clichés -- including a few tired four-letter words. ... Today, teens aren't…
Read more →November 17, 2006, Hour Two: The Family that Couldn't Sleep / The Artist and the Mathematician Starting in the 1930s, Nicolas Bourbaki published dozens of papers, becoming a famous mathematician. There was just one problem: he didn't exist. Join Ira in this hour on Science Friday for a conversation with Amir Aczel about the genius…
Read more →Malaysian National News Agency :: BERNAMA PEKAN, Nov 4 Bernama -- Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has called for the countrys memory-based education system to be replaced with one that promotes mind development so that the students become more creative and critical. The Deputy Prime Minister said the education system was currently directed towards memorisation…
Read more →From the Wikipedia entry : Accepted is a 2006 comedy motion picture about a group of high school seniors who, after being rejected from all colleges to which they had applied, create their own college. ... At one point Bartleby [the main character] wants to end the charade before it begins, but is overcome with…
Read more →Bearing witness to a teacher's task - The Boston Globe Many people believe they know what makes effective schools because they have attended school. This is akin to saying I am a physician because I've been in a hospital. I challenge any of this group to spend a week teaching in a public school classroom…
Read more →The Books Google Could Open The nation's colleges and universities should support Google's controversial project to digitize great libraries and offer books online. It has the potential to do a lot of good for higher education in this country. ... This powerful tool will make less well-known written works or hard-to-find research materials more accessible…
Read more →BostonHerald.com - Opinion & Editorial: Education studies show: $$ wasted on them Choice, competition and freedom are core values that define what we are about as a nation. The Bush administration proposal to appropriate $100 million in opportunity scholarships for poor kids in failing schools is a needed program. Let’s use our limited taxpayer dollars…
Read more →English is Spoken Here - Yahoo! News The second dumbest statement in the debate over Senate legislation establishing English as the national language came from Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who said it was needlessly divisive. ADVERTISEMENT Wait. A law that unifies a country under a single language is divisive? What kind of logic is that?…
Read more →Florida high court kills school voucher program In a ruling expected to reverberate through battles over school choice in many states, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a voucher program for students attending failing schools, saying the state Constitution bars Florida from using taxpayer money to finance a private alternative to the public…
Read more →BBC - Radio 4 - Woman's Hour -Phone-in: parents and schools A recent survey from the Department of Education shows that parents are increasingly unhappy with their local schools. Satisfaction levels have fallen by 10% during the past year and more than half of parents saw no change in the quality of schooling or thought…
Read more →The Video Game Revolution: "Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked" by Henry Jenkins | PBS The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence. According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for…
Read more →BBC - Radio 4 - Today Programme Listen Again David Cameron promised to tackle the lack of women MPs from his party. What can he do? Audio here An interesting discussion of three conservative MPs each arguing a different position. 1. women shortlists are necessary, 2. more older women (of non-child bearing age) should be…
Read more →Universal preschool's big payoff - Los Angeles Times IT HAS LONG been an American article of faith that early schooling for poor children can work wonders. A word-rich classroom gives poor 3 and 4-year-old kids the basic tools for learning and for sharpening their talents for solving problems. A nurturing environment teaches children, many of…
Read more →Narnia's lion really is Jesus - Sunday Times - Times Online AN unpublished letter from the novelist C S Lewis has provided conclusive proof of the Christian message in his Narnia childrenâs books. In the letter [to be published in a new collection of Lewis' letters], sent to a child fan in 1961, Lewis writes…
Read more →Digitizing literature - The Boston Globe But the act of reading a great book requires something of the reader: time. A book must be ''read," it can't be background noise nor can it be understood from a page. If books are reduced to just another streaming media, how does an author foreshadow an event or…
Read more →John Grishamm, The Broker Sure, this is a great book that fulfills all the prerequisite of its genre in a way that allows the reader to probe some of the possibilities of depth. The writing is taut (although I've only listened to it as a book on tape) and reminds me of the masters: Elmore…
Read more →BBC NEWS | Education | Primary reading set for overhaul The way children are taught to read in primary schools in England needs to be changed, says a government review. It has backed the method synthetic phonics, which teaches children the sounds of letters and combination of letters before they move onto books. ... Many…
Read more →Why school achievement isn't reaching the poor - The Boston Globe Other research in places like Dallas and Houston that show how high-poverty students are so much more likely to receive ineffective teachers repeatedly confirm how the nation's school children suffer from a ''crushing impact of maldistribution" of teachers, according to the Education Trust. In…
Read more →Killing the written word by snippets - Los Angeles Times Students are trading in books for search-and-seizure learning on the Internet, and real literacy is getting lost along the way. ... One memorable freshman sagely informed me that people shouldn't be reading entire volumes these days anyway. ... Many of this generation are aliterate —…
Read more →Students Ace State Tests, but Earn D's From U.S. - New York Times A comparison of state test results against the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test mandated by the No Child Left Behind law, shows that wide discrepancies between the state and federal findings were commonplace. In Mississippi, 89 percent of…
Read more →BBC NEWS | Politics | 'A third of pubs' to open longer About one-third of all the pubs, clubs and shops in England and Wales licensed to sell alcohol are to get longer opening hours, BBC research suggests. Now, this news is really interesting because of the folk-models of social causality that get employed on…
Read more →Turning academia into a cafeteria - Los Angeles Times DECADES AGO, I clutched an official New York state examination booklet as a proctor threatened me and hundreds of my nervous schoolmates with a felony conviction if we cheated. We dutifully signed a statement that declared we would not. Students still sign declarations on examination booklets…
Read more →Access Holy Wood - On the Media BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ah, Watergate, the gift that keeps on giving. But aside from Woodward's access to well-placed anonymous sources, there's little resemblance between Watergate Bob and White House Bob. Watergate Bob used disgruntled mid-level bureaucrats to tunnel his way into the bowels of a White House scandal. White…
Read more →Evolution is, in fact, the foundation of the entire science of modern biology and much of modern medicine. No, there is no absolute ''proof" of evolution, but that's not how science works. The evolutionary theory of origin of species is supported by abundant evidence from the fossil record and genetics research—indicating, for instance, that both…
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