Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Monday, September 24, 2012
How NASA seeks to travel the galaxy in 80 days
It’s fall and that means it’s time for the latest thing in NASA thinking: Warp drive. For the general informed reader, you know that warp drive is mostly magic. It is a Star Trek technology that allows Federation ships to cross the galaxy relatively quickly and allows the show to tell a story that would be different from one that hewed to science fact.
However for the more well-read reader, two words make up NASA’s more recent thinking on the subject: Alcubierre drive.
Monday, September 1, 2008
School's out
It's not like there wasn't an education crisis before the housing bubble burst. The spiraling costs of energy and food, and cuts in funding are helping to accelerate the crisis. Not only are schools being forced to cut back, but the number of poor and homeless pupils is on the rise. As if that wasn't bad enough, there's also a decided failure of leadership. It seems the Clayton County (Ga.) school district is the third school district in the nation in 40 years to lose its accreditation. This means that, failing an appeal, students graduating from the district could have trouble getting into college and getting scholarships. The main problem seems to be that the students were failed by their school board. Today's students have enough to worry about as it is, and that doesn't even include when their teachers are being accused of providing their students with cocaine.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Failing our children, and ourselves
The Atlantic’s June 2008 issue includes an essay by an adjunct professor of English at a Northeastern community college. He outlines a very real problem, that most of his students are not college material. Indeed, he points out that his students barely possess very basic skills with some being borderline illiterate.
Professor X is right to bemoan the level of student ability. He points out a problem that seems prevalent among his older students. The real problems actually run much deeper and he avoids them even as he exposes them. The problems are that we do not value teachers and education at the primary level; the way we approach education; the system of learning we’ve constructed and the way we approach our students. This is a consequence of the system of education we have created.
Teachers at the college level enjoy a different classroom environment than those at the primary and secondary level. Teachers at the college level have assistant instructors and usually only teach two days a week. It is true that they do work beyond the scope of their classes that adds value back into their teaching, but at the most formative levels, primary and secondary instructors are slammed with a teaching load with a minimum eight hours and day, seven days a week with little support -- not counting the hours spent outside of class. We don’t offer teachers sufficient proper rewards or support.
Second, even though our system of education may be the envy of the world (at least at the college level), we treat education as a task to be performed, not as something to be loved and embraced. We approach education the same way we approach medicines, something that tastes bad that must be swallowed if we're going to get better.
Third, we don’t encourage a system of learning for the sake of learning. We don’t build into students the ability, or the desire, to keep learning long after the class is over. And as a society we don’t reward and don’t reinforce the benefits of continual learning.
Fourth, we don’t do a good job of learning our students’ strengths and weaknesses and offering them positive direction and feedback. Talented students are sometimes identified. It’s the tiers between the best and the worst that get shorted. Our teachers at every level simply don’t have the time and resources.
Since the foundation of the republic, the required years of education has expanded from three to sixteen years. The integrating, flattening world is increasing the demand for a quality education. For Professor X’s students, the American system of education has clearly failed. If we don’t fundamentally rethink and reinvent our approach to education, America may not be able to compete and, as a consequence, may not have a future.
Professor X is right to bemoan the level of student ability. He points out a problem that seems prevalent among his older students. The real problems actually run much deeper and he avoids them even as he exposes them. The problems are that we do not value teachers and education at the primary level; the way we approach education; the system of learning we’ve constructed and the way we approach our students. This is a consequence of the system of education we have created.
Teachers at the college level enjoy a different classroom environment than those at the primary and secondary level. Teachers at the college level have assistant instructors and usually only teach two days a week. It is true that they do work beyond the scope of their classes that adds value back into their teaching, but at the most formative levels, primary and secondary instructors are slammed with a teaching load with a minimum eight hours and day, seven days a week with little support -- not counting the hours spent outside of class. We don’t offer teachers sufficient proper rewards or support.
Second, even though our system of education may be the envy of the world (at least at the college level), we treat education as a task to be performed, not as something to be loved and embraced. We approach education the same way we approach medicines, something that tastes bad that must be swallowed if we're going to get better.
Third, we don’t encourage a system of learning for the sake of learning. We don’t build into students the ability, or the desire, to keep learning long after the class is over. And as a society we don’t reward and don’t reinforce the benefits of continual learning.
Fourth, we don’t do a good job of learning our students’ strengths and weaknesses and offering them positive direction and feedback. Talented students are sometimes identified. It’s the tiers between the best and the worst that get shorted. Our teachers at every level simply don’t have the time and resources.
Since the foundation of the republic, the required years of education has expanded from three to sixteen years. The integrating, flattening world is increasing the demand for a quality education. For Professor X’s students, the American system of education has clearly failed. If we don’t fundamentally rethink and reinvent our approach to education, America may not be able to compete and, as a consequence, may not have a future.
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