Formative education (i.e., what Germans call Bildung) is the result of a continuous process of interaction between individuals and the environment. Children are formed by their experiences with parents, teachers, peers, and even strangers on the street, and by the sport teams they play for, the shopping malls they frequent, the songs they hear, and [...]
Archive for October 2008
Schools contribute only a relatively modest fraction to the education of the young.
October 14, 2008It defies reality.
October 13, 2008The NAEP was created to be a service to tell Americans what young people know and can do in certain important areas of learning and how it is changing. The main objective of the new legislation was to extend that purpose to encourage state level use of NAEP. Those of us who recently supported the [...]
to rise above the poverty of their initial state…
October 12, 2008Our views in these respects are, I believe, still dominated by the small town which had but one school for the poor and rich residents alike. Under such circumstances, public schools may well have equalized opportunities. With the growth of urban and suburban areas, the situation has changed drastically. Our present school system, far from [...]
Put twenty or more children…
October 11, 2008The problem is fundamental. Put twenty or more children of roughly the same age in a little room, confine them to desks, make them wait in lines, make them behave. It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, had made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number [...]
the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles
October 10, 2008Master Pangloss could prove to admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was the most magnificent of all castles, and My Lady the best of all possible baronesses."It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; [...]
Power to the People, d’après Thomas Jefferson
October 9, 2008I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses [...]
Rabbi, we can’t both be right!
October 8, 2008The Sizer side thinks that the problem of the schools is that Hirsch’s vision is already well ensconced in the education establishment; Hirsch thinks the exact same thing about Sizer. Both arguments make a certain sense, and one is reminded of the old Jewish joke of the two men who come to a rabbi with [...]
the American Dream
October 7, 2008For Adams, no theme was more important than what he called that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world. That dream or hope has been present from the start. Ever [...]
Do parents have any important long-term effects on the development of their child’s personality?
October 6, 2008Do parents have any important long-term effects on the development of their child's personality? This article examines the evidence and concludes that the answer is no. A new theory of development is proposed: that socialization is context-specific and that outside-the-home socialization takes place in the peer groups of childhood and adolescence. Intra- and inter-group processes, [...]
3,000 generations have passed since that common ancestor lived
October 5, 2008Seen from outside the species, human races look remarkably similar. To a chimpanzee or a Martian, the different human ethnic groups would barely deserve classification as separate races at all. There are no sharp geographical boundaries where one race begins and another ends, and the genetic variation between races is small compared with the genetic [...]
