Category Archives: Education
Back to the Future with Technology
One of the personal ironies of the current push to “21st century learning” is that I would be happy to return to the technology of the 1990’s. Back in those halcyon days, when I lived and worked in a small community along the Alaska border, our tiny rural school had one bookable computer lab fitted […]
Tobey Steeves: Schools as sorting machines and the imperative of reform
I am pleased to offer a guest post from my comrade-in-arms, Tobey Steeves (@symphily). I think Tobey’s call to recognize the unique qualities of each student in the face of bureaucratic classification and stratification is imperative in today’s obsession with “reform”. Tobey points to a particularly egregious proposal regarding special education: as a sop to […]
A Few Tweets with Baldrey
Twitter is an interesting technology that I’ve just started to use in the last four months (@grapemanca). So far, it has been a wonderful way to save, share and collect valuable links to fast-breaking stories. Not so useful is its capacity for discussion. Trying to follow a conversation between two other people is very difficult, […]
Changes in Core Competencies?
The following is my response to the Ministry of Education’s question, What new competencies will students need to prepare them for graduation and the future? The question can be found on the Ministry’s new website, engage.bcedplan.ca/ ______________ The most important competencies are the ones that have existed for millennia. In terms of the basic literacy […]
Reflections on the Social Studies Conference
On Oct. 21 I attended the annual conference held by the BC Social Studies Teachers’ Association. Given how touchy everyone is about Pro-D, I thought I should mention that I spent my time wisely! The theme of this year’s conference was a familiar one – “21st century learning”. In the sessions I attended, the tone […]
A Lament for the Provincial Exams
I’ll be honest: I’m a dinosaur. Or at least that’s what I’m labeled by the progressives who make so much noise in the field of education. To them, teachers like me are throwbacks, anachronisms, conservative reactionaries, Sisypheans who roll the rock of futility up (and, like me, over) the hill. I also suspect we might […]
Questioning Progressive Education’s Sacred Cows
As someone who blogs, tweets, wikis, flickrs and youtubes [and turns nouns into verbs], I suppose I’m a fairly modern teacher. But I’m also very suspicious of “student-centered learning” and the sort of unyielding optimism that its adherents seem to possess. Maybe I’m just an old crank, but modern education seems consumed by a cheery […]
Some surprising conclusions regarding creativity and innovation
Howard Gardner is well known for his theory of multiple intelligences. He is less well known for a fascinating book on creativity. [This is obviously anecdotal, but I don’t know a single educator who has even heard of this book.] In his Creating Minds (1993), Gardner explores the lives of seven famous persons from the 20th […]
America’s Education Politics: A Crass and Explicit Example
As if we didn’t have enough examples of the highly politicized nature of American educational reform, along comes another illustration that reaches new lows for crassness and audacity. Jonah Edelman is a leader of Stand for Children, a well-known and influential educational reform movement based in Oregon. The “grassroots child advocacy organization” is said to […]
Aspects of Effective Teaching
I recently read an analysis of education practice entitled Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? from the American Fordham Institute. In Chapter 5, Professor Mark C. Shug discusses the qualities of a good teacher. It’s an interesting analysis because Shug points out something that I have observed since the days of my own teacher training: […]