Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
3
Oct
Posted by John S in Education, economics. Tagged: David Leonhardt, Flash Forward, new york times magazine, predicting the future, price gaps, school issue, the cost calculation, U.S. News and World Report, value. 3 Comments
In this week’s New York Times Magazine—“The School Issue”—there is a short piece debating whether or not a college education is “worth it.” David Leonhardt outlines various schools of thought: On the one hand, people who earn a college degree earn substantially more than those who do not, far more than the cost of the [...]
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29
Sep
Posted by John S in Education. Tagged: Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, David Gilmour, different systems of education, Education, expanding the school day, expanding the school year, gratuitous classic rock references, high school, our long-forgotten agricultural economy, Roger Waters, school, tutorial. Leave a Comment
Contrary to the opinions of Roger Waters and David Gilmour, we do, in fact, need education. In fact, according to President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, we need more education. This weekend, the two of them floated the ever-unpopular ideas of expanding the school day and eliminating or shortening summer break.
Now, since I [...]
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22
Aug
Posted by Josh in Education, Social Norms. Tagged: Education, public school, SAT scores, social acceptability, teacher quality, women. 3 Comments
Individuals who have entered public school teaching in the 1990s and onward are less qualified for teaching than individuals who entered public school teaching in earlier decades (despite modest improvements in the past decade according to one study). According to a 2008 study based on SAT data, “education majors finished 25th in reading, 27th in [...]
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28
Jul
Posted by Josh in Education, On the Long Side, Stuck in a Poor Equilibrium. Tagged: Cambridge, in defense of intellectual rigor, Oxbridge, Oxford, taking lessons from the English, the University System, tutorial, why the lecture is bad ONCE AGAIN. 3 Comments
The Lecture and Its Drawbacks:
The lecture is a systemic feature of the American university system. Let me be clear: I have a fairly broad definition of the lecture. It could consist of anywhere from 15 to over 1,000 students. The primary feature of the lecture is that the professor controls all of the talking, [...]
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8
Jul
Posted by Josh in "We Take, Among Other Things, Umbrage", Culture, Education. Tagged: abominations, Francis Bellamy, God, Hitler Salute, Pledge of Allegiance, slavish devolution, something worse than fireworks. 5 Comments
*I’m glad I said arguably the last time I used this title because this definitely takes the crown.
Imagine going to a foreign country and visiting its schools to get a sense of the country’s culture. Now, further imagine that, before class every day, all of the students across the country simultaneously stood up, posed uniformly, [...]
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3
Jul
Posted by Josh in Education. Tagged: Discussion, Lawrence Krauss, Lecture, Q&A, Richard Dawkins, Stanford University, Underprovision, Universities. 2 Comments
After spending four years as an undergraduate at a university, you grow to notice the inefficiencies of the university setting. Whether it’s due to catering to trustees, a political agenda, excess conformity to tradition, or some other factor, there is a lot of friction when it comes to making changes at universities.
Perhaps one of the [...]
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28
Jun
Posted by John S in "We Take, Among Other Things, Umbrage", Culture, Education, Film, On the Long Side. Tagged: The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger, Harvey Dent, Anton Chigurh, the Joker, No Country for Old Men, Javier Bardem, the Coen brothers, large extrapolations from small and almost coincidental cinematic trends, filmic analysis, coin flips, Sheriff Bell, Carla Jean Moss, Morality, Nihilism. 4 Comments
“The only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.”
—Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
Carla Jean: The coin don’t have no say. It’s just you.
Anton Chigurh: Well, I got here the same way the coin did.
—No Country For Old Men
There has been a rash of coin-flipping killers in the movies recently—well, only two, but [...]
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6
Jun
Posted by Josh in Education. Tagged: clever solutions, equilibria, New York Times, teachers, tenure, The Equity Project. 3 Comments
The New York Times reports on the start of The Equity Project (TEP), a charter school in New York City that pays teachers $125,000 per year, with a potential for a $25,000 bonus. There is no tenure and only a limited retirement benefits program. There are no assistant principals, and the principal earns just $90,000. [...]
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