Pomegranate

09/10/2013

Educated?

Please join us for an exciting public debate inspired by the topic of this year's Hannah Arendt Center Conference, "Failing Fast: The Educated Citizen in Crisis." The debate will feature both Bard Debate Union members as well as Bard College faculty on the topic, "Resolved: online education will sav...

07/10/2013

Charter schools are places where various people try out their ideas of what education is. Some of them are fine, some are great. Some are not so great, they simply become money (narrow achievement) hungry private corporations that would stop at nothing to be ranked higher.

Can we at least learn more from this experience?


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ravitch-charters-school-reform-20131001,0,6358122.story

Los Angeles has more charter schools than any other school district in the nation, and it's a very bad idea.

05/10/2013

"Mens sana in corpore sano" has been lately further specified: want better math grades, go do some sports! better vocabulary, go do some sports!


Sweating is good for your brain! Check it out:

PS: if you want really good math grades, do sports and make some music (it works)

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/high+schools+across+Ottawa+students+running+spinning+doing/8974786/story.html

In high schools across Ottawa, students are running, spinning and doing jumping jacks and squats before they sit down at a desk to tackle math or English — and it’s making a big difference in their marks.

04/10/2013

Remember that insulting and aggressive but effective teacher? Here's somebody who wants her back - because it works.

This is not a very loud or popular voice even if I bet there are lots who think, even if the supporting arguments are false, the main ideas make sense (1. A little pain is good for you, 2. Drill, baby, drill, etc)

"Strict" may be "better than nice" but my question is what for? Yes Dostoyevsky had a terrible father and a hard life - he did lots of his great work right about the time he so miserably addicted to gabling that he was betting off his wife's wedding dress.
Should we give a large segment of society a miserable life so they can maybe distill emotional turmoil into unforgettable works of art?


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304213904579095303368899132.html

Joanne Lipman writes that today's educators are too soft. It is time to go back to the discipline of the past.

03/10/2013

The title of this article doesn't go far enough. What BENJAMIN WINTERHALTER fears is: if we have computers grading / judging our work - and this is our expectation growing up, how are we ever going to make anything original anymore? Computers are not (yet) smarter than us, and they will perpetuate a set of values pertaining to a certain slice of time and place.
I don't know if Shakespeare got good grades in his English class (not that he got much formal education) but his computer judge wouldn't appreciate his approach to the language.


http://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/computer_grading_will_destroy_our_schools/

Feeding essays into a computer program tells students: No one cares what you have to say

02/10/2013

Internships! Ah, the delight of doing marginal work to be able to put some months on a CV or/and fulfil that uni requirement.
Learning little and not being payed for making exclusively boring work displeased interns for a while but there seams to be a new uproar about it.
The article points out that it is actually not all as black as it looks at first sight. For example 61% of payed interns get offered a job at the end of the internship and only 38% of the unpaid. No number of jobs for those who never go for an internship (is that even possible anymore?).



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/interns-resist-working-free.html?pagewanted=1&ref=education

A backlash against unpaid internships in the United States, manifested in a spate of lawsuits this year, is spreading to Europe.

01/10/2013

Graduates my have a hard time getting jobs in India but vocational training is on the rise.

Being obviously useful is not a waste of time.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/where-did-the-great-dream-go-20130910-2ti5c.html

30/09/2013

Bard College suggests that four well thought-through research papers might be enough to get you admitted. The idea opens the "crazy" perspective that at the admission level, selecting for a wider diversity (certainly based in functional competence) may work even better than the usual "CV-perfect" people.
If an open mind and flexibility is a virtue we seek, wouldn't this idea work well for any organisation?


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/nyregion/didnt-ace-sat-just-design-microbe-transplant-research.html?_r=0

Beginning this fall, Bard College will look beyond grades and test scores by offering a new option for applying: writing four, 2,500-word research papers.

28/09/2013

Mark Edmundson is into "real education" as opposed to "corporate education" (more about how he defines these in the article).

There appears to be a tension between looking for knowledge out of being inquisitive or to get a career. It seems the usual ideals vs. money opposition. At pomegranate we choose not to take these sides - we need to eat and we need to do meaningful work. Is it really that hard to keep both in mind at the same time?

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/19/mark-edmundsons-new-book-calls-renewed-emphasis-teaching

It’s a question many professors may be asking themselves this month, as they prepare for another academic year: “Why teach?”

21/09/2013

Dominic Pettman is a professor who structured a course on media as a Reality Show. Sounds like more than fun.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/08/26/essay-teaching-about-reality-tv-turning-course-reality-tv

Among the mountains of literature dedicated to "best practices" in pedagogy, the consensus has emerged that engagement is key, and that we teachers can no longer – as we did throughout history – willfully try to drag students violently by the ear into our own umwelt and call it learning. Rather we n...

21/09/2013

Here are some people convinced that games are going to change education. We're glad someone is working on it 'cause games have that immersive quality that gains almost complete control of the personal universe.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danieltack/2013/09/12/serious-games-and-the-future-of-education/

Are serious games the classroom tool of the future? Is the future already here? The tablet classroom may have once been the stuff of science fiction, but modern developments in technology and brain science may have come together to create a massive change in the way we think about education. Nolan…

20/09/2013

Homework in the US:

A parent doing his daughter's homework:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/my-daughters-homework-is-killing-me/309514/?single_page=true

A teacher doesn't want to assign homework:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/should-i-stop-assigning-homework/279803/

Meta-study on the effects of homework:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx

What happens when a father, alarmed by his 13-year-old daughter's nightly workload, tries to do her homework for a week