It is no secret that the education system in both the US and UK are shadows of their former selves, and are the battleground for at least two competing groups: - the ‘equalizers’ who insist that we can make anyone learn anything, and so necessarily hold back the best and the brightest. These are the minds in our colleges and departments of education, who paradoxically understand absolutely nothing about teaching,…
As a follow-on to AK Haart’s piece the other day: Moving from the UK to the US over 30 years ago was an eye-opener for me, especially in the realm of religion. To someone raised in the relatively timid Church of England culture, the ‘in your face’ style of the Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists and others, was a startling contrast. It was even more surprising that all of the individuals…
I have spent my career training future engineers, scientists and mathematics teachers. I have also researched and published widely, in both basic science and applied areas. As such, I have a keen sense of how dependent our society is on technology. From my reading, debates and conversations, I am also aware of the fact that the vast majority of people have no idea of even the basic principles of the…
The current economic problems that the West faces were not purely a result of greed and dishonesty. Our business and government leaders chose to ignore the experts, and instead went by the whims of the public. Given that the average person cannot deal with large numbers and has trouble with logic, why are we surprised? It doesn’t help when I read pieces like http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html?wprss=answer-sheet and http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/revealed-school-board-member-who-took-standardized-test/2011/12/06/gIQAbIcxZO_blog.html , which presents the…
As Heinlein pointed out, the natural state of Man appears to be poverty. Two hundred years ago, a person living on my property was 10 miles from the nearest small town. If he didn’t plan ahead, he would starve or freeze in the winter. Thanks to advances in technology, all but the very poorest of us now have access to clean water, cheap and safe food, and terabytes of bad…
Last year, in a piece in Academe magazine, a professor of English at the American University in Rome wrote, “What they teach in the hard sciences might be useful, but for real critical thinking, you have to go to the liberal arts”. Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8n0gLmL9M ), we have another English professor. His premise is that universities can generate better ideas and students by eliminating critical thinking, replacing “Yes, but…” with “Yes,…
Freedom must include freedom of thought, or it means nothing. In Robert Heinlein’s ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, a character notes that the government has the power (but not the right) to imprison the body, but not the mind. To shackle the mind requires control of emotions, as rulers have known for millennia. Neuro-scientists have discovered that the amygdala (part of the reptilian hindbrain) is the location of emotional…
On a recent episode of the US TV show ‘Modern Family’, one character says to his partner, “I get creative, make a mess, and then it gets cleaned up”. The careful use of the passive voice was a part of the plot, in that he expected his partner to clean up for him. This resonated with me, since I have the personality (read OCD) to clean up things,…
Not all of us in higher education are raving left-wing idealogues with an axe to grind. Some of us actually care about the subjects that we are teaching, and would like some respect for that. This view is very nicely stated in the following piece: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/parents-listen-more-talk-973630.html
I suspect that my rate of posting will get me banned fairly soon, but here goes. ____________________ When I was a child, I used to dread the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s speech each year, as it meant that my scant few hours of entertaining television were reduced. Almost fifty years later, I can see the wisdom of explaining the shared misery, an approach which fit the quiet fatalism of the…
In any large organization, there is a dynamic tension between the people who focus on procedure and process, and those who concentrate on results. In times of plenty, the former group has the upper hand. It is when there is a crisis that results matter. Were it not for World War II, men such as Montgomery, Patton and Eisenhower would probably not have risen as far as they did. This…
I would like to thank everyone for the invitation to contribute, although the very libertarian tone of some of the posts makes me feel a trifle out of place. First, an introduction: I was born to a British soldier and his German wife, gaining the English sense of humour and the German ability to organize (and not being forced to eat English cooking). I spent my formative years moving around…
I would like to thank everyone for the invitation to contribute, although the very libertarian tone of some of the posts makes me feel a trifle out of place. First, an introduction: I was born to a British soldier and his German wife, gaining the English sense of humour and the German ability to organize (and avoiding English cooking). I spent my formative years moving around England, Wales, Germany and…
Latest Comments