Category: Education Page 8 of 18

Losing faith in the “experts”

On Tuesday, February 24, 2015

There were a couple of great articles in The American Interest on the continued growth of homeschooling. The first article talks about the many reasons to homeschool. The last paragraph of the first article on the many reasons to homeschool resonated with me:

We’ve noted before that homeschooling is on the rise as Americans lose trust in the experts that run the American school system. For religious people, that distrust stems from their belief that schools don’t respect their values. Silicon Valley entrepreneurial types think they can disrupt education and create better approaches on their own. According to this piece, African Americans increasingly distrust schools as well. It’s not just because of low expectations either—some families quoted in the piece think their kids don’t get as complete an education in African American history in public schools as they should. Distrust in experts, cultural pluralism, dissatisfaction with current institutions, DIY-ism: some of the biggest trends reshaping America are at play in the rise of homeschooling.

The second article on how the American people have lost faith in the “experts” as blue progressivism has taken control in much of institutional America is quite a good article, too.

Betty Blonde #267 – 07/28/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Stunning blog post on math and teacher education

By Dad

On Monday, February 23, 2015

In Education, Homeschool

My buddy, Andrew sent me a link to an incredible (incredible bad, not incredible good) blog post on some events he witnessed in a teacher education class at McGill University in Canada. It turns out he experienced first hand a class where the professor gave a cogent explanation of how to calculate the average of a set of numbers and then watched while these college students try to do it themselves. Why they would even have to address such a topic is beyond me. I do not want to give away too much, but this is right in line with some things I have written on this topic in a previous post. I know there are some great teachers out there and I am very aware they are often saddled with untenable teaching situations. Nevertheless, if the worst students are the ones that enter the field of education and their pre-college preparation and the training they receive while they are at college is as abysmal as what is described in this post, I think everyone should find a way to get their kids away from the government education establishment.

Betty Blonde #265 – 07/24/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Socialization, teaching and large groups of children

By Dad

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015

In Education, Socialization

Luke, in his latest post at the Sonlight blog, writes about a conversation he had with a friend who appears to work at a traditional school. The whole post is great with one minor caveat which I will discuss in a bit. Here is a bit that nails the whole government school socialization conundrum:

“This one school has an assembly every Thursday morning.” He looks at me, inviting me to ask.

“What do they talk about every week?”

He produces a gorilla shrug. “Exactly!” He’s as excited now as he was when talking about the affection his kids have for him. “I have no idea! In fact, in a school that large, it takes a ton of time just to file all the kids in and out. It’s an hour of that, every week, for 36 weeks, for every single student. File in. File out. And when you have a mass of kids like that…” he pauses. “Large groups of children do not tend to propagate maturity.”

The post describes concepts that are easy to understand, but that many are willfully unwilling, if you will, to acknowledge.

The only part of the post with which I have a quibble is the quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson that advocates for the idea that schools should teach empathy along with reading, writing and arithmetic. As is usually the case with Tyson, he has made what, on the surface, appears to be an enlightened statement, but that is monumentally wrong. The last people who should be assigned to teach children empathy in the current government school educational environment are teachers. It is not that some teachers might not be be great at it–it is that the system ties the teachers’ hands and often advocates for the teaching, even bullying of students with Christian world views on things like homosexuality, sex and origins. Too often, the empathy only travels one direction. Maybe we should change the system and/or let the parents manage how their children get taught empathy.

Luke — Thanks for another great post. Please forgive the quibble!

Betty Blonde #263 – 07/22/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

When does real life start

By Dad

On Monday, February 2, 2015

In Education

I have some more great (and pretty hard) questions to answer (the first of which is here), but I started my new job today and do not have the time to do them justice, so I have decided to point out a post Luke put up over at the Sonlight blog about “real life.” The post talks about a college graduate working in a grocery store. It is a great post that makes some great points and it made me think of conversations I have over the last while with the kids. The point was that success is not something at which you arrive. What one does at any given time in life is a success as long as it is on the path laid down by God. The trick is to have a close enough connection with God to know the difference. Sometimes we let our own ideas about where we should be in life get in the way of going where God wants us to go.

Betty Blonde #254 – 07/09/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

A Patriot’s History of the United States

By Dad

On Thursday, December 25, 2014

In Education

There is a nice article on the textbook we used in our capstone homeschool course on the history of the United States. The name of the book is A Patriot’s History of the United States. It is truly a stellar resource for homeschoolers or anyone else who wants to understand the true history of the United States. Dependence on undersourced screeds written by the likes of revisionist historians like Howard Zinn have played havoc with the public’s understanding of Amercian history.

Boys should not be pushed into STEM fields?

By Dad

On Tuesday, December 23, 2014

In Education

I just read a blog post linked by Luke in the “Other Posts of Note” list over at the Sonlight Blog. The title of the blog post is Stop telling boys to go into STEM and it is just wrong on so many levels I do not even know where to start. First, the idea that there are too many STEM majors is questionable at best. Read this article and this article to start then google it for more articles and lots of research on both sides of this issue. The upshot, though, is that STEM majors make a lot more money whether or not they chose to work in a STEM field. In addition, the author inadvertently makes a very important point when she tells the following anecdote:

Lest you think I’m just being negative toward men, this is actually something a man told me. I had an English professor who was one of the best college teachers I’d had, I think in part because he was very knowledgeable in science. In fact, he’d received a degree in engineering from Stanford but then shuffled around for several years before finally getting a master’s degree in English. During one conversation, I asked him why he got a degree in engineering when he really loved literature.

It is arguable that a STEM degree is better preparation for non-STEM work than many non-STEM degrees. Our daughter Kelly took a similar path by earning a STEM degree (Statistics) all the time knowing she never wanted to work in a STEM job. She has gone on from that Statistics degree to further education in a non-STEM field–several schools offered her funded PhD’s in Marketing. She chose University of Washington. There is no way she would have been accepted into the program after her Bachelors degree following the normal trajectory which typically includes a non-STEM BS, some relevant work and an MBA in Marketing. That she gets the Math and can “do” big data got her in the door.

I guess the issue centers more on the fact that liberal arts degrees are not highly valued in the work place. There is absolutely more academic and intellectual rigor required to earn a STEM degree than a typical liberal arts degree. It has been argued that many hiring managers view many liberal arts degrees as similar to having no degree at all. See here. My argument is not that non-STEM work is not valuable, but that there are better ways to prepare for it than getting a non-STEM undergraduate degree. I think the answer is to change the non-STEM degrees so they ARE valuable by adding rigor including more Math, Statistics, and Computer programming. Maybe less people would enter those fields, but that is right in line with Charles Murray’s idea about too many people going to college anyway.

And don’t get me started on pushing people toward anything based on their gender. It is abjectly elitist and sexist to do that. So what if a person’s culture, value system or worldview pushes a woman toward a “feminine” field. It is THEIR culture, value system and worldview, not yours. Why is your idea about what they should do better than theirs? Additionally, the sexes ARE different from each other, even (if not especially) in the way their brains operate. Maybe men ARE inherently better at math (a religious discussion onto itself), but even if it is just a cultural construct, who is anyone else to say what is right for given individuals whatever their sex. Why do the self-appointed academic elites get to chose what is right and, therefore, what gets pushed when it is a decidedly unscientific “right or wrong”, personal choice kind of question.

It is a luxury to be able to do what one loves as anything other than an avocation if it does not put food on the table. If you do something you love and it does not pay the rent, someone else has to pick up the tab. If that someone is a spouse, an ancestor who gave you a big inheritance or some other benefactor, good for you. The sad part of all this is that it is off “we the people” who end up paying via ill-advised uses of our tax monies. If such a luxury is not immediately available, it is probably a pretty good idea to a get a job that pays well enough to eat, then work your way into the vocation you love. A STEM degree is not a bad way to do that. The probability that you will make enough money for following your dream is much higher if you start with a STEM degree whether you end up deciding to work in a STEM field after that or not.

Makers: The difference between inventors and scientists

By Dad

On Thursday, November 6, 2014

In Education, Science, Technology

An article titled Is School Overrated? High School “Dropout” Makes Affordable 3D Printer in Forbes got me to thinking about a vigorous discussion we have at my work on a fairly regular basis. We are (currently) an intellectual property company made up mostly of engineers and scientists. It is fascinating the technical/professional divide in the company, and it is a pretty big divide, is not your standard scientist vs. engineer divide. Everyone kind of agrees the divide is between those who “work from first principles” and use intuition and those who take a more empirical approach, performing a few experiments and take some measurements before choosing a path to make improvements and innovations. Of course, both groups follow both paths to a certain extent, but the intuitionists (if that is a word) tend to start with a single approach then tinker and tinker until something works while the scientists tend to identify the theoretical possibilities and plan experiments to figure out which one is best and to identify unknown problems.

Virtually everyone on the team that does invention has at least a Masters degree and most have PhD’s. We all, pretty much, get the math in the areas in which we work. It would be my contention that people with formal education in the science can become good tinkerers AND good scientists while those who do not have the formal education at a high level struggle when it comes to science and tend to relegate themselves to tinkering. People who want to learn undergraduate level math can do that without ever going to college through use of things like Khan Academy and other online tools. It is possible to get additional, graduate level math skills out of books, but it gets much harder. To be an Olympic class judo player, one needs to practice with other Olympic class judo players and train under Olympic class coaches.

I think we need both scientists and tinkerers, but as our understanding of physics, chemistry, biology and other highly technical areas of science gets more complex, it will be harder to compete without engagement with the best thinkers in any given field. The example above is about someone who is finding innovative ways to combine and use technology that has already been invented. Inventing something new requires much deeper knowledge than the skills required to create the things described in the article. The “maker” in the article is working with people from MIT who have deep technical skills and formal knowledge, so maybe he will someday move from tinkering to science.

Betty Blonde #205 – 04/29/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

There ARE some great government school teachers

By Dad

On Sunday, November 2, 2014

In Education

I have a cousin who is a government school teacher in Nevada. She is very, very good at her job as is attested by the scores of her students on national normed standardized tests both in terms of the scores themselves and the improvement from previous years. We regularly talk about a lot of things on the phone, but every conversation eventually makes its way around to education. The best of both homeschoolers and and traditional schoolers is that they maintain focus on education. I certainly believe that our country is in big trouble because of the state of our public school system.

That being said, I think the problem is bigger than the education system. The reason the education system is in trouble is that our culture as a whole is in trouble. The reason the schools are failing is because the students, teachers, parents and administrators are all a product of a culture on the move toward secular humanism and paganism, even in the church. Still, there are people out there fighting the good fight to educate our children. We should cherish them. They have to deal with things in the classroom that are way outside the venue of teaching.

My cousin in Nevada has a great blog called Roll Call Tales. If you want to read a great blog by a teacher who is giving it her all down in the trenches, this is a great one. She blasted out a rant there yesterday titled Pray for Teachers that is well worth reading. You should read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt.

Pray for teachers. Please. In one corner we are talking to the child whose mother may have ended her life with pills when she was three and she “doesn’t even know what she liked.” In another corner we are working with a student who has every excuse in the world to not do a thing and a parent that backs him up. Then he wants the grade adjusted because effort doesn’t always equal ability. The bully that is learning to bully from home? It has to be from home right? The quiet one in the corner that you have to beg to speak. The English-Language learner that looks at you in panic every time you call on them. Please don’t call on them. The student that is obsessed with food. The student isn’t malnourished and you can’t figure it out. Until you find out the cupboards are locked at home and food is taken out of their hands and eaten by the parents. The student that cries whenever the teacher has to leave because being left in the classroom with the “scary” sub just fills them with anxiety and they can’t even think. The student whose eyes fill with panic when you say the word “test” or “writing” and you have to find a way to reassure them they can do this. Just getting words on a page that make “sense” is the most amazing accomplishment. The students whose eyes sometime sparkle and sometimes look so flat and dead and not there, You are chilled wondering what put that look there.

She wins some and she losses some, but she keeps on fighting the fight. It is worth it.

How much money will you earn if you get a little more school?

By Dad

On Sunday, November 2, 2014

In Education, Work

I ran into a great article in The Blaze that very succinctly explains, with graphics, how much more money you will make if you:

Get a high school degree rather than drop out
Get an Associate’s degree after your high school diploma
Get a Bachelor’s degree after your high school diploma
Get a Master’s degree after you Bachelor’s degree
Det a PhD after your Bachelor’s degree

It also explains how much additional money you will make for each lecture you attend and what will change if you get A’s and B’s rather than C’s and D’s. It breaks it down by degree type, not surprisingly the hard sciences and engineering have the biggest economic impact on ones lifetime income. The people who did this are from eBay. Pretty impressive. Here is how the research is described in the article that points to the eBay work:

Using data from a variety of sources, including the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the team at eBay Deals produced an infographic breaking down exactly how different degrees — and even individual grades — correlate to extra earning potential over the course of a lifetime.

Now if they could only break lifetime income down based on whether you got your high school diploma from a homeschool, government school or private school.

Class Dismissed – A film about homeschool

By Dad

On Monday, October 27, 2014

In Education, Homeschool

I cannot believe I only ran into this now. There is what appears to be a good documentary film on homeschool now being shown in a few venues. The name of the documentary is Class Dismissed: A Film About Learning Outside of the Classroom. Here is one of the trailers:

SAT scores by major–Education major toward the bottom on every measure

By Dad

On Sunday, October 26, 2014

In Education

An article in Business Insider features a list of how well different major did on their SAT score. It is a fascinating article. The winner, Interdisciplinary majors, people who want to study more than one thing do best. It is hard to say what that means because it is not specified what the multiple majors might be, but the two majors after that are Mathematics and Physical Science in that order. It is interesting to me that those majors did significantly better on the Reading and Writing sections than the Social Science and English Majors did on the Mathematics section. That has kind of been our operating theory all along. If you can get the Math, it is possible to do well on the reading and writing, but that is not necessarily true the other way around.

The other thing that was very apparent is that Education majors are very poor on all of the above. It makes me sad for those teachers whether they are working for the government or in the private sector whose vocation are as educators, but who have to suffer the fools who teach them and/or are only in it for an easy paycheck. I know working teachers and some of my own teachers from when I was in government school who were dedicated, brilliant and invested in helping kids. It is too bad those teachers were the exception rather than the rule. We have to get the unions, government and the educational ivory tower out of the control of public education.

Betty Blonde #194 – 04/14/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

How to follow your dreams (Humans of New York)

By Dad

On Wednesday, October 22, 2014

In Education, Work

A while back, the guy who does Humans of New York posted this about a talk he gave, Brando Stanton says,

Love the quote they chose to pull. Can’t be emphasized enough.

Humans of New York creator and photographer Brandon Stanton spoke to a sold out crowd at Eisenhower Auditorium Thursday night. “There are so many people that use ‘following your dreams’ as an excuse to not work,” he said. “When in reality, following your dreams, successfully, is nothing but work.”

I love this. Kelly and I had a brief “messaging” conversation today. She is slammed right now with work, social commitments and living on her own (pay bills, keep the car running, dentist appoints, shopping, etc.). This is a recurrent theme between Christian and I, too. We have always had to perform triage on our opportunities and commitments on an almost daily basis. Is this opportunity going to help us or hurt us? Do we need to take time to smell the roses today or do we need to just put our head down and work?

Now the conversation has turned to whether our consistent high level of frenetic work will end. It is a hard question. Consistency is more important than the freneticism and it is good to take time to reflect and rest. It is important, also, to take the time to ask the question, “What is the point?” Sometimes the answer really is that there IS no point and one’s ways should change. Our educational goal in homeschool and at an undergraduate level was to finish well and get into a grad school. We did that. We are done.

Now that the kids are in graduate school, they need to decide whether what they are doing really meets any goals they want to accomplish. They have now entered “life” and school for school’s sake is not sufficient reason to continue. So if the hard work of graduate school is replaceable with hard work to meet another, more noble end, then it makes a lot of sense to do that.

The other part of this “follow your dream” equation is the dream itself. It seems like many, many dreams in our narcissistic generation are selfish dreams, but that is a topic for another day.

Betty Blonde #191 – 04/09/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Homeschool is not a monolithic thing

By Dad

On Tuesday, October 21, 2014

In Education, Homeschool

Yesterday, Matt Walsh reposted an article he had written on homeschool at The Blaze. He is very supportive of homeschool, but both the article and the usual acrimonious arguments following the article were pretty depressing. The arguments for and against both homeschool and government school followed the standard pattern. They included the socialization canard, arguments about homeschool versus government school academic performance, anecdotes about über homeschoolers who graduated from college years early and reclusive, uncivilized homeschool acquaintances incapable of functioning in society.

I have been in those kinds of discussions about homeschool. All homeschoolers have engaged in them. They always depress me. There are as many different kinds of homeschool styles as there are homeschool children. When someone argues about the relative merits of homeschool over other methods of schooling, I immediately want to know what kind of homeschool they have in mind when they are arguing. Our homeschool was very academically oriented with a focus on math, science and history. If the measure of a homeschool is academic performance in those areas, than we would probably be judged as having done pretty well.

Some homeschools are more oriented toward the arts or vocational training or any number of other foci. If judged with respect to those areas, we probably would not fare so well. We worked hard at music, art, literature and athletics. I would like to think we did an adequate job in those areas–probably pretty average. We did not work so hard on auto repair, welding, plumbing, construction and sewing. I know some homeschool kids who learned how to do those things extremely well and are gainfully employed as tradesmen who contribute greatly to society, but our kids were probably below average in those areas.

I also know personally of failed homeschools. The kids truly are unsocialized messes. Of course, we all know people in all of the categories I have described from government school, especially the unsocialized messes. I have decided I no longer want to engage in arguments about the kinds of homeschools about which I know very little. I know there are plenty of studies out there that purport to measure how well homeschools do in the areas of socialization and academics. I have bought into those studies in the past, but when I consider what I know about homeschool, I realize that I really only have in-depth knowledge about what we did in our homeschool. I know that worked for us way better than the government schools our kids attended for a couple of years, but that is all I know. I do not know whether what we did would work for anyone else.

On the other hand, I have seen the research that shows the government schools, as a whole, are an abysmal failure. There are very good alternatives, but there is no universal right answer on what is best for any given child. I do believe the one best suited to choose between the available good alternatives is almost always a caring parent. It should never be the government or a government worker who makes the decision except in extreme cases of abuse. Certainly the “professional educator” class (government school teachers and administrators) should not be involved in any of these kinds of decisions. As a whole, they seem to know less than anyone what is in the best educational interest of most children. There might be some cases where government school is best, but the parent should get to decide and I am not willing to second guess them.

Betty Blonde #190 – 04/08/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

We need more professors like UNCW’s Mike Adams

By Dad

On Friday, October 3, 2014

In culture, Education, Politics

I have been a fan of Mike Adams for years. He is an extremely engaging writer and his column over at Townhall is well worth reading whenever he writes. He won teaching awards and has a very high rating on RateMyProfessor.com. He has written some books that were well received titled Feminsts Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” on Campus and Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor.

UNCW denied him tenure because of some conservative personal opinions he expressed while not at work. They denied they had discriminated against him. Over the last couple of month or so he wrote a series of articles on how he beat the administration and faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington into submission for their blatant and continued discrimination against him for being a Christian white male. The funny deal is that he was an atheist when he started. They loved him then. He even had the good sense to leave leave UNC Chapel Hill after spending only a year there in law school. So he is a man of conviction and a man after my own heart.

Here are the articles in the series he wrote about the trials:

Article 1: This is Providence
Article 2: Pharisees and Pharaohs
Article 3: Prayers and Preparation
Article 4: Pride and Perjury
Article 5: David French Slays Goliath
Article 6: To Speak the Truth

Read them all!

Betty Blonde #177 – 03/20/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Discovery Institute on the case of David Barash

By Dad

On Wednesday, October 1, 2014

In Education

I wrote a blog post a couple of days ago on David Barash’s absurd statements about the impact of the study of evolution on History, Philosophy and Theology. Barash is the University of Washington Biology professor who pontificates vigorously and confidently about this from what is, quite evidently, a position of complete ignorance about how work is done in those three fields.

His ignorance does not even slow him down. He continues to clown himself in new venues, the latest being an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. That seems fitting somehow in as much as the Times is not too much of a paragon of clear thinking and veracity itself. It turns out that the Discovery Institute in Seattle has been on the case. Their Evolution News and Views blog articles here, here and here are well worth the read both in terms of entertainment and as a reality check for David Barash, PhD.

Betty Blonde #175 – 03/18/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Be wary of Biology professors at University of Washington if the rest of them are anything like this guy

By Dad

On Monday, September 29, 2014

In Christianity, Education

Commie professor alert!* I just sent Kelly (UW graduate student) a note that said, “http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/09/david-barash-speaking-with-authority-on-what-he-knows-next-to-nothing-about/ — Don’t take Biology at UW. You might get that guy.”

She wrote back and said, and I quote exactly, “ha ha i won’t” with precisely that punctuation and capitalization.

I fear for the reputation of the graduate schools at UW. While there is a certain amount of hipness associated with IM’ing people with little regard for grammatical convention, I do not get why people like the good Biology professor do not realize how foolish they look (and actually are) in making outdated, absurd, discredited philosophical, historical, and theological statements outside their area of expertise. Tom Gilson over at ThinkingChristian explains in painstaking detail (see the linked article) why this is so ridiculous. It seems like it has reached epidemic levels amongst atheists credentialed in one area (Biology, Physics, Zoology) and an abysmal lack of knowledge and training in the areas on which they are opining (Philosophy, History, Theology). Here is a snippet, but I recommend you read the whole thing. And while you are out it check out the blog; there is always something interesting going on there, too.

In his Talk, [David Barash] also says,

Adding to religion’s current intellectual instability is a third consequence of evolutionary insights: a powerful critique of theodicy, the scholarly effort to reconcile belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God with the fact of unmerited suffering…. The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

He does not say, “I have observed and reflected on animal pain and death as a biologist, so therefore I am qualified theologically to pronounce every explanation for the goodness of God to be inadequate.”

*Just kidding. I WISH that guy was at UW or ASU. I would have a ton more interesting material if he was. On the other hand, Lawrence Krauss of ASU got his hat handed to him in debate with William Lane Craig at NCSU for much the same reason that David Barash has clowned himself, so maybe there is hope for good material at the kids’ new schools.

Grad school and homeschool are about learning. Traditional high school and undergraduate degrees are about grades.

By Dad

On Saturday, September 27, 2014

In Education

The kids made the transition from homeschool to community college four years ago, then on to big state university two years after that. We are now engaged in an on-going conversation about the differences between their undergraduate work and the work they have been given in their first year of graduate school. We are slowly arriving at the conclusion that the types of focus and goals of their graduate school work is much more similar to their homeschool experience than to their undergraduate school experience.

It seems like the goal of the community college and big state U is to give a common set of instructions and work requirements to all the students with grades as a way to determine whether any of it stuck. It is easy to understand why it is done that way. Almost everyone who gets an undergraduate degree has a common core of material they have to learn, then within disciplines there is another big chunk of classes all the students have to take, so it would be nigh unto impossible to deliver those classes in any other way in a traditional college/university setting.

The difference between that and homeschool/grad school is that there are usually one or two individuals ready, willing, and even desirous to tailor the materials for each individual student to a specific end. In the case of the grad students it is his major professor. For the homeschool student it is the parents. Both of the kids were given difficult preliminary research tasks and a handful of classes for their first semester. Their classes are more focused on getting concepts and materials to them so they can perform their research tasks. Grades are a part of it, but really, the thing on which everyone is focused is to achieve a level of understanding that will allow them to perform their research; i.e., learning.

Just like grad school, learning rather than grades is the primary goal almost all homeschool programs. That is the way it should be. Technology is changing the way undergraduate education is delivered. In virtually every case, the most effective tools are the ones that promote learning and close the feedback loop for error correction rather than just prepare a student to regurgitate facts or memorize processes for solving chemistry and math problems.

Betty Blonde #172 – 03/13/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Unusual story/video about learning for its own sake

By Dad

On Wednesday, September 17, 2014

In Education

I do not want to give too much away about this video. It is SUCH an unusual video. It is about a choice to dive into the deep end of the pool and do something out of the mainstream in the name of learning–not in the name of formal school, in the name of learning. I want to make these kinds of choices about learning until the day that I die. A link to the article that goes along with the video is here.

Update: Ruthie found this other great version of the story that has additional commentary and interview footage:

Betty Blonde #165 – 03/04/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian’s birthday present and Lorena gets started

By Dad

On Friday, September 5, 2014

In Education, Family

Christian's BS Applied Math diploma Christian starts his last year as a teenager today. A couple of days ago he received the final piece of paper from his time at NCSU. There is no longer any official connection to NCSU. He is officially and completely graduated. I get to run down to Tempe today after work to bring him the computer he purchased with part of his ASU grant. The computer he bought for NCSU died a couple of months ago and he has been limping along with an ASUS tablet/laptop that is awesome, but not really powerful enough for his current work.

Lorena heads down to Wake Tech Community College today to figure out exactly what she needs to do to finish her degree. She is not very far away and we have had such joy with higher education in North Carolina it seems like a shame no one is affiliated there any longer. It will be good to remain in that world for a few more semesters. We will be able to get all those great student discounts for a little while longer.

Betty Blonde #160 – 02/25/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Are our kids smart? Are yours?

By Dad

On Saturday, August 23, 2014

In Education

We have tried to avoid making claims about the intelligence of our children. Partly that is because it is so grating to hear parents and grandparents state that their children and grandchildren are super-intelligent based on how soon they learned to say the alphabet, read, or memorize poetry. Mostly, though, it is because our kids had to work very hard at their learning. Some concepts that might have come easily to a gifted few required extended hard work from them. These periods of extended hard work came every semester and it is no different now that they are in graduate school. Measures of intelligence are fairly controversial and seem to pit people against each other much more than any benefit derived from insights about why their intelligence is what it is.

That is why I was very grateful to read what I believe to be a brilliant and true blog post by Salman Khan of the famous Khan Academy. His belief, backed by a growing body of research, is that a mindset that embraces rather than avoids the struggle and failure required to fight through hard material is more conducive to learning than just about anything else. I highly recommend you read the whole thing. This is a belief I have long held–it is hard, but worth it to learn hard stuff. A corollary to all this is that intelligence is not fixed. He has (of course!) a great little video that goes with the article to illustrate his point. Here is a quote from the article to whet your appetite. Please read the whole thing.

[Dr. Carol Dweck] has found that most people adhere to one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. Fixed mindsets mistakenly believe that people are either smart or not, that intelligence is fixed by genes. People with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can be grown through effort, struggle and failure. Dweck found that those with a fixed mindset tended to focus their effort on tasks where they had a high likelihood of success and avoided tasks where they may have had to struggle, which limited their learning. People with a growth mindset, however, embraced challenges, and understood that tenacity and effort could change their learning outcomes. As you can imagine, this correlated with the latter group more actively pushing themselves and growing intellectually.

The good news is that mindsets can be taught; they’re malleable.

Betty Blonde #156 – 02/19/2009

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.