Wil [Smith] graduated from Bowdoin in 2000. He eventually became the school’s associate dean of multicultural student programs, a post he kept for 10 years.
“My graduation day from Bowdoin is a day I’ll never forget,” he says. “You know, all of my classmates, they stood up and gave me the only standing ovation. ”
“I remember walking up with you and having my head on your shoulder,” Olivia says with a laugh.
The children of white middle-class, college-educated parents, Hugh Green and Turner Jenkins are just the kind of kids everyone would expect to be stepping out into the world one sunny June day, bachelor’s degrees in hand. But they both veered from the traditional American educational route.
One decided that a bachelor’s was never going to be enough, while the other concluded it was unnecessary….
Once the hallmark of an educated and readily employable adult, the bachelor’s degree is losing its edge. Quicker, cheaper programs offer attractive career route alternatives while the more prestigious master’s is trumping it, making it a mere steppingstone.
For more than five decades, Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate and professor of psychology at Princeton, has been asking questions like this [A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?] and analyzing our answers. His disarmingly simple experiments have profoundly changed the way we think about thinking. While philosophers, economists, and social scientists had assumed for centuries that human beings are rational agents””reason was our Promethean gift””Kahneman, the late Amos Tversky, and others, including Shane Frederick (who developed the bat-and-ball question), demonstrated that we’re not nearly as rational as we like to believe.
When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions. These shortcuts aren’t a faster way of doing the math; they’re a way of skipping the math altogether. Asked about the bat and the ball, we forget our arithmetic lessons and instead default to the answer that requires the least mental effort.
Although Kahneman is now widely recognized as one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, his work was dismissed for years. Kahneman recounts how one eminent American philosopher, after hearing about his research, quickly turned away, saying, “I am not interested in the psychology of stupidity.”
The NSW Teachers Federation and public school advocates such as Trevor Cobbold argue that there is little, if any, evidence to support the benefits of increased school autonomy.
If true, their claims undermine the argument that choice and diversity in education, represented by autonomous government and non-government schools, is a good thing and suggest that moves around Australia to empower schools at the local level are misdirected.
But there is increasing international evidence that freeing schools from centralised and bureaucratic control is beneficial.
Most of the renovated library will look the same as it does today. Its special collections and manuscripts will remain in place, and readers will be able to consult them in the same quiet setting of oak panels and baronial tables. The great entrance hall, grand staircases, and marble corridors will continue to convey the atmosphere of a Beaux-Arts palace of the people. But the new branch library on the lower floors overlooking Bryant Park will have a completely different feel. Designed by the British architect Norman Foster, who will coordinate the renovation, it will suit the needs of a variety of patrons, who will enter the building from a separate ground-level entrance and may remain only long enough to consult magazines or check out current books, videos, and works in other formats. But it will also be used by scholars and writers who want to take home selected books that formerly could only be read in the building.
Will the mixture of readers who take home books and researchers who work inside the library, of premodern and postmodern architecture, of old and new functions, desecrate a building that embodies the finest strain in New York’s civic spirit? Some of the library’s friends fear the worst. A letter of protest against the plan has been signed by several hundred distinguished academics and authors, including Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Prize”“winning novelist, and Lorin Stein, the editor of The Paris Review. A petition of less-well-known but equally committed lovers of the library warns that the remodeling “will be ruining a functional element of its architecture””and its soul.” Blogs and Op-Ed pages have been sizzling with indignation.
The shrill tone of the rhetoric””“a glorified Starbucks,” “a vast Internet café,” “cultural vandalism”””suggests an emotional response that goes beyond disagreement over policy.
You are not special. You are not exceptional.
Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you”¦ you’re nothing special.
Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman! [Editor’s upgrade: Or The Swellesley Report!] And now you’ve conquered high school”¦ and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building”¦
But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can’t ignore….
Read it all or you can watch it all on video there instead.
Faced with slowing growth in its advertising business, Facebook is considering throwing open its social network to children, in the hope that their parents will pay for games and other content on the site.
The plan is also designed to limit the company’s legal risk over the already-widespread use of the site by minors, millions of whom might be on Facebook after lying about their age.
News that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, pictured, is considering legitimising and expanding the use of the site by children comes as Facebook shares fall further below their flotation price. The stock slipped below $27 in early trading in New York yesterday, compared to the $38 at which they were sold to new investors two-and-a-half weeks ago, as investors continued to fret about slowing advertising income from its website and the even narrower options for monetising traffic on its mobile site.
Exactly 30 minutes into the problem-solving the researchers interrupted each group. They entered the room bearing a plate of cookies. Four cookies. The team consisted of three people, but there were these four cookies. Every team member obviously got one cookie, but that left a fourth cookie, just sitting there. It should have been awkward. But it wasn’t. With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it. Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of the extra cookie were crumbs on the leader’s shirt.
This leader had performed no special task. He had no special virtue. He’d been chosen at random, 30 minutes earlier. His status was nothing but luck. But it still left him with the sense that the cookie should be his.
This experiment helps to explain Wall Street bonuses and CEO pay, and I’m sure lots of other human behavior. But it also is relevant to new graduates of Princeton University.
Last fall, Sissy Bradford, an adjunct instructor who taught criminology at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, questioned why crosses were being placed near the public university’s entrance. Last month, she was informed that the university would not offer her any courses to teach in the fall semester. Ms. Bradford insists there is a connection, but university officials deny any link.
Though critics in online message boards have accused Ms. Bradford, who is Jewish, of being intolerant of Christianity, she said that is not the case. “I think I’m the only instructor these students ever had who required them to know passages from the Bible,” she said, “because we base so much of our criminal justice policy on it.”
Now, she is out of work, and the campus has been cast into a heated debate about academic freedom and the separation of church and state.
The PACHA resolution states that only programs with the best scientific information be funded, and that the government should uphold the rights of young people to have access to information in order to make healthy and responsible decisions about their sexual health.
The UCC officials issued objections in their Friday endorsement, however, specifically $5 million in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
What would it be like if you were 10 years old and composed a piece of music that was played by the New York Philharmonic? For a few New York City school kids, including one fifth-grader, it’s a dream come true, thanks to the orchestra’s Very Young Composers program.
Composer Jon Deak, who played bass with the New York Philharmonic for more than 40 years, says the idea for Very Young Composers came when he and conductor Marin Alsop visited an elementary school in Brooklyn several years ago.
“As we were going in, I saw all the children’s art on the walls, which was so superior,” Deak says. “I said, ‘That’s it, Marin! We’ve got to get kids to compose music on the level of this art right here, because look: Doesn’t that look like a Picasso? Doesn’t that look like a Paul Klee?'”
I caught this one yesterday morning running errands and it brought tears to my eyes. Read (or much better listen to) it all–KSH.
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Do not miss this, especially the obstacles she herself has had to overcome in her own life.
In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.
Those efforts have indeed shrunk the divide. But they have created an unintended side effect, one that is surprising and troubling to researchers and policy makers and that the government now wants to fix.
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.
This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it.
Lori Anne is speller 269 during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and so the first time on stage at the bee likely couldn’t have come soon enough for a bubbly 6-year-old who sometimes, she and her mother say, can’t sit still. She’s the youngest ever to compete in the bee ”“ but it didn’t seem that way Wednesday.
She asked for the definition of the word. Then she rapidly spelled “dirigible.” She got it right and quickly took her seat.
While it’s easy to focus on this new commencement controversy, Benedict’s address represents another skirmish in more than two decades of conflict between Rome and liberal Catholics entrenched on many college and university campuses. At the heart of the conflict is a 1990 “apostolic constitution” on education issued by Pope John Paul II entitled “Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church).”
That document contains numerous statements that trouble American academics, including this one: “Catholic teaching and discipline are to influence all university activities, while the freedom of conscience of each person is to be fully respected. Any official action or commitment of the University is to be in accord with its Catholic identity.”
Read it all and make sure to follow the link to the Pope’s full address if you have not yet read it.
When Sally tells Jimmy that he’s going to hell for believing in a false religion, is that Sally exercising her First Amendment right to free expression, or is that Billy getting bullied?
A broad coalition of educators and religious groups ”“ from the National Association of Evangelicals to the National School Boards Association ”“ on Tuesday (May 22) endorsed a new pamphlet to help teachers tackle such thorny questions.
Authored chiefly by the American Jewish Committee, “Harassment, Bullying and Free Expression: Guidelines for Free and Safe Public Schools,” contains 11 pages of advice on balancing school safety and religious freedom.
Read it all and see what you make of the guidelines themselves.
Many apps for kids are designed to stimulate dopamine releases””hence encouraging a child to keep playing””by offering rewards or exciting visuals at unpredictable times.
My wife and I stopped letting our son use the iPad. Now he rarely asks for it. He is 4 and his friends aren’t talking about cool iPad games, so he doesn’t feel he’s missing out.
The experts interviewed were mixed on whether we did the right thing. About half say they would have taken away the iPad if their kid exhibited similar behavior””asking for it constantly, whining. The rest say we overreacted.
Campaigners have warned the Government’s free school programme could add to religious and racial segregation in the region’s cities after plans to create Muslim, Sikh, and Jewish schools, and a failed bid by a Christian group to teach creationism to pupils were put forward.
Concerns have also been raised that another planned free school in Yorkshire is part of an education movement which is based on “pseudoscience” teachings ”“ a claim strongly rejected by those involved.
The Yorkshire Post can reveal that there have been at least eight faith groups or religious private schools in the region interested in joining the free school movement since the flagship policy was launched by Education Secretary Michael Gove.
Heritage Keepers, an abstinence-based sex education curriculum offered by Heritage Community Services in Charleston, S.C., has been approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after a study found it effective in delaying sexual initiation among youth.
The study involved 2,215 students in grades 7-9 and demonstrated that those receiving the Heritage Keepers curriculum were significantly less likely to become sexually active at the 12 month follow-up than those in a comparison group.
For those in the comparison group, sexual experience increased from 29.2 percent to 43.2 percent, compared to an increase from 29.1 percent to 33.7 percent among those who participated in Heritage Keepers.
The school said in a statement Thursday morning it was disappointed by the decision. “Our curriculum is not intended to promote hatred towards any individual or group of people; rather, the children are taught to respect and value other faiths and beliefs, and to uphold Canada’s basic values of decency and tolerance.”
But the school’s curriculum, which it has now taken off its website, referred to “crafty,” “treacherous” Jews and contrasted Islam with “the Jews and the Nazis.” The passages were from two books published by Iranian foundations.
….there was an uproar when it recently became public that Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, had invited Ms. [Kathleen] Sebelius to speak at an awards ceremony this Friday, its commencement day.
The Archdiocese of Washington released a strong letter of rebuke to Georgetown’s president on Tuesday afternoon, calling Ms. Sebelius the architect of the birth control mandate ”” “the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history.”
The conflict is only the latest example of friction between Catholic universities and their local bishops, who are charged with ensuring that the universities uphold Catholic doctrine and exhibit an explicitly Catholic identity.
Don’t get me wrong: Teaching at any level is a noble profession. Some might say it’s not a profession at all but rather a calling. I just pray that if my kids get the call for a high school, they don’t pick up.
I haven’t always felt that way. There was a time when I would have been pleased for my children to become teachers ”” even though teaching is a relatively low-paying profession and an often thankless job. But I used to think the drawbacks were more than offset by the intellectual stimulation and respect that teachers enjoyed, not to mention cut-rate cafeteria lunches.
Now I look at the school calendar and see one long string of standardized tests, most with acronyms that would make the Pentagon blush: CogAT, PSAT, CRCT, GHSGT, ITBS, BOGUS. (OK, I made that last one up.)
Character, and specifically its neglect, is the number one issue of our age. A society that is not grounded in deep values, that doesn’t know who its heroes are and that lacks a commitment to the common good, is one that is failing. Such we have become.
Today sees the launch at the House of Lords of the Jubilee Centre of Character and Values, to be based at the University of Birmingham. The multi-million-pound investment over 10 years comes from the John Templeton Foundation, set up by the American-born philanthropist. The aim of the centre is to promote and strengthen “character” within schools, families, communities and companies. It argues that character strengths can be taught, are critical to a life well led, and will benefit all aspects of the country if they are more widely in evidence.
Parents are angry and Roseville City School District officials have plans to sue after St. John’s School trustees announced the small private school is broke and will close at the end of the month.
The 32-year-old Episcopal school is more than a half million dollars in debt, including owing more than $170,000 to the Roseville school district for leasing the Barbara Chilton Middle School campus.
Congressional lawmakers seem to agree on two things: College student loan debt is out of control and something should be done about it.
Where they disagree is how to solve the problem. Currently they are looking at one piece of this puzzle: how to keep a lower interest rate on federally subsidized undergraduate student loans for low- and middle-income students which is set to double to 6.8 percent this June.
Isaiah Toney, a senior at George Washington University in Washington, said he is “extraordinarily happy” this issue is being raised, but he thinks the discussion has been too narrow.
Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.
“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.
Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.
Ironically, the very freedom Vanderbilt administrators have to make their unfortunate decision derives from a 19th-century Supreme Court case that led to the proliferation of Christian colleges such as Vanderbilt, founded under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1873.
Dartmouth College vs. Woodward originated in 1815, when the Dartmouth Board of Trustees fired the college president, who then appealed to the state legislature for intervention. Having granted Dartmouth’s charter in 1769, the New Hampshire legislature revoked it, instead forming the University of Dartmouth and filling its board with state supporters.
Very few students attended the new university, and the original one remained intact with 130 students. It was a diminished institution without state support, but with persecution came blessing””including a “wonderful interest [in Christ],” according to the record of the Dartmouth Theological Society, and the conversion of 60 students.
Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.
“Try living for one day with all the pain I am living with,” Mr. Jungreis, spent and distraught, said recently outside his new apartment on Williamsburg’s outskirts. “Did anybody in the Hasidic community in these two years, in Borough Park, in Flatbush, ever come up and look my son in the eye and tell him a good word? Did anybody take the courage to show him mercy in the street?”
In the age of helicopter parents, dads spend hours with their children practicing sports, hoping their child will be the next Tiger Woods (In light of recent revelations, I hope less fathers dream about their children playing professional sports), and moms work themselves into a frenzy trying to get their toddlers into the best preschools. How often do parents pick up the religious education textbook and review it with their children?
A further systemic problem is the lack of content in Catholic education, a reaction to the style of education before the Second Vatican Council. Upon reviewing the old catechism and talking with many older Catholics, I discerned that the previous system was based on rote memorization of key church teachings. Older Catholics know basic doctrines, but they lack the knowledge as to why they should believe them.
Going to a U.S. high school and learning to learn like Americans are what increasing numbers of students in China are hoping to do in order to improve their chances of getting into an American college, CCHS says. As an evangelical private high school with experience teaching students from China, CCHS has been taking in more of these overseas students and is starting to refer others to like-minded Christian high schools in the U.S.
Foreign students like Mr. [Tom] Zhou now make up about a third of the 217-person student body at CCHS, the U.S.’s oldest accredited school founded by and catering to evangelical Christians from China, according to superintendent Robin Sun Hom. The school also has students from Taiwan and even one Mandarin speaker from Venezuela.