Thanks to Hadley Ferguson (@hadleyjf) for sending me this article from the Huffington Post by J.B. Pritzker titled, “Only Kids Can Fix This Economy”. Pritzker is specifically talking about investing in the President’s proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund and the important waterfall effect that it can have, but let’s take this title and go in [...]

Every once and a while I come across a thought, post, or idea that I can’t let go of thinking about. Lately, it has been Jerrid Kruse’s post “Relevance Is Not The Holy Grail”. Here’s a quick line that has me thinking more and more about the topic of relevance in schools: Understanding footprints in [...]

I’m reading “Collapse” by Jared Diamond, and I am amazed by the complexity of the issues he is discussing yet the clarity he maintains in doing so. In fact, I would argue that utilizing Diamond’s framework to dissect world civilizations is more advanced than any curriculum framework I’ve ever seen AND more engaging to think [...]

In his book The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein puts forth some rather provocative commentary on the state of American children with regards to their academics and intellectual advancement. One item he discusses is the lack of student discussion before and after class with professors. The data he puts forth in his book suggests that students [...]

It is rather intriguing to look around the world of education and listen to the varying beliefs on “what” should be taught in schools. Curriculum is always a favorite target of mine, and many of you who read my work regularly know my feelings on our inflated, overstuffed, irrelevant curricula that emphasize a need to [...]

Dr. Scott McLeod recently wrote a post that discusses what information is really relevant and necessary for students to know in the age of hi-speed internet. This is the type of question and discussion that troubles me because teachers all over the country truly believe that knowing every single concept for their subject is necessary [...]

I hope that when you saw the title of this post you thought I had gone completely mad. Am I really going to write a 463 part series on homework? No way. My point is that it seems educators perceive the “issue” of homework as a topic that you either believe in it or you [...]