"The classroom is the crucible in which education takes place. The classroom holds the raw materials of education: the teachers and students; the materials for teaching and learning; the concentrated time for work; and the shared energy that comes from intense, sustained involvement with other people.
The people with the greatest stake in the classrooms are those whose lives are directly affected by the quality of each day's classroom events: teachers and students. They are in the crucible. . . . I came to believe that education policies could not be properly understood as part of a broader picture of education, one solidly based on the realities of daily life in the classrooms.
Throughout its history education policy research has seen teachers and students as passive, unresponsive followers who must be told what to do at every turn. . . . Money and policies, not the classrooms, are the focus of attention.
The metaphors of control and nurturance (better services, counseling, remedial instruction, tutoring, etc.) have been used to support highly specific policies on teaching methods, textbooks, instructional materials, and testing."
From "The Classroom Crucible" by Edward Pauly, 1991
Monday, January 16, 2006
"Knowledge is All"
According to the management "guru" Peter Drucker in his book "The Next Society":
"The next society will be a knowledge society. Knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce. Its three main characteristics will be:
* Borderless, because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.
* Upward mobility, available to everyone through easily acquired formal education.
* The potential for failure as well as success. Anyone can acquire the "means of production", i.e., the knowledge required for the job, but not everyone can win.
Information technology, although one of many new features of the next society, is already having one hugely important effect: it is allowing knowledge to spread near-instantly, and making it accessible to everyone."
"The next society will be a knowledge society. Knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce. Its three main characteristics will be:
* Borderless, because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.
* Upward mobility, available to everyone through easily acquired formal education.
* The potential for failure as well as success. Anyone can acquire the "means of production", i.e., the knowledge required for the job, but not everyone can win.
Information technology, although one of many new features of the next society, is already having one hugely important effect: it is allowing knowledge to spread near-instantly, and making it accessible to everyone."
Monday, January 09, 2006
"Is Harvard Overrated?"
Special Report in U.S. News & World Report,
Aug. 29, 2005
"Despite the school's well-documented academic prowess, there seems to be at least a shadow of a doubt. In a survey conducted in 2002, Harvard ranked fifth from the bottom of a group of 31 elite colleges when it came to overall student satisfaction. . . .Students still complained about the inaccessibility of faculty as well as the quality of instruction and advising."
"At smaller schools, you're going to have substantive academic conversations with professors who know your name. Here, you see a famous professor walk through the Yard, and it's almost mutual avoidance."
" 'Listen, the Core program is really disappointing. The lack of access to professors is incredible. Advising is abominable,' says Alicia Menendez, a women's studies major. "All that said, it's the students that make this place special.' "
THE NEW YORK TIMES, EDUCATION LIFE SECTION,
January 8, 2006
Title: "What Every Student Should Know"
Subtitle: "Even Harvard, as it replaces its well-known Core, isn't quite sure."
DUHH? Harvard Discovers a Real Core Curriculum
A new faculty report on revising the Core Curriculum at Harvard "essentially dismantles Harvard's well-known Core Curriculum, which requires the students to choose many courses from a fairly narrow menu demonstrating "ways of knowing"--say, moral reasoning and the study of foreign cultures. Instead, it favors a system of distribution requirements whereby students must take a certain number of courses in each of three general areas: arts and humanities, the social sciences and science and technology."
"This is a system, of course, that many other universities have been using for decades."
"It's old wine in new bottles. . . .It's not hard to imagine dozens of deans privately pulling their hair over Harvard turning up in the news for something that their universities did sooner and better. In 2003, for example, Yale issued a report, four years in the making, that winds up in more or less the same place as Harvard's but is far more eloquent and detailed."
Aug. 29, 2005
"Despite the school's well-documented academic prowess, there seems to be at least a shadow of a doubt. In a survey conducted in 2002, Harvard ranked fifth from the bottom of a group of 31 elite colleges when it came to overall student satisfaction. . . .Students still complained about the inaccessibility of faculty as well as the quality of instruction and advising."
"At smaller schools, you're going to have substantive academic conversations with professors who know your name. Here, you see a famous professor walk through the Yard, and it's almost mutual avoidance."
" 'Listen, the Core program is really disappointing. The lack of access to professors is incredible. Advising is abominable,' says Alicia Menendez, a women's studies major. "All that said, it's the students that make this place special.' "
THE NEW YORK TIMES, EDUCATION LIFE SECTION,
January 8, 2006
Title: "What Every Student Should Know"
Subtitle: "Even Harvard, as it replaces its well-known Core, isn't quite sure."
DUHH? Harvard Discovers a Real Core Curriculum
A new faculty report on revising the Core Curriculum at Harvard "essentially dismantles Harvard's well-known Core Curriculum, which requires the students to choose many courses from a fairly narrow menu demonstrating "ways of knowing"--say, moral reasoning and the study of foreign cultures. Instead, it favors a system of distribution requirements whereby students must take a certain number of courses in each of three general areas: arts and humanities, the social sciences and science and technology."
"This is a system, of course, that many other universities have been using for decades."
"It's old wine in new bottles. . . .It's not hard to imagine dozens of deans privately pulling their hair over Harvard turning up in the news for something that their universities did sooner and better. In 2003, for example, Yale issued a report, four years in the making, that winds up in more or less the same place as Harvard's but is far more eloquent and detailed."
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
"Higher Education: Like Processed Meat"
Quotes from "The McDonaldization of Society" by George Ritzner
"The modern university has, in various ways, become a highly irrational place. . . like cattle run through a meat-processing plant.
The large lecture classes, contained tightly by the clock, make it virtually impossible to know professors personally. At best, students get to know a graduate assistant teaching a discussion section.
In sum, students feel like little more than objects into which knowledge is poured as they move along an information-providing and degree-granting educational assembly line."
"The modern university has, in various ways, become a highly irrational place. . . like cattle run through a meat-processing plant.
The large lecture classes, contained tightly by the clock, make it virtually impossible to know professors personally. At best, students get to know a graduate assistant teaching a discussion section.
In sum, students feel like little more than objects into which knowledge is poured as they move along an information-providing and degree-granting educational assembly line."
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