INFORMATION / IDEAS / EDUCATION

2012-01-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

WORLD AFFAIRS / 2011 / 6-11 /

11.6 Education Issues Dividing Public, College Presidents

University presidents, meanwhile, suggest that quality-of-learning concerns might better be focused on high school; 58% of university presidents say that high schools are doing a worse job than they did a decade ago at preparing students for college.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509104576325611317227614.html

Above All, Character. While Americans value college, they value character even more. Asked what it takes for a young person to succeed in the world, 61% say a good work ethic is extremely important and 57% say the same about knowing how to get along with people. Just 42% say the same about a college education.

http://pewsocialtrends.org/2011/05/15/is-college-worth-it/

11.7 Do schools kill creativity?

Do schools kill creativity?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&NR=1

11.8 Tabloid Journalism Takes Lead

As our generation progresses, teenagers, and surprisingly the majority of our adults, know less and less about our actual political, literary, and environmental news. When looking back into only the generation before ours, a drastic decrease in common knowledge has been noted. Our new concern is tabloid journalism. And a very great concern it is…

http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/431979/newspaperid/767/Tabloid_Journalism_Takes_Lead.aspx

11.9 Degrees and Dollars

And legal research isn’t an isolated example. As the article points out, software has also been replacing engineers in such tasks as chip design. More broadly, the idea that modern technology eliminates only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date.

... Therefore, any routine task — a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs — is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

It is encouraging that a prominent economist has come out in the open to state that education by itself will not guarantee jobs in the future. This trend should have become obvious by the mid eighties, when the explosive growth of computer technology married to automation of industrial processes, began to take productivity out of the chart without increase in human labour.
This gives me an opportunity to once again promote the idea: it will be much better if 90% of us work for only 50% of the time in a formal organisation and spend the rest of the time in a social / cooperative / voluntary organisation.

Advantages:
1. We will immediately double the formal workforce.

2. At present there are 6.5 billion people on this planet, who are going through life with blinkers attached to their eyes; most of them don't know that problems relating to global warming, peak oil and production of food exist; and even if they know, they are too exhausted to react to the dangers. This is not their fault, they just don't have the time to think about anything else but the work they are engaged in. This unsatisfactory situation will change with this innovation. (Time is the most precious commodity we have).

3. The productivity (and health) of white collar workers will jump - it is unnatural to work in an office atmosphere (that too with computers) for long periods of time.

4. There will be a flowering of the sciences as people learn to relate their fields of expertise to the larger world around them.

etc. etc.
Selvaraj

11.10 Is IT enough, what about basic sciences?

We often hear captains of the IT industry complain that graduates are not industry-ready. That is, whatever their other accomplishments or merits, the graduates do not measure up to the expectations of the IT industry. The IT honchos never tire of lecturing the universities about the employability-deficit of the otherwise qualified candidates. Engineering graduates may be employable by the manufacturing sector, but not by the IT sector. Employability is measured vis-à-vis the IT industry's needs.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article1512884.ece

11.11 The perils of becoming a nerd

But what would protect human bodies from the rigors of books? Long before 1949, when the term “ergonomics” was coined, doctors blamed reading for health hazards including (to quote one 1795 authority) “weakening of the eyes, heat rashes, gout, arthritis, hemorrhoids, asthma, apoplexy, pulmonary disease, indigestion, blocking of the bowels, nervous disorder, migraines, epilepsy, hypochondria and melancholy.”

And muscle spasms, I might have added. I, too, blamed reading, or more specifically e-reading, for my symptoms. Tired of shouldering a book bag, I had resolved to shrink my literary footprint. Reams of paper dwindled into a Kindle. Tattered photocopies were replaced with PDFs. Slipping a svelte new netbook into a ladylike purse, I felt younger and slimmer myself. Until my neck began to ache, then my shoulders, then my back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/books/review/Price-t.html

2012-01-08T01:56:00.000-08:00

WORLD AFFAIRS / 2011 / 1-5 /

11.1 No male teachers at 4,500 primary schools, figures show

Men make up just one-in-eight teachers working in primary schools and only 48 are currently employed in state-run nurseries.

The disclosure comes amid concerns that a lack of positive male role models may be putting boys off school at a young age and fuelling the gender gap in education.

It comes just days after the publication of GCSE results showed that the gulf between girls and boys at the end of secondary school had now widened to a record level.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8734967/No-male-teachers-at-4500-primary-schools-figures-show.html

11.2 Social media and education

... Surveys, including one in the Chronicle of Higher Education, note that many college students spend only 3-6 hours a week studying; they should be studying 2-3 hours for each meeting of each class. A recommended full-time load of five courses meeting three hours each week means 30-45 hours a week studying. If students don't read assignments (some don't even purchase textbooks), they cannot understand the lectures. And forget discussion — a professor cannot establish a two-way dialogue if the students are unprepared...

http://www.newsleader.com/article/20110609/OPINION02/106090312

11.3 Education - Home schooling

Academic Statistics on Homeschooling

Many studies over the last few years have established the academic excellence of homeschooled children.

... Another obstacle that seems to be overcome in homeschooling is the need to spend a great deal of money in order to have a good education. In Strengths of Their Own, Dr. Ray found the average cost per homeschool student is $546 while the average cost per public school student is $5,325. Yet the homeschool children in this study averaged in 85th percentile while the public school students averaged in the 50th percentile on nationally standardized achievement tests....

http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp

A plan to move schools into digital age ...
"In my industry," he said, "editors who put out newspapers the night before now marvel at the sight of readers getting news delivered to cellphones and tablets.

"But not in education. Our schools remain the last holdout from the digital revolution. The person who woke up from that fifty-year nap would find that today's classroom looks almost exactly the same as it did in the Victorian age: a teacher standing in front of a roomful of kids with only a textbook, a blackboard, and a piece of chalk.
"My friends, what we have here is a colossal failure of imagination. Worse, it is an abdication of our responsibility to our children and grandchildren - and a limitation on our future."
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/06/09/2362140/a-plan-to-move-schools-into-digital.html#ixzz1Ol7QYKp5

11.4 Federal Tax Dollars

Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258

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Interesting to look at the American Budget:

Safety Net Programs ...... 14 %

Medicare, Medicaid and Chips ..... 21%

Social security .... 20%

Benefits for federal retirees and veterans ... 7 %

TOTAL FOR SOCIAL PROGRAMS ..... 62 %

Education is 3%

Scientific and Medical research 2%

I tried to obtain the breakup for India but was not able to do so. Analyzing a national budget can give people a lot of information, it can also suggest ways to solve national problems in a strategic way.

I don't intend to analyze the American budget, all that I can comment is that the outlay for education is surprisingly small. This a threat for USA, and a threat to the rest of the world (since Americans seem to decide what is good for the whole world).

The British outlay for education (2007 - 08) was 13%.

Selvaraj

11.5 The Kite Runner

Just finished reading 'The Kite Runner', a novel about Afghanistan, by Khaled Hosseini. Shows the futility and tragedy of people blowing up one another. A book worth reading.

Selvaraj

2012-01-07T11:13:00.000-08:00

EDUCATION / 2011

Dear Friends,

The purpose of this blog is to make available to a larger audience my posts, mainly in the IIT Global Current Affairs Group and a few other groups.

Most of these posts refer you to the store house of knowledge - The Word Wide Web. A few of the posts are also my 'bright?' ideas.

This blog is for posts in the category 'Education'.

11. EDUCATION

11.1 No male teacher in 4500 primary schools (2/9/11)

11.2 Social media and education (9/6/11)

11.3 Education – home schooling (9/6/11)

11.4 Federal tax dollars (8/6/11)

11.5 The Kite Runner (18/5/11)

11.6 Education issues divide Public, College Presidents(16/5/11)

11.7 Do schools kill creativity? (23/4/11)

11.8 Tabloid journalism takes lead (12/4/11)

11.9 Degrees and Dollars (8/3/11)

11.10 Is IT enough, what about basic sciences? (6/3/11)

11.11 The perils of becoming a nerd (27/2/11)

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