Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray is back with a three-part essay series on edcuation, published in The Wall Street Journal: Part I: The world is full of stupid people. Part II: Too many stupid people go to college. Part III: We should spend more money on the tiny fraction of people who are smart. (You… Continue reading The Problem of Charles Murray
Category: Education
Perspective : SAT Prep :: Fish : Bicycle?
As I said previously, I get a lot of emails from people looking to promote their sites, and I do try to look at most of them. Yesterday’s batch included ePrep, a site offering college preparation advice, and while I can’t speak for the quality of their services, they get a link for pointing me… Continue reading Perspective : SAT Prep :: Fish : Bicycle?
Basic Concepts
In a back-channel discussion among ScienceBloggers, John Wilkins suggested that it might be interesting to do occasional posts on really basic concepts in our fields– the sort of jargon terms that become so ingrained that we toss them around without realizing it, and end up confusing people. A lot of these terms often have a… Continue reading Basic Concepts
Hot New Trend: High-School Physics!
There’s been lots of news from the AAS meeting in Seattle this week, but the best from my perspective is that high school physics enrollments have neevr been higher: Presenting new data that encourage this outlook, [Michael] Neuschatz [senior research associate at AIP’s Statistical Research Center] will show that enrollment in high school physics classes… Continue reading Hot New Trend: High-School Physics!
Statement on Teaching
One of the standard elements of most academic hiring and promotion applications, at least at a small liberal arts college, is some sort of statement from the candidate about teaching. This is called different things at different places– “statement of teaching philosophy” is a common term for it, and the tenure process here calls for… Continue reading Statement on Teaching
No Child Left Without a Pony
Yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed had a story about the latest group to report on science education. Like any good blue-ribbon commission, they have changes to suggest: The panel’s members seemed agreed on several major goals. One is to align all components of education in science technology, engineering and math (STEM). The current system in the… Continue reading No Child Left Without a Pony
The Education Gap
The Times last weekend had a big article on the “achievement gap” in education, where poor and minority students are found to lag behind upper- and middle-class white students in many subjects. The author looks at a number of innovative shools that are producing good results with students from the at-risk groups, and considers a… Continue reading The Education Gap
Wieman on Science Teaching
Inside Higher Ed has a short piece today on a lecture given to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching by Carl Wieman on how to teach science. Though, from the sound of it, it was mostly about how not to teach science. During the talk on Friday, Wieman said that traditional science instruction… Continue reading Wieman on Science Teaching
Single-Sex Education
There’s been a lot of discussion of single-sex education in blogdom recently, in the wake of new rules allowing more single-sex schools. Matt Yglesias offers links, and Kevin Drum expresses concern: It turns out, though, that my real fear is just the opposite: what if we try it and Becks turns out to be right?… Continue reading Single-Sex Education
Thoughts on Survey Seminars
I’ve had a tab open for a while containing an Inside Higher Ed article on a new approach to introducing science at Emory University: David Lynn, who chairs the department of chemistry at Emory University, spoke about Emory’s seminar program for entering freshmen. All Emory freshmen must take a seminar the first semester and the… Continue reading Thoughts on Survey Seminars