Kevin Drum notes a growing backlash against education reform, citing Diane Ravitch, Emily Yoffe and this Newsweek (which is really this private foundation report in disguise) as examples. The last of these, about the failed attempts of several billionaires to improve education through foundation grants, is really kind of maddening. It makes the billionaires in… Continue reading Education Reform Is Slow
Category: Education
Big Brother Is Evaluating Your Teaching
The New York Times ran a couple of op-eds on Sunday about education policy. One, by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari is familair stuff to anyone who’s heard me talk about the subject before: teachers in the US are, on the whole, given fewer resources than they need to succeed, paid less well than… Continue reading Big Brother Is Evaluating Your Teaching
Support the National Center for Science Education
I try not to do any shilling for political groups on the blog, but I’ll make an exception for the National Center for Science Education. Why? Three reasons: 1) They do good and important, if not always glamorous work, supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools, both in the classroom and in the courts.… Continue reading Support the National Center for Science Education
Hello, Southern Maryland: Talk Wednesday at St. Mary’s College
I’m in last-minute-revision mode here, made mroe frantic by the fact that SteelyKid developed a fever yesterday, and had to be kept home from day care. I did want to pop in to note that I will be giving the Natural Science and Mathematics Colloquium at St. Mary’s College in Maryland tomorrow, Wednesday the 13th.… Continue reading Hello, Southern Maryland: Talk Wednesday at St. Mary’s College
Great Moments in Campus Visits
It’s college admissions season, which means a steady influx of high-school seniors thinking about coming here next year, making campus visits. Most of these students sit in on at least one class, to get an idea of what it’s like. Which occasionally leads to odd things, but nothing stranger than what just happened: a prospective… Continue reading Great Moments in Campus Visits
What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics, Now Streaming
A few weeks ago, I gave a talk based on How to Teach Physics to Your Dog for the University of Toledo’s Saturday Morning Science program. At that time, their local PBS affiliate recorded the talk, for use on their very nice streaming video site, Knowledgestream.org. My talk is now up, and the video is… Continue reading What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics, Now Streaming
Biomedicine: The English Literature of the Sciences?
Thursday’s post about the troubles of biomedical scientists drew a response from Mad Mike saying that, no, biomedical science Ph.D.’s really don’t have any career options outside of academia, and pointing to Jessica Palmer’s post on the same subject for corroboration. Jessica writes: This is something I’ve tried to explain many times to nonscientists: most… Continue reading Biomedicine: The English Literature of the Sciences?
Advancing by Subtracting
I’ve got draft versions of all the chapters of the book-in-progress now, which is great. Of course, when you add up all the words in those chapters, it comes to 92,000, when the contract calls for 70,000. Which means I’ve entered the part of the writing process where progress is measured not by how many… Continue reading Advancing by Subtracting
Student Comments and Internet Reviews
I got my student comments from last term’s intro mechanics course yesterday, which is always a stressful moment. As tends to happen, they were all over the map, with some students really liking me and others absolutely hating me. It struck me while I was reading through the written comments that the experience is a… Continue reading Student Comments and Internet Reviews
NCAA Tournament: Play-Ins, Ratings, and Majors
The 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship officially started Tuesday, with the first of the “First Four” games, formerly known as the “play-in” game. It gets going in earnest today, though, which means that once this posts, I’ll be shutting the Internet down and working like crazy for a few hours, so I can justify moving… Continue reading NCAA Tournament: Play-Ins, Ratings, and Majors