Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman are both talking about firing teacehrs. Being moderate, wonkish guys rather than fire-breathing ideologues, they mostly say sensible things– Kevin notes that it’s really difficult to document bad teaching, and Mark has a particularly good point about teacher pay: [T]he brute fact is that we’re not currently paying teachers enough… Continue reading Firing Idiots
Category: Education
Education Wonkery
Buried in a “Quick Takes” post a few days ago, Inside Higher Ed had a link to a set of suggestions for improving public education: Education Sector is offering the following eight education ideas for the 2008 presidential campaign. They cover the educational spectrum, from preschool to higher education. They range in scope from big… Continue reading Education Wonkery
Comprehensible Is the New Black
John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes (“people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines”), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible: 1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable… Continue reading Comprehensible Is the New Black
Want to Be a Doctor? Major in Physics
Somebody at work had printed out a table of MCAT scores by major, compiled by the AIP. I couldn’t find it on the web, but I found the original source, and made my own version of the relevant bit. This shows the average numerical scores on the three sections of the MCAT test for students… Continue reading Want to Be a Doctor? Major in Physics
Throw a Monkey a Bone
Or, um, a banana. Or something… The Evil Monkey at Neurotopia is soliciting donations to support an essay contest to be run by the Alliance for Science. The idea is to offer prizes for students to write essays about evolution, to encourage students to learn more about the foundations of biology. They’re a registered charity… Continue reading Throw a Monkey a Bone
Physics Lab, By the Numbers
Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes. Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes. Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot 137Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes. Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the… Continue reading Physics Lab, By the Numbers
Unsurprising Results in Pedagogy
Via Eurekalert, a Florida State press release touting a paper in Science studying techniques used to teach reading. The conclusion won’t surprise anyone who has worked in education: The researchers found that “the efficacy of any particular instructional practice may depend on the skill level of the student. Instructional strategies that help one student may… Continue reading Unsurprising Results in Pedagogy
Dorky Poll: Least Favorite Textbook
It’s going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you’ll need to entertain yourselves. Here’s a question for the science-minded: What’s your least favorite science textbook of all time? It could be a book that you loathed when you were… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Least Favorite Textbook
Dorky Poll: Favorite Textbook
It’s going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you’ll need to entertain yourselves. Here’s a question for the science-minded: What’s your favorite science textbook of all time? It could be your favorite book from when you were a student,… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Favorite Textbook
More Murray
The discussion of Charles Murray continues in comments to my earlier post, and some interesting things have been said there. Also, some fairly loathesome things– you take the bad with the good. For those who can’t get enough Murray-bashing, let me also point to a few other people: Dave’s collecting suggestions of things that Murray… Continue reading More Murray